Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #18 Sea Fever

 In Sea Fever, Siobhan, a solitary, socially-awkward marine biology student, ships out with an Irish fishing boat as part of her studies, to catalog their catch in order to [insert vague movie science here].  Siobhan has difficulty connecting with people - and the fact that the fishing crew think she is bad luck because she is a redhead doesn't help - but the owners of the boat, Freya (Connie Nielsen) and Gerard (a haggard Dougray Scott), need her university's money.  Off-shore and straying into an "exclusion zone," ostensibly to avoid calving whales, the boat gets fetched up on something.  When Siobhan dons her scuba gear (most of the crew can't swim because better to drown quickly than slowly - yikes), they learn that an enormous creature, like a huge starfish with squid-like tentacles, has hold of them.  It appears to be an entirely new species - and an unfriendly one, as it starts oozing its way on board, chewing through the hull and sending larvae into their water filtration system.  It is infectious too and soon enough the formerly close-knit crew is turning against each other, just as poor Siobhan is starting to make friends.

Sea Fever is a sleepy little movie, where not much actually happens.  It's not really scary or suspenseful and only has a couple of icky bits (exploding eyeballs for the win yo).  The characters are pretty shallow; there aren't really any jump scares.  There are plenty of other, better movies that Sea Fever has borrowed from, like Alien and The Thing.

I have one more bonus movie to add here, so hopefully we'll go out on a high[er] note ...

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #17 Nightbreed (1990)

 The very first thing I wrote down whilst watching Nightbreed: "I don't know what this movie is about but just from the pre-opening credits sequence, I am HERE FOR IT."  And the male lead, Craig Sheffer, looked super-familiar [from A River Runs Through It, I guess].

Aaron Boone (Sheffer) is a troubled young man, tormented by dreams of monsters and Midian, the city those monsters live in.  He's been in therapy for a while and has made great progress, with a solid job and a solid girlfriend, and he hasn't had the dreams for years.  And then his former therapist (played creepily by David Cronenberg) calls him up and says that he thinks Boone is responsible for the brutal slayings of six families over the last ten months.  Panicked, Boone runs and, after a chance meeting with a crazy person in the hospital, makes his way to Midian.  Which is real.  And populated by real monsters, who are generally nice people, just trying to live their lives, in hiding from humans who have persecuted them throughout history.  Boone's arrival draws unwanted attention, however, and soon Midian is wracked by conflict, within and without.

Clive Barker's follow-up to Hellraiser, directed by Barker himself and based on his book Cabal, Nightbreed is more dark fantasy, never really scary (although I did jump a couple of times) but with a fair amount of violence and gore.  It's a bit cheesy and kind of incoherent (likely from the studio's interference and insistence on changes from Barker's original vision) but the monster make-up, prosthetics and puppets are incredible.  I don't know that I'll make the effort to track down the recently released Director's Cut, which is reported to be closer to what Barker intended, but I'm definitely glad I added Nightbreed to this year's watchlist.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #16 Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

 Repo! The Genetic Opera has been on my list for a while and now, finally and emphatically, I can cross it off that list and never watch it again.  R!TGO is Type 2 fun for sure: I very much disliked it while I was watching it (also fell asleep for one scene but couldn't be bothered to go back for it) but now, after sleeping on it, I'm feeling much charitably inclined.

Since, as I said above, I fell asleep for a while - one would have hoped that a post-apocalyptic goth horror rock opera would have held my attention - I'm not super clear on the plot.  At some point in the future, the world experienced an epidemic of organ failures; one company, Geneco, began financing organ transplants and implemented fashion surgery and if you couldn't make your payments, your organs would get ripped out of your sad little body by Repo-men.  Our heroine is little Shilo (Alexa Vega), sick with a blood disease and kept cloistered at home by her doctor dad Nathan (Anthony Stewart Head, emoting for all he's worth).  The villain is the head of Geneco, played by Paul Sorvino; one of his awful children is played by Paris Hilton (who apparently won a Razzie for her role).  Also popping up is the amazing actual opera singer Sarah Brightman, who is Shilo's godmother and current indentured spokesperson for Geneco.  There's secrets and conflicts and quite a lot of blood.

R!TGO is what the goth/theater kids would have put together with a little (very little funding).  The sets are all flimsy and look like they've come right off a community theater stage (no offense to community theater, some of which can be quite good).  The "songs" are arrhythmic and not the slightest bit catchy: because this is an "opera" instead of a "musical," there are no spoken lines - everything is sung and so the "songs" are just sung dialogue, hardly the basis for a Top 40 hit.  It is definitely bloody and violent, with stacks of corpses, faces falling off and being pinned back on, disembowellings and guts flying everywhere.  Anthony Stewart Head and Sarah Brightman are powerhouses and the best parts of the whole thing.  And now I've depleted all the [nice] things I have to say about that. 

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #15 Unsane

Shot on a smartphone, psychological horror flick Unsane (on Hulu) is actually a legitimate movie (unlike the next one coming up): directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Claire Foy, Jay Pharoah, Juno Temple and Amy Irving, with a cameo by Matt Damon.  

Sawyer (Foy, American accent slipping occasionally) is at a new job in a new city, hooking up with random dudes but still clearly traumatized from a two-year stalking situation.  She interviews a therapist with whom she connects and, at the end of the initial session, fills out some paperwork that - she thinks - is setting up future appointments.  When she tries to leave the clinic, however, she finds that she has unwittingly checked herself into a "voluntary" 24-hour observation; she freaks out, obviously, and that lands her in a seven-day observation hold.  As kind, wry, articulate Nate (Pharoah) explains to her, her insurance is paying the clinic and they're not about to let her go until the money runs out.  He advises her to stay calm, play nice and try to get along with the other inmates.

Problem is, one of the orderlies is, according to Sawyer, the asshole who stalked her for two years.  She can't get away from him, can't get help from the administration or the outside world.  She ends up doing whatever she has to do to get out.

Unsane is not really horror per se, more a psychological thriller with some violent/bloody bits, but it is plenty creepy, unsettling and disturbing.  My notes: "OK that was pretty good" - high praise indeed.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #14 Body Bags (1993)

 1993's Body Bags is an fun anthology (originally aired on Showtime) with three unrelated episodes bound within a framework.  Ths first story is "Unleaded," about a night shift gas station attendant dealing with a local serial killer.  The second is "Hair," where an insecure balding man gets an unconventional hair-regrowth treatment with side effects.  The last, "Baseball Man," is about a talented minor league player, on the verge of getting called up to the majors, who loses an eye in an accident and receives a possessed transplant via an experimental procedure.  The first has some tense moments; the second is silly; and the third is slightly disturbing and fairly gross.

What's so amazing about Body Bags is the cast:  John Carpenter (directs the first two episodes and is the main actor in the framework), Tobe Hooper (directs the third and acts in the framework), Sam Raimi (cameo), Wes Craven (acts), Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine (Revenge of the Nerds), Tom Arnold, a fine-looking David Noughton (American Werewolf in London), Stacy Keach, Greg Nicotero (The Walking Dead, etc.), Debbie Harry (!!), Sheena Easton (!), Kim Alexis, Twiggy and Roger Corman (acts).  Holy moly - that's some serious horror movie pedigree in there!  Even though the anthology itself is a little lightweight, it is worth watching just to see all those folks.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #13 One Cut of the Dead

 If you haven't seen One Cut of the Dead, it is best to go into it as unspoiled as possible.  This is what I knew when I put in the DVD (yes): a low budget film crew shooting a zombie movie at an abandoned government facility encounters actual zombies; and it was filmed in one long shot.

I am not going to say anything else (other than there is a lot of running and screaming - and also this movie looks like it was a ton of fun to make) because I found One Cut of the Dead slight but charming (yes) and an entertaining take on the over-exposed zombie genre.  If you watch it, I hope you do too.  [Japanese with English subtitles]

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #12 Chopping Mall (1986)

 Hello to the glorious Eighties!  In this silly little movie, Chopping Mall, we have: lace body stockings (I completely forgot about those), stacked bangles, Guess jeans, popped collars, Heineken beer, relentless synth music, big hair with lots of hairspray, hightop Reeboks (or knockoffs) and, that hallmark of 1980s horror, lots of red tempera paint "blood."

The "plot" is this: the mall is instituting a new security systems consisting of patrolling robots that are controlled by a central computer system.  "Absolutely nothing can go wrong," says the head of security at the demo.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, say all of us who have ever seen a horror movie.  Sure enough, a freak electrical storm fries the computer system and the "Killbots" become sentient.  They start racking up the kills (nine total, by my count).  Meanwhile, eight "teens" are having an after-hours beer-and-sex party in one of the mall's stores - which the Killbots obviously take issue with.

Chopping Mall is clearly a classic 80s B movie and, despite being set at a mall, is not quite the pointed indictment of capitalism that Day of the Dead was.  This flick is super cheesy, although keep in mind that computers were not omnipresent like they are now, and this was the era where there were several movies with the theme of the dangers of rogue technology (War Games and Terminator come immediately to mind).  The "acting" is terrible but there is one exploding head (the Killbots have "lasers") which is quite excellent.  You could probably just google that clip online and save yourself 75 minutes.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 Hellraiser (2022)

Another remake of a 1980s horror classic: Hellraiser.  We start at a hedonistic rich people's party, where the host, Mr. Voight, has nearly solved a puzzle box.  He sacrifices a pretty, vapid youth in an attempt to [make contact with the Cenobites because if you're watching this remake, chances are you've seen at least one of the vastly superior original movies and know WTF is going on].  

Six years later, deadbeat Riley (kind of a druggie mess and fighting with her big brother, her only remaining family) and boyfriend Trevor break into a storage facility.  They're hoping to score bit but all they find is that puzzle box.  Riley is drawn to it and begins figuring it out.  When the Cenobites arrive, they take her brother - who had gotten stabbed by the box's spike trying to revive his passed out sister - and she starts investigating the box further.  This leads her - and Trevor, and her brother's boyfriend and their roommate - to Voight's abandoned (or is it?) mansion.  The gang starts getting picked off as the Cenobites surround them, edging ever closer to ... whatever the hell it is that these creatures want.  It's really not clear (or if it was clear, I wasn't paying attention): whoever solves the puzzle box gets a reward, except that the rewards are really pain and punishment and a perfect example of be careful what you wish for.

I was not impressed with this remake of Hellraiser (although it makes the Evil Dead remake much better in comparison).  I did like the idea of a gender-bent Pinhead (Jamie Clayton, Sens8) but (1) the pins didn't go all the way around her head, (2) her distorted voice was very difficult to understand and (3) she just wasn't menacing like the OG - she just seemed small.  In fact, all the new Cenobite designs were inferior to the original: it looked fake and overdone, not seductively ominous in black leather and piercings.  Although, just like in the original, the chattery-teeth Cenobite was my favorite.

Verdict:  Gory, oh yes, but neither creepy nor scary and the Cenobites sucked.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #10 Werewolf By Night

While Marvel's Werewolf By Night (on Disney+) is not technically a movie, it is a thematically-relevant special so I'm including it here.  At only 53 minutes long, and being a one-off, I guess you could call it a short film.  I'm calling it so much fun.

Quick plot synopsis: Famed monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone has died and his widow assembles some prolific but lesser hunters to compete for his magic relic, a bloodstone that imbues its holder with strength, protection and power.  There are four tough-looking characters (whose names I didn't catch), plus Jack (played by Gael Garcia Bernal), a quiet Mexican, and Elsa, Bloodstone's estranged daughter.  It's obvious that Jack and Elsa will eventually and reluctantly team up, but that doesn't diminish any of the charm.

From the opening moments, I was in love with Werewolf By Night: almost entirely in black and white (like a 1930s monster movie), slightly campy and yet still creepy, with wonderful retro music.  And the titular werewolf is all practical effects - a person in a wolf suit - which is just how I like my werewolves.  The climactic fight is just awesome: bloody, vicious and violent, definitely more along the lines of Jessica Jones/Daredevil than the Avengers and their ilk.  Plus there's a frickin' flaming tuba!  What more could you possibly want, except more of it?

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #9 12 Hour Shift

 Written and directed by Brea Grant (who got launched to wide notice in her role on Heroes back in the day), 12 Hour Shift is a horror/comedy/heist/farce that takes a minute to get going but that I found extremely entertaining.  Mandy is a junkie nurse working night shifts at a small Arkansas hospital. She is involved in a human organ trafficking ring where she and a supervisor procure the organs - Mandy is the one who kills the patients - which are delivered to a local thug by Mandy's dumb-as-a-stump cousin (by marriage) Regina.  When Regina loses the kidney she was supposed to deliver, she asks the reluctant and pissed off Mandy to help her get another one.  Things start to unravel when Regina tries to take care of it herself, resulting in friendly but ineffective cops bumbling around, an escaped convict (David Arquette), drug overdoses, needy patients and terrible birthday cake.  Plus a really excellent hallway dance sequence.

Mandy, played by the always good Angela Bettis, is a fantatsic character: capable but strung out, frustrated, annoyed, loyal, grumpy.  I thought the Regina character started out ridiculous but by the end, well, she was still ridiculous but I liked her.

In addition to being fairly gory (but never scary, so not really horror per se) and a bit lightweigtht, 12 Hour Shift actually does a good job of portraying what nurses must have to go through: fatigue and stress, and having to muster kindness and compassion in the face of it, having to deal with people literally all the time, the stuggle to care for your patients when you sometimes find it difficult to care about anything at all.  Those realistic moments were as disturbing as any of the "scary" stuff.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 Evil Dead (2013)

I mean, how do you even dare to do an Evil Dead remake?  The original movies are iconic and yet, here we are.

Five friends gather in a super-creepy cabin in the woods (and now I want to watch that movie again) in a somber reunion to help Mia (Jane Levy, excellently bug-eyed and twitchy) kick her dope habit.  Others in attendance are healthcare worker Olivia, bookish Eric, Mia's older, absentee brother David, and David's girlfriend, "Natalie," who is such a non-entity that I didn't even know her name until the nail-gun started going off.

It hits all the horror tropes - which, back in the early 80s still was new but now opens no uncharted territory: people doing extremely stupid things like crawling into dark holes, going down into the fetid basement which is full of cat corpses strung from the ceiling, reading aloud from the Necromicon.  Seriously, who does that?  The cabin is much, much bigger on the inside that it would appear from exterior shots.  Brief, early appearances of a shotgun, electric knife and nail-gun, being used appropriately, clearly signal that we'll be seeing them all again later, in a much more gruesome manner.

Fans of the originals will recognize plenty of callbacks, including but not limited to evil hands, self-amputations and putting THE CHAINSAW into play.  I may have cheered a little at that one.  At the very end, there's a flash of humor as the last remaining characters are bathed in enough fake blood to make Dead Alive envious.  I would like to say, however, that I wish we hadn't revisited the invasive vine sequence.

Right from the start, this Evil Dead reworking shows that it is not going to back away from the gore and over-the-top violence, although the cheeky humor of II is definitely lacking.  Final verdict: not a complete waste of time for the viewer but there really wasn't any reason to remake this one.  Go back and rewatch the Bruce Campbell ones instead.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #7 #Alive

 Nothing like a zombie movie, amirite?  I do love a good one but these days, zombies are oversaturated.  There's been so many movies, plus The Walking Dead (remember when I used to recap that show? good times) and its spin-offs, that it's just difficult to come up with something new and exciting.  #Alive (2020, Korean, with English subtitles, on Netflix) is decent but not particularly groundbreaking.

The apocalypse (mini-apocalypse, really, very limited) happens quickly: people get infected, then they eat other people, then they get gnarlier and gnarlier as the disease progresses.  These are the fast zombie variety and technically they're not zombies since they're still alive (hahaha #alive lol); they are of the 28 Days/Weeks ilk: infected and deadly.

Our protagonist is a gamer dude who lives at home.  When he wakes up late one morning, finding a note from his mom that there's not much food in the house so he should go to the store, all hell breaks loose in Seoul.  Suffice it to say that he doesn't get a chance to grocery shop.  He hunkers down in the apartment, posts on social media to let people know he's still alive, and watches horrible things happening on the street below him.  Days pass, zombies break in sporadically although he's mostly barricaded in, the water gets shut off - and here's a quibble, how the fuck does he survive for fifteen days with scarcely any water? - and eventually he gets desperate.  But soft! What light from yonder window breaks?  It's another survivor in the apartment building across the way and thank goodness, she's a LOT more competent than our guy.

#Alive is entertaining enough, slightly different from the usual zombie fare due to the main characters' extreme isolation.  The zombie makeup is really good, which makes up for the fact that this isn't a particularly scary movie.  Or maybe after the last six years, zombies just don't scare me anymore.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #6 Day Shift

 Day Shift is a new (2022) straight-to-Netflix horror-comedy starring Jamie Foxx as Bud, a hard-working but non-union vampire hunter in the San Fernando valley.  When his ex-wife threatens to take their kid and move to Florida, he needs to come up with enough cash - quickly - to pay for the kid's tuition and braces to entice her to stay.  He wheedles his way back into the Vampire Hunters Union, on the good word of legendary slayer Snoop Dogg, but gets saddles with Seth, a bean-counting chaperone (Dave Franco).  JF starts racking up the kills (the hunters collects vamp teeth as proof) and soon kills the wrong old lady vampire, pissing off the head vamp, Audrey.  Audrey kidnaps Bud's family, there's lots of car chases ... and this just didn't hold my attention very well.

The action is solid, with good fight choreography, and it's plenty gory.  But this is not even close to scary, or all that funny, or all that original.  I give it a meh.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #5 Oats Studio

 From the mind of Neill Blomkamp comes Oats Studios, a series of post-apocalyptic / science fiction / horror short films (some of them very short), both animated and live action.  There's plenty of violence and gore but horror purists will likely take issue with my including this here.  I don't care.  This is my blog, this is my October series, I liked most of these little films and several of them made me squirm.  Scroll on by if you must.

Rakka - This was the longest of them, I think, an alien invasion/human resistance piece.  It very much looks like District 9 (love that movie).  Violent, bloody, with body mods and holy hell Sigourney Weaver!

Firebase - Set in Vietnam, U.S. forces finding tens of thousands dead, mutilated corpses like no one has ever seen, a survivor in the tunnel, the River God.  Unsettling.

Cooking with Bill - The scary movies are interspersed with funny ones to lighten the mood.  Cooking with Bill definitely has a lighter tone but HOLY FUCK I literally gagged at the sushi.  Not for those with weak stomachs.

God: Serengeti/ Chicago - Imagine God as a bored, petty deity inflicting pointless misery on the humans laid out before him in dioramas.  This is half live action and half animation and the tiny human animation is very, very good.

Zygote - Only two miners have survived out of 98 at the installation.  Something horrific killed the rest and the survivors are trying to get to the next building where there's a possibility of safety.  The male actor was nearly impossible for me to understand, speech-wise.  The monster is AMAZING and looks really good even though I think it's mostly animation and not practical.  This one counts as space horror.

Bad President - Another "funny" segment (not very funny) about how awful the U.S. president is after the alien invasion.  My least favorite of the lot.

Adam: Episode 2 - All robots, prisoners and guards.  They're trying to remember who they were, where they came from.  All animation.

Adam: Episode 3 - A mystic requires all supplicants to renounce technology in exchange for refuge, healing and miracles.  The miracles are real but there's a twist.  Uncanny valley animation.

Gdansk - More uncanny animation (not my favorite style, to be honest) set in what looks like medieval times.  Plus there's a giant.  And the Neverending Story theme song which made me laugh.

Kapture/Locust - The final bit is more uncanny valley animation with new weapons testing on unsuspecting human prisoners.  Lots of animated blood splashing about.

I definitely preferred the live action stuff (Rakka and Zygote particularly) to the animated pieces.  Some more successful than others but generally solid stuff if you're in the mood for weird sci-fi/horror adjacent stuff.

Thirteen Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #4 Creepshow 2 (1987)

 As previously noted, I am a sucker for anthologies, even though they are so often a mixed bag.  Such is the case with 80s classic Creepshow 2.  Trying to capitalize on the success of the first Creepshow, this second installment just isn't quite as good.  It has only three chapters, down from five in the first movie, due to budget constraints.  Based on stories by Stephen King, it was written by George Romero, and one would think that you couldn't get any more horror pedigreed than that.  But the third chapter is very thin, character- and story-wise, and the first chapter is plagued by bad wigs and off-screen gore.  The interconnecting story is on the light side too, and I didn't much care for the animation, although I get that it's got that comics connection. 

Chapter 1: Old Chief Wood'n Head.  This one at least has George Kennedy!  He's a general store owner in a dying small town.  His wife would like him to cut his losses and close the store but he knows that it's the only place around for the local indigenous population and he doesn't want to leave them stranded, even though they're all overextended on credit.  As he is meticulously repainting the wooden Indian on the front porch, one of the local tribe's elders comes to him.  They treat each other with mutual respect and the elder gives Kennedy a pouch of priceless turquoise and silver jewelry.  When Kennedy protests, the elder says that it is just until they repay their debts.  After the elder leaves, some young punks rob the store, killing the shopkeeper and his wife and taking the tribe's treasure.  The wooden Indian, who has seen all that has transpired at the shop, avenges the killings and retakes the tribe's treasure.

Chapter 2: The Raft.  This is the only one for which I vaguely remember a Stephen King short story.  Four kids go out to a lake long after summer season is over.  It's chilly, but no one is around so they strip down and swim out to the raft in the middle of the lake.  Unfortunately, the lake is home to a menacing slick of black oil/goo that has a taste for meat.  People meat, in case that wasn't clear.  The acting is impressively bad but the evil goo effects are terrifically gross.  And despite my very short plot summary (it's all you need, really), this was a really fun, sick little piece and by far the best of the three.

Chapter 3: The Hitchhiker.  A rich woman, having an affair, is late to get home and runs down a hitchhiker.  She bolts and tries to rationalize that she'll turn herself in later, after she's gotten home.  (Meanwhile, several other good Samaritans, including a truck driver played by Stephen King himself, do stop to try to help but the stricken hitchhiker dies.)  This chapter was especially dumb, I thought.  There's no plot to it at all, just this unsympathetic lady driving her Mercedes through the woods, trying to escape the murdered hitchhiker who is now haunting her.  That's it.  That's the story.  On the plus side, the practical effects of said hitchhiker get increasingly gnarly as the movie goes on, so that's good.

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #3 Urban Legend (1998)

 Ah, that's better: a classic late 90s slasher, one of the post-Scream attempts to revitalize the genre. Urban Legend came out in 1998 - also known as the year I met Mr. Mouse - and it has all the 90s hits: gas at $1.14/gallon!  Girls with dark lipstick! Pagers! Internet via phone line modems! Slide projectors! Boot-cut jeans!  And it has an outstanding cast: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Joshua Jackson (with a hilarious Dawson's Creek joke), Tara Reid (before all the surgery), Michael Rosenbaum and Rebecca Gayheart (I coveted her hair), plus Robert Englund (Freddy himself) and a pre-Deadwood Brad Dourif.  Just outstanding!

It was a dark and stormy night in Maine.  (And hallelujah that no one really attempted a Maine accent.)  A Pendleton college girl gets axe-murdered to start things off.  And later, her murder comes up when a college professor (Englund) is teaching his class on urban legends.  As someone starts picking off college kids, our Final Girl Alicia Witt (no one care what her character name is, right?) realizes that the killings are patterned after various urban legends.  For some reason.  

At this point in my notes I decided to guess who the killer is: I picked Jared Leto because he was kind of weird and bossy and has a crush on Alicia, so he's killing all the people around her.  I also noted that: no one uses glass mugs at frat parties.  They use red Solo cups.

This is a slasher, so here's how everyone dies SPOILERS FOR A TWENTY-FOUR YEAR OLD MOVIE: beheaded with an axe from the backseat; hung in the woods; strangled while roommate is in the next bed; run over in parking garage and impaled on tire spikes; pop rocks and Drano (plus dog in the microwave); stabbed; axe-murdered on air; stabbed and stuffed in a trunk.

Is this a horror movie?  Technically, but it's more silly than scary and not at all gory, axe-murders notwithstanding.  Still, I enjoyed it lots more than that Resident Evil nonsense.  Viva la 90s slashers!

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #2 Resident Evil: Retribution

 Oh my hell.  Will someone please tell me to never bother watching another Resident Evil movie again?  I've seen two for this movie series so far - Extinction (2007) and now Retribution (2012) - and I know I've seen the first one (2004).  But there's also Apocalypse (2004), Afterlife (2010) and The Final Chapter (2016) and it's really important that I don't watch them.  I do like Mila Jovovich and she is by far the best part of these ridiculous movies but it's just so dumb.

Basically - and yes, I know that this series is based on a horror video game and I know that the series has grossed $1,200,000,000 - but Retribution is a plot-free video game where the "characters" move from scene to scene, shooting things and trying to move to the next level.  The "story" is that Alice has been stripped of her previous super-powers and captured by the Umbrella Corporation, held in HQ where they develop bio weapons and run self-contained simulations in places like "Moscow" and "New York" and, for some reason "Suburbia."  A team goes in to rescue Alice; she ends up rescuing them right back, in addition to a little "girl" who is a clone/fodder for the bio weapon simulations.

Some old friends pop back (Oded Fehr and Michelle Rodriguez) and some old enemies too, I guess.  The zombies are pretty good - fast and vicious and prone to ripping throats out, but not even enough to make this a "horror" movie - but there's just so much shooting (SO MUCH) and bad CGI.  It's distracting and just all so dumb.

OH AND IT'S IN 3D, DEAR GOD

Thirteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #1 Creep

 Welcome back, ghouls and goblins, to the THIRTEENTH annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series! I can't believe it's October already - it seems like we haven't done so much this year and yet, still, the year has just flown by - but let's get into it.  I asked on social media for scary movie recommendations because after over a decade of doing this, and over 187 horror (or horror-adjacent) movies watched (see the Movie Review A-Z link over there, will it do ya?), I'm needing some help finding good ones.  There's plenty on the streamers but so many of them seem to be Netflix-originals (or whomever) and that stuff is just jump scares and weak sauce.  If you've got any suggestions, please leave them in the comments!  I'm especially partial to monster movies (werewolves, aliens, creepy-crawlies, giant alligators, slugs, and I'll include vampires and zombies too) and big bonus points for practical effects.  Some of my all-time favorites are The Thing (I may need to rewatch that this year ...), American Werewolf in London, Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers and Dead Alive.  

But I digress.  This first one was recommended to me by a grade school (!!) friend.  He watches quite a lot of horror movies - I think he's got a higher tolerance for jump scares than I do - so I tend to listen to what he says. And he said: Creep, the 2014 found-footage film starring Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice.

Aaron, a videographer (Patrick Brice) answers an ad for a one-day gig, up in the mountains of California, filming a day-in-the-life of a dying man, Joseph (Mark Duplass), as a video diary for Joseph's unborn baby.  Easy enough gig, just have to put up with this slightly off-kilter dude for eight hours.  And to be sure, Joseph is off-kilter: invading personal space, naked in the bathtub within fifteen minutes of meeting Aaron, jumping out and scaring Aaron multiple times.  But Aaron is conflicted, because although this guy is weird, he's not too weird, maybe just lacking in social graces and off-putting in the face of his imminent demise.  So Aaron puts up with it, with the wolf mask and the fast-paced hike into the wilderness (lol I know it was in service of the plot, but I do a lot of hiking and there's no way anyone could have gotten lost on that well-travelled a trail, despite Aaron's city-slicker misgivings), strange confessions, etc.  

Aaron finishes the gig but picks up a disturbing phone call on Joseph's phone after the other guy passes out from too much whiskey.  In the morning (too drunk to drive, plus keys mysteriously missing), Aaron gets the hell out of there when Joseph seems threatening.  It doesn't end there, however, and Aaron realizes that taking this job was a big mistake.  I'm not going to spoil it further: at under an hour and a half, you'll get where this movie is going fast enough.

Is Creep a ground-breaking little indie, a la The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity?  No, not at all.  Is it uncomfortable and creepy, edging into unsettling for moments?  Yes, absolutely.  Mark Duplass is quite good at going against his mumblecore type.   There's a number of jump scares too (gawd I hate jump scares such a chicken) and to sum up, this is an uncomfortable without being scary, solid little non-gory creeper.