Tag Archives: horror

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Daddy’s Little Girl

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Bloody Axe Wound

by Hope Madden

New to Shudder this week is Matthew John Lawrence’s (Peckerhead) charming dismantling of the slasher genre and insightful look at the impact of adolescence on the generations.

Bloody Axe Wound stars a spunky Sari Arambulo as Abbie Bladecut. Her family video store lives and dies on the movies they package and rent, slashers starring her dad, the infamous serial killer Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke under heavy prosthetics), slashing his way through their hometown’s high school students and campers alike.

But ol’ Roger’s getting old. Well, technically he died as a boy at that campground, but for decades he’s been a grown man haunting Lover’s Lane and other tropey spots, coming back from the dead whenever the adventure takes that turn. But lately, well, he doesn’t seem to be healing as quickly. He’s lost a step or two.

Perfect! Because Abbie’s ready to step in. Dad reluctantly, tentatively agrees, sending her to the town high school to make minced meat of the chosen clique. But Abbie soon realizes that these kids are not so bad.

The film delivers some honest moments, however comedically staged, about watching your child outgrow you, lose their need for you, see what used to be honored tradition as old fashioned nonsense in need of change. Bloody Axe Wound is sharpest when Lawrence and his game ensemble use the coming-of-age storyline to make points about horror movies, and slashers in particular.

Burke and Arambulo share a delightfully begrudging chemistry, and their scenes at home and at the video store are populated with genre-loving easter eggs that suit the meta undertaking.

Likewise, the cast of high school misfits—Molly Brown, Margot Anderson-Song, Taylor Watson Seupel and Eddie Leavy—create a warm friend group you can see wanting to hang out with.

The kills (and near kills) are often clever and the characterizations are funny. The film’s mythology gets mushy and the story comes to a close with more of a nod to horror tropes than an acknowledgment of the internal conflicts and genuine emotion the story built, but it’s still fun.

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Grow Old Along With Me

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The Rule of Jenny Pen

by Hope Madden

In 2021, Kiwi filmmaker James Ashcroft made his feature debut with the lean and unforgiving thriller Coming Home in the Dark. While his follow up discards the taut terror of a road picture in favor of lunacy and a hand puppet, The Rule of Jenny Pen mines similar tensions. Vulnerability, institutional ignorance, helplessness, bullying—Jenny Pen comes at it from a different angle, but the damage done bears a tragic resemblance.

The great Geoffrey Rush is Judge Stefan Mortensen, a self-righteous ass who finds himself institutionalized after a stroke. But as soon as he’s better, he’ll be out of there. In the meantime, he will berate and belittle staff and patients alike—even his kind roommate, Sonny (Nathaniel Lees).

But Dave Creely (John Lithgow, never creepier) doesn’t think the judge is going anywhere. He doesn’t think he’s such a much, if you want to know the truth, and he looks forward to pressing every vulnerability the judge has, terrorizing him until he breaks him. Just as Dave has broken every other patient at the home—with the help of his bald little hand puppet, Jenny Pen.

Back in the Sixties, hagsploitation (or psycho-biddie films) featured middle aged women with likely mental health concerns that led to various kinds of horror: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; Strait-Jacket. The women’s age was what made them suspect, the films reveling in the grotesquerie of their images.

Lately, though, filmmakers are realizing that the more powerful horror mines our own fears by empathizing with the aged characters, forcing us to see through their eyes. Relic, Bingo Hell, The Taking of Deborah Logan, The Demon Disorder and Bubba Ho-Tep all focus on the inevitable and terrifying vulnerabilities of aging.

The Rule of Jenny Pen fits neatly into this real estate. Ashcroft’s direction situates the sadistic within the well-meaning. Hospital staff, visiting musicians, family members—all genuinely hope to make the world better for these patients. But this is a world Dave knows well, and he exploits every opportunity to wield his and Jenny’s sadistic power.

Lithgow’s a maniac, making the most of his substantial physical presence among the fragile patients and delivering the most unseemly moments with relish. And Rush is his absolute equal. The veteran broadcasts pomposity with rigid authenticity that only lends power to the judge’s most helpless moments.

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No Crumbs Left

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Do Not Disturb

by Daniel Baldwin

It’s a tale as old as time. Sweethearts get married to fix their very rocky relationship and – surprise, surprise – it makes things worse! Chloe and Jack are longtime lovers turned newlyweds taking a honeymoon trip to Miami, hoping that it might bring them closer together. When a chance encounter with a strange drug mule leaves them with a stash of designer drugs, they hope that tripping together might help them achieve that.

Spoiler alert: Things get even worse!

Sometimes couples want to tear each other apart. And other times, they want to – as the kids today say – “eat each other up, no crumbs left.” But in the case of Chloe and Jack, it’s both! You see, while the cocaine-by-way-of-peyote high that they’re on might initially make them more open to physical and emotional intimacy, their moments of sobriety between trips drive them further apart. The solution? Do more drugs. Problem there is that in addition to a trippy high, the substance has this bad habit of making one crave human flesh.

Cannibalism CAN be an interesting metaphorical delivery system for a romance. After all, when we’re in love, we want to be a part of one another as much as possible. What is more a part of you than what is inside you? Throw in cannibalism as an additional flavoring and you’ve taken the allegory to its most extreme conclusion. This is illustrated nowhere better than in Luca Guadagnino’s masterful road trip cannibal romcom, Bones and All.

While John Ainslie’s Do Not Disturb does not reach those same heights, there’s a lot to like here. Kimberly Laferriere and Rogan Christopher turn in good work as Chloe and Jack, although they’re more at home during the drug trips and horror elements than they are during the grounded dramatic beats. This is largely the fault of the writing not quite being up to snuff in those sequences, but the highs of the more genre-oriented fare go a long way toward balancing that out.

Do Not Disturb is slow to start, but once it gets going, it earns that build up and is at its best when it’s freaking out, man. If you’re a fan of the aforementioned Bones and All or even the psychedelic ferocity of Joe Begos’ Bliss, you’re bound to find something to like here. Just be sure not to snack on your loved ones while you watch it!

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Smells Fishy

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The Lure

by Hope Madden

Who’s up for Polish vampire mermaids?

You do not have to ask me twice!

Gold (Michalina Olszanska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) are not your typical movie mermaids, and director Agnieszka Smoczynska’s feature debut The Lure is not your typical – well, anything.

The musical fable offers a vivid mix of fairy tale, socio-political commentary, whimsy and throat tearing. But it’s not as bizarre a combination as you might think.

The Little Mermaid is actually a heartbreaking story. Not Disney’s crustacean song-stravaganza, but Hans Christian Andersen’s bleak meditation on the catastrophic consequences of sacrificing who you are for someone undeserving. It’s a cautionary tale for young girls, really, and Lure writer Robert Bolesto remains true to that theme.

The biggest differences between Bolesto’s story and Andersen’s: 80s synth pop, striptease and teeth. At its heart, The Lure is a story about Poland – its self-determination and identity in the Eighties. That’s where Andersen’s work is so poignantly fitting.

Not that you’ll spend too much time in the history books. The context serves the purpose of grounding the wildly imaginative mix of seediness, hope and danger on display.

The film opens with a trio of musicians enjoying themselves on a Warsaw waterfront before hearing a siren song. Cut to screaming, and then to a deeply bizarre nightclub where a kind of Eastern European burlesque show welcomes its two newest performers – mermaids.

From there we explore a changing Warsaw from the perspective of a very fringe family. Mystical creatures play nice – and sometimes not-so-nice – among the city’s thrill seekers and the finned sisters need to decide whether they want to belong or whether they are who they are.

But that’s really too tidy a description for a film that wriggles in disorienting directions every few minutes. There are slyly feminist observations made about objectification, but that’s never the point. Expect other lurid side turns, fetishistic explorations, dissonant musical numbers and a host of other vaguely defined sea creatures to color the fable.

In fact, Olszanska’s film is strongest when it veers away from its fairy tale roots and indulges in its own weirdness.

Whatever its faults, The Lure will hook you immediately and change the way you think of mermaids.

Shudder Premiere

Occupied!

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Glorious

by George Wolf

I like to imagine the pitch meeting went something like this:

Picture it: a desperate man, trapped in a remote roadside rest stop with an ancient monster named Ghat.

Who’s playing the monster?

The voice of J.K. Simmons.

Go on.

So our man’s in one stall, with the monster in the other, offering commands from behind a glory hole.

What’s it called?

Glorious.

You’re damn right it is, and Shudder wants it for August.

Well now it’s here, and while the downsized cast and location recalls a host of pandemic-era productions, director Rebekah McKendry makes the most of what she’s given. Glorious proceeds at an intriguing pace that never feels sluggish, showing us just enough of the tentacled bathroom beast to strike an effective balance between bloody Lovecraftian spectacle and doomsday humor.

True Blood‘s Ryan Kwanten is perfect as a sad, pantsless bathroom sack named Wes. Screenwriters Joshua Hull, Todd Rigney and David Ian McKendry give Wes a wisecrack-fueled arc that shifts from wallowing in the pain of losing Brenda (Sylvia Grace Crim) to bargaining with Ghat for the fate of humanity (and Simmons, of course, is priceless). While the character is never quite compelling, Kwanten settles in a notch of two below Ryan Reynolds on smartass scale, making it easy have an interest in where Wes’s trippy toilet trip ends up.

And you may catch on early to that destination, but the real test of how Glorious will hit you is how much love you have for Lovecraft. Even if it’s minimal, this is a bathroom break full of squalid, forgettable fun.

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Oh, Hell

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Hellarious

by Hope Madden

Short films rarely get their due, and getting an audience is rarer still. Any opportunity to sit down with a set of shorts that made a splash in the festival circuit is an opportunity worth taking. If arterial spray and laughter are your thing, Hellarious is a chance worth taking.

The compilation contains seven short films, each a horror comedy. There’s no framing device or theme, simply a collection of sometimes bawdy, once in a long while sweet, mostly viscous horror. There are a lot of fluids here.

Like an automatic door to hell, James Feeney’s Killer Kart opens things. His creeping camera sets a fun tone for an absurd “ordinary item” monster movie (a la Rubber). An inspired score by Daniel Hildreth, Christine Rodriguez and Ray Bouchard matches the mayhem nicely.

Robert Boocheck’s charming Horrific—a tale of mutant varmints, hula hoop porn and besotted tidy whities—lands laughs thanks to Mike Nelson’s semi-heroic central performance. Likewise the Deathgasm-esque Death Metal offers a highly enjoyable and sometimes morally questionable bloodbath with the most delightful practical effects.

A sweet authenticity drives Bitten, Sarah K. Reimers’s romantic, dog-loving upending of the werewolf tale. (Who’s a good boy? Iggy is! Iggy’s a good boy!) If you can take your eyes off that adorable dog, you’ll notice two tenderly funny performances by Francine Torres and Michael Curran.

Director Jason Tostevin, who also compiled the films, helms two of the shorts in the program, both co-written with Randall Greenland. ‘Til Death offers a post-mortem comeuppance tale boasting several strong performances. Born Again, though, is one of the compilation’s two highest points.

Six and a half minutes with the worst Satanists ever exposes you to a really beautifully filmed subversion of expectations. Slyly comical performances top to bottom entertain, but Greenland is a laugh riot in a starring role.

The collection’s second high peak comes thanks to Clarissa Jacobson and J.M. Logan’s sloppy concoction, Lunch Ladies. This is a delirious fantasy about underdogs rising to the challenge and making their dreams come true—becoming personal chefs to “the Depper,” Johnny Depp. Donna Pieroni and Mary Manofsky deliver consistent laughs in a film that almost makes a person want to love Johnny Depp again.

Variety, laughs, mayhem, blood spatter, romance, cheerleader pot pie—Hellarious is a tasty treat of bite sized horror.

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To All Who Enter

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Woe

by Hope Madden

What is it that haunts us, really?

Horror has a blossoming subgenre that’s particularly spooked by that inescapable curse of heredity. The metaphorical horror of facing what your family has to hand down to you whether you want it or not fueled Relic, Hereditary, The Dark and the Wicked, and now, Matthew Goodhue’s family horror, Woe.

It’s been a year since his father died, but Charlie (Adam Halferty) still hasn’t seemed to put it behind him. He toils on his dad’s old house but doesn’t ever make any real progress. Same with the backyard. Same with everything. He barely evens speaks to his family anymore, even though his sister Betty (Jessie Rabideau) is about to get married.

Charlie’s not just grieving. There’s something really weird happening to him in that house, and it colors his perceptions of everyone and everything else. Mysterious phone calls and a sketchy meeting out in the woods might set things straight.

Wait a minute, when has that ever helped anything?

Goodhue’s script avoids easy answers or simple metaphors. He evokes an eerie atmosphere, one that seems to envelop Charlie and threatens to take in Betty, but something that everyone else appears to be immune to. That’s especially true of Betty’s well-meaning doofus of a fiancé, Benjamin (Ryan Kattner, as an endearing as any could possibly be).

The three performances sell the story, the Twilight Zone weirdness, and the human pathos that underly everything. Woe is a slow burn, rushing nothing but punctuating its fog of depression and sorrow with bursts of action and brief, welcome splashes of humor.

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Video Nasty

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Censor

by Hope Madden

Catch catch a horror taxi

I fell in love with my video nasty

            –The Damned

Damned, indeed.

Stern, driven Enid (Niamh Algar) takes her responsibilities seriously. Unfortunately for her, they come at a high price. Enid is a film censor in the most punishing time and place for such an endeavor: Thatcher’s England. It’s 1985, an era when controversial films hoping to make their way to screens big and small found themselves more butchered than their characters.

Co-writer/director Prano Bailey-Bond takes inspiration from this notion in her feature debut, Censor—an immersive era-specific horror. It is especially immersive for Enid.

She spends long hours deliberating on exactly where the line is between danger and acceptability: rewinding, examining frame by frame, if necessary, regardless of the nonchalance and casual derision of her co-workers. Enid is convinced it is her duty to protect people from these images.

As she herself drowns in repeated viewings of the most violent and depraved material, you have to wonder whether she might be better off protecting herself.

Bailey-Bond has other questions in mind, like why is it that Enid is so preoccupied with this job, how might it feed her own darkness, and what happens when her worlds blend together?

Censor is a descent into madness film—nothing new in the genre. And moments of Censor can’t help but call to mind fellow Brit Peter Stickland’s 2012 treasure Berberian Sound Studio. But Bailey-Bond and co-writer Anthony Fletcher evoke such a timestamp with this film, not just in the look and style, but with the social preoccupation.

As coincidences pile up – a definitive family decision, a horror movie-style murder spree, a film that hits too close to home — Enid seems to suspect that her real motive has been to censor her own thinking.

When she stops doing that, look out.

Algar’s prim and sympathetic, deliberate and brittle. It’s clear from the opening frame that Enid will break. But between Algar’s skill and Bailey-Bond’s cinematic vision, the journey toward that break is a wild ride.

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Unchained Melody

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Caveat

by Hope Madden

The room is dark, decrepit. A wild-eyed woman with a bloody nose holds a toy out in front of her like a demon slayer holds a crucifix. The toy – what is it, a rabbit? A jackalope? – beats a creepy little drum. Faster. Slower. Hotter. Colder.

This is how writer/director Damian Mc Carthy opens Caveat and I am in.

The woman is Olga (Leila Sykes), and we’ll get back to her in a bit, but first, we’re part of a conversation between the hush-voiced Barrett (Ben Caplan) and the foggy Isaac (Jonathan French). What can we tell from the conversation? They seem to know each other, Isaac’s had some kind of an accident, Barrett needs a favor.

The favor involves Olga, that house, and a long stretch of tightly fastened, heavyweight chain.

Dude, how good is Mc Carthy at this?

An expertly woven tapestry of ambiguity, lies and misunderstanding sink the story into a fog of mystery that never lets up. Isaac’s memory can’t be trusted, but he seems like a good guy. He looks like a good guy. Surely, he is a good guy! He’s just not making good decisions right now.

French shoulders the tale, and you hate to compare anything to Guy Pearce in Memento because who can stand up to that? No one, but still, Mc Carthy and French draw on that same type of damaged innocence and unreliable narration to stretch out the mystery.

Meanwhile, the filmmaker unveils a real knack for nightmarish visuals, images that effortlessly conjure primal fears and subconscious revulsion.

Caveat is not without flaws. Once or twice (when possibly channeling Mario Bava) Mc Carthy dips into camp unintentionally. OK, twice. These moments feel out of place in the unnerving atmosphere he’s created, which makes them stand out all the more. But it’s hardly enough to sink the film.

Mc Carthy does a lot with very little, as there are very few locations and a total of three cast members—all stellar. You won’t miss the budget. Mc Carthy casts a spook house spell, rattling chains and all, and tells a pithy little survival story while he’s at it.  

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Or Did the Case Solve Us?

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Spiral

by Hope Madden

It’s been five years since we’ve had a new episode in the Saw series.

I know! You thought it was longer, right? That’s because the last iteration, 2017’s Jigsaw, was so lackluster and forgettable that you forgot it.

Well, what if they go in a new direction? (Not really, but at least there are name actors.)

What if they bring in filmmakers from the series heyday? Not James Wan and Leigh Whannell. I mean, they have bigger fish to fry. But Darren Lynn Bousman, the guy who directed Saws 2, 3 & 4, is on board. Along with the scribes who penned Jigsaw, Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger.

To summarize, the guys who wrote the worst episode in the Saw franchise have returned with a middling director to take a borderline novel direction for the 9th chapter.

But Chris Rock!

He’s not enough. Neither is Samuel L. Jackson.

We open, as we must, on the first victim. We wander with him into what he doesn’t realize—although we surely do, unless you are very new to this franchise—is a trap, and one that will not end well.

So far so good, to be honest. If this is the kind of horror you enjoy and you aren’t sick beyond words of it just yet, the opening gag is serviceable.

Then we cut to Det. Zeke Banks (Rock), undercover and getting off a couple funny lines concerning the Forrest Gump universe. Nice. But don’t get comfortable because within minutes we’re dropped into Zeke’s precinct, where the coppiest of all the cops vie for most obviously borrowed cop cliché.

Undercover without backup?! You’re off the rails!

Do not team me with a rookie. You know I work alone!

You’re too close!

And so many more sentences articulated with need of an exclamation point. Zeke is, indeed, teamed with a rookie (Max Minghella), the only cop in the precinct who doesn’t hate him for what he did years ago…

Sam Jackson’s kind of fun, though. And it’s hard not to hope that the excruciating opening act exposition and cop grandstanding is all a way to quickly build the world in which these cleverly planned, torturous games are played.

It is not. It is the whole movie. And it isn’t clever, it isn’t fun, it isn’t gory, it isn’t scary.

It isn’t necessary.