I admit I have a complicated appreciation for the first movie, and I actively like the second one... but this is *awful*. It loses all of the grubby, nasty, charm from its predecessors, instead subjecting us to the torture of following a group of unbearable friends for nearly FORTY MINUTES before any actual (ultimately mid) torture happens! Did someone forget this is a Hostel movie??
There were a couple of little moments I appreciated. A set-up that wasn't completely transparent, and some decent gore... but nothing that could wash its smug, bloated taste from my mouth. I hope this tanked at the box office. Whoever had the idea of inflating the Hostel universe deserves to have their pinky finger snapped.
Sometimes I get into a headspace, and only this movie will do.
The opening montage may rank in my top 5 favourite ever. The BALLS to have your opening shot be a clearly violently murdered woman. Cut to Henry, going about his business and appearing normal. Cut back to another dumped corpse, and on and on. The motel bathroom scene is particularly grisly (my fave, only just beating the one face down in a trash-ridden pond). I really adore this start to the story, it's so fucking BLEAK, and the reveal of the violence left in Henry's wake is all the more impactful for the slow pan outs/zoom ins, which clarify - along with the soundtrack as it plays garbled, condensed audio from the murders - maybe a little of the "how" but absolutely none of the "why". Because there is no "why". There's just Henry.
It's a depressing-as-shit heavy hitter, and I love it, down to the intro/outro score. PLUS, I always seem to be surprised he doesn't stamp that terrier to death. Deserving of full marks.
The Soska sisters (American Mary, Rabid (2019), and my personal favourite: the Hellevator TV series!) bring us Gen Z teens fighting zombies in this "spiritual sequel" to Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
Set 55 years on, the festival in question is commemorating that past zombie outbreak... and our lead, Ash (Ashley Moore), is trying to fit in after years of being a social outcast with one good friend, Iris (Camren Bicondova).
Ash agrees to attend the festival along with her douchebag boyfriend and his terrible friends, while Iris covers babysitting duties. When everything almost immediately starts going wrong, Ash's heroic heritage of being the granddaughter of Night's Ben (Duane Jones), and being rather skilled with a shotgun, certainly comes in handy.
Social media influencers start snorting dust from a recently crashed meteor near the festival site - could see a YouTuber legit doing this btw - triggering a zombie outbreak as they die and reanimate ("Talk about going viral..." <-- actual dialogue 🤦♂️). But now it's 2020's festival style, with fairy wings and face glitter.
At the risk of stating the brutally obvious, Festival of the Living Dead is not to be taken too seriously! It's a fun little appetizer of a zombie flick; a silly, simplistic, colourful romp of snark, guts, and finding your place in a terrifying world.
This song also gave me an earworm.
Really reminds me of the indie I was into in my early twenties. Got that Dandy Warhols vibe, y'know?
Anyway, this is streaming on Tubi now. I picked it out of a whole heap of zed flicks currently in their catalogue. Maybe services are stocking up for when we all get zombie fever again, from the soon-to-be-released 28 Years Later? We can hope.
A signal sent out over the radio, TV, phone, etc. turns those exposed homicidal. They aren't zombies, they still have their personality, they're just obsessed with killing and see it as a completely rational act.
Told in three parts and following a young woman, her abusive husband, and her love interest, this is a low-budget, tonally slippery tale. Violence is gruesome, but worse is hinted at offscreen in all three acts; and the second adds dark, almost absurd humour into the mix. Not sure it needed to be 1hr43min long, but the fake-outs and strangeness kept me watching.
