Before I Wake (2016) 1h 37m

I've been having some serious issues with insomnia lately, so getting a film that revolves around sleeping is partially infuriating and partially calming.  The former because I'm jealous, but latter because at least I don't have to deal with the crap that they put up with in this film!

Before I Wake has our picturesque couple of Mark and Jessie.  They lost their son due to an accident and decided to adopt a boy that is around that age.  Enter Cody, an adorable boy that likes butterflies, has a shoe box full of caffeine pills, and comes with some serious emotional baggage.  You see, when Cody sleeps, his dreams become real, but so do his nightmares...

When I started watching this I was expecting it to fall into the void of generic book club-esq horror.  Where it had a scare element but the script was very cookie cutter.  Luckily, as I progressed through my viewing those fears fell by the wayside because everything leads up to a really well thought out explanation.  It also avoids having this happy ending.  Instead it takes what we have left and leaves us with a realistic (or at least as realistic as a movie with a dream child in it) "we'll make the best of this" ending.

I will say that Before I Wake does have some lulls in its story progressing and our first view of the nightmare creature had me making jokes about the alien from Signs haunting this kid, but all in all this is a solid film.  Child actors are also a coin flip if you're going to have a solid one or not and the kid that plays Cody definitely pulls his weight.  Watch this with your partner on the couch in the dark and you'll probably both enjoy it.  That is unless your baseline for horror is something like that Texas Chainsaw movie with Renee Zellweger.

I give Before I Wake 3.5 Signs aliens out of 5:

Godmonster of Indian Flats Blu-Ray + Extras (AGFA/Something Weird)

Welcome to 30 Days of Plight's newest segment, Saturday Screamers!  During these we will be covering various DVD and Blu-Ray releases and re-releases that were lovingly provided to us through secret underground connections!  Today's comes to us from the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) and Something Weird. 

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The year 1973 brought us many things.  Off the top of my head I can't think of any, but it did give us Godmonster of Indian Flats.  A local sheep herder has his casino winnings stolen by a questionable group of people.  He returns to his flock only to have some sort of UFO experience.  The next morning brings us an external hybrid sheep embryo blob thing.  Luckily, this dirt town has a scientist can take it to his lab in hopes of finding out what the hell it is.  Now forget this monster even exists until the third act because the real story is that a black man comes to the town in an attempt to buy it up for a development company.  Sadly, the entire town is full of racist scammers that pull some serious shit on him so he ends up in jail and then almost lynched.  The monster, now full grown and looking like a shitty Snuffleupagus, brings hell to the town... for like five minutes.  Then the ending becomes as equally confusing as the rest of it.

This movie screams MST3K.  Get your friends together and feel free to riff on this as much as you want because it's full of material.  For example:

- a dog funeral
- a crash mat made out of a mattress and empty PBR cases
- awkward attempts at 70's psychedelic film making
- the line "I've been following you all the way from the glory hole!"

The transfer quality is crystal clear as well so you'll be sure to see all this on your screen.
But wait!  We're not done!  Let's talk about the extras on the disc, thanks to Something Weird.

You get an entire extra film entitled The Legend of Big Foot (1975) where you follow a man on his narrated journey in search of Big Foot.  Despite his claims of having video evidence of the creature (which we're also told were discredited) we don't see any real footage of Big Foot.  It's a insane journey full of moose fights, squirrels getting hit by jeeps, native people, and shots of bears.  I felt changed as a man after it was over because I had no clue what the hell just happened.

Next, you are given three short films.  The first is Dr. Frank E. Strange's Strange Sightings from 1964.  This is meant to be a true story about a man that was labeled by the courts as a "UFO Eccentric."  Supposedly his lawyer wanted to know more so we get a very staged scene where they talk about why UFO's are probably real. We're treated to various interviews with random college kids about if they believe and then an interview with someone that claims they were taken on a UFO multiple times.  The climax of this short is an interview with the founder of The Aetherius Society which is a spiritual organization where he claims to communicate with aliens.  It's amazing!

The second short film is a safety film entitled Just In Case: Suppression of School Bus Fires.  Here are the things I learned from it:

- Middle school kids have zippos and bowie knives
- All vehicles in the 70's where explosive death traps, especially school buses since we're given about a dozen ways they might just catch fire
- It wasn't just my school bus that used to have a cardboard box in the front for trash
- The guy that takes the help instructions from the kids, drives 10 feet and then tears it up and throws it out the window while they watch is my fucking hero.  I haven't laughed that hard at something in ages.

The final short is entitled White Gorilla and contains questionable racism and even more questionable accents.  A group of assorted Europeans are tracking a white gorilla in the Congo.  They build a super camp overnight but the gorilla ends up stealing the only female in their group.  It's stopped by a regular gorilla that comes out and they fight with trees for about ten minutes.  White gorilla wins, he's shot somewhere that just makes him fall on his side, and then he's captured.  Mission accomplished and film over!  Before you ask, yes, it's a man in a gorilla suit with a plastic mask.

That's it!  That's the mass of the Godmonster of Indian Flats Blu-Ray!  Thanks again to AGFA and Something Weird for collecting such strange and wondrous this on a digital format for the ages!  Also, thanks again to them for hooking us up with a copy of this!  This will be released on July 10, 2018 so if you want a copy you can head over to the AGFA or Amazon to bring this joy into your home!

The Devil's Candy (2015) 1h 19m

All this time and metal got it wrong.  Satan doesn't like super fast riffs or growling vocals coming from someone in corpse paint, he just wants a single drop-D chord played in the most boring manner over and over.  That, and apparently child murder, which I didn't sign up for when I started listening to Gorgoroth.

The Devil's Candy might be one of the most metal horror movies I've ever watched.  A small family move into a cheap farmhouse where two old people were killed by their son (which I thought was Kyle Gass for part of this film, but isn't).  The father is a painter and a semi-serious metal head.  After moving into the house, the father begins to hear strange music from the walls and has moments where he blacks out while painting only to come to and see he's created some of the sickest shit ever put on a canvas.  Connected to the murderous son, the father and family are now faced with something straight out of some Dark Throne lyrics.

As a whole, The Devil's Candy is a total package for a horror film.  We have solid and down-to-earth characters being wrapped up in this supernatural element and having to fight back against that.  They do too.  Holy fuck do they and we get a rad final death.  It's so rad that I almost stopped typing to throw up the horns so you know it's metal as fuck!

My favorite thing in The Devil's Candy is the art gallery where the father is trying to get shown is named Belial.  Belial is a fallen angel that is said to have been created after Lucifer and is possibly the first angel to fall to Earth during the angelic revolt.  The owner of the gallery talks of being "represented by Belial" and having to "sacrifice," basically in order to gain material wealth.  I thought it was a good touch.

I give The Devil's Candy 5 Emperor albums out of 5:

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:

The Boy (2016) 1h 37m

I'm not sure about you, but any time I dare to enter a Wal-Mart I head straight to the DVD section just to check out the cheap shit.  Over the last six months or so I've seen copies of today's movie staring at me from the shelves.  I hadn't heard of it, never even bothered to pick it up and read the back, but I still felt strangely drawn to it.  Luckily it has shown up on Netflix recently and the dice were on my side when I rolled.

The Boy starts with Gretta, a woman attempting to put her life together after an abusive relationship.  She takes a short-term yet high paying nanny position away from home.  Upon arrival to the grand estate, Gretta is greeted by the parents and a life size porcelain doll, their son, Brahms.  Given a strict schedule to follow, our nanny is expected to wake up, dress, feed, and provide lessons to the doll while the parents are away on holiday.  Gretta instantly chalks this up as insane and shirks her duties until strange things begin to happen in relation to Brahms.

I'm jumping right in and saying this film has one of the best reveals I've seen in a long time.  Through the course of this entire movie we are left wondering if the doll is haunted.  Hearing disembodied footsteps, a child's voice, shadows moving under closed doors, and the doll ending up in places where it was not left.  So when the explanation comes blasting out of nowhere I popped hard for it.  One of the hypest moments I've had watching a recent horror film.

Alas, I do have a complaint, and that is that despite this amazing moment, I'm left the same way I felt after watching High Tension.  Now that I know where the rabbit hole goes, I have no reason to go back and watch this again on my own.  It was still a great movie, but ignorance is bliss when it comes to these types of horror films.  You want to be scared by the unknown.  Think of how boring Scooby Doo would be if Velma just walked up to the person from the start and said "It's this scumbag!"

I give The Boy 3.5 supposedly haunted dolls out of 5:

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:

Veronica (2017) 1h 45m

A few years back I used to work at a witchcraft store here in New Orleans.  People had no problem picking up statues of Goetic demons or objects meant to curse, but the moment they saw a spirit board/Ouija board they refused to touch it.  It's amazing how fearful people have become of press board with a decal on it and a plastic planchette.  I mention this because today's film is loosely based on a woman named Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro that supposedly ran afoul of a spirit board and it lead to her death.  To this day it's Spain's only officially documented police record with a focus on supernatural and the unexplained.  You can find all that info online so I won't go into it.  What I will go into is our review!!

Veronica is a Spanish film where our title character and her two friends attempt to hold a seance during an eclipse with hopes of contacting passed loved ones.  They make contact with something but in the process it seems that the spirit has latched itself to Veronica.  She and her siblings become threatened by the spirit, shadow people roam the house, and strange stains begin to appear on under their beds.  Not even the blind nun nicknamed Sister Death can help Veronica as she is told her only hope is to be able to outrun the entity surrounding her.

I've noticed that the more horror films I watch for this website, the more grizzled I become.  My skin is much thicker than it was say 10 years ago.  With that in mind, I think the younger version of myself would've been way more into this movie than I was.  There are some really decent visual effects involving hands coming out of the bed and grabbing people and shadows moving inside of the apartment.  I liked the overall story telling, it's supernatural gonzo-fiction but that's what makes it a movie and not a documentary.  My only complaint (once again) is this weird mix of magickal practices contained inside of the literature that accompanies the board.  I know, it's not meant to be some sort of "official" anything and is just this weird hodgepodge of info, but I'm pushing a pair of glasses up the bridge of my nose and scoffing like a douche at it.

I give Veronica 2.5 haunted paintings out of 5: