Mom and Dad (2017)

Mom and Dad plays like a zombie movie if the undead were swapped for psychotic parents. Seriously stylish, from the beautiful retro opening credits to the expert use of music (satisfyingly Carpenter-like in places) to the rich cinematography, but also rapid and unforgiving in plot (you've got to respect a film that starts by showing a mother leaving her baby in the path of an oncoming train) this packs a hell of a lot of fun into its not even 90mins.

Which, when you realise it was written and directed by Brian Taylor, the writer/director of the Crank franchise, makes perfect sense!

We meet a white middle class household. Mom, dad, big sister and little brother. They're the kind of people who have those motivational/aspiration script-y signs everywhere in their home. The scene looks kind of perfect but quickly we see that, of course, things aren't that way.

Mom (Selma Blair) does a typical white woman "I'm an ally!" move of apologising to her Chinese housekeeper for something she deems offensive said at breakfast, but in the process offends the woman more. Dad (Nicholas Cage) seems close to his son, but at work turns the photo of his kids face down to jack off at his desk before taking a nap and ignoring a call from his wife. He's obsessed with his youth and all the opportunities he missed out on to have the life he does now.

No one is particularly likeable. But that's okay.

One of the best aspects of Mom and Dad is that we see the story unfold from both perspectives in the central family. As things start to go batshit the kids fight to stay alive, but more interestingly, we're shown what mom and dad are doing, too. It's chilling and hilarious how rational all the adults are about trapping and murdering their own children. Everything else about them is the same apart from this sudden, insatiable, specific urge to kill and it's highly entertaining to watch!

This was an excellent find after some false starts one evening. For sure worth checking out if you're in the mood for something blackly comic. Mom and Dad is fast, funny, mean, and streaming on Hulu at time of writing.

Before I Wake (2016)

Yet another title that's been on my list for some time - I can't remember how I even came to add it? Perhaps because it's Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Hush, Gerald's Game, The Haunting of Hill House series and the forthcoming Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep).  I like Flanagan's "voice" and style - Oculus being the weakest I've seen, and I feel like I'm in the minority there - and was eager to see where this one fell in my personal spectrum of hits and misses of his work.

Some spoilers incoming!

We join Jessie (Kate Bosworth) and Mark (Thomas Jane) as they near the end of an adoption process, after the tragic accidental death of their son. The little boy they bring into their home is named Cody (Jacob Tremblay) and he has a special gift: when he sleeps, his dreams and nightmares manifest as tangible apparitions in the vicinity. 

At first this is something spellbinding, but soon the bogeyman (known as the "Cancker Man") who stalks Cody's nightmares appears, and we learn that it has the power to hurt and kill.

This reads as quite a basic plot, and it is, but there are some little touches to it that kept me invested. Jessie goes through a spell of manipulating Cody's gift in order to see her dead son again; filling his mind with anecdotes and visuals then drinking coffee all night to stay awake in case an apparition appears.

Her decision to give Cody sleeping pills and make excuses to husband Mark how this was helping them was so cold! And Jessie is the one who ultimately survives! Poor Mark (and poor Thomas Jane for having to wear that bad wig, honestly) didn't have much to do but manages to be both common sense and conscience to Jessie, before being startlingly "absorbed" by the "Cancker Man".

Two moments stick out in my mind after watching this. That of a vision of the deceased son Sean, eyes wide, repeating the same words over and over again; and the scene of Cody's previous foster father hugging a vision of his dead wife - only, as the camera shows her face, his voice over explains how Cody was too young to remember (and therefore dream) her correctly. The woman we see is a terrifying facsimile of a human.

Flanagan has a lot to impart about grief, doesn't he? Oculus and ...Hill House were both heavy with sadness along with chills. Before I Wake fits into his oeuvre pretty well, with muted tones of set design and characters listless in beautiful houses that feel too cold and somehow too big for their occupants. 

I did call the reveal about 5mins before it was explained, but the flashback was heartbreaking enough for me not to mind. Maybe because I lost my dad to a terminal illness, I don't know... Adults can barely deal with that reality, so I can't imagine a small child trying to comprehend it. Your mileage may vary on this aspect of the film especially, but I found where it could have lost me with a potentially silly and/or overly sentimental explanation, this was awful in just the right way.

For a movie that comes across a little Conjuring-universe in its marketing, I enjoyed this more than I expected to. There are some moments that lean into the "simple summer blockbuster" horror vibe (as ever, no judgement, it has its place) like jump scares and eyeless ghosts... but there's also an interesting story woven through this. It's a great concept, and even if this didn't reach its full potential, it was still absorbing enough to keep me watching.

Streaming on Netflix at time of writing!

Midsommar (2019)

Okay, so just a couple of warnings.
1) 🚨Spoilers🚨
2) It's about to get real fucking feminal* up in here.

*"relating to a woman". It's archaic but I kind of love it.

I have been processing this film for a while. Letting it sink in and then rise to the surface of my thoughts over and over. Usually, I try to bang out reviews fast but this one needed time. Honestly, I still don't quite know how I'm going to approach it. I'm writing and hoping my thoughts align, somehow!

To begin, I'll say that Midsommar was a balm on the wounds still smarting from my terrible viewing experience of Hereditary. There is much here linking the two: the theme of grief/trauma, the  bordering on (and sometimes tipping into) comedic melodrama, Aster's delicious visual style, and the symbolism (triangles: the shape of choice for the horror genre).

I now definitely count myself among those excited for his next film and how these explorations and links may continue.

Christian (Jack Reynor) and Dani (Florence Pugh)

In his Fangoria interview with Jordan Peele, Aster calls this a "breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film". And ponders - as this chat took place before Midsommar hit our screens - how people may feel as they leave the theater after.

"I hope people walk out feeling elated and happy, despite the fact they just watched a small massacre".

Mission accomplished, Ari. I felt like standing up and applauding at the film's end. That smile on Dani's face... I felt invigorated.

What's fantastic about Midsommar is not only the juxtaposition of horrible imagery, stunning tableau-like shots and bizarre glimpses into the idiosyncrasies of Hårga - though those aspects are wonderful, of course - it's that we witness Dani and Christian on this journey of the slow implosion of their relationship, to the point where one partner makes a decision to have the other murdered in a ritual sacrifice and it doesn't feel at all excessive. It's a "horrific" breakup quite literally.

Perhaps it's because I identified with Dani so much... but really, who hasn't wanted to burn a shitty boyfriend alive?!

Aster draws these characters with care; many of the smaller moments feel so real and they work to build an understanding of the emotional chasm between many of the men and women we meet. Dani's stream-of-consciousness phone call to her friend about her relationship; bringing an issue to a partner only to find yourself apologising by the end of the conversation; the way Ingemar (Hampus Hallberg) and Connie (Ellora Torchia) interpret a past situation so differently ("we dated" / "...we had a drink"), Dani's breathing when she's trying to hold off a panic attack, and how Christian silently, awkwardly holds her as she screams her loss during the opening scenes, compared to the women of Hårga who emote along with her later on.

Over the past year or so, a number of films have been made that have resulted in me sitting back, exhaling, and realising what a sense of power and strength they conveyed to a female audience. This is a feeling that pop culture has been handing men since the dawn of cinema, but now it feels like new things are playing in front of my eyes that strike something deep in my being. Something I didn't know I was missing until relatively recently.

Stacie Ponder on Gaylords of Darkness called it a "power fantasy paradigm" and that's such an awesome way to phrase it.

There's the connection, sisterhood and female leaders of Suspiria; of being enough and not having to prove anything (especially to men) from Captain Marvel*. And now with this, again a feeling of female connection (the dancing, the breathing/primal screaming, the sex scene) and finding a strength you always had within yourself. Her smile at the end broke me and rebuilt me all at once. I felt my own face reflecting Dani's. It was art!

*Yes, not a genre film and yes I was suprised I felt so empowered by that movie. But I did!

This film brought me such joy in so many ways. It also made me want to a) watch it again, immediately, and b) rewatch Aster's debut feature with a renewed appreciation for this writer/director's unique vision and voice. It is MIND-BLOWING that this is only his second feature film.

It also brought to mind several others that beg to be revisited - or at least included, as I mentally curate my Midsommar-inspired film festival...

• The Wicker Man - ...obviously
• Kill List - Cults, symbols
• A Field In England - Outdoors; hallucinogenic visuals, mysticism
• Apostle - A small community with shocking traditions; becoming one with the earth
• The Endless - Cult/commune; clueless newcomers
• Suspiria (2018) - Sisterhood; female leader; dancing as a powerful energy

I'm definitely going to be seeking some of these out again as I ponder "folk horror" for the remainder of the summer, wait impatiently for Midsommar's Blu-ray release and work on a flower crown.

This is a beautiful, perfectly woven tapestry of humour, heartbreak, and death. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Cherry Tree Lane (2010)

Not NW10...

This is an English movie, even if one variation of the artwork clearly shows an American-style house and a white picket fence. It's actually set in North West London, and was written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams (another of his horror outings was darkly comic The Cottage).

That's... better...?

Cherry Tree Lane reminded me of both Funny Games and Eden Lake, and though it's neither as cerebral as the former nor as devastating as the latter, it still manages to be pretty riveting and successfully create tension with "only" a mostly one-room setting and a lot of dialogue. 

It never truly reaches heights of being scary (or at least, it didn't for me) but home invasion is always going to be unsettling... and here the invaders are not dramatic, masked, silent ghouls of unknown motive; they are loud kids with bad attitudes, little empathy, and when it comes to leader Rian (Jumayn Hunter, who actually starred in Eden Lake also) a real streak of cruelty.

The plot couldn't get much simpler; married couple Christine and Mike (Rachael Blake and Tom Butcher) settle down for an evening in - if I had one complaint, it was that the setting up of their dislike for one another was done so painstakingly, we were led to believe something would happen later to explain this, but it doesn't - and while they're eating dinner, a group of teens ring the doorbell and push their way into the house, taking the pair hostage. They say they want to speak to Sebastian, Christine and Mike's son. He's due home within the hour and they're going to wait. They assault Mike to subdue him and tie both up with gaffer tape.

What follows is a slow, stressful climb in unease as time passes, tempers fray and cruelties heighten. Much is done with off-screen violence, using the classic "we'll just have you hear what's happening and imagining far worse than we could ever show/afford to show" to great effect. Screaming and thumping reverberate through the house on a couple of occasions, and it makes up the nastier moments of the film as both the audience and other characters grimace and think about what's happening.

Even though this is a white middle-class couple up against working class kids, it never particularly feels like A Statement On Class. Honestly it feels more straightforward than that. It feels real in the sense that you can imagine Sebastian (whom we wait the entire runtime to see and barely catch a real glimpse of, a touch that I liked) is a mouthy little shit who acts like he's a big deal and got caught saying the wrong thing about the wrong person. I have known people like this - I think we all have. 

As nasty as Cherry Tree Lane gets, it never feels over the top. There are also some stand-out singular moments and shot compositions; watching one of the gang browse the DVD shelf in slow motion, tossing them aside, and the appearance of Christine in the foreground towards the end.

This one was a bit of a grower, but ultimately it left me feeling satisfied that I'd checked it out. I've been feeling pretty uninspired by horror movies of late... or locked into a perpetual scroll of streaming services through fear of wasting time on something shitty. There's so much shit out there! This piqued my interest - the clincher being it runs less than 90mins - and I'm glad it did. Oh, and anyone remember UNKLE? They did the music!

Cherry Tree Lane is currently streaming on Tubi! Honestly, Tubi is making me re-evaluate some life choices. It's free, their catalogue is MASSIVE and even if you have to wade through some crap, they have gems hidden in there too. 

I'd recommend giving this a spin if you want a short, sharp, English take on home invasion.*

*I feel I ought to say, however, CW: sexual assault. It's handled without exploitation, or lingering on the abuse like many movies tend to, but heads up that it happens here. 

Brightburn (2019)

Brightburn is clunky with exposition, light on character development, and even if jump scares catch me out occasionally, they still make me roll my eyes... but this movie is still hugely fun and worth your time.

While never reaching heights of what I'd call a "great" horror movie, it has enough wallop where it counts; notably with its gore and willingness to go further than you're probably expecting it to.

Us (2019)

 

❝We're Americans.❞

Hi! So I know I don't tend to review new stuff. This is because I feel a weird kind of self-imposed pressure for having an opinion that's somewhat topical...! Buuut I wanted to get some thoughts down about Us. This kind of starting writing itself without me making a conscious decision. So here we are :)

Okay firstly, let's talk about this fact from the IMDb trivia page:

Jordan Peele gave the cast ten horror films to watch so they would have "a shared language" when filming: Dead Again (1991), The Shining (1980), The Babadook (2014), It Follows (2014), A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Birds (1963), Funny Games (1997), Martyrs (2008), Let the Right One In (2008), and The Sixth Sense (1999).

This list does two things: reminds me that I need to see Dead Again, again, (it was a taped off the TV favourite of mine, back in the day) and it gives some clue as to the calibre of storytelling and overall atmosphere that Us was reaching for - and in my opinion, succeeds in capturing.

And honestly, those film choices simply make my horror/thriller nerd heart happy. Pun intended: Peele is clearly one of us.

I'll say no more other than what's already out there with regards to plot: the Wilson family are on holiday when doppelgängers of themselves wearing red overalls invade their summer home, intent on forcing them to take part in some kind of ritual called "the untethering".

This film just kept turning down avenues I wasn't expecting and, as ever, that's truly the best way to experience it.

Worthy of mention though are the performances from the central four: Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide, Winston Duke as dad Gabe, and Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex as their children, Zora and Jason. 

Instantaneously I believed in this family dynamic and all their superbly drawn little idiosyncrasies. From Winston's amusingly (and adorably) feckless father-figure, eliciting eye rolls; Wright Joseph's bored teen; Evan Alex as the "weird" little brother still into masks and magic tricks, and finally the force that is Nyong'o, whose performances are quite simply fantastic.

Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker also star as the delightfully loathsome bougie family "friends", the Tylers. They have twin teen daughters, to further the doubling/doppelgänger weirdness. Moss doesn't have much to do, but that's fine; she has a tonne of fun as Kitty Tyler, a sloppy WASP who clearly can't stand her husband or kids. The later scenes with this family are a great blend of humour and violence.

The more Us unfolded, the more I loved it. And yes, okay, I guessed a beat or two, but that didn't stop any of the gut-punch-like enjoyment as this peeled back to a story that is both brutally simple and simply brutal.

There's nothing like a shattering final shot in a horror movie, so enjoy this one while never being able to hear "Les Fleurs" the same way again.

And join me, won't you, in obsessing over the "untethered" mix of "I Got 5 On It"...




Us is in theatres now and hopefully smashing records and expectations all over the place. I recommend you go and see it, and then go see it again ✄✄✄


Argh, there's so much I haven't covered here! Partly through fear of spoilers, plus the need to sit with some of the epic themes or see this film again to fully be able to process it all. I may do a follow-up post exploring things a bit more - or at least giving links to further reading from voices better placed to comment than mine.

Bonus Jo-went-to-sleep-thinking-about-this content:

The Loved Ones (2009)

I emerge from an unplanned break from horror, and The Loved Ones wasn't a brilliant one to come back with, but here we are.

This is from the same guy as The Devil's Candy but this grubby little Australian flick did not give me anything approaching the heart eyes 😻 that Candy did, sadly.

Sitting here wondering how to start this review, I was reflecting on our introduction to Lola, the main character, and it only further highlighted to me how aggravatingly one-dimensional she is. Robin McLeavy certain commits as this nightmare in a pink prom gown and Lola is never ever shown as anything other than delusional and psychopathic. Even when she appears by the locker of her crush Brent (Xavier Samuel), she's wide-eyed and manic. Always heightened, turned up to 11. That ended up being my main problem with The Loved Ones. Lola is annoying as shit, so I spent most of the time irritated and waiting for her to die - and even the death scene was annoying, too! More on that later.

There are two "dates" happening throughout this movie. Lola with a kidnapped Brent, and Brent's friend Jamie (Richard Wilson) with a sexy goth girl. This secondary story is ultimately revealed to be a tenuous (at best) link to the kidnapping and torture, and if its purpose was to serve as light relief or a way to break the tension of Brent's apparently hopeless situation, it doesn't really work. There's even a moment where we're led to believe the stories are about to interestingly converge... but it's a fake out. Thanks?

It's hard to imagine Lola existing in the real world well enough to successfully attend school and socialise, but we're shown that throughout her life, with the help of her father (who harbours incestuousness feelings for her) she's lived a cycle of crushes and rejection, followed by capture and torture in the name of her obsession.

Drills, forks, knives, syringes of bleach, a hidden pit under the kitchen; it's all here. Yet, I wasn't enjoying this ride.

When the moment finally came to see her die, she's treated like horror royalty in a Big Moment where time slows down. She watches her death approach, and we watch her watching. It goes on for-ev-er. This kind of end is fit for someone way more iconic and giving her this, when the writing and action have done nothing to flesh her out feels unwarranted and unearned.

The Loved Ones is streaming on Shudder at time of writing. Have I just woken up grumpy from my hiatus?!

The Devil's Candy (2015)

The Devil's Candy was pretty much buried on Netflix, and it's only because I regularly make a pass through the horror section that its artwork caught my eye (see above - how could it not?). So I read the blurb, took a swift look at the IMDB and Letterboxd pages (more to see what its average user rating was than anything else) and that was enough. Onto the list it went.

This was written and directed by Sean Byrne, whose only other horror credit seems to be The Loved Ones. The plot revolves around a close family of three (mum, dad, daughter) moving into a new house and strange, dark forces at work both inside and out of their new home. 

Daughter and father metalheads 

The house seems to speak to those with an open enough mind to hear it, including dad Jesse (Ethan Embry - who has come a LONG way since Empire Records) and Raymond (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a troubled individual who used to live there.

Jesse is a struggling artist and takes over the garage/barn area of the new place to paint. However, even for a metal fan, what ends up being committed to his canvas in this new studio takes an extremely dark turn.

Going into rapture-like states to create these images, Jesse loses all track of time, painting solidly for hours on end and failing to pick up his daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco) from school on more than one occasion.

The images he creates are frightening. The reason he's creating them, we learn eventually, is extremely tragic.

Taking place during an unnaturally hot Texas summer, this feels oppressive and intense. Jesse most of all is seen sweating and/or shirtless, a panicked and pained expression permanently on his face as he tries to make sense of what is threatening his family. 

❝He's no mask in a Halloween store, he's not what you see in the movies. He is an active, violent, anti-God personal reality. And as much as we refuse to admit it, he lives through us.❞
− TV Preacher

An "active, violent, anti-God personal reality" is a perfect description of the villain in this movie.

I could not shake how much Raymond looked like Harvey Weinstein, too. Just to add another layer of evil repulsiveness on top of an already detestable character.

It's not just in atmosphere that this film succeeds; stylistically too, The Devil's Candy knows what it's doing. Watch for the use of light in the final shot, and for the scene with cross-cutting between paint hitting the canvas and blood spilling from a murder. There really isn't much gore to be had in general here, with the more brutal stuff happening off camera, but the glimpses of a bathtub dismemberment are more than enough to unsettle. 

This one may be my favourite new discovery so far this month. Simple, satanic, stylish, and streaming on Netflix now. At 1hr19mins it's definitely worth the time commitment.

Verónica (2017)

There seems to have been an annoying tradition over the past couple of years, where a new horror film will come out to headlines of "This Is The Scariest Movie Ever!" or "Netflix Users Can't Finish This Movie!". As I recall, Verónica was one of the films that got this treatment.

And I get it. It creates a buzz around the new release and one way or another - through people seeking a scare, or to prove they can handle it, or just plain curious - it gets viewers. The problem I find though is that this buzz kind of infiltrates my brain and creates hype where there wasn't any (and wasn't any needed) before. It's like going to the cinema and right before going into the screen, someone tells you the film you're about to watch is the best film ever! How can it possibly live up to that?

Obvious observation time: Verónica is not the scariest film ever, and it's easy to get through it without having to turn off in fright. It kind of reminded me of [REC] which, I learned later, made perfect sense as it's from Paco Plaza, the same director. It's reminiscent in places, rather than in any way similar; way less visceral, more contemplative and creepy. It's the quieter teenage sibling of Plaza's breakout film.

Based on a true police report, this depicts the alarming supernatural occurrences that take place after Madrid teen Verónica (Sandra Escacena) and two schoolfriends dabble with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse.

This is not a standard tale of possession, rather, it's the pursuit of a young woman by dark forces that she never intended to invite into her life. Verónica was trying to contact her deceased father but instead is caught in a week-long struggle against faceless humanoid demon figures stalking her house, threatening to harm her and her three young siblings.

Apart from teachers and nuns, their lives are rather adult-less, with their single mother working hard at a bar every evening and weekend. Verónica as the oldest is caretaker to her sisters and brother, and every weekday is a repeat of the one before: getting everyone ready and walking to school (established early on as a responsibility she takes seriously, so when we see it gradually break down, we know that shit is going wrong).

It must be mentioned that the kids in this film are one of its strongest points; their acting is so natural and the bond between Verónica and her siblings is warm and very apparent. They are cute, good kids - which makes the looming shadow over their existence all the more worrying.

Likewise, Escacena is amazing as Verónica (or "Vero" as she's known), charting the decline from normal 15 year old - old beyond her years nonetheless, due to circumstance - complete with fickle and catty friends who very much reminded me of the pain of being that age; to a bruised, isolated and exhausted husk of her former self. 

There's a couple of really interesting scenes where Verónica watches a girl in an apartment across the way from her, and it's clear this girl is meant to be her mirror image, a representation of everything Vero is not. She's seen dancing carefree to music (at the same time Vero is loading a washing machine with urine-soaked bedding from her little brother), talking affectionately with her father and having a love life. Verónica has none of these things, and the likelihood of her ever getting them becomes slimmer as events progress.

It's been a while since I've seen [Rec], so I can't remember how artistic Plaza was able to get with that found footage nerve shredder, but this had several moments of creative touches I wasn't expecting, including an incredible transition as Vero gets out of bed and walks across her room that was so cool I had to rewind to see it again. Others are not quite as flawless, but still effective.

This probably isn't going to give genre fans sleepless nights, but it is a very decent telling of a very chilling, supernatural story. It's streaming on Netflix now.

Hounds of Love (2016)

Content warning: Abduction, abuse, rape.

Hounds of Love is the debut feature from Australian writer/director Ben Young and another I'd heard whispers about from the festival circuit. It's been floating around on the edges of my radar ever since. There's a special kind of thrill when a movie you've had your eye on for a long while appears on a streaming service.

Anyway.

Supposedly based on several different true crime stories (I thought it echoed Fred and Rose West quite a lot) it most closely resembles the real-life experiences of Kate Moir, and her abduction and abuse by David and Catherine Birnie in Perth, Western Australia.

Like the Birnies, Evelyn and John White (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) have a disturbing, mutually fucked up and co-dependent hobby of kidnapping, raping and murdering young girls. 

Their latest victim and the one whose story we see unfold in full is Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), who almost immediately spots the weaknesses in the White's relationship. John, a rapist and probable paedophile with a violent temper, needs Evelyn's help to abduct and deal with the girls; Evelyn, seemingly a victim of abuse from an early age herself, is damaged and manipulated to the point of believing these horrifying deeds count as acts of love. There's an awful lot of awful stuff going on behind the closed doors of this house.

Maybe it's my true crime obsession showing, or that my resistance to bleakness is pretty high, but I didn't find this as soul-crushing as others seemed to (want bleak Australian realism/nihilism? May I suggest The Snowtown Murders. Note "suggest" and not "recommend"). 

Hounds of Love is some of the worst of what humans are capable of, shown convincingly and without exploitation (at least in tone, as Kate Moir has gone on record as saying she was upset at the startling similarities). All three leads are incredibly strong, with a special mention for Cummings, who manages to convey so much when most of the time she's bound and gagged.

Young's vision for this is pretty spectacular, given it was shot in 20 days and was his first feature. He knows what to linger on: the stillness, hopelessness, the surrounding suburban normality; and what is going to be more upsetting to imply than outright show: the detritus left after a rape, the killing of a dog ☹. The cinematography (hat tip to Michael McDermott) is beautiful, dare I say it. It's as stunning as the subject matter is stomach-churning, looking almost fashion editorial/music video perfect in some moments.

It's not without a problematic cloud around it, but if you don't mind that and feeling like your heart is in your throat for 90mins, it's streaming on Hulu now.

The Mutilator (1984)

Okay, I think I finally realised something. It's taken my entire history of watching horror movies for this to click, which is kind of embarrassing, but I think I just figured out that my approach to slasher films has been all wrong.

So my main complaint with a lot of these movies always seems to be the interminable downtime between the kills. For me to really enjoy a slasher film, there has to be something interesting happening to bridge the gaps between the blood being spilled. It doesn't have to be Citizen Kane over here, it just needs to hold my attention and, ideally, lay the groundwork for actually giving a shit about who survives and who doesn't. I don't necessarily mind a conveyor belt of victims steadily making their way toward death; I just want to care, just a little bit!

The Mutilator (original title: Fall Break) is a perfect example of the giddy highs and woefully bad lows of films like this.

Written and directed by first-timer Buddy Cooper - a film reviewer for a newspaper who wanted to make movies, so he did. I have to respect that! - this is part of what must have been a bloody cascade of films made after the success of Friday the 13th in 1980. In it, we see a group of college kids staying in a beach house and being murdered using a different weapon each time (hence that awesome tagline).

And the gore, courtesy of SFX man Mark Shostrom (Videodrome, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Evil Dead II, a couple of Phantasms) is really good, but the price of admission for it is TERRIBLE dialogue, DELIVERED TERRIBLY for extended amounts of time. 

At one point, we follow the worst character in the entire film (the "joker" of the friend group 😐) for fucking ages as he walks around looking for his mates. He cracks jokes and does voices and funny walks to no one in particular for soooo looooong until he's finally killed. There's no tension here at all, and just like in The Prowler, it gets boring and frustrating waiting through these slumps.

I found myself wishing I were a) more drunk, b) with a group of friends, or c) drunk with a group of friends. And that's when I realised that my sitting alone or with my husband just chilling and watching this stuff isn't how it was originally meant to be consumed. Stuff like this was meant to be drive-in fodder; where you're laughing and goofing around with friends and/or making out while the movie is playing. That's what passes the time while you're waiting for fucking Ralph to die. You're meant to be throwing popcorn, cracking open another beer or making snide comments - that's what makes this stuff bearable.

So, mental note for the next 80s stalk and slash that I suspect might be like this: cheap beer, funny friends are essential.

Unless you're coming to it armed with the above, I'd say The Mutilator is a "fast forward between the kills" kind of situation, as everything else is painful to sit through. The odd, melodramatic feel, the sluggish pacing, frankly insane theme song, the appalling acting... it's a lot.

Streaming on Shudder right now. What a waste of such an amazing tagline.

Dead End (2003)

If you'd have told me this was an episode from the 1995-2002 run of The Outer Limits series I would have totally believed you. 

That's not meant in any way to disrespect Dead End - for one, I loved The Outer Limits! - but it's just that in its 1hr25min runtime it's so simple in premise and so restrained, almost coy in its gruesomeness, reminiscent of such TV-friendly horror back in the day. And it feels delightfully nineties, too, mainly due to daughter Marion's style (those highlights and that lilac palette!) and a passing mention of Marilyn Manson.

Alexandra Holden, Ray Wise as daughter and dad, Marion and Frank.

However, Dead End is indeed its own movie. Written and directed by French natives Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa, it's technically a French movie, even though it was filmed in the US, and all dialogue spoken is in English by a majority American cast.

The plot: It's Christmas Eve, and the Harringtons are driving to visit family when dad Frank (Ray Wise, always a delight to watch) decides to take a shortcut. What they encounter as a result is actually the opposite of a "dead end" in the literal sense, as for the rest of the movie they find themselves on a seemingly neverending road through a forest.

In frightening succession, horrible, urban legend-worthy things start to happen: they pick up a woman in white, standing dazed at the roadside clutching her baby; Marion's boyfriend Brad is seen being driven off in a hearse (hammering at the rear window, clearly still very much alive and terrified); son/brother/horny brat Richard meets a sticky end, and they pass a sign for a town that seems perpetually unreachable. The road never turns - cue some really lovely shots of endless trees and their little station wagon trucking along - and yet they keep coming back to landmarks from earlier on.

When the family begins to get picked off, some of the remaining members have a hard time holding it together, and it's these scenes above anything else that I found unsettling. Genre pillar Lin Shaye as the mother makes your skin crawl as she grapples with what's going on, reverting to a childlike insanity that is at once so horrible and very darkly funny (see: eating an entire pie, saying she's fine and then a quick cut to her puking in the background of shot).

The moments of the Harringtons just struggling, arguing and trying to remain calm are written brilliantly. Coming from a family not without its own dysfunction, I really enjoyed the dynamic of underlying love with a sheen of passive aggressive and irritated attitude. Just because you are all facing certain death together doesn't mean you're all suddenly going to get along!

I want to call this one "quirky" but I mean that in the best way. It's so odd at times but it all works together to make a solid, dark, entertaining film, right through to its "shock" ending - which also feels quite television script-y. Again, not a complaint! 

It's streaming on Shudder right now so check it out - and make sure to watch to the end of the credits.