Bloody Ends Before New Beginnings: Time's Up (2022)

Time's Up (2022)

Rating: **

Starring: Damian Maffei, Hannah Fierman, L.C. Holt

On a general occasion, whenever a slasher flick sets itself around the theme of school bullying, it's often within the idea of brutally snuffing out those who did the bullying as presented by movies like Evilspeak (1981), Slaughter High (1986) and Tormented (2009). In Time's Up (2022), however, it appears the kill count will be focusing on the people who could have prevented the bullying, as in the school staff from the principal to the guidance counselor, from the theater teacher to the gym coach. A novel angle, but will the approach be just as good?

It's New Year's Eve and the faculty members of Pine Falls Highschool are celebrating the countdown at a get-together, all the while trying to get behind a recent tragedy wherein a student committed suicide after so much bullying and heartbreak, an incident that tainted the school's reputation considerably. Easier said than done when someone dressed up as "Father Time" is making sure those responsible for the death will pay in blood, thus forcing these fine folks to a game of scavenger hunt that night and should they refuse to partake, lives will be taken. 

Time's Up (2022) definitely has a something to say about a school's role on their students' well-being and it does so by working in small scenes of drama involving the bullied teen and his interactions with the staff members. The drawback from this is that the acting and writing are questionable enough to be distracting, so the effectiveness of the story's depth is mostly loss and often hinders with the flow of the plot. It also doesn't help that there isn't that many likeable characters here and those who could've been interesting have barely anything to do except be played as ploys for the killer's grand scheme of revenge. Quite a shame, really, since the story does have the ambitious potential to be good, engaging even, if only the execution is anywhere competently handled.

The only good things to come out of Time's Up (2022) are the kills being done in worthwhile practical effects, with the few extreme slayings really delivering the gore, and the killer's "Father Time" get-up looking rather creepily good that I kinda wish we see more of the maniac in action while donning it. There's also a scene in the last act where an arsehole character bites the big one in the most satisfyingly brutal way, but apart from that, the film could have use some extra polishing to smoothen out its small production bumps.  

Decent enough for a quick watch, but I can't picture myself coming back to this one as an annual treat.

Bodycount:

1 male shot through the mouth

1 male gets a hammer claw to the head

1 male seen dying from a throat cut

1 male found murdered with their face carved

1 female slashed in half with a scythe

1 male succumbs to a heart attack

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 male found murdered

1 female stabbed with a knife, later found decapitated

1 female found with rail spikes ran into her eyes

1 male found murdered, body wrapped in plastic

1 male gets a knife stabbed into the back of his neck

1 male stabbed in the eye with his own fractured bone

1 female brained with a cinder block

Total: 14

Of Christmas Slays From Days That Could've Been: It's a Wonderful Knife (2023)

It's A Wonderful Knife (2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Jane Widdop, Joel McHale, Justin Long

Every time an angel do their slayings, a victim gets their wings.

Alright, let me just get this out there first and tell you guys that I never saw the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but I am familiar with its plot thanks to a lot of cartoons from my childhood parodying it with varying degrees of effectiveness, showing me what would happen when a meddling angel takes the time to talk a troubled soul out of removing themselves from the plane of existence by showing how sucky everything would be without them. It's a cute concept, warm even, so why not put a little slasher spin to the tale for our bloodcurdling enjoyment? 

The small and idyllic town of Angel Falls is currently going through a bit of a commercial takeover courtesy of its excessively wheedling mayor, Henry Waters (Justin Long), and the only obstacle left before the unctuous town leader can start building his dream mall is an old man who refuses to sell his real estate. It's Christmas Eve and after rejecting Waters his title of the land once more, the old timer bites the big one when someone dressed in an ironically angelic white cloak and creepy blank-faced mask murders him, before going after his teen granddaughter, Cara Evans (Hana Huggins), who's currently attending a Christmas party with her bestfriend, our lead girl Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop). Just when the festivities are in full swing, Winnie unfortunately gets the dishonor of watching her bestie die at the hands of the Angel of Death before the cloaked killer goes after her and her gay brother, Jimmy (Aiden Howard). One cat-and-mouse stalk through the woods later, Winnie eventually ends the carnage by electrocuting the Angel to death with a car battery just as the bastard was about to dig its dagger into her brother's chest, revealing the killer to be none other than *gasp!* Mayor Waters!

Jump ahead one year and it's Christmas once again. Angel Falls is moving past the horrific killing spree that shook the little town and everyone is doing their best to be honky-dory for the holidays. Everyone, except Winnie; still reeling from the trauma of losing Cara, she's disheartened by the fact that most of her family is basically blind to her grief and her Joyeux Noel is further tainted when the college she's aiming to get in rejects her application, some members of the Waters clan are openly hostile at her for killing Henry (yeah, well, maybe he shouldn't be killing in the first place?) and she catches her boyfriend getting the mistletoe service from the school floozy. Holly jolly mood broken from one bad news to the next, beaten down to her lowest, Winnie wishes under the glow of the night's glowing green aurora that she's never been born. 

Well? Wish granted.

Now Winnie finds herself in an alternate reality where she never existed and, in turn, no one was there to stop Henry Waters from his killing spree. The town is now in shambles, with the Waters family taking over most of the businesses and positions of authority, and, oh, the friggin' Angel of Death is still out and about depopulating the town of its people every other week or so. As Winnie is now a blank slate to everyone in town, she also has little to no way on convincing the townsfolk that their beloved mayor is behind the growing death toll so she has no choice but to find a way to stop the Angel from taking more lives herself and hopefully find a way back to the life she once thought is crummy. Thankfully, she has the town weirdo Bernie Simon (Jess McLeod) on her side, convinced of her wild tales of wishing to never existing and Maniac Mayor Waters after she herself gets a close call of getting acquainted with the Angel's dagger, but will their combined wit and bravery be enough to undo the reign of terror that have befallen Angel Falls?

As a horror stab on It's A Wonderful Life, It's A Wonderful Knife (2023) transitioned a lot of the Christmas classic's plot elements into the slasher playing field well enough to give us a rather unique festive bodycounter that delivers chuckles and chucked body parts, but not without tumbling down a step or two; It starts off strong with an oldie but goodie slasher act of a mad masked maniac going after their victims in a motivated killing spree, dishing out striking visuals, intense murders and effective prowling scenes punctuated with an unmasking and an obvious reveal. From there, the movie spends a fair roll showcasing our lead girl's understandable seasonal depression and the universe's unwavering cruelty of playing its dices against her, an overwhelming bout of cynicism that taps well into the movie's ability to evoke pity whenever it is needed, which would have been a memorably strong direction given that Knife stuck with it.  

Instead, once after an otherworldly force answers Winnie's wish of non-existence, the film leans to a more quickly paced, humor-adjacent approach and though this is no means a bad thing, it does take away opportunities for the film to go deeper into the horror and misery of the odd misadventure our heroine finds herself in, something that could have build the stakes higher and grace us with a better range of character development that didn't feel sort of lacking, if not rushed. For its worth, the writing at least maintains an animated energy and even a sense of warmth, particularly whenever it focuses on Winnie learning her lesson after seeing how terrible things would have become if she didn't came to be, thus motivating her to find a solution to undo it to better everyone's lives, as well as her growing relationship towards the town's young pariah cruelly nicknamed 'Weirdo', who'd become Winnie's strongest ally and a workable second main character to root for. 

When it comes to the slasher goods, It's A Wonderful Knife (2023) fortunately swings it with a fair line of bloody kills that goes double digits by the count and fun set-pieces packed with viable thrills and suspense, plus the design of the Angel of Death really stands out for how simple yet menacing they look in an all-white mask and cloak, even more so blood-drenched. The only Crux of the matter is that, seeing we pretty much know Mayor Waters is the culprit behind the first set of murders, the movie tries to bend things a bit to keep the massacres a little less easy to resolve, though the path taken unnecessarily complicates things to the point it's nonsensical: without revealing too much, the whole thing devolves into a weird, cultish, mind-control situation that may or may not be supernatural. It all came out of nowhere and the resulting showdown at Angel Fall's town center is just mind-boggling for how needlessly extra it is when the eventual resolution is underwhelmingly simple. 

Little flecks of coal aside, It's A Wonderful Knife (2023) grants our wishes of a fairly fun slasher for the holidays! It may not be at the same ball park as Happy Death Day (2017) or Freaky (2020) in terms of writing or gruesome brutality, but there's enough chasing and slashing here to earn a watch, especially around the most wonderful time of the year! Warm from both bloodshed and tender moments, you can't go wrong with this one!

Bodycount:

1 elderly male had his throat cut with a dagger

1 male impaled through the mouth with a cane

1 female stabbed and slashed to death with a dagger

1 male electrocuted to death with a live car battery

1 male found stabbed in the eye with a dagger

1 male hacked to death with an axe

1 female gutted with a dagger

1 male found pinned to a table with a knife through the neck

1 female stabbed in the back with a dagger

1 female stabbed to death with a dagger

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger

1 male stabbed in the chest with a broken broom handle

1 male stabbed in the gut with a dagger

1 male stabbed in the gut with a dagger

Total: 14

Winter Wonder Alien Massacre: The Visitor (2020 Novella)

The Visitor

Author: Sergio Gomez

Publication Year: 2020

Chapters: 20

Rating: ***

In this little tale of holiday horrors, we take a step into a familiar set-up of strangers being brought together at a single place to take shelter from nature's wrath, only to discover someone or something lurking around is out to kill them. 

The Visitor starts the pages at a diner during Christmas Eve where its owner Sal, regulars Kaito and Ichiko Takahasi, and traveling poet Moshe Janovsky have been keeping each other company as Indiana's worst snowstorm covers the road in inches of thick snow. They're soon joined by Xavier and his Collie, Norman, who just survived an accident that had their car crashing at a barricade, as well as truck driver Santiago Sanchez whose rig couldn't handle the now-slippery road. With hot food and drinks to go around, a generator keeping everyone warm and a football game playing on the TV, the group make the best out of their predicament by talking about mundane things and share a little bit about themselves. Until, that is, a lone tree branch outside snapped into falling unto a power pole and taking the lines with it, sending the diner into pitch darkness and shivering cold.

And it is around this time that the group would soon know that there is another visitor joining them. A hunter and its hound out to stalk and prey on a few specimens that just happen to be stranded inside a diner...

As slasher story, Sergio Gomez done an equitable enough job of keeping his novella a fun and breezy read by keeping the story easy to digest and with the right amount of popcorn entertainment as any good bodycount horror should be. It's basically your standard cat-and-mouse hunt, straight to the point towards its thrills and kills once the titular visitor starts to make their rounds on killing these innocent people, only the catch here is that our killer is an alien, down to the space suit and helmet, armed with a space rifle to go along its knife and even tagged along its own tamed creature which is supposed to be a hound of sorts. Even if this is far from anything new (Without Warning (1980), Predator (1987) and Almost Human (2013), for example), this is still an intriguing turn for anyone wanting more than just another average escaped loonie terrorizing people in their slasher stories, though I do wished the author gave us a little more detail as to the motive behind this thing's hunt as the story only went as far as telling us what it does with the bodies, but not what for.

The book did fairly with its character introductions and how it crafted their little predicament with the unfavorable weather, vividly describing the sheer coldness and unforgiving barrage of snowfall with brooding wordplay which adds to the intensity and atmosphere of the eventual attacks. Not much in terms of developing its casts seeing the length of the story, though Gomez did pen the kills and the ensuing carnage descriptive enough to vividly visualize the stalk and stab/shoot action and whatever gruesome gore and horrors that go with it, thus maintaining itself to be an engaging read on a good level. 

Though, again, it doesn't offer anything new to the slasher subgenre, The Visitor is a fun read for anyone who wants a quick and easy horror short to indulge in, one that delivers cold chills and classic kills with a simple scifi aftertaste!

Bodycount: 6 

Notable Kill: A gnarly laser shot to the head courtesy of a space rifle. Apart from that, we also got poor fella who got their head bitten off by a large critter!

Down Through The Chimney, Ole' Sick Nick: Santa Isn't Real (2023)

Santa Isn't Real (2023)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Kaya Coleman, Scarlett Sperduto, Dana Millican

Now, I know myself to be patient enough to sit through a good slowburn horror flick given that the story and its characters are decently engaging, making the entire stroll to the inevitable horrors worth its while. Sadly, I didn't feel the same kind of patience nor was I all that entertained with this killer Santa offering. 

The film opens with a young woman named Nikki (Kaya Coleman) spending her Christmas alone with a glass of egg-nog when, seemingly, none other than Santa himself decided to give her a visit and instead of giving her the gift of a Christmas miracle, he cuts her wrist open with a knife, bashed her head with a snow globe and leaves her to die, right after he gorges on some Christmas cookies. Nikki survives this attack, though it did leave her comatose for a year. Literally.

Comes next Christmas and Nikki wakes up from her coma. She's visited by her best friend Jess (Scarlett Sperduto) and boyfriend Nathan (Trey Anderson) who share to her the shocking news that her parents were ready to pull the plug and have already converted her bedroom into a gym. Rightfully upset, Nikki decided to spend the holidays with Jess and Nathan at a woodland vacation home owned by another friend named MJ (Cissy Ly), though the girl can't help but feel off and uneasy. Perhaps it's the fact that that Jess and Nathan are actually seeing each other now, much to her shock. Or maybe it's the matter that her attack was ruled as a suicide attempt. Whatever it is, it's leading to a red-stained Christmas as someone would soon crash their little get-together with an axe murder or two in mind. Someone resembling Jolly Old Saint Nick, seemingly finishing what they started one Christmas night ago...

In a ploy to, perhaps, build a sense of mystery and characterization, Santa Isn't Real (2023) opted to work its way to the snowbound holiday horror by first focusing a decent deal of its run time on Nikki's claims of being attacked by Santa Claus and the crazy conspiracies that goes with it (many of which were confused with other Winter folk beings like Krampus, Gryla and her Yule Lads), as well as her reaction towards Nathan and Tess’ relationship for brooding drama and tension. The result, however, is an excruciating test of patience as the writing barely made any of the characters interesting or likable enough to sit through all of the melodrama, a point hardly helped by the actors' uninspired performances, nor by the lack of energy and action in the film's direction. There's an initial attempt to play around with the idea of whether the threat could be supernatural or not, though the lack of budget and clumsy execution meant a lot of questionable visual effects and plot holes, all leading to an unsatisfying conclusion that confusingly juggles between the line of the whole killer Santa shtick being product of someone's unstable psyche, and teasing hints of an actual Saint Nick out on a murderous prowl. 

Anything decent to say about Santa Isn't Real (2023) falls on the slayings, which we don't get to until the near end of the film after our killer captures their targets. The minuscule kill count delivers a surprisingly gruesome amount of practical gore and some savage editing to highlight the murder's chaotic flair but, by then, it's a little too late for it to be a saving grace, not when the accompanying murder motive and twist reveal were damn predictable.

Sad to say, Santa Isn't Real (2023) is a mishandled mess of a Christmas slasher, one that aims to be an inviting and diverting horror drama but couldn't get neither the horror nor the drama working in its favor. Mediocre filmmaking at its most ungainly, you're better off getting coal than this in your Christmas stockings... 

Bodycount:

1 male gets a thrown knife to the chest, stabbed to death

1 male gutted with a knife

1 female stabbed in the eye with a sharpened candy cane, stabbed to death

1 male had his throat cut with a sharpened candy cane

Total: 4

All The Tender Sweetness of A Seasick Crocodile: The Mean One (2022)

The Mean One (2022)

Rating: ***

Starring: David Howard Thornton, Krystle Martin, Chase Mullins

Released months before a certain silly old bear goes backwoods maniac on grown-up Christopher Robin and a couple of girls visiting the Hundred Acre Woods, this is the movie Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) could have been: crazy, bloody and fun!

As a wee little girl, Cindy once got a not-so-silent night after spotting "Santa" trying to steal away their Christmas tree and dear ole' mother opted to tussle with the thief, only to end up falling unto a nutcracker's sword and impaling her neck. Twenty years forward and as suggested by her therapist, Cindy (Krystle Martin) decided to go back to her hometown of Newville with her supportive father Lou (Flip Kobler) to confront her past, find closure and just have a holly jolly Christmas like she used to as a kid. That was until the same "Santa" comes back to spread some holiday fear just as pops finished putting up the decorations one night, brutally murdering the man before whisking all the Christmassy trinkets away.

Understandably distressed and now wanting answers as to who or what killed her parents when the local sheriff (Erik Baker) and the town mayor (Amy Schumacher) prove to be of little help, Cindy starts looking into the events and Newville's little history, leading her to discover a grisly conspiracy involving missing hikers, encountering a green furry creature donning a makeshift Santa suit, as well as meeting a local drunkard (last name Zeus, but everyone calls him "Doc") who have his own misfortune with the creature after it slaughtered his wife many years ago. Through all of this, she learns that what they're up against is a real Mean One, as cuddly as a cactus, as charming as an eel, and with a murderous streak to anyone who celebrates Christmas, intentionally and accidentally! 

As a parody, The Mean One (2022) presents itself with the usual B-grade slasher/monster-hybird romp of traumatized protagonists going back to town to settle their troubled psyches only to come face to face with the threat that started the whole ordeal, though the gimmick here is that the villain just happens to be a familiar face to those who grew up under the whimsy and wonder of the Theodor Geisel classic children's book, Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Seeing this is an unauthorized horror jab of the story, the name "Grinch" couldn't be uttered anywhere in the film so they simply refer to it as The Mean One and this is practically one of the jokes in the film as a small running gag involves someone yelling for a Mr. Finch just as somebody else was about to utter the creature's real name. The movie could've actually benefitted from more jokes and nods like these but the direction and writing occasionally drags unto the mediocre, insisting on playing the plot itself straight in an attempt for some depth to Cindy's plight and the horrors brought upon by the titular monster, only to fall flat with how much it clashes with the overall tone, as well as how clumsily oversentimental it can get.

Fortunately, a lot of these failed straight-faced angles do come off unintentionally funny and the resulting camp outweighs whatever serious approach The Mean One (2022) tried leaning to, thus whenever the film wanted to be silly and messy, it somehow delivers: the murders are certainly one of this movie's highlights once the carnage goes full force and, although a decent bunch of them did rely on some CG blood for extra splatter, the absurdity of the kills work with how cartoonish the villain can get with their murdering as Terrifier (2017) and Terrifier 2 (2022)'s own Art The Clown actor David Howard Thornton dons the make-up and channels Jim Carrey's neurotic take of the Grinch back in 2000's How the Grinch Stole Christmas in terms of body language. A fine example would be one massacre wherein a group of overly festive drunkards dressed up as Santas, sexy elves and, for one shmuck, a Christmas tree hollered too much noise noise noise for The Mean One's liking, so the creature goes ho-ho-homicidal on them with killer candy canes and fairy light lassos, all the while The Mean One slides into places, jumps from spot to spot, pretty much being a limber evil thing! No speaking lines were given for the furry green fella, though, just a lot of growls and howls, so in terms of characterization, our villain is greatly lacking on that end, sadly, and we never did get an official reason for why this take of The Grinch is so murderous towards anyone celebrating Christmas in turn.

The rest of the casts are usually of one note, but they have a sense of warmth and humor that do make their presence tolerable to an extent whenever one or two of them start hamming it up the dramatics. The last act of the film is when the campiness of it all goes nearly as high as Mount Crumpit, with Cindy going on full training montages and setting up traps to use against The Mean One, before luring the beast into her home with all the bright lights and holiday music blaring, ready to roast the monster away with candy cane-colored machine guns and Christmas baubles filled with explosives. Heck, even the villain's defeat is deliciously hammy and hilarious as it addresses the fact that a heart growing three times its size is never a good thing! 

Schmaltzy dialogue and overdramatic acting aside, The Mean One (2022) can be a fun holiday treat stocked with a fair dose of fun kills, satirical stabs on a beloved children's literature and an explosive finale that goes great with hot popcorn and cold sodas. Far from a new cult classic, but entertaining enough to pass the time with!

Bodycount:
1 female lands neck-first unto a nutcracker's sword
1 male has his gut clawed open, head impaled with a cane
1 male stabbed to death
1 male murdered, later found with an icicle stabbed into his neck
1 male beaten with a cane

1 male had his head beaten unto a stationary spindle

1 male stabbed in the gut with a cane

1 female had her head stomped

1 male beaten to death against a bar table

1 male clawed on the face

1 male clawed to death

1 female had her neck snapped with a length of fairy lights, hanged

1 female mulched through a meat grinder

1 female torn in half (flashback)

1 male hacked on the head with a meat cleaver, dismembered

1 female decapitated with a car's trunk

1 female had her neck broken (flashback)

1 male mauled offscreen, dismembered arm seen

1 creature dies from an exploding heart

Total: 19

Just a Weird Case of Prehysteria: The Stoneman (2002)

The Stoneman (2002)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Pat Morita, Christopher Atkins, Robin Riker

Take the plot of, let's say, The Giant From The Unknown (1958), have it directed with the same level of cheese and ham as a cheapo drive-in shlock like Eegah (1962), chuck in a bit of slasher mayhem within that troglodyte-centered mess and you'll get The Stoneman (2002)! For better or worse... 

Narrated by one Professor Fitzgerald (director Ewing Miles Brown, who will continue to pop up now and then to annoyingly and unnecessarily spoon-feed us what's happening as if we couldn't figure it out on our own), it all started at the heart of a safari where a native finds a perfectly preserved body of a huge humanoid creature in a bog. Dr. Stevens (The late Pat Morita) is then notified of the discovery and he soon have the remains shipped to the US where he and his colleague Dr. Weston (Robin Riker), along with an excited university journalist named Kip (Christopher Atkins), awe at the find once it arrives. A Professor Milano (Bernie Kopell) isn't buying the authenticity of the body, however, though Stevens is confident that what they have here is a genuine troglodyte, so much so that he already planned to have the find showcased to the press.

That is until the body suddenly springs back to life and murders one of the university staff some time after everyone left for the night. 

It isn't long before the cops are called to investigate the crime scene and detective lieutenant Hill (Ron Masak) suspects the old-smash-and-grab, just with a mummified cave man stolen and an additional fresh dead body on the side. But Dr. Stevens believes something else might be going on here, especially when he took a good look at the murder victim's neck and notices the rather large bite marks. As more victims start falling prey to the stone axe-wielding fella, Stevens, along with Weston and Kip, set out to find the Stoneman and capture him back (for science!), all the while attempting their best to convince the investigating officials that what they're dealing with in this recent string of murders is no ordinary man. Will they succeed or will there be more victims to be hacked to death with a deadly stone axe?

I really shouldn't be enjoying this disaster of a movie given how questionable its entire production is; the acting reeks high on underacted/overacted cheddar and the writing is hammed up with an entire pig winking at us with its tongue pressed firmly in its cheek! The effects are laughably cheap (yes, that's, uh, that's definitely a stone axe our creature is wielding. Definitely not a plastic prop...), so much odd direction is put into the plot that it's near parodic and, furthermore, it's clunkily pieced together as the picture and audio quality dips once in a while. One moment the pic and sound is bearable enough to watch, next thing you know the darn thing is fuzzy and sounds like it was recorded in someone's backyard! (Also, I think one of the scenes was ripped straight from a test footage as a portion of the damn timecode is visible!) And yet, here I am enjoying the ever-loving crap out of The Stoneman (2002)!

The whole film is practically a love letter to 50s/60s Z-grade drive-in flicks, where corny characters step up to save the day from a threat so outlandish, it's spectacularly terrible yet laughably fun. The Stoneman (2002) practically nails the tone and sway of these movies, down to the silly banters between our unlikely yet likeable heroes consisting of two doctors, a snarky journalist and one disbelieving yet well-meaning detective, as well as the entertainingly crazy murder spree of our titular killer caveman who proceeds to unga-bunga-bash people apart with his stone axe while said people dramatically screams in terror til' their dying breath or, during one hilarious fiasco, be yelled at by an angry neighbor for being too noisy! The caveman is played by a sizeable fella named Steve Henneberry, looking like your typical cartoonish depiction of a prehistoric man donned in animal fur, only with a more pronounced brow, distinguishably huge nose and overly large canines, doing a fine enough job working the Neanderthal maniac gig with a singular motive of hunting at nightfall. Not a lot of extreme blood and gore offered here, though, but with set pieces like the Stoneman casually entering and attacking a biker bar just for the kick of it, or go toe-to-toe against a woman armed with pepper spray, slow-mo'd for phenomenal effect, I say the film done more than enough to make up for its lack of genuine horror and be an amusing piece of bad filmmaking!

As clumsy as The Stoneman (2002) is in terms of quality production, it is still as an obscure trash masterpiece that deserves a good watch should you find yourself in the mood for low brow-levels of celluloid craft. A fun throwback of yesteryear's weird yet wonderful cinema sillies! 

Bodycount:

1 male hacked to death with a stone axe

1 female slashed across the neck with a stone axe, hacked to death

1 male strangled, later found with a bitten neck

1 male hacked to death with a stone axe

1 male strangled, later found with a bitten neck

1 female hacked on the face with a stone axe

1 female strangled to death

1 male gets a thrown stone axe to the chest

1 male falls off a cliff

Total: 9

Carve Us Some Meat, John Carver: Thanksgiving (2023)

Thanksgiving (2023)

Rating: ****

Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Ty Olsson, Gina Gershon

Ever since director Eli Roth tossed in a fake trailer about a slasher film taking place in Thanksgiving, complete with an axe-wielding pilgrim and a decapitated turkey mascot, in the double-feature exploitation throwback Grindhouse (2007), a lot of slasher fans wanted the film to become a reality, even more so when the other featured fake trailers got their own movie adaptations, namely Machete (2010) and Hobo With A Shotgun (2011). Now, sixteen years later after long believed to be a dead project, we are thankful to say that we finally have another Thanksgiving slasher to gorge on! 

It was Thanksgiving night in Plymouth, Massachusetts when tragedy struck the town, as the staff of a local big box retailer, lacking much security against the horde of pissed-off consumers, got swarmed during its Black Friday sale. A riot quickly formed, resulting to one security guard trampled, the store manager's wife accidentally killed and a few other fatal casualties among the injured many. 

Jump ahead a year and the owner of the store (Rick Hoffman) opted to continue its operation despite the protests of a small mob who are still bitter from the fiasco. In turn, Jessica (Nell Verlaque), who’s the daughter of said store owner, finds herself and her friends in an odd and vaguely unsettling social media tag featuring cryptic messages and a picture of a Thanksgiving dinner set with their names on it. Being partially responsible of the mob riot of one yesteryear ago, the group can't help but see this as jab on them, but they try their best to ignore it, hide their guilt and move on from the incident. Little do they know is that someone is going to make sure they own up to it, along with a few other folks linked to the deaths that occurred during that horrible holiday scuffle. 

Soon, a killer wearing a creepy John Carver mask and suited in full Pilgrim wear is carving up the guilty ones with an axe. The town sheriff (Patrick Dempsey) quickly pieces together that the victims all had something to do with last year's Thanksgiving riot, but with so many people involved that night, pointing out potential suspects is no easy task. Eventually, Jessica has an encounter with ole' John Carver and nearly got her head chopped off in the matter, forcing her and her friends to help with the investigation and put a stop to the masked slasher, even more so when their threatened number is quickly dwindling down to none. 

With a good murder mystery at play and savage kills from a cool-looking killer to boot, Thankgiving (2023) practically shows that director Eli Roth knows his way around the bodycounting sub-genre, piecing in a lot of fair and fun tributes to many slasher tropes and playing them with a right balance of dread and humor. You'll pretty much get moments like John Carver gutting a poor tubby sap with an electric knife and decapitated them with a deadly wire, before having him taking the time to properly feed his victim's now ownerless cat before legging it out with a severed head which will later turn up as a macabre centerpiece of a dinner table. Its direction and writing basically juggles its tones with a considerably good balance and I am glad to say that it holds well through a good bulk of the plot, emphasizing the serious threat of the murders as the authorities and the targeted teenagers try piecing together clues regarding the identity of the maniac behind the mask, all the while sidelining to a silly My Bloody Valentine (1981)-inspired love triangle with potential red herrings, quirky discussions involving a character's unusual nickname, or visits to the local gun-totting, drug-dealing idiot played by Joe Delfin who, honestly, have to be my favorite character out of the bunch for how increasingly silly he gets in his attempts to be cool with the kids and even help them. A good swing on the acting department definitely helps make whole mystery gig watchable, plus the cordial portrayal of the friend group is just refreshing to watch.

Many of the ridiculous yet brutal holiday carnage of massacred parades and human "turkey" cook-outs are lifted from the original faux trailer that inspired this film, though more noticeably polished and not as exploitative. (we still got the trampoline striptease, for one, but it didn't end with a near-naked cheerleader doing the splits unto an erect knife by accident) The movie wisely makes up for it with a great deal of gory effects and a better variety for its kills, from standard slayings of twisted heads and knife stabbings, to savage ends like a live-broadcasted head crushing and even a full face impalement courtesy of a runaway ship prop, most of it done under the horrifically twisted spirit of the Fall holiday. On top of that, Thanksgiving (2023) have the good grace of giving us real nail-biting chase sequences that hearken back to a couple of slasher classics, one channeling Prom Night (1980) as a teen find themselves alone and hunted in a school with an axe-wielding maniac, the other bringing pitchfork horror vibes ala The Prowler (1981) as a victim plays cat-and-mouse with the killer (who accidentally made his mask cooler by leaving one side to burn on a pre-heating oven) inside a dilapidated yet well-equipped lair.

Of all the things the movie did right, however, Thanksgiving (2023) did loose a few footings and clumsily stumbled down in places, mainly within its last act. It's kinda disappointing as a potentially good set-up was there; John Carver have gathered all of his victims, the surviving ones tied to chairs while corpses of the unfortunate others are propped up in seats, used as decors or even served as the main course in a horrifying sight that comes across something out of Happy Birthday To Me (1981) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). The killer does a fine job delivering a twisted monologue taunting his victims and even adding another body to the count, but then two of the survivors manage to escape and that leads to a backwoods chase that ends just as it started. A supposed twist is then revealed, only to be undone by another and, again, the film looks like it's gearing up for another fun chase sequence, this time involving 16th century muskets and a pick-up truck, but that's also wrapped up abruptly without much fanfare (despite the big blaze involved) and leaves us with a stale parting gift of a predictable jumpscare, as well as a sequel bait as (say it with me) no body was found. This whole finale is simply a hack job in the editing department, terribly rushed with too many survivors and a reveal that should've been good given that the story had the chance to dwell on it further. Still, it could have been worse. Way worse.

Stuffed with enough good bits to make most slashers fun, Thanksgiving (2023) is a welcome addition to holiday bodycounters, one that serves a platter of carnage, satire and witty humor, as well as a decent tribute to the golden age of dead teenager flicks. It may not hit all the marks right, but there's still plenty of a killer treat to be found here. Serve it up and gobble it down!

Bodycount:

1 male trampled to death

1 male had his neck caught and cut on a glass shard, bled to death

1 female hit on the head by an incoming shopping cart, neck broken

1 female split in half in a car-crushed dumpster bin

1 male stabbed in the gut with an electric knife, decapitated with a thin wire

1 male had his head twisted

1 female pushed to a table saw, eviscerated

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 male had his head impaled by a projected bowsprit

1 female impaled on a thrown pitchfork, cooked to death inside an oven

1  female seen dead from multiple stab wounds

1 male had his skull bashed apart with a meat tenderizer

Total: 12

Images (c) Google

Gory Gory Youth Group Camp: Sardines (In The Dark) (2023 Novella)

Sardines (In The Dark)
Author: Judith Sonnet
Publication Year: 2023
Chapters: 10
Rating: ***1/2

Sometimes you just want to relax with a good story without going through an essay's worth of pages just to finish a single chapter. Sometimes you just feel like getting a quick read for a good shot of fantastical entertainment in one sitting before readying ourselves for a full day ahead. Often at times I find myself very busy balancing business with pleasure, thus a cheap paperback novella such as this gore-soaked nightmare is just what the horror doctor ordered for a fun-sized page-turner.

The story follows the young members of an evangelical-free church's youth group enjoying their Fall Break retreat at some rented cabins in the woods when one of their newest members suggests a new game for them to play; Sardines, were one person hides while the others look for them in the dark and whoever finds the hider have to hide with them. Last person to find the group would be "it" on the next round. The kids are excited to play the game, save our protagonist, fifteen-year old Kylie, who really isn't getting into the vibe of playing what's technically hide-and-seek in the dark, but she felt a tad more daring that night to give it a try since her bestfriends Jackie and Harold are joining, too.

Unbeknownst and unfortunately for this youth group, something else decided to join the game. Something hulking and powerful. Something twisted with a crazed smile. Something with a taste for warm flesh.

Originally published by its author as a part of an out-of-print collection of horror shorts titled Your God Can't Save You, Sardines (In The Dark) is an unrelenting example of splatterpunk horror fiction in its prime, vividly describing extreme torture and gore through out the pages while taking the time to tackle religious horror centering on traumatic upbringings and uncertainties. Being a novella, however, the book doesn't dive too deep into its religious subtexts and it's mostly used here to slightly flesh out the characters for a paragraph or two before they're pounded to death with a mallet, or give the antagonist a cliched motive behind the massacre. No, the book strongly focuses more on style over substance, more on shock factor and visceral exploitation as not only do the murders go on brutal lengths wording the bodily destructions, but a few of these kills were also done to awfully young victims and the killer even indulges in some really screwed-up shit like wearing a severed head in a manner that's disturbingly and disgustingly perverse.

And speaking of, the book's monstrous villain is certainly quite a disturbing aberration, described as a near-naked muscular freak cloaked in nothing but a rain slicker, bearing a misshapen head, red eyes, almond-shaped teeth and an amazing display of strength. It's revealed to be non-human way too early into the book but, considering the novella is aiming to capitalize on brutality, I wouldn't be surprised if it was done that way to give the writer more opportunity to pen about the creature's terrifying penchant for mutilating victims through sheer strength. It doesn't dilly-dally on getting the ball rolling, too, with the gore quota starting as soon as the second chapter introduces the story's murderous being and its blunt weapon of choice, steadily going through one victim to the next in a consistent pace and an unwavering savage tone, eventually leading to a few interesting curveballs such as who's actually behind the killing spree, as well as the true nature of the killer which is, admittedly, creepy. 

Sardines (In The Dark) never really went anywhere beyond its basic supernatural slasher plotting of groups splitting up and finding reasons to walk into spooky spots in the dark only to be horribly killed by an abomination, but it does make up for it with an effectively violent direction and a good flair of traumatizing writing. It's not for the faint of heart, but if you think you have a strong stomach for nightmarish splatter and gross killers, then I say give this one a read! 

Bodycount: 12

Notable Kill: "He felt the wooden mallet slam between his legs with so much force that it scooted him back toward the wall. The mallet was lifted and brought down again. Its wooden rim detonated his testicles against the dirt floor. He felt his left ball mash into a squirting paste in his jeans. The other seemed to crawl out from its skin sheath," 

And that's just the beginning for this poor chap. Not to mention this is just the first kill from of the entire novella!

Breaking The Breakfast Clubs: Study Hell (2007) and Getting Schooled (2017) Double Bill Review

If I had a nickel for every time we get a slasher movie about combat shocked army veterans-turned-terror teachers losing it on problem students and going mad with murder, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice! By different writers and directors!

Study Hell (Canada, 2007)

Rating: **

Starring: Lindsay Dell, Brian Austin Jr., Stephen McDougall

Donald Keller (Stephen McDougall) is a teacher with issues; he doesn't appear to be that motivated to teach, a lot of the other staff is creeped out by him, he once showed up in a pep rally drunk and, oh, he appears to be suffering from PTSD after witnessing the horrors of the Vietnam war as a Black-Ops army captain! But the school principal he works under is willing to give him another chance to better himself and it just so happens there's a handful of troublemakers attending afterschool detention who needs a teacher to keep an eye out on them. 

The wannabe-Breakfast Club gets a small taste of Keller's overly strict disciplining as he orders them to write an essay as to why they deserve their punishment while he takes care of some personal matters, though what the gang doesn't know is that their night's about to become deadly when the school janitor decided to confront Keller about a wrongfully accused man and the massacre of an entire cheerleading team that the teacher may have been involved in. This snaps Keller's already fragile psyche, sending him down to a murderous streak as he now sees everyone who defies him as enemy combatants punishable by death!

This being a shot-on-video production, it comes to almost no surprise that Study Hell (2007) has all the trademarks of a low budget do-it-yourself horror film; the casts juggle from underacting to overacting their roles and the direction tries too hard to build its characters for depth that it occasionally winds down to drag out an insipid sentimental scene or two, only to succeed very little for how forced it all feels, as well as how low-grade cheesy the scripting it is. (John Hughes, writer Jeff McArthur ain't)  Cinematography is done through a cheap camera with little to no regards on lighting or style and the lack of editing in its audio means it hardly syncs, so the volume fluctuates from loud to low and back time to time. 

There is no denying that this here is a rubbish film, a bottom scrap from a barrel of terrible shlock, but frankly, it's not without its good points; I do like the idea of Study Hell (2007)'s concept of a madman teacher going psycho on the high school brat pack, forcing these misfits to band together in order to survive. It's a plot that has great horror potential and this movie could've done a well enough job on that front if only the execution had more effort put into it. Still, its amateurish cheesiness at least got me chuckling as much as I am groaning from its questionable production values, especially on how over-the-top our villain is once he goes into full post-war trauma triggered and dishing out dumb quirky one-liners. If only the murders were anywhere interesting, though, as the budget restrains limited a good dose of the killings to be done offcamera and those that happened onscreen barely showed any form of creativity or thrill to them. (Save, maybe, one involving a locker rigged with projecting daggers?) By the hour mark, most of the casts are dead and we're left with our final girl and final boy wandering around air vents and secret tunnels trying to find a way out, only to end up fending off Mr. Keller from one awkwardly staged fight choreography to the next, which is nothing but bad yet hilarious popcorn moments! 

Study Hell (2007) is a difficult film to defend at the end. There's just too much from it missing to be considered a workable movie, but the corny results and the unintentional hilarity earned the pic a bit of a soft spot from me so I cannot completely diss it. If you like bad slashers (like, really REALLY like them), or if you are simply curious to see how much of a train wreck this bodycounter is for yourself, then I say give it at least a go. But if you think you could do better then, yes, you could certainly do better. Way better.

Bodycount:

9 females found slaughtered

1 female found slaughtered, body stuffed in a locker

1 female stabbed in the mouth with a pair of scissors

1 male hanged with a stage curtain's pulley rope

1 female stabbed in the back with an ice pick

1 male beaten, had his head repeatedly crushed with a door

2 males seen dead in a battlefield (flashback)

1 male shot through the neck with an arrow

1 female had her face mutilated by rigged daggers

1 male dragged away, killed offscreen

2 males seen dead in a battlefield (flashback)

1 male killed, method unknown

Total: 22

~~~

Getting Schooled (2017)

Rating: ***

Starring: Mayra Leal, Tom Long, Roland Ruiz

It's the 20th of April, 1983; troubled outcast Julie, cheerleader princess Hillary, hooligan Rusty, meathead jock Mike and bespectacled nerdette Shelley find themselves spending their Saturday in detention for various misconducts and their wheelchair-bound monitor Mr. Roker is not too pleased babysitting these delinquents. Everybody is just dying to get out and spend the weekend anywhere than an empty classroom, but this little afterschool confinement would become a fight for survival when, after a projector accidentally falls on Mr. Roker, a head trauma triggers the teacher's PTSD from his days as a Black Ops unit and is now under the delusion that the kids are trying to kill him, so he's hellbent on killing them first.

Trapped in a locked empty school with a murderous paraplegic Vietnam vet skilled and strong enough to take them down one by one, the motely crew have no choice but to work together in order to live through Mr. Roker's deadly war games, as well as find a way to kill off the maddened teacher before he ends them all!

Getting Schooled (2017) is basically the melting pot mess you would get when one would outfit John Hughes' coming-of-age teen dramedy The Breakfast Club (1985) with the sensibilities of a low-budget B-grade throwback to 80s slasher flicks. It's filled with the common clichés and trappings of a bad bodycounter pic, mainly subpar acting and sub-standard writing resulting to caricature characters and tonal shifts juggling between being funny and emotional, though the direction do feel like it knows the absurdity of the story, occasionally willing to let loose on being silly for the giggles while squeezing in some bit of hammy drama in an attempt to give the movie a bit of weight. It doesn't always work, of course, but the courtesy of being entertainingly cheesy do help lessen the corny blows, not to mention the daringness of the plot to go into mean-spirited territories when it's called for.

Frankly, they have an interesting angle here when it comes to the slasher elements; it's not very often we get physically handicapped killers in the sub-genre (though not for the lack of trying as seen with titles like Hellroller (1992) or Highwaymen (2004)) and Mr. Roker surprisingly does a pretty good job being a real menace on four wheels, sadistically enjoying torturing his victims before slaughtering them all under the trauma of post-war combat. He is terrifyingly resilient and tough enough to out-grapple those who tried to brawl with him, often resulting to refreshingly graphic kills that made good use of the budget to dish out gory splatter and bloody dismemberments through sloppy practical effects, as well as gruesome make-up work for the aftermath bodies from the movie's few offscreen slayings. 

Production-wise, Getting Schooled (2017) is far from the most polished indie slasher, but it plays nice with its camera work, giving us a good bunch of expressively creative shots and lighting for both its horror and comedic angles. Costume and design do lean heavily on the stereotypical and cartoony, making the throwback aesthetics sort of a miss unless you look at it with a joking eye. Pacing does hobble, especially whenever the movie decides to slow down for the sake of giving its characters a moment to bond cheesily or spew pointless monologues, but the film's last act sort of makes up for it as the comedic elements were almost dropped in favor of grounding how much of an actual threat Mr. Roker has become now that he nearly killed off everybody. (Including Ron Jeremy in an extended cameo as a sleazy school janitor)

As clunky as it is as a cheesy slasher riff, Getting Schooled (2017) can be a fair watch if you're not demanding a lot from it, nor try making too much sense out of the whole deal. (I mean, for one, had it ever occurred to these kids to try hurting Roker with long-ranged weapons seeing, you know, he's on a chair?) It's good enough for laugh or two and its splatter-rich kills are a welcome sight, so I'll give this deadly detention a passing grade of 'B', for B-flick.

Bodycount:

1 female had her head repeatedly crushed with a radio

1 male stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver, fed with acid

1 male had a hand chopped off with a paper guillotine, later found slaughtered

1 male ran through and eviscerated with a wood saw

1 female found disemboweled and her eyes gouged

1 male skewered through the neck with a broken flag pole

1 female decapitated with a dropped sign

1 male dropped from a building, head splattered open

Total: 8

My Bloody Reunions: To Become One (2002)

To Become One (Australia, 2002)

Rating: **

Starring: David Vallon, Emma Grasso, Jamie Giddens

Hey, dear readers! Ever wondered what would The Human Centipede (2009) would be like if it was a slasher? No? Well, good for you! You're completely sane and I don't have to worry about you! But, yeah, that's what this low-budget early-2000s Ozploitation reminds me of. Minus the poop thing.

A year after seeing her dear mum get sliced in half by a killer donning a gas mask, Melinda was just celebrating her birthday with friends one night when the same masked maniac shows up to ruin the evening, slaughtering a couple of guests. More of Melinda's buds are then bumped off no soon after, forcing the rest of the gang to try saving themselves from being murdered by driving into the countryside. (Which meant they'll be far from civilization and any potential help, surely making themselves convenient for the killer to pick off one by one. And some of you wonder why I often root for the killers in these films...)

One car bomb decimated, two girls burnt to a crisp and a Carbine gun opened fire later, Melinda is chased into the woods where the killer finally corners her and this is when the movie begins to shift the curve because next thing you know, she's bound to a hospital bed and stuck inside an insane asylum where a doctor high on religious fervor plans to reunite her with a long lost family member ala surgery. Melinda must now find a way to escape the demented doctor and his crazed cohorts before she suffers a fate worse than death, all in the meantime taking a gander or two to what kind of delusions the sick surgeon is feeding himself, his staff and his congregation of patients.

From teen slasher to medical-cum-cult horror, To Become One (2002) has the ambition to better itself and be more than just another slasher flick which is admirable, yes, even more so when the production only had a couple of grand to work with. However, the clumsy execution of this gesture shows that the film still bit more than it could chew and it's distracting to say the least, more often within the movie's clunky ventures to stylize itself with warping colors and overly active camerawork, as well as dripping the horror drama elements with too many talky scenes that are just made worse by wearisome writing. There are no likeable characters to root for and the killer could have been this movie's strong point as they do rock a good gas mask and black trench coat combo, and the murders they commit have a decent splash of blood and gore to them, but all that's tossed away the moment they're unmasked midway into the movie and, before you know it, they're just annoying to watch.  

Finishing on an inevitably frantic note, To Become One (2002) is too much of an overworked yet underwhelming chore to watch as a whole; while the slasher half have a lot of dumb moments, it's somewhat entertaining with its badness, which is a lot more than I can say about the pretentious wannabe psycho-drama we're treated with in the other half. If you think about it, it doesn't really add up now, does it? Why does the killer even have to stalk and massacre Melinda's friends if the main goal here was to get her to the hospital and settle her for surgery? Why waste all that precious time and energy? I don't know. All I can tell is that there is a good idea to be found here, it's just messily handled in this blunder of a film. 

Bodycount:

1 female sliced in half with a sword

1 female ran through with a digging bar

1 female had her head skewered with a digging bar

1 female had her neck crushed and slashed open with metal claws

1 male garroted with a thin wire

2 females decimated with a bomb

1 elderly male passes away

1 male stabbed in the back with a knife

Total: 9

I Dream A Dream of A Better Dream: Heebie Jeebies (2005)

Heebie Jeebies (2005) (AKA "The Oak Hill Picture Show")

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Alex Balestrieri, Deb Billing, Amy Booth

Whoa, wait, wait, wait, let me get the story straight here: a girl with clairvoyant dreams gets a nightmare of her old high school friends getting killed off, so she fakes an invitation for a reunion and have them meet up at an abandoned, dilapidated farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in order to protect them. At a farmhouse. A dilapidated and abandoned farmhouse. In the middle of nowhere.

...This chick hadn't seen enough horror films to know that is the stupidest place to try and protect a bunch of people from a rampaging loon with a machete, had she?

Well, to no one's surprise, as day goes to night, our killer starts skulking around the farmhouse to prowl on them and hacking away their heads. (Mostly offscreen, but have a nice way of revealing the headless states of the victims, plus there's a fair dash of gore to be seen) There's supposed to be a big reveal as to who this mysterious slasher is but it's hard to miss the fact that we have that one shmuck missing during an entire slasher attack, even more so when you only have five characters to work with, so it's not hard to figure out who's headhunting that night.

Now, it would have been a relatively short straight-to-video movie if Heebie Jeebies (2005) was just a straight-up slasher, so it also took the liberty of treating us with intermittent segments focused on our lead girl's nightmares, making this film an oddball anthology pic with a prank involving a moron with a prop scissor stuck on his head gone horrible wrong, gargoyle-like critters that only comes to life when its pitch-black dark (quite convenient for a low-budget shlock like this, am I right?) and a hit-and-run accident that gets worse when a good Samaritan suddenly gets involved. None of these are any better to watch than the main plot as they're all tedious, horribly shot, barely coherent audio-wise and crappily acted. Interestingly, only two of these segments tie in to the slasher backdrop, leaving the remaining one quite out of place, only adding more strangeness to an already bizarre bodycounter.

The last act fortunately delivers well on the stalk-and-stab action, but with very little salvageable at that point, it barely matters. I'm sure it looked good on paper, a slasher film that sidelines as an anthology, but with a lack of structuring, solid direction and proper ingenuity to work along its minuscule budget, Heebie Jeebies (2005) is simply a frustrating mess of a movie. Hard to watch with its distractingly low quality. Hard to sit through with its clumsy writing. Unless you're a curious horror fanatic or a die-hard slasher completist like moi, I say don't bother with it. You can do better with that video rental money...

Bodycount:

1 male decapitated with a garden shear offscreen, head later seen

1 female decapitated with a machete

2 males slaughtered offcamera, mangled bodies seen

1 male killed, scream heard

1 male decapitated

1 female bashed with a shovel, fed into a woodchipper

1 female head found

1 male gets a machete dropped into his face

1 female decapitated with a machete

1 female hit by a car

Total: 11