I always keep an eye out for new films from Lucky McKee, because he’s the director of my official Favorite Horror Movie of the 2010s, THE WOMAN. Even your average individual who knows who Lucky McKee is may not have heard of his young-people-find-some-stolen-cash thriller BLOOD MONEY or his Lifetime Channel domestic thriller KINDRED SPIRITS, but you bet I’ve seen and reviewed them. He has a new one that came out on VOD recently called OLD MAN, and I didn’t review that one because it’s so simple I didn’t really know how to write about it. It’s pretty much like a two person play with two actors I like – Stephen Lang (BAND OF THE HAND) and Marc Senter (BRAWLER) – having a long, increasingly strange conversation/confrontation in a remote cabin. I didn’t feel like I totally understood where it ended up, but I enjoyed the experience.
Before Halloween I rewatched Tobe Hooper’s THE TOOLBOX MURDERS, which stars long time McKee collaborator Angela Bettis, and I read in an old Fangoria that McKee himself almost played the toolbox murderer in it, and that he hooked up Hooper with cinematographer Steve Yedlin, who’d shot his first film. That inspired me to revisit MAY and also reminded me that despite all my bragging in the first paragraph there were two other McKee/Bettis joints from the aughts that I hadn’t actually seen. What the fuck dude. So I did a triple feature.
I can’t keep up with as many TV shows as some people do these days, but I have a few, and right now the one I love the most is Reservation Dogs. It’s on FX (and streaming on Hulu) and so far there are only 2 seasons totaling 18 half hour episodes, so it wouldn’t be that hard to catch up on. It centers on a group of teenagers who live on a reservation in Oklahoma, though sometimes it veers off to be more about their elders. It reminds me of my other favorite show, Atlanta, in that it has this A+ ensemble of core characters surrounding straight woman Elora (Devery Jacobs) who are each so hilarious in their own way that whenever it focuses on one of them I start to think that’s my favorite character. They have their funny shit they obsess over and their ways of saying things but maybe the funniest stuff is just their expressions seeing and listening to all the ridiculous things they encounter. (And the truth is my favorite is Willie Jack, played by Paulina Alexis.)
SECTION 8 came to VOD a couple months ago and now is on disc and I guess AMC+. It’s a solid and enjoyable movie of its type, with a good cast, some good fights, and liberal use of familiar action conventions that tend to be enjoyable. However I’m gonna show it a little tough love in this review because, as we agreed when I went on
The story begins in “Mosul, Afghanistan” (uh… whoops) where Jake Atherton (Kwanten) is, we’re told, a really great marine, but his platoon is ambushed by the Taliban and only he and his mentor Captain Mason (Dolph Lundgren, HAIL CAESAR!) survive. I’m kind of unclear what happens, but later we’re told that Mason saved Jake’s life and also received a career-ending leg injury. 
Friends, I am here to announce that I have officially transitioned from 
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER has so much more to live up to than just being the next Marvel movie. As the first sequel to 
I don’t know why it took me so long to see A CURE FOR WELLNESS. I guess I missed it at the time and kept putting it off due to mediocre reviews, but what the fuck, Vern? You’ve liked this director since fucking MOUSE HUNT, you were won over by 
LOST BULLET 2 is, yes, the sequel to 
This year I celebrated Halloween by taking the day off of work and watching a witch-themed triple feature. This is not something I ever thought I’d do, because I’ve always had that issue with historical witch movies where it kinda bothers me to pretend there’s a such thing as witches, since that’s the superstitious bullshit that real life tyrants used as an excuse to torture and murder many innocent people in this country and elsewhere. But there were a couple witch-related movies I’d been thinking I’d like to rewatch, and at the same time I’d been thinking about my late mother, who loved to dress as a witch every Halloween. She painted her face green and glued on a warty latex nose with spirit gum. Some of the younger kids in the neighborhood were terrified of her, but she got a kick out of it. So I dedicate this witch-a-thon to her.
THE DEADLY INTRUDER (1985) is not a very good horror movie, but it’s a pretty good Slasher Search find. It’s an obscure only-on-VHS one from not-prolific filmmakers, but watchable due to okay production values, competent acting, a catchy synth score by director John McCauley (whose only other directing credit is a 1976 snake movie called RATTLERS), and a pretty fun (but very easy to see coming) twist. It’s fairly low rent, but it does have a Hollywood veteran (Stuart Whitman, 
It uses the most generic premise of post-
I only managed to do one Slasher Search entry in October of ’22, 
