Alone at Night (2023) - A Review

About half of the horror movies I end up watching are just movies that I spot in Google TVs' recently released list. I see something that looks like a new horror movie, I watch a trailer, and if it doesn’t look godawful, I add it to my queue. Most of the time I’ve never even heard about it. Some of the time I’ll stumble across community buzz soon thereafter. This blindly hunting method is how I end up watching so many random movies no one has heard about. And while I also operate off of a very thorough list from Upcoming Horror Movies (an invaluable website), I’m also rather fond of the inelegance of my poking around in the dark for crap to watch.

One such movie is Alone at Night. Starring Pretty Little Liars Ashley Benson as a cute cam girl who borrows a friend’s cabin for some r&r, and to focus on her cam work, after breaking up with her shitty boyfriend. The cabin is secluded and keeps losing power. Enter the hot handyman guy. The cabin is secluded and belongs to her friend, enter the friend’s hot cousin guy. The cabin is secluded and the neighbor is bored, enter the hot neighbor guy. Despite being called “Alone at Night”, cute cam girl Vicky is never actually alone at night. She parties with all these hot guys throughout her week-long stay. Lusts after one, tries to kiss one, sleeps with one, all the while there’s a Crowbar Killer on the loose so says Sheriff Rogers PAMELA ANDERSON (WTF). Meanwhile, when our cute cam girl Vicky isn’t casually rolling around on her bed in bondage, or masturbating in a bubble bath for her clients, she’s watching Trap Stars - a reality show hosted by PARIS HILTON (WTF) about a group of beautiful youths quarantining together in a mansion. All the while we might think that maybe her weird client “daddy” who never shows his face might be maybe like, one of these hot guys? Or maybe might one of these hot guys be the crowbar killer? So many red herrings! Which hot guy can we trust?

As far as the "slasher" that this movie seems to promise it being, it fails miserably. Very little slashing actually happens. But, there is a killer and cute cam girl’s life is in peril and a struggle does ensue. It plays out like more of a thriller than a horror movie, especially since, while the body count is quite high, all of the kills happen off screen. Major lameness. 

There’s a fun little twist at the very end that’s silly but that I’m quite fond of, and then it ends with a rap music video so… very sophisticated. 

PARIS HILTON!

M3GAN (2023) - A Review

My interest in M3GAN was initially nonexistent. I could care less about a killer AI doll in a horror movie starring a child. And frankly, the trailer looks dumb, with M3GAN’s SUPER CHEERFUL cartoon voice and large glassy eyes. And just how many super cute outfits does this doll come with? No thank you. But day after day for a week I came across casual conversations and reviews mentioning how much fun the movie is. “Such a fun time in the theater!” “This movie is so much fun!” Fun Fun Fun. Well, I DO like fun. So one night, I cast my line out in hopes a spontaneous friend would want to see a late night movie on short notice. And one did. Well, I have to say, the movie was pretty dumb. But yeah, it was also, So. Much. FUN! 

It was a small theater with about a dozen people and everyone was having a great time. Lots of vocal audience members playing along with the movie and laughing, and my friend and I were no exception. It was the most interactive movie experience in memory, we were drinking wine and shoveling away the popcorn and just having nonstop commentary. What a blast! Oh, what, you want to hear about the actual movie? Okay, well…

A little girl’s parents are killed and her tech brilliant aunt gifts her niece with an AI doll that is totally a test model and has not been approved by, the people who approve, like, robots or whatever. This super secret AI doll project is gifted to a ten year old who then pairs with it like some werewolf imprinting hoodoo, and then they’re all, “You’re my BEST FRIEND”. Totally normal. M3GAN of course is anything but normal and soon you can see that girlfriend has a few screws loose and goes forth on her murder spree and her love of killing, and of dance, blossoms. Then they like, stop her or whatever (or do they) and that’s the end.

Given the bonkers storyline I shouldn’t have been too surprised to learn that James Wan was the initial creative mind behind this movie idea, given his penchant for writing and directing doll movies (Saw, Dead Silence, Annabelle), and his recent descent into madness (Malignant). Wanting the film to be a horror black comedy he snags Gerard Johnstone (of the brilliant horror black comedy, Housebound). Aside from working with Wan and the undoubtedly bazillion dollars he’s making from the success of M3GAN, this ridiculous movie seems a step down for Johnstone, given that Housebound was so fantastic. But I guess, yeah, going from a director who has barely worked over the last twenty years but made one really great movie, to making a box office hit with James Wan, even if that hit is pretty silly, seems like a win. I mean, if you’re into that whole fame and fortune thing.

Many of the reviews and editorials I’ve read about M3GAN have said that the movie is essentially an allegory for absent parenting. But aside from the parents literally dying and being absent, I think the aunt is just trying her best. What I think the movie is more about is the dependent bond we create with our devices and how those bonds tend to be very toxic. Upending our mental and emotional state to some degree and causing our relationships with the physical people in our lives to be neglected and damaged. But what do I know, my best friends are cats.

The Offering (2023) - A Review

A few odd things to know about me - I love forensic and medical examiner stories, and I love stories featuring Jewish characters and/or Jewish faith and culture. I find both topics fascinating in a hundred different ways that would in and of itself be their own blog posts. So when I stumbled upon a new movie called The Offering, that looked like a mashup of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and The Vigil, I rented it immediately.

An estranged son and his new wife return to his father’s Hasidic funeral home in Brooklyn, NY to deal with family trauma and financial woes. While helping out with a recently deceased member of their community, a trapped demon is accidentally set loose. This demon begins to torment members of the family in subtle and creepy ways that of course no one talks about so they all independently think they're going crazy. 

Despite the overuse of jumpscares and deafening music crescendos, the first half of the movie is pretty solid. The funeral home is a spectacular piece of real estate with its old, vintage decor and long hallways with strange rooms that seem to hold ancient secrets. There’s an engaging side story about how the demon came to be trapped in the (recently deceased) old Hisidic man, who had accidentally conjured it in an effort to bring his wife back from the dead. There’s some moving family drama between the son and his father and father’s longtime friend. And there’s a great dinner scene. But then, from there, things go sideways.

Instead of continuing down the subtly creepy route, ala The Vigil or The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Offering decides that a crappy CGI monster and over-the-top action scenes are the way to go, throwing clutter and chaos into an otherwise chill experience. This movie could have been great, instead it settled firmly into the worn footsteps of mediocre horror that misses the mark because they went with more is more. And with a name like The Offering, it’ll be a forgettable one at that.   

Skinamarink (2023) - A Review

I first learned of Skinamarink about two months ago when a friend texted me late one night with a link to its trailer and said, “I just watched this trailer and it genuinely unnerved me.” I was alone in a room only lit by a tv. Adam was asleep downstairs. The house was quiet. And I clicked on the link. A crackly trailer begins to play, with closeups of doors and carpeted floors and the barefeet and pajama clad legs of children. The only light is from a vintage TV playing old timey cartoons. There’s an unnerving whispering that sounds loud yet far away and a deep voice repeats, “In this house. In this house.” My arms broke out in goosebumps and I was immediately suspicious of the dark hallway outside my room. The trailer continues in this fashion until the very end when a maniacal voice commands the children to “come upstairs” and then small voices scream and cry and the trailer goes black. So you can understand that even before it hit theaters, Skinamarink had the horror community buzzing.

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting when I went to see the movie in the theater on opening weekend. It was a small theater, with moderate attendance, and we sat only a few rows away from the front. The theater was pitch black and quiet. The screen, huge. It was a perfect atmosphere for a movie that practically demands your absolute attention. But I suppose I assumed the trailer was a teaser to a more straightforward horror movie. A movie with dialogue, plot, characters, soundtrack. But the movie is the trailer. 100 minutes of that trailer. 

It is fair to say that this little indie low budget horror movie is an experimental film. It felt like more of an immersive experience than a viewing, and I walked away a little disoriented with a scrunched up look on my face. What the hell was that? And did I like it? I’m still not sure. 

I will say that I appreciate everything about Skinamarink. I love that this little low budget movie made with a video camera and the kids of a friend, made with borrowed toys and in the house of the creator’s parents, with almost only the light from an old found tv and recorded with no sound (the sound was recorded separate), landed a major distributor and ended up in the theater (even after being illegally leaked on the internet). I love that this weird little movie made for 15k has made over a million dollars and has gone from a limited release in small quirky theaters to a full release in huge box theaters across the country. This is proof that the horror community will show the fuck up for their weird little movies, and they’ll bring their friends. Proof that despite the streaming world and the bootleg world, that people will still plant their asses in theater seats and support. 

So, did I like it? Who cares. Be the change you want to see in the world. Support indie horror with your ten dollars and bring a friend and go sit in a dark theater and watch a weird movie that you may love or that you may hate. At least there’s popcorn.

Sick (2023) - A Review

Sick - the new pandemic movie that dropped just weeks after the 2023 new year, feels a little late to the party.  Granted, virus and pandemic movies have been a staple in horror, even before the Covid virus took hold of our world. Contagion, Carriers, The Crazies, It Comes at Night, Quarantine, and so on. Many of the pre-covid virus movies focus more on the wild-fire spread of an infection that oftentimes takes down entire cities or countries, leading to an end of world conclusion or implication. After covid hit, we had a few covid-specific virus movies, most notably Host, the first horror movie that dealt directly with current event topics like quarantining, masking, and chatting with friends on Zoom. For the next year or so we were in a deluge of covid horror, a few of the more notable ones would be Stay Home, Songbird, and Safer at Home. In 2022 it seemed like we were finally veering away from horror with covid-tones. And then here comes Sick. A movie about a killer that shows up at a remote home where two girls are quarantining. We see tell-tale signs of covid life, like wiping down groceries with disinfectant, wearing masks (and being yelled at for not wearing a mask), long grocery lines, toilet paper shortage, food delivery services, and those awful teen “end of the world” parties. And while we’re still undoubtedly living in a Covid world, watching Sick felt a little like going back in time.

Sick was written by Kevin Williamson - the writer of 1996’s Scream, and perhaps because I knew this, everytime the killer wielded their large knife and chased the unsuspecting screaming young woman around the house, it felt extremely familiar. Even though the whole of the movie lacked the humor and self awareness that Scream is known for, it is very apparent given the entirety of the plot, that it was written by the same writer. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I guess I was just hoping for another flash of brilliance from the mind who brought us Scream. But instead, we got a dulled down covid version of a movie we saw in the ‘90s.

Despite this lack of creativity, I genuinely had fun with Sick. It’s a solid teen slasher with a few good kills and an extremely satisfying final scene. The actors are solid, including our main character Gideon Adlon, who I thought was a terrific final girl. She fought like hell, ran fast, used her brain, and her guttural “get off me” screams were both chilling and powerful. And though I don’t have an eye for directing style, Sick’s director John Hyams also directed Alone, a favorite movie of mine from 2020 about a serial killer who targets a woman traveling alone, and the cat and mouse pursuit that follows. All in all, you could do worse for a late night horror movie at home. Watch with a friend! Without a mask! And cough a few times! It’ll be hilarious. Sick is streaming on Peacock now. Check it out!