Nothing is worse than a horror comedy that is just not funny. Destroy All Neighbors tries desperately to be like greater films such as Dead Alive, Braindead and Bad Taste but stumbles, trips and falls face-first on its own machete.
Jonah Ray, who is most well-known for his stint as Jonah Heston on Mystery Science Theater 3000, plays one of the most irritating characters in recent memory. Although his condition is never explained in the movie the dull-as-dishwater, weak-kneed prog rock musician William Brown should have had an MRI done early in life because apparently he doesn’t have a spine. When his boss trashes his music he just goes silent. When his derelict landlady refuses to address an on-going issue he accepts her answer and slinks off. When a new neighbor, Vlad, is so noisy that he and his girlfriend (Kiran Deol as Emily) cannot get any sleep William balks at Emily’s notion of confronting them.
These decisions and more make it hard to cheer or pull for someone who allows others to walk all over them. Like Alan from Return to Sleepaway Camp, I started laughing AT and not WITH William. The dark side of me wanted him to be a human Crash Test Dummy and get his ass kicked hard and often.
William finally grows himself a pair but of course he takes things too far. He kills his neighbour not realizing he is the literally the “neighbour from hell”. This is when Destroy All Neighbors goes completely off the rails with a very confused filmmakers behind the wheel. There are a lot of just dumb moments that are supposed to be humourous but play out as just completely moronic such as William watching an instructional video on how to dispose of a body. It isn’t funny. It is just stupid.
The film’s only redeeming qualities are the special effects and Bill and Ted’s Alex Winter as Vlad under all that make-up.
Destroy All Neighbors is like Victor Frankenstein’s creation. It is a bunch of bad set-pieces, a bunch of orphaned script ideas haphazardly sewn together. Unfortunately, this creature was brought to life instead of left on the slab to rot.
Watch on: Shudder
Horror fans have seen “killer” everything and anything. We’ve seen killer cars (Christine). We’ve seen killer trees (The Evil Dead, The Guardian). We have even seen killer jeans (Slaxx). And now we have…a killer swimming pool? Yup. That’s preposterous and frankly boring premise director/writer Bryce McGuire wants us to swallow in his feature film debut.
Professional baseball player Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) has taken a leave of absence from the sport he loves due to the onset of MS. To enhance his treatment, Waller and his family buy a house with a swimming pool. Unknown to them the pool has a murky and dark history. As you might guess once the pool has been restored to its former glory strange things begin to happen. Waller starts to go into remission. Family member start seeing things underwater and some almost drown. We begin to understand that the family should have invested in a hot tub instead. Oh, crap. Forget that. Let’s not give the filmmakers any ideas for a sequel to this dumpster fire.
The mystery itself is about as intriguing as skimming a pool free of leaves, insects and other debris and the solution is so simple one wonders why the family didn’t enact it earlier. Perhaps because they have the collective IQ of a bag of baseballs?
Night Swim does one thing successfully though. It confirms that when it comes to producing horror movies Blumhouse believes in quantity over quality. They are quickly becoming the Full Moon Features of the modern era releasing tons of flops and very few hits.
Watch on: In theatres, On Demand
Just when you thought the Saw franchise was all played out director Kevin Greutert (Saw VI, Saw 3D) and writers Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg have breathed some new life into John Kramer’s sorrowful existence. An imaginative prequel to Saw 2, this tenth film in the series follows Kramer as he attempts to find a cure for the cancer that is killing him. Kramer goes all-in on an experimental treatment in Mexico that promises to heal him as it has others.
Saw X becomes Jigsaw’s very, very personal revenge story with his apprentice, Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), lending him a helping hand in setting his deadly death traps. The reason why Jigsaw is seeking vengeance is what really drives the story and instead of the played out format of a cat and mouse game between Jigsaw and law enforcement, Jigsaw kidnaps all of his victims holding them hostage together in the same place. The entire back half of the drama plays out in a warehouse where the “victims” face their individual trials right in front of the others. This sort of brings an entirely new dynamic to the Saw series.
Watch on: Prime Video, Starz
Let’s get one thing out of the way. Wrath of Dracula is not a very good movie but not for lack of trying. If it had a bigger budget and a better focus as a horror comedy rather than a straight-up horror movie, it might have been more than a movie-that’s-so-bad-it’s-good. The fight scenes are amateurish. The plot is seriously silly. Dracula isn’t as imposing or impressive as he should be. The acting though by everyone involves is quite good as is the Gothic backdrop. Still, the retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is so completely ludicrous it would have been more successful if everything was played for laughs as it should have been.
In this version of Dracula, Mina Harker (Hannaj Bang Bendz) is a bit more proactive. Instead of waiting around for news about the fate of her husband not fiancé Jonathan, she travels to Transylvania to investigate. There, she bumps into Van Helsing (Mark Topping) who enlightens her about the true danger she faces. Mina agrees to team with him to not only rescue her husband from Castle Dracula but to end his reign of terror forever.
Things take a comedic turn when Mina takes the time to begin her training with Van Helsing despite the fact that her husband is in imminent danger. Mina borrows an ancient martial arts guide in a language she doesn’t understand from Van Helsing. She studies the simplistic illustrations and starts kicking, punching and flailing in the air like she was the guest-starring on an episode of Sprockets.
Once Mina has Dumb Fu down she and Van Helsing just waltz right into the castle leading to their big confrontation with Dracula’s brides and The Count himself. Imagine if you will Busta Rhymes kung fu fighting Michael Myers in Halloween: Resurrection and you might have some idea what you are in for as the movie should have been titled Laugh of Dracula instead.
Watch on: On Demand
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