The Devil's Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's Former Roommate: Bloodspell (1989)

Bloodspell (AKA 'The Boy From Hell', 'To The Devil a Son') (1989)
Rating: **
Starring: Aarin Teich, Anthony Jenkins, Twink Caplan

Ever wondered what The Omen (1976) would have been like if, instead of the baby Antichrist being taken in by a wealthy couple with ties to the government, spreading his influence across the world under the unholy ploy of the Devil himself, we have a teenager being dropped off at a care home for troubled kids by his frightened mother because his estranged Satanist father is looking to awaken his son's inner-devil and have him create the Anti-Christ with the girl of his choice by the time he turns eighteen?

If you answered 'yes', you're a weird lil' fella. And this is the movie you're looking for.

 

During his stay at St. Boniface Evaluation Center for Troubled Kids (where said 'kids' are played by actors pushing somewhere between late-20s to early-30s, acting like pre-schoolers), aforementioned bringer of darkness Daniel (Anthony Jenkins) is starting to show a lot of supernatural evil like causing windows to shatter to cut someone's face, making a remote explode at a kid's hand after they hog a TV, and murdering a pair of nasty bullies through grisly accidents. He's also been talking to the demonic apparition of his father who, after finally catching up to sonny, tells him of his destiny to sire the Anti-Messiah by the time he comes of age. Which, unfortunately for the residents of the center, is just a few nights away. 

Recognizing the danger after noticing that Daniel's present during these incidents too many times, jittery Charlie (Aarin Teich, in his late twenties) tries to warn the rest that the new kid is evil, but this is proven to be a lot difficult to do seeing he has the mental maturity of a tantrum-throwing twelve-year old who bonks his head on a tree-root when his suicidal girlfriend refuses to talk to him after, out of the blue, he asked her why she tried killing herself. Yeah. Is it any mystery, too, why he's also the butt of many jokes and bullying going around the center? When he gets upset, he gets intensely upset. Over-the-top and many screws loose.

Still, what remains of the group eventually figure out that Daniel is demonic when a visiting psychiatrist suffers a heart attack trying to run away from a session gone spooky. With Daniel's evil growing stronger, it's up to Charlie, House mother Jenny (Twink Caplan) and live-in guidance counselor Tony Montana (Edward Dloughy) to stop the Boy from Hell from bringing forth the devil's spawn, as well as killing anybody else who gets in his way.

As much as this movie is a laughable car wreck when it comes to acting and dialogue, the story does play around enough predictable horror-of-the-demonic tropes to make it an interesting watch. It's a terrible movie, sure, with cheap effects and cockeyed editing, but there's a charm to how well it wears its badness over the craziness of its story, making it quite easy to see Bloodspell (1989) as a guilty pleasure for lovers of bad cinema. Like, what other slashers out there have a finale overblown with cheese courtesy of a group hug and sappy end credit music right after divine intervention helped save the day? Not a lot, I imagine.

If you like your supernatural slashers absurdly ridiculous and fun for being that terrible, then seek out this hammy gem and enjoy!  

Bodycount:
1 female strangled to death
1 male set ablaze
1 male shredded through a woodchipper
1 male suffers through a heart attack
1 male ran through with a pike, struck by lightning
Total: 5

Death Comes For Legacies: Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Rya Kihlstedt

It's been, what? Fourteen years since the last Final Destination movie? In all honesty, Final Destination 5 (2011) would have ended the franchise on a high note by being an absolute godsend entry for managing to still keep the idea of Death personally picking off disaster survivors brutally frightening and morbidly fascinating within its back-to-basics story. Not to mention that one neat twist in the near end that I'm sure surprised a lot of the audience the first time they saw it! But through the next years, the rumor mill kept hopes of another round of the "howdunnit" bodycounting alive, this including talks of a story set at the medieval ages, to ones focusing on a group of first responders. (Frankly, a period piece Final Destination movie would have been interesting. Maybe then they would finally address who or what the flying fridge kept giving these random people visions of terrible disasters?)

Now, Death is back once more, and this time it takes a bloodied flying log through the legacy sequel trend, with a big emphasis on "legacy".

The scene starts at 1968; young Iris is surprised by her boyfriend Paul with a fancy dinner high up at a newly opened Skyview Tower, a classy restaurant built hundreds of feet above ground. What Iris didn't know is that her man plans on proposing to her there, all the while Paul isn't aware that the love of his life is carrying his child. When the two learns of each other's little secrets, the couple couldn't be happier for themselves and one another, thus everyone clapped and is happy.

Until some brat's coin toss somehow leads to the tower's glass dance floor shattering, a massive explosion, and the structure falling apart, killing everyone.

As Iris falls to her death, this turns out to be no more than a recurring nightmare and the source of night terrors for one Stefani, a present day college student. It's been two months since she started dreaming the disaster and, hoping to find its source so she can live normally again, Stefani pries information out from her extended family who hesitantly reveal to her that Iris is her grandmother, driven insane by her constant lookout for Death ever since that visit to the Skyview and is now dwelling inside a fortified cabin at a secluded mountain clearing.

Tracking her grandmother down, Stefani learns that Iris was successful in preventing the tower's collapse, saving the lives of everyone there. Of course, Death didn't like that its plan got screwed up, so it starts to kill off every survivor in the order they would've died that time, along with their respective descendants who shouldn't exist to begin with. The matter that everyone walked off living and breathing from that tower meant Death took a very long while to eventually get to Iris' bloodline (so long, dare I say, that if it was a movie, it would take three or four sequels just to do it justice), but with Iris now terminally ill, she theorizes Stefani's getting these dreams as a sign that her family's next to bite as soon as the cancer finally do her in. 

Stefani didn't buy any of this at first, but a well-projected weather vane through grammy's head moments after their meeting was enough to make a believer out of the girl, who then starts to go through and take to heart Grandma Iris' impromptu gift, a Bible-thick journal full of tips and tricks on how to avoid Death. The rest of her family, as you would expect, was skeptical by all of this until, that is, someone's dad got his face mulched by a runaway lawnmower and a cousin gets a gruesome yet unusually humor-driven incident involving a garbage truck. By then, it's a desperate race against time to find a way to break the cycle, which may include a heartfelt final appearance of Tony Todd as the mysterious mortician William Bludworth, a kooky plan to kill-and-resurrect a cousin through a triggered peanut allergy, and maybe even a darkly humorous suggestion of infanticide to steal the fresh soul's years, though thankfully nobody bothered to do after, perhaps, one of this film's best exchanges.

In fact, one of the key good points of Bloodlines (2025) is how the two families are written and portrayed, just a colorful bunch of fun and likeable characters despite their flaws. The film generously gives good bits after good bits of just how close they all are (Uncle Howard's kids and their cousin going through the house looking for a tiny adorable pet turtle, for one. And then there's Richard Harmon's Erik, a tattoo and piercing-studded assholey joker-type, shown to have a photo of his dad giving him a fatherly smooch on the cheek set as his phone's wallpaper, which successfully tugged my heartstrings), and it's this warm bond that's something mostly absent throughout the franchise, thus greatly welcomed here for giving the movie an identifiable theme and tone, as well as a relatable raise of stakes.

When it comes to the messy meat and bone of the movie, Bloodlines (2025) does kick things off with one of this franchise's best opening disaster next to Final Destination 2 (2003)'s vehicular pile-up; just brutal carnage all over. Blood, guts and charred bodies grace the screen full of splatter and a dash of dark comedy here and there. (Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head plays on a radio before hapless dancers start getting splattered on the hard concrete from a fall. A penny's weight causes a piano to tip over and fall through and, satisfyingly, on top of an obnoxious character. Just to name a few) This dip into grim comedy occasionally shows up across the rest of the death scenes, making the massacre here oddly balanced in terror, gore and cathartic laughs as MRI magnet flies metal debris through soft flesh, or an accidentally-chained nose piercing escalates to a deadly blaze.

The excitement, unfortunately, starts to fizzle down around the final act as the remaining family decide that the best course of action to keep Death at bay is to have them, or at least one of them, fort up inside late-Grandma Iris' "deathproof" cabin as long as they could, so the rest can live their lives to the fullest. Now, see, this is when Bloodlines (2025) starts to get sloppy with its direction as, for one, this plan is just dumb; with Death managing to kill off Iris using the structure of the cabin against her, the whole place is basically imperiled and this is further hammered down by the number of hazards originally meant to keep the Grim Reaper off now posing as dangers against the doomed family. And, yet, they continue ahead, resulting to even more deaths and a near-death experience that may or may not have broken the cycle.

I could have tolerated this shortsighted turn of events as it did still feature a few nicely executed set-pieces, but even when the movie rears up its inevitable twisty final disaster, Bloodlines (2025) couldn't even bother to come up with a more creative exit. Practically speaking, they just did the ending for Final Destination 3 (2006) again, only with little to no exciting build-up, looking awfully cartoonish and has Final Destination 2 (2003) logs thrown in because, well, fanservice. Yawn.

Quite a shame, really, as I would have given this entry a better rating given that they tried harder and better for its finale. Still, the journey before that is a whole baggage of fun, one that isn't shy to toss around an emotional core in the midst of all the crushed bodies and witty jest, reminding us to cherish our time with our loved ones. All I can say is I'm glad we have Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)! It's imperfect, but worth a watch! 

Bodycount:

1 elderly female gets a projected weather vane through her head

1 male had his face shredded by a lawnmower

1 female crushed to death inside a trash compactor

1 male gets a magnetized wheelchair crush and impale him into a malfunctioning MRI machine

1 male gets a magnetized metal spring through his head

1 female crushed by a falling light post

1 female crushed by an airborne log

1 male crushed by an airborne log

Total: 8

Images (c) Google

We Are The Monsters, Babes: Get Away (2024)

Get Away (United Kingdom, 2024)
Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Nick Frost, Aisling Bea, Maisie Ayres

For the Smiths - Daddy Richard (Nick Frost), Mummy Susan (Aisling Bea), and angsty teen siblings Jessie (Maisie Ayres) and Sam (Sebastian Croft) - their holiday vacation to the small Swedish island of Svälta is the bonding experience they need as a family, especially when the divergent dynamics between the parents and the kids make a lot of conversations and activities awkward. The people they come across along the way, though, thinks their plan to visit and stay on Svälta is a terrible idea as the mainlanders there, lead by an ill-tempered crone (Anita Suikkari), doesn't take too kindly to outsiders, especially when their Karantan festival is nearing, celebrating a 19th century British-led massacre that drove its survivors into cannibalism.

And, to no one's surprise, the islanders aren't too pleased to see the family, even more so when they learn that one of Susan's ancestors took part of the massacre and she trivializes their traditions as a simple show to be gawked at. It isn't long before the residents of Svälta start showing up in the middle of the night wearing folk masks and tossing dead animals at the house the Smiths rented, not to mention the odd creaking noises coming from somewhere inside said house and the troubling sight of enough coffins for four being loaded onto boats. Believing the unwanted arrivals are a sign, the island elders ponder on the possibility to do a proper Karantan, a chance to resurrect a dormant tradition involving murder and the taste of fresh human flesh...

For the first hour, Get Away (2024) clashes the likes of folk horror inspired by movies such as The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019), with the bumbling comedy of a family under constant confrontations and awkward situations just trying to get through their holiday by being as polite as possible, to the point many obvious red flags are ignored. While some of the jokes are a hit-or-miss with its tired jabs at vegan diets or culture clashes, the story itself is made tolerable by the entertainingly dysfunctional interactions of the Smiths as they get on each other's nerves, but open to surprisingly wholesome moments like Richard sharing his youthful experience with recreational weed with his daughter, or chuckle-worthy conversations about moist waffles during a family breakfast. 

The islanders, sadly, didn't get the same in-depth treatment considering most of them are portrayed as one-note fodder, filling out backgrounds as angry locals glaring daggers and being rude to the Smiths. The only one with any real sense of character is the head Svälta elder, who passionately believes the community she leads has lost its edge over the years, that it's about time they go back and hold the Karantan as it is intended to be, a gory vengeful act upon those who wrong them. We also got one Matts Larsson (Eero Milonoff), who owns the house the Smiths are renting and hinted to have something sinister planned for the family, though he's practically reduced to a creeper with a fetish for lingerie and voyeurism, spending his time on the movie being just pervertedly gross and upsetting. 

With only so much material to work around the premise of a hapless family butting heads with angry Swedes, the pacing did get a tad draggy near the film's climax, though this is remedied greatly by Get Away (2024)'s third and final act; without giving away much, let's just say the promised massacre did happen, just not in the way you may have expected. It's a killing spree that saved the movie for me, the sheer lunacy and maniac energy of it all bringing out a dementedly dark humor as the killers hack, stab, gut and decapitate everyone on sight, all the while sharing homely banter and playful teasing, reminiscing about old times and even sing gentle lovelies with one another. Some unfortunates do fight back, even managing to land a jab or two against the maniacs, which keeps the slaying fields all fair and fun, as well as interesting down to the cornball finale. This abrupt turn on who the prey and predators are may not sit well for some folks, but you got to hand it to the film, it's a very good twist on the account of all the shocks and surprises!

From cult-like folk horror to berserker slasher, all done with a British tongue pressed firmly against a cheek, Get Away (2024) may have its shortcomings, but the pay off in the end makes sitting through it worth every minute! Patient gorehounds be delighted!

Bodycount:

1 female stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife

1 male stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife

1 male knifed to death

1 male seen dying from a head wound

1 male seen murdered

1 male stabbed in the gut with a butterfly knife 

1 male knifed in the temple

1 female had her throat slashed with daggers

1 male stabbed in the chest with a push knife

4 victims seen dead

1 male gets a thrown hatchet to the back

1 female knifed in the gut

1 male seen being hacked to death

1 victim knifed in the head

1 female slashed across with a knife

1 female repeatedly knifed, ran through with a pike

1 male seen on fire

1 male seen being stabbed to death

1 female slashed across with a razor

1 male decapitated with a sword

1 male ran through with a sword

1 male stabbed to death

1 male knifed in the neck

1 victim seen on fire

5 heads seen 

1 male seen dead from a head wound 

1 male had his throat slashed with a knife

1 female had her head blown off with a shotgun

1 male shot to death

Total: 36

With A Cuddle And A Kiss: Basement Jack (2009)

Basement Jack (2009)

Rating: ***

Starring: Eric Peter-Kaiser, Sam Skoryna, Michele Morrow

A serial killer with a severe case of mommy issues, Jack Riley (Eric Peter-Kaiser), AKA 'Basement Jack' for his naughty little habit of hanging around in the basements of houses before slaughtering the families who own them, gets recently released after serving an eleven-year sentence and goes back to doing what he does best, leaving a nice trail of murdered households. All the while, Karen (Michele Morrow), the only survivor of Jack's last family hack 'n slash before he got locked up, is out tailing the madman in hopes of putting an end to his killing spree, doing her damnedest to warn everyone of the impending evil on two legs. (Yes, Dr. Loomis and Laurie Strode rolled into one!)

The two end up prowling each other in a macabre cat-and-mouse game at the town of Downer's Grove, where Karen teams up with rookie cop Chris (Sam Skoryna) to try disentangling Jack's next move and targets, all the while Jack does his usual modus operandi of murdering families and creepily posing their corpses. As Chris and Karen get continuously chewed out for interfering with proper police work, thus ignoring their input on the investigation, we're also dealt with peppered flashbacks and hallucinations detailing what exactly caused Jack Riley to get this much loose screws in his head; long story simple, his mama (Lynn Lowry) loves to psychotically torture little boy Jack with 9-volt batteries and leaving him out chained to a pole during thunderstorms, so big boy Jack is warped in the head with a bloodlust for happy families. Particularly those with mums resembling his own.

Basement Jack (2009), in all honesty, didn’t really do anything new for the subgenre and it more or less suffers from common direct-to-video slasher pitfalls of overused CG effects, mediocre acting and oozing levels of fondue. It does, fortunately, approach its story with an interesting angle of making the killer a tad more fleshed out than your average masked psycho, generously focusing on his psychosis and the patterns to his madness which result to Jack being portrayed closer to how serial killers operate. There are times the movie almost feels like a character study for how much and often these little snippets of the killer's abused childhood get shown, only to share its limelight with the police work being done to capture our elusive serial slayer which does reduce a lot of the kills into offscreen massacres, the victims merely existing to be slain.

The last act of Basement Jack (2009) is where the absolute craziness kicks in, with Jack going further into slasher villain mode, donning himself a broken porcelain doll's mouth as a mask piece and wielding something best described as a wearable sword. By that point, we get a cop station massacre inspired by The Terminator (1984), littered with hilariously awful CG and some impossible yet outrageously fun kills, before going down on a brawl between Karen and Jack atop a hotel that's punctuated with a shot calling back to Halloween (1978) and an ending that reminds me of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988). It's the kind of silliness that only a B-grade slasher can pull off and I love the fact that the film embraces its own shlock the further it goes down, even if some of it didn't exactly work. 

Not quite high art, but doable as a fun little timewaster that's a little more better than most video bin horror flicks!  

Bodycount:

1 female found beheaded

1 male found dying from his wounds

1 male repeatedly stabbed through with a knife

1 male found with half of his face missing

1 baby implied murdered

1 boy seen murdered

1 female found slaughtered

1 male stabbed in the gut with a machete

1 female found murdered

1 male gets a machete to the face

1 male and 1 female seen slaughtered with a machete

1 male gets stabbed though the gut with a machete, skewered unto a fuse box and electrocuted

1 male stabbed through the head with a machete

1 female stabbed through the gut with a machete

1 female seen slaughtered (flashback)

2 males double-scalped with a wearable sword

1 male killed with a wearable sword

1 male had an arm lopped off with a wearable sword, killed

1 male skewered through the gut with a wearable sword

1 female gutted with a wearable sword

1 female seen murdered

1 male seen murdered

Total: 24 

This is The Whack of Undertaker Zach: The Embalmer (1996)

The Embalmer (1996)

Rating: **

Starring: Jennifer T. Kelly, Kenneth E. Mullen, Myron Creek

Tell you a story about Undertaker Zach.

He killed his wife with a whack, whack, whack!

His daughter started cryin’ ’cause her mama was dead;

He shut her up by choppin’ off her head.

Life at home isn't good for Chiffon (real name Laura), not with her folks practically making a slave out of her, ordering her to do laundry, fetch beer and change TV channels using the dial before getting angry at her for blocking the damn screen. One night, though, this troubling sight got out of hand and next thing we see is that Chiffon's kicked out from her own house. Distressed, she calls her boyfriend Duane to pick her up after explaining what happened, who in turn calls his bud Archie to help them out as a favor and the guy tagged along his girlfriend Cindi because why the hell not? The gang basically decided to run away from their crappy lives that evening but, after running a red light, they got a little trouble with the law and got chased into hiding inside an abandoned house's garage. 

The stunt, unfortunately, killed the car's battery and the teens find out that not only did they lock themselves in by accident, but the house also once belonged to Dr. Zachary Harbotswood, AKA Undertaker Zach, a local urban legend who's known to have murdered his wife and daughter during a psychotic episode. Chiffon doesn't like this fact at all seeing she used to have nightmares about this place as a kid, but with no other plan at hand on how they'll get out of the house, the gang opted to stay put and just deal with the situation until they figure something out.

Badly acted melodrama here, a tame sex scene there, maybe even throw in a last minute nightmare sequence involving big snakes (both literally and figuratively), the foursome eventually encounters Undertaker Zach in the flesh, as well as a nasty little secret hidden down in the basement...

In a way, it's not hard to picture why this low-budget regional urban horror is so below the radar as instead of your typical bodycounter plot of murdered horny teens and angry maniacs, The Embalmer (1996) dragged its focus more on the somber schmaltz going on with our lead girl life, which frankly would have worked with the genuinely dark and uneasy issues tackled like trauma, child abuse and sexual assault, if only the tone and direction were anywhere as competent. It's simply difficult to buy into the seriousness of the subjects when most of the casts act their parts and deliver their lines like your everyday B-grade horror fodders, which can be either hilarious or bothersome, though I will give actress Jennifer T. Kelly for putting more effort in her role as the troubled main gal, Chiffon. Couple these with the usual talk of the killer's lore and sexy times under the sheets, and the film essentially yapped its way through a really clumsy and sloppy midsection.

Thankfully, the last twenty-some minutes picked up greatly as this is where the slasher elements kick in with a few good gore effects given the budget and, too, a fairly decent twist reveal that nicely leads to a surprisingly effective and satisfying conclusion that I didn't entirely see coming. It's a good enough take on the teen slasher set-up, one that kinda gives The Embalmer (1996) the potential to be a tolerable watch given, that is, you could overlook the distracting low cost production and the slow lumpy road. All in all, it's nowhere near being a real gem of a find, but it is an adequately interesting time waster should you ever need one. 

Bodycount:

1 female slaughtered to death with a scalpel

1 girl hacked to death with a meat cleaver

1 male castrated with a knife, brained to death with a hammer

1 female stabbed to death with a scalpel

1 male had his throat cut with a scalpel

1 male and 1 female killed offscreen with a knife

Total: 7

There Lives a Phantom Freak: Phantom Fun-World (2023)

Phantom Fun-World (2023)

Rating: **

Starring: L.C. Holt, Celeste Blandon, Jace Carson

In 1997, the Phantom Fun-World indoor theme park found itself in damning controversy when four staff and two responding police were brutally murdered, apparently by the owner's disturbed young son. The scandal was enough to shut the place down and left alone for a very long while until, that is, recently, under new ownership and a fresh start away from its dark past. With its grand reopening drawing near, troubled teen Andi gets herself a job at the park in order to provide for her 16-year-old brother Cole while their estranged mother sorts her own life out. Unbeknownst to her and the rest of the new hires, someone obsessed over the park's grim history and its Phantom mascot is paying their respect, depopulating Fun-World of its staff night by night with the seeming intention of keeping it closed forever...

Concept-wise, Phantom Fun-World (2023) has the very potential to be a fair enough throwback to Golden Age slashers with a plot that kinda resembles Friday The 13th (1980)'s only in a carnival-esque setting, peppered with decent practical gore effects and a few good stalk-and-stab antics towards the end as our survivors fight off a decent-looking killer with a unique mask. The problem rises from its obvious microbudget; the Fun-World itself is more of a glorified single-floor arcade that just happens to have bumper cars and a Merry-Go-Round than the exciting theme park it's advertised to be, thus failing to properly utilize a fun backdrop. Writing attempts a flair of the melodramatic for potential character development but it's so stinted yet forced that it's less engaging and more tedious to sit through, something the movie's range of hokey to amateur acting, nor its dubious audio quality hardly helps. In fact, there's an entire sequence here involving Andi's snarky bestfriend being attacked by The Phantom and the whole thing is shot like something out of Rob Zombie's own brand of horror, complete with slow-mo's and muted flashbacks of the victim being happy, just to show how devastating this is supposed to be. Would have been effective given that we get to know the character maybe a tad more than just 'that snarky friend", so the result is more eye-rolling than tear-jerking.   

Actually, come to think of it,
the resemblance is rather uncanny...

Still, giving credit when credit is due, Phantom Fun-World (2023) at least made itself worthwhile whenever it focuses on the killings, may it be for the gnarly gore effects, the classy stab on your usual cat-and-mouse chase, or the unintentional hilarity of The Phantom's absurd durability. Friday The 13th (1980)'s Jason Ari Lehman is here in a fun cameo as the original owner of Phantom Fun-World, while The Phantom himself is played by L.C. Holt, who donned the Lamb Mask in the awesome home invasion slasher You're Next (2011), and he's certainly giving his all in his role here as another mute murderer.

Mediocre it may be, if you're not looking much for your horror viewing then Phantom Fun-World (2023) is serviceable enough for a low-budget slashing good time filled with blood, cheese and a good shot of a killer. Other than that, you can definitely do better... 

Bodycount:

1 male hacked with an axe, eyes thumbed

1 male knifed in the head

1 male knifed to death

1 male had his jaw torn off

4 males murdered with a knife (flashback)

1 male had his throat cut with a knife (flashback)

1 male knifed to death (flashback)

1 male knifed in the neck

1 female beaten to death against a wall

1 male knifed to death (flashback)

1 female dies from multiple knife stabbings

1 male beaten to death with a police baton

1 male knifed to death

Total: 16 

"ME NO DUM-DUM, YOU DUM-DUM!
You bring me gum-gum?"

Family Bonding Bloodied: House of Dolls (2023)

House of Dolls (2023)

Rating: **

Starring: Dee Wallace, Meeko, Stephanie Troyak

Family reunions, am I right? 

Three estranged sisters (an aspiring children's book author, a CPS worker and a shit show of a diva) are summoned by their father who's in his deathbed, hoping to resolve any bad blood between them as a family by leaving the ladies an inheritance of three hundred grand. The catch, though, is that the girls must stay inside the titular House of Dolls, a life-sized doll house filled with family memorabilia and clues for the sisters to piece together in order to earn the cash and, maybe, even grow closer as a family. Sad to say, this is easier said than done as the siblings not only hate each other's guts, but there's also a trench coat-dashing, spike-studded pink balaclava-wearing killer out there knifing their way to the same house, seemingly to settle a score with the girls.

Let me just say that, out of all the mess I've experienced watching House of Dolls (2023), I do like its slasher segments where the killer simply pops up in random places to kill people who have little to nothing to do with the main plot or characters just for the sake of showing off gnarly gore effects. I, too, like the killer's get-up of a punk leather coat and pink, spiky balaclava for how simple yet striking it is. I also like the unintentional hilarity that came with the movie's low budget production as some of its editing makes it look like the killer could just teleport from one part of the town to another to pull off their murder spree, as well as some of the weapons and backdrops used are clearly plastic Halloween props.

That being said, it's hard to fully engage and enjoy a movie when none of its characters are likable, when all they do is go for each other's throats with harsh tongues and criticisms every time one of them opens their pie holes to talk or, heck, even breathe. The wooden acting I can overlook, but to have such unbearably hateful set of victims-to-be just be arseholes kinda fucks up the mood when we're supposed to be rooting for these girls. Also, for a movie that tries to market itself for having a giant dollhouse, there's really not much to say about that as said life-sized toy house is really just a house with overly decorated walls and furniture, pretty much adding to the story, underwhelming, nothing.

It's like watching a bad reality TV show: all the people are just plain nasty and/or dumb, forced to work together to win that day's challenge, leading to said horrible people to whine and bitch some more until they either throw temper tantrums and rage quitting or go sappy on live TV with fake sincerities. Here in House of Dolls (2023), fortunately, we get intervals of people in wrong places at wrong times meeting their makers through the killer's dual knife-wielding skills, which eventually crosses into the sisters' little bitching sessions and leading to a doable enough twist reveal that a few of us could've seen coming.

All in all, House of Dolls (2023) is flawed, but at least it has the decency to make up for its terrible characters and missed opportunities with a decently fair bunch of kills, a cool-looking killer and feisty fromage. Oh, and Dee Wallace. Dee Wallace is also here. 

Bodycount:

1 male found slaughtered with a knife

1 female stabbed with a knife

1 male found dead with a slaughtered face

1 male gutted with a knife, throat cut

1 male headbutted to death with a spike-studded mask

1 male found gutted

1 female garroted with a rope

1 female had her throat cut with knives

1 victim found murdered, body hung from a ceiling

1 female knifed to death

1 male drowned to death in a toilet

1 female had a leg hacked off with an axe, knifed to death

1 male sliced in half with a chainsaw

1 male knifed in the gut

1 male and 1 female killed with an axe

Total: 16

No Winners, Only Survivors: All Fun And Games (2023)

All Fun and Games (2023)

Rating: ***

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Annabeth Gish, Natalia Dyer

As standard as the affairs are in this movie, I got to say that All Fun and Games (2023) is at least a fair watch of a supernatural teen slasher flick.

Set in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, the film centers on a macabre knife seemingly carved from human bone as it gets discovered by brothers from a dysfunctional family while the two were riding bikes across the woods one day. Fascinated by the find, younger sibling Jonah (or just Jo, for short) decided to take the knife home despite his older brother Marcus' disapproval, later learning that the blade also comes with an incantation scratched unto it and, upon uttering them, awakens something demonic. The evil presence makes its way through the brothers, eventually settling inside Marcus as its chosen vessel and the night becomes a deadly, stabby game of Hide-and-Seek as the brothers' sister Billie, her boyfriend Pete and her bestfriend Sophie, as well as the family's bum uncle Bob fall victim to the chaos. 

With its concept of a cursed object bringing forth murderous supernatural possessions being far from original, what All Fun and Games (2023) have running for it is an attempt on developing its characters, a breakneck pace and mostly adequate production quality. Despite being overly hostile in some scenes, the relationship between the three sibling leads works on a rather strained yet relatable closeness considering the domestic troubles they have to bear with, painting a sympathetic enough dynamic which is further helped by the acting and writing done during the movie's more drama-focused scenes. This flair with the dramatics doesn't overstay its welcome, though, and the plot devolves into a slasher as soon as night falls and the curse of the knife brings out someone's inner knife-wielding maniac. 

The slasher scenes are a decent bunch; not overly gory but deliciously bloody for the bloodhounds, with a few stalk-and-stab sequences delivering a good sense of suspense and thrills. This all leads to a final act where the remaining casts explore the otherworldly origins of the knife and its curse, challenging the demonic force with a paranormal take on a couple of children's games in order to beat it which would have been alright if it wasn't for the overly cluttered and unsatisfying villain defeat capping things off. It could have ended worse, sure, but it could have rounded up the plot with a better conclusion, too, especially after all of the passable possessed murderer gig.

Production-wise, All Fun and Games (2023) has a competent look to say the least; its camera work captures the chill of its night scenes and its visual editing and effects are usually alright, though some of the CG effects do look a bit hokey. The film, in its entirety, is relatively okay; it's not really setting itself up for anything too grand, but what it is able to achieve makes for a good enough viewing to pass the time with.

Bodycount:

1 boy seen stabbed to death

1 girl seen dying from stab wounds

1 girl seen dying from a stab wound

1 male had his throat cut with a knife

1 male hanged with a noose

1 male knifed in the chest

1 male killed with a knife, blood splash seen

1 male knifed through the neck

1 female knifed to death

1 boy beaten and tortured, set on fire (flashback)

Total: 10

TV Terror: Chucky - Season 2 (2022 Series)

Chucky (Season 2, 2022 Series)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Zackary Arthur, Bjorgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind

Previously on Chucky, season one; a Good Guy doll possessed by the soul of Chucky, real name Charles Lee Ray, AKA the Lakeshore Strangler, shows up in the New Jersey town of Hackensack. He nearly manipulated a lonely queer teen named Jake into becoming a murderer, only for the boy to wise up and learn that the doll is actually prompting him to kill as a part of a ritual that's supposed to raise an army of even more possessed Good Guy dolls, spreading chaos across America. Jake, along with his crush Devon and a bully-turned-ally Lexy, and too returning franchise heroes Andy Barclay and Kyle, puts a stop to Chucky's Diabolical plan, with Andy seemingly driving himself and the rest of the living killer dolls to their deaths off a cliff.

Season two starts months after Chucky's bloody reign of terror in Hackensack; Jake and Devon are now living apart with foster parents, while Lexy is undergoing therapy with her seemingly traumatized kid sister and a mother whose milking the tragedy for political clout. Things go South when on Halloween, one of the Chucky dolls tricked the kids into meeting up and have Jake's young foster brother bring the little Good Guy and his expertly crafted home-made bomb to them. After a brief struggle, the bomb is detonated, killing off the tyke, and the three is naturally blamed for the tragedy. But instead of getting thrown off and locked away, Jake, Devon and Lexy find themselves chucked to a Catholic school that specializes in treating problem kids, which also happens to be Chucky's former residence. 

There they face an overly pious Father Bryce (played by Devon Sawa with no connection to the previous character he played last season), a real shortage of mean kids for the kill count, Lexy's struggles with drug addiction and, of course, Chucky dolls going around the school killing random people before stalking the lead trio and their new member to the anti-Chucky movement, a sweet nerdy girl named Nadine. Curiously, though, the story often dips into the same black comedy curveballs as that of Seed of Chucky (2004)'s when it comes to moments involving any killer dolls like one misadventure involving the reprogramming of a captured Good Guy into being good ala A Clockwork Orange, or the arrival of even more Good Guy variants like a really swole one who'd take care of loose ends, as well a Good Guy who may have taken a liking to Apocalypse Now (1979)'s Marlon Brando a tad too much. A fair deal of these mini murderers are often taken care of so easily, which starts to show the downside of Chucky learning how to split his soul into multiple dolls; when it comes to the movies prior to Cult of Chucky (2017) or even Curse of Chucky (2013), there's a satisfying sense of triumph when Charles goes through the beating and get killed in the end as, albeit the knowledge that he'll be back somehow, there's only one of him. Now, when one Chucky doll goes down, there's no more weight to it, no sense of victory as you know somewhere is another one of these little bastards sneaking up on them with a knife, a hammer or, god forbid, the world's quietest chainsaw.

While all of this is going on at the school, season 2 spreads its spotlight to Tiffany Valentine's own little situation when her two young adult children, Glen and Glenda (both played now by Lachlan Watson), shows up one day seeking answers as, for some odd reason, the two forgot that they used to be one genderfluid living doll back at Seed and have been feeling "empty" whenever one of them is away from the other. Tiffany, still in charades as Jennifer Tilly, tries her best to protect her two darlings from the truth, but the ruse gets complicated when the twins discover their mum's dirty little secret: Nina Pierce, the ever-so-tormented lead girl from Cult and Curse, quadruple-amputated to prevent her from escaping and forced to live with the very soul of Charles Lee Ray inhabiting her body. This fork in the road eventually leads to the twins learning about their past and even more murders at the hand of Tiffany as she struggles to keep things in control, both homicidally and financially, leaving Glen and Glenda choosing sides between their loving yet psychotic mother or a small gang of survivors who are out to stop their father's increasingly convoluted plans of horror and terror.

This entire mess of a story somewhat straightens itself up around the near end when most of the players introduced gather around and attempt an exorcism on a Good Guy which is, honestly, one of the best ideas this franchise ever dwelled in. I mean, with all of the pseudo-voodoo going on, how is it we only now tackle the possibility of doing another rite to get rid of Chucky? But as you would expect, things didn't go as easy as expected and, unsurprisingly, characters get snuffed out, including those who were introduced for last minute twists only to have their existence and contributions to the Child's Play lore practically rendered pointless by dying no soon after. (But, hey, at least their deaths were pretty bloody and gory. I guess that has to count for something) The end result of this exorcism-gone-wrong would have made a great season finale but, instead, we're treated with one more episode where we go jump ahead a few months to Christmas and one "final" Chucky doll plots to kill Jake, Devon and Lexy. That concludes the season with Chucky splitting a victim gloriously gory with a chainsaw, and then he himself is carved gloriously gory with said chainsaw, a character we nearly forgot turns out to be evil, Tiffany is on the run and possible in danger herself and the Glen/da doll returns with a new makeover and a new name, Gigi, with plans to see the world~

All in all, this second season of Chucky showcases the very reason why I rarely bothered with media with plotlines expanding over multiple books/movies/shows/whatever; it's simply all over the place and often gets too complicated to follow through. Some established ideas were retconned with twists, only to have it go nowhere and dropped unceremoniously, plus the potential drama between the human characters is just a cycle of bickering and making ups that gets real tiring quickly, which doesn't help the fact that a lot of these troubles feel uninspired and recycled. When it comes to the horror sequences, thankfully, the show still packs a real gut punch with its gore, torture and deaths, sometimes peppered with black humor and mean-spirit that I wholeheartedly welcome. Some cheese can be found, true, but better have that to lighten things up than have the entire show drag on with its crisscross plotting straightfaced and dull.

Frankly, the show's increasing silliness is what kept me watching (Plus, the gore. Of course), though I cannot deny that the amount of clashing surprises, motivations and dead ends hindered me from enjoying this season any further. Hopefully things get more focused story-wise in the future, all the while maintaining the grue and black comedy, but I can't help but think that's wishful thinking considering what I just experienced here... 

Bodycount:

1 boy blown up with a bomb (S2, E1 - Halloween II)

1 elderly female frightened into a heart attack (S2, S2 - The Sinners Are Much More Fun)

1 male had his throat cut with a nail file, stabbed to death (S2, S2 - The Sinners Are Much More Fun)

1 elderly male strangled with a rosary (S2, E3 - Hail Mary!)

1 male beaten, heart punched out (S2, E3 - Hail Mary!)

1 male found dead from poisoned wine (S2, E4 - Death on Denial)

1 male shot to death (S2, E4 - Death on Denial)

1 Liv Morgan knifed to death (S2, E4 - Death on Denial)

1 female slashed and stabbed to death with a straight razor (S2, E5 - Doll on Doll)

1 female tossed off a tower, lands on a statue (S2, E6 - He Has Risen Indeed)

1 female ran over by a truck (S2, E7 - Goin' To The Chapel)

1 male blown apart (S2, E7 - Goin' To The Chapel)

1 female gets a thrown bowie knife to the eye (S2, E7 - Goin' To The Chapel)

1 female had her soul swapped, gunned down (S2, E7 - Goin' To The Chapel)

1 male electrocuted with a defibrillator, bursts into flames (S2, E8 - Chucky, Actually)

2 victims found dead, souls removed (S2, E8 - Chucky, Actually)

1 female split in half with (The World's Quietest) chainsaw (S2, E8 - Chucky, Actually)

Total: 18

Cannibal Pilgrim Traditions: The Last Thanksgiving (2020)

The Last Thanksgiving (2020)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Amanda Arrants, Jake Balser and Annie Collins

When it comes to holiday themes within slasher movies, Thanksgiving doesn't get as much love as Christmas, Halloween or even Easter. Not only do they lack in numbers, but only a handful of them really stands out such as the cheesy killer twin flick Blood Rage (1987) and the infamous cult classic homicidal turkey movie ThanksKilling (2008). Fortunately for us, we have folks out there contributing to the slowly but surely growing number of Thanksgiving frights. Folks like writer/director Erick Lorinc who graces Turkey Day with this rough little gem about small town diners getting terrorized by cannibalistic families.

In The Last Thanksgiving, the entire staff of Derry’s Famous Fish and Grits find themselves working during Thanksgiving with the rickety promise that they can go home early if no other customers would come in that evening. As luck would have it, not only does a customer (Horror icon Linnea Quigley! Nice!) show up to order dinner, they also have to entertain a man named Kurt Brimston who walks in looking for work, forcing the diner gang to stay a little longer. Unbeknownst to them all, their night's about to get worse as there's a family of psychotic cannibals cruising around town, looking for victims to hunt and eat as a part of their own twisted Thanksgiving family tradition. Conveniently for these creeps, Derry's just happens to be still open that night... 

Although it has the usual low-budget production pitfalls of awkward acting and dodgy writing, The Last Thanksgiving holds enough of a nifty premise and, too, a competent amount of gore and cheese to be at least a serviceable effort as a manic holiday slasher. The plot is simplistically straightforward, with us following a small group of troublesome diner staffs and the members of a deranged yet normal-looking cannibal family going about their day during Thanksgiving before the two parties eventually clash and the bodycount begins. Its as formulaic as most slashers tend to be, though its creative do-it-yourself aesthetics and the interesting directions it took to work the holiday theme into the story rather than mindlessly shoehorning it in do come off rather charming in their peculiar ways.

The only matter to mind here is that there isn't a lot of likable characters within the diner group, not with their paper-thin douchey motives and stereotyped personalities meshing horribly with subpar onscreen talent that involves a lot of annoying, aimless yelling, thus reducing most of our supposed protagonists down to standard kill count meat one simply cannot wait to get snuffed. Now I say "most" as a few did get a little better (or at least more tolerable) over the course of the film, particularly our lead heroine Lisa-Marie Taft who spends the first half of the film being basically a cynical big bitch to just about everyone within radius. Once the killings starts and she gets a bit of an emotional meltdown, the gal eventually mellowed down. Still stereotyped personality-wise though, but agreeable nonetheless. 

Thankfully our villains fare a little better albeit the low rent Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) persona they're trying to emulate, complete with that one dumb, mute and deformed big brother who is always wearing a mask and is the muscle of the family. They're the more memorable bunch as the casualness in their interactions while plotting and acting out their massacres often comes as cheeky as it is creepy, befitting the tone of their entertainingly maniacal backdrops as, according to the film's last act monologue, descendants of a pilgrim girl who murdered Native Americans and served them as food to her fellow starving settlers. It's silly and over-the-top but, as a fan of cheesy B-flicks, it all just works for me, especially when these villains can still dish out a range of decently gory kills, from the truly gruesome to the hilariously strange. (Like, if you think a pit of boiling gravy-like liquid to throw people in is too random of a murder method, how about decapitating the still-moving bony remains of a poor fella to ultimately kill them off?) 

As a potential Thanksgiving piece for one's seasonal horror pickings, I say The Last Thanksgiving sits dang well as a holiday guilty pleasure with a bit of personality. It may not be that polished, but this little movie slayed and served a satisfactory amount of Turkey Day horrors and bodily carnage for one's enjoyment. 

Bodycount:
1 male gets a bread knife through the jaw, stabbed to death
1 female set ablaze
1 male gets a whisk stabbed into his eye
1 female had her scalp torn
1 female hacked in the back with a meat cleaver
1 female jabbed to death with a broom handle
1 male had his head split in half with a meat cleaver
1 female decapitated with a commercial dishwasher door
1 male dismembered with an electric knife
1 girl had her throat cut with a meat cleaver (flashback)
1 female gets a thrown hatchet to the head (flashback)
1 male ran through with a hedge trimmer (flashback)
1 male and 1 female electrocuted in a bath tub with a live radio (flashback)
1 female had her head crushed between a sliding door (flashback)
1 male decapitated (flashback)
1 male stabbed through the head with a fire poker (flashback)
1 female knifed (flashback)
1 male had his throat torn out from his gun shot-mutilated mouth
1 female gutted with an electric knife
1 male boiled in a pit, decapitated with a hatchet

1 male gets a pitchfork through his head
1 elderly female burned inside an oven, left for dead
Total: 22

Drilling, Killing, Loving: Slumber Party Massacre (2021)

Slumber Party Massacre (2021)

Rating: ****

Starring: Hannah Gonera, Frances Sholto-Douglas and Mila Rayne

As a cult favorite, The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) is known by many slasher fans as a staple of the subgenre, a fine cheesy run on your typical bloody horror story of an escaped nut case terrorizing scantily clad girls while in their lonesome. It is slasher simplicity at its best, though that wasn't always the case as the film's original concept, penned and directed by women, was intended to be a parody of the horror subgenre until the producers had their way and had it filmed instead as a straightforward bodycounter. This 2021 reboot could've gone the easy route of just having the same ploy of partying girls and their boyfriends getting slaughtered by a maniac with a murder-ready powerdrill given that note, but I am glad to say Slumber Party Massacre (2021) went by a mostly different route that delivered promising results.

The movie opens in 1993, at Holly Springs where we see four teenage girls partying out in a lakeside cabin while their brownies bake and a creeper named Russ Thorne (Rob van Vuuren) lurks outside. Armed with a powerdrill, Russ makes quick slayings out of the most of the gals (and one stalker-ish guy) soon enough, leaving last girl Trish (Schelaine Bennett) to defend herself from the maniac and successfully does so by beating the man down into a lake with a boat paddle, leaving him there to drown. 

Cut to the present and we now follow Trish's teen daughter Dana (Hannah Gonera) and her friends Ashley (Reze-Tiana Wessels), Breanie (Alex McGregor) and Maeve (Frances Sholto-Douglas) leaving town to attend a party, only for them to run into a few mishaps including Maeve’s younger sister Alix (Mila Rayne) somehow sneaking in to their trip and the car breaking down in the middle of the ride. With no other means to travel, the girls decided to make the best out of their situation and rent a nearby lakeside cabin at (where else?) Holly Springs to have their own little get-together there. 

And as you would expect, Russ Thorne arrives later that night, somehow surviving his supposed drowning years ago and have been in hiding since. But little does he know is that these girls have been expecting him; as it turns out, Dana planned their arrival at the cabin to not only exact revenge against the man who terrorized her mother years ago, but to finally put an end to the driller killer's murderous madness as people have been disappearing around Holly Springs. It's a good plan for most parts until, of course, it gets derailed thanks to a nearby group of true crime fanboys getting in the way. Will the girls get to save the guys and themselves while ultimately killing off the serial slayer? Or are they all doomed to face the deadly drillbit of Russ Thorne?

Turning the slasher conventions around, Slumber Party Massacre (2021) tones itself with a positive "girl power" outlook to its story by making its leading female casts aware of the well known slasher clichés usually associated with their demises and utilize them to their advantage, all while still keeping itself grounded as a fun and gory dead teenager flick that doesn't take itself too seriously by healthily supplying us with copious gore, little slices of satire and some intense set-pieces. It's a direction that mostly works here thanks to the writing balancing the serious and the goofy, giving time to flesh out the situation and its characters through some effective dialogue and damn good onscreen talents, all before tossing them into the fray of a classic backwoods horror set-up of teens dying in the woods, courtesy of a maniac with a weapon.

It isn't until a good hour into the run that Slumber Party Massacre (2021), after being pretty open with the fact that Russ Thorne is our driller killer, decided to keep us on our toes with yet another fairly intriguing twist; without spoiling much, we're suddenly thrusted into a whodunnit ploy and everybody is suddenly fair game for the still increasing kill count. It's a whiplash on both the movie's tone and story, one that I openly welcome as it thickens the plot the right way and it eventually leads to a satisfyingly entertaining final fight between not one, not two, but four final girls against a surprise villain!

Granted that some of the satire here can feel too one the nose to be funny and there are moments where the mood can get a bit all over and clashing, the overall gist of Slumber Party Massacre (2021) is that it's still a fun, energetic little slasher that suits well as both a "modern reimagining" and a companion piece to the 1982 original! It's pretty much its own little beast albeit the nods and winks to the entire Slumber Party Massacre franchise and so long as it has gruesome gore, workable characters and a curious story, I couldn't ask for more from a great title like this! 

Bodycount:

1 male powerdrilled through the chest

1 female found with a drill wound in the chest

1 female seen murdered

1 female gets powerdrilled through the neck

1 male found with missing eyes

1 male powerdrilled offcamera, body later found inside an icebox

1 male gets powerdrilled in the head

1 male had his face mutilated with a powerdrill

1 male had his throat cut with a machete, repeatedly knifed

1 male ran through the back with a sabersaw

1 female shredded through a car engine

1 female shot in the eye with a nailgun

1 elderly female stabbed through with a drillbit

Total: 13

Cut Out The Cancer: Malignant (2021)

Malignant (2021)
Rating: ****
Starring: Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson and George Young

When it comes to James Wan, I like a lot of his horror films as I see the kind of fanfare I typically enjoy in my fright flicks: crazy B-grade goodness with creepy moments, fun jump scares and expressive camera work. Fortunately for us, Malignant, Wan's little supernatural love letter to giallo and slasher cinema (and then some), delivers all the goods you would expect in a great bodycounter with a little more extra for that positively insane movie experience!

Starting the scene in 1993, at the Simion Research Hospital, where a group of doctors go through a harrowing attack from an obscured patient named Gabriel who somehow has the ability to control electricity, broadcast thoughts through airwaves and overpower anyone twice their size. The staff eventually subdue the vile thing with a dart gun and, hoping to finally stop the patient's increasing threat, prepare Gabriel for surgery to "cut out the cancer".

Forwarding twenty-eight years later, a pregnant woman named Madison Lake gets the rough end of a strained and growingly abusive relationship when her husband Derek Mitchell beats her head against a wall, arguing at her about the futility of them having children since Madison appears to be prone to miscarriages. As night falls, something otherworldly invades the couple's residence and gruesomely murders Mitchell before going after Madison, knocking her unconscious during the attack. By the time she comes through, responding police has rescued her and she's taken to a nearby hospital, where she is informed by her sister Sydney that, devastatingly, her unborn baby didn't survive the ordeal. 

It wasn't until two weeks later though, when a recovering Madison returns to her home, that everything shifts for the far worse; she quickly learns that whatever has targeted her during that home invasion is far from done terrorizing her life as visions of savage murders and monstrously taunting phone calls start plaguing her days and nights. The more the bodycount rises, the more Madison and Sydney, as well as Kekoa Shaw and Regina Moss, a pair of detectives looking into the murders, start to piece together a grim puzzle and untangle a dark past involving medical horrors and a familiar violent entity that goes by "Gabriel".

Albeit the tone can be a bit (if not mostly) all over the place, it does befit the craziness Malignant wallows in and it is put to good use as Wan embraced the absurdity of the movie's premise to give us the outrageously energetic madness that is this hodge-podge of supernatural horror, brutal slashings, body horror, medical nightmare and, yes, even a little bit of creature feature. It isn't without its own rusty cogs and drawbacks, of course, such as the characters being a little dim, holes on the plot and the twist being anything but close to original (I can tell two other slashers that already did it, though I cannot say which as it'll spoil the fun. You might get it once you see it, though), but the manically stylized execution and wild, increasingly no-holds-barred direction undoubtedly make this film a real popcorn horror treat.

As the director himself put it, Malignant is a horror film made for horror fans, so it doesn't come as any surprise that it has genre homages in every nook and cranny; there are giallo influences pretty much present within the movie's cinematography as well as the villain's get-up and the home invasion around the first act even has its little slice of ghostly scares for that supernatural creepiness. But what really brought home the fun factor for me is the ridiculous levels of campy creative choices and hammy dialogue that certainly place this movie around the same plate as cheesed-up 80s slashers and monster movies, especially with its Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)-inspired victim/killer shared visions and a bodycount going monumental by the second half courtesy of a police station massacre that rivals The Terminator (1984) or Maniac Cop 2 (1990), committed through the hands of a maniac with a rather interesting concept and design focused on limberness and flexibility in all the wrong way. (Oh, and random electricity-based powers. That's a thing you get for being that, apparently) It's crazy, without a doubt, but as everything is done with a straight face and a semi-serious banter, the half-and-half subtle tongue-in-cheek is just made twice the better!

This being said, those looking to see sober scares may want to look elsewhere as the movie's clearly made with the intention to be darkly playful and littered with dismembered body parts. What else is there to say but James Wan really let it all loose in Malignant and I am happy to say that the resulting gory, campy and thrilling little devil is destined to be a bonafide cult classic!

Bodycount:

1 female smashed against a door, killed

1 female found murdered

1 female found murdered

1 male had his head internally decapitated

1 female beaten to death with a trophy

1 male stabbed and carved to death with a weaponized trophy

1 male found slaughtered to death with a weaponized trophy

1 female had her neck torn open

1 female clawed through the gut

1 female had her head stomped

1 female had her neck broken

10 females slaughtered offcamera

1 female had her eyes thumbed, used as a human shield and shot dead

1 male repeatedly beaten against iron cell bars

1 female found murdered

1 male found murdered

1 male found murdered

1 male stabbed through the back with a weaponized trophy

1 male had his throat slashed with a weaponized trophy

1 male stabbed through the gut with a weaponized trophy

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 male used as a human shield, shot dead

1 male stabbed through the neck with a weaponized trophy

1 female stabbed through the head with a weaponized trophy

4 victims seen murdered

1 male stabbed in the gut with a weaponized trophy

1 male stabbed through the neck with a weaponized trophy

1 male slashed across the neck with a weaponized trophy

1 male stabbed with a weaponized trophy

1 male stabbed with a weaponized trophy

1 male slashed across the throat with a weaponized trophy

2 males seen murdered

1 male had his pacemaker supernaturally cooked, explodes out of his chest

Total: 46

Also, "Cocky-Knockers"