The Return
Haunted house movie turns out to be a time travel movie, I think. The actors looked weird and I barely paid attention to it.
The Devil’s Tail
Horrible anthology film. Does include the original short of"Piggy", though, which isn't bad.
Entity
Decades ago, in the Russian woods near an abandoned asylum, four bodies were found. Now, a documentary crew goes in to explore. Blue-toned video, night vision, and people screaming during video glitch effects ensue. You know the drill by now.
The Final Project
These people take the"no cameraman"ethic of"found footage"films even further, to"no editor". This appears to be a group of banal college students with no acting experience at all who went to an empty house and improvised a horror movie (albeit one without any horror), then taped all the footage they shot together and called it done. There are interminable, pointless passages of them talking to their professors in class, sitting in the car playing"Never Have I Ever", uneventfully exploring the house and grounds, all shot with a total lack of any kind of cinematic or even sound recording quality that makes the previous recordholder for"worst first-person shooter"I'd ever seen look like Citizen Kane in comparison. No plot, no attempt to build tension, until finally, over an hour into the movie, people's cameras suddenly do the deaddrop one by one for no explained reason and everybody starts running through the house and woods yelling each other's names. Basically, it's like a bunch of students saw"The Blair Witch Project"and said,"Hey, we could do that!", but they couldn't.
The Companion
Low-rated, but I liked it. Postapocalyptic supernatural western with tough-as-nails survivors facing off against strange spectral apparations instead of zombies. Not great but I kind enjoyed it.
Stir Of Echoes
Reminiscent of The Sixth Sense, although it was in production simultaneously and based on a Richard Matheson novel from 1958. Kevin Bacon is hypnotized into being able to see ghosts, does his best Jack Torrance as he tears up his house and backyard at the behest of the ghost of a murdered neighborhood child without explaining to his wife why.
Backwoods
The capsule description for this"psycho yokels"movie starts,"A group of friends embark on a camping trip for a ten-year high school reunion."That's all you need to know. Whatever you're imagining comes next is as imaginative as what actually does.
Humanoids From The Deep
Hilariously bad, phenomenally dated 1980 exploitation monster movie, from right before everything became either a slasher picture or"Hellraiser". Basically Jaws but with many sharks instead of just one, and the Creature From The Black Lagoon instead of sharks, and a whole lot more jiggling boobs. Lots of cool pyrotechnics, too.
The Fearway
A gorgeous couple is chased by a menacing black car being driven by Prince down a desert highway, forcing them to take refuge in an odd roadside diner where the locals seem to be hiding a secret. A more entertaining failure than many. Plays something like an episode of one of the less successful horror anthology TV shows, indulges in a lot of familiar plot devices, and telegraphs its punches very badly, but succeeds in being somewhat watchable, on those terms, mostly because of a likable cast. Don't go in expecting more than that and you might find it a passable way to kill 80 minutes.
Burning Bright
Seems a little like a TV movie, but kind of a good one. Irresponsible stepdad accidentally leaves daughter and autistic son locked in the house with a savage tiger during a hurricane. Panicky running, hiding, and lots of growling ensue. No, really, I kinda liked it. Don't expect much.
The Secret Village
Another execrable movie that seems like someone's hobby project. A woman investigates a village where there have been numerous waves of ergot poisoning, only to discover a cult apparently killing people. As amateurish and poorly-made as it gets.
Control
strange, high-concept, small-cast sci-fi reminicent of"Circle". A woman is trapped in a soundproof room and forced to do increasingly difficult tasks that bring out a latent telekinetic ability.
A Texas Funeral
a stellar cast (Martin Sheen, Robert Patrick) talking in regrettable fake southern accents nearly sank this off-kilter magical realist southern family drama for me. It was ok, though. Family that fought on camels in the Civil War gets together for grandpa's funeral.
Sudden Fury
Billed on Freevee as a horror, this '90s drama about two troubled adopted kids who murder their parents plays like a TV movie. Neil Patrick Harris and Johnny Galecki, if that's a draw for you.
Hunted
Very english criminals get caught burgling a country manor home, made to be prey in The Most Dangerous Game. I wouldn't go out of my way to see it, but, eh, for a captivity/pursuit pic, not too terrible.
A Dream House
Gorgeous couple buys a beautiful house under very sketchy terms at auction. Typical haunted-house hijinx ensue, except with lower-budget effects. Amateur hour. Freevee seems to have a lot of these.
C.A.M. (Contagious Aggressive Mutations)
Supposedly a first-person shooter about the spread of a new pandemic that turns people into zombies (I know, where do they come up with such original ideas?) but I think it might actually just be a 90 minute recording of a video game.
Tales From The Loop [tv series]
Holy cow. Up there with the best of"Black Mirror"-quality writing, but less like the Twilight Zone and more like finding a trove of lost Ray Bradbury stories... Small-town life above a mysterious underground research facility. Old folks gather in barns and play fiddle beneath strange technological ruins. Kids wander through the autumn woods and find derelict robots and mysterious artifacts. The stories are humanist and character-driven, not technology-driven, and as well-written as any sci-fi I've seen.
JeruZalem
Google Glass™️ commercial disguised as a first-person shooter, as two students on vacation in Jerusalem run from the beginning of the apocalypse, which apparently consists entirely of zombies attacking, and living people turning into winged demons. I guess the filmmakers were concerned that people are so addicted to pop-up notifications, they wouldn't sit through a whole movie unless it contained them. Maybe this appeals to the sort of people who think that if you're running from zombies and your Google Glass™️ starts unexpectedly blasting music into your ears, the thing to do is spend the next five minutes yelling"Glass™️, music off! Glass™️, music off!"over and over, instead of just /taking the damn glasses off/.
Super Hybrid
Mechanics trapped in a garage fighting for their lives against an alien shapeshifting car. Fortunately, there's plenty of shotguns there. The leading lady's face is square, which is something new. Honestly? I've seen worse.
The Possessed
Goofy, extremely unintentionally campy Australian film about an affable middle-aged amateur exorcist, going around doing exorcisms. Lots of good rubber demon costumes and Buffy-style production values but they play it completely straight. I dunno, somehow the Australian accents let them get away with this.
A.I. 187
This had to be made originally as a TV pilot. Lance Hendrikson (who does not die in this one, because nobody does) leads a cast of gorgeous actors as they stand around in ultracool sci-fi cyberpunk secret headquarters and do nothing but talk and talk and talk and talk.
The Old Ones
Ok, this is truly weird. A sea captain, rescued after 100 years of being possessed by"the Old Ones", encounters magicians and monsters trying to get back to his own time, who he mostly seems to find junkyards and abandoned industrial sites around town. This is zero-budget, sub-"Creature From The Black Lagoon"rubber-mask monsters, to tell a story with as much ambition, weirdness and imagination as a Clive Barker film. Terribly miscast macho he-men who look like extras from a"Dirty Harry"police station scene—the actor playing the captain has almost 300 IMDB credits to his name including"Donnie Brasco"and"Fast and Furious"—run around spouting scenery-chewing Lovecraftian dialogue at each other, like"I have to go. Things are hunting me. Hideous things that dissolve and devour..."or"My pets. You see them? The creatures that fill what men call the pure air and the blue sky", as cheesy, obviously papier-mache bugs and creatures float and skitter around. Meanwhile, out of place humor pops up periodically, like bringing a magician the heart of a demon in a styrofoam takeout container, and when they tell him,"We have brought you a tribute", he says,"What, leftovers?", before opening up a demonic portal in his torso, a giant, hideous gaping maw full of very obviously fake rubber and foam fangs*; or, at another point, a waitress character for some reason played, completely straight and with no explanation or anything to suggest it's meant to be humorous, by a hipster-looking male actor with a goatee and mustache. This seems like a movie made by a very imaginative person who hadn't seen a movie since they were a young child and had only vague memories of what movies are supposed to be like, and a special effects budget limited to whatever they could spend in an hour at the craft store. I generally don't get into"so bad it's good", but this is so over-the-top, and they try so hard, despite having no budget and no talent, I can't help but be entertained by the effort. I might even give it an"honorable mention"... which, in this case, should not be confused with saying it's in any way good. Rather, it's so pyrotechnically, impressively bad, so ambitious without having anything even remotely resembling talent involved anywhere in the production, that I have definitely never seen quite anything like it. I can say that much for sure. (*C'mon. How cool is this, just for being so unrepentantly awful: https://www.voicesfromthebalcony.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/H.P.-Lovecrafts-The-Old-Ones-1.jpg)
The Space Between Us
A sneak attack! What starts off looking like a halfway decent sci-fi about the first human born on Mars traveling to explore Earth, turns into a fairly cliched teen romance-adventure-drama of the sort you might get from Disney or Spielberg's cheesier moments (not a good thing, in my book) when he hooks up with the earth girl he's been video chatting with and they go off to try to find his father, while being pursued by NASA scientists desperate to find him for a heart transplant before his enlarged heart gives out due to Earth's great gravity. Saved by the charming performance of Asa Butterfield as the protagonist, with numerous fun moments such as his convincingly startled expression the first time he sees a horse, and for some reason got a lot of really terrible reviews it didn't really deserve, but at the same time I have a hard time going for the teen romance adventure thing.
The Velocipastor
"After losing his parents, a priest travels to China, where he inherits a mysterious ability to turn into a dinosaur". Between that, and the obviously rubber dinosaur head shown in the preview, unfortunately I will not be able to review this film, because I refuse to watch it.
Don’t Talk To Strangers
One of my old ex-girlfriends goes to Ireland and finally becomes the blood-drenched psychopath I for one always knew she had it in her to be. You go, girl! (I thought it might not be her, until the closing credits say,"A film by Normal", which is so totally something she'd be involved with.)
Promising Young Woman
I have never seen a movie pull such a successful turnaround over its runtime as this one. I found it in with FreeVee's horror movies, but noticed the names of a bunch of comedy actors in the credits (including Max Greenberg as the douchebag he's only hinted at in every other role he's ever played.) It starts seeming like a somewhere trite revenge fantasy—woman goes out, acts drunk, gets guys to take her home and try to take advantage of her, and then confronts them and does something to them that's never actually revealed. And, it was well done enough to be enjoyable on that level, even if it seemed a little on-the-nose and unimaginative. I figured , with all the comedy actors, I was in for satire on the level of"Teeth", perhaps. Then it progresses to reveal the crime she is avenging, and she moves from general douchebags to targeting the people from her past who were specifically involved in the crime. Also shows characters with some depth, not everything is black and white... such as the parents of the friend she's avenging (without their knowledge) asking her to move on from the loss, which she's clearly unhealthily holding on t, noticed even by the other people in the film who care about her. The tension ratchets, and by the end, not only are there some profoundly disturbing scenes (which is saying a lot considering how many horror movies I've seen) but I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen next, until it finally built to a very satisfying final act that I didn't see coming.
It's a tough call if I can recommend it as a watch, as a very good chunk of the movie is no better than ok, it takes a long time to build and I'm not sure the denouement is quite worth all that. But I will say it opened by setting expectations very low, and only turned up the heat extremely slowly, but by the end totally had me, I was kinda blown away.
Infini
A confusing ending spoils a fairly decent sci-fi thriller in which a team of army people goes to rescue the final survivor of a faraway space outpost where everyone else been infected by intelligent ooze that drives them mad.