The general public’s apathy and indifference unlare the calling cards of this sci-fi flick featuring Brandon Routh returning to his comedy and fantasy roots. He’s high school football quarterback Hank Wallace whose life and its opportunities passed him by. Now a high school science teacher, Hank sounds the alarm bell about an alien presence in their small town but since they are just annoying, odd weeds and plants in their present state nobody gives a shit until that shit hits the fan and they evolve. Ick is too much CW melodrama and not enough Invaders From Mars. You have to pull a lot of weeds before finding the roots of something that could have bloomed into something better under the right guidance.
Watch: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV.
Except for the last entry which was one of the best films of 2024, I have never been a fan of the V/H/S series. Far too often they routinely and blatantly disregard the found footage rules making me wonder: Who is filming this? How are they filming this? And…Why would anyone be filming this? Halloween does ignore common sense at times but the stories and the wrap-around are so good I can forgive the film turning a blind eye to reason.
The bookending story is “Diet Phantasma“, a documented scientific experiment in which subjects are asked to drink a new brand of soda as a team behind bullet-proof glass monitors the grotesque and entertaining results.
Don’t be put off by the first story: Coochie Coochie Coo. It is the absolute worst of the bunch. It is just another modern “Mommy” monster story in a haunted house. It isn’t scary or macabre. It is just so, so stupid.
The rest involving a Halloween scare gone wrong, a zany parallel reality that riffs on famous Halloween candies, a mystery surrounding a town’s missing children and homemade haunted house that takes on a life of its own range from kick ass to quite good. The segment having fun with Halloween candy – Fun Size – has some really imaginative special effects.
All in all, this is another step in the right direction for a franchise that has struggled to find a mainstream audience.
Watch: Shudder
Night of the Reaper is another movie that claims to be an eighties throwback that doesn’t capture the tone, spirit or atmosphere of the eighties but we will let that go for now. What the film has going for it is a clever little twist part way through turns every slasher trope on its head. Now, it takes a bit to get there as a college student (Jessica Clement as Deena Golding) returns home only to find herself subbing for her friend on a babysitting gig. There is a lot of unnecessary exposition and a lot of background on Deena’s life, parents that really and truly just isn’t necessary. All that does is act as filler until the the main event comes. There aren’t enough kills until we get to that big twist either. Is the wait worth it? It is. I just wish that the first act measured up to the second act.
Watch on: Shudder
I was never a fan of the original franchise. To me, it just seemed to be the same movie and same story told over and over again. Not in a good Friday 13th way either. I am the kind of slasher fan who wants to know the killer’s motivation, wants to know their origin story even if it is just never having won the prestigious “Hitchcock Award” as a student and blaming the heroine’s father for casting the deciding vote that prevented their win. If you know, you know. Chapter 2 is just one long, frantic chase scene in which the final girl from Chapter One, Madelaine Petsch as Maya, is always on the run once The Strangers find out she survived their shenanigans. There is barely time for us or Maya to take a breath as the psychopathic trio of Pin-Up Girl, Scarecrow and Dollface are swiftly in pursuit chasing her through a hospital, a forest and two or three houses.
If that isn’t enough, Maya fights off a wild boar. Yes, you read correctly. Maya runs a foul of a very hungry boar. If Maya didn’t have bad luck she wouldn’t have any luck at all.
The filmmakers do live up to their promise of revealing more about The Strangers who never seem to communicate with one another in any way. How is that even possible? We do learn though how two of them met, where their catch phrase began and a little bit more about the very secretive town of Venus, Oregon. By the end of the film and that dreaded “To Be Continued” prompt, we still have more questions than answers though.
Watch: In Theatres, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video
What do you do when you want to make a sequel to a successful horror movie but you… Doh!… killed off your villain? Easy. You borrow heavily from Wes Craven turning The Grabber into Freddy Krueger so he can terrorize siblings Finney and Gwen from beyond the grave. While the original was all about Finney, this is Gwen’s story. Her psychic powers have grown even stronger leading her to investigate their mom’s mysterious death. There aren’t any hockey masked killers at the Christian youth camp where their mom used to work but there are clues to The Grabber’s origin and their mother’s connection to him. Black Phone 2 answers the question… What would happen if Freddy haunted Camp Crystal Lake… in the winter? There is even a scene in which Gwen is flung around a room by an invisible assailant as her helpless pals look on. Whether this and the entire film is considered a Nightmare rip-off or a clever homage is in the eye of the beholder. Black Phone 2 is worth a look though for any fan of the original.
Watch: In Theatres
Four friends are kidnapped and forced to participate in a deadly and gruesome game show hosted by a demented, sadistic host. This gory throwback to the Torture Porn horror era of the early 2000s fails to break any new ground but sure breaks a lot of bones. What stops this from being yet another lame Saw rip-off is the intense bat shit crazy performance by Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach in Watchmen, Freddy Krueger in 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street) as the unhinged vengeful game show host Barry Miller. When the screaming and screeching stops long enough there’s a couple of plot twists along the way that ratchet up the drama even more. Gotta love that compressor scene.
Watch: In Theatres
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