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 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 Dead Heat (1988, Mark Goldblatt)

After Hiruko and White of the Eye, I’m accidentally on a late ’80s kick… help.

Straightman Treat Williams and his wacky partner Joe Piscopo (Wise Guys, SNL) are in trouble with their cop boss Robert “The Cowboy” Picardo for being reckless out of control loose cannons who do not follow the rules. At a sketchy science lab investigating some major crimes committed by zombies armed with machine guns, PR Hotgirl Lindsay “Sister of Mark” Frost fails to distract them and Joe easily finds the zombie reanimation chamber – and just in time, since Treat gets himself killed in another room.

Lot of fishtank drama in this movie:

“Rich dead people, what does it mean?” Funny, I’m reading Don DeLillo’s Zero K, which asks the same question. But here the screenplay is just something you’ve gotta get through, an obstacle to the heart of the movie, which yearns to show us more reanimated corpses with machine guns (and admittedly good makeup), now including Treat. The PR woman joins them, saying she didn’t mean to be evil. When she belatedly admits that she’s also dead, the company keeping her alive as long as she’s useful, she corpse-rots immediately. Now they need a new hotgirl on the team, and fortunately we’ve got Treat’s ex, morgue attendant Becky.

Treat, Gremlins Salesman, and the zombie army:

More stuff: the zombie chemicals run through Chinatown, where the Gremlins salesman makes a getaway by turning on a lightning machine which reanimates all the chickens and ducks and pigs in his butcher shop. The zombie company is run by Dr. McNab (Kolchak: The Night Stalker) and PR woman’s father, VHS Vincent Price. You expect the happy ending is gonna be finding a way to keep Treat unalive so he doesn’t rot like the PR woman, but no, everyone ends up dead, and when a cornered Kolchak shoots himself, they reanimate him just so they can kill him again. Good commitment to the bit, though overall the movie doesn’t move swiftly or smartly. Director Goldblatt was better known as editor of James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven and Joe Dante movies (the evil company here is called Dante).

The split-second before John Le Carre’s “Smiley’s People” took a bullet intended for Joe Piscopo:

Treat’s final form:

by ·Comments Off on 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026, Nia DaCosta)

This one is set 28 days later than 28 Years Later. Our kid Spike has been kidnapped by the Jimmy Gang run by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, spends most of the movie semi-panicking since his new friends have a kill-or-die policy and they like to torture local homeowners to death for no apparent reason. They plan to grow in numbers and take over the land, but their plan seems mathematically challenging, since you have to kill a Jimmy in combat to become one. Spike Jimmy does make friends with Girl Jimmy (Erin Kellyman, a ghost in The Green Knight), who finds out about Ralph Fiennes and thinks he might be Crystal’s dad Satan.

Fiennes, meanwhile, spends his days hanging out with anesthetized alpha-zombie Samson, and spends his nights dancing to Duran Duran in his bunker. He makes a deal with Crystal to put on a show and impress the others. But things start to turn sour in Jimmyland, with loyalties in doubt, then Jimmy kills the Jimmy who was gonna kill our Jimmy.

Dr. Ralph and the Jimmys destroy each other, leaving zen zombie Samson partially dezombified, and Jimmy Spike running off with Jimmy Kelly. Being an immediate sequel with no new characters, DaCosta (Candyman 3) goes through the motions of setting up part three part three, which is apparently gonna star the ur-Jimmy Cillian Murphy.

by ·Comments Off on Ick (2024, Joseph Kahn)

This has got one of those modern sound mixes where the dialogue is buried, too bad, but the one-star reviews were wrong, Kahn is back baby! [an hour later] Okay, they buried the dialogue because it’s bad, lot of embarrassing culture war stuff, but most of the visuals are still good, Kahn is kinda back baby! This week I watched two Superman-adjacent movies about townspeople zombied by gooey creatures, and this one doesn’t come off great when closely compared to Slither.

The ick has been around for decades, suddenly becomes hostile and starts zombifying people, leading washed-up science teacher Brandon Routh to summon his old hometown-hero energy and fight back with student Grace (who played Young Supergirl, appropriately) plus fellow losers The Goth One and The Arty One. Big year for guys going on adventures with high schoolers who they believe to be their illegitimate daughters. At least we all learned about some key figures in existentialism.

by ·Comments Off on The Day The Earth Blew Up (2024, Peter Browngardt)

Palate cleanser after all this week’s zombie movies (28 Years Later, The Sadness, Weapons) and antisocial behavior (Golem, The Beast To Die). I mean sure, this is also a zombie movie (the population gets possessed by alien chewing gum) full of antisocial behavior (Daffy), but with a different tone, and animated. Zippy and funny, the 74 credited writers should be proud (their other works include Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Samurai Jack, SpongeBob, Camp Lazlo, She-Ra, and Brigsby Bear).

by ·Comments Off on 28 Years Later (2025, Danny Boyle)

Dad and son leave their tidal island home for a coming-of-age venture into zomb territory, and when their short trip gets derailed and extended they end up meeting skull collector Ralph Fiennes, a doomed Swede, and evil acrobat messiah Jack O’Connell. Second-most interesting part of this movie is learning that the rest of the world is normal modern, with internet and uber eats, and only England is zombie-quarantined – the most interesting is that Boyle is image-making here, not just telling a family/zomb story, and this has got more trick shots/edits in the first four minutes than the entirety of last week’s zombie junk The Sadness. Ends weirdly because they’re setting up a sub-trilogy, so the kid and his dad (Aaron T-J of one of the bad Godzilla movies) and other weirdos will return, but the kid’s mom (Bikeriders wife Jodie Comer), an elite zombie defender with terminal brain cancer, will not.

by ·Comments Off on The Sadness (2021, Rob Jabbaz)

Starts as a mild relationship drama (she has a job, he is useless), then he goes outside and witnesses an extremely sudden citywide outbreak of The Crazies. The infected get red around their big black eyes, sport a big grin, and torture normals for fun, retaining their person skills (can talk and use weapons). After no living humans are in sight, the crazies have violent blood orgies. So our guy runs back home to come up with a plan, after the gardener neighbor cuts off a couple of his fingers, meanwhile the girl has taken the midnight meat train to work, uh oh. Rest of the movie is them trying to find each other, meeting up at a hospital, each trailing their own zombie archnemesis. I feel like it’s trying to be somewhat comical in an over-the-top gory kind of way, like Terrifier, but mostly ends up depressing (“charmless, sadistic“).

by ·Comments Off on Vulcanizadora (2024, Joel Potrykus)

Back to basics, just Joel and Joshua Burge alternately amusing themselves with fire or glowsticks and driving each other nuts in the woods. As their growing tension and weird vibes and the movie’s awesome poster indicate, the end goal is a double suicide, but squirrely Joel can’t follow through, so his head is exploded by a supercharged firecracker while Josh gets a half-hour coda of legal issues and regret. Really messed-up movie, a perfect addition to the Joel/Josh canon.

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Ludovico Testament (1999)

Best-case scenario of early homemade short films. This is exactly the sort of lifesize stop-motion that I would’ve made in my VHS-cam days if I’d seen The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb the year it came out instead of eight years later.

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Gordon (2007)

Gordon takes his kid to the playground and dies unexpectedly, then comes back a few months later as a zombie, his face deteriorated but his suit still in nice shape. Family has moved away, and nobody can stand to look at him, so he bums around town to Beck’s “He’s a Mighty Good Leader,” his teeth and fingernails falling out, then returns to his grave.

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Joel Calls Indie Film Type Dudes (2020)

Conceptual comedy, Joel calls all the industry people in his phone to ask how the quarantine is going for them, then doesn’t listen to their responses and hangs up in a hurry. The joke is on Alex Ross Perry, who gets called four times, each time listing him as the director of a different film.

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Unemployees (2023)

Dani and Kandy are slacker idiots with an ill-thought-out plan to get jobs and be fired then collect unemployment. After stints in an office, a factory, and a cafeteria (all filmed at Grand Valley U in Allendale MI) they take a field labor gig and discover that money does grow on trees – but trees that cause horrible skin infections.