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Tag Archives: Horror
Hallowed Be Thy Name (2020)
Shannywise strikes again. I guess her days of inflicting fear have gone by the wayside because now she’s only suggesting movies to inflict pain. In her defense, I think she’s just seen every good horror movie ever made so now she’s just watching all the rest. Also in her defense, I do specifically request movies like this. And she’s a clown that feasts on the fear and pain of others, and a girl’s gotta eat, right? Anyway, this time she requested a movie called Hallowed be Thy Name, written and directed by Taylor Ri’chard (I don’t like typing the name like that either. And you can take my word for that, or my name’s not R’ob?ert B*!ck#et), and starring Collin Shephard, Alissa Shaye Hale, Bryen Lenis, Fiona McQuinn, Mamie Morgan, Zander Krenger, and Bill Barrett.
A kid (who is probably 30) named Devin (Shephard) moves with his mom (McQuinn) to live with his grandma. He meets gay dude Mick (Lenis) and bitchy chick Skylar (Hale), who day one lies to the other two that she wants to go to this magic wishing cave because her mom has cancer. Fooled you! She wants her boyfriend to love her again after she got an abortion without telling him. And then she says, “Also, nice to meet you, Devin.” In the wishing cave, they make a wish and also decide to steal a sword and teddy bear because why not? Well it gets them haunted by a demon named Koosh Ball and blah blah blah this is the movie I just sat through.
Shannywise, you’ve outdone yourself this time. I was considering doing a video review of this, but there is no way I’d be able to find footage or pictures from this movie to use and also, I have just too many things to say about it. Not terribly much to say about the story though. We’ve all seen a movie like this before, I’m sure. And most parts of it too. Recently divorced parent takes their kid to be a fish out of water in a new school. Messing around with magic stuff gets you haunted. I think what sets this one apart is you’ve never seen it happen to people quite as dumb as this. You’ll think you have because there’s a lot of dumb going on in horror movies, but these people lower the bar a bit. You steal a sword and a teddy bear from this magic place and now the ghost is after you. He even flat out tells you to give it back right before he kills your sister to show he means business. Not once after this did any of these people attempt to return the stolen items to the magic cave! Would it be enough to stop further killings? Probably not. But you could at least try to do what he says and see! Koosh Ball (or whatever the demon’s name was) was a little unclear with his rules anyway, which you could tell because he started by killing the sister. What’s that about? She wasn’t in the cave, she didn’t take anything, she doesn’t even know her brother did. The two kids killed in the beginning didn’t take anything. One of them just read a note in the cave and put it back. If you’re a demon and you can actually just kill willy-nilly, why haven’t you been?
So let’s talk about this as a horror movie. Not scary at all, mostly laughable, and predictable. They had some interesting camera work, for what that’s worth. Which is not very much, but it was there. Although I do assume this camera work was mostly just because someone bought a drone and thought that was excuse enough to make a movie. The scares they attempted were mostly pretty standard things. Lots of darkness and people being suddenly tugged into it. They did the one where something is in the middle of the street when they’re driving causing them to suddenly swerve to avoid it, but that one was pretty poorly executed. Like first, it was a dog. Why after are they saying, “What WAS that?!” …It was a dog. You’ve seen a dog before, right? If it suddenly disappeared, don’t be alarmed. Dogs that almost get hit by cars do that a lot. Also, when you show the car spin and stop perpendicular to the road, don’t have it be very obvious that the car is parallel to the road when we cut back to the inside. You don’t see the road through either window, just the woods on the side. That dog was also around a lot and we never really figured out why. Was the dog evil? A herald of Kooshball? It was a very sweet, cute looking dog, but really didn’t seem to have much purpose in the movie. Kooshball himself looked pretty decent…at first. When he was just in the shadows and all you could see was the top of his head looking all sinister and stuff, he worked fairly well. When you got up close and had him talk and showed that he was just wearing face paint that was black on his lower jaw? Not so much. That makes sense to do in a movie making sense that it looks more sinister in the hood when you can’t see his lower jaw, but why would the demon paint his face like that? Or why would his skin just look like that?
The acting is what really brings this movie down. There was one person that was mostly a passable actor in this movie and that was the gay best friend Bryen Lenis. He was put in stupid situations and was given stupid things to say, but that wasn’t his fault. He did the best he could with the situation. The character was gay and seemed to live in a small, possibly Southern town, so I assume that’s a tough life. He had apparently had a bad situation before when he crushed on a dude and it didn’t work out well. I can only assume it’s because he has the very problematic understanding that if a guy isn’t on your team, “they just need a little coaching.” That sounds an awful lot like reverse homophobia. Isn’t the idea we want to get across about gay people is that they’re just born that way? He’s essentially suggesting the reverse of “pray the gay away,” which I assume is to “gay the pray away.” When he finds out Devin isn’t gay because he catches him and Skylar fresh after some sex, he spends an awful lot of time moping about that. You came over to tell them that your sister was just killed by a ghost, man! Maybe your crush goes on the backburner for a bit. Especially since this guy is no great catch. He was nice to you, sure, but you’ve known him for all of 2 days maybe and he’s kinda fuck ugly. Skyler was probably my biggest issue with this movie. There was just nothing redeeming about her at all. We meet her immediately after she breaks up with her boyfriend which she reacts to in a way that makes her seem less distraught and more sleepy. She then gets super bitchy because they don’t want to go to her magic wish cave. She then convinces them by lying to them and saying it’s because her mom has cancer and she wants to try to wish it away when in fact she just wanted to wish to get her shitty boyfriend back. And because you have to give something to the cave to get your wish, she brings her favorite necklace which looks exactly like shitty Mardi Gras beads, but those being valuable to a girl like this actually fits her character pretty well. Just because they’re probably the most valuable jewelry she owns and not because she’s not used to showing her boobs for cheap plastic. I mean, she’s known this Devin guy for all of 2 days, they just kiss for the first time, and she immediately starts taking his clothes off for one of the most icky and uncomfortable sex scenes I can remember. There wasn’t nudity and I was actually completely fine with that, but that Devin dude really played it like a high school dude would. Or maybe he just really wanted to honk her boobs and grab her butt and give her some light motorboating. Generally, you just have to keep kissing and hugging with your clothes off and we’ll get the idea. And I was okay with them cutting before the nudity would’ve happened ‘cause I just found the Skyler girl offputting. Her character was annoying and her acting was bad. Like pronounce every syllable bad acting. You know the kind? The kind that says, “Are you going to go to the cave or not?” instead of, “Are you gonna go to the cave or not?” but out loud it sounds really stilted. Also, later in the movie this psychic lady calls her a “skinny heffer.” First of all, those terms are contrary. Second, she ain’t skinny. She ain’t a heffer either, but that just makes it more of a confusing thing to say.
Here’s a couple other random things I couldn’t figure out how to fit in to the rest of it. Devin and his mom are moving and assumedly packed all their belongings for the move, but all he unloads from the car are like two suitcases, and watching him remove them from the car they seemed like they were completely empty. Why does it seem like the lunch these high school kids are eating is granola bars and Capris Sun? Did they forget their Lunchables? They have a big argument about how the guys are gonna leave Skyler if they don’t find the cave soon, then immediately one points at the cave that is huge and probably 20 feet away from where they were arguing. Who brought xylophone to the wishing cave? And what were they wishing for? A better xylophone? Why is Mick’s sister acting like she’s choking when Kooshball’s hand is on the back of her neck? When Devin’s mom and grandma find out that Skyler was trying to convince him to go find this cave and he wasn’t interested, why do they go on and on about how he better stay uninterested? I mean, I wouldn’t be interested in going to some stupid wishing cave either until the two of you made such a big deal about it. Now I’m curious.
There is probably plenty more to say about Hallowed be Thy Name, but the only thing I can think left to say about it is there’s no reason for anyone to watch it. The story is basic horror stuff, there’s no scares at all, and pretty much all of the acting is awful. There are much better uses of your free time.
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0089 – The Curse of La Llorona Review
0086 – The Nun Review
0085 – Winchester Review
Terrortory (2016)
This Movie’s Production Company is ‘Kangas Kahn Films’ … Like the Pokémon…
This is going to be an interesting one. You see, Shannon had originally made a request of me for my October Horror-thon for a movie called Deathgasm, which was a fine comedy horror movie that I just couldn’t find enough to make fun of…I mean “review.” When I told her that, she then suggested I review today’s movie. A movie so bad and obscure that I can’t find anything about it on Wikipedia or Rotten Tomatoes, so the only information I have is from IMDb…which is fine because I don’t intend to give you much information because (SPOILER ALERT) I don’t think anyone should ever watch this movie. This movie is Terrortory (sigh…I know, right?), “written” and “directed” by Dan Doran, Kevin Kangas, and Mark Wenger, and “starring” who the hell cares?
A dude wants a blow job. In order to obtain said blow job, he tells 5 “scary” stories that all were said to take place in some stretch of land called “the Terrortory” to some chick. …Clever, ain’t it? The first story is about a naked chick that wants beef jerky, but will settle for your face in a pinch. The second story is just a random murderer on a film set. The third is two people trying to catch a serial killer with a pumpkin for a head, and if that doesn’t work the dude has an engagement ring to give the girl. The forth story is killer drones. The fifth one is the Blair Witch if the Blair Witch was Pennywise. Then storyteller guy and the girl get killed, but it was all a dream and they go to the beach instead and probably gets that blow job. The end. AND I AM NOT JOKING ABOUT ANY OF THAT!!!
Well this was a whole heap of garbage, but y’know what? I can act angry about it all I want but we all know I love a movie that I could mock this easily. So let’s get started, eh! First off, I would like to recommend to this movie that they never reference other movies. You talk about Alien, which is only going to remind us what a good movie looks like and then we remember we’re watching this. And then you have your characters call Twilight a shitty movie. Granted, I agree with that. But the problem is that this movie makes me utter a phrase I never expected to utter: This movie is worse than Twilight. I threw up 3 times while writing that sentence. But also, these people say this house must be super prepared for a power outage because they have a bunch of glow sticks in their house. That’s not really being prepared for a power outage; it’s being prepared for a rave, maybe. Of course, this is coming from a guy that literally used a lightsaber as a light the last time his power went out, so maybe I can’t judge. …But here I go anyways. After that, he tells his first story and afterwards says, “I’ll tell you another. And this is a good one.” So, you realized that the first story was garbage and you’re telling your audience that? Also, the second story was also garbage. I mean, the first one was terrible, especially since they expect you to believe that a good ole boy comes across a mostly naked, 6/10 woman in the woods that keeps asking if he brought her meat and he never once grabs his crotch and says, “I got your meat right here!” The second story doesn’t even really have a story. It’s just some people filming some movie in the woods and then there’s a killer and they all die. That’s it. Story 3 at least had an interesting idea in that the pumpkin head guy had no head in his trick or treat pumpkin bucket head, but started tossing his victim’s brain in there. That could’ve been something if they had bothered. They didn’t though. But they did decide to add a subplot about how the guy brought an engagement ring with him for him and his girlfriend’s trip to the woods to hunt a serial killer, which is definitely the way to get that “yes,” fellas. Nothin’ gets the ladies in the mood for marriage like impending doom. Story 4 goes back to the lack of story and random killing, but this time it’s modernized because the filmmakers rented a few drones for the day. Problematically, drones are too hard to pilot for a) someone to fly one and fire a dart accurately, b) have one person flying several simultaneously, c) make one cut someone’s throat with them while somehow still keeping them aloft, and d) fuck you, movie. But it turns out they were all being controlled by artificial intelligence or something, so it’s okay. Story 5 was the closest they got to an interesting story, but by that I mean they ripped off two better stories (Blair Witch and Stephen King’s It) and mashed them together into their garbage. Basically, this whole movie was 3 guys that had about 1/10th of an idea for a horror movie, so they all just smashed them together to make about 1/27th of a decent movie. I am good at math.
Now, since this is a really low budget movie, you have to forgive their special effects. …I mean YOU do. I do not and will not. It all sucked. They basically had access to corn syrup, but not to actual special effects, so they would show the wind up and the aftermath, but they could not actually show a stabbing. They can just have a guy have a vision, start screaming, and then be suddenly back in the woods with a lady pulling very unconvincing strips off of his face and eating them. Or they can show a guy swing a pickaxe and then show a lady with a pickaxe coming out of her mouth and the very tip of the pickaxe going into the mouth of the person she was kissing, which I would like to add is not nearly enough of the pickaxe to kill the guy underneath. Maybe he’d have a tongue piercing now at best, but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume he just drowned very quickly on the blood of the girl above him who would actually have died from the pickaxe. The fourth story also made me very sad for another reason than just it being the 5th garbage storyline I was watching. It was also because that story made me realize this movie was made recently enough to have drones in it. I was thinking 1970 and then it could’ve gotten a pass, but no, not so much. I also tend to focus a lot on boobs in my horror movies, because if you’re gonna make me sit through an awful movie, at least give me something I can enjoy. They don’t really deliver there either. That one siren lady in the first story is pretty much naked all the time (which leads me to believe that this was the only person in the movie who wasn’t a buddy of the writer/directors and instead was hired from the local strip club), and the rest of the movie was just people that teased with their boobs, being in bras and shaking them at the camera a lot, but only one other person goes through with it. I do applaud the director of the third story (pumpkin head guy story) because the camera angle he chose while showing the girl putting on the wedding ring made sure he kept one of the girls boobs in the top right corner, just so the audience would know it was still there.
Obviously, you can’t really expect much by way of acting in this movie either. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly seemed like every person in this movie was just the writer/director’s buddies that they paid in pizza and a six-pack of Dos Equis. So let’s just go through them, shall we? First off, the main character of the first story’s name is Marshall Trigger. Take a moment to let that sink in. Secondly, he is roughly as smart as you would expect someone to be with the name Marshall Trigger. His big plan to bag a deer is to just wander around the woods with a gun. Doesn’t take up a perch in a tree, doesn’t cover himself in deer urine or use deer calls or whatever you do, just shows up and wanders around. Doesn’t even wear an orange vest. But instead of getting shot by a yokel, he gets his face eaten by a naked chick. And he kind of deserves it, because he meets her, she keeps asking him for meat, he doesn’t have any beef jerky on him (which I would recommend; it’s a great travel snack and also keeps you from getting your face eaten), then he has two visions in the vicinity of this creepy chick and decides it’s her fault and shoots her in the face. Some might call that a bit hasty with the conclusions there. Second story is about actors in the woods, but strangely employs no actual actors in the scenes. There are people there, to be sure, but I wouldn’t call what they were doing acting. There was also a fat lumberjack looking dude who thinks he needs to completely drop his pants to masturbate to two of the actors making out in a tent, but also thinks it’s fine to just stand out in the open to do it and also is fine masturbating to the idea of them making out because he’s far away and they’re in a tent so he can’t see anything at all. The third story made very little sense at all. Guy takes his girlfriend to find a serial killer/ask her to marry him, but then they also feel the need to record themselves beforehand acting like they’re just going camping, as if the killer were going to see the video and be fooled into thinking they weren’t there for him. The guy also seems to miss twice when firing a gun at someone just an inch or two away from point blank range. It was a good thing they were out there looking for Smilin’ Jack and not Broad Side of a Barn Steven. Surprisingly enough, these people also can’t act. The guy’s death rattle was more akin to drinking water and having it go down the wrong pipe than being disemboweled. In story 4, they employed no good actors. I know I could just say that about the whole movie in general, but I feel like they were bad enough that it needed to be pointed out each time. But in this story, I was hopeful that the guy the campers met in the beginning would be the bad guy, because him going on about poisonous bugs and snakes and stuff and his general vibe made him the creepiest thing in the movie. Instead, he was just a kindly hiker who was most likely a pedophile in his free time. Also, the black guy in this straight up does parkour to escape the drone, proving that this movie was made when a bunch of frat boys were sitting around getting stoned and reciting things that they think are “rad.” Drones, parkour, ear gauges, boobies, and murder. “Bro! You should write that down and make a movie! …Dude, there are two O’s in ‘boobs’…” And finally, there were no actors in the 5th story either. Also, every character was extremely unlikeable. Dumb chick (but at least she’ll get her boobs out), like two other girls that make no impression at all, annoying AV twerp, Native American looking dude that talks to the camera all the time, ass-hat director guy. Should I really be cheering for the murderous clown instead of the victims?
So that’s Terrortory. A God-awful collection of God-awful half-baked ideas that someone decided should just be filmed straight off of the idea stage without bothering with all that “writing” nonsense those nerds are always doing. They also couldn’t afford anything resembling effects or anyone resembling actors. There are some boobs, but there are better ways to see better boobs and I recommend you try those first. I cannot say this is the worst movie I’ve ever slogged through because I’ve seen and reviewed some real garbage, but this movie could certainly be a competitor. Basically, I’m saying don’t watch it. Unless you’re into that sort of thing. Terrortory gets “Someone actually gave this movie 10/10 on IMDb!” out of “I hate that person!!”
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Lights Out (2016)
There’s No You Without Me.
I saw today’s movie in a RedBox and started to remember that the trailer looked like it had some nifty spooky things in how they handled light, and since I had an October Horrorthon to prepare for, it seemed like a good enough reason to give it a shot. …And that’s pretty much it. There aren’t always good stories to these things. Anyway, the movie was Lights Out, written by Eric Heisserer, directed by David F. Sandberg, and starring Teresa Palmer, Maria Bello, Gabriel Bateman, Alicia Vela-Bailey, and Alexander DiPersia.
A man is murdered in a warehouse by a creepy shadow lady that looks like Penance from Generation X – let’s just call her Diana (Vela-Bailey). That man had a wife, Sophie (Bello), who is crazy, a stepdaughter, Rebecca (Palmer), who has left the family, and a son, Martin (Bateman), who is not sleeping well. When Sophie can’t be reached, Rebecca is contacted by child protective services because Martin keeps falling asleep in class. When asked, Martin claims that he can’t sleep because his mom keeps him up by talking with her friend Diana. …OH SNAP! That’s the name I gave to the evil ghost lady, isn’t it? That’s strange…
I found myself fairly underwhelmed by this movie, but I wouldn’t say I hated it. It was just kind of … regular. The story was a pretty basic haunting thing with a few twists to separate it from the pack a little, but that’s not really what sets it apart. They even put it in the title! It’s all the lights on and off stuff. That stuff was fun, but also was occasionally problematic. A ghost thing that can only be seen when it’s almost pitch black means that we will barely be able to see her most of the time. At least until they bust out the giant, check-your-hotel-room-for-semen style black light that this family has in their basement for some odd reason. Then you’ll see her and she just looks like a zombie or a lady with a skin condition. But the stuff they did with the darkness and the rules they set was fairly interesting, it just wasn’t that spooky, even if you ignore the fact that it shouldn’t be nearly that hard to keep yourself in the light. Go buy a battery or fire powered lantern, for crying out loud! But what they did go for with scares was used mostly for jump scares which can be fun, but probably won’t make your movie a classic if you can’t build enough tension and spookiness. Plus, only 3 people died in this movie! Super powered zombie ghost shadow lady should’ve tried a little bit harder.
There were at least some good performances in this movie. Teresa Palmer’s character was a bitch to people randomly and seemingly without reason in the beginning, but came around to a very likeable character when she started trying to look out for the welfare of her half-brother. She seemed to make fairly good decisions for the most part, but I cannot fathom how this girl would be in a haunted house with a shadow ghost that likes to jump out of the darkness at people and yet Rebecca still thought it would ever be a good idea to walk backwards into an open doorway. You should just hold your flashlight and spin around in circles until morning…or until you throw up. Either way, it seems pretty fun. I found Gabriel Bateman annoying, but I’m not entirely convinced that’s not just because I hate most kids. Maria Bello is great though. She plays really her role very unhinged but also sympathetic at the same time, which made the ending more disappointing. She couldn’t have found a better way out of this situation than she did? And by “she,” I feel like I actually mean “the writers.” Boyfriend guy was just kind of there to me and didn’t really make an impact beyond seeming like a big creep for being so determined to move in with Rebecca in the beginning that he wanted to leave some of his stuff there, and when she said no, he tried to stash a sock there. As if having some article of clothing in a girl’s house means that you’re dating now. If that were the case, I’d start leaving clothing in girl’s houses instead of leaving with their underwear like I do now. The only other character that stood out to me was the child protective services lady. She seemed nice enough, but I found it really dumb that when she was trying to indicate that she didn’t believe Rebecca was fit to raise a child, her examples seemed to be that Rebecca likes Heavy Metal music (or at least posters of them) and marijuana.
I feel like the best thing I can say about Lights Out is that it’s nifty. The story of the movie is fairly basic with one or two new ideas, but mostly the movie rests on the shoulders of one or two solid performances and some interesting jump scares based around lighting effects. You could probably get roughly the same effect of this movie by just watching the 7 minute short film of the same name that inspired this movie, but watching the movie isn’t a terrible option either. Lights Out gets “Mom, we need to talk” out of “We’re living with a dead woman.”
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