"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Americana

AMERICANA is an ensemble crime movie set in rural South Dakota and Wyoming, where regular, likable doofuses clash with dangerous, organized crime doofuses. It definitely falls into the category of contemporary westerns (complete with a siege), but it might also be fair to say it’s in somewhat of a ‘90s post-Tarantino indie crime movie vein. Only in a good way, I’d say. Not a copycat. It’s a good variation on a clever but unpretentious story with some violence, some laughs, a good cast playing colorful characters, and even some interesting themes running through it. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

It’s divided into parts with titles, introducing different characters, and in the second one we see a living person who died in the first chapter, so we know it can be non-linear. But that turns out to be a one time deal – part 1 is a flash forward that establishes the tone and tips us off not to worry too much about one particularly scary guy. But there will be plenty of others to look out for. (read the rest of this shit…)

November 3rd, 2025 | 12 Comments »

Nightbreed (special Halloween revisit)

There was a time when I was 14 years old and Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED was my favorite movie. Maybe that was too soon to move on from BATMAN, or maybe they were both my favorite movie. They blew my brain open in a similar way, and come to think of it they have more in common than just baroque, enthralling music by Danny Elfman (his ninth and tenth film scores). Both are ambitious early films from idiosyncratic directors who are also visual artists, who are breaking into a larger budget range than their previous work but getting even wilder than before. Both are arguably a little stiff with the traditional action expected of a blockbuster, but it doesn’t even register much because they’re so overflowing with visual imagination and invention that they create their own, very specific worlds. And though both were intended as mainstream event movies, at their heart they’re by, for, and about misfits and weirdos.

NIGHTBREED, unfortunately, was treated like a misfit and weirdo itself. It was produced by Morgan Creek (YOUNG GUNS, ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES) and distributed by 20th Century Fox (whose other releases that year included DIE HARD 2, PREDATOR 2 and HOME ALONE), but they didn’t know what to do with it. Barker was forced to make compromises that were drastic, though not catastrophic in my opinion (or I would never have loved it so much). Other than changing from the book’s title Cabal (I agree with that), they really didn’t know how to market it to the normies, though they did okay with nerds. I still cling dearly to autographed comic books and a “Nightbreed Chronicles” paperback with portraits and bios of the movie’s Star-Wars-esque collection of background creatures. Though a triumph in the minds of myself and my best friend at the time, it was a financial flop and novelist turned director Barker never even wrote the next book in the proposed trilogy. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 31st, 2025 | 14 Comments »

Night of the Reaper/Random Acts of Violence/Jack-O

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.

(read the rest of this shit…)

October 29th, 2025 | 6 Comments »

It Chapter Two

When IT CHAPTER TWO came out six years ago I heard that it was really bad (a subjective opinion) and two hours and fifty minutes long (a verifiable measurement). The “bad” part isn’t really a dealbreaker for a courageous viewer like yours truly, but combined with the length it was intimidating. Still, I intended to see it because I’m a horror fan and a merciful soul (I didn’t even hate director Andy Muschietti’s followup THE FLASH) and I promised friends I would see it so we could talk about it. But every October since it’s sat there on my list.

This month I watched a Sophia Lillis and a Finn Wolfhard and a couple Bill Skarsgårds and I decided it was time to stop running. It was time to go back home and face IT CHAPTER TWO. I’m not proud of it but my method was to watch it in three one-hour installments like a TV show. I know that’s not the way to watch an epic and I wouldn’t normally do it, but it finally got me through. (And the filmmakers probly figured out that was the best way to do it too, because they’re just starting a prequel TV series called Welcome to Derry.) (read the rest of this shit…)

October 27th, 2025 | 14 Comments »

Other

I saw that Shudder had a new movie from David Moreau, one of the directors of that 2006 French movie THEM (ILS). We all thought that one was scary at the time, I seem to remember. He had one last year called MADS that I’ve been intending to see but this OTHER stars Olga Kurylenko, and I enjoy her action works such as SENTINELLE, THE PRINCESS, HIGH HEAT and BOUDICA: QUEEN OF WAR, so I got right to it.

Let me tell you, this is a weird role for her, and a weird movie. Her character Alice returns to her childhood home after the death of her estranged mother. She spends much of the movie hanging out alone and pantsless in the house, smokes an old joint, gets nostalgic for her teenage years, also starts to hear weird noises like there’s an animal sneaking around, also is being spied on by a drone and hunting cameras, also is kind of a nut so she gets drunk and wanders in the woods wearing her Miss Teen USA gown. Eventually she’ll find out what that noise is and also be trapped in a bunker by a teen wearing a mask (Sacha Nugent) and also find out shocking secrets about her past and also by the way for many years someone or something in the area has been eating the faces of animals and people, including her mom. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 23rd, 2025 | 5 Comments »

Bring Her Back

BRING HER BACK is this year’s release from Danny and Michael Philippou, the Australian twins “known for their horror comedy YouTube videos” according to Wikipedia, but I know them for the 2023 ghost movie TALK TO ME, which I enjoyed. The brothers both direct while Danny writes with Bill Hinzman (no, not the cemetery zombie from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD – I looked it up, and he died in 2012). This is another impressive Philippou Brothers joint, more serious than the last, not much humor this time, but just the right level of bleakness for me.

It’s about a half brother and sister who are having a rough go of it. Piper (newcomer Sora Wong) is blind, but tries to go without her cane to fit in at school, which doesn’t work. Andy (Billy Barratt, “Street urchin,” MARY POPPINS RETURNS) is older, seems to have been a mess since the death of their mother, but he’s very loving and protective of Piper. Then they come home and find their dad dead in the shower. This may be a dumb thing to note but I think it’s important that he’s just laying there with his junk visible, because for all our lives most movies have lived in a world designed to avoid the sight of dicks. Seeing one here adds a blunt reality that makes the death more matter of fact, and more shocking. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 21st, 2025 | 12 Comments »

Black Phone 2

BLACK PHONE 2 is an interesting sequel, and not just because they dropped the ‘THE’ and streamlined the title, FAST & FURIOUS style. It’s also because it follows the somewhat forgotten slasher sequel tradition of having to invent some new mythology to continue a story that seemed pretty damn wrapped up last time. The first movie (based on a short story by Joe Hill) used the supernatural elements of ghosts and psychic dreams, but its villain was just a plain old mortal human who kidnaps kids in a particular suburb of Denver. And then he got killed. Can’t really redo that, so what they came up with feels fresh.

The protagonist of the first one was Finney (Mason Thames, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON live action version), who gets abducted and locked in a basement by the Grabber (Ethan Hawke, EXPLORERS), and the titular telecommunications device allows him to speak to the ghosts of previous victims, so they pool what they know about the place their in and the Grabber’s activities, and together conceive an escape plan. Meanwhile his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, AMERICAN SNIPER) is at home surviving their abusive alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies, DARK HARVEST) and having psychic dreams with clues that help her locate Finney.

For the sequel Finney is back, older and tougher, having taken over for the bullies who used to beat the shit out of him at school, and also partaking in quite a bit of weed. Thames has grown into such an authentic 1982 rocker dude face that I was a little thrown off by him wearing a Peter Gabriel t-shirt, but that’s okay. Finney avoids categorization. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 20th, 2025 | 6 Comments »

The Hitcher (2007)

THE HITCHER (2007) is a Platinum Dunes remake I had no interest in at the time. Robert Harmon’s 1986 cult classic obviously didn’t require a remake, and I didn’t trust those guys to do one. Also almost everybody said it was terrible. I do know of an exception – Jordan Crucchiola and Sam Wineman used to rave about it on their podcast Aughtsterion, and they got it to #1 on the “’00 Slashers” episode of Screen Drafts. They’re younger and much more attached to that era of horror than me, but their enthusiasm made me curious.

And I think they’re right! There’s a good chance I wouldn’t have liked it back then, when I had a grudge against Michael Bay productions and the original was more fresh on my mind. It’s certainly not a replacement, and some of it might’ve been lessened if I remembered the original better. But viewed on its own, as 2007 studio horror, it’s pretty impressive – a vicious 84 minute head on collision of a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 17th, 2025 | 10 Comments »

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) is pretty much what I was hoping for: a traditional/formulaic slasher movie, sometimes slightly more clever than expected, sometimes dumb enough to get some laughs. It has a solid cast of fresh faces, just the right amount of “legacy sequel” characters (more than cameos, less than leads), and a couple fun surprises that I guess people didn’t care enough about to spoil for me even though I missed this in theaters. Thank you! I had a good time watching it at home with friends and a box of Jason Voorhees sponsored cider.

Like HALLOWEEN and SCREAM and almost TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE before it this is not a remake but a sequel that inexplicably has the same title as the original. It does feature a new group of young people who do a new cover up of a new car accident, but when they receive a note saying “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER” and start getting killed by somebody dressed as a fisherman holding a hook they recognize this as something that happened before and they go to original main characters Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt, CAN’T HARDLY WAIT) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr., WING COMMANDER) for advice.

In the trailer this seemed like a ridiculous concept – what advice could they really give? (Unless it’s “Turn yourself in.”) There’s definitely a certain amount of DIE HARD 2 “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” knowing absurdity at play. But the idea is that the fishing town of Southport, North Carolina has been gentrified and turned into a highly profitable resort town, and in the process information about the 1997 murders was scrubbed from the internet to protect their reputation. So trying to learn more about the crimes is the group’s only lead for figuring out who would by copying them now. Okay, I’ll go with it. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 16th, 2025 | 10 Comments »

One Battle After Another

(there will be spoilers)

I was pretty sure I’d like Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, but I was surprised to walk out feeling it was the movie of the year. That’s not only because it speaks so deeply to our exact moment of political insanity, but because it’s such an exhilarating viewing experience – confident, masterful filmmaking, very effective as a thriller, but also extremely funny, absurd and original. It’s possibly Anderson’s most traditionally entertaining movie but it doesn’t feel in any way watered down or compromised.

I saw it in bona fide IMAX, where its Vista Vision format fills the entire screen, so the anxiety-inducing score by Johnny Greenwood rumbles in your jaw as you stare at a scraggly, sweaty, 37-foot-tall Leonardo DiCaprio face fretting and scowling. Then sometimes it switches to a taller version of a Sergio-Leone-type-shot where two tiny characters stand apart on opposite sides of the screen. That’s the full range of cinema right there.

The credits say this was inspired by (not adapted from) the book Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. I was surprised when I learned that character names like Perfidia Beverly Hills, Virgil Throckmorton and Junglepussy didn’t come from the book. These little heightened details spike a mostly naturalistic feeling world with exaggeration and draw attention to the authentic ridiculousness of our world. Sometimes that feels more real than if it was realistic. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 14th, 2025 | 19 Comments »

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