by ·Comments Off on The End of Oak Street (2026, David Robert Mitchell)

Parents in Spielbergian suburb (Anne, Ewan) have two kids (one played young Aubrey Plaza in My Old Ass, the other played young Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein aka the young twins in The Monkey). The girl is really into Carl Sagan – Cosmos came out in 1980, so when the power goes out those flashlight batteries aren’t gonna last long. And the power goes out because their street gets time-warped into the dinosaur age, and dinos start eating their neighbors.

“Will you stop being so damn optimistic? This is not going to be okay.” Cut to a wide shot with the rooftop blood spatter that used to be their annoying neighbor (acupuncture casualty PJ Byrne of Final Destination 5) is great enough, then I laughed so hard when Ewan got eaten that it’s probably best I didn’t see this with an audience. Ewan had been Tokyo Sonata-ing, secretly delivering pizzas for cash, but now capitalism and pizza don’t exist anymore. The survivors discover a pulsating black hole and jump into it, arriving back in their home era with twenty minutes left to alert anyone worth rescuing before the dinopocalypse repeats. Mitchell’s movies seem more watchable than ever, but less worth taking seriously as time goes on – we’ll see if It Still Follows turns things around.

by ·Comments Off on Terrifier 3 (2024, Damien Leone)

“a Phil Falcone production” – not the disgraced hedge fund billionaire, but the auteur of a PTSD army drama with Tom Sizemore, and defendant of finance disputes over the first movie in this series. Home-invader Santa carrying an axe is nothing new. “Five years prior” cop finds a decapitated clown in abandoned building, it kills him and takes his head, so the backstory is… Art in various forms of headlessness and disrepair tears some people apart to repair himself?

Teen Vic Secret Angel Sienna is still alive from part two, and continuity is a drag. Her uncle Greg (a Goldthwait regular) takes her home to Aunt Jess (Crazy Joe’s wife in The Irishman) and admiring younger cousin Gabby (who has only ever been in Christmas movies, incl this one). Nerd boy Jonathan is also still alive, growing into a not-great actor. But it barely matters – the dialogue is Hallmark-caliber and the production is at “casting Clint Howard” sequel level, following in the footsteps of The Dentist 2, Silent Night Deadly Night 4, Leprechaun 2, and 3 From Hell.

I don’t like that the girl-clown-demon talks, or that the final scene reveals Sienna’s Wolverine healing ability. Not sure how I feel about Art killing a podcaster with a chainsaw while a novelty “Terrifier Christmas” song plays. I’m fine with the cute niece falling into hell despite a really terrible plan to save her.

by ·Comments Off on The Loved Ones (2009, Sean Byrne)

Another rock & roll movie from the Devil’s Candy guy. Traumatic backstory comes back around in the end in a different way than expected. Lola likes a boy Brent, but the boy likes Holly. So Lola has her dad kidnap the boy and bring him home to enact their own little prom. The boy is resistant to this idea, so they nail his foot to the floor, then drill a hole in his skull and threaten to “boil his brains.” He escapes and kills the dad, so she throws him into the boyfriend pit… but he’s got a hammer, and now has to kill all the boyfriends.

The boy must’ve been a coworker in Send Help, his Cooper Hoffman-like friend was in The Proposition, and Cooper’s goth prom date is now Sonya Blade in the Mortal Kombat movies.

by ·Comments Off on Night Visions, part 1 (2001-02)

Discovered a whole anthology horror series I’d never heard of before, from a couple of Goosebumps producers, hosted (succinctly) by Henry Rollins. What joy!

–
Quiet Please (Joe Dante)

Nervous city boy Cary Elwes goes camping to relax, only to spend the whole trip trying to get away from noisy, arrogant camper Brian Dennehy. But it turns out Cary is the serial killer the city news had been reporting on, bad luck for Brian.

–
The Occupant (Joe Dante)

Someone is intruding in divorcee Bridget Fonda’s house and moving stuff around, only enough so she’ll notice, not to tip off the police. She thinks someone is living hidden in her house – tries telling her ex, tries telling a random guy who buys her dinner when her card is declined, tries praying to god. Turns out Bridget is the person living hidden in the house – it hasn’t belonged to her since the divorce. That’s the second episode in a row where our tormented protagonist turns out to be the dangerous crazy person (and this was better than the camping story).

–
The Bokor (Start Gordon)

Real clunky writing, as the cadaver assigned to a team of medical students turns out to be a bokor, “an evil voodoo priest.” But this was a fakeout by one student (the princess in Super Mario Bros.) to scare the others (a Bride of Chucky cop and a Lucky Louie regular), so her doctor boyfriend (Jason London of Carrie 2) can bury them alive for witnessing him stealing morphine. Twist: he double-crosses his girl and buries them all then goes home to his sweet morphine. Twist: Princess knew about bokors because she is one, and returns from the grave to dissect him alive.

–
Patterns (Start Gordon)

Nicely apocalyptic, the best of this batch with the classiest cast. In interview with psychologist Miguel Ferrer (deep in between Twin Peaks seasons), arrestee Malcolm McDowell (in a slack period before replacing Donald Pleasence in the Halloween remakes) nervously explains that he has a contract with god and needs to do his OCD rituals or else people die. Ferrer is not convinced, so they drug and isolate the patient, then reality starts collapsing in a manner more random-cartoony than apocalyptic-horror, now Ferrer needs to take over doing the OCD patterns in order to keep the planes in the sky.

by ·Comments Off on Village of the Damned (1995, John Carpenter)

Pretty good remake of the pretty good 1960 movie, which is to say it’s a terribly disappointing followup to In the Mouth of Madness. At 10:00AM during the harvest festival everyone in town passes out, and a few hours later the women wake up pregnant. This movie’s major update is that in the 1990s you can say the word pregnant.

Carpenter couldn’t help himself:

Killer Jedi Priest:

Kirstie in her evil boardroom:

Epidemiologist Kirstie Alley arrives from the government and offers to pay all the townspeople to have their alien demon babies, so they all go along with it. As the kids grow up they have a tendency to mind-control-murder any parents who get in their way. They take out twisted priest Luke Skywalker, but killing Superman’s beloved is going too far, and he manages to suppress their mind-reading powers long enough to blow everyone up with a suitcase bomb. The Damned Kids: one would play a Toulon descendent in Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys… one starred in Shrooms… one was in an Elm Street reboot.

Linda Kozlowski of Crocodile Dundee fame just drops in to rescue her alien demon son from the impending inferno:

by ·Comments Off on Legend of the Mountain (1979, King Hu)

So titled because I Married a Witch was already taken. Scholar-dropout-turned-copyist Shih Chun takes a gig to copy some holy sutras, heads to a quiet place in the country where he can focus, and that plan sure does backfire. First he gets wasted at the annoying neighbor’s house while her daughter Melody plays trance-drums, then he wakes up and Melody claims they slept together, so they get married. Now he has a new wife, an annoying mother-in-law and a contradictory host, and they’re all being circled by the host’s deranged servant Old Chang who looks suspiciously like a vampire, plus a disappearing hot flautist called Cloud, and a Lama.

Movie is good for its entire 3+ hour runtime – King sure knows how to frame a shot and set up a scene. And it gets slowly weirder and more unsettling, until after two whole hours of gradual build, we’re rewarded with a dance-fight wuxia scene. This is post-Star Wars but instead of using light beams to portray the magic, he sticks with flashbangs, colored smoke, and surreal reverse-film effects. It’s belatedly explained that Melody and Cloud are rival magicians, and even more belatedly demonstrated that everybody here except Shih is a ghost.

All the ghosts get backstories via drum-induced flashback (there is a lot of aggressive spiritual hand-drumming in this). Cloud, the Lama, the host, and even Old Chang appear to be our guy’s savior and/or evil conspirators at different points. Melody is banished to hell but easily escapes for a final showdown, and when Shih (whose primary ability until now has been to run away) gets fed up of all these ghosts, he throws his prayer beads into the air and everyone burns up. All these actors are from the same year’s Raining in the Mountain except the great Sylvia Chang as Cloud, who went on to Shanghai Blues and Office.

The most suspenseful scene to me, hoping drunken Shih wouldn’t break this teapot:

I recently discovered The Chinese Cinema site, where Sean writes: “As a wuxia mystery film, it feels more in the spirit of Tsui Hark’s debut The Butterfly Murders (also from 1979),” which sounds promising, so I’m watching that next.

Shih is terrific as the scholar, dogged yet constantly befuddled, but ultimately competent (you do feel for him when he finally discovers how much he’s been manipulated and the film’s final shots wouldn’t work if we didn’t know this man so well as he stands alone against a raging river). It’s a very different character than his ultra-confident swordsman in Dragon Gate Inn or even his not-as-clever-as-he-thinks scholar in A Touch of Zen.

This is what happens when ghosts mess with prayer beads:

by ·Comments Off on The Butterfly Murders (1979, Tsui Hark)

Not sure it’s worth recounting the whole Scooby Doo story of Hark’s debut feature – there’s so much of it. Flipside of the King Hu movie, pulling off as much plot and action and as many cool compositions in under half the runtime. Sean and Jake are saying the same thing, and they’re both saying it better than I could’ve.

The initial team:

Multiple clans unite to solve the killer butterflies mystery, including Green Shadow (who’d return in We’re Going to Eat You!). They arrive at a castle, where the Lord is the dad from A Brighter Summer Day and the Lady was in the same year’s Magnificent Butcher. Soon, the Three Thunders arrive – including Magic Fire, who would be in a few Johnnie To films and The Bride With White Hair. Now Scholar Fong (villain of the Chinese Ghost Story series) knows the mysterious leather mask-man who controls the butterflies is the castle lord and gets the heck out of there, also knowing everyone is gonna kill each other.

Mouseover to unmask the mysterious armored man:
image

Ladies and gentlemen… The Magic Fire Crow:

by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 35: SHOCKtober 2026

Evil Dead Burn (2026, Sébastien Vanicek)

Oh right, it’s the New French Extremism sequel, which is actually none of those things. Lot of severed body parts lying around as the girl kills a final zombie with a lawn tool then sets the place ablaze. Nice photography when the girl stands still and there are no CG beasties around, but any action is shot and/or edited like shit. I think her trauma is speaking to her in the form of a crumbling demonified husband who wants to get her holy dagger. The director made Infested (which has the same poster as this movie!) and the girl was a lead in Climax.

–
Night Swim (2024, Bryce McGuire)

Someone is being chased by a demonified abusive family member, is this the same movie? Another girl is rescuing a kid from their ghost-filled lake-sized swimming pool. They attack Wyatt Russell with a bat and he simply barfs out his demon, then sacrificially swims back into the ghost pool to save them all. Mom was Kerry Condon from The Banshees of Inisherin, the director looks like Eli Cash in his promo shot.

–
Primate (2025, Johannes Roberts)

The latest monkey rampage movie. Girl is being beaten up by the monkey while her deaf dad arrives home, oblivious. Eventually two girls and the dad are all getting beaten up at once in their broken-glass house by the monkey, who appears to be a guy in a fursuit as often as he’s a CG beastie. Doesn’t look like there’ll be a Primate 2 unless whatever substance turned this monkey into such an asshole is still out there, somewhere. I’m not even mad about this one, it looks like a fine monkey movie. The director made the pretty good buried-alive segment of V/H/S/99, a fake Resident Evil, and a couple shark attack pictures.

–
M3GAN 2.0 (2025, Gerard Johnstone)

Allison Williams is wearing a powersuit in psychic contact with her own robot, as the new hyper-evil military robot Amelia murders tech boss Christian. The kid Katy is back, with a good bit that I thought would be a RoboCop reference but was actually a Steven Seagal joke. Gerard gets to do his signature camera-cartwheel during the robot battle, which features all the best cyber sound effects and cheesy 90s good-vs-evil cyborg stuff, before all robots are destroyed by an EMP blast. Then it ends with a congressional hearing about the future of AI, boo.

–
The Menu (2022, Mark Mylod)

Anya is tormenting gourmet chef Ralph by asking him to make a basic cheeseburger then taking it to-go and tipping a penny. I forget what this movie was about, but I assumed cannibalism was involved? It seems kinda boring. But hey, John Leguizamo is here. As Anya speedboats away, the rest of the customers and staff turn out to be a death cult, suicide-by-smore. The director worked on Da Ali G Show, which is making a comeback.

–
Perpetrator (2023, Jennifer Reeder)

I’ve seen a couple of Reeder’s shorts but I’ve heard the turn to genre features has been rocky, let’s see. Mom and kid are rehashing their traumas, whispering. Then at a school assembly, more traumas get rehashed, crying. A couple people spontaneously bleed, the whole auditorium starts swearing in unison, then the mom and kid rip some white guy’s heart out. Whatever was happening here, at least it’s a unique take.

–
Humane (2024, Caitlin Cronenberg)

Girl is badly cut and the family tries to do that movie thing of searing the wound shut with a red-hot kitchen implement, but it doesn’t work. Cops arrive to round everyone up. Head police/company guy Enrico Colantoni (Stigmata) isn’t very careful and gets captured by the medical experiment family then killed by BlackBerry inventor Jay Baruchel. I don’t mind when battered bleeding victims take bloody revenge on their tormenters at the end of a movie, but apparently that’s not what this is, and they’ve been attacking each other?

–
AGGRO DR1FT (2023, Harmony Korine)

“I smell the blood of a dead man,” growls the villain. “Let’s do this!” This movie has a plot and characters, it’s not just vibes? The dialogue and action are garbage beneath the really unique visuals, so they should’ve stuck with vibes. Watching this on mute over a mix of Zorn music would help, but not enough. The regretfully violent good guy kills the annoyingly violent bad guy, both of them over-narrating, then a dwarf machete gang plays catch with the baddie’s head. I think the repetitive and terrible dialogue might be a gag, but I haven’t seen a more tedious last ten minutes since Source Code. The hero was in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and Travis Scott fortunately went on to better things.

–
Baby Invasion (2024, Harmony Korine)

This one’s in twitch livestream mode, the Burial music glitchy and low. Someone’s pissing on a boat. The babies say “let’s go” and “let’s roll” but not “let’s do this.” It’s all onscreen text in the game simulation, no spoken dialogue, so at least that’s an improvement over DR1FT. Long-take first-person camera through 3D tunnels, more Wolfenstein than Eisenstein. I think the twist is it was a game-in-a-game, and God kills the elite baby squad with his lightning hands.

–
The Toxic Avenger (2023, Macon Blair)

Toxie has a magic green murder wand, and has teamed up with a girl who keeps whacking people with a toilet. Movie keeps glitching or flashbacking mid-scene. Evil Elijah Wood is vanquished, movie has really good color, and some of the jokes land – what more could you want?

by ·Comments Off on It Ends* (2025, Alexander Ullom)

Old friends are catching up, go on a drive onto an endless* road, when they turn back they hit a dead end and people from the woods assault them, so they turn around and just drive forever*.

Military guy Tyler’s delivery of “I’m the most well-adjusted person in the vehicle” was possibly my biggest laugh of the year. He’s the first to leave the car to take his chances in the woods, years(?) before anyone else gives up. I didn’t notice until editing the screenshots that the movie goes from widescreen to 16:9 at this point – why?

“This is not real life anymore.”
“Like a drug trip or a wormhole or an ancient curse?”

As the people in the woods diminish, outside breaks can last longer. They never get hungry or tired, the car doesn’t run out of gas, the days go on until some of them give up and become the people in the woods. The time I had to stay at work overnight for a PBS Kids delivery, and I ate a Kind bar and was allergic to it, this is exactly what it felt like.