TITLE & REVIEW
In a dystopian USA that is all to similar to the modern world,
the tweenage kids of undocumented migrants
are rounded up and concentrated in prison camps.
This is an attempt by the Republican Governor (Brett Cullen -
Joker (2019)
) to imprison a section of society
specifically because it is likely to vote for the other side.
However, there is a loophole for the tweens to exploit.
If they sign up to help out in an Old Folks' home ...
The main cast, a bunch of Latinx tweens - well, English-speaking brunettes - are fitted with ankle monitors and put to work in a well-guarded buildings. The old folks seem creepy, like in The Visit . Even the name of the program, E.A.T.U., is sinister.
The villain (Eric Dane - ) is a white supremacist who talks about Manifest Destiny. He monologues the protagonist about how automation has now rendered immigrant workers obsolete.
This is a parody of
Ted
, made in the UK.
The big difference is that Benny is evil!
Jack (Karl Holt, who also doubled as writer and director) is a lonely workaholic employed by a toy manufacturer. His cow-orker Richard, so named because he is a bit of a Dick, is his rival for promotion to the role of Creative Director. When Jack is inspired to make a serious of murderous dolls based on his kill-crazy buddy Benny, things begin to look up for him. The good news is that a girl at work, Tara ( Lydia Hourihan ), takes a liking to him. The bad news is that Benny's murder-sprees usually happen when he gets jealous of someone else being friends with Jack.
The climax, which features the survivors being chased around by a trio of murderous toys, seems to have a lot of references to other films. However, because this is played for laughs it is happy to call out the more ridiculous aspects of the sub-genre that spawned Chucky and so many other pint-sized terrors.
The UK's top 1980s comedian, Kenny Everett,
goes to a haunted house with a number of other famous characters -
Pamela Stephenson
, Vincent Price (
Abominable Dr Phibes
) and
Cleo Rocos
.
This is a wonderful parody of the Haunted House genre, and includes a scene later used featuring Tori Spelling in Scary Movie 2 .
This is a 1960s parody of the Hammer Horror movies
that were popular in that period.
Normally Sid James would have taken the lead role,
but he was unavailable so they went with a replacement actor.
The story is set in the late Victorian era. A young man (Jim Dale - The Spaceman And King Arthur ) takes his girlfriend for a romantic stroll in the woods, and she is abducted by a monster of the Frankenstein type, played by Bernard Breslaw ( Krull ). The local police detective (Harry H. Corbett - ) takes over the case.
The woods are adjacent to the land of a local mad scientist (Kenneth Williams - ) and his vampish sister ( Fenella Fielding ).
This is a portmanteau featuring a trilogy of cheap schlock movies,
shown in a 1950s movie theatre.
The frame story becomes a movie in its own right - A Zom-B Movie!
In the early 1980s, an
American Criminal
type smuggler parachutes some packages of cocaine
into a National Park forest in the USA.
Unfortunately he is unable to complete the transaction,
so the gangster Syd (Ray Liotta -
No Escape
) sends his minions Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr -
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich -
Solo
) to retrieve the packages.
Unfortunately, a wild bear gets there first.
An off-duty nurse ( Keri Russell ) goes out looking for her missing daughter. The girl has skipped schhol and run off to the National Park, where the massive cocaine-addicted bear is on the loose.
This was directed by Elizabeth Banks , but is much more enjoyable than her previous effort Charlie's Angels (2019) . While there are more female characters than in the usual animal-attacks movie, at least this time an effort is made to keep the death toll as even as possible among the different genders. That said, when the females die it is tragedy and the male deaths are comedy.
The big surprise is the presence on Ehrenreich. He has fallen from starring in a major Disney Star Wars tentpole to a supporting role in an overblown B-movie. This may be a sign that he is about to become the next Barry Pepper ( Battlefield Earth ) or Taylor Kitsch ( John Carter ).
Lucy (
Demi Moore
) runs a trendy woke corporation.
She takes her minions on a team-building retreat,
which involves wandering around a virtually unexplored cave system.
They get trapped by a cave-in, without food ...
Freddy (Karan Soni - Miracle Workers ) tries to keep things together as the starving horde consider cannibalism. Nasim Petrad is a nice addition to the cast.
Bumbling brothers Peter (Reece Shearsmith -
League of Gentlemen
) and David (Andy Serkis -
Lord of the Rings
) kidnap mouthy Liverpudlian Tracey (
Jennifer Ellison
). The plan is to extort money from her stepfather, a violent gangster.
Naturally it all goes horribly wrong for them.
The bad news is, the gangster sends a couple of Triad hit-men after the crooks. Even worse, the cottage is near a village filled with old people who wander around like a plague of zombies.
The story has a genre shift at the midpoint, much like From Dusk Til Dawn , where it changes from crime thriller to straight-up horror. Actually this goes from comedy-thriller to slasher, but the comparison is close enough.
There is an after-credits sequence with Tracey's stepfather (Stephen Berkoff - Werewolves Vs Strippers ).
This starts as a cliched 1990s porno movie.
A group of archetypes, including the cheating brother-in-law (Jerry O'Connell -
Sliders
) and the horny babysitter (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
), are in sexual situations.
Then one of them is brutally murdered by person or persons unknown.
The other characters, aided by a Private Dick,
must overcome their inbuilt limitations and solve the murder.
Despite the setting, this is actually somewhat anti-porn and anti-sex. Sluttishness is deemed to be a bad thing, while education and nerdiness are deemed to be the cure. Indeed, in this universe there are no horny nerds.
A mentally unbalanced man gets a new jacket, made of deerskin.
His mental state deteriorating,
he believes the jacket is talking to him.
He thinks it tells him that it wants to be the only jacket in the world,
and he agrees to the mission it charges him with -
to destroy every other jaket in the world.
He is staying in a small village in the alps, and his wife has cut his access to their shared bank account because he spent so much money on the jacket. To get by, he pretends to be a location scout for a big movie production that intends to shoot locally. This allows him to borrow money off a young woman who works as a bartender. He even hires her as an editor on the film, although she is unknowingly the film's sole financier.
The protagonist uses a camcorder to shoot scenes of him stealing jackets from people. The editor is impressed with his footage, and encourages him to do more. However, he ups his game and instead of conning people into handing over the jackets he just kills them and strips the jackets from their dead bodies.
The editor is smart enough to know that the protagonist is not a real location scout, and sees through his unrealistic story about the Producers. However, she still agrees to act as his editor and financier. It is unclear if she is just gullible, or if she is being dragged deeper into his insanity.
The result is a somewhat surreal film, with the descent into insanity and violence a slow and natural development. This was made in France, which would account for the straight-faced approach to the comedy.
This is set in a small town in the USA
where humans live in peace with supernatural creatures.
For the moment, at least.
However, there is a simmering undercurrent of racial tension.
The protagonist, a teenage boy, wants to date Lorelei ( Vanessa Hudgens ). However, instead he gets stuck with Petra ( Mackenzie Davis ) when the race-war breaks out.
A workaholic estate agent (
Marsha Thomason
) takes her husband (Eddie Murphy -
Bowfinger
) and pre-teen kids to dinner with a rich client (Nathaniel Parker -
Merlin: Season 4
) in his creepy old mansion.
The creepy old Butler (Terence Stamp -
Star Wars: TPM
) advises them that the river has flooded,
and the family must spend the night.
Up to this point it is all cliches from gothic horror movies. However, the story is played purely for laughs as the characters spend the night enduring slapstick created by CGI ghosts. Exposition comes from the ghostly Wallace Shawn ( Princess Bride ), who now has a new catch-phrase - unspeakable - and a fortune-telling Gypsy ( Jennifer Tilly ).
This seems to be a big-budget promo for a ride in Disney's theme-parks - just like Pirates of the Carribean . However, to judge the films on their relative success we must ask how many sequels they produced. At the time of writing this review, there are five films in the POTC series. In contrast, Haunted Mansion sank without trace at the box office.
A horror novelist (William Katt -
Greatest American Hero
) returns to his childhood home.
Unfortunately it turns out to be a gateway to a realm of unspeakable evil,
so various beasties emerge to endanger the protagonist.
The novelist has flashbacks to his time in Vietnam. He does not really look old enough – Katt was one of the rising stars of the 1970s, but he is about the right age to have served in the final years of the conflict. This film was made at the same time as more serious efforts like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket were coming out, and the Nam sequences suffer quite badly in the comparison.
Meanwhile, the novelist's wife ( Kay Lenz ) and neighbour (George Wendt - Santa Baby ) do not believe in monsters. Their take on the events would be a lot more suspenseful if the monsters were not so OTT and surreal, reminiscent of The Evil Dead . Basically this is a horror-comedy from an era before such cross-genre efforts were common.
A young female writer-director,
Gillian Horvat
, makes a video diary of her attempt to get a movie deal in Hollywood.
Her idea is to make a Found Footage film about a serial killer.
In a Meta twist, she ends up becoming an actual serial killer.
This is a light-hearted look at the slasher genre,
although in all fairness it is not really scary or funny.
The protagonist, a tweenage girl, seems to be haunted by the ghost of her father (Ray Wise - Twin Peaks ). Her absentee hippy mother ( Kim Delaney ) is not much use, being off on a commune or something. Then the girl gets fired by her creepy boss (Ray Santiago - Ash Vs Evil Dead ). She decides to leave her friend Blaire ( AnnaLynne McCord ), and rents a house in the country where she can stay for a few days to get some peace and quiet.
The house is owned by Harvey (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2 (1992) ), an aging Baby Boomer who does not approve of the Millennial generation. This leads on to the story's main theme, that of the current generational conflict in the USA - as well as the conflicts of city people versus country people and males versus females.
It turns out that the only way to have fun in the small midwest town is to either get drunk or get high. The protagonist scores some drugs from the local dealer, Wyatt ( Keisha Castle-Hughes ). Meanwhile, Harvey is a murderer who has plans to make her his next victim.
The prologue explains the backstory, which is predictable enough.
There is a magic book,
and when the contents are read aloud it summons demons into the world.
The only original aspects are that this time the book was created by Dr John Dee,
the Elizabethan wizard, and that some LARPers ended up buying it on E-Bay.
The hero (Ryan Kwanten - True Blood ) gets dumped by his girlfriend. His flatmates Eric (Steve Zahn - Sahara ) and Hung (Peter Dinklage - Game of Thrones ) try to cheer him up by taking him to a Live Action Roleplay (LARP) event. The rest of the team includes Danny Pudi ( Captain America: Winter Soldier ) and Summer Glau , while the Game Master is Jimmi Simpson ( Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter ).
Our all-star cast go on a merry quest. Naturally, a demon gets accidentally summoned and predictably goes on a killing spree. However, this is well handled and the resulting film is an above-average effort.
Lisa's mother was murdered,
and her father married an evil stepmother (
Carla Gugino
). Now she is a goth-chick,
and spends her spare time writing poetry in a disused graveyard.
One night a gravestone is struck by lightning,
and a tweenage love interest comes to life.
A bit like
Twilight
, but not so annoying.
Lisa hides Frankie in her home, which leads to a comedy of errors. Worse, it turns into a murder-spree. Strangely, nobody uses the Internet. The movie turns out to be set in 1989, which explains the big hairdos and absence of mobile phones.
Director Zelda Williams, making her debut, does a good job by focusing on the comedy rather than the horror aspect. She is supported by writer Diablo Cody and star Kathryn Newton , veterans of movies like Jennifer's Body and Freaky , which this resembles a lot. However, the closest comparison would be with Heathers. There is a new approach that makes it more like the Anti-Male Horror genre of the 2020s. The victims are mostly male, while the mean girls are ignored as targets. Instead, the males are reduced to body parts that can be reassembled. A hand that cupped a breast, or a penis that friend-zoned the protagonist, can both be weaponised for the female's pleasure without the consent of the male.
Dr Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin -
Bowfinger
) is brain surgeon, hyper-competent but arrogant -
the opposite of Martin's character in The Jerk.
He marries one of his patients, Dolores Benedict (
Kathleen Turner
). Unfortunately, she is a manipulative femme fatale -
an exaggerated parody of Turner's character in Body Heat.
The doctor is invited to a symposium in Vienna, so he leaves Dr Jones (Jeffrey Combs - Re-Animator ) in charge of the surgery and takes Delores along for a honeymoon. There he befriends the local mad scientist, Dr Necessiter (David Warner - Time Bandits ), who experiments on human brains that are collected from the victims of the local serial killer.
The doctor, frustrated by his wife's manipulations, falls in love with one of Necessiter's brains. He decides to stay in Vienna permanently, and buys a house from the local realtor (James Cromwell - Star Trek: First Contact ). However, Dolores the femme fatale will not give up easily.
Joe Dante
parodies the kind of film-making that
William Castle
, king of the 1950s B-Movies, was famous for.
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the growth of youth culture in the USA,
and movie theatres capitalised on the new-found teenage market
at a time when the adult population had made the switch to television.
A B-movie promoter (John Goodman - 10 Cloverfield Lane ) releases his new movie, Mant, a monster-movie about a man-sized ant. His chosen venue is in Florida at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The cinema manager (Robert Picardo - Star Trek: Vgr ) is a bag of nerves. The schoolboy hero (Omri Katz - Eerie Indiana ) just wants to see the movie.
A con-man worms his way into the home of Catherine (
Louise Linton
). She is a serial killer,
who gets pleasure from killing anyone she finds physically unattractive.
Linton is not only the female lead, who narrates the film, but also directed the film. Yes, she is a writer-director ... but the script shows a deep knowledge of the slasher genre, while the visuals utilise the so-called Male Gaze to make her look very glamourous.
A small village in modern-day America is menaced by a monster. Not a
Bubba Hotep
, but the Chinese God of War.
As in The Three Amigos they mistake an actor for the role he has played.
Bruce Campbell (
Evil Dead
) is promptly kidnapped.
He is confused, and thinks he is in a movie - like in
Galaxy Quest
.
The film is filled with references to Campbell's earlier works in the Genre. Ted Raimi ( Skinner ) plays several roles, so you should know what kind of movie to expect.
An American car salesman is invited to visit a client's home -
the location referred to in the title.
Once there he discovers that he has wandered into a parody of
The Cat and the Canary
. Well, this is literally a
William Castle
co-production with Hammer House Of Horror!
The family have to stay in their mansion every night, or else they will be deprived of their right to a massive inheritance. Uncle Roderick (Robert Morley - ) is a stock character who delivers exposition. Cousin Morgana ( Fenella Fielding ) is a raven-haired femme fatale, the kind of role that Fielding is best known for in movies like Carry On Screaming (1966) . The one who sticks out is Cousin Cecily ( Janette Scott ), an innocent-looking blonde.
Paul Dood is a middle-aged man who lives with his mother
in a suburb of Winchester in England.
He works as a shop assistant,
but his real career is as a live-streaming influencer
on a video website named Trend Ladder.
One day he gets the chance to take his career to the next level,
by auditioning for an American celebrity.
He even takes his wheelchair-bound mother,
on what should be the happiest day of his life.
Unfortunately the journey is beset with a series of encounters with some of the most terrible people imaginable. They are the most recognisable faces in the movie - a jobsworth (Steve Oram - ), a cultural appropriator (Johnny Vegas - Tales From The Lodge (2019) ), a creepy priest (Kris Marshall - The Most fertile Man In Ireland ) and his bossy assistant ( Alice Lowe ). Finally, the celebrity is the American version of Simon Cowell - a stereotype at seeing peoples' worst traits and then mocking them horribly.
The stress of the events that day basically destroys Paul's life. Driven beyond the edge of sanity, he sets out to kill everyone on his hit-list. The death scenes he fantasises about are a lot more successful than what actually happens.
The police, led by an Asian female officer (the equivalent of Yaz in Dr Who ), close in on Paul. He gets stuck in a hostage situation with his love interest, Clemmie The Cleaner ( Katherine Parkinson ), and manages to stream a second audition piece.
A naive young woman goes on a road trip with her Life Coach.
Unfortunately the Life Coach is a murderer,
who kills off pretty much everyone they meet.
A bit like the movie
Switchback (1995)
, but a female-led comedy version.
Well, at least it passes the Bechdel test.
This is a British effort,
the title a parody on High School drama Ciderhouse Rules.
It evokes a world similar to
Kingsman
, where British Society is divided into aristocrats and paupers.
The protagonist, a teenage pauper, is sent to a boarding school
that is like a mixed-gender version of
St Trinians
. There is also an element of Hogwarts from
Harry Potter
. In fact, one of the Prefects even paraphrases Dumbledore,
when he says that the wood are out of bounds
to anyone who wishes to avoid a most painful death.
The Headmaster (Michael Sheen - Good Omens (2019) ) is set up to be a bad guy, when he gives a Trump-style Make Slaughterhouse Great Again quote. His plan is to allow fracking in the forest, which will destroy the water table and pollute the atmosphere. Luckily all it actually does is unleash a horde of carnivorous beasties that start to devour the cast.
There are a couple of familiar faces. A school-teacher (Simon Pegg - Mission Impossible: Fallout ) is obsessed with getting back with his estranged girlfriend ( Margot Robbie ). Meanwhile, a hippy (Nick Frost - Shaun Of The Dead ) is camping out in the woods to protest the fracking. Since the movie was not written and directed by their co-conspirator Edgar Wright , Pegg and Frost are just supporting characters. Hermione Corfield makes up the numbers.
The protagonist and his room-mate (Asa Butterfield - The space Between us ) have to save the day. Yes, this boils down to a teenagers-versus-monsters story.
This is a period piece from the far-off olden days of 2012.
An American High School girl is obsessed with her ex-boyfriend,
even though he is acting very strangely.
She manages to seduce him, and lose her virginity to him.
The next day she has symptoms of a rapidly developing pregnancy.
Everyone at her High School is a judgemental gossip,
so she has to seek help from a nerdy girl instead.
The girls head to the Free Clinic, which is being picketed by a pro-birther so presumably it doubles as an abortion clinic. It turns out that the pregnancy is not a human foetus, and instead happens to be a deadly alien. The story turns from teen comedy into straight-up horror-comedy.
The mutant foetus is the result of an ancient Aztec curse. It causes the biggest police station massacre since The Terminator (1984) , then tries to spawn itself across the whole town by possessing the town's population of horny teenagers.
Amber (
Alison Brie
) is manager in a one of a chain of pasta restuarants in the USA.
She is sent on a staff training course in Italy, Europe.
While there she is befriended by Kat (
Aubrey Plaza
), who introduces her to Nick (Alessandro Nivola -
Jurassic Park 3
) - the multi-millionaire who owns the restuarant chain.
They spend a lot of time hanging out on his yacht,
or at a party with his rich friends like Sofia (
Tricia Helfer
).
The obvious answer would be that Nick seduces the most beautiful girl in every class. After all, the only men in the class have gender-neutral names and the previous classes were all-female. Of course, this turns the soppy romance storyline - which inspired the bodice-ripper type movie poster - into something a bit more sinister. Is he luring the pretty girls off to seduce them, or does he have another motive?
In the third act, things hot up a bit. It seems that someone has gone on a kill-crazy rampage. This has turned into a parody of a slasher movie!
The Foo Fighters,
a six-man group of middle-aged rock musicians,
are pressured into recording a new album.
Their manager's Real Estate Agent (
Leslie Grossman
) gives them an old mansion to record their music in.
Well, old by Hollywood standards.
It was abandoned since a massacre in 1993.
Luckily the neighbour (
Whitney Cummings
) seems to know a bit about the house's evil past.
Dave Grohl ( Pick of Destiny ) sees a ghostly groundskeeper with a pair of hedge shears, like Cropsy in The Burning (1981) . Later, one of the band gets demonically possessed ... and the others get bumped off one at a time. It all has something to do with a magical book, like the Necronomicon in The Evil Dead .
So how is this a comedy? Well, the humour comes from the situations as opposed to the dialogue. There are no memorable one-liners. That said, there are some epectacularly OTT kill scenes. The chainsaw scene is particularly memorable.
Mackenzie Crook (
Pirates of the Caribbean
) and his wife (
Laura Fraser
) go to stay in a
Cabin in the Woods
. They invite their friends, including Johnny Vegas (
Paul Dood's Deadly Lunch Break (2021)
). After scattering the ashes of a dead friend,
they tell some scary campfire tales.
This is a slacker comedy, with a bunch of thirty-something movie stars
playing obscene versions of themselves.
Jay Baruchel (
Sorceror's Apprentice
) and Seth Rogan (
Paul
) go to a party at the home of James Franco (
Your Highness
). Unfortunately, that night happens to be the Apocalypse!
A small band of survivors cling together, and turn on each other, in hilarious ways. The more OTT the situation becomes, the funnier it is.
Wilmington, North Carolina, 1986.
A teenage Rocker kid is bullied by Jock Alpha bastards.
Rock DJ Gene Simmons (
Runaway
) gives him a one-of-a-kind record,
and when he plays it backwards he hears the demonic rituals that a deceased singer performed.
But when he plays the tape, supernatural events occur.
The singer can return from the dead to seek vengeance,
powering himself from any electrical source.
The climax is on Halloween Night, when there is a dance at the High School. Shades of Carrie , to match the Christine type feel to this film.
Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath) has a cameo as a Heavy Metal-hating preacher.
Tucker (Alan Tudyk -
Serenity
) and Dale (Tyler Labine -
Reaper
) are a couple of scruffy-looking thirty-somethings who buy a
Cabin in the Woods
. All they want to do is hang out, drink a few beers and do some fishing in the lake ...
Unfortunately, twenty years previously the area was the scene of the Memorial Day Massacre. A group of college kids, familiar with the tropes of horror movies, think that our protagonists are bloodthirsty murderous hillbillies. The kids arm themselves in the way that horror movie victims ought to (but rarely do), spiralling down into a Lord of the Flies situation. And violently hilarious, hilariously violent mayhem ensues.
The obvious comparison is with the above-mentioned Joss Whedon film. However, this is played entirely for laughs. It is original insofar as the film is from the hillbillies' perspective. Every survival movie from Deliverance onwards has a set of tropes that are mocked here.
Henry Jekyll (Bernard Breslaw -
Krull
) is a harmless soul with the mind of a child.
Unfortunately his klutzy behaviour makes him unpopular.
However, one day he discovers his grandfather's scientific formula.
This turns him into Teddy Hyde, a cool teddy-boy type.
Rather than straight-up horror, this takes Jekyll-and-Hyde in a comedy-thriller direction. Since Teddy Hyde is a master of all skills, he becomes a one-man burglary crew and steals a priceless jewelry collection. When his brother (Jon Pertwee - Dr Who ) finds out, he makes Henry return the jewels before the cops can find out. Unfortunately, Henry has lost his teddy-boy super-skills. Also, the gangster who planned the robbery wants the jewelry for himslef.
Ryan Reynolds (
Green Lantern
) steps away from his usual Van Wilder persona.
He plays a likeable loser who has mental issues.
His pets (voiced by Reynolds himself) give him advice
- the evil Scottish cat gives devilish tips,
while the big dopey dog tells him to Beee Good like
E.T.
.
Our protagonist works with a handful of young women. Anna Kendrick takes a liking to him, but Gemma Arterton is the one he wants to be with. However, she does not reciprocate.
It turns out our hero is haunted by a dark past. This is basically a comedy about a seral killer. It has very dark subject matter, but manages to pull the comedy off quite well.
A bumbling fool (Kenneth Connor -
Carry On Cleo
) is approached by a creepy lawyer (Donald Pleasance -
Halloween
), and summoned to the reading of the will
of his recently-deceased uncle.
Kenneth's flatmate (Sid James -
Quatermass II
), tags along for company.
Yes, this is a bit like an episode of Hancock's Half Hour.
The dynamic duo, along with the lawyer and the butler (Michael Gough - Sleepy Hollow ), are locked in the dead man's mansion overnight with the other heirs named in the will. Glamour is provided by Shirley Eaton , who went on to become a Bond Girl the next year in Goldfinger (1963) .
Much like in The Cat and the Canary , which this parodies quite heavily, someone starts to bump the heirs off one at a time.
Some tweenagers on a road trip stop off in a small town.
The locals direct them to a disused amusement park,
the titular Willy's Wonderland.
It is filled with animatronic creatures like
The Banana Splits
. And like the movie, as opposed to the TV show,
the animatronic monsters go on a kill-crazy rampage.
A drifter (Nicholas Cage - Renfield ) has been stuck with the job of janitor. He spends the night cleaning up the mess, and is the only one who stands a chance against the monsters.
This is a parody of the classic Universal horror movie
Frankenstein (1932)
.
Doctor Frankenstein (Gene Wilder - Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ) is the grandson of the infamous Baron. He inherits that castle and its contents, as well as Igor (Marty Feldman - Yellowbeard ) - the grandson of the Baron's assistant.
Frankenstein eventually falls prey to his ancestor's madness. He decides to create the perfect man, and ends up with a Monster (Peter Boyle - Species 2 ). The real problem is that Igor used an abnormal brain. Well, that is always the problem. However, Frankenstein tries to cure the creature's monsterous tendencies.
Ken Marino (
Veronica Mars
) is happily married to
Gillian Jacobs
. However, working with her Community co-star Garrett is very stressful.
Worse, his boss is Patrick Warburton (
The Tick
).
A series of strange occurances lead to his doctor (Peter Stormare - Armageddon ) making an incredible discovery. Our hero has a demon living in his lower intestine. Sort of like the pussy-troll referred to in Clerks 2 . Whenever he falls asleep while stressed out, the demon emerges and kills the people that gave him the stress. This is the most messed-up ever version of The Incredible Hulk ... in fact, there is an audio reference with the old don't make me angry soundbite from the TV show.
The protagonist's issues come from his childhood abandonment by his father ... yes, just like Jeff Winger in Community. The old man lives in the woods, away from other people, and constantly self-medicates with medicinal marijuana. Nobody thinks that the condition might be hereditary.
Chip, a regular American, discovers he enjoys putting things up his butt.
He tries larger and larger objects.
Eventually, the neighbours notice when pets and children start to go missing.
Five years later, a Police detective joins his local Alcoholics Anonymous. The cop is given a sponsor - none other than Chip himself.
This detective is far above average when it comes to supernatural cases. He quickly works out that Chip is responsible for the missing persons cases. The Second Act of the movie is him trying to catch Chip. In the Third Act, things get a bit more surreal ...
This is basically a weird freaky low-budget horror-comedy reminiscent of The Greasy Strangler . Perverse but enjoyable, certainly not the most extreme of the subgenre.
This is a story about a father and son
who live in a run-down area of Los Angeles, USA.
They are physically unappealing people,
which helps this indie movie play against the mainstream tropes.
The area is beset with murders committed by a big greasy thug who strangles his victims with his bare hands. This is secretly the were-form of the father, Ronnie, who is an abusive bully even in his human form.
The son, Brayden, gets a girlfriend. The result is a lot of nudity from the kind of people who are not considered conventionally attractive.
The protagonist (Richard E. Grant -
Hudson Hawk
) is a 1980s yuppie who works in the Advertising industry.
His boss (Richard Wilson -
Merlin (2008)
) assigns him a new account - a pimple cream.
Unfortunately the additional work stress drives him to a nervous breakdown.
Worse, he develops a nasty boil on his neck.
As the boil gets bigger, he starts to hear it talk to him.
A trio of aspiring young musicians set off on a tour of half a dozen venues.
They hire a homeless guy as their roadie,
because he has a van and they need the transportation.
Unfortunately he turns out to be a were-monster,
who turns into a flesh-eating beast at midnight.
This is reminiscent of the works of Troma Studios, known for their low-budget horror-comedy schlock.
A tweenage college girl gets murdered by a masked killer.
Then she wakes up and re-lives the day again.
It is not
Friday the 13th
, but it is her birthday.
Nobody remembers what happened except her.
However, the mysterious killer is still after her.
This is a typical time loop story. As it is a horror type film, the Genre Blindness trope is invoked and the protagonist never mentions Groundhog Day (1992) - even though it is the prime example of a SciFi concept going mainstream.
With every repetition, the protagonist gets more disorientated. Perhaps this is stress due to panic on her part, but it is probably more like a Butterfly Effect situation where the physical memories stack up. Her X-rays show that the damage is cumulative, and every death she experiences results in healed scar tissue inside her body. In other words, she does not literally have infinite loops.
The killer wears a mask of the college's team mascot, so she cannot identify his face or track him down by a unique identifier. The protagonist is a mean girl type, so there is a long list of potential suspects.
Eventually the protagonist changes for the better, and becomes Final Girl material. She has to physically defeat the villain, but there is also a mystery to be solved.
The end result is actually quite an enjoyable film. It is a horror-comedy that delivers some good death scenes but is interspersed with laughs and character moments. And unlike most cheap horrors, this actually got a sequel!
The movie starts with a different victim in a time loop,
in the same University but being stalked by a different serial killer.
This killer wears a creepy baby mask, like in
Valentine (2001)
. This mask is the image of the University's sports team mascot - like in
Scream Queens
.
The new character meets up with the Final Girl, and she gives a quick recap of the events of the first film. So new viewers do not need to have seen the original movie, although this certainly spoils the big twist reveal. Anyway, now we get an explanation for the creation of the time loop.
The Final Girl gets flipped into an alternate reality, where she has to re-live the original Death Day all over again. This world is different, because every bad character now seems to be good. This means she has to fight a completely different killer.
The human interest element of the story has changed. Instead of pure romance, it is now about the girl's relationship with her mother. Mama was dead in the original timeline, but now in this alternate universe the heroine gets to spend time with her again. If this all sounds familiar, it was a major plot point in The Final Girls (2015) . These days, romantic love is out and female platonic love is in. This all seems to have started with Frozen (2012) .
Evan (Fran Kranz -
Cabin In The Woods
) hates his day job, stuck in an office.
His new boss is his college rival, Max (Pedro Pascal -
Kingsman: Golden Circle
).
Things get worse when it turns out that someone is turning the office staff into vampires.
This is a horror with a comedic tone, made in the UK.
Predictably it has a small scale, set around a remote farmhouse,
but it has a cast of recognisable faces including a couple of
Doctor Who
veterans. The director, Jason Flemyng,
is an actor best known from mockney gangster movies ... and his old pal Jason Statham (
The Transporter
) is credited as the fight consultant.
Once every fifty years the Vampire overlords of Great Britain meet up. The Duke (Vincent Regan - Lockdown ) hosts the meeting, attended by Henry (Charlie Cox - Stardust (2007) ), Peter (Tony Curran - League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ), Alice (Annette Crosbie) and Angel ( Freema Agyeman ). Meanwhile, Vanessa ( Eve Myles ) collects a human to introduce to her friends.
A religious fundamentalist (Mackenzie Crook - Pirates of the Carribean ) has hired a group of elite mercenaries to capture a vampire. They find they have bitten off more than they can handle.
The vamps are trapped in the farmhouse, surrounded by the mercenaries. Neither side has the upper hand, in a nasty stalemate. The human hostages, including the farmer (Dexter Fletcher - Kick Ass ) and his wife, are in a tough spot.
James Corden (
Three Musketeers
) and Horne, a pair of UK comedians who recently got their own TV show,
now have their big-screen debut.
The lads go on holiday,
and hike into a parody of a 1960s Hammer Horror lesbo vamp movie.
Myanna Burring is a not just a damsel in distress - she is a foreign exchange student who is an expert in folklore, and can more than look after herself. Paul McGann is a vampire-fighting preacher.
This starts with a bunch of Dublin girls on a hen night in Transylvania.
The hen meets a local vamp ...
The action shifts to Dublin, Ireland. Matt, a tweenage boy, discovers that his older brother Deco has been bitten by a girl. This bite comes with certain side-effects: an aversion to sunlight and garlic, and the absence of a reflection. Can he cure vampirisim by going cold turkey?
Henry Montgomery (Anthony Stewart Head - Buffy the Vampire Slayer ), taxi-driver by day and vamp-hunter 24/7, is in town. He has sworn to hunt down and stake the vampiric hen party before they can take over the city.
The hens plan to open their own vampire-themed night-club. They will use it to turn victims, building an army so they can take over the city.
An Australian boy named Davis moves to a new High school in the USA.
Caitlyn Crisp, the most popular girl in the school, is a fan of
Twilight
. Due to a series of misunderstandings
she and her friends think that the new boy is a Cullen-style vampire.
Rather than correct her misapprehension,
as a real vampire would, he leans into it.
With the help of the nerdy girl next door he masquerades as a Masquerader.
The school's Jocks become jealous and obsessed with the newcomer. One of them calls in his uncle, a grown man under the delusion he is a vampire hunter.
The protagonist is called out for lying and pretending to be something he is not in order to get people to like him. However, it is pointed out that his so-called victim is no better than him. After all, she basically treats boyfriends as arm candy and is milking the dating-a-vampire image to enhance her own popularity. But the protagonist does emphasise that they are all in High School, so they should not be held to the same standards as real grown-ups.
Vampire subplot aside, what this basically boils down to is the hero has to choose between two women. Does he end up with the nerdy girl or the school princess? If this all seems a bit childish, that is because it is a made-for-TV effort for the Nickelodeon channel.
Dracula (George Hamilton -
Zorro: The Gay Blade
) moves to New York City, USA.
This was made in the 1980s, but seems to be set a few decades earlier.
The main characters are a small town's undertaker and his apprentices.
Not only are they in charge of looking after burials,
but they also defend the town from vampires and ghosts
using a mix of Chinese magic and kung-fu comedy.
This story does not follow a Hollywood-style three-act structure. Instead it is string-of-pearls, showing a series of encounters with different monsters.
As well as the monster-fighting, there is a subplot involving all the age-appropriate males trying to date Rosamund Kwan .
This is not a direct sequel to the original,
since it is set many decades later in the 1980s,
but seems to be set in the same universe.
After all, the vampires follow the same rules.
A trio of tomb raiders discover a cave near an archaeological site. There are three coffins inside, with well-preserved corpses. Rather than just rob the graves of the jewelry, the grave-robbers decide to steal the corpses themselves. Of course, they do not bother to check out the paper talismans until it is too late.
As in the original film, the adult vampires are ravening beasts driven only by their lust for human blood. However, the vampire child is merely curious and has no sign of bloodlust. Just as well, since he escapes and goes exploring.
In a scene clearly inspired by ET: the Extra-Terrestrial , the vampire boy is befriended by a young girl and her friends. They think he is an illegal immigrant, a so-called small human snake, and hide him to protect him.
Luckily the descendents of the characters from the first film run a Chinese traditional medicine shop in the same town. Unfortunately one of the new generation of apprentices sees himself as a photo-journalist, and spends more time setting up photo shots than he does fighting vamps.
Peter (Damien Lewis -
Your Highness
) and Helen (
Kelly McDonald
) are the Radleys,
a generic middle-class couple in suburban England.
There is a lot going on beneath the surface.
The title seems inspired by the name of
the creepy character from To kill a Mocking Bird,
while the setting itself is Whitby - a town famous from
Dracula
. It turns out they are non-drinking vampires,
kept blood-free with support from the Abstainer's Helpline (
Sian Phillips
).
Their teenage daughter is a vegan, which leaves her weak and nauseous. One day she goes to a party, and inevitably a lonely teenage boy will not take no for an answer. Naturally she penetrates him without his consent - using her vampiric fangs, which excuses her actions. After all, if the victim is male then they deserve what they get.
The parents cover up the murder by calling in Peter's estranged brother - who, unlike them, is still a blood-drinker. Unfortunately his presence slowly influences the Radleys to fall off the wagon. Ironically, the daughter is the only one who can show self-control.
The daughter and her closeted gay brother both want the mixed-race boy who lives next door. While they learn about vampirism, the boy's father (Shaun Parkes - ) closes in on them. He is an obsessive ex-police detective, and he sees things the local uniformed cops miss.
Robrt Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult -
Mad Max: Fury Road
) has been the personal servant of Dracula (Nicholas Cage -
Willy's Wonderland
) for over a century.
Now they live in New Orleans, USA.
Renfield attends a regular meeting for co-dependent people in toxic relationships with narcisists. This lets him create a target list, feeding their abusers to Dracula like a supernatural Dexter. Later the group empowers him to take control of his life.
Renfield befriends a female cop, Rebecca Quincy ( Awkwafina ). Together they take on a bunch of gangsters, which is a complete massacre. This is justified by the gangsters being portrayed as evil, and their unsympathetic nature makes the ultra-violence seem comical.
Later the duo take on a police SWAT team, which is another complete massacre. Not only does Renfield's supernatural status give him superhuman strength, but the cop's 9mm handgun can somehow penetrate bulletproof armour. This one-sided slaughter is apparently okay because the police department has a few corrupt officers. Not because the police are an oppressive power structure, of course. No, it is only the criminal gang who are evil-doers. Typical copaganda!
This is the long-awaited mockery of the
Twilight
saga.
Unfortunately, like most recent parodies it is more like
Meet The Spartans
than the hilarious parodies of yesteryear.
It is a PG-12, however, so it is dumbed down
to the level where it will not confuse or scare young kids. Like
Die Hard 4.0
for example.
We get the basic plot of Twilight . A Teenage Girl moves in with her dad (Dietrich Bader - ), attends school, falls in love with pretty-boy vampire ... And hilarity is supposed to ensue.
This starts as a day in the life of a pair of NYC girl vamps -
Alicia Silverstone
and
Krysten Ritter
. Ritter, the younger of the pair, dates a young man named Van Helsing.
By strange coincidence, her BF’s father (Wallace Shawn -
Princess Bride
) is a Homeland Security agent by day, vamp hunter by night.
He uses Federal government resources to subpoena the vamps into appearing in the daytime.
The girls have to help their community survive the crackdown. Even Vlad Tepes (Malcolm McDowell - Clockwork Orange ) is on board with it. However, the girls’ maker ( Sigourney Weaver ) is a psycho killer, and thus is a danger to everyone around her.
This is quite an enjoyable little film, made on a low budget with a great cast. The supporting actors play it straight, and the special effects support the story without undermining it through over-use.
Two decades after the original classic by
John Landis
comes this overly comical effort.
The original had a sense of gritty realism,
with elements of actual horror.
In contrast, this is a poor follow-up.
A trio of American extreme sports lads visit Paris. While bungee-jumping off the Eiffel tower they meet Seraphine ( Julie Delphy ), who has a dangerous secret. The protagonist, Andy (Tom Everett Scott - Z Nation ), becomes obsessed with her. Then he and his friends fall foul of a gang of skinhead werewolves.
Seraphine wants to find a cure for lycanthropy, although all she did was create an instant-transformation inducer. However, it turns out that there is a magical cure ... just eat the heart of the werewolf who turned you. Unfortunately, Andy spends the night with Seraphine and wakes up with a werewolf bite ...
This movie hits a lot of the same plot points as the original, but it has a much more comedic tone. Characters like Amy ( Julie Bowen ) are introduced, but we never care if anything happens to them. This is not helped by the unconvincing CGI, which replaced the original's ground-breaking practical effects.
This is a 1980s remake of
I was a Teenage Werewolf
Starring TV actor Michael J. Fox, this was shot BEFORE his big break on
Back to the Future
. Presumably on a much lower budget - the terrible lighting shows just how cheaply this film was made.
It also looks extremely dated.
The protagonist is a teenage boy who discovers he is a werewolf. The original was a horror movie, but this is played for laughs. Instead of being overcome by his animal instincts, the werewolf uses his superhuman abilities to become the school's star basketball player.
A US Parks Ranger is assigned to a post
in a small town in rural USA.
The locals are an unusual bunch,
at each others' throats because of a new construction project.
A millionaire wants to build an oil pipeline through their land.
Some locals stand on principle, like Joaquim Wolfson (Harvey Guillén -
Blue Beetle
) while others desperately need the money.
Worse, the townsfolk find themselves cut off - like in 40 Days Of Night . But it is not vampires that is hunting them, it is a werewolf. Worse, the killer is already inside the house. This drives them paranoid, and they start to turn on each other.
The movie is stolen by the little postal worker ( Milana Vayntrub ) who is the protagonist's love interest.
A deputy in a remote Canadian town gets bitten by a werewolf.
The result is a police version of
Teen Wolf
. Unfortunately there is a coven of shapeshifters in town,
manipulating everyone.
The WolfCop is still in business,
eating criminals who bother his small town.
This is typical propaganda, promoting police brutality.
After all, he has supernaturally granted superhuman strength and speed,
while his victims are normal humans who only broke a few laws.
In real life, people often get a trial before their execution.
Millionaire businessman Sidney Swallows (Jannik Bisson - Murdoch Mysteries ) moves to town, and sets up a brewery to make and distribute chicken milk beer. He and his minions are alien shapeshifters, so at least the wolf-cop can take on someone his own strength and speed now. They build a frankensteinian monster, so the police are distracted.
The town's new mayor, Bubba (Kevin Smith - Mallrats ), supports the new brewery because it will bring jobs to the area. Also he is corrupt and on the take. Unfortunately the aliens are using the beer as part of their plan to infect humans and conquer the world. This is a more gross-out comedy version of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch .
This is about a teenage schoolgirl named Anna (
Ella Hunt
). She attends a High School with the regular asortment of cliched characters,
including the token nasty teacher (Paul Kaye -
Dracula Untold (2014)
). The kids have a tendency to break into song, like in High School Musical.
As in that other great British zombie comedy, Shaun of the Dead , it turns out that a zombie apocalypse has started when nobody was paying attention.
The musical numbers are quite impressive, but the fight scenes are rather less so. The zombies are of the Romero kind, slow-moving brain-eaters
The protagonist (Anton Yelchin -
Star Trek (2009)
) is a nerdy twenty-something American who works in a store that sells magic goods.
He has a hot girlfriend (
Ashley Greene
). Unfortunately she is a crazy obsessive - like the
Amanda Peet
character in
American Woman AKA Devil Woman
. She cannot stand his best friend, who may not be played by Jack Black
but is still the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins.
The girlfriend from hell dies in an accident, and the boyfriend moves on with goth-chick Alexandria Daddario . Unfortunately there is a cursed idol nearby, like in Picture of Dorian Grey . This one raises the girlfriend from the dead, as a zombie.
Directed by Joe Dante , this follows his usual path of combining horror with comedy. While the comedy is funny, the horror aspect is played with seriousness and full-on gore.
Substitute teacher Clint (Elijah Wood -
The Faculty
) turns up for his first day at work.
The school crossing guard is Hurley from
Lost
, and he is more interested in smoking weed than doing job.
This should be the first sign that something is wrong,
although it is completely unrelated to the main storyline.
Nevertheless, it tells us a lot about the characters.
Some of the chicken nuggets in the school cafeteria are infected with a zombie virus. The good news is that anyone who has hit puberty is immune. The bad news is that the school's pupils are mostly pre-pubescent, so by the end of the lunch hour they are a raging band of Fast Zombies.
Clint manages to hide out with a few of the other teachers. They include his former High School crush ( Alison Pill ), her boyfriend Wade the gymn teacher (Rainn Wilson - The Meg ). The other TV actors in the cast are Tracy (Jack McBrayer - 30 Rock) and an annoying Xian woman named Rebekkah ( Nasim Pedrad ). Horror director Leigh Whannell rounds out the cast as Doug the brain-damaged biology teacher.
This is a shockingly violent film when one considers the antagonists are pre-pubescent zombies. Presumably Elijah Wood was still on good terms with the Hobbit stunt-doubles from Lord of the Rings , and found a willing team of child-impersonating stunt-zombies.
Jeff is a struggling musician in his thirties,
who earns a living as a busker in Australia.
His girlfriend kicks him out, so he sleeps on his sister's couch
because her five-year-old son has the spare bedroom.
While attempting to earn his keep he takes the kid to kindergarten,
where he meets the gorgeous teacher Miss Caroline (
Lupita Nyongo
). So far, so rom-com.
Luckily, this movie has something to set it apart from the others. The children are taken on a day-trip to the petting zoo, where they can meet childrens' entertainer Teddy (Josh Gadd - Pixels (2015) ). Unfortunately the zoo is right next to a US military test-site. Yes, the US military is testing a zombie formula … although for safety's sake they are not doing it on American soil. Lucky Australia gets to play host to the test site.
The zombies escape and overrun the petting zoo. Caroline and Jeff must save the kids, without actually letting on how dire the situation really is. And hilarity ensues.
The story starts in Portland, Maine, on the night before the Fourth of July.
Debbie (who looks like a shorter, perkier version of
Felicia Day
) has a one-night stand with a generic pretty-boy (Michael Cassidy -
People Of Earth
). Next morning, after an embarrassing walk of shame,
she discovers the town has been hit by a zombie apocalypse.
The bickering pair head to the boy's family home. His father (Ray Wise - Twin Peaks ) runs the water treatment plant. It turns out that the company's environmentally unsafe procedures have contaminated the water with a brain-eating parasite.
This is an indie movie crowd-funded by kickstarter. The result is a pretty decent rom-zom-com, not the usual SyFy-type garbage.
The protagonist, Desmond (Brenton Thwaites -
Oculus (2013)
), is a slacker who works for the US military-industrial complex.
The first act is basically a day-in-the-life,
as we meet his love interest (
Jane Levy
) and his token ethnic friend (Karan Soni -
Miracle Workers
). We also get a lot of generic office-worker humour.
The company is about to be merged with a rival,
which means that excess staff members will be trimmed from the payroll.
The next day Desmond turns up late for work as usual. Unfortunately he does not realise that his cow-orkers have been dosed with an experimental energy drink that makes everyone hyper-aggressive. For example, the regional manager (Zachary Levi - Shazaam ) wants to take over the company. The sad fact is that he has the ambition and the talent to actually make his plan work. He also has an army of minions who are basically Fast Zombies.
This is most like a comedy version of The Belko Experiment , down to the casting of Gregg Henry as the man in charge.
This starts in a scientific laboratory,
where a lone scientist is at work with minimal safety or security protocols.
The janitor, while messing about,
discovers that the experiments concern a Fast Zombie.
Naturally, the zombie contagion gets out.
The protagonists in the story are a trio of boy scouts who live in small-town USA. They look old enough to be venture scouts, but they are in High School so this is just another example of twenty-somethings cast as teenagers.
The scouts' main concern is to get in with the cool kids at school, like Halston Sage . Their typical teenage boy problems continue through the zom-pocalypse.
The main thing that stands out about this film is the zombies themselves. Most of the time they are slow-moving Romero zombies, so the good guys can run away from them with minimum hassle. However, whenever the plot demands it the infected are Fast Zombies. The virus can also jump species, since a deer and a house-cat both get infected. In other words, it would be practically impossible to control the epidemic.
In the climax, the scouts use the skills that earned them their merit badges to macguyver up some home-made weapons. Will they be able to save their town?
It is the Xmas party in a British office building.
The janitor is hard at work, fixing the womens toilets.
The good news is, he gets to spy on girls in skimpy outfits making out.
The bad news is, there is an outbreak of zombie-itis and people start to eat each other.
The movie is a horror-comedy with some camera shots inspired by the works of Sam Raimi . The protagonists are trapped in a confined space, and the tension slowly ramps up as the bathroom gradually fills with more and more zombies.
There is also an after-credits sequence, although it does not really add much to the story.
A couple of truckers drive some barrels of toxic waste along the backroads of rural USA.
Unfortunately the driver is one of the title characters from
Clerks
, so they end up losing a barrel.
It drifts downstream, until it gets stopped by a beaver dam.
Later, three sexy tweenage girls go to stay in a Cabin in the Woods . As always, it is right next to a lake. The good news is, it is not Crystal Lake or even Lake Placid . The bad news is, it is the lake that the beavers created with their dam.
This parodies a few different movies in the horror genre. However, it is not just a parody - it is more of a horror-comedy, like Gremlins . Rather than just endlessly mock genre films, it is both scary and funny in alternate turns. Perhaps this could be the Critters for the new century. Unfortunately, those movies had teenage boy protagonists so appealed to a more adventure-loving audience.
This effort clings to horror movie tropes that became cliches long ago. However, it adds a new twist. If you get bitten by a zombie, vampire or werewolf then you turn into the thing that bit you. But if you get bitten by a zombeaver, it turns out that you become a were-beaver.
Len Carver (Dan Ackroyd -
Ghostbusters
), horror movie director,
holds a one-off exhibition showing of his greatest movie.
The cinema is run by Richard Landro (Henry Czerny -
Mission Impossible
), whose teenage minion is the story's main protagonist.
Unfortunately the movie was made on magical film,
and it turns almost the whole town into zombies.
Only two townsfolk, the teen boy and his gal-pal, are left unzombified. They discover that the zombies are Smart Zombies - they can talk, although they cannot run like Fast Zombies. Also, they do not eat brains - instead, they soul-suck their victims. Yes, this is a bloodless parody of a horror film. The result is that this is basically like the Goosebumps version of a zombie apocalypse instead of The Walking Dead . Well, it turns out that RL Stine himself was a Producer.
The only one who has the knowledge to save the town is Mezmerian (Chevy Chase - The 3 Amigos ). Unfortunately Carver has imprisoned him inside one of the films.
There are a couple of after-credits sequences with Chase and Ackroyd, and even a brief appearance by Stine himslef
This is a film about teenagers but aimed at a much younger age group.
The protagonist is an only child who lives with a single mother.
They have just moved into a new house, and he starts at a new school.
He makes two friends - the class nerd and the beautiful girl next door.
The next-door neighbour is a bossy shut-in (Jack Black - Tropic Thunder ). He insists the protagonist stay off his land and away from his daughter ( Odeya Rush ). Naturally, our hero ignores both these rules. One thing leads to another, and the boy, the girl and the nerd end up messing with the Special Bookshelf.
It turns out that - and this was in the trailer, it is not a spoiler - the neighbour is RL Stine, author of the Goosebumps books for children. Please note, Stine is not exactly Stephen King and this movie - like the books - is more humourous than scary.
It turns out that the monsters in the books are actually real. Whenever someone opens one of the first edition books on the special bookshelf, the monster emerges and starts to menace the town. If the idea of literature characters becoming real seems familiar it was used in Inkheart , a more serious film.
Horror movies, even horror-comedies, generally require a sense of isolation. The monsters' leader takes out the town's cell towers, so nobody can phone out for help. The small town is thereby isolated, as the trope requires.
The protagonist's mother, the assistant Principal at the local High School, must chaperone a rave that is passing itself off as a school disco. Ken Marino ( Veronica Mars ) is lurking around, as a creepy potenial love interest for the protagonist's mother.
Halloween in small-town USA - specifically upstate New York State.
A couple of young boys go exploring in an old abandoned house.
It turns out to be the house that RL Stine (Jack Black -
Pick of Destiny
) lived in before he moved into the new house in the first movie.
They discover a secret closet, which contains a secret box,
which has a mysterious unfinished RL Stine novel titled Haunted Halloween.
The boys' transgression liberates one of Stine's monsters, a telekinetic ventriloquist's dummy that can talk on its own. It brings about the same kind of mayhem that we saw in the first film.
For such a big-budget movie, the cast are a bunch of unknowns. In all fairness, some of them are quite successful in their television cereers. The next-door neighbour is Chang from Community. Jack Black pops up as RL Stine himself, in an effort to make a slightly bigger impact on the audience.
This starts with a bookend sequence,
a 1990s Cable TV style intro presented by Titus Darq (Tony Todd -
Candyman
). He introduces a VHS movie about the first Black serial killer,
a man who chose the nom-de-guerre Bitch Ass (2022).
The story starts a bit like The People Under The Stairs , with a street gang out to rob the richest house they can find. Unfortunately they are out of their depth, because the house's resident forces them to play a series of deadly games. One of the robbers is a sympathetic soul, raised by a single mother and drawn into the gang life to prove himself.
In a series of flashbacks, we see the events that turned mild-mannered High School boy Cecil into the sadistic serial killer. His grandmother was an abusive religious fanatic like in Carrie , and the other kids were mean to him ... like in Carrie .
The result is comparable to the similarly-themed The Blackening , which came out in the same year. Despite having a visibly lower budget, this movie comes out far ahead. The difference is the approach. This one uses many familiar slasher film tropes, but combined with an all-Black cast and a retro 1990s feel it certainly does not feel overly cheap. Alas, it is not played for laughs.
A group of Black people stay for a weekend in a
Cabin in the Woods
. The characters are not simply Black actors portraying the five archetypes,
but they seem to embody a series of archetypes
that African-American audiences might be familiar with.
When they inevitably transgress
it is by playing a board-game called The Blackening,
which makes them answer questions about Black American culture.
And if they fail any of the questions,
one of them will be killed off by a big man in a mask.
The Wayans Brothers did this kind of thing so much better twenty years ago with Scary Movie , which parodied the slasher movie tropes of the day but also put an African-American spin on things. This new movie is less about the Horror genre, and more about Black culture.
Park Ranger White (Diedrich Bader - Beverly Hillbillies ) points out that the cabin's owners usually rent to ... families. White families, as one Black woman assumes. However, this film has inadvertently stumbled upon an uncomfortable truth. Horror movie victims are usually middle-class, visually coded as White people. Black characters, with a presumably working-class temperament, should naturally survive so much more easily due to their pragmatic approach and skills. But in the modern era, there are a lot more middle-class Black people. This should result in the characters embracing the mainstream, but instead as they get more successful in life the more they embrace their self-marginalising identity. In the end, this is thematically a slightly less-serious version of Candyman (2021) ...
Carl Black (Mike Epps -
Acts of Violence
) moves his family from Chicago to Beverly Hills.
On the same day, there is a 12-hour period
when all crime there becomes legal.
Yes, this is a parody of
The Purge
.
Director/Producer Deon Taylor is best known for more serious movies like The Intruder .
Carl Black (Mike Epps -
Acts of Violence
) meets his new neighbour.
Cindy (
Anna Faris
) has moved on from the last Scary Movie.
She is a TV journalist, but now her new boyfriend's family is being harrassed by supernatural occurrances.
There is the creepy videotape from
Ringu
, and the crop circles from
Signs
...
The President Of The US (Leslie Nielsen - Spy Hard ) has to keep everything together.
This is the first in the series that is not written/produced/directed by the Wayans Brothers. They handed the reins over to Zucker (a parody veteran from the Airplane series), who still managed to include a high representation of African-Americans.
This is the fourth in the series, and the second Zucker effort,
so if you have seen the previous film you should know exactly what to expect.
Seriously. The plots are remarkably similar.
Cindy ( Anna Faris ) has moved on from the last Scary Movie. She is now taking care of an OAP lady who lives in The Grudge House. Her new love interest is Craig Bierko ( Long Kiss Goodnight ).
Aliens invade. AGAIN. This time it is Tr-Ipods! Bierko takes the kids to safety (like Homer/Cruise in War of the Worlds (2005) ) and ends up in a basement with Michael Madsen ( Sin City ).
POTUS (Leslie Nielsen - Forbidden Planet ) dithers, insults the entire United Nations and parodies George Walker Bush in other ways too. He also provides the most eye-catching screen nudity since Misha Barton in Closing the Ring.
Cindy goes in search of the solution. She teams up with Regina Hall , who has come back from the dead as a super-horny journalist. They visit Bill Pullman ( Independence Day ) in an homage to The Village , where he lives with Carmen Electra (who died in the first movie, but who is keeping count?).
The Aliens' plan for the human race is to torture them to death. But they do not use just ANY torture chamber - it is the one from the Saw series.
This is the fifth in the series, and the third Zucker effort,
so if you have seen the previous film you should know exactly what to expect.
Seriously. The plots are remarkably similar.
This starts with Charlie Sheen ( Being John Malkovich ) and Lindsay Lohan enacting a parody of supernatural shocker Paranormal Activity .
Cindy ( Anna Faris ) has moved on from the last Scary Movie, and been usurped as female lead by the younger (but still comedically talented) Ashley Tisdale . She finds herself the reluctant stepmother to a couple of feral girls. This leads on to mockery of recent ghost stories - specifically Mama . There is also a sub-plot that parodies Black Swan .
A toy-maker dresses as Santa and goes on a revenge spree against the naughty.
The cops try to arrest every white man with a santa suit.
The real killer avoids the manhunt,
even though his actions seem limited to a small area of the city.
Children assume he is the real Santa, and try to protect him.
Adults do not have mobile phones (it is 1980),
and do not bother calling the inept cops -
they make their own flaming torches and form a lynch-mob!
The cast includes Jeffrey Demunn ( Walking Dead ).
A young orphan boy, with access to his grandmother's bank account,
feels judged when he only gets a lump of coal for Xmas.
In retaliation, he hires a hitman (Walton Goggins -
Django Unchained
) and sends him off to kill Santa.
Nick (Mel Gibson - Braveheart ) is a grumpy old sod who lives at the north of Alaska with his wife ( Marianne Jean-Baptiste ) and army of minions to keep him company. Unfortunately, the rise in global Naughtiness levels means that his services are not in such demand any more. To supplement his budget, he must now accept a contract from the US Military-Industrial complex.
While the hitman tracks his quarry down, Nick's workshop is fortified by the US Army. This sets up the biggest Xmas showdown since the Lobo Paramilitary Special (1992).
This is set in suburbia, USA, in the 21st century.
A happily married couple, Adam Scott (
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
) and
Toni Collette
, live in peace with their two young children.
The good news is that this is Xmas time.
The bad news is that they must play host to their relatives.
The family's young son gets upset, and writes a note to Santa Claus. Unfortunately when it gets magically whisked away, like in Mary Poppins , it does not go to the jolly red giant. No, it goes to his twisted alternative, the spirit known as Krampus. Instead of bringing gifts and joy like Santa, Krampus brings punishment and dispair.
This is a horror movie of sorts, but it is of the relatively child-friendly type. Krampus and his minions are created with high-end special effects, which makes up the movie's relative lack of familiar faces. Collette is probably the biggest star, although Adam Scott is familiar from supporting roles in a lot of comedy movies and Auntie ( Conchatta Ferrell ) has a major supporting role in the long-running TV sitcom Two And A Half Men. There are few out-and-out laughs, but there is no real blood or gore either. In other words, this is a light-weight horror comedy.
Small-town Deputy
Jaime King
wanted to take Xmas off work.
Unfortunately Sheriff Malcolm McDowell (
Halloween 2007
) calls her in, because her replacement (Brendan Fehr -
Roswell
) has mysteriously disappeared.
It turns out that a maniac dressed in a Santa costume is killing people. One suspect is Santa Jim (Donal Logue - Vikings ), an embittered, cynical and hard-drinking loner.
This particular Bad Santa is hunting and killing people he believes to be immoral and corrupt. Unfortunately this means almost everyone in town is a potential target. The local preacher does not molest the altar boys, but he pervs over the young ladies in his congregation.
This starts straight into an action scene.
A white suburban dude, Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman -
Suicide Squad
), chases down a couple of car-loads of feuding street-gang members.
His methods are sloppy - he has no police or military training -
but violently effective.
In a flashback we discover his motivation. He was happily married to Catalino Sandino Moreno , living his best life in the suburbs, when a stray bullet from the gangsters' high-speed shootout hit his son. The comically over-protective father instantly became an insanely violent one.
In the days and weeks after the loss of his son, the father becomes distant from his wife. When she eventually leaves him, he focuses himself on revenge against the gangsters. Since they are working-class people of colour who have chosen a life in the drug trade, they have the advantage. However, Brian just takes a few classes and watches some online tutorials. In all fairness, in Peppermint the heroine Riley ( Jennifer Garner ) spent a few years learning hands-on skills as a cage-fighter and pistolero before she started a one-person war against the Latinx community. However, this film is more about the self-destructive nature of grief.
John Woo is best-known for his action movies, but this is a completely different pace for him. There is a lot of focus on the father's grief, which is very well-done and completely explains his motivation. There is practically no spoken dialogue, which plays to Woo's strengths - he is an expert visual story-teller, and he speaks little or no English himself. The result is a straightforward film that communicates everything visually, and maintains a breakneck pace when it needs to.
A Norwegian farmer is killed by something unseen,
while trying to burn his barn down.
A year later, the dead man's nephew brings his family
to live in the remote farmhouse.
There is an Elf (Kiran Shah - ) living in the barn. The family's son, the only one who believes, placates the Elf with offerings of cookies. However, the father's American ways include bright decorations and loud noise, which only annoy the Elf.
Eventually, the father's transgressions provoke the Elf to violence. The family are besieged in the house, and the violence is excessive enough to be comedic.
Santa (David Harbour -
Stranger Things
) is a hard-drinking loser.
However, he is also a centuries-old supernatural creature
who spends Xmas Eve flying around delivering presents.
If he gets milk and cookies, he leaves something nice.
If not, he leaves a lump of coal and takes the beer.
The richest woman in America, Gertrude ( Beverly D'Angelo ), has her family over for Xmas. They seem a terrible bunch, like in Knives Out . For example, the daughter's new husband Morgan Steele (Cam Giganet - In The Blood (2019) ) is an egocentric action movie star. Unfortunately the catering crew are a gang of well-armed thugs like in Under Siege. Their leader, Mr Scrooge (John Leguizamo - Super Mario Bros (1993) ), wants some loot from the house's vault.
Santa is too drunk to use his pixie-dust, and the gunshots scare off the reindeer. Without his sleigh, he is trapped and has to fight his way out. Since he is a drunken brawler and his opponents are military veterans with special forces training he has to improvise, resulting in some very creative kills. It turns out he has the same origin as the title character of Santa Claus: The Movie , but instead of being a simple cobbler he was a Viking Warrior. Yes, he is basically Eric from True Blood .
Gertrude's mixed-race grandaughter gets away from the attackers, and hides out with a walkie-talkie that her parents told her was a direct line to Santa. By incredible coincidence, the real Santa gets hold of one of the attackers' radios and they end up conversing directly. The girl hides out and sets some booby-traps like in Home Alone, although the not-for-kids nature of this movie means that the violence is a lot more graphic and the consequences are a lot more realistic.
The setup may be a generic parody of Die Hard , but it actually seems to take more from Die Hard 2: Die Harder . There is a skidoo chase, and an icicle gets used to stab someone. When someone is freezing in a snowdrift, the answer is to burn wads of stolen cash - like in Cliffhanger . However, what this movie brings to the mix is a dash of dark comedy.
