Review - Departing Seniors

 Departing Seniors (2024)

Director: Clare Cooney
Writer: Jose Nateras
Stars: Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, Yani Gellman, Ireon Roach
Where to Watch: VOD

Synopsis: Following an act of bullying, witty high school senior Javier develops psychic abilities which he must use to stop a mysterious serial killer targeting his classmates.

Thoughts: Based on the trailer alone, I didn't have terribly high hopes for this high school slasher, which is great news because that meant that my expectations didn't have far to fall. Here's the deal - I really liked these characters. A gay Mexican-American boy with razor-sharp wit and his insightful, brave black girl bff, fighting off bullies and catching a serial killer? Hell yeah. Actors Ignacio Diaz-Silverio and Ireon Roach bring charisma and heart to these characters, which is honestly the only reason to stick around these 90 minutes. Otherwise, the kills are weak and few, and the mystery of who the killer is really isn't a mystery at all if you've seen any slasher movie, ever. The added element of newly obtained psychic abilities after suffering from a fall, feels unnecessary and clunky. I can see this movie working under different circumstances. Up the kills, up the gore, get creative and give us an unexpected killer. There's plenty of slashers making a name for themselves these days, this just won't be one of them.

2.5 out of 5 💀s

Review - Lovely, Dark, and Deep

 Lovely, Dark, and Deep (2024)

Director: Teresa Sutherland
Writer: Teresa Sutherland
Stars: Georgina Campbell, Nick Blood, Wai Ching Ho
How to Watch: VOD

Synopsis: Lennon, a new back-country ranger, travels alone through the dangerous wilderness, hoping to uncover the origins of a tragedy that has haunted her since she was a child.

Thoughts: The woods are a terrifying place. And I grew up surrounded by them - living in a large, (slightly haunted?) house in the middle of the woods in the 1980s. My childhood was spent camping in the woods, walking in the woods, playing hide & seek in the woods at night. And despite the woods being a constant presence in my life, I've always had a respectful fear of them. Of the secrets they keep. Of the power of nature. Of knowing that, regardless of having a native american heritage, that the woods aren't a place where people belong. And I still believe that now, as an adult, more than ever.

Writer/Director Teresa Sutherland (writer of the 2018 historical horror film, The Wind, which I loved) creates a psychological nightmare using the woods as a place *not* to get lost in. Our main character, actress Georgina Campbell, who has become somewhat of a scream queen as of late, starring in Barbarian, Bird Box: Barcelona, and this year's T.I.M. (a Megan ripoff?), delivers a bit of a subdued performance as a park ranger who gets lost and stumbles into a super trippy alternate world (? unclear), full of body horror and ghosts and hallucinations of her past. 

This ultra slow-burn of a film was a very compelling watch. The cinematography is gorgeous. The shots of the woods aren't gloomy and creepy but instead bright and welcoming and beautiful.  But even with the beauty you can feel the claustrophobia of being so small within the endless expanse of the outdoors. Much like viewing a scuba diver in the immensity of the ocean. And the auditory element! Lots of crunching leaves and birds and wind. Which are all used in the normal space of being in nature, until it's then used against your senses and then the nature noises become unsettling and malicious. You can feel the "other shoe" hovering above your head, waiting for it to drop and clobber you. And clobber it does. The film takes an unexpected turn into the weird, into the really fucking weird, and while I was absolutely there for it, I didn't know what the hell was going on. Doing a deep dive Google of the movie, it looks like no one who has watched this movie had any clue what it was about, which makes me feel somewhat better. So this review will end much like the one I wrote for Monolith - was it aliens? was is The Woods? Was it an alternate dimension? I have my theories but they feel about as solid as quicksand. But ultimately this was an interesting watch full of looming dread, and once the weird wraps up, it's got a satisfying though open-ended conclusion that I thought was clever and kind of brave.

3 out of 5 💀s

Review - Stranger in the Woods

 Stranger in the Woods (2024)

Director: Adam Newacheck

Writer: Holly Kenney

Stars: Holly Kenney, Brendin Brown, Paris Nicole

How to Watch: VOD

Synopsis: Stranger in the Woods follows Olivia and her friends as they go on a vacation. After Olivia nearly drowns with a slit wrist in her bathtub after her fiancé's funeral, her friends suspect that she tried to kill herself, but she believes someone attacked her.

Thoughts: Remember those early 00's horror movies that felt like they still had one foot in the '90s and the other foot in what they thought was a new idea? Well, this is that movie but twenty years later. This makes for a somewhat nostalgic-feeling movie that plays out exactly like you thought it would.

Holly Kenney wrote and starred in her own horror movie. Which is awesome. What a dream! But the problem is she's not the greatest actress. This low-budget, grungy little thriller, and I'm going to call it a thriller, could have benefited from some serious talent as the main actress. Holly is good enough. She is. But she looks like she was snagged from the mall as a thirty-something ex-goth girl who hasn't moved on with her life. The story is extremely basic and the twist ending is one that you can see coming from the start. The most menacing thing about this movie is the cover art. Only a couple people die in this and not in a particularly interesting way. If this were the '90s, this would have gone straight to being a midnight movie on basic cable and wouldn't have seen VHS light of day maybe ever.

Was it a fun movie? Not particularly. And it wasn't even bad in that unwatchable way that tends to happen with contemporary low-budget films. It was fine. A passable excuse for a movie attempting to be horror but missing its mark and instead being a basic thriller warning us about male toxicity. Thanks, we got the memo a few decades ago. 

2 out of 5 💀  s

Review: Monolith

 Monolith (2024)

Director: Matt Vesely

Writer: Lucy Campbell

Stars: Lily Sullivan, Ling Cooper, TangAnsuya Nathan

How to Watch: VOD

Synopsis: A headstrong journalist whose investigative podcast uncovers a strange artifact, an alien conspiracy, and the lies at the heart of her own story.

Thoughts: Lily Sullivan carries this monolithic Australian sci-fi thriller on her lone shoulders as a one-woman show. You may remember her from last year's Evil Dead: Rise as the badass sister, Beth, who battles the dead and saves who she can. Her role here is the complete opposite of the horror movie action hero she portrayed then, but it's no less compelling, as almost the entire movie is just her velvety, slightly gravely voice and close-ups of her talking into a microphone. Trust me, it's riveting. It's a podcast movie about an other-worldly black brick that shows up in people's lives and impacts them in various ways. Our main character is interviewing people who have had these bricks, and trying to unravel the mystery behind them for her new podcast job, Beyond Believable. 

Director Matt Vesely shoots the entire film in sort of a crisp achromatic gloom that matches the misty countryside that the clean-lined sprawling estate is surrounded by. The whole film feels like some ASMR experiment that tickles not only your ears, but your eyes as well. 

The movie creates many paths that it never actually goes down. It touches on government conspiracies, aliens, word-of-mouth illnesses, pandemics creating global mental illness, and more. You could say that the movie doesn't have focus but I saw it more that when you're investigating a mystery, you're going to have a lot of wild theories until it all unravels into that one truth. 

I'm not going to lie, as the third act begins its climb into the climatic ending, I kind of lost the thread a bit. The ending is something to behold and while there is no clear mapping of how we got there, it's a delight to theorize about. Is it an allegory for secrets? Lies? Mental Illness? Or is it all just aliens? I think it's up to us to decide what that black brick means, I've drawn my own conclusions. Give it a watch and tell me yours.   

3 out of 5 💀s