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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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 Shorts watched Feb 2024

The Glass Harmonica (1968, Andrey Khrzhanovskiy)

I’ve seen this style before, some hinged limbs but most “motion” is cuts or fast fades between drawings. The townsfolk are greedy and private, and all beauty is kept away from the people by spooks in black suits. They hear the glory of a glass harmonica, then see the government thugs destroy it, and get back to hoarding wealth, transforming into animals until there’s a wacky war of mixed-up creatures in the town square. From the first half of this you’d never predict it would have such wild character design. Our glass-wielding dude come back a-strummin’ and turns the people from abstract art back to realism – the hoarder becomes generous, everyone so enlightened that they float into the sky, rebuilding the town commons they’d looted earlier, even after the agent of money smashes the instrument again. I don’t think any glass harmonicas are heard in the symphonic score, nor do glass harmonicas look like the portable glass pipe organ the animated musician strums like a guitar. Not only was this banned for screening in soviet territories, the director was ordered into the navy for two years.

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A Return (2018, James Edmonds)

Houseplants, sheep, and windowlight, superimposed and cut with stuttery editing. The soundtrack is all crashing ocean waves until the last couple minutes when new tones arise, sounding coincidentally like a glass harmonica. A short and pleasant abstract piece.

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Seven Songs About Thunder (2010, Jennifer Reeder)

Uniformed marching band girl flees through the woods, is later found dead by apparently-pregnant jean-jacket Libby, who narrates about death and reincarnation. After offending her psychiatrist (who later offends her husband), Libby keeps getting calls on the dead girl’s phone with its “Sweet Child o’ Mine” ringtone, finally calls in the dead girl to the cops. Kind of a stagy, unreal short film, low-budget but accomplished. The psych’s husband went on to play Anne Hathaway’s brother in Dark Waters.

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And I Will Rise If Only to Hold You Down (2012, Jennifer Reeder)

Dancer alone, saying aloud insults and affirmations… another marching band girl running, this time getting home safely. Mostly locked down shots (the last movie kept gliding in straight lines towards then past the characters), dialogue repeating in different contexts.

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The Three Stooges in Termites of 1938

I’ve got this Stoogeological Studies zine sitting on my desk, but I haven’t seen the Three Stooges in action since I was a kid. Let’s watch some classic shorts and see if they hold up.

Muriel (Bess Flowers, “Queen of the Extras”) wants the escort bureau to get a date to Mabel’s party, but maid Etta “sister of Hattie” McDaniel calls the exterminators instead. Larry/Curly/Moe are in their office attempting to blast the mouse with a cannon, but the mouse blasts them – a real Wile E. Coyote situation – Chekhov’s crate of “gopher bombs” sitting on the floor. At the party they’re alternately trying to mingle and exterminate critters. Since our guys start eating first, the fancy people all take their table manners cues from them – they cause a ruckus and get ejected. Characters are named Clayhammer, Mrs. Batwidget, and Lord Wafflebottom. This was loads better than Ferrari. Stooges also have a short called Ants in the Pantry, and between that title and this one, I’m getting Ants in Your Plants of 1939 vibes.

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Wee Wee Monsieur (1938)

These Stooges movies are more complicated than their <20 minute runtime would suggest. Multiple locations and a lotta plot here, but it doesn't lose focus from the main attraction: conking people on the head. Our guys are broke Parisian artists, fishing out the window to steal from food carts while completing their masterpieces, then chased off by landlord and cop, and join the foreign legion not realizing it's the army. Put on guard duty by Sgt. Bud Jamison (of the Chaplin Essanays), their charge is immediately kidnapped. Now on a rescue mission, they need a disguise because “no white man has ever entered” the palace of whatever exotic land we’re in – I feared the worst, but they all dressed as Santa Claus, conking suspicious guards and loading ’em into the sack. Masquerading as harem girls they save Captain Gorgonzola from the enemy (recurring antagonist Vernon Dent) and harness the man-eating lion to get home (well, back to base at least).

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Tassels in the Air (1938)

The previous two were directed by Canadian hero Del Lord, this one is by Charley Chase. Bess Flowers and Bud Jamison are having the house redecorated, come to visit a snooty artiste decorator’s office but our guys have mislabeled the office doors, so they get hired for the decorating job. They start out by painting the antiques, not that anyone notices, but I caught them apologizing a lot in this one, aware of their own incompetence for once. Curly fails to learn pig latin, and has a nervous condition where he goes barking mad when he sees tassels. Lboxd useless as ever, the top three user reviews call it “the worst Three Stooges short,” “one of their best,” and “the median.”

Bud is sent to mix some polka-dotted paint: