The Signal (2007)

 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.

Last Shift (2014)

Oh hey Paimon! Listen, I know we had a rocky start with that first viewing of Hereditary, but I'm here now and I'm ready to listen.

I guess Last Shift doesn't really bury the lead here. There's a demon in this! If you're into cult-y, demon-y shenanigans then this little flick directed and co-written (along with Scott Poiley) by Anthony DiBlasi, is surprisingly unsettling and... full disclosure... I had to turn it off 30mins in the first time, as I was alone downstairs in my house and got freaked out. For that reason alone it gets points!

And so attempt #2, with company and knowing a little more about what to expect, I checked out this story of rookie cop Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy) spending the night in a soon-to-be abandoned police station. The old Assault on Precinct 13 location treatment.

There may only be a single locale for Last Shift - apparently it was an actual redundant police station - but it's used fantastically. Loren, initially bored and then increasingly on edge, wanders the empty halls and rooms of the precinct; experiencing strange noises and visions of a spine-chilling, violent past that played out within its walls.

We learn along with her that it may be more than just bad luck placing her on this doomed shift, in this doomed building. Her father's time - and death - as a police officer may be relevant, too.

The scares are often of the jump variety here, and there is at least one moment of that once heavily-relied-upon effect of sped up ghouls being ghoulish (that kind of 90s/early 2000s music video editing thing... yawn). However, the cult/demon visuals are pretty jarring and disturbing when they come, so this lends some heft to the proceedings. Despite some questionable paths getting us there, I found the scares and creepiness ultimately successful.


❝I am the dancing flame.❞
− John Michael Paymon

So, I mentioned Paimon earlier. His incarnation here is as a Charles Manson-esque cult leader called "Paymon" (Joshua Mikel). I'm not well-versed enough in my occult history to have recognised the name without the help of Hereditary, but I thought it was pretty cool to see him featured in something else. 

According to Wikipedia these are the only two films with a plot where Paimon comes up. Demon-specific double bill, anyone?* Though I think Last Shift would pair better with Let Us Prey for strong female police officers getting more than they anticipated during their first night on the job.

 *See my "double bill idea" tag. Maybe one day I can actually make use of all these?!

I caught this on Shudder but as usual, it's probably pretty easy to find. A movie that's smaller in scope, but with atmosphere and nastiness (that ending!) to feel like it deserves a seat at the table.

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. 

The House of the Devil (2009)

If you've heard one thing about Ti West's The House of the Devil, it's more than likely how successfully it mimics the slasher films of the 70s/80s, despite being from the early 2000's. The level of detail and care is indeed astounding, with really only some familiar genre actors giving the game away.

There are clear acts in this movie; the first introducing us to Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), a sophomore at university who's looking to move out of her shared dorm into a cool new apartment. Donahue plays Sam perfectly and charmingly unremarkable - an opening scene shows she's "landlady approved": testament to how vanilla she is - and both her sexually active, punk roommate and street-wise best friend Megan (Greta Gerwig) appear to be more interesting characters. Sam has uncomplicated wants at this point in her life: she just needs enough money to write the aforementioned new landlady (Dee Wallace!) a cheque.

❝It could be awful. It could be from hell.❞

− Megan.

The second act establishes that Sam is so desperate for money that she's willing to make some questionable decisions when it comes to a babysitting gig she answered an ad about. She accepts the job for that night - a night of a lunar eclipse, no less - with little-to-no information, and when she meets the family, she ignores her instincts (and those of Megan) about how increasingly odd this all is. We watch her make herself at home in what is a quintessential house for this type of movie (think the sorority house in Black Christmas but scaled down a bit; lots of stairs and passageways). She orders pizza, dances around to her Walkman, and does a little light snooping. Normal babysitter stuff.

Come the third act, Sam has shed the shackles of her earlier worry, and descended through woozy fear into full blown survivalist hysteria. Behind the doors she neglected to open during her nosing, this house holds its darkest secrets, and once she wakes up to them it's the beginning of the end.

Shot on 16mm film and using the same techniques from that time too, this is both a loving tribute and an enjoyable movie in its own right. Claiming to be based on true events from the "Satanic Panic" era in the US, its 95min runtime makes use of every second to establish Sam's plain existence and then tear it apart.

This awareness of itself in the best possible way, along with a gently creepy turn from Tom Noonan, and beautifully sewn seeds of dread as the film progresses, plus some wonderful, Exorcist-like subliminal work in the final act, make The House of the Devil an absolute treat.

It's streaming on Shudder at time of writing. 

Once you've seen it, check out some of the alternative/fan-made poster art that can be found online. There are some truly gorgeous ones out there and people really had fun with the retro vibe.

The Open House (2018)

As I'm sure you've noticed, Netflix are going hell for leather on their Originals lately, but the past couple of horror movies I've watched from this collection have been a hit and a miss. The Ritual - which I hope to get around to reviewing soon! - was a great "friends lost in the forest" occult tale. The Open House... didn't seem to have a clear enough idea what it was.

The plot isn't the worst... Recently bereaved mother (Piercey Dalton) and son (Dylan Minnette, who you'll recognise* from Don't Breathe and 13 Reasons Why) temporarily relocate to a beautiful mountain cabin after their husband/father's tragic death. The only catch for staying there for free, is to make themselves scarce every Sunday for an open house.

Logan Wallace: Have you ever thought about how, like, weird open houses are?
Naomi Wallace: What?
Logan Wallace: I mean, you give your keys to someone you hardly know, they stand in one room and welcome in a bunch of complete strangers, and those people just roam around the house. And the realtor doesn't check the house when it's done, right? They just... turn the lights off and go?

I feel like this was basically the pitch for this film.

And it looks great. There's pretty, atmospheric woods and streams close by. Inside the house and despite its huge size, there's still a sense of claustrophobia and tension, where shots are often made teasingly wide with room for someone or something else to appear. There are tense, slow pans toward doorways, as if it's us creeping around the house, either being stalked or doing the stalking.

It sounds good too, with a suitably sting-filled and moody score. From a visuals and "general vibe" point of view, The Open House works.

But here comes the "but"... for what amounts to a home invasion movie, there's so much thrown at us (the big deal made about Logan wearing glasses! A friendly/over friendly local! The neighbour who may or may not have Alzheimer's! The plumber! The estate agents! The mysterious death of the father!) so many details and red herrings that when the reveal finally does come, it feels too small to be satisfying.

This is streaming on Netflix now (obviously. Though I'd recommend The Ritual more).

*Does anyone else have that thing where you can't rest until you remember where you recognise an actor from? I have it SO bad and it's a curse!

Black Christmas (2006)

I'll never underplay how much I love the original Black Christmas, so when this remake was announced, I was not interested in the slightest. To the point of being offended that they were even bothering to try. I turned my nose up at the mere thought of it for years.

I am now older and wiser (well, older at least, etc etc) and realise that boycotting for these reasons - especially 11 years later! - is pointless , because y'know what? Sometimes remakes are all right.

That's a good word to describe this movie: alright. It's an interesting watch for fans of the original, and it's certainly got gore aplenty (which is a complicated aspect, as I'll explain later) but it never becomes anything more than an explicit and un-scary rehash of a classic.

Let's break it down...

The Good:

• An actress who played one of the 1974 sorority girls plays the 2006 house mother.

Andrea Martin was Phyllis in Black Christmas (1974).

• There's a moment where the sound of Billy slurping down prison food is overlapped with the slurping of a couple making out in a car.
• Visually, it looks great, drenched mostly in a colour palette lifted straight from Christmas lights.
• There's a really awesome shot that pushes through the branches of a Christmas tree, to reveal Billy lurking behind it. Really well done.

• Someone dies by having a giant icicle fall on their head.
• In amongst some pretty pedestrian eye violence, there's a moment that made me say "oh, jesus" 👀
• This shot:

The Bad:

• The drunk/lush character is truly awful. Even without comparing her to Margot Kidder's Barb, she's the worst.

• I have never enjoyed Lacey Chabert in anything.
• This is an incredibly early 2000's version of this story...
• ...Meaning almost all of the cast are sarcastic ad-campaign-pretty sorority girls (did anyone else have trouble telling them apart?).
• ...And cell phones are EVERYWHERE. I want to watch this again and do a shot every time someone is shown with a flip phone. #motorolarazrlife
• It's light on suspense, heavy on jump scares and splatter (the studio demanded extreme gore: the director didn't want that. Always a winning recipe - see below).
• Billy's backstory is told - often through clumsy exposition - in full. It's really messed up, which is pretty cool, but it also eradicates any sense of a terrifying unknown threat.

Oh, and he's yellow.

• Being a sorority house, they hammer away at the sisterhood thing like mad, but it never really sticks. There's no sense of love or bond between this group of women, despite their insistence otherwise.
• Billy is obsessed with ripping eyes out?! The one thing they don't explain about him.

You see, this movie doesn't make it easy to sit back and attempt to judge it on its own merits. Even though there's a lot added to the story, there are just too many things either lifted straight from, or heavily nodding towards Black Christmas (1974). I honestly tried to take it at face value, but it ultimately suffered from my knowing the original so well.

It's not worth actively avoiding, but considering its roots, it's an unremarkable, predictable stalk and slash.

The making of Black Christmas (2006) and what happened afterward, seems complicated and rather sad. Apparently director Glen Morgan was good friends with Bob Clark (director of the original) and had him come aboard as an executive producer, remaining on set for shooting. Clark saw the finished product before his death, and even though IMDb doesn't state what he thought of it, this interview suggests he was at least very happy with the backstory elements that were introduced here.

However, as mentioned above, the extreme gore was a matter of some dispute between Morgan and producer Bob Weinstein. Bizarrely, the film was marketed using multiple shots that weren't - and were never going to be - included in the final film. Morgan reportedly stated he stayed attached to protect as much as he could about the original idea, but Weinstein "urinated" all over the movie, trying to cash in on the torture porn craze. The end result is what we see today. Morgan never made another film after this one :(

A damn shame, all of it. I wonder what the intended film would have been like?

P2 (2007).

You know what I wish? I wish P2 was as awesome as its poster suggests.

That wonderful, gritty, hard-boiled eighties-ness. There's absolutely none of that in the film itself.

With an opening sequence jump-scare which genuinely got me, being set in one location (a within-the-genre favourite thing) and a nice colour motif running through the movie, this certainly seemed like it should be a winner...?

Despite all this, there wasn't much of a kick to be gotten from P2. It suffers from poor characterisation and pacing and to be honest I lost count of the number of times I checked how much was left of the run time. Never a good sign!

Angela (Rachel Nichols) is a hard-working businesswoman. Before embarking on her drive home for the holidays, she stays late at the office and when she's finally done, finds her car won't start. Odd but seemingly harmless (wuh-oh) parking attendant Thomas (Wes Bentley, elevating himself from "creepy guy in American Beauty" to "creepy annoying guy in P2") tries to help. 

What Thomas does not offer.

She accepts but then decides to cut her losses and get a cab. Only, when the cab arrives and she tries to exit the building, she finds all the doors locked and the rest of security nowhere to be found. The cab drives off as she looks on helplessly. The lights go out and she's left to wander nervously through the garage. Suddenly Thomas appears behind, grabs and sedates her.

She wakes up to find herself chained to a chair in his office, sat at a Christmas dinner table and wearing a low cut, flimsy satin dress.

What follows... well, you can guess. A game of cat and mouse as Angela escapes and gets re-captured by Thomas, who becomes increasingly more batshit as the film rolls on.

One of my main problems with this film is Thomas, actually. He's not a good villain; he's derivative, manages to somehow be both hysterical and bland, and to add insult to injury he's portrayed as an Elvis fan!

As a huge fan of both the king and horror, I'd be okay with this if he were a decent psycho... but he's not. The scene where he watches Angela on the CCTV monitors whilst lip-synching to 'Blue Christmas' was cringeworthy where it should have been creepy - or at least funny. Just, no.

For a film with only really two characters in it, one has to wonder how they both ended up so depthless. As entertaining as it may be watching the transformation from prim office worker to this:

...we just don't spend enough time with Angela to get very attached. We're shown nothing of consequence to connect with or particularly like about her. It's hard to get too involved with the torment when you feel ambivalent toward the tormented, y'know? If she were a complete bitch at least we could find it in ourselves (some of us) to cheer for her fear. As it stands, however, it's all a bit "...Meh." As the finish line of the 98mins was in sight, I just wanted it over with and didn't care who had to die to make it happen - though I wish that poor rottweiler hadn't met such a gruesome end :'(

Still, there are a couple of moments of nice gore.

See how the red of the blood really "pops" out of the image, there? It does that throughout the entire film. A basic technique I am a sucker for.

 

So it's not an exploitation picture as the promo artwork promises. Instead, the pendulum swings the other way, toward style over substance.

 

I wouldn't go so far as to say the look of P2 saves it from mediocrity completely, but it certainly sugars this Christmas cookie a little bit.

hanging on the 📞 ...30 Days of Night.

hanging on the 📞 ...Eden Lake.

hanging on the 📞...Last House remake.

hanging on the 📞 ...See No Evil.

The telephone. More specifically, the mobile telephone. The bane of a horror movie set in a modern age.

"Why don't they just use their cell?" ... This question has to be knocked on the head, and early on. Cue the ever-present sequence of something happening to somehow disable the thing.

In See No Evil, the solution is more creative than simply losing a signal...