Let's Scare Chad

  Name :  Corona Zombies  Directed   By : Charles Band  Subgenre : Satirical Zom-Com Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #31; review #93 Review : It's been a hell of a 2020. I don't need to ramble on about how much the past year has affected, well, everyone and everything. I mean, as of writing this entry, the U.S. is on the cusp of rolling out COVID-19 booster vaccines, there are ongoing wage/labor shortages in all manner of industries largely impacted by the virus's spread, and face-masks are somehow still political. COVID-19 has touched damn near every facet of our lives, and it doesn't look like it's going to fade away any time soon. In times of hardship, it's a nice reprieve to escape into works of fiction, and biting satire can help ventilate some of those otherwise pent-up feelings in a more healthy way. The time is ripe to riff on the subject to help take the edge off...but is Corona Zombies the right film for the job? Well, no: Corona Zombies isn'...

  Name :  Wounds Directed   By : Babak Anvari  Subgenre : Supernatural Body Horror Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #30; review #92 Review : Will (Armie Hammer) is a pretty unlikeable guy. He's in a relationship that's going nowhere because he spends nearly all of his time working (and loitering) at Rosie's Bar--a dingy, roach-infested hole, where he pines after his good friend, Alicia, in vain. Will's life takes a bit of a turn when he lets a gaggle of underaged college kids drink while he's on shift. That wouldn't be a problem in-and-of-itself, because Will's totally cool like that, but the teens end leaving their phone as they scamper away when Will's other beefcake Confederate patrons start aggressively hugging it out. Will, being a bit of a detective, gets access to the teen's phone and finds that they've been dabbling in a bit of the spooky scary occultism: specifically, The Translation of Wounds , a Gnostic text on the use of wounds as po...

  Name :  Black Box Directed   By : Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour  Subgenre : Psychological Thriller Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #29; review #91 Review : "I run my mind. It doesn't run me."   Nolan has a problem: he died. Thankfully, he got better. Well, mostly: you see, Nolan is suffering from a bit of amnesia following the devastating car crash that killed his wife and left him alone with their only daughter. The bits of memory loss--forgetting to pick her up from school, failing to recall their secret handshake, etc.--aren't just getting in the way of their relationship: they're now have an active impact on his career. But, will the experimental memory recovery treatment he enrolls in save him or send him into the dark depths of his damaged mind? It's an interesting premise and one that's reels you in with its sci-fi psychobabble until the film pulls the rug out from underneath your feet when crossing over into the second act. We fairly rapidly transition...

  Name :  His House Directed   By : Remi Weekes  Subgenre : Supernatural Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #28; review #90 Review : "Your ghosts follow you. They never leave. They live with you. It's when I let them in that I could start to face myself." Following their harrowing escape from war-torn South Sudan, a married couple find that adjusting to refugee life in an English town is going to be more trying than expected--especially with specters lurking in the shadows of their new home. His House , to me, fits into a similar niche as Tigers Are Not Afraid : a cast of predominately non-white characters struggling to live while their own personal horrors manifest around them as lurking spirits, for good or ill; save that, while Tigers leans into the realm of fantasy and contrasting whimsy (given its cast of children), His House steers fully into supernatural horror and brings a new ghoulish spirit to the table for the vast majority of audiences (including m...

  Name :  Host Directed   By : Rob Savage  Subgenre : Supernatural Found Footage Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #27; review #89 Review : Five gal pals and their asshole friend Teddy decide to host a séance via Zoom for shits and giggles because it's 2020 and the world was under quarantine, but when they decide to fuck around with spirits, they soon find out why that's a pretty stupid thing to do. Host was released in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and, despite what the teaser image below might seem, the entirely of the film is shot via Zoom conference. It is an incredibly lean horror film as well, clocking in at little under an hour long: Host sets up its premise and quickly ramps up its scares (with plenty of well-executed jump scares to boot) until its climactic conclusion. There is very little room to breathe in between scenes, and the film's medium only heightens audience engagement and suspension of disbelief: you don't even want to blink f...

  Name :  The Lie  Directed   By : Veena Sud  Subgenre : Thriller Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #26; review #88 Review : Another day, another unintended Blumhouse thriller to review. The production studio is nothing if not prolific. As mentioned before , I'm watching the last week's worth of Spooktober 2020 films a year later, and I'm glad I waited for this one. It's not that the film had aged like a fine wine, but that recent current events have created an unfortunate real-world analog to the film, and that only serves to heighten the drama therein. I'm talking of course about the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Gabby Petito . To briefly summarize, Gabby left on a road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, in July of 2021; in September, Brian returned in her van, alone. In the weeks following, Brian refused to comment to police about the situation leading her parents to file a missing person's report. Brian holed up at his parents' hous...

  Name :  Antebellum Directed   By : Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz  Subgenre : Period Piece Thriller Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #25; review #87 Review : So, slavery is bad, right? Right. Very good. Slavery, specifically chattel slavery in the antebellum period of American history (antebellum, in this case, referring to the period prior to the American Civil War), was an objectively horrible institution that destroyed the lives of countless black people and laid the foundations for systematic prejudice that marginalized peoples today--and black people in particular--face on a daily basis. With all of the racial injustices coming to light in the U.S. every day, transplanting those narratives onto the existing template of the existential horror that people who were enslaved felt on a daily basis seems like a simple formula for, well, evoking all of the emotions related to the genre: fear, rage, disgust, shock, terror, and the like. But, can it be done wel...

  Name :  CarousHELL Directed   By : Steve Rudzinski  Subgenre : Creature Feature Comedy Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #24; Trash Panda Files #4 ; review #86 Review : CarousHELL is about a carousel unicorn that gets tired of being constantly disrespected and decides goes on a pun-fueled killing spree. Also, the unicorn is a Nazi, but that's not important. What is important, however, is the underlying message about how we treat the world around us, how we should undo objectification by way of respect; there's a certain animist quality lurking in the folding metaphors and social commentary, prescient given how far we have sunk as a society. That's the real horror here... The Wife: "Are you still typing out that review? Stop it. You can't type up some pretentious nonsense to make others watch this garbage movie. If you give that stupid movie an ironic 5 out of 5, I'm going to be mad at you. It's so bad." I mean, she's not wrong. Seriously spea...

  Name :  Sweetheart Directed   By : J.D. Dillard Subgenre : PG-13 Creature Feature Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #23; review #85 Review : Today's Spooktober watch was actually a recommendation from my very good buddy, Crystal. If you're reading this, you're the best and I love you. Sweetheart follows our main dame* as she washes up on the shore of a deserted island only to find that it might not be as uninhabited as it looks. Simply put, for a PG-13 creature feature, it's way more entertaining than it has any right to be; the shots are lovely, the minimalistic music adds to the loneliness of the early act, and the monster is fairly unique spin on an old classic. That said, the second act gets a bit grating with its new characters, and the reveal of the monster's full form is a bit disappointing but, thankfully, the film does a good job of pulling you in to the narrative by that point so it's easy enough to give that a pass. It's a simple film that is ...

  Name :  Bad Hair Directed   By : Justin Simien Subgenre : Supernatural Creature Feature Comedy Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #22; review #84 Review : Bad Hair follows our main dame as she navigates a subtle (but also glaringly obvious) racially charged workplace that is moving away from the more "urban" look of the past; in order to fit in, she gets her hair done up with a new, premiere weave...then things start to take a bizarre turn. Bad Hair is a tale about what happens when black women give in to the cultural pressure to adapt their natural hair styles to make others around them (and you know who we're talking about; hint: I look like them) more comfortable. To that end, the social commentary is understandably loud but well done, at least until the third act when Simien takes the film's premise, imbues it with an interesting cultural spin, and then makes a gadarene charge into campy territory. Seriously, the climax act is bonkers, but in a fun way. While ...

  Name :  Cadaver Directed   By : Jarand Herdal  Subgenre : Foreign, Thriller Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #21; review #83 Review : Cadaver follows our main dame and her family as they find out that the post-apocalyptic dinner party they've been invited to is a bit more than it seems. For being such a grim tale, the film is stunning, the hotel's vibrant colors contrasting starkly and beautifully with the grizzly post-apocalyptia beyond its walls. It manages to weave a compelling mystery that dips into the horrific without needing to fixate on gore. While it likely won't scare you in the traditional sense--in large part because of the large swaths of time between even conventional attempts at scares-- Cadaver will likely keep you invested in the film throughout until its questionably bleak end. However, once the credits start rolling, you might just have the nagging feeling that you've seen this movie before, and likely better. The unique spin on setting, es...

  Name :  Tigers Are Not Afraid Directed   By : Issa López Subgenre : Foreign, Fantasy, Thriller Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #20; review #82 Review : Let me start by saying that I love this movie. It's a multi-layered modern day ghost story / fairy tale fusion that's as uncompromising as it is creative. I absolutely want to gush about this movie, but doing so would rob each of you of a more pure, first-time experience with the film. Stop what you're doing and go watch it, then come back here, finish the review, and then leave me a comment. So, while my reviews tend already be fairly succinct, this review will be even shorter than usual. Hey, we've all got those days. But seriously, go watch it and then tell me how wrong (or right) I am. Tigers Are Not Afraid is a Mexican film about a young girl, who happens to be gifted with three wishes, as she joins with a group of kids who have all made orphans by the local cartel. Given the mix of dark whimsy and even bl...

  Name :  Pure Directed   By : Hannah Macpherson Subgenre : Thriller Series :  Spooktober 2020 entry #19; review #81; Blumhouse's Into the Dark entry #4 Review : Pure follows yet another main dame as she is voluntold by her father to attend the annual Christian Purity Camp. She and the other girls do what every girl does when forced to attend hyper-evangelical camps: making contact with an otherworldly entity. From there, things take a turn for the spoopy. Pure is cut from the same cloth as The Other Lamb but, where that film employs subtle, artistic nuance, Pure knocks you over the head with its Patriarchy Bonking Cudgel™. That said, while the writing is blunt, the characters all feel unique...even if obnoxious at first glance. On the surface, the horror is mostly jump scares and bad CGI smiles, but the deeper horror is the systematic, faith-based gaslighting that takes place at the camp. The film is a 3 out of 5 (in my opinion, per usual), but I'm giving it a...