Category: 2010’s

Directed by Don Mancini [Other horror films: Seed of Chucky (2004), Curse of Chucky (2013)]

Having just finished this at the time of this writing, Cult of Chucky is a somewhat hard one to rate.

It certainly feels much more ambitious than any of the previous films, and follows Curse quite nicely. But as for the story itself, I think it got a bit away from itself.

The setting of a mental institution is quite fun, and especially as the film begins having a dreamier atmosphere a bit through the movie, the bright white surroundings work well. Actually, I really liked the dreamy feel this movie had, and parts even reminded me of (I know, it’s crazy) A Cure for Wellness. Hell, even the cinematography was of very high production.

Curse of Chucky was a step toward trying new techniques, but this one, with slow motion, and occasionally dreamy scenes, and split screens, thrown in with a somewhat befuddling story, really makes this one stand out. For the most part, that’s a positive thing. Even though there were a few atrocious CGI scenes (one of the death scenes, for instance), most of what was tried here works still.

Gore was pretty solid throughout, with multiple stabbings, stompings, and, of course, disembowelments. All in good fun. Like I said, the only death that wasn’t that great was due to CGI, unfortunately.

Despite a plethora of these positive factors, the story is a bit of a mess toward the end. It’s not as though it was without some solid tension, and it was definitely better than the abortion that was Seed of Chucky, but really, the story seemed to go all over the place, and with the route they took, I’m sort of getting the feeling that future films won’t really be as solid as Curse was able to be. I can’t say much more without spoilers, but it was worth mentioning, as it’s about the sole reason this isn’t being rated as near as well as Curse.

There are plenty of good things about Cult of Chucky, but it’s no doubt that Curse was a more cohesive, enjoyable, and better movie. The direction that this takes the series seems iffy, but time will tell. If you’re a fan of the series, this is certainly worth seeing, but as it’s entirely different than all of the other movies, I can’t guarantee you’ll love it.

6.5/10

Directed by Jake Aurelian [Other horror films: N/A]

Depending on your expectations, The Stripper Ripper might come across a hoot, or one of the worst things you’ve ever seen. Truth be told, I’m leaning toward the latter.

This comedy-horror spoof-type movie, at this point in time, doesn’t appear to have an IMDb page [and as I saw this in April 2018, it’s been a year, and still no page up], but information can be found out about it from various online articles.

Filmed entirely in Danville, Illinois, this movie, for the most part, acts as a documentary about a clown terrorizing Ripper County, delving into the victims of the so-called Stripper Ripper, copycat crimes, local reaction to the events, along with interviews from FBI profilers and a Sam Loomis-inspired character named, you guessed it, Dr. Pleasance (played by Shawn Hosseini).

It’s a very silly, slapstick movie, which is exactly what author and first-time director Jake Aurelian was going for. The thing is, I just don’t think it works well at all. Perhaps as a short, this could have been okay, and maybe mildly amusing, but at an hour and 22 minutes, it just drags on and on.

Sure, we have a plot of sorts: a clown is assaulting people by throwing pies in their faces, and Dr. Pleasance tries to get the local authorities to take the guy seriously, all the while the Stripper Ripper continues his reign of terror. But some of the sequences just run on far past the point of amusing. Indulge me, please, as I list a few examples.

Berating an impersonator, the Stripper Ripper complains for something like five minutes (occasionally impersonating Macho Man Randy Savage, for some reason) before finally punching out a guy who is mimicking the Ripper’s style. There’s an “interview” with a comedian who got arrested for threatening an audience member that he’ll pie her face (in the local climate, this came across as tasteless, apparently). It’s fine in theory, but again, it’s at least a five minute scene.

At seven minutes, there’s a sequence where the Ripper gets pulled over by a police officer for not using his headlights, and the officer asks a barrage of questions. And at eight minutes, there’s a FBI profiler who take the time to explain why the Ripper is the man he is. Eight fucking minutes.

Out of those four scenes, 25 minutes total have passed. And nary a chuckle was to be found.

Certainly, there were some occasionally funny moments, such as the “Run, Lola, Run,” line, and Shawn Hosseini’s acting is just so unbelievably amusing. But for a movie that is first and foremost a parody, the laughs are too few and far between.

One more positive thing I’ll say for it – the actress Chloe Miller (playing a character named, get this, Laurie Lee Curtis) was moderately decent in her role. With the few scenes she had, she definitely seemed a bit of a highlight to me.

Many portions of this film mimic well-known scenes from Halloween, which is all well and fine, and perhaps if the movie focused more on parodying that classic, I might have enjoyed it more. But slapstick has never been my thing, and this movie just went overboard on everything (don’t even get me started on the narrator – the narrator was almost worse here than in Curse of the Faceless Man). These individuals may have had a great time making this, but I just had a horrible time watching it.

1/10

Directed by Marcus Nispel [Other horror films: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Frankenstein (2004), Friday the 13th (2009)]

This film was exceptionally atrocious and mind-numbingly stupid. I could end the review there, but I’ll delve into why I believe this is so. A bunch of teens have a party at an old children’s mental hospital. One of the patients comes back from the dead and possesses someone. Stuff happens. Actually, given the “twist” at the end, this plot isn’t even accurate, but they never bother explaining anything.

So much of this film relied on logic being on a separate plane. For instance, after some creepy stuff begins to happen, the teens decide not to call the police (which might make a modicum of sense, because one of the members of the group hit someone with his car, and they don’t want to go to prison).

But later on, once the building locks itself up, and the teens find the body missing (meaning no potential jail time), they don’t even considering calling the cops. Keep in mind, they have internet service, so even if a call can’t make it through, they’d still be able to potentially contact the outside world. But no. What do they use their phones for? To look up how to perform exorcisms.

It’s as though logic would be a nice idea, but for this film, it was an afterthought they never got to. None of the characters were remotely likeable. Many of the scenes don’t make sense in retrospect. The jump scares are underwhelming.

There are a few things that can be said that a good, though: for one, the film does have a more comedic take on things (evidenced by a few characters), but don’t get the idea it’s a comedy-horror; it’s not. It’s simply light-hearted every now and again. Secondly, much of the gore is actually pretty decent (save a CGI face-being-cut-in-half scene). There was even a funny line that made me smile. But that’s it.

Directed by Marcus Nispel (who directed not only the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, but the Friday the 13th remake also), Exeter is a poor, poor film. See, a film like Jockstrap Slaughterhouse may not appeal to many people; it was ultra-low quality and had some overly silly scenes also. But that movie didn’t take itself nearly as seriously as this movie did. More so, I actually had fun watching Jockstrap Slaughterhouse. For Exeter, I just wanted the suffering to end (and as it’s an average 90-minute length, it’s Hell to get there). Exeter is a piece of shit, to be nice about it. The gore is about the only thing going for it, and that’s not nearly enough.

3/10

Directed by Joe Bandelli [Other horror films: Bumbloods (2012), Unknown Dimension: The Story of Paranormal Activity (2021)]

A pretty standard slasher fair, Cabin Fear (also known under the title Seclusion, which is how I saw it) features a group of friends who are slowly killed off while they’re at an isolated cabin for a destination wedding.

As this movie is mostly moved by characterization, and there’s not that many characters to speak of (eight total cast members, not counting the extras at the beginning), it’d have been really easy for the movie to fail, but actually, it mostly worked out moderately well. While the plot isn’t overly creative, the interaction between the characters seemed real and accomplished it’s goal.

As for the identity of the killer, that’s more a mixed bag. There’s plenty of red herrings throughout the film, and while they skirted that with the reveal, things still weren’t done as well as they could have been. I don’t even know if the killer could have realistically killed those that died, as the time-frame seems off. That’s not mentioning a scene prior to the reveal, which seems to contradict what was revealed after. Basically, a few scenes needed tightening up a bit.

Another thing worth mentioning is the music, which seems to be stock violin music. It’s difficult for me to explain, but the music sounded really cheap, for lack of a better word, and they definitely should have thought twice before using it.

To end on a positive note, though, most of the actors and actresses did a pretty fine job. Nicole Pacent (who’s character I am still mixed on) stole the scenes she was in, Alyson McKenzie Wells did a perfect blonde airhead slut, and while Matthew Wise wasn’t remarkable, his character wasn’t either, so all’s well there. The only problem I had insofar as acting’s concerned is Clea Alsip. Throughout the film, she was a sappy newlywed, never missing a chance to tell her new husband that she loves him. I know there are people like that out there, but in the situation they were in, it sort of got on my nerves.

Seclusion isn’t going to win any awards, but it was a pleasant enough movie made average by a failure to fully explain a scene or two, and adding in some unnecessary red herrings. All things considered, this probably falls somewhere around being average. It’s not really something I’d recommend to others, but I wouldn’t run the other direction if offered it.

7/10

Directed by Mark Pavia [Other horror films: The Night Flier (1997)]

Mark Pavia, the director of this film, also directed a movie I rather enjoyed, being 1997’s The Night Flier. Here’s what’s interesting: The Night Flier was the last film that Pavia directed before this one. So it’s been just under twenty years since Pavia’s directed anything, and one would (reasonably) think that after such an extended hiatus, he’d be able to craft, at the very least, a movie on par with his last work.

Sadly, that’s not the case here.

17-year old Hilary (played by Makenzie Vega) gets into a fender bender with an odd individual, and later that night, the man attempts to kill her and her friends. It’s not necessarily all that amazing or creative a plot. What holds it back most, though, is the fact that, save the opening sequence of the movie, it takes a while for the horror elements to come into the film.

The movie’s an average-length film, at just around an hour and thirty minutes, and it’s not until an hour in that the killer actually starts making an appearance. Before that, there were some tense scenes, but it was nowhere near enough. Truth be told, though I liked Hilary and her two friends, I was bored for a large portion of the film. When things do start happening, nothing really stands out in those scenes either. The ending wasn’t a bad one, but it wasn’t overly satisfying either, and the killer’s final words make little sense.

So the story is rather average, and the only thing it can really boast is decent production value and a somewhat cool (if not generic) looking killer. The kills aren’t bad, and can even come across as brutal in a way, but much like the movie as a whole, they weren’t memorable. Really, the most interesting thing about this movie are the names involved.

Pavia’s directorial involvement aside, our lead character is played by Makenzie Vega, who isn’t a big name, but did play Lawrence Gordon’s daughter in Saw, so it’s a nice surprise to see that she’s still acting and I have to say, does really well with her character. Her father in the movie is played by Steven Michael Quezada, who portrayed Steve Gomez in Breaking Bad, which was another nice surprise (though Quezada doesn’t get much screen time).

All-in-all, though, Fender Bender doesn’t have that much to offer us as viewers, and it’s really a forgettable experience. It’s truly a shame that this is the product of a twenty year break.

5.5/10

Directed by Mike Flanagan [Other horror films: Absentia (2011), Oculus (2013), Before I Wake (2016), Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Gerald’s Game (2017), Doctor Sleep (2019)]

A deaf woman living in the isolated woods must fight for her survival against a serial killer. Sounds mildly generic, yes? I thought the same thing before starting the film, but as the movie goes on, Hush presents us a very solid entry to the home invasion subgenre of horror.

Firstly, the atmosphere and suspense throughout the film is top-notch – knowing the main character can’t hear, yet seeing the killer creep up behind her is likely to get your heart racing. It’s a tense movie, almost from beginning to end. And despite what others say, I don’t think it’s a predictable one either.

The ending was satisfying and came as a surprise to me, especially given the set-up; I expected a far different ending than the one they gave. The gore also stands out – while our killer’s main weapon of choice is a crossbow (used to good effect), he’s not averse to knives, nor is our deaf woman averse to wielding a hammer. There’s not massive bloodshed by any means, but some scenes do stand out, such as one of the main characters’ hands getting stomped on until two fingers were bent completely out of shape. Just looking at that mangled hand was painful.

The killer himself is interesting also – while at first he’s the masked mute killer, that very quickly shifts. In fact, for most of the film, he doesn’t wear his mask, which I thought was both a cool and brave move, something that you don’t usually see. Some people criticize the killer as being weak, but I thought his performance was up to par – he’s a likely crazy guy who gets off on killing people. You don’t need the strength of Jason or evasiveness of Michael against most people.

The deaf woman, Maddie, was played convincingly well by Kate Siegel, whom I don’t know, but if her other performances are as good as this one was, she has a good future. The killer too, played by John Gallagher Jr., should be praised. Despite not being an overt physical threat, he’s still obviously very much a menace.

As aforementioned, the story itself may not be original, aside from the deaf protagonist, but everything came together very well. Hush is a tense movie with a satisfying conclusion and gore that’s worth waiting for. Very solid film overall; I highly recommend it.

8.5/10