Twisted was directed by Darren Lynn Bousman who shot four…count them… FOUR…of the Saw movies yet it has the tone of a vapid, Hallmark drama and the plot of a goofball 50’s sci-fi film…and not in good ways. Two partners in crime in and out of the bedroom (Lauren LaVera and Mia Healey) deal in long-term luxury dwellings. The thing is they don’t actually own the apartments or condos to be able to legally rent or sell them.
The scam artists get a taste of their own medicine when they targeted a brilliant neurosurgeon, Djimon Hounsou as Dr. Kezian. Trapped in his modified dwelling, they become the mad doctor’s unwilling patients. From dopey TV movie soundtrack to the way the characters behave and interact, Twisted’s entire attitude is that of a Lifetime movie for adolescents. Unlike something like Re-Animator, there’s no edge here.
Watch: Video On Demand
You know that overwhelming sense of disappointment you get when you are desperately excepting that ONE birthday or Christmas present and you get something else instead? On the outside, you are thankful for any present at all but on the inside, you cannot help but be crestfallen. Well, that’s The Strangers: Chapter Three in a nutshell. Yes, the final installment in the trilogy does answer all of our questions. We learn the identities of The Strangers, how Dollface joined the band of merry murderers and how shifty Sheriff Rotter is involved.
We also learn the fate of the only survivor of The Strangers, Maya Lucas (Madelaine Petsch) who has been on the run and put through a physical and psychological meat grinder for three movies in a row. As a stellar final girl, Maya has been driven so far to the edge that a Stockholm Syndrome situation is actually teased. Maya perhaps being lured to the dark side by The Strangers is actually the most intriguing part of the movie and has us guessing especially when she shockingly joins The Strangers on a random Murder-A-Long.
The resolutions of all the character and plot threads are rapidly expedited like dinners are at your local Japanese restaurant. It is only during the big wind-up do things slow down allowing the characters and their choices to breath. Like the 28 Years Later franchise, there is no reason or point for this story to have been dragged out for three movies. A tip of Freddy’s fedora though to Madelaine Petsch whose performance across all three films has been the stuff of any final girl’s dreams….or nightmares.
Watch: In Theatres
I wasn’t even aware of this trilogy until they all appeared on Netflix here in Canada. A big, big nod to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. Death Whisperer follows a farming family in Thailand who are tormented by a vengeful spectre (known as The Black Spirit) who can possess people, summon creatures, can manipulate the minds of her victims and can cause general eerie phenomena and other such scary nonsense.
The family’s older brother (Nadech Kugimiya as Yak) is a solider and acts much like the groovy Ash in Evil Dead rushing headlong into danger with a chuckle and a smile. Yak’s man-at-arms and mentor is Sergeant Paphan (Ong-art Jeamjaroenpornkul) simply known and referred to as Sarge. Sarge is all of the Ghostbusters combined. His wealth of supernatural knowledge often means the difference between life and death for Yak and his family.
In this the third film, we learn more about the origins of The Black Spirit and why she is soooo pissed at humanity. Most of the film is spent in a haunted forest. Our heroes encounter all sorts of nasty monstrosities as they try to rescue the youngest member of the family Yee (Natcha Nina Jessica Padovan), who was kidnapped by evil spirits. The backbone of the series is the family and their dynamics. We have accompanied them on their entire harrowing journey so they aren’t just meaningless body bags to us. We are invested in their journey as crazy and zany as it is.
Watch: Netflix
Corin Hardy‘s and Owen Egerton’s Whistle reminds me so much of 2024’s Tarot. Both are good little films that came out of nowhere and offered a welcome fresh perspective. Both need more love though. X-Men’s Laura Kinney (Dafne Keen as X-23) stars as troubled teen Chrys Willet who moves in with her comic book lovin’ cousin (Sky Yang as Rel Taylor) after a tragedy befalls her family.
Chrys is a fish out of water at her new school until Rel introduces her to some of his friends who take her in as one of their own, after a very awkward getting-to-know-you period. The gang stumbles across an Aztec Death Whistle which, unbeknownst to them, when activated sets Death on their tails much like Final Destination in a way.
The difference here is the idea is that everyone has a fixed date of death and once the whistle is blown those within its radius start being haunted by their future selves and eventually suffer the same death now, whether it is set to happen a month or 50 years away.
This makes for some interesting kills as one dude’s future death is a car accident so his parents watch on in horror as he suffers a real time car accident and the injuries in his bedroom, minus the car. It is a cool visual, concept that. About the whistle, I don’t fully understand why it exists as it offers no positives to the owner or finder. I figure that it is like The Monkey’s Paw or the cursed toy in Stephen King’s The Monkey, only that is a cursed object with no real positives but released upon the world to gather more souls for the ancient god?
Whistle’s characters are fully developed, there are two love stories going on, and every character is human in the sense that they have strengths and flaws. What prevents the film from rising from good to great is that Hardy and Egerton needed to push the concept beyond what is expected in a traditional horror movie. They needed to push a lot further and harder than they did. Still, like Tarot, one hopes word of mouth will breath more life into this solid flick.
Watch: In Theatres
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