Desolation (2017) 1h 18m

I don't have a child, but if this film has taught me anything it's that before I ever let said imaginary future child to go camping with me or someone else then I'm going to make them watch both Predator and First Blood just so they're prepared for anything!  You need to hide from something trying to kill you?  Cover yourself in mud and let all the rad traps you set take that mother fucker out!  I don't care if you're five!  Protect your neck, non-binary imaginary child!

Desolation is a journey of letting go.  A mother and son go hiking in the mountains in order to spread the ashes of their recently deceased husband/father.  Armed with bear mace and a family friend, they begin to be stalked by woodland Rob Zombie for an undefined reason.  After the friend is stolen in the night the mom and son combo realize they have to escape before they're forced to listen to Living Dead Girl until they die.

I don't know what to classify this movie as.  It feels like it would be a terrible home invasion film if this took place in a house, so Forest Invasion?  Woodland Survival Horror?  Scout Horror?  Woods of 1000 Corpses?  Okay, that was the last one.  While there is this whole plot of the stranger hunting them the real plot of this film is that the son just wants to be recognized as being a teenager, and thus no longer a child.  You feel for the mother, having lost her husband and thus wanting to protect her son but you can't be emotionally dismissive or else he's going to learn to resent you!  Go to therapy!  With that in mind, the boy does prove to his mother that he is now more man than child and eventually bludgeons Rob Zombies head to pieces with a rock.  I get it, you're working through some shit as well kid, but damn... you need to go to therapy too.

I give Desolation 2 copies of Hellbilly Deluxe out of 5:

Bleed (2016) 1h 22m

You know that part in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy and those Nazis get to the grail room and they have to chose the Holy Grail?  The lady Nazi hands the one guy a cup and he says "it certainly is the cup of the King of Kings" and then fills it and drinks from it?  You remember that?  He fucking died super hard from that because he had chosen... poorly.  That's kind of how I feel with today's film.  I rolled a movie that I had already watched.  When that happens I try to go with the film before or after it then.  Upon reading that this was a bunch of people ghost hunting in a burned down prison I figured it would be good enough.  That's only a tiny bit of the plot and I felt this movie age me.  Not to dust, but enough that I'm not sure if my penis will ever work again...

Bleed focuses on a couple that just bought a house in southern fuck-all USA.  Our female protagonist has a strange crescent moon birthmark on her neck and is also eight or nine months pregnant.  These two things are related as the movie progresses.  Friends come to visit the couple and the woman's Burning Man burnout brother and his girlfriend convince almost everyone to go to a supposedly Satanic burned down prison to ghost hunt.  The ghost of Rob Zombie past appears, a bunch of pointless backstory and unnecessary character development happens, and the towns folk are a cult that want the baby for reasons never really defined.

This movie would've done well as a short film.  All killer, no filler, and we'd be just fine.  Unfortunately we have a rag tag cult with a religion thrown together based on no research other than "ummm... blood... babies... satan but not satan... Rob Zombie."  We get two thirds of the way through and a girl suddenly discloses that she was schizophrenic since she was a child and that's why she keeps taking pills.  This reveal has nothing to do with anything!  Ever!  Even the fact it's a prison is kind of worthless as it's just used as a building where Rob Zombie in Rasputin form could be chained up.  They could've used a spooky old shack for that.  It was just a dart board full of ideas and whatever they hit they tried to fit in and make it work.

On the plus side though, the acting was decent.  The accents were a bit thick on some of the locals but otherwise not too bad.  Camera work and sound were all good.  The score used a lot of cool instrumentation where I could tell it was metal bowls with water in them or doing slides on a violin or cello string.  I'm not knocking things like Carpenter's Halloween score here, but I would like horror to work more on atmosphere like that rather than traditional music.  Overall though, I think Bleed bled out, leaving a husk of a film on the floor.

I give Bleed 1 copy of Alice Cooper's Only Women Bleed out of 5:

Drifter (2016) 1h 26m

There's nothing worse than buckling in for what you think is going to be a wild ride only to have things just jump the tracks.  I sat down, started this up, had some orange juice with me, a cat on my lap, hit play, things started off great.  Then...well... let's get into it.

Drifter follows two brothers as they're attempting to track down the man that killed their father.  They're driving across the desert in hopes that they're on the trail of the murderer.  After a few tough run-ins one of the brothers needs medical attention and they stop at the first town-ish/trailer park thing they come across.  From there everything goes south.

This film has one of my greatest complaints which is unnecessary or unfinished plot points.  You can leave a plot point open ended if done well, but the first quarter to half of this film is focused on the brothers getting revenge.  About 10 minutes into them being in this town that plot line is completely abandoned.  I'm also not sure what the setting for this world is.  Everytime someone comes across them they ask how they have a working car.  Yet the person they're chasing is supposed to be in a car.  So is it just that in this desert region of nothing cars became scarce or is this some form of post apocalyptic world?  Finally, I assume that the one writer/director are a fan of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1000 Corpses because once the town "family" gets introduced then it's the crazy eccentric cannibals!  It's like you took the Firefly family from ...1000 Corpses and told them to be poorer quality versions of themselves.

The high points of this film are everything up to them arriving in the town and the score.  The score is simple but coated in a sense of pending danger.  It's louder than some scores but it doesn't overpower the scene.  The viewer has an auditory dread of "what's coming" while watching.

As I mentioned earlier, I wish that plot line A (revenge) would have tied into plot line B (the town) better.  Once B is wrapped up we're just left wandering that same wasteland of a desert without a decent sense of accomplishment for the characters or even just us.  It tries to make that jump that ...1000 Corpses does but it's not absurd enough.  They don't have the horror experience that Rob Zombie had at that time, and in the end, it set Drifter into a ditch to die.

I give Drifter 1.5 car pancakes out of 5:

Day 6: 31 (2016) 1h 42m

So I'm pulling an audible for today's film.  If you happened to watch my Halloween special post (you can see it here) you know that I'm a fan of Rob Zombie films.  Luckily for me, 31 came out on DVD just before XXX-mas and it was gifted to me from my fiancé.  So rather than roll for a film for this post I decided to pop 31 in and watch it.  Let's see what you've got, Mr. and Mrs. Zombie!

31 revolves around a group of carnie folk that get attacked and kidnapped.  They find themselves thrust into a game of "31" (which I assume is called that because it happens on Halloween).  The object of the game is simple: survive 12 hours inside of some sort of basement labyrinth while psychos dressed as clowns attempt to kill them.  While all of this is going on, Malcolm McDowell and two women are dressed in powdered faces, wigs, and old French noble clothes while they watch and listen in on the whole scene.

This film had two other versions that existed at some point.  The MPAA gave those versions NC-17 ratings until this final cut had an R rating.  The MPAA is a group of random shit sacks.  I don't mean just a bag full of feces, I mean actual scrotums full of feces that lead to some imaginary dick to fire shitty loads.  Censor that assholes!

I can't say that 31 was better in its original form as I haven't seen that.  I will say that it feels like Rob Zombie is running out of tricks when it comes to his directing.  A lot of the shots were similar to those that existed in his prior films.  They feel less like a signature for him and more along the lines of a madlib that he keeps writing the same thing in for every space.  I liked the acting in it and everyone interacted well with each other.  Malcolm McDowell steals the show every time he is on screen and I really wish I knew more of the back story of his group.

I think my biggest complaint though is that I had a lot of moments where I would become suddenly invested in the characters or scene only to have the scene become drawn out or the next shot slow the pace too a crawl.  It was a bell curve of being a bit bored, then getting really into 31, then bored again, repeat.  That isn't to say that I didn't like 31 though.

There were some great kill shots.  One of the guys falls on top of a chainsaw that is running (I'm not sure how without someone holding the trigger) for a long ass kill scene.  In addition to that, the first killer is a Spanish speaking little person with nazi body paint and a room devoted to Hitler... which, honestly, the killers' personalities were great, but this one was one of those things where he should've pulled back just a bit.  I think it's Tim Gunn that said that while you are accessorizing you should always remove the last thing you put on because it was probably overkill.  Then there's Doom-head who is such a weird sleazebag and I hate/love his character, all in a good way.

So I think that this isn't Rob Zombie's best film.  It's not a bad film, but I just don't know who this film was really made for.  It makes me want to watch Battle Royal, or The Running Man, or Slashers (the 2001 film) because it's kind of the same premise.  I will end this saying that there is a great nod to the Rocky Horror Picture Show in this film.  At least I hope it was a nod...

I give 31 2 ceramic ass clowns out of 5: