REVIEW: Eye Without a Face [2021]

It’s all in your head. Henry’s (Dakota Shapiro) had a difficult life. The abuse he endured on behalf of his father has made it so he can barely leave the house. Talking to strangers (let alone women) is a non-starter. And he can’t even open the door to his dad’s old room for fear of thinking he might somehow be inside despite promising never to come back. Henry’s existence is therefore confined to the den. He sleeps on the couch, walks the streets late at night to stay isolated, and…

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REVIEW: Shivers [1975]

Poor birdy. You almost want to say Dr. Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver) is on to something when telling Dr. Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton) about his latest scientific experimentations between bites of his pickle. He and the late Dr. Hobbs (Fred Doederlein) have been funneling grant money into a project that hopes to put parasites to work for humanity. The pitch is as follows: Which is better? A faulty kidney? Or a working parasite? If the latter cleans your blood without needing to wait for a new organ, doesn’t it…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: 哭悲 [The Sadness] [2021]

I thought you were crazy like the other ones. The trigger warnings that accompany 哭悲 [The Sadness] at the Fantasia International Film Festival are no joke. The acts of violence that writer/director Rob Jabbaz has his characters inflict upon each other are as depraved as can be and seemingly devoid of remorse. It often feels like an Aphex Twin music video with enraged men and women stopping to turn and grin with blackened eyes before pouncing on their latest targets with relish. It therefore means something when we first see…

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REVIEW: Prom Night [1980]

The killers are coming. Built upon a story by a film student (Robert Guza Jr.) that director Paul Lynch knew, Prom Night delivers a grounded slasher focused on revenge. Written by William Gray, the script begins six years in the past as four children play hide and seek in an old, abandoned building without adult supervision. They play rough with chants about killers to try and spook each other into giving up their location—a style that might scare someone unfamiliar with the tone being set like young Robin Hammond. She…

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REVIEW: Maximum Overdrive [1986]

It turned itself on and it bit me! To read Stephen King‘s short story “Trucks” (from the compilation Night Shift) is to get embroiled in a nihilistic nightmare along the lines of a “Twilight Zone” episode. A few people are left stranded at a truck stop while diesel vehicles gain cognizance and begin killing any people they see until fuel stores run low and a truce must be met to acquire their victims’ pumping services. There’s little room for hope as the new order of things appears destined to continue…

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REVIEW: Great White [2021]

We’ll get you there. There’s a legend of sorts about a shipwreck on the island locale most tourists ask Charlie (Aaron Jakubenko) and Kaz (Katrina Bowden) to take them off the Australian coast. Only one man survived the ordeal and natives, like the Captain’s cook (Te Kohe Tuhaka‘s Benny), have never forgotten his name. It therefore means something when the trio’s latest fares (Kimie Tsukakoshi‘s Michelle and Tim Kano‘s Joji) take out an urn of ashes and a photograph of that very same man. He was her grandfather and always…

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REVIEW: The Forever Purge [2021]

Follow the roses. There’s one key fact about the fifth and (apparently) final installment in James DeMonaco‘s Purge series that demands mentioning: it was scheduled to debut July 2020. Whereas a COVID delay doesn’t mean much for F9 or Black Widow, it’s crucial to understanding just how prescient these political horror films are. Why? Because much of what occurs in The Forever Purge is an exact parallel to January 6th, 2021. DeMonaco’s mythology leads his fictional America to the brink of insurrection not to comment on what happened five months…

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REVIEW: Till Death [2021]

It’s time to wake up. Emma (Megan Fox) arrives at her husband’s (Eoin Macken) law office ready for their anniversary dinner only to hear him say he prefers her red dress. Instead of thinking out loud, he’s stating a problem in need of rectifying. A “joke” that there’s time to stop home and change isn’t therefore a joke at all once we cut to the restaurant, see Emma in red, and begin to understand why the first scene of S.K. Dale‘s Till Death showed her in another man’s (Aml Ameen‘s…

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REVIEW: Gaia [2021]

The apes return to the trees. Mankind doesn’t follow God because He’s compassionate. Anyone who’s looked through history at the death and destruction wrought in His name should know this all too well. Man follows Him out of fear—a fear so deeply rooted in our DNA that we cling to a fantasy instead of admitting its crippling hold. Because what’s God really saving us from during the rapture? Evil? Science? Ourselves? If we’re to believe God created everything, the only logical answer as to the orchestrator of our demise is…

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REVIEW: Werewolves Within [2021]

Everyone here is a little … questionable. If not for the Ubisoft logo revealing the game company as a producer of Werewolves Within, I would be wondering what the point of buying licensing rights was since this adaptation isn’t even set in medieval times. I’m not sure if there’s more that sets it apart from other variations on Mafia (the deduction party game created in 1986 by Dimitry Davidoff before getting a fresh spin as Werewolf by Andrew Plotkin in 1997 and more recently appropriated into the online sensation Among…

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REVIEW: Caveat [2021]

There’s got to be more to it than that. Isaac (Jonathan French) doesn’t remember Barret (Ben Caplan), but Barret assures him they are friends. He even visited him at the hospital only to discover Isaac had no recollection of ever having met him before. I guess you have two choices when suffering from partial memory loss: you either decide to trust nobody or accept the help of strangers who say they aren’t strangers at all. Isaac is the latter … albeit skeptical. Whether that skepticism is towards Barret himself or…

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