Blow The Whistle, Baby! Here We Go!: Whistle (2025)

Whistle (2025)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang

This should have been the kind of movie that'll win me over; a supernatural slasher revolving around the Ehecachichtli, also known as the Aztec death whistle, an instrument formerly used by the Mexica people to scare off foes as the noise it makes resemble either wind or, most macabre, a high-pitched scream. Have that badassery incorporated into an otherworldly massacre done in your classic teen-kill plot and this title could have been an interesting bodycounter. But regrettably, Whistle (2025) hardly bothered with what it presents.

At a Pellington high school basketball game, star player Mason is terrifyingly distracted by visions of a charred figure slowly approaching him. Despite this, he wins the match and, immediately afterwards, seemingly ends whatever haunting that's going on by destroying an artifact from his locker: the Aztec death whistle. This, unfortunately for the kid, didn't stop the charred man from finally catching up to him, burning Mason alive in the school showers as everybody else occupying it watch in horror. 

Six months later, recovering drug addict Chrys leaves Chicago to attend Pellington following her father's death, hoping for a fresh start to her life post-rehab. She's living in with her cousin Rel, who also happens to be a student there, and the two gets into a lick of trouble when Dean, one of the jocks, learns that Chrys is now using Mason's locker, a matter that he deems disrespectful to his late friend. The altercation escalates to the basketball player getting his balls kneed, a fight that Dean's girlfriend Grace and a do-gooder bystander Ellie tried stopping. However, a schoolteacher (played by Shaun of the Dead (2004)'s Nick Frost in what's basically a glorified cameo) witness the fight and issues all five teens to detention.

Things further go from frustrating to strange as, inside her locker, Chrys finds the Aztec death whistle, whole once more. Thinking it belongs to Mason, she brings it along to detention after school, where the schoolteacher decides to hold on to it as school property. Sellable school property. It ain't long, though, before this fella gets his comeuppance as, after ending detention early to get rid of the kids, he blows into the whistle to see if the antique still works, unknowingly summoning a gaunt balding figure that proceeds to murder him through what appears to be an accelerated sickness. 

Having forgotten a comic book, Rel returns to the classroom and spots the whistle all on its own. He pockets it because, well, it's cool, and he brings the damn thing along to a group meeting/party at Grace's house where they're supposed to be working on an assignment. As you expect, the skully trinket gets blown into again, its noise now heard by Chrys, Rel, Dean, Grace and Ellie. 

Eerily mangled, aging and/or slaughtered visages of themselves begin to terrorize the main casts then, a ghoulish predicament that Chrys and Ellie readily accept as the doing of the cursed whistle after some slight research, and a quick visit to Mason's home where his Grandmother Ivy lore dumps what the thing does; as it turns out, hearing the whistle's cry causes one's future death to arrive sooner in the form of a shambling doppelganger, which is frankly the movie's strongest element. 

We see a good array of these deathly doubles ranging from brittle seniors running amuck, to horrifying flesh sacks loosely held together by broken bones, all of them stalking and chasing their victims one by one. A good deal of make-up and CG work were done for their scenes, leading to gruesomely creative deaths that earn this movie it's R-rating with all the blood and gore in display. Sadly, these are the only positives I can see from Whistle (2025) as everything else is your run-in-the-mill cursed object spiel done in the barest of bones and borrowed points.

Basically, the writing is cheap with expositions and one-note characterizations, following a simple paint-by-number direction of kids fucking around and finding out, then trying to survive and mostly failing. Cliches upon cliches are tiresomely ever present as, of course, the one person who knows what's going on fails to explain how to stop it the first time they're asked, only to hint it later when all that's left are two and a half of the casts. But even then, Whistle (2025) fails to be impressive with its surprises since the way to stop this curse is ripped off from Final Destination 2 (2003), Final Destination 5 (2011) and The Evil Dead (2013), just done more complicatedly and dramatically. Wouldn't you know it, too, the film just has to end with a mid-credit scene that suggests a potential sequel. Yeah, sure. Smile 2 (2024) you are not, movie. 

Underwhelming. Just underwhelming. Whistle (2025) may have delivered the gory goods, but the painfully generic story drags everything else down to a forgettable slop. 

Bodycount:

1 male set ablaze

1 male suffers through an accelerated cancer

1 female aged to death

1 female passed away from cancer

1 male mangled

1 male minced and shredded into pieces

1 male gets a gunshot wound, suffers from a water death

Total: 7

Slithering & Slaughtering: Kiss of The Serpent (1988)

Kiss of The Serpent (1988) (AKA 'Snake Island')

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Chris Moore, Murray McDougall, Jeff Greenman

The scene starts at 1979, with a father attending a snake cult ceremony and begging its members to release his son from a curse. This fellow is herpetologist Dr Waylan, who runs a local Serpentarium and is guilty of stealing the cult's sacred white snake for an experiment involving venom, creating some sort of miracle cure. The cult, however, claims that it is too late to release his boy, Michael, from their snake god's wrath even if he returns the serpent to them, so Waylan has another member of this cult, a Native American friend, promising to take care of his son should anything happen to him.

And, wouldn't you know it, one 4th of July night, a gaggle of loud and horny teenagers choose to celebrate the holiday by taunting Michael with fireworks, lighting them outside the Serpentarium where the boy's entire family resides. This gravely escalates into an accidental arson, killing Dr. Waylan, his wife and his daughter. Michael, strangely, is nowhere to be found...

Moving ahead eight years later, the same teenagers are now in their twenties and are, unsurprisingly, just as loud. And horny. They're celebrating 4th of July by taking a yacht out to open waters, unbeknownst to them that someone has sabotaged the ride, making sure it crashes near a small, isolated isle known as 'Snake Island' which is populated mostly by, what else, snakes. Upon arriving there, our sultry subjects opt to make the best of their predicament, as being marooned does little to sway them off sex and booze, unaware that whoever plotted their unconventional stay has set their fangs on killing them off one by one to appease a serpent god and finally rid them of a curse. 

As a slasher fan, nothing catches my interest faster than the word 'obscure' and, time to time, I do end up enjoying the obscurities I get to see. Yes, there were some duds (looking at you The Intruder (1975) and Shaman (1988)), but hunting down rare slashers did lead me to seeing some rough hidden gems like Bloodstream (1985), Arboy Day (1990), The Stoneman (2002) and even the original cut of A Night of Dismember (1983)! 

That said, Kiss of The Serpent (1988) (AKA 'Snake Island') may as well join my collection cheesy guilty finds; it's nowhere near being a good movie with its distractingly choppy editing and muffled audio mixing. Not to mention the inconstant acting chops and line delivery from our casts, working on a script that walks a fine line between sleazy and unintentional satire. But what it lacks in quality production, the movie makes up for it with its creativity and ambition to be a little more than your average hack 'n slasher, even if said execution can be laughable for how on-the-nose and hammy it can be.

Given how many cult-themes slashers are out there, Children of the Corn (1984) and Blood Cult (1985) just to set examples, the supernatural angle of Kiss of The Serpent (1988) would have been nothing too special, if it wasn't for the killer being dedicatedly on brand with their cult's snake themes when it comes to their murders. Stabbing and slashing a victim? They'll do it with what looks like a hand-puppet snake head with twin metal blades for fangs! Need to shoot someone dead? Our murderer happens to have arrows tipped with open-mouthed, decapitated snake heads that they can shoot with a crossbow! And the sheer ridiculousness doesn't stop there as, while the majority of the plot follows your typical revenge-against-the-guilty jig, the last act of the movie shifts into creature feature territory as our slasher, finally succumbing to the curse, slowly transforms into a giant snake to attack one last victim. It's unhinged, yes, and I wouldn't have it any other way, though I do wish the kills could have been gorier, if not bloodier at least.

From what I can gather, Kiss of The Serpent (1988) never had a North American release and, instead, went straight to VHS internationally, contributing greatly to its rare status which is either a shame or a relief depending on how well you can swallow bad slashers. Still, I enjoyed its craziness enough to give it a pass, and if you don't demand much from your low-grade slashers and love a good enough rarity, then this is a title worth looking into.

Bodycount:

1 male seen killed in a fire

1 female and 1 girl mentioned killed in a fire

1 female garroted with a thin wire

1 male had his throat stabbed with a bladed snake glove

1 female stabbed to death with a bladed snake glove

1 female pulled underwater, decapitated

1 male repeatedly shot with a snake-headed arrows

1 female buried up to her neck, head set on fire

1 male bitten to death by snakes

1 male locked inside a room with a python, later seen dead with a throat wound

1 female slashed across the face with a bladed snake glove

1 male had his head blown off with a shotgun

Total: 13

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

Blood Freaks and Spanked Cheeks: Evils of The Night (1985)

Evils of The Night (1985)

Rating: **

Starring: Neville Brand, Aldo Ray, Tina Louise

A group of space aliens resembling voluptuous women in short skirts (and old John Carradine in a silver jogging suit) arrive on Earth to harvest and experiment on the youthful blood of horny teenagers for a way to keep themselves alive, only to encounter dilemmas when it turns out that the nearby town is short on victims due to most of the teens driving off for Spring break, and those they were able to capture often end up dead thanks to the murderous tendencies of their two hired hillbilly goons. (Played by Neville Brand and Aldo Ray)

If this sounds like the plot of one of those drive-in cheapo flicks, or dime store movies often shown in public domain, that ought to show what to expect from this mess of a film, honestly. Evils of The Night (1985) is a cauldron concoction of a cheese-fest combining low brow scifi plotting of very human-looking aliens in skimpy dresses and big hair yakking up technical space jargon and extraterrestrial quips to pass up what this movie considers as an intergalactic threat (of the small scale), with that of a very exploitative swing on your typical backwoods teen slasher, showcasing very spicy sex scenes that lingers long on screen and a victim group consisting of airer-than-airhead teens punctuated with outrageously cheesy dialogue and overly expressive acting. 

It's bad. Like, amazingly bad. So much so that I, frankly, sort of enjoyed this junk of a movie! The unapologetic cheesiness of its direction and production, down to its cheap laser effects and unabashed sleaze just works with the mad science craziness of space doctors with questionable morals roping in a pair of killer gas station hicks to kidnap sex-crazed teenagers for research. They justified this juxtapose with the aliens needing someone dumb enough to be bribed with gold coins to help out with their blood-draining science project, regardless of how uncontrollably brutal they can be, which is the kind of demented writing I could always go for whenever I'm in the mood for an entertainingly dumb movie.

That said, it is still a dumb movie. One with audio work and editing that are patchy, and, too, a lack of any real sympathetic characters as practically all of them are one-note stereotypes of screaming girls and their eye-candy boyfriends. The group of villains flair a tad better as low-rent 'space aliens' and violent townies, hamming up their scenes to ludicrous fancy whenever they appear, something to consider since the story is as thin as a single sheet of paper. Heck, you can honestly tell with the way the story kinda just ends with the operation halting due to the aliens having a deadline for these blood experiments and somehow this includes one more laser death. And speaking of, for a slasher, there really isn't much gore to speak of until the last thirty minutes, so those expecting a slaughterfest may need to test their patience.

It's not going to be everyone's ham and cheese treat. In fact, even if you are hungering for a really feisty cheddar and smoky meat-to-meat minute, Evils of The Night (1985) is still the odd one out for how unconventional it is as both a slasher and a sci-fright flick. But if you don't mind a bit of an obscurity, then is one title you could try seeking out. 

Bodycount:

1 male garroted

1 female dies during an operation

1 male shot dead with a laser

1 male repeatedly beaten with a wooden beam, later dies during an operation

1 male brained with a tire iron

1 female mentioned drowned

1 female beaten to death with a blanket filled with glass containers

1 female disemboweled with a power drill

1 male crushed by an automotive hoist

1 female hacked apart with an axe

1 male shot with a laser, bled to death

Total: 11

Murky Visions: Scalper (2023)

Scalper (2023)

Rating: *

Starring: Susan Priver, Jake Busey, Bai Ling

Y'know, it's hard to get excited for a slasher when the first kill involves a dirty fat fella getting sodomized with a dagger until the weapon is caked in blood and shit. Yeah.

Clementine Carver (Susan Priver) is a psychic, as well as a surviving victim of a serial killer dubbed The Scalper, named so after their habit of scalping women. It's been some time since the maniac was killed off and with her niche of having powers that helped track down The Scalper, Clementine sees herself getting interviewed for a radio show one day, with her friend, Jade Mei, excitedly calling the station for give the psychic some support over the air. Horrifyingly, Jade finds herself attacked by a man masked in black, her screams for help broadcasted over the airwaves. Clementine, in turn, goes into a seizure-like trance wherein she sees what happened to Jade, which is nothing short of a full-on slaughter that ends with her face and scalp being sliced off.

When Clementine comes through, she's greeted by Detective Hayden (Jake Busey) and his partner Detective Lupino (Kate Patel), who are already on the case of the recent murder and hoping to have her otherworldly abilities help them investigate what appears to be a copycat Scalper killing. Unbeknownst to them, this new wave of scalp murders has a more personal touch to it, all of which seems to lead down to Clementine herself...

Now, see, this is fine and all but, not going to sugarcoat anything, the production of this movie blows; aside from the downright horrendous writing and the very questionable set of C to Z-grade talents involved in bringing this murder mystery to life, Scalper (2023) tries to be this slick and creepy supernatural slasher by involving the previous victims of the titular killer in helping solve their own murders and, too, the new killings, via our heroine's psychic connection. Just for it all to fall embarrassingly flat when the shoddy editing, lowbrow CG effects and dollar store practical make-up distractingly and hilariously highlights how cheap this movie really is.

You could argue that this may be the intention, to bring a bit of humor to the plot, but the direction of the film is clearly aiming for something serious with how much it builds around the police procedural, and the trauma Clementine is going through being nearly another victim of the Scalper. Not to mention her worries of losing her father after he himself became a target of the serial slayer, presented here with her transversing the afterlife to convince his soul to return. Only, for some reason, the afterlife is a highly tinted barren of ruins, but not really since you can see moving traffic just way over the horizon. Yeah. Hard to take these heart-wrenching emotional moments seriously with all of that clunky production showing up.

You may be wondering, then, if I find this movie as absolute horse crap, why did I still give it a single star? Well, I'm awarding that to this movie's single highlight, which is the killer's design. Under the right lighting and angle, the fella is genuinely creepy with their flesh face mask and messy wring of a scalped hair, and I applaud Scalper (2023) for that.

That said, take this shitty movie out of my face and kick if off a trash heap.

Bodycount:

1 male sodomized with a dagger, scalped

1 male sodomized with a dagger, scalped

1 female slaughtered with a dagger, face flayed and scalped

1 female killed with a dagger, face flayed

1 female killed with a dagger, face flayed

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger

1 female sodomized with a dagger, face flayed

1 male stabbed through the neck with a dagger

1 male gets a dagger through the head

1 male found murdered

1 male stabbed with a dagger

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger

1 female decapitated with a dagger

1 male shot on the head

Total: 14

Love Hurts, Love Scars: Strange Darling (2023)

Strange Darling (2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Madisen Beaty

It's a classic horror sight to see: a shotgun-toting madman in the woods, his wounded lady prey running for her life. What could be strange about this you ask? Well...

Two characters, simply named "Lady" (Willa Fitzgerald) and "Demon" (Kyle Gallner) meet up at a motel one night for a sexy good time of drugs, smokes and kinks, only for it all go brutal when one of them turns out to be a serial killer, accumulating to a backwoods cat-and-mouse chase where bloody casualties are to be expected. So far, so familiar? Perhaps, but Strange Darling (2023) opted to tell this narrative by chapters. Six of them and an epilogue. Each told in a non-linear path and revealing more of what exactly happened from dusk to dawn in that one motel room, all the while toying with our expectations and subverting what we may have already understood.

This seemingly randomized plot direction practically has the story's tone all over the place, establishing some of the strange aspects of the movie and welcoming a needed sense of uncertainty for what looked like your everyday slasher horror final girl scenario. This, though, isn't the only thing peculiar about Strange Darling (2023) as there's also a notable mumblecore quality to the writing done for the characters here, especially between the Lady and the Demon, echoing elements of toxic relationships and sexual tension tinted with dark humor, sometimes accompanied by a soft yet haunting soundtrack composed by artist Z-Berg. All of which being shot with a dream-like vibrant cinematography which goes so well with the jumbled plotting, no doubt punctuating how much this film is made to build intrigue, and it certainly does its job right down to the chilling finale!

Production for Strange Darling (2023) is said to be a difficult one as producers weren't exactly on board with writer and director JT Mollner's vision for the movie, resulting to momentary shutdowns and even production company Miramax hiring editors to re-work a linear cut of the film behind Mollner's back. Fortunately, creative heads prevailed when test screening of original cut proved to be greatly successful, the end result being this hauntingly captivating indie piece of backwoods violence with a devilish twist. It can get a little talky during some of the slower scenes, borderline being pretentious at times, and the fetishization of sexual violence roleplays-gone-nearly wrong did get rather uncomfortable to sit through until its awkward aftermath, but one cannot deny the thoughtful construction and execution of its increasingly dire and unexpected turns towards cruelty, heartbreak and gore. 

Refreshingly chaotic and fractured, Strange Darling (2023) is a simple movie told in a not-to-simple way, gracefully carried by hot messes of characters over the scenic beauty of forest landscapes, awaiting to be defiled by grit, sleaze and blood splatter. It's an art piece of a horror film, an exercise on cleverness and misdirection, and I, for one, appreciate that. How well one can take said practice of a backwoods horror movie is another question, however. What say you?

Bodycount:

1 male found bashed on the head with a landline phone, knifed in the chest

1 female stabbed in the neck with a buck knife

1 male had his neck bitten open, bled to death

1 female shot on the head

1 male shot

1 female shot, succumbs to her injuries
Total: 6

Double The Booking. Double The Hooking: Bone Lake (2024)

Bone Lake (2024)

Rating: ***

Starring: Alex Roe, Maddie Hasson, Marco Pigossi

When the first scene you see in a movie is a naked couple being chased through the woods by a shadowy figure brandishing a crossbow, hitting one victim through the balls in an unapologetic gratuitous shot, I think it'll be more than understandable to expect nothing but trashy horror in Bone Lake (2024). And, yes, the movie does lean on the sleazy side, but it's also playing a different kind of game. One that's going to test our character's will to commit, to trust, and to survive one night in the damn woods in one piece.

Former teacher and aspiring writer Diego (Marco Pigossi) is hoping to spend a (clothing optional) weekend in a rented lake house with his girlfriend, Sage (Maddie Hasson). Not long after just settling in (and doing each other on a bearskin rug), another more spirited couple, Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita) show up ready to have their own happy weekend at the same cabin, but are a tad confused to find the house already occupied. It seems a booking screw-up have both couples scheduled to enjoy the forest-bound vacation home and with neither pair wanting to leave, they mutually agreed to spend the weekend together as new friends.

And as friends, the two couples share experiences, little secrets and tips for a spicy relationship, as well as engage in other fun times like sharing scary stories behind the lake's name, 'Bone Lake', which has less to do with the fact that it's a popular sex spot for lovers, and more on the fact that it's a dumping site for victims killed by a serial killer back at the 1950s. There are also the three suspicious rooms the house owner keep locked tickling the couples' curiosity, which they drunkenly proceed to open two, revealing a sex dungeon and a macabre room dedicated to the lake's dark history. What of the third room, though? Well...

As morning comes, trouble starts brewing; Will steals a wedding ring Diego was planning on proposing to Sage with and uses it to propose to Cin. It turns out the girl cheated on Will some time before and, out of desperation, he made the proposal as a way to keep her by his side. Diego, though outraged at first, somewhat understood Will's predicament as Sage also cheated on him early into their relationship, thus forgiving his new buddy so long as he does bring him back the ring before the weekend's end. 

This, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, does little to help with Diego's self-esteem as he fears he's not sexually satisfying enough after catching Sage pleasuring herself in a bathtub the day before, but it appears temptation is rearing its horny head for him as it looks like Cin's up to her old cheating tricks again, this time seducing Diego. To further complicate matters, Will is suddenly taking his shots on Sage, too, while driving to town together for groceries, promising her a good time that nobody else would ever know. 

Will the two take the bait? 

As you can tell by now, Bone Lake (2024) sets itself as a twisty erotic thriller highlighting the flaws of our main casts as both relatable figures and lovers, played with a B-grade tongue firmly pressed in a cheek and fair amount of steamy sex scenes. Yet, the film still finds the time to slow down and properly give our hapless pairs the time to grow as they share their vulnerabilities and insecurities behind their partners' backs, only to eventually face them when shit hits the fan and, by that, I mean the movie delivers a decent twist to what's really happening here, making way for a very backwoods slasher-inspired third act; chainsaws, crossbows, wise-cracking maniacs and all! Without a doubt, it takes a real long while before we do get to the splattery action, but by then insane motives and backstories were monologued, giving us a real demented and icky pair of psychos to terrorize our screens, and the movie does reward our patience with surprisingly decent stalk-and-stab sequences, visually enriched with awesome practical gore and some of the most satisfying kills to grace a forest-bound horror thriller.

Bone Lake (2024) may have the sweet and tangy coating of an inviting eye-candy exploitation and, in a lot of aspects, it is, the movie thankfully remembers to be fun with its horror thriller elements, playing us a genuinely intriguing situation of seductive temptations and moral reproach, then escalating the dangers from emotional and psychological to downright horrific and viscerally messy for our inner gorehounds! Its writing also fascinates the brooding situation without being overly titillating and prude, balancing the sexism and mystery along its well-rounded set of characters to both root for and be wary of, which is something I openly welcome if it means a real fun watch in-between all of the sleaze and slaughter. 

Delirious and debauched, Bone Lake (2024) promises outlandishly bunkum and a savage finale, just a good snatch to catch if you ever see yourself looking for something wilder and more bodacious from your typical horror thriller fix! 

Bodycount:

1 male repeatedly shot with a crossbow

1 female lands gut-first on a dead branch, killed offscreen with a crossbow

1 victim seen murdered, body being dragged and dumped into a lake (flashback)

1 victim mentioned murdered

1 male hacked on the head with an axe, lands face first on a chainsaw

1 female had her jaw whacked off with an axe and her hair caught on a boat propeller, dismembered

Total: 6

Lots of Tricks, Little of Treats: The Jester (2023)

The Jester (2023)
Rating: **
Starring: Michael Sheffield, Lelia Symington, Delaney White

Based on a series of Youtube short films from 2016 to 2019, The Jester (2023) should have been about the exploits of a mysterious masked jester as he terrorizes a small town celebrating Halloween with twistedly deadly magic tricks, but it instead focuses mostly on soapy drama between two estranged half-sisters who are meeting for the first time after their father seemingly committed suicide. (Read. Seemingly) This draggy attempt of a plot spends its run rubbing in the fact that it have some form of depth going here, with the women discussing their issues of having a father who abandoned a family to move on to another; one of them is rightfully pissed at him for leaving her and her mum, while the other just wants to patch things up and, hopefully, help her sister move on from the pain.

This is all easier said than done when, somehow, a supernatural masked magician gets connected to all of this. And I don't mean this in a way that the girls had a chance encounter-gone-hellishly wrong with the Jester while out for coffee and swapping around childhood stories, no. That would have been preferrable. Rather, the maniac magician just happens the one who killed their father after the guy failed to gain the forgiveness for ditching a family, which implies that the Jester has some bit of history with the guy, even more so when the ghoul starts berating one of the sisters with frightening visions of their undead pa scolding them for being unforgiving and cold. The story never bothered to explain, though, why the masked creep is this invested with the family, opting to hide this fact behind more conflicted melodrama and strived emotional horror of the B-grade kind, which makes the whole gag of the movie having some semblance of layers feel boringly cliched, flimsy and borderline pretentious. 

You can clearly tell The Jester (2023) wanted to make something out of its titular villain, perhaps a representation of grief or trauma given the ending narrative. A novel goal, sure, but greatly lacking in execution. If anything, the whole movie is unnecessarily dramatic and could have benefitted more as a straightforward supernatural slasher seeing that the best moments here are The Jester doing his killer tricks. From an elevated strangling and death by tied shoelaces, to an entire head disappearing via magic hat and body parts removed ala cup tricks, our ghastly grinning ghoul does all of this magical terror through enigmatic yet playful pantomime body language, with special effects that are delightfully practical. The whole concept of a mute killer magician murdering their victims via paranormally empowered parlor tricks should have opened an opportunity to be wild and imaginative with the story, but, once more, the movie shackled itself as overly serious psychological horror, thus reducing the villain's role to almost just a lingering presence, his whimsically twisted kills an afterthought 

The Jester (2023), by the end of it, is plainly underwhelming. Clumsily mixing psychodrama with slasher tropes that barely benefits one another, the movie is a misfire of missed opportunities. Its story would have worked better with a different, less flashy villain. Its villain would have worked better with a cheesier, more popcorn-friendly story. All in all, a hardly passable affair.

Bodycount:

1 male strangled by an elevated noose

1 male trips on a tied shoelace, hits his head on a tombstone 

1 male gets an entire apple rupture out from his throat and mouth

1 male had his head removed via hat trick, shot

1 male killed offscreen

1 male had his eyes and teeth removed via a cup trick

Total: 6

Stranger Things Are Abound: Marshmallow (2025)

Marshmallow (2025)

Rating: ***

Starring: Giorgia Whigham, Corbin Bernsen, Pierson Fode

Bullied by neighborhood kids. Suffering from a reoccurring nightmare wherein he's gushing out water from a gut wound like Ole' Faithful. Not to mention witnessing his beloved grandfather croak from a heart attack during a family dinner. Is it any surprise at all that young Morgan is a little too down for a kid his age? 

Hoping to get him out of the doom and gloom, his parents have him packing up for a one-of-a-kind summer adventure at Camp Almar where he, unfortunately, suffers from further bullying not just from a couple of troublesome kids, but also from the more aggressive counselors. As a silver lining, though, he did befriend a small group of nerdy chumps who, in more than one occasion, stood by him. But will this newfound friendship be enough to keep Morgan safe from what's coming to the woods one night?

Camp Almar happens to have its own boogeyman, you see; legend says that a figure known as The Doctor used to bring his wife and kids around these parts to supposedly relax in the cabins, but the fella had a suspicious habit of skulking around the basement at night. His wife soon grew curious about this and followed him down there once, only to horrifically discover that her husband has been sewing people together, creating monstrous freaks. (Here's hoping nothing like The Human Centipede (2009)). To keep his secret hidden, as well as continue doing the mad doctor's deeds, he trapped his own wife and children down the very same basement and sew their limbs together so they can never leave.

Now, it appears this Doctor is roaming the woods once more and Morgan even spots the sickened science man emerging from one of the cabins. His terrified claims, however, are dismissed as nothing more than nightmares, with one friendly counselor even admitting that the story was made up to keep children from sneaking off after lights out. It's not too long, of course, before these doubters are proven wrong when The Doctor, sporting a surgeon's garb and a head lamp, armed with a powerful electric taser, starts an onslaught of attacks at the doomed camp.

Calling Marshmallow (2025) a slasher can be a real stretch; yes, we do have the staple of horny teen counselors boinking their brains out here and there, as well as the obligatory campfire tale featuring a humanoid hulk who would later turn up in the flesh to siege the camp with violence, but there's more of a coming-of-age story here as the plot focuses strongly on the troubles of one forlorn kid and how he deals with them. For a decent while, we navigate through Morgan's day to day at Camp Almar as he tries to survive the anxieties of being harassed by arseholes and the awkward socializing pressure within peers, only occasionally dipping into horror territory via unnerving nightmares. It isn't until we get to the expected twist that The Doctor, or at least someone dressed up like him, is operating inside one of the cabins that the slasher lunacies take effect, sending the kids (and the entire movie) into chaos as the madman finally goes on a spree, targeting anyone on sight. 

Interestingly, Marshmallow (2025) opted to keep the exploitative elements of its slasher attacks to an almost non-existent minimal, with The Doctor, instead of hacking and slashing everyone into sloppy pieces, just shocks their victims unconscious with their taser. The reason for this is where the movie's plot twist comes in and, without spoiling much, it does dive into the fantastical and amazing, which strays the film further away from being a genuine bodycounter, and heads a tad more towards a very emotional and intense feature-length episode of Goosebumps. This, admittedly, may divide those expecting the usual affair of lopped off limbs and flayed faces, the norms of a good slasher movie, but the way the plot took the elements of a backwoods stalk 'n slash and make it their own is admirable in its creativity and imagination. Even more so when its somberness, oddness and even warmth is made effective thanks to the likeable and relatable performances of its young talents.

 

Not the strictest slasher in terms of paint-by-number storytelling and expectations, nor is it the splashiest and kill count heavy, but there is still value to be found here in Marshmallow (2025) with its lush camera work and expressive editing. A real quality work that pushes the boundaries of your typical slasher story, I say try it out! 

Bodycount:

1 elderly male suffers a heart seizure

1 boy drowned (flashback)

1 female seen floating on a lake slaughtered

1 male killed with a knife

Total: 4

Death's A Dance, Make It A Prom!: Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)
Rating: ****
Starring: India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fina Strazza

The 2021 Fear Street trilogy is, without a doubt, one of the more unique movie events made for the slasher sub-genre. It's practically one five-and-a-half-hour-long film inspired by R.L. Stine's young adult book series of the same name, divided into three parts, each to be played a week from one another. Though each entry has their own strengths and weaknesses, resulting to varying qualities per film, the all-in-all result is still a unique and adventurous blend of supernatural terror, generational trauma and gory slasher action.

Now, the franchise returns with a standalone title set in the same movie universe, this time an adaptation of Stine's book The Prom Queen, done gorier, messier and reeking of pure 80s nostalgia. 

It's 1988 and the small town of Shadyside is getting ready to celebrate one of the few good things to look forward to every year, the high school senior prom and the race for the Prom Queen crown! For this round, the candidates are mostly within the same clique known as The Wolf Pack, led by pompous queen bee Tiffany Falconer. She and her three cohorts are up against street-smart weed dealer Christie, who's just doing it so she can annoy Tiffany, and Lori Granger, the underdog candidate whose mother is rumored to have murdered Lori's father during her own prom many years ago. For Lori, to be crowned Prom Queen is a chance to represent the sunnier side of Shadyside, to break the town's gloomy reputation of being the breeding place of homicidal serial killers and masked psychos, thus hopefully freeing her and her mother from being looked down upon as tragic cases. 

On Lori's side is her horror geek bestie, Megan, rooting from the sides as she go about trying to ruin the Wolf Pack's morale by pranking them with horror effects and magic, from self-dismemberment via prop hand, to life-like replica of Tiffany's head left curiously floating in a punch bowl. However, Megan soon finds herself and Lori are in a horror movie of their own: someone in a red rain slicker and masked-up like a ghoul is out cutting down the competition, hacking up the prom queen candidates and, too, pretty much anybody else who happens to be in their way with an axe. By the end of the night, will there be anyone left alive to be crowned Prom Queen?

A more back-to-basics entry from a film franchise centered around witch curses and maniacs that can regenerate from demonic goo, Prom Queen (2025) is your classic high school bodycounter flick mixing in girl drama with good old-fashioned hack 'n slash, ala Heathers (1988) crossed with Prom Night (1980). Admittedly, this is a direction that isn't going to garner a lot of favorable opinions after the trilogy's more unique swing at the slasher sub-genre, but for those who are not in an overly demanding mood and simply want to watch a dead teenager film for the fun of watching a dead teenager film, this movie serves!

Prom Queen (2025) unfolds quite nicely as we breeze through its high school dramatics and be rewarded for sticking through the scenes with a decent kill or two. Maybe even a dance-off! Yes, the paint-by-number approach is still riddled with slasher tropes like couples repeatedly sneaking away from the party to hook up, only to get a knife buried into a head or being relieved of their limbs with an axe, but the movie isn't one to shy away from doing something shocking and nasty whenever it can to keep everyone on their toes, mainly offing some likable characters, as well as having a madman publicly go after a victim through a crowd while the Prom Queen coronation is happening. The deaths are also a splashy bunch, a real showcase of blood and guts here with a brutal buzzsaw to the face and a savage axe double-murder being among the better examples! 

The throwback aesthetics is workable enough; the snappy soundtrack full of 80s mood classics and modern retrowave is a good hear, plus the fashion sense and lingo here do strike a nostalgic nerve, quite passable attempts for a late-80s slasher tribute such as this. By the near end of the film, we're treated with a twisty set of reveals that, while isn't exactly new or surprising, it still pairs pretty well with the bonkers motivation the killer have for massacring teenagers during prom. It's the kind of crazy slasher finale we've grown to love and I'm all for it! 

Overall, Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) may not win every horror-living hearts out there, but for those who loves a gruesomely bloody teen slasher with the decent amount of nostalgic ham and craziness, this is a great movie to consider for your slasher viewings! Make it a date! 

Bodycount:

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 female gutted

1 male had his hands lopped off with a paper guillotine, face smashed against a door

1 male had his face eviscerated with a buzzsaw

1 female startled unto a fusebox, electrocuted to death

1 female hacked on the head with a meat cleaver

1 male jabbed on the head with a knife

1 male found with a hammerclaw buried into his head

1 female had a leg lopped off with an axe, bled to death

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 female fell unto and impaled on a falcon statue

1 female fatally brained with a trophy, dies from her injury 

Total: 12

Is Mac and Cheese A Side Dish or A Main?: The Blackening (2022)

The Blackening (2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg

For the longest time, the whole trope of Black characters dying first in horror movies baffled me since, being a guy obsessed with slasher films, I can only count maybe five titles out of hundred-ish wherein this instance holds true. (New Year's Evil (1980), Alone in the Dark (1982), Slaughter High (1986), A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), and Scream 2 (1997), to name a few) I now understand that this is more of a stab at the token minority trope, a problematic movie practice of sacrificing characters of certain ethnicities to the threat as bodycount fodder and/or motivation for the hero (typically a white male) to do better in saving the day. Over the years, through social push, more big-name Black actors are given more access to show off their talents, resulting to horror legends like the late-Tony Todd, Ken Foree, and Keith David, as well as modern horror creators like Jorden Peele and Misha Green, gracing the screen with a great deal of prominent Black characters in memorable leading roles.

With this turn, the "Black guy dies first" trope is occasionally uttered around nowadays as a tongue-in-cheek joke. The same kind of cheekiness that gets us fun and silly terror flicks like this house-in-the-woods survival slasher, The Blackening (2022)!

It's a Juneteenth weekend and a group of old college friends are meeting up for the first time after ten years; the assortment includes gal pals Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) and Allison (Grave Byers), and their gay bestie Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins); hunky African-descent Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls) and his former-gangster bro King (Melvin Gregg); life-of-the-party Shanika (X Mayo) and incredibly nerdy Clifton (Jermaine Fowler). They're all invited to a vacation house in the middle of the woods by their friends Shawn and Morgan, who are suspiciously missing the moment they arrived. Nonetheless, the gang starts celebrating like any people in backwoods slashers would, with a whole lot of Spades, diabetic Kool-Aid and a side of troublesome fling that may or may not open old heartbreaks. 

The good times can only go so long before the lights suddenly go out and, on their search to get the power back on, the group stumbles upon a hidden room full of board games. Including an obscenely racist-looking one called "The Blackening", consisting of question cards, a grinning Sambo fella on the middle of the board and, curious enough, game pieces seemingly made based on their specific personalities. When the game centerpiece starts asking them to pick a card and play, this is when things get really screwed up as everybody finds out that Shawn is dead and Morgan is about to be tortured by a masked killer somewhere inside the house. Making matters worse is the game room is rigged close and the only way everyone to get out alive is to beat the The Blackening, or die trying!

Keeping the record straight, The Blackening (2022) is less a horror-comedy and more of a comedy with horror elements. Yes, there are kills and killers, a sense of stake, and a mystery as to who is behind this entire bloody fiasco, though the approach taken here leans closer to satirizing slasher tropes through the eyes of sharply witty and street smart African-Americans. Think a Halloween episode of The Boondocks, only feature length and with a killer masked up to look like a damn minstrel show. This certainly meant that the movie has little in the sense of blood, tension and scares, but the unapologetic energy of its writing and characters when it comes to poking fun at horror tropes, as well as showcasing jokes outside of the horror spectrum, is incredibly infectious down to the funny bones! (A running gag involving conversations through eye contact only being my favorite!) 

A good deal of this workability stems from the incredible chemistry and performances the entire casts have, from the hearty humor surrounding around Lisa and Dewayne's friendship jeopardized by Lisa's love for Nnamdi, to the no-nonsense loudness of Shanika and Carlton's cringe-inducing awkwardness. Their reaction to the bloodshed practically lampoons the roles of Black people in horror media, mainly being quippy, lucky and even straightforward enough to actually best the killer in a lot of encounters despite some painful, embarrassing, and painfully embarrassing blowbacks on their part. (Splitting up. Accidentally hurting themselves with their weapons. Getting high on Molly while being hunted down. Y'know, the usual backwoods horror theatrics) Interestingly, it is through this lampooning that The Blackening (2022) also took its chances to examine how modern culture and its many attempts to define ethnic communities led to harmful judgement within these circles, a lot of it light-heartedly addressed during the times the friends are forced to play The Blackening and test their Black-ness, only to later resurface as a motive in this movie's plot twist. While nowhere a grandeur deconstruction, it is an intriguing insight to pull within the movie's remarkably coherent humor.

The Blackening (2022) is, without a doubt, very "Black" and I just love it for that! It may not do much as a horror flick, but as silly fun little movie you can sit back and relax to, it's a whole party, baby! So grab some Rap Chips, down some King's Kool-Aid, and treat yourself with this roaring riot of a comedy slasher!

Bodycount:

1 male shot on the neck with a crossbow

1 female killed offscreen

1 male repeatedly stabbed with arrow heads

1 male shot through the neck with a crossbow

1 male had his head pulped with a candlestick, stomped dead

1 male shot with a crossbow, kicked into a well (?)

Total: 6 (?)

Camping The Camp: Bloody Murder (2000)

Bloody Murder (2000)

Rating: *1/2
Starring: Jessica Morris, Peter Guillemette, Patrick Cavanaugh

Well, boys and girls, can you name that one infamous hockey mask-wearing slasher known to lurk around the woods killing teenagers? If you answer 'Trevor Moorhouse' then I'm both impressed you even remember the guy, and disappointed coz you've probably never seen a Friday The 13th film. You're an anomaly of a slasher fan and that makes me sad...

So in this direct-to-video cheapo, trainee camp counselors fixing up Camp Placid Pines are disappearing one by one after bringing up a campfire boogieman named Trevor Moorhouse, who may or may not be responsible for cutting down the local population for a few years now. As suspicion variously falls on one another, our heroine Julie decides to do some amateur sleuthing to try and figure out who could be responsible for the potential murders going around the camp. And apparently this includes scenes of imagined scenarios wherein other characters are committing the murders to throw us off, and hilarious voice-over work whenever a letter is involved...

Bloody Murder (2000) was released around the time Scream (1996) made witty and satirical deconstruction of horror flicks look like the hottest thing to do, and it often feels like it with scenes shamelessly ripping and calling out slasher tropes, most of it coming from the resident horror nerd Tobe, who bemoans wry remarks like "...a great time to be walking through this camp alone. Why don’t you just paste a sign on my back that says ‘Please Kill Next’." (Yes, dude. We get it. You're trying to be Scream (1996)'s Randy) The result is nowhere as engaging nor as clever as it wanted to be, considering the whole murder mystery angle is clumsily handled with too many obvious red herrings and an acting tone dangerously leaning towards parody, courtesy of its eight-grade level writing. 

Nothing simply works here, not even the slasher elements which are awfully chaste by dead teenager flick standards; there's hardly a drop of blood for a good deal of these kills, no workable stalking or chase scenes involving a hapless victim and our masked murderer, and the raunchiest this movie ever got is a make-out session in the woods where no one got naked. Plus, the whole 'Trevor Moorhouse' shtick just isn't cutting it with how much the plot tried making him a household name here, making a mountain out of a molehill when the guy hardly even has the presence that demands attention, even more so when the killer ends up being someone we hardly paid attention to. But, hey, the movie seems to be dead set on making Trevor Moorhouse the next slasher star, so much so they're willing to risk a dumb twist ending featuring the hockey-masked maniac. (May have worked, though. This damn movie got two sequels, believe it or not...)

Perhaps the aim here was to be so bad it's good, but all I got is a whole lot of bad and very little of the good. If any. Bloody Murder (2000)? More like a bloody waste of film reel...

Bodycount:

1 male hacked up with a chainsaw

1 female stabbed with a kitchen knife

1 male shot to death with arrows

1 male had his throat cut with a kitchen knife

1 male gets a lawn dart thrown through his back

1 male found hanging dead atop a tree

1 male killed with a chainsaw

Total: 7