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 (?)

Bad Night At The Fat Bottom Bistro: Last Straw (2024)

Last Straw (2024)

Rating: ***

Starring: Jessica Belkin, Taylor Kowalski, Jeremy Sisto

Recently discovering that she's pregnant, waitress Nancy (Jessica Belkin) will see her day go for the worse when her dad, the owner of the diner she works at, puts her in charge of that evening’s late shift while he enjoys a pleasant date with his lover, putting a damper on Nancy's party plans for that night. Combining this with a nauseating wave of pregnancy hormones, as well as a rowdy gaggle of teen punks showing up and throwing roadkill all over the place, Nancy is simply having none of it and the small diner staff and patrons can tell.

After a long day of snapping at mouthy customers, cooks and former love interests, Nancy settles in for an even longer late evening dealing with the diner all in her lonesome. This, as you can see, is a terrible arrangement for the young gal as the four punks from earlier, seeking revenge for having them kicked out and disrespected, decided to get even by terrorizing her. 

Or, at least that's what it seems.

For the first act of Last Straw (2024), it plays out like a slasher siege flick ala You're Next (2011) or even Tobe Hooper's Gas Station slasher segment from the movie Body Bags (1993), with the hoodlums all masked up and keeping themselves mute while they sneak around to prowl and hunt their prey, even scoring a bonus body when the local sheriff picked the wrong place to personally investigate a disturbance. Heck, they might have added another for the count when Nancy's co-worker shows up to apologize for making things awkward earlier that shift, but just when the gal got a chance to escape and set things right by ending these punks, the film throws a curveball at us.

This is when Last Straw (2024) switches from siege horror to crime thriller, shifting its perspective to another character and shows us what happened in between a work-related verbal lashing and the night the punks came out to play. Without spoiling much, it's bad decisions upon bad decisions, fueled by misery and hate, adding a little more depth to the horrors that happened so far and will continue that evening, giving the villains a couple more dimensions in their character and a bit of sympathy despite the horrible things they'll end up doing. It leads to everyone here being flawed, but it is this flaw that makes their bloody predicament an intriguing watch, especially once the story kicks back up again with a massacre to boot.

The kills are nothing too spectacular in the creative sense, but remains tragic and brutal within the tone of the plot, even more so once after the reveal was made. The greater focus here is on tone and suspense as the story and bloodshed escalate to the point where we're not even sure who will be walking out of this mess alive, all in all a workable effort that did keep me on the edge of my seat, captivated on what the outcome will be. 

If there is any real drawback here, it'll be the main character, Nancy; I guess the movie was aiming to write her off as 'irritable' due to her baby-bearing situation and teen angst, but she's more irritating, testy and harsh here than needed to be, always with a scowl on her face and a sharp tongue cutting down people who irks her, even if said people were only trying to help. They did try fixing this by throwing in a sentimental flashback of her discussing with a friend about her woes and troubles as a teenage girl living a life so similar to a family member who passed away, but the damage was done and this is like putting a tiny band-aid over a bloody stump where a leg used to be. This, mind you, doesn't mean Jessica Belkin did a horrible job portraying her character, it's just that she nailed it too well that it's kinda laborious rooting for Nancy all the way, at least for me.

Still, Last Straw (2024) is a commendable effort; I like the twist and shift. I like the grounded tone. I like the fact that the villains were fleshed out a bit more. It just needs some good script polish and, perhaps, dial back the lead girl's pessimism and testiness a bit. Unconventional but bold, I say give it a try!

Bodycount:

1 male beaten to death with a meat tenderizer

1 male repeatedly stabbed with a hunting knife, bled to death

1 male strangled to death

2 males murdered offscreen

1 male dunked into a deep fryer, brained with a metal tray

1 male dies from knife wounds

1 male seen bled to death from a stabbed gut

1 male knifed in the neck

Total: 9

Into The Woods, Down The Hill: Mercy Falls (2023)

Mercy Falls (United Kingdom, 2023)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Lauren Lyle, Nicolette McKeown, James Watterson

As a child, Rhona caught a glimpse of an incident involving her father and an injured horse, a moment in her life that troubled her so much that her relationship with him strained to the point she barely visited him as an adult. Now that her father passed away, Rhona learns that she inherited their old family cabin up in the Scottish Highlands, so she plans a hiking trip through the moors with her boyfriend and a couple of friends to visit the place and see what became of it. Along the way, they tagged along a lone traveler named Carla, who may or may not have a bit of screws loose after the horrors she faced back when she was deployed to fight a war at Afghanistan. 

As the day goes by, the would-be jovial hike begins to devolve into an intense stay when romantic and sexual tensions between the group have them arguing and quarreling with one another. When push comes to a literal shove, the gang soon find themselves in a situation they weren't prepared for as one of them ends up dying and someone's sudden spring of bloodlust have them hunting and hacking the rest of the group.

Looking past the gorgeously scenic camera work and the good enough acting talent presented here, Mercy Falls (2023) feels like it was robbed of an opportunity to do a better story seeing, prior to anyone from the group biting the big one, the narrative seems to be heading more on a direction focusing on the psychological horrors of trauma and distrust. It dances around the rising tension within the gang as they question the credibility of their friendship and love life, as well as the mental health of the few joining them after catching one too many suspicious activities the longer they stay outdoors, but that's eventually tossed away for a more traditional survivalist-type backwoods slasher run once one of them decided to give an unfortunate fella the knife-across-the-throat treatment after concluding he didn't have long to live with a big stick impaling his thigh. The mercy killer is then found out to have stayed at a mental ward and, just because they couldn't trust the group anymore, opted to hack and slash their way through them.

This unfortunately cheapens the rest of the movie since the killer's motive could have been explored further for better thrills but, rather, Mercy Falls (2023) went ahead with the usual simplification of PTSD equaling to homicidal tendencies, thus making the mad maniac here genuinely unremarkable. Pairing this misfire with a predictable and overlong stalk-and-stab situation, as well as murders that are barely captivatingly splashy or gory, and you would, in due course, get to climactic showdown that's disappointingly isn't anywhere as satisfying or impactful as it could have been due to its lack of tension and personality. Really underwhelming stuff here bearing in mind how well the movie starts.

If you're not in a very demanding mood, then Mercy Falls (2023) makes a suitable timewaster, I guess. It has enough production quality to look good and, honestly, I have seen worse backwoods killing sprees out there, but you can also do better than this downhill tumble from high ground to flat dirt. Good plot, terrible execution.  

Bodycount:

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

1 male stabbed to death with a combat knife (flashback)

1 male had his throat cut with a hunting knife 

1 female shot on the neck (flashback)

1 male hacked to death with a hiking pick

1 female hanged

1 male stabbed in the gut with a hunting knife

1 female set ablaze by a gasoline-doused flaming torch

Total: 8

Beware The Witch's Water: Feed (2022)

Feed (Sweden, 2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Vincent Grahl, Sofia Kappel, Annica Liljeblad

Hoping to market their experience to countless lifestyle fans online for content and clout, a group of social media influencers set themselves to take a relaxing weekend at an eco-resort curiously located at a small island right in the middle of a lake, all owned by an elderly couple who are more than happy to see their little business getting some attention, maybe enough to hinder a lingering bankruptcy. 

It's mostly a quaint stay, with the resort being more of a luxurious camp that comes with spacious tents decked with furniture, an outdoor grill, a wood-fired sauna and even its own little legend of a child-devouring witch named Märit, who was forced to wear an iron mask and banished to the very same island back in the 17th century, right before supposedly taking her own life by drowning herself in the lake. The gruesome ghost story have the elderly couple cautioning the group from approaching the water, but it isn't long before the gang would ignore the ominous warning and can't help taking a swim, resulting to one of them to get attacked by something and be horribly maimed. 

After a rescue attempt by one of the resort owners eerily ends with the old man getting dragged into the water, the group will not only learn in their horror that they're marooned on the island, but there is also something murderous living in this Scandinavian lake that could surface and stalk the island for more victims to take...

For a good stretch of the film, Feed (2022) echoes the likes of The Ruins (2008) or even The Raft segment from Creepshow II (1987) with victims-to-be trying to figure out their chances of surviving and escaping the single location they're trapped in without getting their numbers dwindling down further, courtesy of a threat that's hunting them. It makes for an engrossing watch, focusing on the group's uncanny encounters with the water-drenched killer, as well as the risks and lengths they'll do just for that slight chance of salvation which, in turn, opens up a surprising amount of character build-up from a group that was initially introduced as one-dimensional stereotypes of self-absorbed influencers. Add on the matter that the killer itself, the iron-masked Märit, is intriguingly depicted as a rapid wave of water tailing boats and swimmers to drag them down to a watery grave, and, too, as an amphibious figure that can only walk and stalk around wet grounds, a bit of mythos that help build a few decent suspense scenes of our group looking for places around the small island where they can hide from the witch as rain pours down, and you have a backwoods slasher with a rather unique touch to it, throwing in some curveballs to our expectations to keep us on our toes and even some fair scares to boot.

By the time the film reaches it climax, Feed (2022) shifts its gear from seemingly supernatural to something a little more grounded, which is also when the plot piles up on the bodycount as it drops all façade of restraint and go all out on its crazed twist. It's not perfect, leaving a few questions unanswered and even coming off as rather improbable, not to mention wasting such an amazing villain design, but so long as it leads to some gruesome kills and the typical hokey villain monologues, I can stretch my disbelief enough to enjoy this last act generously peppered with brutal kills and gruesome thrills of B-grade proportions. 

Despite the flaws, Feed (2022) is a promising little Swedish slasher that does the backwoods horror jig in a largely traditional way even with the tempting opportunities for it to devolve into another lazily modernized outing. In fact, the whole social media aspect of the movie didn't really do much to drive the story forward and it's mostly set aside as self-aware jabs at the culture for the sake of a few jokes or even as a character's flaw, which is a little rich coming from a film produced by Joakim Lundell, who is among the biggest influencers in Sweden, but a welcome and well appreciated approach nevertheless. I say give this one a chance! It ain't great, but it is good!

Bodycount:

1 female murdered, method unknown

1 female dragged away, murdered offcamera

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 female hacked to death with a hatchet

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 female shot to death with a shotgun

1 male knifed through the mouth

Total: 7

A Heart of Tainted Candy: Dark Harvest (2023)

Dark Harvest (2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Casey Likes, Emyri Crutchfield, Dustin Ceithamer

Based on a 2006 Bram Stoker Award-winning novel of the same name penned by author Norman Partridge, Dark Harvest (2023) could have been your classic creature feature with small town misfits joining forces to become unlikely heroes fighting against a powerful threat and, in a way, it does walk that path, but not without its bittersweet twists and grim turns.

Set in the1960s, at the rural town of Bradbury, a curse plagues the community every Halloween as a creature known as Sawtooth Jack makes its presence to wreck havoc and take lives, promising even greater devastation once it reaches the church by midnight. To fend off this entity, the folks of Bradbury initiate a ritualistic competition dubbed The Run, wherein the male teens of the town are starved for three days before being unleashed on Halloween night with masks and weapons, with the goal of hunting down Sawtooth Jack before it steps even one foot to the town church. (Given, that is, they don't end up either killing one another or raid butcher shops for food after brutally murdering the owners) The boy who successfully kills Sawtooth Jack will be heftily rewarded with a prize money, a decent housing and brand new Corvettes for a chance to get out of town to see the rest of the world.

This year, Richie Shepard (Casey Likes) is anxious yet adamant to join The Run, hoping to prove to himself as well as the rest of the town's doubters and bullies that he is just as good as his older brother Jim (Britain Dalton), who won last year's Run and is currently travelling across the states. All Hallows Eve night would eventually come and the town's boys, riled-up with a bloodlust for violence and the need to eat, are sent off to hunt down Sawtooth Jack once again. As Richie joins in the macabre competition with his small gang of friends, including the town's newest African-American resident Kelly (Emyri Crutchfield), they will unfortunately learn that there's more to the annual The Run than most expected, a deadly secret that puts them not only in danger of Sawtooth Jack and the murderous gang of teens, but also of those working in between.

Directed by David Slade of 30 Days of Night (2007), Dark Harvest (2023) looks and breathes small town horror story with its population of archetypical caricatures of meathead bullies, untrustworthy police forces and parents hiding dark secrets hounding over the main casts stirring up trouble and drama, all in the backdrop of an old rural American town that holds its traditions seriously, strictly and, dare I say, dangerously under the rule of a powerful group who may know more than they're letting on but choose to keep quiet about it for the sake of the peace. There's practically an allegory running throughout the plot, of class conflict and the repetitive nature of violence disguised as tradition, and for some parts it is handled quite nicely as it adds a little more weight and depth to an otherwise standard creature feature affair of teen victims getting slaughtered by a rampaging monster. But the further the story goes, the more questions it leaves open as it tells us how things work in Bradbury, though never bothering to dive deeper into the rabbit hole they introduced thus leaving some vital plot points hanging in the air unsatisfyingly. 

Fortunately, what Dark Harvest (2023) lacks in substance, it makes up with style; whenever the movie decides to focus on The Run, it guarantees at least one or two satisfying murders with a generous amount of gore, a crisp Halloween atmosphere and a very novel-looking creature design for our dear Sawtooth Jack. Makeup effects designer Francois Dagenais (of many Saw sequels) and visual effects supervisor James McQuaide manages the onscreen violence and it is impressive how well both practical and CG effects blend in with one another here, showcasing kills from both the monster and the deranged young men that's as entertainingly gruesome as they are absurdly inspired. Cinematography strikingly evokes a genuine Autumn spirit and captures perfectly the wide destruction both Sawtooth Jack and The Run cause. Talent-wise, Likes and Crutchfield more or less sold themselves as the empathetic duo since majority of the character development and focus fall on them, following their characters bond over their outcast status as they find warmth and trust from each other in this dangerous night, which does make the movie's conclusion effectively bittersweet to swallow.

Dark Harvest (2023) may not work all the way with its narrative, but it does a fair service of providing us a fair amount of thrills and kills, an interesting lore behind its creature and a couple of good leads with a heart. It's crafted to look cozy good and, I say, it succeeds at that, making this film a fulfilling enough watch for the spooky season, preferably with a bucket of sweets and nice cold bottle of pop!

Bodycount:

1 boy killed, later seen set on fire

1 boy torn in half

1 boy had his head sliced in half

1 boy had his head pried apart by the mouth

12+ boys slaughtered, blood splash seen

1 boy shot on the gut with a shotgun

1 male beaten to death

1 boy had his head sliced down with a machete

1 female knifed in the neck

1 male shot on the head

1 male shot dead

1 boy buried alive

1 male stabbed in the head with a hunting knife

Total: 24+

Deep In The Woods, A Woman Hunts: What Keeps You Alive (2018)

What Keeps You Alive (2018)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Hannah Emily Anderson, Brittany Allen and Martha MacIsaac

Celebrating their first anniversary, married lesbian couple Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson) and Jules (Brittany Allen) head to a remote cabin in the woods to do all your typical backwoods fodder like hunting, fishing, and love-making near a warm, roaring fire. Their stay is far from honey glows and blissfulness, however, when Jackie's old friend suddenly stopped by one night and addresses her by a different name, much to Jules' confusion and now growing suspicions.

It isn't long before it dawns on Jules that the woman she married wasn't entirely open about her life and a long, painfully strenuous and deadly nightmare awaits her as Jackie pushed her off a cliff one day. A nightmare that will only gets worse the moment she survives the fall...

While it is evident the people behind What Keeps You Alive (2018) were aiming to do a modern-psycho thriller, the film does generously borrow a lot of tropes and elements from backwoods slashers for its more horror-oriented moments. The plentiful stalk-and-chase sequences all over the woods echo the likes of your classic forest-set bodycounter climax, building up tension and intrigue as the plot further marches onward to venomous betrayals and psychopathic twists while maintaining a very basic yet stylized survival story in its core.

What makes this all work for me is that once the reveal is made, the fact that the villainess here is simply bad because she is bad, detached from any feeling of compassion and is simply malicious, is all the reason the film needed to keep going. She is a threat that one needed to survive against and escape from and nothing else, a simplicity that feels genuinely terrifying and thankfully didn't resort to cheapening the dynamics between her and their wife being queer as a cause or a tool for the killer's evil, a trope you normally get as a mean to punish or be the cause of one to turn knife-stabbing mad in a horror story.  Everyone is simply a bear or a deer for her to hunt and this makes her the kind of driving force that keeps survival horror all that interesting, thrilling and fun.

Of course, What Keeps You Alive (2018) is far being flawless when one would consider the still numerous horror clichés thrown here and there, such as the number of times Jules could've escaped and not risk a deadly confrontation with her captor, or the real life inconsistencies and plot conveniences the writing suffers from. The quieter moments certainly have their shining moments of emotional baggage and development, but the horror side of the film is undoubtedly cheesed up on occasions, fortunately not enough to lessen the impact of its stronger, nerve-wrecking suspense scenes and the few yet brutal killings.

As it is for most backwoods horror films, What Keeps You Alive (2018) is simply gorgeous with its scenic mountainous backwoods and ever-going lake. The camerawork done for these shots greatly foreshadows how eminently isolated the whole place can get, thus the uselessness of getting any help soon or at all even, which adds to the strengths of the film's survival horror aspect. All in all, this is a solid survival thriller in its simplest and earnest, and sometimes that's all you need to have a fairly decent good time. A guaranteed watch!

Bodycount:

1 male had his throat cut with a hunting knife

1 female stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 female injected with tainted insulin, suffers a fatal stroke

Total: 3

Go Home: Turistas (2006)

Turistas (2006) (AKA "Paradise Lost")

Rating: ***

Starring: Josh Duhamel, Melissa George and Olivia Wilde

Around mid-2000s, the horror scene seems to had a small trend going on with tourists being terrorized by malicious people as seen in the likes of Eli Roth's Hostel movies and the infamous Ozploitation cult classic Wolf Creek (2005). Hot on this bloody hike trail was a little affair set in Brazil wherein a group of turistas must survive the dark and gritty side of paradise.

After a narrow escape from being potential bus crash casualties caused by a speedy driver and a very steep drop off a cliff, friends Bea and Amy, Bea’s chaperoning older brother Alex, Australian backpacker Pru and a pair of British buddies Finn and Liam decided to stroll down to a nearby beach bar after being notified that the next bus won't be around for another 10 hours. The place looks and feels legit enough for our newly acquainted gang to loosen up and have fun, drinking til' night time after a day of swimming, playing soccer with local children and hooking-up with Brazilian hotties. 

The movie, though, makes no attempt to hide the fact shit's about to go down when a barmaid secretly phones a shady doctor after doing a headcount on the foreigners. Morning comes and not only do our gang find out they were drugged unconscious that night, but all of their belongings were also stolen. Now stranded with nothing but the clothes on their backs, they wander into the nearest town hoping to find help, which they eventually did with Kiko, a local man they met a day prior at the beach. 

Kiko agrees to lead them to another man named Zamora who lives up in a jungle-set private house and appears to have enough connections and money to help them out of their predicament. Things only go for worse from this point as halfway into their journey, Kiko injures himself severely, thus leaving the group to hobble him up to Zamora's residence where they find out the man operates an organ harvesting ring, thus he has no intention at all on letting them leave Brazil alive.

Though low-key, the slasher elements in Turistas (2006) are present in the sense that the villains aren't shy on keeping the kill count stabby once in a while and, too, that the film has some pretty decent stalking scenes thrown here and there. It's not very often we get a slasher movie set deep in a dense tropical jungle, so it is refreshing to see this film make a fair attempt incorporating the deadly cat-and-mouse trope the subgenre is well known for with the scenic backdrop of Brazil's sandy beaches and forested wilderness. 

These facts aside, however, the overall feel of the movie leans much closer to a crime thriller laced with a horror aftertaste and medical nightmares; though Turistas (2006) has its brutal and shocking moments (particularly the demise of a Swedish couple and one unfortunate henchmen's bad end with a wooden skewer), is noticeably restrained as it exchanges most of the stomach-churning exploitative horror elements with a bigger emphasis on survivalist ventures, by-the-book vivisections and our leads' escape from their captors, not much unlike our boys back in Hostel (2005)'s fictionalized Bratislava. For what it is, the movie is a passable survival thriller, tight in tension and sparing some moments of realism even if it's still unable to escape a few parts being mediocre and predictable, which hinders the ramifications of the threat as a whole. 

Turistas (2006) would certainly have fared better, too, if it took the time to work out its premise, perhaps flesh out its characters further than the cardboard cut-outs that we have here. As expected for a movie dealing with stereotyped representations, the film is unsurprisingly bashed with controversy around Brazil for how it depicted its citizens as well. The resulting product, by the grace of it all, could have been way worse nonetheless and I would be lying if I say I didn't enjoy Turistas (2006) as a small guilty pleasure. 

Bodycount:

1 male hacked to death with a machete

1 female ran off a cliff, falls to her death

1 male gets a wooden skewer forced into his eye

1 female operated on and disemboweled

1 male stabbed to death with a machete

1 male shot on the head with a rifle

1 male killed offscreen

1 male shot on the neck

1 male repeatedly stabbed on the neck with an arrow

1 male beaten with a rock, shot on the head with a rifle

Total: 10

TV Terror: Another (2012)

Another (Japan, 2012 Animated Series)

Rating: ****
Starring: Natsumi Takamori, Naoko Sakakibara, Atsushi Abe

When it comes to anime and manga, I mostly keep myself grounded within the casual and lighthearted side of the geeky interest, meaning I tend to veer towards light-hearted comedies and/or slice-of-life titles a lot more than story-heavy, multi-season franchises. This is out from the fact that I'm not patient enough to sit through five hundred episodes of a single series, nor do I have the capacity to care about a plot that's as thick as ten Bibles when materialized in print. I simply prefer to take it easy when it comes to my Japanese comics and animation, which is why slice-of-life comedies and gag shorts cater best to my taste.

As a slasher fan, however, I wouldn't pass the opportunity to read a manga or see an anime that borrows heavily, if not entire structured around my favorite horror subgenre just to try it out. This leads me to watching one of the more intriguing horror anime titles I've seen in a long while; a supernatural murder mystery that's one part high school drama and one part Final Destination sequel, simply called Another (2012).

In its single season run of 12 episodes, the series tells the story of one 15-year-old Koichi Sakakibara, the new transfer student of a rural junior-high school who finds himself assigned to a particular classroom that's rumored to be cursed. As soon as he settles in, he's drawn to Mei Misaki, a weird and quiet eyepatch-wearing girl in his class whom both teachers and students seem to ignore as some sort unspoken rule that Koichi, understandably, finds odd. Curiosity eventually takes over the boy and he begins to look into the mystery surrounding the school, which in turn triggers a methodic series of fatal accidents and violent deaths befalling unto not only everyone in the afflicted class, but also their loved ones.

Visually, Another (2012) is a commendable work of animated horror drama that undoubtedly has its gloomy and suffocating feel made with an art direction that greatly focuses on dim lighting, twisty angles and a minimalist approach. The atmosphere these visuals create, in turn, goes heavily well with the show's plot considering how much it prompts an isolated feel drawn from not only the story's rustic small town premise, but also from the matter that there are hardly any other characters outside the class circle. This approach meant that the show's very mystery-centered, doing its best to hint and weave all the necessary red herrings and clues to what is happening to Koichi and Mei's peers and friends, working the concept of the curse first before slowly branching it out to shocking onscreen deaths that interestingly increases in number the further the series goes, and too putting cliffhangers to good use in each episode's end.

It is, however, hard to ignore the series' slow start courtesy of some mishandled opening exposition which made the first two episodes not only feel sluggishly paced, but redundant by the fact that we have to sit through our protagonist discover things we may already know from the start. It does this dance until the near end of the third episode, wherein we get our first kill and it was a spectacular one at that. 

On that note, I fully appreciate the balanced amount of gore, brutality, shock and suspense done for the deaths here in Another (2012); while the bloodletting is generous and carnally striking, I like the fact that the story tackles the subject of grief and loss during the series' slower moments. It gave the characters a lot more depth and it helps make the murders feel more cathartic and tragic even in their manic and occasionally exaggeratedly twisted moments. At most, the deaths featured fits wonderfully within the Final Destination franchise as we get a set of both subtle and not-so-subtle accidents taking out the cursed students one-by one. Highlights among these are the first death involving the wrong end of an umbrella and a terrifyingly claustrophobic end through a malfunctioning elevator. 

Around the last two episodes of the show, the chaotic tension finally breaks and the students go on a frenzied survival mode as they try to murder one another in hopes of ending the curse. It's around here that the show delves into superstition and paranoia, molding it around the supernatural and resulting to bountiful onscreen murders and free-for-all accidents that ends on a somewhat decent twist that's as heartbreaking as it is purgative after all that madness. 

With modest character designs and talented voice actors bringing a sense of groundedness and intrigued flair to their roles, Another (2012) is simply one of the better horror anime entries a curious cat can try and rightfully enjoy. While one may have to work through a number of who’s who of characters involved in the plot (even more once we get around the second half!), it doesn't completely overcomplicate itself much and the mystery is fascinating enough in its twists and turns, dishing even bloody ends at the side to satisfy one's exploitative need for bloodshed. Animated supernatural murder mystery fun with a bodycount, what else could you ask for? 

Bodycount:

1 female lands neck first unto an umbrella's tip (Episode 3)

1 female implied killed in car crash (Episode 4)

1 female mangled in a dropping elevator (Episode 4)

1 male suffers a heart seizure (Episode 5)

1 male suicide, repeatedly gouged his own neck with a knife (Episode 7)

1 female seen murdered, method unknown (Episode 7)

1 male dismembered through boat propeller (Episode 8)

1 male struck by lightning (flashback) (Episode 9)

1 female slipped off a cliff, mangled in fall (flashback) (Episode 9)

2 females and 1 male drove off a cliff after a rock hits their car (Episode 9)

1 male found crushed by a crashed excavator (Episode 9)

1 male impaled through the mouth with a branch (flashback) (Episode 10)

1 male found pinned to a wall with spikes (Episode 11)

1 female slips and snapped her neck (Episode 11)

1 male incinerated by flames (Episode 11)

1 female caught on wires, hanged (Episode 11)

1 female gets a thrown knife to the back (Episode 12)

1 female knifed on the back (Episode 12)

1 male crushed by a falling pillar (Episode 12)

1 female gets a thrown knife to the neck (Episode 12)

1 male brained with a steel rod (Episode 12)

1 female impaled by flying window shards (Episode 12)

1 female killed with a knife (flashback, Death A) (Episode 12)

1 female hacked with a pickaxe (Death B) (Episode 12)

Total: 26

Real Estate Break-In Night: Sweet Home (2015)

Sweet Home (Spain, 2015)

Rating: ***

Starring: Ingrid García Jonsson, Bruno Sevilla, Oriol Tarrida Homedes 

Apparently in Spain, there's a phenomenon wherein the elderly are forcibly removed from their homes by shady real estate with plans of using the space to build apartments. Now whether they use the same methods in real life as the ones seen from this slasher/thriller hybrid is something I cannot conclusively tell, but I sure hope they don't!

Alicia (Ingrid García Jonsson) is a real estate broker who, after inspecting a nearly abandoned building for a company, decided to use it as a secret rendezvous for her English boyfriend Simon's (Bruno Sevilla) birthday later that rainy evening. They eat Japanese food, have sex, Simon gets pissy at Alicia for getting him a birthday gift coz it'll make him feel guilty of not getting her anything back (...wait, what?), unbeknownst to them both that the company eyeing the building has sent goons to finish off the last tenant living there. When Alicia and Simon sees the result of these killer's handiwork and fail to hide themselves away, their night becomes one long cat-and-mouse chase which gets worse once a hulking slasher dubbed El Liquidador gets called-in to help clean up the mess.

A melting pot of home invasion thrills and hack-and-slash slasher spills, Sweet Home (2015) mostly passes as a fast-paced stroll through horror clichés, tainted with bad decisions and brutal bloodlettings. The story is straightforward for what it is, one long hide-and-seek session with stalking and killings, though its direction can get clunky given the number of times our protagonists could have escaped, only to get those chances botched by not only the killers but also by themselves. The action set-pieces and the bloody murders do make up for most of the horror trope-related dumbness though, enough to give blood and gore hounds a bout of satisfaction, especially by the time El Liquidador arrives with an axe and cases of liquid nitrogen at hand. (Jason X (2001), Mindhunters (2004) and now this? Gotta love liquid nitrogen!)

Production-wise, Sweet Home (2015) is simply eye-candy. The film is rich in amazing camera work and the abandoned building setting's just gorgeous, utilizing so many crevices, hidden rooms and tight spots to hide in and be stalked at that works quite well with the tension-building scenes. The talents involved are mostly alright with their acting roles, with Jonsson and Sevilla taking up a good streak of onscreen presence as our doomed couple who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, while the rest do away their best movie bad guy thug and silent axe murderer impressions. (As in talk mean, look mean and act mean)

There's not really a lot more to say about this movie. Sweet Home (2015) is foreign B-flick horror in its purest form, and, yes, the story could have done more to raise itself from being a mediocre run of horror and thriller trappings, but for what it is offering right now, it couldn't have done worse. Way worse. 

Bodycount:

1 elderly female slips in a bath tub

1 elderly male found murdered, cause unknown

1 male topples down a flight of stairs, killed

1 male repeatedly stabbed in the neck with a calligraphy pen

1 male dismembered with an axe

1 male had his head crushed with a thrown elevator motor 

1 male gets a cable tie tightened around his neck, axed on the head

Total: 7

Welcome To The Foundation: Wrong Turn (2021)

Wrong Turn (2021) (AKA "Wrong Turn: The Foundation")
Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley and Bill Sage

Let me just drop this as early as now: this isn't one of the Wrong Turn movies you grew up with all the way back in 2003. 

The scene opens with Scott Shaw asking the sheriff of a small Virginia town about his missing daughter, Jen, who hadn't reached out to her family from her hiking adventure with friends for over six weeks at that point. He's not getting the help he needs, though, as despite the town being the last place his daughter stopped by before seemingly disappearing, they're more willing to sweep it all under the rug and pass the issue as another missing teens case.

Flashback six weeks earlier and we see Jen and company do the usual traveling-teens-to-the-woods gig of bar hopping, getting roughed up by unfriendly locals and ignoring the very important rule of staying on the damn trail. Being the adventurous types, they nevertheless went off into the uncharted woods for better memories that I'm quite sure didn't involve any gigantic rolling log that crushes one of them dead. 

Convinced the rolled log was an attack after apparently spotting some figures skulking around in the woods, the group ventures further in an attempt to escape, only to end up lost, cold and triggering more traps. This is where the slasher bits get played somewhat straight as the teens suspect that they might have fallen victim to what looks like your usual backwoods masked slashers, enraging one of the kids into braining a masked figure with a log until their head's mush as "self-defense". This gravely leads to them getting followed by more of these animal skull-wearing fellas soon, now stalking and prowling around the forest to catch and not kill them. Yet. 

By then, the teen slasher element stops and the survivalist backwoods thriller begins; in a daring curveball, the now captured teens are walked into a hidden community deep in the Appalachian mountains simply dubbed as The Foundation, where every member lives a life as close as possible to early day settlers. Our hapless gang are soon judged in their court for, ironically, murder when it turns out the masked figure they pulped headless was actually trying to help them. The guilty one gets the same log-to-the-face treatment, while the rest were to be sentenced to "darkness", which is modern day settler folk lingo for shutting-your-eyes-close-with-hot-iron-before-being-hurled-into-a-spooky-dark-cave.

Jen, thinking on her feet, fortunately convinces the court to spare her and her boyfriend Darius' lives by allowing themselves to become one with the community, which pleases the Foundation's leader Cullen as he sets his eyes on making Jen his new wife.

Now that we all have caught up to what went down, back to the present we go and Papa Shaw finally have someone around the nearby town agreeing to help him get his daughter back, but will he survive his own rescue mission when the woods are filled with traps, all under the watchful eye of The Foundation?

As you can tell from all of this, gone are the mutant cannibals and in goes a survivalist mini-epic, straying this film far from being another trashy entry to a slasher franchise that went a tad too far on the gore and thinning plot line the more sequels it pumped. Much like the case of House of Wax (2005), Black Christmas (2006) and Child's Play (2019), Wrong Turn (2021) can be a worthwhile watch when viewed as its own kind of beast and for what it dished out, I say it done its job good enough through its own set of charms.

I do like the unexpected twists of our supposed villains being no more than just people defending their way of life, despite how hostile and barbaric they can be through a different set of perspectives. The matter that there's a bit of power play within the community and that some of its members still shows a side of malice do keep the Foundation as much of an intimidating force as possible nevertheless, which I find greatly essential to make its last third act to work and its final scenes satisfying to sit through. Despite not having the same brand of B-grade splashy gore and violence the Wrong Turn franchise became infamous for through its sequels, this film instead handles its gory in a more essential sense, keeping the brutalizing acts in minimum but knows enough timing to showcase some impressively nasty-looking aftermath corpses for that shock factor and dread building.

Acting-wise, Charlotte Vega, Matthew Modine and David Hutchison are simply amazing in their roles as Jen, Scott and Cullen respectively, though this is more due to them carrying a good bulk of the film while the rest of the casts are either watered down to your usual one-dimensional slasher meat, or background fodder. Its bulky running time also could have been used to develop some ideas thrown un here a tad further, such as one of the teen's sudden siding to the Foundation or how exactly does this settlement work. (I mean, here you have these people wearing animal pelts and skulls to hunt the woods like old age natives, but they apparently also know how to dress up like normal people and drive RVs. Did I miss something?)  

There's definitely some money thrown in here given the more competent-looking sets and quality work, and I'm very glad the resulting product is an appeasing work of backwoods thrills and spills that I think deserves credit where credit's due. Wrong Turn (2021) may not be the forest-bound cannibal slasher world many of us were expecting or are used to, but its a welcome variant that delivers its own brand of terror and atmosphere that works nonetheless. I say take it for a ride, or take a hike.

A hike down... to The Foundation!

Bodycount:

1 male crushed against a tree by a rolled log

1 male had his head pulped with a log

1 female falls into a spiked pit, shot with an arrow

1 male had his face beaten in with a log

2 males crushed by a spiked trap

1 male shot

1 male shot

1 male knifed to death

1 female shot on the head

1 male shot dead with arrows

1 male gets a thrown knife to the head

1 male gets a thrown axe to the back

1 male and 1 female killed offcamera

1 male knifed to death

1 male knifed to death

Total: 17

Survival and The Price Men Pay For It: Rituals (1977)

Rituals (Canada, 1977) (AKA "The Creeper")

Rating: ****

Starring: Hal Holbrook, Lawrence Dane, Robin Gammell

While some backwoods slashers tend to set themselves within campgrounds or lakeside vacation homes, a faction of them do brace the very woods itself and have their casts face on not only a psychopathic figure out for blood, but also the unforgiving savagery of steep terrains, rapid waters and forests veiling its threats in shadows at nightfall.

Rituals (1997) is among the early examples of these backwoods "survival slashers", taking very strong cues from the 1972 drama Deliverance as we follow five doctors on their yearly outdoor trip, escaping the busy and stressful city life. It's clear in their banters that they've been friends for a very long while now, their little jabs at each other's professions, ethics and personal life hinted with much good terms and sly warmth that only a good tempered bond can forge, thus this little stroll down to some place called the "Cauldron of The Moon" should have been nothing more than just another hiking and camping trip for these men.

However, in the morning after, they see their first hint that something's amiss when all but one pair of their boots suddenly go missing and, later that evening, someone erected a macabre idol made out of a freshly decapitated deer head on a stake nearby their camp. Assuming these being the work of a prowler (or prowlers) who decided to terrorize them, the men choose hike out while they still can with nothing but rags wrapping their feet, while one of them with the only pair of boots volunteers to venture to a dam he spots in the map to find help. It is then that they become aware of the severity of their predicament when, during a wasp attack from a hurled hive, someone throws one of them to their death, a cold murder that's bound to happen to the rest of them should they stay in the woods any longer...

From here, Rituals (1977) shows how strong its as a survivalist thriller and I will admit with no hesitation, it is verily effective; the further our men go through nature's harshness of heavy rain, crashing waterfalls and sun-scorched trails, the more we see their necessities get taken away and they slowly lose grip on being civil as they start throwing blame around or open old wounds to pick fights, getting reduced into angry babbling messes simply struggling to survive. This direction works so well with the casts' stellar delivery of the movie's superb scripting, bearing little to no ham even if the plot progresses out of its near-realistic wilderness terrors and stalk into straight-up fantastical horror. The film's handful of striking imagery somehow works itself within the plot's theme of losing control and the unpredictable cruelty of nature, swinging in a right amount of dread and suspense upon both its characters and the audience as we path through and observe an environment that is as unforgiving and dangerous as the human threat teased throughout the movie, a strong staple of survivalist horror done right.

As a slasher in turn, Rituals (1977) may not follow the classic bodycounter rulings given its greater focus on psychological strain and devolution, it does still tackle enough from the sub-genre to be a solid early outing for the backwoods hack 'n slash-type; we do have a body count with a decently fair number, albeit it's brought upon from a more wider variety of causes not limited to the movie's eerily obscured maniac. In fact, the killer's never really completely present on screen until the hour mark where we finally catch a glimpse or two, or see things through their eyes in your typical point-of-view shot. They got through a couple of kills, yes, but they're mostly an observer, biding their time to commit their next kill or let Mother Nature take out these men for them. The motive behind their killings can be a bit loose though, silly even for how both unrelated and specific it is, but I see it as a minor gripe considering how well the rest of the movie works itself around it, especially if it all leads to a harrowingly intense climax, a hauntingly silent reveal to what's behind these deaths and misfortunes, and one last shot that's serene and cathartic at the same time.

An excellent Canuck proto-slasher, this is one title that earned its cult fave status. I strongly recommend any true horror fans to try this out and consider giving this movie a spot for their collection as a minor classic and a hidden gem. A guaranteed genre pleaser!

Bodycount:

1 male thrown down a cliff

1 male strangled to death

1 male had a leg caught on a rusted bear trap, suffers through toxic shock

1 male hacked on the chest with an axe, bled to death

1 male set ablaze

1 male shot with a shotgun

Total: 6

The Paris Neo-Nazi Massacre: Frontier(s) (2007)

Frontier(s) (France, 2007) (AKA "Frontière(s)")

Rating: ****

Starring: Karina Testa, Aurélien Wiik, Patrick Ligardes 

In the midst of one of France's presidential elections wherein a far-right candidate gets considered for position, a street gang of French-Arab youths takes advantage of the resulting riots to pull a robbery, scoring some cash they needed to escape Paris. The plan, however, ends up with them splitting for a bit after engaging the police in a gun fight, with one group consisting of Yasmine and her ex, Alex, looking for a hospital to treat Yasmine's severely wounded brother Sami, while the other two, friends Tom and Farid, drive to the countryside to look for a hideout where the rest can catch up.

Their predicament worsens when Sami dies moments after getting past hospital doors, forcing Yasmine to leave her him behind as security's made aware of their possible involvement with the riots. All the while, Tom and Farid decided to stop by a family-run inn near the border for a small break, only to somehow anger the clan when the innkeepers felt disrespected by the boys after a fairly disturbing dinner.

From that point, it all escalates to torturous and deadly turns as not only is the family revealed to be deranged and hinted to be cannibalistic, but they're also living remnants of the Third Reich, Neo-Nazis desperate to keep the bloodline of their "supreme race" alive. As the youngsters fall victim to their murderous madness one by one, Yasmine alone will find herself in a situation much worse than death and she will have no choice but to fight back or die trying.

Heavily borrowing elements from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and mixing it up with the violent taste of the New French Extremity movement, Xavier Gens' Frontier(s) is a bleak stroll down classic Hicksploitation horror that starts and ends in pure chaos. It's nothing relatively complex plot-wise as we follow yet another group of troubled friends ending up in unfamiliar grounds at a "middle-of-nowhere" countryside, to be horribly tortured and killed by what first looks like an angry family of rural folks, but the driving force that makes this movie a bit more extra is its unexpectedly wild turns tackling other exploitation tropes, leading to Grindhouse-gritty Nazisploitation, claustrophobic monster horror with secret tunnels being prowled by animalistic mutant children and Hostel-level of nihilistic torture and gore that get more grueling the further we go. 

It's a mixed bag of horror trappings that works well enough, though the multitudes of terrible on-goings definitely needs a tad more expanding around the conventions it introduced rather than mildly hinting it, such as the animosity and favoritism between the "family" members of the Neo-Nazi clan that broods a good deal of tension throughout the movie. There's also the matter that Frontier(s) wallows in its own bleakness a lot more than it needed to at times, which may turn off some viewers who isn't in it for complete doom and gloom as the film's flow pushes the ante of despair and torment to levels that bear little to no light to balance it out .

Then again, from what it offers, the film is made purely for exploitation fun and enjoyment, delivering on that front in full force with its sleek and grungy look, working on grainy-tint lenses, cinematography that's focused on everything in decay from buildings to flesh, and a breezy fast pace to keep the carnage going as much as possible. On that note, the gore scenes -the very highlight of this movie- are brutal in the rawest definition of the word, especially towards the finale in which Frontier(s) pulls a "reverse-slasher" on us. From Achilles heels crushed and cut with long pliers to a bisection by table saw, it's all a gorehound's treat for the amount of practical effects and fake blood used for these kills, with little to no CG assist done to keep it as old school as traditional filming and visual effects can get.

The cookie-cutter characters are played with good enough talent to bring them to life on screen, but their lack of depth may mean difficulty to empathize with them throughout their ordeal save, perhaps, Yasmine; leading actress Karina Testa done a fantastic job in her role as our definite final girl, a vulnerable protagonist at first, soon forced to fight back and feel the wrath of the clan after her character's subjected to watch her friends and former lover die. Her struggles to keep alive and escape in the later act infuses raw emotion and terror so perfectly, one might find themselves holding their breath back until the last shot of the film for how intense it all got.

Frontier(s) may be lacking a developed story or more fleshed out characters from both ends of the coin, it does have a story that sticks with you for a good while after all that manic cluster of blood, guts and torture. If you're looking for a carnal French horror flick that offers the basic exploits of people being tortured and slaughtered in all manners possible then try this for your liking. It could be your hidden gem!

Bodycount:

1 male dies from gunshot wound

1 male brained, throat cut with a knife

1 male cooked inside a sauna, shot with a shotgun

1 male shot on the head

1 elderly male shot with a shotgun

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 male repeatedly hacked with an axe, eviscerated in half with a buzzsaw

1 male had his head blown in half with a shotgun

1 female caught on a gas explosion, seen dying from a shrapnel to the neck

1 female had her neck bitten open, bled to death

Total: 10