Strayed (a.k.a. Perdidos) (2014) 1h 33m

So close.  So close to finishing this Cut without having to deal with another "found footage" film and instead one more has to sneak in at the zero hour.  My husband and I had a long discussion last night about this subgenre of horror and what has and hasn't worked.  Blair Witch played on the fact that everyone grew up with some sort of urban legend.  Paranormal Activity brought the fright into our homes.  Grave Encounters took the phenomena of ghost hunting shows and had their own twist on the absurdity of them as well as pushing horror to be a bit more extreme.  Most generic found footage just keep taking a group of 20-somethings and putting them in a haunted space.  You know what else had that plot?  Scooby Doo!  And the fucking Scooby gang is way more entertaining!

Strayed (Perdidos) does this same dead horse style plot.  A group of 20-somethings go into a supposedly haunted building to record ghosts.  They vanish and this is the footage found.  The twist here is that we know a Rabbi had to do an exorcism in this building.  The Rabbi also left a Dybbuk just chillin' in that space, which I feel you wouldn't want to leave hanging out for just anyone to find.  Spooky scares happen and I can't read Hebrew to save my life so I have no idea what half of that stuff says.  I couldn't even translate whats on that poster and I spent a good 20 minutes trying and just gave up assuming its one of the 72 names of god.

Surprisingly, Strayed was one of the better found footage films I've watched.  The quick pans gliding by shadowy figures are decently scary but what this movie does that I really like is that the spirit has the ability to manipulate physical space.  People find themselves in hallways that end up looping themselves, rooms will change at any point, and impossible space becomes possible.  In the end though, these weren't enough to save the film from long periods of nothing and poor character interactions.  I would have liked this better if it were a 20-30 minute short film.  This way you get all killer/no filler.

I give Strayed (Perdidos) 1 rabbi clip art out of 5:

Night of the Living Deb (2015) 1h 25m

Both on and off of this blog I've watched a lot of horror comedies.  Sometimes you want to be able to laugh while also seeing gore as opposed to laughing at the poorly done gore.  John Dies at the End, Tucker & Dale..., Shaun of the Dead, Deathgasm, all great examples of mixing hilarious comedy with fantastic horror.  So what happens when a horror comedy does neither their horror nor their comedy aspects well?

Night of the Living Deb doesn't have much going for it in the plot department.  Deb attempts to hit on a guy without knowing his fiancé is there and pissed at him.  They end up getting drunk and passing out back at his place.  The next morning is awkward but then so are the zombies that exist everywhere now due to water contamination by the water company owned by the guy's father.  That's about it.

There's an attempt at an awkward romantic angle here but the dialog feels really forced and disingenuous between our leading characters.  It's only made worse by 90% of the lines in this film attempting to be jokes.  I had a few laughs while watching this but to be bombarded with mediocre humor consistently made me dislike this film even more.

If I had to sum up Night of the Living Deb in a few words then I would say this is the equivalent of some college friends realizing one of them had a video camera and trying to make a zombie movie in a weekend.  Okay, that's more than a few, but we're not quite at "shit sandwich" level of bad with this film.

I give Night of the Living Deb 0 copies of Shaun of the Dead out of 5:

Ghost House (2017) 1h 29m

At some point soon I would like to write a book that's an "everything I needed to know about life I learned from horror movies" type thing.  In it I plan on having a section on foreign travel because holy fuck do white tourists just do the dumbest shit!  Agreeing to ride out to the country in a foreign land with people you just met, yeah, fucking stupid!  Taking an object from something called a "ghost house," you're an idiot!  Basically being a tourist, you're probably an asshole, and I say that living in a city that is a tourist wonderland.

Ghost House sets us up with a couple on vacation in Thailand. On their first day they befriend two other tourists that are staying in their hotel.  After an evening of drinks and strippers our couple is convinced to go out to a remote spot because the fiancé is jealous of her man friend having lipstick on his face and she is told that she could get some cool pictures out there.  The other couple tricks them so that a spirit possessing their friend will possess our cranky lady.  Now, with the help of their tour driver (Gogo) our man seeks out all kinds of shaman and mystics to save his betrothed.  He has three days to do so before her soul is taken into the abyss.

This film had a really sharp reverse bell curve.  It started out strong, despite relying heavily on jump scares, but there were about 15-20 minutes where it just couldn't keep my interest.  By the end of the film it came back around and I want to create an award just to give to the actress that played the witch at the end (or whatever she might be called, my occult knowledge doesn't extend too far into Asiatic countries).  She by far has the best "fuck you I did it!" laugh I've ever heard.

As for our ghost woman, except for the very end she is shown in quick and jerky shots.  We get a few close-ups which end up disappointing because the facial appliance looks a bit rough.  I don't know if it's what they molded it out of, or the paint job, but it looks a bit too Halloween mask for me.  I've also been rewatching Syfy's FaceOff from the beginning and I'm finding myself more critical of stuff like that.  Curse you Glenn Hetrick!

I give Ghost House 2 ghost houses out of 5:

Dark Signal (2016) 1h 38m

My husband hates when I tell stories.  Despite the fact that I write summaries on this blog, when it comes to telling an actual story I feel the need to make sure all my bases are covered.  So instead of a simple "the cat farted today" I tend to add in extra details to set up the situation.  It usually kills the story.  This movie though, it made my story telling seem like the greatest oral literature ever.

Dark Signal is like someone took a bunch of speed and then audio recorded their ramblings to write down later.  Then, instead of editing, they just went with it.  I'm going to try to keep this short.  There's a serial killer named the Wedding Band killer because he cuts his victim's ring finger off (although, later he seems to just take any finger).  Laurie, our main character, needs money for her and her wheelchair using son.  The son is the only person we know nothing about even though he has a demon voice for a bit, and even that gets ignored as far as an explanation.  Laurie has an online friend named Ben who works at a radio station that has just been bought out and so the host is doing her last show.  There's a stupid amount of back story for this radio host for no reason except to tie her to the killer of this film.   Also, they have a psychic medium on as a guest (for some reason) and they contact a ghost which is telling them about a possible victim of the murderer.  Back to Laurie and her boyfriend that offers her a cut of the cash if she helps him rob a house.  They go to the house but it ends up that the killer is also in the house.  A ton of unnecessary story telling and explanations happen, the killer is revealed, I wanted to flip my coffee table in disgust.

"The spirit of a murdered girl returns with a message for the staff of a local radio station" was the summary I was given for Dark Signal.  I thought I was going to get some sort of Pontypool with ghosts instead of zombies.  This film is seriously four different movie plots they crammed together.  We have Laurie and the robbery, the radio station, the ghost the psychic contacts, and the serial killer.   Calm the fuck down and pick one, maybe two, and go with it!  You don't need all of this!  Aside from a telegraphed jump scare there isn't anything else to complain about with Dark Signal, but I can't let this slide.  Don't watch this.  It's not worth the loss of what precious time we have on this Earth.  I took this bullet for you, you owe me a life debt.  Expect a call from me at some point requesting a pizza.

I give Dark Signal 0 danger signs out of 5:

Pay the Ghost (2015) 1h 34m

I've been spending a lot of time recently looking into prop design, especially when it comes to stop motion animation.  One of the main things you need when doing any stop motion is a foundation.  Normally it consists of a table-like structure so you can make sure your puppet doesn't fall on its ass every time you pose it.  The foundation is extremely important because it's going to hold your set, your characters and, at its essence, your story together.  I mention this not because I would like to work for Laika in their design department (but seriously, Laika, that would be my dream job, hit me up) but because this film, stripped down, had a really interesting story concept for the foundation.  Unfortunately, instead of making interesting characters and a great setting they chose to whip out their collective parts and piss all over the foundation.

Pay The Ghost is Nicolas Cage being a distant father while attempting to get tenure at his university.  He misses trick-or-treating with his family and to make up for it he takes his son to a Halloween carnival around the corner.  His child promptly vanishes after asking Mr. Cage if they can "pay the ghost."  Skip to a year later and ol' Nickleback has put together a crazy board of missing kid cases and finds connections between Halloween, missing kids, the phrase "pay the ghost," and eventually a poorly constructed witch story where they take actual pagan symbols and give you half stories about them while they make a bunch of shit up to fit their narrative.

I'm probably not doing it justice but as I said, the foundation of the story was good.  Witch woman steals three kids everyone Halloween to avenge her lost children from a time when people didn't wash their ass regularly.  I'm on board with that.  From there though it starts to get muddy.  There are some great scenes where the witch absolutely wrecks people with some sort of ghostly Falcon Punch but mostly it's Nicolas Cage playing a crazy Nicolas Cage character and everyone else is along for the ride.  I was expecting a "he saves his son but sacrifices himself" ending but nope, everyone's happy, except me because I watched this and because the sequence after the first credits made it seem like they had a sequel in mind.  Fuck that!  I'll pay a ghost to not have another of these movies exist!

I give Pay the Ghost 1 piece of Joss Paper out of 5:

The Axe Murders of Villisca (2016) 1h 18m

If you look at the little bit of white text under the title on this film's poster you'll notice it says "inspired by the true story."  So of course this sent me into a research spiral five seconds into the damn movie when it quotes some random reverend about hearing voices to murder.  The axe murders in Villisca, Iowa was an actual event that happened in 1912.  The variation in this film and the actual story (ghost possession aside) was that there were multiple suspects but the Reverend was the only one tried... twice.  The first time it was a hung jury and the second time he was acquitted.  Although he did have a history of being a perv and later ended up in a psych ward after sending what could be the first documented unsolicited dick pics.

The Axe Murders of Villisca establishes way too much personal back story for three twenty-somethings posing as high school students.  Somehow this group of faux misfits end up going on a road trip to this murder house so the one guy can record it for their YouTube ghost hunting show.  After they're booted from the home because the girl is a dunce they agree to break into the house at night and use candles and dowsing rods to speak to spirits.  It's a slapdash operation but one Instagram post later we have the weird semi-jock and his friend drive out in an attempt to cause some sort of harm to the others.  Instead, the demon or ghost or whatever is in this house possesses the semi-jock and he kills his friend and then others get possessed and everything becomes a mess.

The only upside to this film was the fact that it made me seek out information about an interesting unsolved murder.  But a film shouldn't make me want to do that during the whole film.  This was an IFC film but it feels more like some farm club production that got called up to warm the bench for the pro team and jumped on ice during some sort of line change confusion (I played ice hockey most of my life, those are my go-to sports metaphors, deal with it).  The actors were too old for their parts, there's no real understanding of why multiple people are possessed at the same time or if the mirrors hold a greater meaning to things.  Also, did they have Fireball candy back in 1912 and how did a fucking Fireball from 1912 exist to modern day?!  Fuckin' ghost magic!  Too bad they couldn't have used that to make this movie good.

I give The Axe Murders of Villisca 1 copy of So I Married an Axe Murderer out of 5 but only because this film lead to me learning something:

Here Alone (2016) 1h 38m

About 10 years ago I was working for a city library system.  One of my co-workers had just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road and suggested it to me on the grounds that he thought I would like it and he wanted someone to discuss it with.  He was wrong on the first part and my biggest complaint was that the book had a repeating pattern of "nothing but us/oh shit! danger/nothing but us/etc."  I bring this up because today's film was like a shittier version of me reading that book.

Here Alone is a post-zombie-apocalypse film where our female protagonist is the surviving member of her family.  We get flashbacks of her learning outdoorsman (outdoorswoman?) techniques from her husband and brief moments of what happened (viral outbreak) but mostly this is just the lady of the woods eating worms and pissing in buckets.  Eventually a man and his step-daughter end up in the film in an attempt to break up the fact that now it's just three people in the woods, but whatever.  There's a brief heel turn which I think is because the step-daughter has a lady boner for her not-dad but I might be writing my on narrative into this film out of boredom.

There's not much here.  I think we see a total of three zombies and one just looks like he's a metal head swinging his hair around to some thrash.  I wish the only person in this entire film was the woman to really push that feeling of self-survival.  Otherwise there is nothing to write about, or watch, or care about here.  Just the lady of the woods covering herself in dookie and dumping buckets of piss on herself.  So if you have filth fetishes, then this film is for you.

I give Here Alone 0 copies of The Bad Movie Bible out of 5: