Hungerford (2014) 1h 19m

I don't know about you, but if I were an alien planning some sort of invasion I don't think that I would start in a small UK town.  The idea of starting low key in a suburb is good; less people to notice, easy to take over an area quickly, etc.  I just don't feel like picking somewhere on a large island would work out well in the long run.  Unless it was Australia and then you learned to weaponize the hellscape of fauna that exist there.  You know, this is all if I were planning an alien invasion...

Hungerford is set in the UK, where a film student decides to film every aspect of his life for an entire week.  It just so happens that this week is the one where a parasitic alien race decided to start invading the Earth via his small town.  Armed with cans of deodorant, an axe, and a camera, our film student and his flat mates all set out to secure a love interest while attempting to fend off these alien brain slugs.

This movie felt like it was a really long trailer for a video game.  The ending came and I felt like I needed to pick up my PS4 controller to help them fight off the invading hoard.  With that in mind, Hungerford does toe that Shaun of the Dead line.  It just lacks the humor and charm that Shaun has.  I think they realized this too during filming because there is a mention of Shaun of the Dead by name.

Hungerford is a bit slow and we're given a lot of shaky cam footage which gives us zero visual content.  Otherwise, Hungerford is pretty solid.  By the end, it satisfied me enough to be pleased but left me open to wanting more.  I doubt that sequel will ever come, but I'll throw in a few bucks to a Kickstarter or whatever if they announce it.

I do want to address that this movie sent me down a huge personal research spiral because I couldn't remember what movie, TV show, book, comic, or video game had a similar type of alien.  Something that was invisible until the connection was broken, slug-like, and controlled the host through the back of the neck.  The closest I found was 1994's The Puppet Masters but that's not what I'm thinking of.  For some reason I keep thinking it might be in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that feels wrong too.  So if anyone knows what I might be thinking of (as that's not vague at all) please hit me up on Twitter @30daysofplight or e-mail me at 30daysofplight@gmail.com because it's driving me insane!

I give Hungerford 3 Eldritch Parasite MTG cards out of 5:

They're Watching (2016) 1h 35m

I was on board with They're Watching at the start.  Really, I was.  But then we got to the last 15 minutes and it was like they realized they had a bunch of money left over and promptly use it for some rough CGI to shart all over the ending.  So much CGI.  Borderline SyFy CGI.

They're Watching takes place in a random Eastern Europe village where a rich white woman and her European husband buy this absolute trash cottage.  It is part of a home-fix-up show where the filming crew comes back some time later to film the progress that was made on the house.  Since this is the case the entire film is done from the POV of each of the film crew cameras.

The village itself has a story about a woman that was burned as a witch when the village children got sick.  This is a continual theme, especially after two of the film crew intrude on what ends up being a funeral for some children.  The village turns against the crew for this trespass. After that everything starts to spiral down the Blair Witch hole.  Which sounds like it's some weird theme porn.  The Blair Witch Hole!  Like Debbie Does Dallas, only in the woods and filthy!

I think that's a good point to step away from the plot here in case anyone reading this wants to watch it.  I will say that up until the terrible CGI kicks in, I was relatively engaged.  It isn't hard to follow the threads left out while viewing this, but, for as much as I complain about this style of horror movie,  They're Watching did it well.  Just that fucking CGI... god fucking damnit!

I give They're Watching 2.5 flipped houses out of 5:

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