Tag: 2015

Directed by Rene Perez [Other horror films: The Dead and the Damned (2011), Demon Hunter (2012), Alien Showdown: The Day the Old West Stood Still (2013), The Snow Queen (2013), The Dead the Damned and the Darkness (2014), The Burning Dead (2015), Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust (2016), Little Red Riding Hood (2016), The Obsidian Curse (2016), Playing with Dolls: Havoc (2017), From Hell to the Wild West (2017), The Dead and the Damned 3: Ravaged (2018), Cabal (2020), Cry Havoc (2020), Legend of Hawes (2022), The Vampire and the Vigilante (2024)]

I’ve known about Playing with Dolls for a long time, and because of the little I knew about it, I avoided it. Well, after seeing it, I wish I had kept avoiding it, as it really is quite awful.

To be sure, the movie is not without it’s strong points. The killer, for instance, uses a sledgehammer to kill two people, and that was sort of fun. Uh, perhaps Natasha Blasick had a few moments in which she was quite attractive. Um, the trees were nice?

Okay, there’s not many strong points, and on the flip-side, a whole lotta negative ones. For instance, it seems that little really happens for the first hour of the film. Sure, we get the set-up, but once Blasick’s character is at the cabin, we get nothing for forty minutes save “creepy” scenes of her being followed and watched while not knowing it. It was just tedious and often boring, in my view.

I don’t want to harp on the performances. It’s true that I found pretty much everyone’s acting stilted, including Natasha Blasick (Death of Evil), but I don’t really blame them for it. The story was pretty damn bare-bones, so it’s not like any of these people had much to work with. Blasick looked cute now and again, which was something. David A. Lockhart (The Dead and the Damned) seemed rather weak, but again, I’m hesitant to blame him. Richard Tyson (The Fear Chamber, Flight of the Living Dead, Big Bad Wolf) literally had no character, but boy, was he great at staring at a computer screen menacingly.

There’s also not a real ending here. Sure, where things leave off with Blasick’s character, we’ve seen before, and that’s all well and good, but what happens to Lockhart’s character? What happens to the killer? We literally have no idea. I would hope that this is picked up immediately in the following film, being Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust, but given the quality of the story, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.

All-in-all, Playing with Dolls (or, as an alternative title, Metalface, which is the God-awful title I saw this under on Tubi) was pretty bad. When it wasn’t dull af, it was beyond mediocre, and the lack of story doesn’t do this one any wonders. It’s not like the kills make up for that either, which is all the more disappointing.

I wasn’t surprised that this movie didn’t do much for me. Perhaps some out there would enjoy something about it, but it was just terribly bare-bones, in my view, and not at all my type of thing.

3/10

Directed by Devon Gummersall [Other horror films: N/A]

More than anything else, I found The Inherited a rather frustrating film. The plot wasn’t without intrigue, but it went down a somewhat predictable path, felt rushed come the finale, and just wasn’t something I found too enjoyable.

It had mystery at times. Was the lead character being poisoned by her husband, or were there some real supernatural events going on around the house, and did her husband kill his first wife, or was her madness natural, that kind of stuff. I can’t say I’m at all happy with the answers to some of these questions, and that’s partially because the ending just felt too quick.

A couple of things bothered me also. At many points, the lead (Jenn Liu’s character) has suspicions – suspicions that she’s being poisoned by someone (could be the housekeeper, could be her husband), suspicions that she’s being gaslit (perhaps by her husband, perhaps by her housekeeper), suspicions she’s in danger. These were all legitimate feelings, too.

Logically, you’d think she wouldn’t stay in the situation. You know, maybe spend a couple of days away from the house, away from her husband, and, you know, reassess the situation. It makes sense to me – if I ever felt to be in a potentially threatening position, I’d like to think I would leave the situation, which she has every opportunity to do.

She didn’t. As far as the audience can tell, she didn’t even consider it. Instead, she confided in the housekeeper (who, on a side note, no one but the lead character ever has much contact with, and most of us know what that probably means) – you know, the housekeeper who makes her tea every day, and lied about being in the kitchen when she wasn’t. This isn’t a lie the audience knows about and Liu’s character doesn’t – she literally thinks to herself that the housekeeper is lying. And yet, she confides in her.

I cannot express in numerical value how many times I made variations of verbal statements along the lines of “Why not leave the fucking house?” I said this at least eight times throughout the film, because it felt absurd and past the point of parody. On a side-note, this is a film I saw on Lifetime, so that may be a common occurrence when it comes to the thriller and horror films they play.

It’s not that I think Jenn Liu did badly. Early on, I was pretty invested in her story, though by the finale, I felt ashamed, as the film ends horribly. I legit #HatedIt, as the kids say. I didn’t care for Tammy Blanchard, Annabella Sciorra, or Nathan Darrow, but Dennis Boutsikaris (Better Call Saul) popped up a few times, and he was sort of cool to see.

Sure, I won’t say there wasn’t occasionally a decent atmosphere in the film. There’s ominous undertones to plenty of the conversations the lead character is involved in (I mean, she never really did anything about it, but whateves, I guess she liked being in danger because of course why wouldn’t a character want to stay in a situation that’s potentially dangerous I mean makes sense amiright????????), but that’s part of the problem, because there’s not much of a sensible approach taken by the lead character in the film.

And to take a step back (and a deep breath), The Inherited (also apparently sometimes called Stranger in the House, I guess, because that name is so much less generic) isn’t necessarily terrible, but it was terribly frustrating, and despite some okay story elements (aside from the abysmal finale) and okay performances, this is a film I never want to see again.

5/10

Directed by Brandon Tobatto [Other horror films: Hacked Up for Barbecue (2009), Loons (2016), Cottontail (2017), Sugarplum (2017), Madhouse (2020)]

For a lower budget film, Loon is okay. It’s not great, and it’s possible calling it good is a stretch, but there’s a somewhat interesting story here, and though I don’t think I’d go back to it, I can appreciate what they were going for.

Truth be told, I expected most of the film to deal with the group of friends going to explore an old carnival attraction – something like a lower budget version of Haunt. You can soon see that’s not where the film’s going, as it switches gears to focus on a police detective (Ryan Gray) and his attempts to go after the killer stalking the woods around the carnival attraction, which is at least different.

Obviously, being a film of this budget, some of the acting is not great. I do think that Tara Moates and Trevor Moates worked as siblings, and given the last names, it’s quite possible that’s the case. During the opening flashback, Kerissa Porter and Randy Porter were good also, and I thought it was sort of a shame that opening scene was all they got. Otherwise, no one really did that well – Ryan Gray had some okay moments, as did both Anne Tuck and John Nieman, but everything else was just ehh.

What’s more was some of the dialogue felt iffy, and the delivery especially stood out as lower quality. I don’t think that really hurt the movie as a whole – God knows I’ve seen worse in other films – but it was noticeable at times.

Also noticeable was the fact that, save for a kill toward the end of the film, there weren’t many kills here worth seeing. The killer primarily used a bat to beat people to death, which is good and all, but after a while, I can’t say it’s not a little repetitive.

Even so, from my understanding, the budget of Loon was around $100, and I know that they probably got more out of the money than I could have. I don’t think the movie’s good, but I do think they did well with what they had, and though there were aspects of the story I wasn’t a fan of (I would have liked it if Tara Moates and Trevor Moates had a bit more to do in the second half of the movie), it’s not a terrible film if you know what you’re going into.

5.5/10

Directed by Todd Nunes [Other horror films: Scary Larry (2014)]

I have to say that I found this Christmas-themed slasher disappointing, but I also have to admit that I’m not surprised, given the generally lukewarm reception I’ve heard from this one.

And it’s a shame, too, because I suspect that, more than most people, I was looking forward to this one. Why? Because back in 2011, the director of this film, Todd Nunes, directed a 13-minute short titled Here Comes Santa. This is a short which I reviewed on my now-defunct Beyond the Darkened Door, a horror blog I was trying to run for a short and inconsistent time in my college days.

To keep things short, I found Here Comes Santa a pretty well-made short. I gave it a glowing review, and definitely saw potential should the director attempt a full-length version of the story.

But to all hope comes death, as the poets say, and the final product here just felt more hollow than anything. Which isn’t to say that the movie doesn’t have strong points, but really, aside from gore, what does All Through the House really have going for it?

I will say that I like the base idea of the film – three young women terrorized by a killer wearing Santa garb while helping to decorate a large house – but the story beyond this, what with the mystery of the focal character’s mother and another character’s missing daughter just sort of fell off the rails.

Again, I have to mention the failed potential here, because while neither of these mysteries were up there with those seen in classic giallos, it still brought a little additional element to the movie, but come the finale, the answers we get aren’t really that satisfying to me.

For what it’s worth, I thought most of the marginally more important performances were decent. It’s not likely that many would be blown away by Ashley Mary Nunes, Melynda Kiring, Jason Ray Schumacher, or Natalie Montera, but they all do fine enough with what little character they get to play around with.

That’s part of the problem, really. Most of these characters just seem shallow, and I don’t think we even get to know the main character of Rachel (Nunes) all that well. More than anything, this movie feels like an excuse to show off decent gore effects, which, while certainly appreciated, isn’t enough to keep interest in a story going. Had the mystery here been handled a bit differently, then maybe we’re talking another story, but with what we got, it just didn’t do it.

There’s also something that should be said about the editing. I don’t think I’m the guy to say it, because I’m not a film-maker, and I have literally no idea what goes into production and post-production of films, and thus lack the vocabulary to explain my problem, but the editing here just felt off at times. I sensed it from the very beginning, and though I can’t put a finger on why things felt off, I know that, to me, they did.

Overall, you have some impressive gory scenes here, but once you get past that, I don’t think there’s a lot holding this one up, and as far as Christmas-themed horror films go, I think that All Through the House will end up in the forgotten category more so than anything else. Definitely not a great experience, and a film I found rather below average.

5/10

Directed by Sheldon Wilson [Other horror films: Shallow Ground (2004), Kaw (2007), Screamers: The Hunting (2009), Carny (2009), Mothman (2010), Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010), Killer Mountain (2011), Scarecrow (2013), Shark Killer (2015), The Unspoken (2015), The Night Before Halloween (2016), Neverknock (2017), Stickman (2017), Dead in the Water (2018)]

I had the misfortune of seeing this Sheldon Wilson film before, and it’s not gotten any better since that first time a few years back. The thing is, I think this could have had potential with the setting and with the characters, but it’s entirely squandered to make a generically bad Syfy original.

This is something that Wilson has a history with, though. I enjoyed Neverknock and The Unspoken, true, and to a certain extent, I enjoyed both Kaw and Stickman, but much of his recent work, such as The Night Before Halloween, Dead in the Water, and this one, are really hard to get through, and this is one of the worse (though certainly Dead in the Water was probably a bit worse).

Was Stephanie Hunt attractive? Sure. Was Sarah Dugdale attractive? You know it. Did either one give a particularly good performance, or in fact, did anyone in the film give a good performance? That’d be a negative. I don’t blame the failure of the film on the performances though – Dugdale and Hunt could only work with what they’ve got, and if they’re given a bad script, what can they do?

The monster was a combination of the roots from The Ruins and that hideous monster-thing in Shadows of the Dead (another stellar Syfy original) – most of the time, it looked like angry embers and sticks were attacking people. This had to do with revenge from some witches, but the witches could have tried harder to not send a creature that reeked of hideous CGI.

I liked the setting – an island off some undisclosed state (probably Washington or something, but I don’t think it’s said in the film). It was a large island, but much of it seemed to be forest, which was sort of cool. And the central characters all being sisters also brought a little bit confort, as we wouldn’t have to deal with any horrible romantic sub-plot (unless there was some lesbian incest going on, but no dice). It has the basics to maybe make for an okay story if they had wanted to, maybe an interesting mystery-slasher hybrid, or perhaps some type of psychological horror à la Hereditary set on an island. That’s not what happened.

Oh, also the younger sister had unexplained psychic dreams, so that was #cool.

When I initially watched The Hollow, I was disappointed because I was hopeful that maybe it’d end up being one of the better Syfy originals, but that’s not the case, and it’s really not a movie I can think of any real reason to watch.

5/10

Directed by Nick Lyon [Other horror films: Species: The Awakening (2007), Zombie Apocalypse (2011), Rise of the Zombies (2012), Foreclosed (2013), Bermuda Tentacles (2014), Isle of the Dead (2016), Titanic 666 (2022)]

Sometimes Syfy gets it right. It happened on such occasions as Neverknock, House of Bones, and a few other occasions. I can’t say this is quite as good, but it was a very solidly made film, though ultimately, I think it’s around average.

The story here is somewhat interesting. A teleportation experiment goes awry, and a bunch of college kids gets trapped in a Hellish dimension, and do their best to survive. The dimension in question is solidly creepy, with a bunch of decently spooky imagery (from a multitude of dead and disfigured bodies to hanging suicide victims to forest and jungle areas, etc.), and I found myself interested in learning more about this place.

The cast isn’t great, but a few solid performances stood out, such as Katy Reece, Kabby Borders, Chris Schellenger, Mirela Burke (who was quite cute here), and James Sobol Kelly. I expected Kelly’s character to matter more, but I’m happy with the restrained route they took. Also, two attractive young women, Katy Reese and Mirela Burke, made out, and that bumped the score a whole point. Hubba hubba.

They Found Hell isn’t amazing, and I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking it is. While the environments in the Hellish dimension are mostly solid, I didn’t like what they did with Hunter Canedy’s character, and the CGI for the creatures (such as the Hellhounds and the Flying Demons, or whatever they are) is about as bad as Syfy often does. Also, and this might just be me, but that opening seemed really odd, and almost disconnected from the rest of the story in a laughable way.

Still, I found this one a lot more palatable than I do many Syfy movies, and I can easily imagine giving this another watch.

7.5/10

Directed by Mike Mendez [Other horror films: Killers (1996), Bimbo Movie Bash (1997), The Convent (2000), Masters of Horror (2002), The Gravedancers (2006), Big Ass Spider! (2013), Tales of Halloween (2015, segment ‘Friday the 31st’), The Last Heist (2016), Don’t Kill It (2016)]

What makes a movie good?

That’s a question I sometimes, perhaps often, find myself wrestling with. There are occasions which I watch a movie that’s terrible on many technical levels, but I still enjoy. The IMDb score might be south of 3/10, but I still want to rate the film an average score (7/10 for me). Is enjoyment more important than technical value?

It must be, because despite the flaws, I found Lavalantula an exceptionally acceptable and enjoyable film.

Let’s talk cast, brothers and sisters: Steve Guttenberg (of Police Academy fame) stars, and while he’s definitely older, you can certainly tell it’s him. Honestly, I’ve not seen Guttenberg in anything outside of the 1984 classic comedy – at the same time, Police Academy is one of my favorite comedy movies ever, so it’s enough to feel nostalgic seeing him here. I really enjoy his sometimes over-the-top performance, and overall got a kick out of him.

No one else really blows me away in particular, but there are some solid performances here. Nia Peeples (who I just saw a few days back, at the time of this writing, in DeepStar Six) does pretty good as an action-oriented mother. Patrick Renna (X-Files ‘Bad Blood’ episode, 2006’s Dark Ride, 2016’s Fear, Inc.) was pretty amusing as a fanboy of Guttenberg’s action-hero persona. There are three characters here who also played characters in the original Police Academy (Michael Winslow, Marion Ramsey, and Leslie Easterbrook), but none of them really do a whole lot for me.

What makes this movie fun is the fact Guttenberg plays a washed-up action-hero, and there are quite a few references made to other films throughout Lavalantula that made me crack a grin (such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and of course, 1997’s Volcano). There’s not really anything that special about the humor, but I had a good time with it.

And I think that’s what this comes down to. Certainly, the special effects here, while still terrible, were better than fellow contemporaries like Arachnoquake, and the spiders here definitely had a better design than the creatures in Arachnoquake, but what matters more was that I had a lot of fun with this one. The conclusion is a bit more ridiculous than I’ve have preferred, but it doesn’t really damage the film much. Overall, Lavalantula is a movie I could see myself buying on DVD, or at the very least, watching again, without much guilt. Or at least, too much guilt.

7.5/10