The Encounter (2016)
First-person shooter, "aliens chasing people" through the woods subgenera. (Woods where literally every single person who enters them is always filming, apparently.) Yawn.
The Changed
People are holed up in a suburban house as everyone outside is slowly "changed", taken over by an alien life form or some such—or, as it's described by the people it happens to, "Perfected", as they turn into blissed-out hippies who want nothing more than to "change" everyone else.
So, pretty familiar tropes. And this is a zero-budget film, not very well acted or written. But what I liked about this is it was more about the interaction of characters (even if the characters were a little thin), more about the captivity of the people in the house than anything else. There's certainly almost no action. There's a longer scene of people just sitting around waiting for dawn, when it's been announced the last "unchanged" people will be rounded up and killed, than most movies would include.
I liked it for that. Judging by the IMDB reviews, most people…
The Unwilling
A scary box possesses a family who has gathered for the reading of their father's will one-by-one and kills them. Pretty bad despite good production values and a familiar cast from TV shows and such.
Notable for Lance Henriksen, in an odd turn, being the first to die, but then, somehow that's not quite explained, still being there off and on for the rest of the movie, including outliving every other character, but then, not dying at all at the end, perhaps because he's dead already. I dunno. weird. He still does appear in the movie after the last death, so the Kupietz/Henriksen conjecture holds.
Destination Marfa
Poor-to-middling "Twilight Zone"-esque take of four travelers trapped in Marfa, Texas. Not badly produced by kind of clumsy... odd editing choices, weird occasionally voiceovers out of nowhere, etc. Meh.
Expulsion
It's too bad this movie is so poorly done because, because the writing is ambitious and despite a reliance on a lot of cliches it has a little bit of an original story. A pair of garage scientists open a portal to a parallel universe and become embroiled in interdimensional intrigue as their employers attempt to take over the universe and their counterparts on the other side may or may not be what they seem. "Expulsion" refers to a universal rule that if two of the same person are in the same universe when the portal between them closes, one is "expulsed" which is never clearly explain but it involves disintegrating.
Terribly acted, zero budget, all around not very well made, but as I said, that's kind of a shame. The story itself mildly entertained me, in better hands and better acted this could have been something. I thought…
The Devil Takes A Holiday
An "Eating Raoul"-level intentionally bad, trashy, overbroad comedy in which a family gathering consisting entirely of a hodgepodge of overbroad, low-effort stereotypes eats a Thanksgiving turkey that was used in a Santeria ceremony, causing the devil to appear and, apparently, change everybody's personalities for no reason that's ever given. Actually it was so goofy that I found it very faintly entertaining, but nowhere near enough to recommend.
The Ghost Lights
Okay timey-wimey supernatural drama about a woman driving across Texas after her journalist father's death to investigate the "ghost lights" that he investigated a generation ago. It was ok.
Camp Pleasant Lake
20 years after a family disappears, a masked slasher kills people at a rural camp. HOW do they come up with these ideas???
The Last Gateway
A young man's stomach pains turn out to be a portal to Hell opening in his abdomen from which demons periodically emerge, and he and his wife must run from mysterious people pursuing him. Stylistically like a Giallo flick, if that's your sort of thing.
It's different, I'll give it that. I wouldn't say it's particularly good but neither is it particularly bad. It takes until the third act to really get going but when it does, decent acting and creature design really help it along.
Necropath
WOW. Here we have something special.
Ok, wait, let me qualify that.
For starters, let me say: my first impression was, most people will hate this movie. Reading up on it afterwards, as is my habit when a movie really interests me, I discovered, yes, sure, enough, everybody hated it. Not just disliked it, I mean REALLY hated it.
I was blown away by it, loved almost every minute of it.
This is a very flawed and totally amateurish movie for sure—but, here's the rub: "Night Of The Living Dead", "Eraserhead", and most of David Cronenberg's classic films were flawed, very amateurish movies. Like them, this to me is the work of an extremely skilled amateur savant, someone with absolutely no understanding of most of the conventions of storytelling, and an absolutely brilliant intuitive feel for the camera and the editing desk.
This is a movie for deep, deep…
Nowhere Land
This is a weird movie. It's about father searching for his daughter, who got sucked into a cursed children's show, or something. Weird enough to be a little memorable, if not exactly good. The children's show scenes are suitably creepy for sure. Reminded me of "Dave Made A Maze" in how it just assumes this demented world and expects you to just suspend disbelief, if not quite as successfully as "Dave Made A Maze" pulled it off.
Shocking Dark
A cliched, bottom-of-the-barrel 1989 Italian sci-fi/action movie about some sort of menace killing scientists in the canals of Venice. Sub-USA-Up-All-Night quality. Garbage.
Another Soul
Bottom-of-the-barrel, by-the-numbers cliched possession story. Like "Paranormal Activity" with even worse acting and less filmmaking skill.
In Its Wake
This low-budget "man in a rubber suit" creature feature is essentially "30 Days Of Night", except with a demon instead of vampires, and you never actually see the demon, and it's bad instead of good. However, they try so hard that I was a little entertained, a little.
Terror Firma
This is a truly odd little movie. Low-budget for sure, with only 3 actors, and hard to call it a very good movie, but, it's definitely a little different in terms of story. Los Angeles is under lockdown for unspecified reasons, and a package of seeds arrives with a delivery of food for three housemates, which, planted in the backyard, turn into a hole in the ground filled with some sort of glop, which, smelling good enough to eat, our protagonists do. Soon they're addicted, one roommate injects the glop and gets caught between dimensions, another has sex with the hole, and soon he goes insane, a twisted flower that produces more seeds grows from the hole, an interdimensional portal appears in the ground below it, and things just get weirder from there. The nice thing is, for such a bizarre plot, things are actually played fairly straight. The lead…
The Red Tide Massacre
A zero-budget feature in which a convict on the run falls into water full of mutant red tide and turns into the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Cold Blows The Wind
Absolutely execrable, bottom-of-the-barrel mess of a horror movie (shot on video, no less, so it looks like a bad TV show) about a couple that accidentally kills a jogger while driving drunk, buries him in the woods by their house where for never-explained reasons "things don't stay dead", and, simultaneously, are visited by a woman possessed by some sort of evil spirit. But, it's so over the top, somehow, I find it entertaining. The terrible actors really try their darnedest to commit, and somehow don't even seem embarrassed to be in this movie. I was mildly entertained by how something this bad even can exist.
Don't watch it. It's really awful.
Foil
Somewhere in the same universe as Repo Man, Harold & Kumar, and Buckaroo Bonzai is this quirky buddy comedy about two slacker friends on a UFO-spotting camping trip in the desert who encounter other enthusiasts out there. I found it slightly above average, although judging from the extremely low-to-mixed reviews on IMDB, not everybody appreciated the humor like I did. And it probably doesn't rise to the level of those others I mentioned. But I liked it, I found it amusing most of the way through, although it dragged on a bit at the end. It's definitely kind of its own thing, for sure.
The 3rd Guest
Absolutely incomprehensible, bottom-of-the-barrel, poorly acted, terribly written attempt at a supernatural thriller about a couple of ghost hunters who go to a murderer's house to try and see the ghost of their daughter, I think. Seems like a zero-budget except they either had a boom, a helicopter, or a drone because there's lots of gorgeous, expensive-looking overhead shots, which is just weird in a movie like this.
Hoodman
It's Hoodman, not Candyman or Bloody Mary, that a young mother believes took her son, rather than him dying in a car crash she can't remember, in this unexciting, paint-by-numbers supernatural thriller with a soundtrack full of conventionally ominous low, metallic drones and skirling violin stabs. Hoodman. Not Candyman.
I kinda would have enjoyed the soundtrack without the movie.
Excess Flesh
Captivity flick that, if that's not bad enough, goes on about twice as long as it should and tries to turn into an art flick, eventually descending into complete incomprehensibility. A slightly pudgy woman takes out her food issues on her skinny, vapid party-girl roommate. Seems like it wants to be some kind of statement on standards of beauty or the fashion industry but simply alluding to issues isn't a statement about them, no matter how many weird slow-motion shots of people stuffing their faces with cake you put in.
Bitter Feast
Slightly better-than-average captivity flick, somewhat well made, and with some character development and decent acting, almost like they were trying to make a real movie instead of just brutality as entertainment. But, still a captivity flick. Chef captures and tortures critic who gave him a bad review. Actually much better than that setup sounds, but still, a captivity flick.
Project Gemini
An attempt to move a life-giving alien orb to another planet goes awry. Mostly basically "Alien" but with tougher tough guys, cooler guns, and worse acting.
The Veil (2023)
A not-bad horror-ish, sci-fi-ish movie that plays like an ok episode of a long-form sci-fi TV show. During a solar storm that knocked out cell reception and causes auroras in the sky, a retired priest takes in an Amish girl fleeing her wedding. The whole movie is them talking or arguing in the darkened house. 70 minutes passed surprisingly quickly. Nothing to really recommend here, but, I don't regret watching it.
Paralysis
A derivative James Wan-style supernatural/otherworldly-entity-in-a-house thriller made by someone much less talented than James Wan. A woman who suffers from sleep paralysis has her brother move in following abuse from their father. But then halfway through she calls psychic and says she's been seeing her dead brother. Then she hangs out with him again. Then the psychic shows up and clichéd sub-James-Wan antics ensue. Blech. Nope.
What Happened at 625 River Road?
Bottom-of-the-barrel thriller with some of the worst acting I've ever seen, and then, one really great plot twist. They got me.
A pair of women rent a house for a few days. The owners act fishy. Someone creeps around outside the house at night. Soon it becomes apparent that the owners, who behaved like the worst actors I've ever seen, weren't really the owners, as they wait in a hotel room and try to plot a way to get the women out of the house. In the background, a newscast, read by an anchor who acts like one of the worst actors I've ever seen, reads a story that local asylums are releasing lunatics early to ease overcrowding [cue ominous music]... a police officer who behaves like one of the worst actors I've ever seen investigates a report that the owner of the house is missing.
But, then…
Violett
The cadaverously beautiful Georgia Evers in what should have been an overbearingly indie surreal thriller but actually is ok, owing to fairly skilled filmmaking. Pretty visually pretentious flick (lots of saturated colors, black and white, sudden shift to silent movie sequences, etc., much of which is actually cinematically beautiful) about a woman and her daughter and the hallucinatory strange and threatening people the meet around her town. It was ok. I wouldn't go out of my way to see it but it was better than a movie this artsy should have been.
Removed
Definitely... well... not a flawed gem, but a flawed alright thriller in which a cleaner is paid to clean house for an overbearing rich guy. Saved from mediocrity by the villain, who does a standout performance as the stereotypical possibly homicidal rich asshole—think Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho" with the histrionics toned down to realistic levels. I liked it quite a bit, almost enough to recommend it, except that the plot kind of falls apart through too many tough-to-swallow sudden twists and turns at the end, and leaves it unsatisfying. Still maybe worth watching for the simmering, arrogant bad guy, though, if nothing else. He's memorable, and the slow burn of the first two acts are watchable; the end of the movie is niether, which, you know, you really want them to stick the landing and sadly they don't.
Thine Ears Shall Bleed
An ok horror movie for about 2/3 of its runtime goes unfortunately far over the top and histrionic for the third act. A pioneer family in a covered wagon takes a wrong turn and gets lost in the woods. Soon another lost traveler stumbles out of the woods, miracles happen like the blind son regains his sight, and they hear a booming sound they assume to be God. It's not. Slightly better for a lot of it than that sounds, mostly because of pretty good acting, but again, unfortunately it doesn't hold up, as their attempts to ratchet up the tension just turn to religious hysteria and screaming and it just, paradoxically, loses all interest. Sometimes filmmakers forget the value of quiet.
Flesh City
Execrable, pretentious wanna-be "avante garde" film from a Berlin filmmaker who obviously thinks "avant garde" means lots of video effects, jumpy edits, stuttering video, and half the movie being just self-indulgent music videos for his terrible music, for no reason that's ever explained.
I assumed this was a student film but it turns out this filmmaker is middle-aged.
Couldn't even tell you what this movie was about. It was listed under horror, and from reading about it apparently in between the music videos there's some sort of story involving a mutation. I did hear a bad actress mention Satan at one point.
Turned it off halfway through.