Sometimes the Mets make it to the postseason, threatening the amount of free time I have to devote to SHOCKtober movies. Tonight is the National League Wild Card game, Syndergaard pitching for the Mets against the mighty Bumgarner for the Giants. I shall attempt to multitask, following Gameday on the laptop while watching the last ten minutes of bad horror movies on streaming sites.
It is tempting to just pick any old crappy horror film and watch the last ten minutes of it. There are so many! There is a cyberbullying horror called #HORROR, and movies with every generic title you could ask for: Slasher, Creep, Circle, Hush, The Presence, The Chosen, Visions, Dark Skies, The Unborn, Rebirth, etc. However, The Last Ten Minutes wasn’t supposed to be a time-wasting review of the latest straight-to-video garbage, but a time-saver – watching only the endings of movies I’ve been tempted to watch in their entirety. Because I really do watch bad horrors sometimes (recently: The Editor, The Guest, Willow Creek, We Are What We Are, Lesson of Evil), so trying to ignore the generic nonsense tonight and stick with stuff I have some reason to wanna see.
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Knock Knock (2015, Eli Roth)
I never liked Eli Roth’s signature Hostel movies, but he’s one of the major names in modern horror so I at least follow his career. This looks like a Funny Games scenario (“it was just a game,” they even say) with a married guy (Keanu Reeve, also in The Neon Demon and The Bad Batch so he may turn up again this SHOCKtober) and two interloping hot foreign girls (incl. Roth’s Green Inferno star). Clumsy-ass Keanu gets captured and buried to his neck. Anyway the girls leave him buried there watching the sex tape they made on his cellphone and they wander away to the same closing song as Fight Club. Eh, seems pretty tame by Roth standards. No excitement in the first inning either.
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The Invasion (2007, Oliver Hirschbiegel)
Since I’ve watched two Body Snatchers movies and am hoping to watch a third soon, here’s the remake I never cared about. Seems like Daniel Craig is already a pod person and Nicole Kidman has a gun, but she lets him unlock a door to unleash the others, then the director uses video-game POV while she shoots them all. Car crash and she’s swarmed by pod people. Argh, Brandon Crawford took nine pitches to strike out. Why did Nicole Kidman agree to do this movie… because Cruise did War of the Worlds? Bottom of the second, her car is on fire, then I think she accidentally knocks out her son with a fire extinguisher but the editing sucks so I can’t tell. Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation, then a montage tells us the world was saved. “For better or worse, we’re human again,” and Kidman’s not so sure it’s a good thing. Two Mets strike out, also not good. PG-13 adaptation (humans are infected, not actually killed and replaced, so Craig is cured in the end) by David Kajganich (A Bigger Splash). This was director Hirschbiegel’s follow-up to Downfall, and he hasn’t been heard from since.
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Cloverfield (2008, Matt Reeves)
A tiny monster! Godzilla ’98-style – I was not expecting that. Another helicopter, huh? Whew, the camerawork looks even worse than expected. Top of the third went fast. Why are these party teens being rescued from the city instead of anyone else? It’s like watching a monster movie with a drunk friend screaming commentary in your ear. Chopper crash… “initiating hammer down,” says the radio. Rabbit ears? Hammer down. The teens survive the crash and keep filming until the monster arrives and eats them. Hey, our first hit, go Rivera. An actor (Brooklynite Michael Stahl-David) is visible on camera for once, then he and his girl get blown up. Glad I watched the sequel and skipped this one, though I’ll bet it was fun in a crowded theater opening night. Written by Drew “Cabin in the Woods” Goddard, produced by JJ “Trek Wars” Abrams and directed by Matt “Planet of the Apes” Reeves.
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Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999, Turi Meyer)
Had to check and make sure I’ve seen part two, which I don’t remember at all. Caroline (Baywatch‘s Donna D’Errico) is staring at bee-covered retro painting of Tony Todd, while her boy David (original Nightmare on Elm Street actor Jsu Garcia) hangs from meat hooks nearby. Candyman totally appears without anyone saying his name in a mirror. And we walked the D-Span with no outs? Candyman is promising that their legends will live forever, but I don’t know if anyone’s even aware that there was a third Candyman movie, so maybe not. Tony opens his shirt and says “behold” and the filmmakers apparently think the human body is a giant ribcage with one big pulsating organ just behind it. Haaha, D-Span caught stealing as Caroline slashes the painting from behind a video layer effect of angry bees, then Candyman literally explodes, a hilarious ending to the trilogy. Giants lost a challenge, and what, another walk? Multiple false endings in the movie, lame. Same goes for the inning, which Mike “Hunter” Pence finally ends by striking out. The cowriters also worked on Leprechaun 2 and a Carrot Top movie.
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Intruder (1989, Scott Spiegel)
This movie recently played the Alamo, who advertised the Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell connection, but it seems mostly valuable for the historical footage of late-1980’s grocery packaging. Supermarket at night, a killer busts through the Frosted Flakes after Jennifer. It’s a bloody murder movie, but there’s some humor in the music cues as a delivery boy is slaughtered, and when the killer puppeteers a severed head. Who is the unshaven hero who comes to her rescue at the end? Actually it looks pretty fun and well filmed as far as slasher movies go. Only minor excitement in the fourth. Amazon worked well for the first four movies, but Hulu’s user interface is ill-suited to The Last Ten Minutes project, so now it’s off to Netflix.
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Bleed (2016, Tripp Rhame)
Okay, I feel bad about not watching this one in its entirety. I waited years for it to come out (used to be called The Circle) and my former coworkers made it, but time is precious so let’s just watch the end and see. Cross-cut between gravedigging and a girl coughing up dirt, that’s interesting. I think she is Chelsey Crisp of Chicken Suit. Her brother Eric (Riley Smith, substitute Dennis Quaid in the Frequency TV series) shows up in the haunted/abandoned warehouse then is killed by an angry mob, and a homeless beardy dude speaks wisdom then vanishes into smoke. There’s some gruesome shit in here, a welcome change from the previous PG-13 fare, too bad it’s stuck in the generically-titled netflix horror bin. Not even close to any score in the game yet, and only 51 pitches from Bumgarner in the 5th… wait, runner on second… wait, a different runner on second… okay, nevermind. Credits say “featuring David Yow”?? Cheers to Tripp and Nate and Kevin Hamm.
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Hellions (2015, Bruce McDonald)
I love the postseason stats reset, everyone with a 0 ERA and .000 batting average. This is immediately better than the last few movies, visually and musically, but it’s definitely the night for pretty girls getting chased by faceless hordes. The girl gives herself an abortion (or c-section, hard to tell in this lighting) by scythe while a pumpkin patch bursts into digital flames. D-Span is the first person to reach base twice, and this time he’s not caught stealing. Hospital epilogue nightmare! Dead-baby hospital epilogue, then alive-baby second hospital epilogue. Top of the sixth went quickly. Bruce is the great director of Pontypool and The Tracey Fragments and Roadkill, but this movie got pretty bad reviews.
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Baskin (2015, Can Evrenol)
Freaky guy with a knife, and they just walked Cabrera with one out, and someone’s throat is getting slashed. Tribal-looking, long hair and dirt in low light. I think Arda and Remzi are cops. Dude retrieves a key from throat of his dying partner, Saw-style, then stabs the weirdo baddie with it before beating him to death with a wooden bench. This doesn’t look great, but the baddie is excellent looking (apparently a deformity, not makeup, but still excellent). Nice, the sole survivor is run over by approaching police van. Turkish movie. Someone’s gonna have to score a run if this game is gonna end. Third walk of the night – that’d do it, too. Whew, got out of that one.
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The Uninvited (2009, Guard Bros.)
A remake of A Tale of Two Sisters, so after hitting play I was reading what I wrote about the original movie and accidentally heard this version’s opening line: “I love you… and I have a condom.” Skip to the last ten minutes and there is blood everywhere. In flashback, the twins blow up their house, one of them dies and hello Addison Reed. Did the original end with the surviving twin in an asylum? Crazy sister Emily Browning will appear in the American Gods series, ghost sister Arielle Kebbel was in The Grudge remake-sequel, David Strathairn and Elizabeth Banks slumming as dad and stepmom.
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Dream House (2011, Jim Sheridan)
“Jack, you killed them.” Argh, bases loaded with two outs and Mike “Hunter” Pence is up. I think it’s all flashback exposition right now and haaa, struck him out. Hello, Rachel Weisz. Another gas can, house set on fire – isn’t this the third fire tonight? Daniel Craig wakes up, saves Naomi Watts from the flames then goes back for Rachel’s ghost. Whoever Ty Kelly is, he’s on first. Daniel Craig, whose character everyone calls Peter but IMDB says his name is Will, is later revealed to have a bestselling book called Dream House – spooky, right? Netflix says if I liked that, which I did not, I’ll enjoy Master of None, as we strand Kelly on second base. Jim Sheridan used to make best-picture nominees starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
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Stonehearst Asylum (2014, Brad Anderson)
Oh good, another fire. I get that we automatically pitch Familia because it’s the ninth in a high-stakes game, but there’s still no score and this might go all night, so why not just leave Reed in? I suppose because he loaded the bases during Dream House. Looks like Ben Kingsley is a wicked man experiencing war flashbacks from when he’d execute hospitalized soldiers. Kate Beckinsale and Jim Sturgess are arguing over which one of them is sane. Now here’s Angry Brendan Gleeson and Catatonic Michael Caine – things are looking up. Identity theft in the late 1800’s, and Familia walks Joe Panik, dammit. This was based (loosely, I’m guessing) on Poe. Anderson made The Machinist and two good Masters of Horror episodes, and this looked alright.
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The Fog (2005, Rupert Wainwright)
What better way to ruin a night than with a John Carpenter remake by someone named Rupert? “This town was built on nothing but lies… and now they’ve come for their revenge.” The fog bringeth translucent skeletons with surprisingly loud footsteps to murder the movie’s generic actors using cheap effects. Ghost army sets an old man on fire, not nice. Giants home run, not nice either. Ew, corpse kissing. One out in the bottom of ninth but Bumgarner has thrown 108 pitches and he’s not superman – we can do this. Maggie Grace (of Taken) ascends to the ghost dimension after making out with the rotting corpse. “Something did come back… sooner or later, everything does.” I hope that includes the Mets, and does not include Rupert. Better luck next year, Mets.