Slasher Search: A New Beginning: Stream Warriors: The Next Generation – Part I: Shudder

So, a few years ago I conceded that I have to change the rules if I’m gonna continue my Halloween tradition of searching for unknown slasher gems. I don’t think there’s much in the way of obscure vintage shit I haven’t come across, and if there is I’ll probly only find out about it when Vinegar Syndrome or somebody releases it on blu-ray (maybe even 4K).

But many of you seem to enjoy the ritual as much as I do, so I’m trying my best to do some variation on it, and the most realistic approach seems to be checking for newer slasher-ish movies on streaming services. When it comes to Tubi, the trick is digging through a million horror movies you never heard of trying to find the good ones. I plan to do some of that soon (probly after the holiday, sorry), but this month I’ve mostly been using the actual curated horror service, Shudder. So here’s an investigation of a trio I watched that are in the slasher tradition.

NIGHT OF THE REAPER is from this year. It’s set in the ‘80s, and many of today’s horror fans love that VHS look, so the opening credits have tracking issues and the killer likes to make videos of his murders, which get delivered to some of his intended victims. This is a whodunit slasher but it’s very intentionally evoking Carpenter by switching between a babysitter and someone investigating the masked killer who may be out on a night close to Halloween (judging by all the decorations).

In the opening you get the scene where a babysitter (Summer H. Howell, CURSE OF CHUCKY, HUNTER HUNTER, and oh shit she’s gonna be Carrie in the upcoming Mike Flanagan show of Carrie) thinks she’s alone and elaborately dances and lip synchs (which reminded me of the diner movie LAST STRAW, also on Shudder). Director Brandon Christensen (Z, SUPERHOST, THE PUPPETMAN), and co-writer Ryan Christensen put together many of these familiar suspense tropes that always work if they’re directed well enough, which they are. She starts finding notes saying things like “Your pretty” [sic] and she thinks it’s the kids doing it, but of course it’s not. It’s somebody in a skull mask and hood. The Reaper, we can assume.

A year later or something, Deena (Jessica Clement, DREAM SCENARIO) visits home from college for the weekend, for the first time since a death in the family. Then she follows in the footsteps of Laurie Strode by covering her horny friend’s babysitting gig. She watches Max (Max Christensen) while his dad, Sheriff Rodney Arnold (Ryan Robbins, TURBULENCE 3: HEAVY METAL), is out investigating the Reaper, having received packages with some of the tapes and even the garage door opener for the house where the first killings happened.

There are not really traditional slasher movie kills – the deaths are seen after the fact, on shaky home videos. But there’s a heavy duty twist where (NON-SPECIFIC SPOILERS), arguably a Worm-on-a-Hook-like one, where it turns out Deena actually knows what’s going on and has been setting things in motion to turn the tables on the Reaper. It’s pretty different from the standard routine, but the trouble is that it’s only the last 20 minutes and the set up is designed to seem completely generic to catch us off guard. So even though it’s well executed I confess that the whole movie exited my mind in a hurry, so much so that during the couple of weeks between when I first watched it and when I was able to write about it I forgot about the twist entirely. Even while watching it it’s so interested in creating a particular retro slasher feel that it felt familiar, like I might’ve already seen it, or a short it was based on or something. I think what it was reminding me of was “The Babysitter Murders,” a segment in THE MORTUARY COLLECTION that did start as a short, and that (now that I read about it) also had a big twist I totally forgot about.

I don’t think HALLOWEEN was the first horror movie about a babysitter, but obviously it drew attention to the potential for scares in that occupation, followed by WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. It’s interesting that babysitting has since become shorthand for an old school horror plot; see also HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, ALL HALLOW’S EVE, THE BABYSITTER and its sequel.

Clement is a good lead, and it seems like a sincere movie, I like that it’s not jokey, but there’s so much pastiche it sometimes feels like the fake horror movie being watched by people in a real horror movie. Then at the end all the sudden there’s narration that I’m pretty sure is modeled after THE DARK KNIGHT. I guess everything can’t come from HALLOWEEN. (The end credits do play “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” though.)

RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE (2019) is I think more ambitious than NIGHT OF THE REAPER, but overall less successful. It’s directed by the dragon trainer himself Jay Baruchel, who wrote it with Jesse Chabot (GOON: THE LAST ENFORCER), adapted from a 2010 comic book of the same name by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Giancarlo Caracuzzo

This one is about a comic book artist named Todd Walkley (Jesse Williams, BROOKLYN’S FINEST, THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) who brags about creating “the #1 R-rated comic book in the genre,” Slasherman. But he’s decided to end the book, and he’s struggling with the last issue. The opening demonstrates one of the big problems with making movies about comic book artists, which is that they almost always make the comic book in the movie look like absolute shit that no fucking way would be popular enough for this guy to be famous. That’s definitely the case here, with one of those mediocre limited animation sequences they always do, with ugly 3D animation mimicking drawings, and pretentious narration delivered by Jordana Brewster (THE FACULTY, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING) as Todd’s girlfriend Kathy. The only thing that made me keep watching was that Kathy doesn’t seem very impressed by the script. It’s clear that it’s not ready.

Todd complains, “They’re not gonna fucking get it anyway, because anytime I try to do anything with any semblance of substance, critics misrepresent it completely, or members of my audience — it’s lost on them.” He says he’s trying to “put a little bit of medicine in the sugar” for the final issue. but nobody’s having it. This is based on a real comic book so presumably its authors know what they’re talking about, but I was surprised to see a comic book artist so preoccupied with “critics.” Is he worried about Comics Journal being mean to him or something? If their criticism is that what he thinks is medicine is actually just self-important gibberish then I agree with them.

Anyway he’ll keep working on the script while they go on a road trip with his publisher Ezra (Baruchel, COSMOPOLIS) and assistant Aurora (Niamh Wilson, SAW III-VI, MAPS TO THE STARS) to promote the end of Slasherman, and they’re purposely stopping in towns where Kathy can research a book.

Here’s the part of the story I had trouble swallowing. Todd is very open about his character, who he describes as the hero, being inspired by a still-at-large serial killer known as the I-90 Killer. Kathy’s is interviewing people who knew the victims, and claims her book is only “peripherally” related to her boyfriend’s work, because it’s “about give a voice to those who, um, no longer have a voice.” A separate thing based on her own interests. Though they’re intentionally going to towns where this guy killed people they’re all surprised when one of the interviewers pulls out a photo of a victim and reveals she was his friend. It’s obviously meant to be uncomfortable, and to question Todd’s artistic choices, but it would work better if the comic seemed somehow appealing, so you would feel guilty about liking it. But who would like that? A tasteless idea, but not an original one, and some of the art is pretty bad.

This benefits from a really strong cast. Williams is especially good at sounding natural talking about his great artistic works, or getting in arguments about it. They all have a good chemistry for giving each other shit, and Wilson is particularly likable, which is always worrying in a horror movie, because you know how that can go. (Worrying is good.)

Anyway he starts getting cryptic phone calls (the first one on the air at a radio station) with a voice just saying numbers, a code to later be deciphered, and also there start being murders mimicking the elaborate gore in his creation. Is it some supernatural comic book come to life thing? Like Super Freddy in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD? Or a copycat? I wasn’t sure at first. Anyway they argue about whether to go to the police, they becomes suspects, etc.

At its best I found RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE to be actually pretty scary. A group of young people have a flat tire during a storm at night, a van pulls up and then the driver gets out wearing a welding mask. They get scared and lie that they’re okay, they already called a friend. He gets mad, starts raging and hitting the vehicles before stabbing them THE RAID style. It reminds me more of ZODIAC than a horror movie. And the nastiest gore is seen laying in a street after the cops arrive. Feels like true crime. Very upsetting. Very effective.

Unfortunately it sorta has to go back to that comic book and how he’s trying to come up with an ending, and that’s where it loses me a bit. I guess it wouldn’t be that bad of an ending if he didn’t insist on adding narration. “Truth is the forced perspective that mutates the abstract into reality. Real art is born of truth.” What the fuck are you even talking about, man? On the plus side, this one is less than 80 minutes long. Actually I kind of recommend it. I would definitely watch another Baruchel joint. He’s got something.

I also watched JACK-O (or JACKO LANTERN according to the opening credits), a genuine vintage slasher from 1995. This one is a stretch for Slasher Search only because I was already aware of its existence and Joe Bob Briggs played it on The Last Drive-In the night after I watched it, pointing everybody in its direction. The motherfucker. But it’s a pretty fun b-movie so I wanted to write about it.

The keyboard soundtrack, terrible font and and rudimentary CG of the opening credits had me ready to give up about ten seconds in, but as soon as the actual movie starts there is a weird guy at a campfire telling stories to a little nerdy kid named Sean (director Steve Latshaw’s son Ryan), and the guy is threateningly waving a knife while talking about “that old nursery rhyme” about “Mr. Jack will break your back, cut off your head with a whack whack whack.” I like when movies make up a fake nursery rhyme and everybody in the movie knows it. Also this guy uses such a bizarre non-actor acting style, doing a cartoonish pervert voice, that it’s instantly clear that this is some oddball fringe thing. It has personality. I’m in.

Sean’s eyes bug out as the guy tells him about a wizard who was lynched but put a curse on the town and came back from the dead on Halloween as a pumpkin man. Also a weird lady (Catherine Walsh, BIOHAZARD: THE ALIEN FORCE) walks out of the woods to listen to the story but they don’t notice her. There are historical re-creations of the story with the same actor as Sean playing a boy named Andrew. Then Sean wakes up… was the campfire story a dream? I’m not sure. And I respect that choice.

Sean walks around with an older dickhead kid named Robbie (Thor Schweigerath), who tries to scare him about “Mr. Jack” and a witch he saw walking around the neighborhood. It’s the eavesdropper from the dream! But driving around like “just a lady,” Sean points out. Robbie tries to throw rocks at her, referencing the historical stoning of witches, and they get in a fight about it but the lady comes over and rescues Sean. Her name is Vivian and she walks him home, becomes friends with him and offers to help his dad (Gary Doles) with the Halloween haunt he’s setting up in his garage.

The editing of the movie (by Wayland Strickland, who mostly seems to work on Star Trek fan films) is particularly weird, with odd flash transitions and scenes that crosscut between reality, Sean’s dreams, and Sean’s visions-within-dreams of the past. Sometimes this means cutting between day and night, or between scenes with the kid playing two different characters. I imagine it’s more disorienting than they intended, but it also creates a dreamy feel that’s appealing.

There are some shithead twenty-something-teens who go out in the woods to drink Hamm’s light beer and vandalize graves, which causes the resurrection of Jacko. Julie (Rachel Carter, additional crew, WITHOUT REMORSE) has a sister named Carolyn (Linnea Quigley, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD), who is Sean’s beloved regular babysitter who makes weird comments calling him her “boyfriend” and saying “I like little boys.” This is executive produced by and co-story-written by Fred Olen Ray, which is to say that there’s a scene where Linnea Quigley takes a shower and the camera lovingly zooms in on her butt and breasts as she slowly cleans them. And it cuts away to another scene and then comes back for more. Important to know how hygenic she is for the babysitting gig.

Jacko looks pretty cool, his face is rubbery but glows from inside. There are a variety of random side characters for him to have his way with. For example there’s a couple who spend their Halloween night watching an off-brand Rush Limbaugh guy (Tom Ferguson, BIKINI DRIVE-IN) on TV complaining about the disabled, the homeless and taxes. Then they tell trick-or-treaters to go away and stop asking for a handout, so we’re happy to see kids prank them and Jacko harvest them with a scythe.

(Why must we always have correct politics in our horror, it’s too woke these days as well as thirty years ago.)

The Halloween setting is strong – lots of decorations, costumes, trick-or-treating, confusion between real dead bodies and fake ones, and a guy telling the resurrected wizard pumpkin man “Nice costume, butthead.” The gore is enjoyably silly, while being treated seriously (check out that severed head prop there). In addition to Quigley they have John Carradine in a small part, Cameron Mitchell (stock footage) as a horror host on TV, and Brinke Stevens (SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA) as a witch.

I’m not saying this is a good horror movie, but movies like this are part of why the genre is so great. Something like this can just be dumb, cheesy fun and then age into something a little more special. A natural process that benefits us all. Happy Halloween, everybody. More soon.