Life And Times of A Middle School Avenger: Liverleaf (2018)

Liverleaf (Misumisô) (Japan, 2018)
Rating: ***
Starring:  Anna Yamada, Hiroya Shimizu, Rinka Ôtani

I came for the gore, I left with a teen psycho-drama. But hey, at least it came with a gory bodycount!

Haruka Nozaki (Anna Yamada) is a transfer student who somehow found herself trapped in a cycle of bullying perpetrated by a notorious gang of delinquents and egoistic posh girls. Some of them justifies this as payback for stealing a boy from one of their friends, others are just in it for the sadistic enjoyment. Regardless, it all escalated to dire proportions one day as Haruka's home catches fire, burning her parents dead and leaving her sister in critical condition. Traumatized and emotionally drained despite the efforts of a few kind souls, including fellow transfer student Mitsuru Aiba (Hiroya Shimizu) as well as her grandfather who takes her in, Haruka can only think of one thing to make things even: murderous revenge.

Clocking for almost two hours, Liverleaf (2018) was adapted from a 20 chapter manga of the same title (Of sorts. Alternative titles apparently include Hepatica) by Oshikiri Rensuke and the movie is best described as first half slasher and second half psychological horror drama. While the comic has a narrative that jumps back and forth via flashbacks to flesh out its characters and the situation they're in, the movie squeezes the narrative into a single direction of varying pacing in which we get to spend some time first focusing on the kind of abuse our protagonist and her parents are going through, cementing the kind of wretched monsters the bullies are on their own. This pretty much sets the slasher film-style bodycounting part of the plot and, in all honestly, its as glorious as it can be with all of the bloodletting, gore and grimly satisfying comeuppances the victims have to suffer through.

The moment the "disposable" victims got taken care off is when Liverleaf (2018) slows down into an entirely different creature; now centering itself around Haruka, Aiba, the bullies' ringleader Taeko Oguro (Rinka Ôtani) and a very disturbed secondary bullying victim Rumi Sayama (Rena Ôtsuka), the film twists its course by revealing more fleshed out motives behind the attacks which, in turn, developed the remaining four main casts in ways one may not have expected. New monsters get created. Supposed antagonists turn to a new leaf. I truly have no qualms over this but some of these curveballs felt unnecessary for their randomness and/or how little they work with the story. Yes, I am aware that this is how the comic went down and I know some of these "surprise villains" claim they ended up that way because of their own instances of abuse, which is in par with the anti-bullying message of the story, but seeing how little were given to build and earn this turn of events despite all of that running time made a bulk of these twists feeling rather cheap, desperate and borderline cheesy.

Production-wise, Liverleaf (2018) is, nevertheless, still strikingly gorgeous despite the violence and depressing undertones as its cinematography worked a lot on contrasting its white winter backdrops with the red splash of practical red corn syrup and CG-assisted splatters, elevating the intensity of the killings and stalking one can already get from a snowed barren wasteland of a small town that's slowly wallowing in its own filth, figuratively and literally. And with some of its camera-work acting as a secondary blade to play around with the violence of the film, I can't help but feel amused by the stylish implications done to this movie's killings.

The music also played its part on enforcing quite a fitting score that changes from subtle tones to that of evoking feelings of mayhem and liberation, if not both. Acting is no short of being okay from all of the talents involved, too, but I could have given it a more passing hand if only the movie found a way to properly build some of these characters to be more than one-note pathetic bullies deserving to be cut up with a knife in a slasher flick.

Gory and Moody, Liverleaf (2018) may not work all the way, but it has a considerable weight as a fantasized revenge drama drenched in blood and guts. So if you're in the mood to watch some old fashioned bully hunting with some attempt of character building in a manner of a late afternoon TV soap, best to give this a shot!

Bodycount:
1 male and 1 female burned to death in a house fire
1 female gets a nail to an eye, beaten to death with a pipe
1 female had a heel cut, trips and lands head first to a debris
1 female beaten to death with a pipe
1 male stabbed and cut with a knife, broke his legs on a fall and left for dead
1 male shot through the head with a crossbow, stomped on the face
1 male eviscerated with a knife, neck stabbed
1 elderly female dies from stab wounds
1 female shredded through a snow macerator
1 female beaten, stabbed on the throat with a branch
1 male shot on the eye with a crossbow
1 female bled to death from a stabbed gut
Total: 13

Note: Left out some possible survivors as no confirmation whether they passed away or not were given.

Drug-Laced Alien Massacre: Welcome to Willits (2016)

Welcome to Willits (2016)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Bill Sage, Chris Zylka, Anastasia Baranova

Alien invasion? Drug use? Backwoods bodycounting? Yep, we're definitely gonna need some buttered popcorn for this one, boys and girls.

Down in the woods of Willits, California, local pot farmer Ash Williams (Not to be confused with Ashley J. He Who Hath Fallen From The Sky To Deliver Us From The Terrors of The Deadites Williams) is convinced that monstrous space men once infiltrated his brain after he cooked up some really good shit in his drug lab some time ago. With this nightmarish memory haunting him since, the farmer has grown paranoid that the aliens will soon come back to finish him for good and, with visions of horrifying intergalactic menaces getting more and more frequent, he thinks said return is happening this one night when he spots a snarling alien prowling in the woods.

Not wanting to go down without a fight, Ash tags along his fellow chemical-head wife Peggy to kill off the nasty invaders with nothing but their determination to commit alien genocide and shells full of buckshots, coincidentally lowering down the number of teenagers from a nearby camping group of six much to the horror of Ash's visiting niece. I wonder why..,?

With the twist coming in pretty darn early and will become the butt of the dark joke this movie revels in, the film could have gotten the standardized "another backwoods slasher" treatment real quick and easy without it as the "scifright" element is that entertaining for its worth. The slasher elements, in turn, still follows a decent killer-in-the-woods-type horror tropes of stereotyped characters and plotting pitfalls of finding reasons to split-up or the classic sex-means-death allusion, but handled with the kind of wry direction, dry comic performance and somewhat twisted cynical sense of humor that works well on a thin-storied B-grade slasher.

Much of the narrative's groundwork focuses on our William character's slow descent to homicidal madness as he continues to believe that aliens are starting to surround his home and his urge to fight back increases the longer he dwells on this delusion. It is a fascinating watch thanks to actor Bill Sage's nutty performance as our main pothead, managing to straddle between the line of being funny and horrifying impressively. For one end, you'll be laughing at his obscure and out-of-this-world ramblings (pun intended) for how silly and over-the-top it is, but the moment he's starting to turn on against his own family, he and the film's direction is quick to grab the severity of the situation and push the flow to a more genuine yet familiar horror-fueled run.

Gore effects used here are pretty diverse considering the kind of plot Willits is running, which meant we do get to see both human and alien dismemberment done in that sweet, gooey, latex and corn syrup work. Some of the kills do lean forward to a more "off-camera" approach which may disappoint gorehounds, but the resulting corpse effects do make up for it, may it be a rotting monster carcass or stoners with their heads cut or blown off. The movie's lighting also helps in a way that it varies to suit and enhance a scene's creepy-yet-absurd feel, ranging from psychedelic vomit of colors to wallow us in a character's drug-induced hallucination, to shadowy backdrops to hide away creepy alien creatures standing cautiously behind the woods.

If there will be any real drawbacks, I would say that some scenes do show the budgetary constrains Willits suffers from time to time, and the flow can get pretty janky with its tendencies to jump back and forth from weed-induced fantasy to weed-embraced reality, particularly around scenes that involves an in-universe cop show called Fists of Justice that just doesn't work out for me. (I mean, there's cheesy. And then there's "cheesy". Fists lands face first on the latter...) Still, the positives are funny and gory enough for me to overlook these little shortcomings, so they're barely a flaw that ruin the film. (Plus, there's an adorable possum in a vest. You can't go wrong with that!)

At the end of it, Welcome to Willits (2016)'s mix of stoner comedy, scifi monster horror and backwoods slasher is best enjoyed for its oddly delightful writing, eccentric acting and a fitting self-aware meth-based humor. If you're looking for a uniquely simplistic horror comedy that packs some spacey laughs, this is a likely candidate for your movie night!

Bodycount:
1 male shot on the head with a shotgun
1 male hacked on the head with a hatchet, decapitated
1 female shot on the back with a shotgun
1 male shot with a shotgun
1 female shot on the head
1 female had her head stomped
1 male decapitated with a tree splitter
Total: 7

A Slow Burn to Madness: Freak (1999)

Freak (1999) (AKA "The Last Roadstop")
Rating: **
Starring: Amy Paliganoff, Travis Patton, Andrea Johnson

With a simple title like Freak (1999), you would expect a uniquely intriguing slasher from the late 90s and, in a way that's akin to a double-edged blade, this certainly is one.

Nine years ago, a young disfigured boy living in the dilapidated remains of his home finally snaps when his abusive pregnant mother gives birth and tosses her newborn into a dumpster fire. After rescuing the baby, the boy ends his mother with a rock and soon gets transported to a mental asylum while his sibling gets adopted.

Present day, aspiring artist Staci is moving with her younger sister Jodi to a new house after their parents' death when, at the exact same time, our disfigured killer finds himself being transferred to a new hospital for treatment and gets an opportunity to escape when the van transport's left unattended by its driver. Now free to roam and kill, the bandaged-up maniac eventually crosses paths with the sisters, stalking and closing in on them with plans on kidnapping Jodi for a very macabre reason.

John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) undoubtedly inspired a butt-load of slashers ever since it came out and even to this day, its influence can still be seen in modern slashers with varying success, plenty of which having a heighten up kill count, gore and exploitation. Freak (1999), on the other hand, sought to replicate and build itself around the atmospheric slow burn of the John Carpenter classic and I can certainly tell they tried.

Working around the minuscule budget, Freak (1999) focuses on creating a steady, near-realistic direction and mundane yet unsettling visual elements consisting mostly of moldering houses and long deserted back-roads. Character development, in turn, has quite the spotlight on this movie's plotting as we learn enough about our two sister protagonists to eventually care about them to some extent. Because of this, most of the horror elements get set aside as there's nothing that graphic going on in this slasher in terms of kills with its lack of high numbers and only half of the count bearing strong blood work. Any scares brought up and used are also near absent, but thankfully it work its way back to the movie's climax as Staci is forced to journey into the decaying house wherein all of this horror began to save her sister from our simplistic yet creepy-looking monster.

Strong drawbacks from this movie include long lulling moments where almost nothing significant happen, as well as a shortage other characters either we or our cast could have interacted with which would have made the road trip part of the movie that more interesting. And yet, despite this, there is a unique charm to be found in Freak (1999) as it did courageously attempt something different from your classic bodycounter. Whether you see this as a hidden slowburn gem, or a distressingly limp attempt of a psychological horror, there is no denying this is quite a unique slasher that earns at least a single viewing.

Bodycount:
1 female brained to death with a rock
1 female attacked, killed offscreen
1 male seen killed, method unknown
1 male hacked on the head with a hatchet, bled to death
Total: 4

When Trailer Park Girls Cry: Far From Home (1989)

Far From Home (1989)
Rating; ***
Starring: Matt Frewer, Drew Barrymore, Richard Masur

Starring a tweenage Drew Barrymore as Joleen Cox, Far From Home (1989) follows her and her character's divorced father Charlie driving cross country throughout almost an entire Summer for a journalism job, until their gas tank runs low enroute back to their Los Angeles home. They eventually end up wandering around a nearby Nevada town of Banco where they have to stay at for a bit as its only gas station's dried out and the next fuel source around is at least another drive away.

Renting out a trailer from guest ranch owner Agnes, Joleen, desperate for some romance and excitement, gets smitten by Agnes’ mysterious teenage son Jimmy, who may or may not be all that safe to be around with considering he's a bit of a bullying creeper with voyeuristic tendencies and a rapey-side. And with the town's suddenly outbreak of suspicious deaths picking off residents one by one, Joleen fears she might be flirting with the top suspect of these murders and that she might be next on the hit list.

Mildly entertaining at its best, Far From Home is, without a doubt, targeted to tweens with its depictions of a youthful struggle to gain an adult perspective on life, managing control on said perspective, as well as one's brooding interest for the opposite sex. It does this alternatively between being laughably cheesy and borderline exploitative at some (nothing too explicit, though the leering shots of a two-piece clad Barrymore feels rather unnecessary), showing off the dangers that would come from an unready mindset and how some innocent acts can have troubling drawbacks. All of this through an otherwise predictable murder mystery with shared slasher elements.

Considering the small number of casts and momentous amount of horror and thriller clichés played, it wasn't that hard to figure out the identities of both the killer and red herrings. In a way, the direction and pace of the movie makes a lot of sense, but the lack of surprises and creative curves just dull the impact of the plot. Add the matter that the kills aren't particularly graphic (but it does have its small share of ingenuity at times), Home could have been a lot more stale and forgettable if it wasn't for the cast; Barrymore and Matt Frewer make a cogent father-daughter pair, even if majority of the focus was around Barrymore's moody Joleen transitioning between adolescence and adulthood. Richard Masur has a fun surrogate uncle feel for his role as Duckett, a Vietnam veteran living with a mantra that help shouldn't come at a price, while Jennifer Tilly and Karen Austin as Amy and Louise respectively were sweet in their enjoyable supporting roles as two women also stranded in the town, ready to befriend the father-daughter pair.

There's also a great deal of atmosphere present as the desert's sense of isolation from urban civilization makes everything a serious debacle, may it be finding gasoline or hiding from a knife-wielding killer during sandstorms. The climax itself utilizes this predicament greatly with its cat-and-mouse final act, a small reward for sitting through what is technically a young adult mystery novel turned feature length viewing.

 Easy on the mind while passing around creepy vibes and interesting characters, Far From Home (1989) doesn't offer much in weight as a teen thriller with a bodycount but, for what it is, it's a watchable effort that tries to be potential game changer for one of its decade's well-loved child stars. See for the cheap thrills and ham and you'll do just fine.

Bodycount:
1 male found shot on the head
1 female electrocuted in a tub with a tossed electric fan
1 female caught inside a burning car
1 female found dead, body preserved in ice
1 male had his throat cut with a hunting knife
1 male shot, falls and lands on a satellite dish
Total: 6

Well, I'm 28 Years old now.

Two more years and I guess my real life starts? Welp, if that's the case, then I better binge all the cheese and B-Horror while I still can!

Hehe, yeah. Happy Birthday to me~

Evil Eye On The Fly: The Drone (2019)

The Drone (2019)
Rating: **1/2
Starring:  Sam Adegoke, Edgar Blackmon, Anita Briem

Tell me if you heard of this already: a serial killer gets hunted down by police, recites an incantation and ends up having their soul transferred to a toy. If you didn't say Child's Play (1987) then I question your validity as a horror fan as well as a visitor to this small slice of the web. Seriously, were you've been living under a rock with nothing but dung slugs for food and occasional company for those long lonely nights?

So, yeah, The Drone (2019) is another "haunted object" horror movie where unsuspecting people gets terrorized by unsuspecting everyday trinkets that's somehow resided by an unsuspecting paranormal evil. In this case, it is the soul of a voyeuristic serial killer known as The Violator who gets struck dead by a random lightning after reciting some presumably cursed binary codes as the SWAT corners him.

After making a quick kill out of one of the detectives, the now-possessed drone flies its way to newlyweds Chris and Rachel, played respectively by John Brotherton and Alex Essoe, and disguises itself as garbage dumped on top of the couple's trash bin. Chris sees the drone and quickly salvages it much to his delight, but Rachel isn't too keen on keeping a remote controlled cam-copter as toys that come with wireless joysticks trigger traumatic flashbacks involving a vehicular manslaughter caused by her RC car. Nevertheless, she soldiers on, hoping to keep the peace.

And as you would expect, nothing that savage for a good while; Chris goes working as a porn photographer while Rachel enjoys some "me time", blissfully unaware that their new toy's hovering around their house and neighborhood leering up women, recording private moments and setting up one of them as a voyeur. After finding their dog hanged by its leash and a hot neighbor killed by what appears to be tiny propeller blades, the two start piecing together a possibility that the recent mishaps and misfortunes are linked to their new drone, soon to be somehow proven when the gadget starts attacking them and, too, those that are in the way.

Presenting itself as a trying techno-thriller with a creative slasher curve, The Drone pretty much trails down your typical haunted object plot, with one character slowly realizing that something may not be quite right with a cursed object only for the rest of the cast refusing to acknowledge the claim until warm flesh hits the tiny fans. Seeing the focus here was more on building the absurd situation, the pacing is relatively slow and steady at first, but this is thankfully remedied by the film's expressively eccentric and fun casts, and too some odd-duck scenes including laughably cheesy horror tributes (I see one for The Exorcist III (1990) and ALIEN³ (1992)) and the drone getting very advanced upgrades to get its kill-zone on.

The third act is when most of the bloodier drone kills rear their cheap and ugly head out but, for what it is, they're in par with the B-grade style of plotting and direction this movie is going for and I would say I'm pleased at some point. The climax also pays off kindly for any slow starts and hammy misgiving, rewarding our patience with a dumb yet enjoyable final fight with the drone which, by then, ditched the silent stalker act for a more wise-cracking persona that had me chuckling for its worth, especially when it starts to act and feel like a genuine slasher villain.

Silly? Yes, and I'm not gonna deny its strongly feisty fromage neither. The Drone (2019) is the type of movie made for someone who can find simple joy out of the strangest things. Granted, the idea of a possessed toy isn't all that original seeing this movie even resorted to borrowing elements from other better titles out there which you could have been watching instead of this, but it has the exuberance to power through the cliched story and its strange choice of villain with all of the gusto it can muster and that is something I learn to admire from this little timewaster. It's not for everyone, but if you love something so bad it's good, give this freak a spin!

Bodycount:
1 female had her neck slashed offcamera
1 male had his throat slashed with a knife
1 male struck by supernatural lightning
1 male killed in car crash
1 male, 1 female and 1 boy killed in car crash (flashback)
1 dog hanged by its leash through a fence
1 female slashed to death offcamera with drone propellers
1 male slashed to death through the arse with drone propellers
1 male gets a powerdrill to the gut, brained against the table edge
2 males decapitated with drone propellers
1 male pushed and falls through a window, impaled on a pole
Total: 14

2020?

Welp, Happy New Year, Boils and ghouls!

Here's wishing you all a good day, a good night, a hopeful start for a new year once the sun comes up!

And wishing me enough patience to see both Godzilla vs Kong and Halloween Kills...