A Birthday Wish To Perish: The Debutantes (2017)

The Debutantes (Philippines, 2017)
Rating: *
Starring: Sue Ramirez, Miles Ocampo, Michelle Vito

Stop me if you heard this before: a weird lonesome girl gets befriended by someone from a popular clique and then invited to a party where she's humiliated by a prank, resulting to unspeakable horrors to those responsible.

Yep, that's Stephen King's Carrie. 

The Debutantes (2017) by Filipino director Prime Cruz is basically this for a good deal of the run, following quiet kid Kate (Sue Ramirez) as she befriends her classmate and neighbor Lara (Mile Ocampo) while helping her out with some math lessons. Grateful for getting her grades up, Lara invites Kate to a debut party (A Filipino celebration of a girl's 18th birthday) where Lara's circle of bullying buddies, unfortunately, decide to traumatize the lonesome girl by undoing the top of her dress, revealing some rather unsettling scars to the entire crowd. Humiliated, Kate rushes home, while Lara, who wasn't in on the so-called prank, chastises the group for their actions.

It isn't long before something is making sure the girls are properly punished for their part on embarrassing Kate, involving ghostly doppelgangers, a creature that kinda looks like a man made from soggy black mush, and deaths. Uncreative, boring, vanilla deaths.

I mean, the first kill was staged pretty okay, with creepy visuals, some good tension with the possessed self-diving car, and a good bloody payoff at the end. But the rest, we have someone getting strangled with a necklace, an abuser suffering a heart attack, and a swimmer getting drowned. Not, uh, not really impressed, sad to say. As if the predictable plotting and twists aren't lame enough to slowly knock me out into sleeping. (A twist character here is only onscreen whenever Kate is around. Who wouldn't connect the dots and see that reveal coming?!)

Cinematography is alright, though, I'll give the movie that. Acting is so-and-so, focusing a lot on the teenage dramatics in the film's attempt to establish some form of depth around its really small casts. (Like, really small. Where the hell are these girls' parents?) The quick pacing of the direction, its paper-thin characters and an abundance of hammy lines, however, didn't do much good for The Debutantes (2017)'s approach on emotional and psychological turmoil, resulting to a very stale horror shlock that's been done better.

Needless to say, The Debutantes (2017) is a supernatural slasher hokum I find hard to praise as there's hardly anything to praise at all. The story is done to death, the deaths lack spectacle, and the spectacle is missing in its execution. What else is there to say but go watch Carrie (1976) instead. Or Evilspeak (1981) if you're in a slasher mood. 

Bodycount:

1 female gets into a car collision against a truck, smashes through a windshield

1 female strangled with a necklace

1 female drowned in a pool

1 male suffers a heart attack (flashback)

1 female stabbed in the gut with a knife

1 female killed offscreen

Total: 6

Budapest's Bloody Basement: The Basement (2017)

The Basement (US/United Kingdom/Hungary, 2017)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Caroline Boulton, Marina Gera, Zsolt Páll

After their house party got shut down by a noise complaint, a small assortment of international students staying at an apartment in Budapest, Hungary got bored enough to do a séance. As they do, a door wasn't closed right so their house cat slips out into the night, which the group eventually notice after their little spooky séance session. When they step out to start looking for the furry fella, they hear the cat meowing from inside an abandoned city basement so they opted to continue looking down there, only to find that the place is seemingly haunted by a crazed figure resembling a woman wearing a broken mannequin's face who wastes no time hunting them down.

So, yeah, everything horrifying that happened in this movie started because someone's pet cat snuck out and wandered into the titular underground basement. Worst pet rescue ever!

I will give this movie points for the claustrophobic set-pieces, a few good peppering of gore here and there, impressive for a mini-production, but its direction and execution clumsily clunks through what little story The Basement (2017) has to offer, which is basically just five people going around concrete tunnels and hallways while a freak in a mask chases them down. Any sort of intrigue or conflict here is reduced to a few characters bickering whether the killer chasing them is an actual demon or an underground-dwelling nutcase, all done through an exaggeratedly uneven tone and dubious personality shifts from its casts. It can get annoying. Tiresome. Weird, even. We do get decent-ish reveal to the killer's true nature at the near end but, after enduring all that terrible acting and line-reading, not to mention the lackluster plotting, does it even matter?

The Basement (2017) is just forgettable. It does the most out of a small budget to make a little horror flick and I commend the attempt, but I'm not gonna pretend I have a swell time watching this worn-out wannabe spook-fest get further butchered by uninteresting victims-to-be. Skip it.

Bodycount:

1 male killed offscreen, blood spill seen

1 female dragged away, killed

1 male killed, blood splash seen

1 male found gutted, left for dead

1 female set ablaze

1 male had his throat sliced with a pickaxe

1 female brained dead with a brick

1 female gagged with a doll and strangled with a length of fairy lights

1 male hacked to death with a pickaxe

1 male doused in gasoline, set on fire

Total: 10

Bloody Hell Of A Retreat: The Cabining (2014)

The Cabining (2014)

Rating: ***

Starring: Mike Kopera, Bo Keister, Angela Relucio

With their recent slasher treatment scoffed down as tired and mediocre, as well as a looming long overdue rent threatening to kick them out on the street, horror screenwriters Todd and Bruce are desperately in need of an inspired terror tale to wow interested buyers and where else should they find said inspiration other than Shangri-La, weekend cabin retreat designed to help artistic types get their juices flowing.

Only, shortly after they arrive, the other artists staying there start to die in mysterious circumstances, a lot of which seems to be whenever a certain oddball sculptor named Jasper is around. The cops mostly disregard these deaths as accidents and Shangri-La's rather lax host dismisses the notion that Jasper could harm anyone. (Even though the guy carries a machete and casually bags a decapitated head) Then again, it's not like he's the only suspicious fella in the cabin; Todd's growing impatience and desperation appear to hint a shortening fuse that's about to go full murder, and then there's Bruce's overly jovial outlook on these recent string of dead people piling up...

The Cabining (2014) is, admittedly, one of those movies that you're not really going to lose sleep over, but it does enough right to be at least worth a look. For one, the two main leads simply carried the film with their frustrated yet cordial chemistry, as Mike Kopera's Todd, being the geeky yet responsible type, mostly just tagging along with the more outgoing and positive Bo Keister's Bruce to make sure his bestfriend-slash-idea guy doesn't end up in deep trouble. (Or will become the trouble) The two are portrayed as absolute chums and I love how natural they play their banter despite the clashing ideas and ideals, overlooking some questionable moments wherein Bruce can be a tad much with his misplaced positivity and flirty attempts, so much so that it borderlines suspicious along side comical.

As a slasher, The Cabining (2014) does lean closer towards a whodunit murder mystery than actual stalk-and-stab, with victims being discovered horrifically snuffed out by seemingly (and not so seemingly) accidental deaths, all the while the surviving cabin guests are trying to figure out who among them could be the killer. (Or, perhaps, find enough damning proof that the really eccentric sculptor is the murderer among them) A lot of the kills are offcamera due to this direction, but there's enough gnarly practical and make-up effects done for the resulting corpses, giving us a fair share of gory eye candy. There's also a semi-decent twist somewhere at the last third of the film, a bit of it kinda obvious but countered fairly by a villain reveal I never really saw coming. I would have liked the movie a lot more if it ended on this silly yet dark and gutsy note but, instead, it pulled off one more curveball under our noses. One that opted for a final scare before going down on a saccharine good note that felt overly rushed and sudden, hardly bringing up a solid motive behind the actual killer's murder spree, even. It could have been better but, also, could have been worse. Way worse. 

What could have been a dime-in-a-dozen backwoods slasher, The Cabining (2014) pulled some extra punches to do a little better and the result is, while not exceedingly phenomenal, admirable to say the least. Polished and written effectively as a horror comedy indie, try this one for the giggles!

Bodycount:

1 female found landed mouth-first on a tree root, head impaled

1 male head found

1 male overdoses on heart medication

1 male found killed by a triggered log trap

1 female found knifed on the back

1 male found dead with a hammer claw to the eye

1 female stabbed in the eye with a fountain pen

1 male ran through the back with a kitchen knife

Total: 8 

Tickle Me Simon: Puppet Killer (2019)

Puppet Killer (Canada, 2019)

Rating: ***

Starring: Aleks Paunovic, Lee Majdoub, Lisa Durupt

A slasher with a killer muppet. Right. Normally, I would say 'Now, I've seen everything', but knowing how weird the horror subgenre can get at the most random times, I'm pretty sure there will be weirder shit out there waiting for me to discover. Still, the hell did I just watch with this one?

Ever since he was just a little baby, Jamie knows three things; he's never too young for good movies, his fluffy puppet Simon will always be his bestfriend and his love for his die-hard horror fan mom will be forever, even if cancer decided to take her from him so early from his life. Still, young Jamie tries to keep his love for dear mum alive by continuing a family tradition of watching shlocky B-grade horror flicks every Christmas, something his eventual stepmother finds rather uncomfortable to the point she lost it one night and starts trashing away his memorabilia. Unfortunately for her, someone didn't like this. Someone small. Fluffy. Wielding a deadly kitchen knife.

Flashforward ten years later, we now see Jamie as a high schooler (played by Aleks Paunovi who happens to be in his fifties...) and he's very much convinced his puppet pal Simon may have killed his stepmom. His dad, the ever supportive guy that he is, simply believes his son has quite the imagination and dismisses the claims (Or at least he's trying to), though Jamie's school counselor appears to take the fella's ramblings a little more seriously. Not that she believes him, of course, but she does constantly reminds him to take his meds, fearing something more psychological might be at play here.

Jamie, however, thinks he should get his closure from all of this killer puppet talk in his own terms and decided to do this by drunkenly relaxing this Christmas holiday with his girlfriend and friends (all teenagers played by people in their 40s...) at the old family cabin up in the woods where it all happened. Beers get chugged. Bonfires get razed. Some of Jamie's friends get it on at a jacuzzi. And who else but lil' Simon gets found hidden away in the basement, tucked inside a box of Christmas decors, much to Jamie's uneasiness.

Needless to say, this holly jolly cabin celebration isn't gonna stay jolly for too long as Simon, strangely enough, does turn out to be alive and pretty much homicidal, slashing a mean kill count as he goes after one middle-aged teenager at a time!

So, yeah, this is a movie where teenagers are played by grown men and women, being terrorized by a pink fuzzy puppet who sounds a lot like Elmo from Sesame Street. I think it's safe to say that Puppet Killer (2019) shouldn't be taken seriously at all and, hell, I think its own production knows that! It's a weird take on your typical cabin-in-the-woods hack'n slash, with our lead guy practically portraying an overly enthusiastic man-child and nearly everybody else is a swing on your classic slasher victims from the overly horny couple to the brooding emo kid and his frustrated stoner brother, all done with over-the-top performances that are purposely delivered in egregious tongue-in-cheek! There's a bit of a charm to how bizarre this direction is, frankly, even more so when the film eventually starts its killing spree; Simon simply goes muppet maniac on everyone in the cabin, throwing squeaky voiced one-liner giggles, donning costumes parodying top-of-the-line slasher villains like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, as well as dishing out surprisingly gnarly practical gore and kills for such a goofy little psychopath!

Out of all this craziness, though, what really caught me off guard is how much mood whiplash Puppet Killer (2019) planned for its finale; needless to say, it teased around the idea that all of this could have been the result of a broken psyche and the movie really took its time playing with this notion with Jamie practically under Simon's mercy, reducing him into a sobbing, blabbering mess. It's a sharp contrast to the mostly cheesy, joke-littered satirical horror jab that makes up a bulk of the film and it would have been a daringly grim ending to leave everything at if it wasn't for one final twist, a last minute shot implying something... otherworldly.

There's no doubt Puppet Killer (2019)'s one of the stranger slasher flicks I've ever come across and, as peculiar as it sounds, I sortah dig it! As a dumb hammy horror comedy, it's quirky and energetic, generous in splatter and occasionally creepy, it's a real fun mess that I'm sure will resonate with those who have the taste for the quaint and batty!

Bodycount:

1 female succumbs to cancer

1 female knifed to death

1 male garroted, dismembered with a meat cleaver

1 female drowned in a jacuzzi

1 male shot in the eye with an arrow

1 female gets a thrown machete to the head

1 male gutted with a clawed glove

1 female garroted, later found gutted

1 female had her throat sliced with a knife

Total: 9

The Last Ride of El Maestro: Cinco De Mayo (2013)

Cinco De Mayo (2013)

Rating: ***

Starring: Anthony Iava To'omata, Lindsay Amaral, Spencer Reza

Labeled as a menace to their little town, a humble and soft-spoken college professor of Mexican heritage gets fired from his teaching position and gets convinced by the faculty counselor that he has "Aztec blood" brewing inside him, waiting to explode into carnal violence when enough gets enough. After further threatened by overly racist neighbors and mocked by his students for trying to teach the importance of Mexican cultural heritage, this professor has one more lesson to teach this Cinco De Mayo and all those who have treated the Hispanic population unjustly will learn it in blood.

Padded with an 80s-style late night movie hostess telling us about the movie we're about to watch, as well as a faux trailer about a dance group going against a zombie apocalypse, Cinco De Mayo (2013) is a small movie done with an even smaller budget, but with big aspirations and ideas! Its relatively simple plot of a quite man finally snapping into violence is a tale as old as time, but the racial tone and social commentary keep things interesting, especially when our main character and soon-to-be masked slasher isn't exactly the worse person to crawl out of the story, making his killing spree all the more fun to watch.

For a micro-budget slasher, acting is mostly okay and some of the score actually fits the kind of tale of terror presented here, not to mention the direction's perfectly paced and the kill effects are pretty good considering the minuscule funds. It does, however, lack style in cinematography with too many open spaces and lightning problems, its audio occasionally clips and the editing tries hard to replicate the old scuffed-up Grindhouse feel on a budget, only to come off as distracting. These are common pitfalls you would expect from a do-it-yourself passion project and there's no doubt that this will not win a lot of people over, but if you can overlook the rough edges and patchwork, the film can be a real guilty pleasure.

Honestly, Cinco De Mayo (2013) is an alright movie. It's nothing new for a holiday slasher and it's definitely within the lower spectrum of what can be considered as quality work, but it has effort and an enjoyable indie touch. Entertaining enough to check out!

Bodycount:

1 male shot

1 male stabbed in the chest with a hunting knife

1 male had his face shredded with a weed whacker

1 male hanged on a noose, beaten dead with a baseball bat

1 male gets a miniature flag to the eye, stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 male stabbed in the neck with a hunting knife

1 male decapitated with a sword

1 male ran through the back with a sword, impaled in the mouth with a flag

Total: 8

Broken and Vengeful: Bedevilled (2010)

Bedevilled (Kim Bok-nam salinsageonui jeonmal) (South Korea, 2010)

Rating: ****1/2

Starring: Seo Yeong-hie, Ji Seong-won, Min-ho Hwang

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

Hoping to escape the busy bustle of Seoul's big city life, as well as the troubles that come with it like a stressful office environment and being a witness of an assault, Hae-won decided to take a week long vacation at her home island, Moo-do, and spend some time with her childhood friend, Bok-nam, who have been writing letters to her. Little does she know, however, are the daily horrors Bok-nam suffer at the hands of the few remaining islanders living there as not only is she berated and shunned by the island women for not meeting their outdated norms of a dutiful and loyal wife, but she also physically and sexually abused by her brutish spouse and sleazy brother-in-law. Her only respite to all of her suffering is her daughter Yeon-hee and the fleeting chance of escaping her hellish island life to Seoul. A chance that might finally be at reach with Hae-won's arrival and help.

Unfortunately, despite Bok-nam's pleas and horrifying suspicions that Yeon-hee is being groomed by her own father, Hae-won turns a blind eye to the request, leading to Bok-nam taking matters at her own hands and attempt to leave the island with her daughter on her own. This only leads to a harrowing loss that finally breaks Bok-nam and, with Hae-won further refusing to help with the matter and the islanders' continuing maltreatment, a sickle is wielded and everyone will feel the wrath of a woman forever scorned...

Bedevilled (2010) is, without a doubt, one of the hardest movies for me to watch and I say that as a compliment to just how well it works not only a revenge-driven psychological slasher, but as a movie in general; for the first hour, it explores the extent of cruelty upon an undeserving party and the consequences of being a bystander, having us uncomfortably witness the full brunt of the abuse Bok-nam endures day by day, a matter that's actually encouraged by the aging island women whose mindsets are still stuck in the old gender norms of men being respected despite the stones they throw upon their spouses, and that a woman's job is only to be loyal to their husbands and do nothing but provide and serve. The film reaches to an extent that it brews a boiling sense of outrage from its audience, even more so when the film presented more than one chances for Bok-nam to be free of her horrible mistreatment, only for it to be swept away by hushed tongues, blind eyes and lies. It's a different kind of horror, one that hits a brand of realism all too well thanks Seo Yeong-hie's outstandingly heart-rending role and performance as the victim of all of these horrible deeds, and too the fact that despite Hae-won being presented as the main character of the plot, the direction and focus are mostly centered around Bok-nam's grueling hardships, making it quite easy to develop our sympathies for her plight.

Eventually, it all has to reach a breaking point and, after one irreversible act of violence, Bedevilled (2010) dives into a cathartic revenge-fueled murder spree as the islanders meet the bladed point of a sickle one by one. Necks hacked, heads decapitated, guts knifed, it's all as satisfying as it can get, a deserving pay-off filled with good gore, savage bloodletting and harrowing intensity after watching these villains haughtily justify their assault and persecutions for the longest time, reducing them to victims begging for their lives once the tables finally turn against them. And yet, in the midst of this eye-for-and-eye retribution play, there's an underlying feeling of misery and heartache as the film subtly reminds us that it didn't have to come to this bloodshed. There's no smile in Bok-nam's face as she murders these people. No quips. No fanfare. Just a stoic face, a broken spirit and pure methodic deaths that could have been prevented when the right people stepped in, a graze of complexity that has this bodycount achieving more in depth than just your regular horror film kill streak.

The final act is where Bedevilled (2010) works its emotionally-scarring character study into your typical slasher flick showdown as Hae-won sees herself trapped in a police station, the only officer there seemingly murdered, with a very maddened Bok-nam waiting there to finish what she started. It's the usual trappings of chase sequences, blows traded and a crazily gory last kill, but it's still punctuated with an emotional dour mood that's in line with the movie's cathartic development, ending on a bittersweet yet still devastating note that touches on the melancholic.

Admittedly, Bedevilled (2010) is not a movie for everyone. The brutality of the abuse shown can come to a point where it feels uncalled for, or at least have one welding a strong constitution to sit and bear it. At the end of it all, though, the promised conclusion is one to deliver and remember. One that rewards your patience and rage with a rush of psychological release through bloody sickle kills upon those who deserves it. If you think you're up to it, then see this unsung revenge masterpiece!

Bodycount:

1 female murdered offscreen

1 girl lands head-first on a rock

1 female hacked on the neck with a sickle

1 female hacked on the back of the head with a sickle

1 female hacked with a sickle

1 elderly female jumped off a cliff and landed on rocks

1 male decapitated with a sickle

1 male gutted with a knife, hacked to death with a sickle

1 male shredded through a boat propeller 

1 male bashed to death with a sledgehammer

1 female repeatedly shot, stabbed in the throat with a recorder flute

Total: 11

Some Bad Scrambled Easter Eggs: Easter Sunday (2014)

Easter Sunday (2014)

Rating: *

Starring: Robert Z'Dar, Jeremy Todd Morehead, Ari Lehman

A fat bloke got his throat sliced open with an axe and farts during his death rattles. The killer, in a voice pitched up as if his balls were being flagellated with an electrified flail, asks the guy if he just broke wind and proceeds to pick up a log to totally decimate the poor shmuck's head with, claiming that "All farters must perish".

All of this is just within the first five minutes of the film. Fuck.

Twenty four years ago on Easter night, Douglas Fisher went cuckoo for carnage, dons a rabbit mask and starts chopping down people dead with an axe, including his wife and daughter. He was soon caught and shot dead by the sheriff (the late Robert Z'dar of the Maniac Cop franchise) and the town he terrorized hardly celebrated Easter since then. Cutting forward to the present and we have the members of an indie band called The Heart Eaters visiting Fisher's hometown for a rockin' Easter weekend. One of the members just so happens to be the surviving son of the infamous bunny-masked killer and as a final 'fuck you' to his homicidal father, the dude decided to play around with a spirit board so he can say all the nasty shit he always wanted to against the fella.

And wouldn't you know it, this allowed the soul of Douglas Fisher to possess his son and start another killing spree. Well, shit, who didn't see that coming?

Easter Sunday (2014) is a difficult movie to watch, in all honesty; the micro-budget production is distractingly evident as a good deal of the kills were enhanced with CG, the sound mixing is atrocious that the background tune is often louder than the audio and a lot of the camera work is boring and dull. I would and could tolerate all of these shortcomings if the story and tone is any better, but with the characters, including the damn killer, acting like overly exaggerated cartoon caricatures spouting painfully unfunny lines for comedic purposes simply made the film too juvenile and desperate to be enjoyable. Like, really, it's torture enough that none of the so-called jokes and one-liners hit, but they just have to make everyone be doofuses who can't stop yapping at how supposedly hilarious their shenanigans are. Look, I get it, it's a tongue-in-cheek homage to old school 80s slashers and I can respect that but, yeah, the level of goofiness here tries too hard to be funny, it fumbled. A lot. 

Frankly, Easter Sunday (2014) is less of a working movie and more of an endurance test at how much low-budget shlock one can take. I can't trash it completely since this is Robert Z'dar's last acting role before he passed away in 2015 and I will give the movie the grace of at least giving him a good role, but this one simply isn't for me. Trash it along with the other stale Easter goods.

Bodycount:

1 male had his throat cut with an axe, head crushed with a thrown log

1 female had her face dunked in a boiling pot of water, head repeatedly stomped on

1 girl hacked with an axe

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 female seen murdered

1 male shot

1 female had her head crushed

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 female split in half with an axe

1 male beaten to death with a baseball

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 male had his throat cut with a knife, gets drizzled with hot oil

1 male and 1 female found murdered

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 female had her head stomped on

1 female had her neck snapped

1 male decapitated with an axe

Total: 18

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

Rave a Cave to The Grave: Bone Cave (2011)

Bone Cave (2011)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Justin Rose, Jeremy Jusek, Andrew Hartl

...Yeah, I'm not even gonna beat around the bush, this is just terrible.

Two college slackers named Mike and... T Rad... want to earn some good cash so they throw the mother of all raves inside a secluded cave for novelty's sake. Lights were set. Tunes were played. Stolen drugs were passed around as party favors. Things were going great - until it isn't. The cave just happens to be the lair of some face-painted creep who goes by Bones Magee and, for the lack of a better term, he has aspirations to be the next wise-cracking slasher villain. Like, he utters terrible one-liners before and/or after hacking someone to death with his assortment of bone-related weapons. So, yeah, Bones Magee soon crashes the party, forcing Mike, T Rad, some hot goth-punk chick named Annora and the few remaining partygoers to try and survive the Bone Cave.

Honestly, I wanted to like Bone Cave (2011). It has cheese factor, a stupidly entertaining villain and some of the kills were gruesome enough, but its pacing is atrocious, taking a very long while with us just watching two boring bozos trying to plan a rave before anything interesting happens, all in the meantime enduring acting chops that range from stiff to dull just to pour salt on the wound. The murder spree wouldn't takes place after almost an hour of lackluster plot building, and its insultingly done and over with no soon after, leaving the last fifteen minutes or so focused solely on Bones Magee hammily monologuing this movie's excuse of a twist, while our survivors equally cheese it out with responding banter. 

Throw in a couple of dated computer graphic effects here and there, plus an entire massacre that happened offscreen, implied only through blood splashes on prop rocks, looped audio of actors screaming and annoying heavy rock playing in the background, and you have one of the cheapest slashers to come out of celluloid. Seriously, Bone Cave (2011) earned its spot on the crusty bottom barrel of horrid horror lameness for not only how crappy the overall quality of it is, but also for how braindead boring it is. 

Avoid it.  

Bodycount:

1 male skewered with a pike

1 female impaled through the forehead with a pike

1 female had her face melted with acid

1 male bashed on the head with a skull-decorated pickaxe

1 male hacked on the side with a bone hatchet

1 female had her throat crushed

1 female hacked on the head with a bone hatchet

2 females slashed with a bone hatchet

A number of victims massacred with a skull-decorated pickaxe

1 victim seen crushed in a grenade-triggered cave-in

1 male had his head crushed with a stereo set, electrocuted

1 female hacked on the back with a bone hatchet

1 male hacked on the head with a skull-decorated pickaxe

1 male falls to his death

1 male dies from a bone hatchet hacked unto his back

Total: 15+

A Doll's Grudge: Kyôfu Ningyô (2019)

Kyôfu Ningyô (Japan, 2019) (AKA "The Japanese Doll", "Japanese Doll of Terror")

Rating: ***

Starring: Nao Kosaka, Riku Hagiwara, Makoto Awane

After the both of them received an invitation to hang out at a camp with the promise of a hundred thousand Yen each just for attending, childhood friends Masato and Yuri decided to go seeing Masato could use the money for his college fund, though Yuri is a tad put off by the odd nature of the invite. There they meet six other people who got the same invitations, as well as a suspiciously distant woman who's tasked to cater to their needs by their mysterious host.

It isn't long before the whole gang realize that they all knew one another at some point and that they all used to go to the very same camp they're at ten years ago. This is also when they remember that there was another girl who attended the camp, Yoshiko, but she, much to their horror, recently passed away and it appears that the girl's beloved doll is now haunting them, following them wherever they go and slowly growing in size. Soon, the doll is big enough to tower them proper and, with a disposal of weapons to cut and carve, it's hellbent to punish everyone responsible for its beloved owner's passing!

For a good deal of its story, Kyôfu Ningyô (2019) strides the familiar footings of a classic backwoods slasher plot of teens going to the woods for fun, only to end up dead in the hands of a powertool-inclined villain, though what sets this film slightly apart from the rest of its kin is that it dabbles with traditional Japanese superstitions to toy with the possibility of our villain being supernatural, mainly the idea of dolls as vessels for curses and grudges. With this, a fair share of the scares and creep factor stem from the toy's otherworldly ability to appear and disappear in places, seemingly observing the group while they remain mostly unaware of its presence until it is too late, as well as a few unexplained moments wherein the doll shed tears and responded in pain while being tortured by this movie's own Ahab, a professor of cursed dolls who arrived at the camp out of nowhere and maybe a little nutso himself.

After dancing around the concept of the occult, Kyôfu Ningyô (2019) would eventually set itself within bodycount territories, paving way to the movie's most memorable peculiarity in which we now follow the doll, grown life-sized but still sporting a humongous bobble-head, as it goes on a killing spree with knives, barbecue forks and, heck, even a chainsaw! It's as standard of an affair as a slasher flick would get (overlooking the giant-headed killer, of course), with groups splitting up for one reason to another, making them easy picking for the vengeful doll. However, may it be due of its low budget or the fact that the film's aimed for a wider audience with its PG-12 rating upon release, the exploitation elements of these killings isn't as extreme as one would expect, with the camera more often than not cutting away before any metal edge would touch bear skin, though this isn't to say it's not without its bloody moments, entertaining chase scenes and a few creative set-pieces. 

There's also a neat little reveal at its climax that channels the backwoods slasher classic Friday The 13th (1980), done in a familiar backdrop borrowed from Happy Birthday to Me (1981) which have dead victims aligned and propped up as guests in a macabre party while the lead characters gawk in horror. Admittedly, it does get a tad emotional, heartbreaking even once the culprit starts to reminisce about precious memories in-between sobs, though the hokeyness of the horror isn't completely lost, especially when the killer entitled themselves to one more attempt to end their victims, giant head still bobbing and chainsaw roaring as down-beaten survivors cower away. 

As far as entertainment goes, this is one weird ride of a horror flick that certainly delivers the good even if, plot-wise, the movie didn't tread on new grounds concerning the sub-genre. From its fun little mystery and bizarre visuals, to the bloody kills and insane-looking killer, Kyôfu Ningyô (2019) is a genuine slasher treat from our friends back at the Land of The Rising Sun and I sincerely recommend this little number for a strange yet oddly satisfying watch!

Bodycount:

1 female found dead with a head wound

1 female hacked with an axe

1 male garroted to death with a length of barbwire

1 male found dead with a head wound

1 female caught on an animal trap, stabbed to death with a barbecue fork

1 male gets a chainsaw through the gut

1 female corpse seen

1 male brained with a sledgehammer

1 male shot to death with a hunting rifle

Total: 9

An Average Sharp Hand Joe: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Rating: **

Starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner

When the 2003 redux of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) made bank at the box office, the decade went on a "reimagining" craze when it comes to a bulk of its slasher films by redoing cult classic titles from yore into lean, mean, modern horror cuisines with varying results of passes and failures. 

More often than not, these reimaginings simply take the name and concept of the movies they're reworking and create entirely different stories around them, all the while paying tribute to the originals with a few jabs and nods, maybe a famous line uttered here and a familiar kill over there. This, in turn, usually rub a good chunk of dedicated fans the wrong way as they argue that some of these remade films hardly resemble the originals they've known and love so it's no surprise that some titles did try to stick to the source material as much as they could, like this 2010 modernized take on a slasher classic about nightmares and a little Ohio landscape called Elm Street. As you would see, that may pose its own shortcomings as well. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) opens at a diner where a group of teens witness their friend, Dean Russell (Kellan Lutz), seemingly ends himself by running a steak knife across his own throat. The core cast within the group did take notice of how odd this apparent suicide unfolded, like how Dean uttered at someone that they're not real before the darkly deed was done.

Next to bite the big one is Dean's girlfriend Kris Fowles (Katie Cassidy), who just hours after attending her late-boyfriend's funeral and getting comforted in her room by her ex, Jesse Braun (Thomas Decker), gets sliced across the chest in her sleep by invisible blades while being levitated and hurled from wall-to-wall. Jesse is blamed for the murder and thrown in jail, but he too falls victim to whatever murderous force is picking off the kids one by one. A murderous force burnt like hell, wearing a fedora and a stripey sweater, wielding a glove with knives for fingertips. 

Quickly noticing that their friend group is dropping like flies, our lead duo Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara) and Quentin Smith (Kyle Galner) starts looking into a few cryptic clues dropped by the others before they croaked, these including the possibility that they all once knew one another at long-forgotten pre-school and, too, the fact that they all been getting similar nightmares involving a burnt fedora-wearing man lately. It isn't long then that Nancy's mother finally reveals the truth to the two, that they and their late-friends were indeed under the same pre-school class many moons ago and that the school's caretaker, a fella named Fred Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), allegedly molested them. In an act of vigilante justice, the man was chased into a boiler room and set on fire by mob of angry parents and the kids, somehow, forgot all about this ordeal. 

That is, until recently; somehow, from beyond the grave, Krueger has returned to eliminate all the children from that preschool class by killing them through their dreams, as revenge not only against the folks that roasted his arse, but also against the now-teenage kids who ratted him out. With time running out and Krueger getting closer to killing them, Nancy and Quentin have no choice but to figure out a way to stop and end a killer who only exists in their nightmares.

Now, I wanted to like A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010); it's a shot on making Fred Krueger scary again and, on a certain weight, we did get that as not only the plot tackled the grim characterization of Fred being a child molester and abuser, an idea that was dropped from the original 1984 film for being too heinous, but Jackie Earle Haley also did a fine job giving us a creepy and menacing supernatural killer with his drawl speech and sadistically perverse body language. (Also, I'm probably among the minority who's actually okay with the new look. It strongly implies that he's hardly human anymore) The problem, sadly, is the story and its execution as the movie practically replicates the original to a near tee so there's very little room for creativity and hardly a reason for this to even exist. The only points that set this remake from the original is a new set of teens with updated classes of stereotypes and the idea of micro-naps which, admittedly, works well on the scenes implementing them as it shows the teens slipping in and out of Freddy's reach in real time as they struggle to keep themselves awake. I would also add the little red herring attempt in which we're supposed to question whether Krueger did abused those tykes or not but, let's face it, anybody with common sense would know that he did terrible things to those kids so we might as just well drop that pointless hook. (I mean, again, he's played by Jackie Earle Haley here. Remember Ronnie McGorvey from Little Children (2006)?)

Any attempts for a scare fall dull and cheapened by this movie's use of CG effects for its supernatural elements, as well as jump scares that mostly looked too silly to genuinely frighten. The characters outside of Freddy are also unapologetically bland, basically among the most boring line of victims-to-be which isn't helped by the fact that most of these dead meats were killed off before any worth of development was done for them. The kill scenes, thankfully, are done with a good deal of practical effects with some digitalized enhancements, and some of the visuals that go along with these scenes do echo a familiar vibe of an early Elm Street movie, where Fred is mostly in the shadows and everything around him is grimy and, well, nightmarish. Apart from that, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) barely stands out and while not a completely bad film on its own as, again, it still delivers on what we expect from an Elm Street movie, a supernatural kill count committed by a nightmare-woven paranormal killer, it fails to bring any sense of charm or creative grit to make itself a rightfully enjoyable watch. 

Bodycount:

1 male had a knife stabbed and sliced across his throat

1 female slashed down her chest with a razor glove

1 male stabbed though his chest with a razor glove

1 male set ablaze (flashback)

1 female stabbed through the head with a razor glove

Total: 5

Another Baghead In The Woods - The Trilogy: Terror at Black Tree Forest (2010), Escape to Black Tree Forest (2012) and Black Tree Forest III (2012)

Welp, here we are. Across the wide open plains of a cheapjack franchise involving another bag-masked loonie killing people in the woods, channeling their inner-Jason Voorhees. How original...

Terror At Black Tree Forest (2010)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Allison Scott II, Paul Albers, Steve Carty

So for the first six minutes of this mostly hour long-trek, we see a 1970s married couple and their boy Brian Mellows out in the woods, with mom and pop deciding to leave lil' Brian alone to play while they go hanky-panky in the forest. This private baby-making session is unfortunately interrupted by a random killer in a sack mask who proceeds to stab dear hubby dead and go rapey on dear wifey. Brian hears the commotion and arrives there just in time to see his mother get snuffed out by the masked man, leading to a chase scene that kinda goes forever with both the kid and the killer tripping on stuff. The boy eventually outruns his assailant and was soon found tuckered out near the road by a passing driver.

Cut to the present and we now follow four friends out to camp at the very same woods Brian Mellows had his haunting experience and, wouldn't you know it, Mr. Mellows, now fully grown yet mentally broken from the trauma, has just escaped from an asylum and made his way to the very same backwoods with a murderous streak. Take a wild guess where all of this is heading to...

There's really not a lot go by this one; the story can be easily shortened down to "kids go to the wood, kids go dead" and nothing much else, all shot and edited in that psuedo-grainy "grindhouse" aesthetic then popularized by the Tarantino/Rodriguez double-feature throwback Grindhouse (2007), only with more eye-straining colored tinting that I'm sure would fry some people's eyes blind if they look at it too long, as well as brain-numbingly dull rock acoustics and synthesizer music to bore our ears, too. All the characters were written unremarkably generic and, worse even, acted with the flair of a wooden stump, so, really, this is honestly one of the most forgettable slasher titles out there, which makes the fact this thing got a movie series even more shocking.

I honestly see very little appeal in this one. Sure, you could call this title an attempt to capture the good old days of hacking and slashing, but it just doesn't feel like it tried too much. Everything about it look, sounds and feel half-assed and it shows. If y'all are looking for a throwback slasher, you can do better than this limp piece of work...

Bodycount:

1 male knifed through the head

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 female knifed in the gut

1 female knifed to death

1 female knifed in the eye, killed

1 male had his throat sliced with a knife

1 male found murdered, method unknown

Total: 8

~~~

Escape to Black Tree Forest (2012)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Paul Albers, Brandon Aylor, Karrie Bauman

Taking place two weeks after the events of the first film, now dubbed in the news as the "Black Tree Terror Massacre", lone survivor Mare Strode is still reeling from the fact that she narrowly escaped being butchered by the mad masked slasher Brian Mellows and her recent stay at the hospital to recover did little to help. So much so that, the moment she got home, Mary picked up a pillow case and turned it into a mask before going Halloween (1978) opening sequence on her own mother, knifing her to death. 

Yep, it looks like we're going down the route of Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985), only this one's a lot more open with the fact that our then-final girl is now a mad slasher, returning to Black Tree Forest to start another killing spree. And everything from there is basically a repeat of the first film as we have yet another set of four teens visiting the titular woods to camp out, all the while doing some dumb shenanigans like stopping by a grocery to buy some supplies and pig out on free samples, as well as skinny dip on a pond albeit some footages missing. (Yep, they're still doing the Grindhouse (2007) shtick here) These tomfooleries are mostly intertwined with Mare's dad and a detective out driving to the same site in hopes of finding the girl, unaware that she'd gone cuckoo for murder and is about to go Michael Myers on our main gaggle around (and I kid you not) the last fifteen minutes of the damn movie.

Frankly, the whole thing simply failed to bring anything with actual substance as despite the plot implying a lot of interesting directions, like Mare's sudden turn to the stabby side, her father's desperate search for her or the suggestions that the first film's original killer may still be out there seeing no actual body was found, none of that really mattered as these are all set aside for what basically amounted to nothing but a lot of padding and even more padding. There's no real urgency to the pace here and by the time we do get some actual slasher horror, the fucking shit is rushed like hell with cheap kills, one uninspired chase sequence and an ending that I'm certain would have been more impacting given we actually gave a shit.

Much like the first film, this sequel is damn forgettable. Heck, even more so as practically nothing happened here to earn any genuine form of thrills, scares or intrigue. It doesn't help too that the writing is as bland as the talent acting them out, as well as the sound design and editing are basically shit. It's simply a boring follow-up to an already boring film and I would rather eat a laundry pod than subject myself to another helping of this movie. Throw it out on a pile of dog doo and carry on with your day...

Bodycount: 

1 male knifed in the eye

1 female knifed to death

1 male knifed in the back

1 male implied brained, bloody rock seen (flashback)

1 female knifed

1 male impaled on a tree branch

1 female knifed to death

1 female killed offscreen with a knife

1 female shot with a shotgun

1 male shot through the head with a shotgun

Total: 9 

~~~

Black Tree Forest III (2012)

Rating: 1/2

Starring: Brandon Aylor, Jennii Caroline, Breana Mitchell

Wow. Like, actual wow. You couldn't even see shit most of the time in this one!

So apart from being a backwoods slasher, this third entry to a franchise that doesn't even need to exist is also a holiday bodycounter, taking place around Halloween. Here we follow Chuck, a character from the prior film who survived the massacre that took the lives of his friends and girlfriend. He's now locked up in a nuthouse where we see a doctor interviewing him about the events that led to them camping at the titular Black Tree Forest, which meant half the running time of the entire run focusing on random shots of him and his girlfriend having fun at an amusement park before eventually showing us the clip note version of the second movie. (Think Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), only less funny, less 'Garbage Day!' and grainer)

Chuck also now believes he's part of a cycle of violence which may or may not be an actual curse inflected by the Black Tree Forest and it is this belief that motivates him to escape the nuthouse, don a raincoat and dollar store mask, as well as steal a knife from an old lady's house ala Halloween II (1981) before legging it back to the woods. All the while, yet another set of four characters planning a Halloween night bonfire at Black Tree Forest and, well, you know what comes after...

...That is, of course, if you could see goddamn anything! Seriously, there's little to no lighting done in this mess so most of the time I'm trying to figure out what half of the crap I'm looking at whenever a scene takes place either at night or in the dark. And because of this, I couldn't even make out most of the killings and for those that I did see, they're nothing to clamor about, making Black Tree Forest III's talky direction, muddled audio, padded pacing, and overly grainy and irritatingly saturated shot-on-video visual aesthetics not really worth sitting through.

I mean, I can give it some respect for perfectly capturing the feel of an 80s local channel midnight Halloween viewing, this film definitely replicated the look. (complete with a shlocky TV host and an intermission courtesy of a black-and-white Trick 'r Treat safety PSA!) I can also appreciate it for trying some type of twist in the form of a random red herring involving a woman being tortured inside someone's basement which eventually ties up to this movie's ending but, aside from these, Black Tree Forest III is just a big bore of a movie and a headache to watch. What really else is there to say about this movie but 'fuck off' !

Bodycount:

1 male murdered, seen strangled with a cord

1 male found dead with a missing eye

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 male stabbed with a knife

1 male stabbed with a knife

1 male hit on the temple with a nailed wooden board

1 female brained with a hammer, body later seen dumped off a bridge

1 female killed, method unknown

Total: 8

~~~

And that's all of them. All three of the original Black Tree Forest movies and, my god, I think I need a strong drink to cleanse away these horrifically atrocious exploitation throwbacks I just subjected my eyeballs to. I'd be even more fortunate if I pass out drunk and get a hangover in the following morning because that would have been a far more engaging experience compared to this movie, too! But oh, what's that? Why did I phrase these three films as the original? Well, dear reader, you curious scamp, you! The franchise found a way to be remade in United Kingdom back in 2021! In fact, I reviewed that movie first and swore then that I wouldn't even touch this franchise for how horrible that movie was but I'm a completist. 

A fucking stupid completist...

You're welcome.