calendar carnage – HudsonLee.com

Tag Archives: calendar carnage

[INSERT CARVING JOKE]

November 23, 2023 Hud Leave a comment

THANKSGIVING

2023/18/106m

“There will be no leftovers.”

Director/Writer: Eli Roth / Writer: Jeff Rendell / Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Milo Manheim, Addison Rae, Tomaso Sanelli, Gabriel Davenport, Jenna Warren, Karen Cliche, Joe Delfin, Amanda Barker, Tim Dillon.

Body Count: 12

Being from a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, it’s a little alien to me, pieced together from Saved by the Bell holiday specials, Friends episodes, tales of brawling families and, finally, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving slasher feature, which comes a whopping sixteen years after the mock trailer he created for Grindhouse (and which, let’s be honest, was the best thing about that project).

Thanksgiving has been a curiously overlooked public holiday in the slasher cannon, with, by my count, only 1980’s Home Sweet Home and 83’s Blood Rage making any ado about it – though I remember someone telling me about a film called ‘Thankskilling’, but maybe that was bullshit.

Roth has always been a bit hit and miss for me, but he shines here, revelling in the nostalgic echoes of early 80s every-holiday-is-a-kill-fest template, and having a bloody good time with it. Emphasis on bloody. He described the movie as a 2023 reboot of what that old trailer would’ve been for, allowing freedom to explore more contemporary themes. Namely: Black Friday.

Shit a brick and fuck me with it, is the scene that starts this movie accurate? Greedy small town store owner Thomas Wright (the always fun Hoffman) decides to open his joint for the Black Friday madness on Thanksgiving, rather than at midnight, and give away a free waffle iron to the first 100 customers. Crowds gather and get impatient: pushing, shoving, swearing.

When Wright’s daughter Jessica lets five of her friends in through the employee entrance and a couple of them mock those waiting from inside the store, a crush ensues, resulting in shattered glass as hordes of selfish lunatics flood in. Three people die in the madness, including store manager Mitch’s wife (a Gina Gershon cameo).

One year later (of course), Jessica’s boyfriend Bobby, whose pitching career was ruined by an injury sustained in the carnage, returns after a year ghosting the others, but she’s now going out with the slightly sketchy Ryan (My Bloody Valentine love triangle sighted off the bow) and the six friends involved begin to receive vaguely threatening Insta messages from ‘John Carver’, the town’s Pilgrim figurehead, which coincide with locals who were involved in the riot being offed by an axe-swinging wacko in a mass-produced John Carver mask.

While Jess worries, local Sheriff (Dempsey) leads the charge to locate the killer, and the classless idiots who trampled over dying people for reduced housewares continue to get attacked with electric knives, table top power saws and, in the most ‘ouch’ moment from the concept trailer, a cheerleader on a trampoline bounces down on to a blade that pierces through beneath her.

Elsewhere, some good chase scenes play out that bring back sweet memories of Prom Night, one of which wrings a great deal of tension in its simplicity, and things culminate in a Happy Birthday to Me-recalling Thanksgiving dinner, with the surviving targets confronted by their sins, and ‘dinner’ is served.

Roth crams a lot into Thanksgiving, recreating almost all of the scenes from his trailer, dropping some subtle clues as to the killer’s identity here and there, and offing people in gruesome ways: One poor uninvolved schmuck is skewered through the head by a parade float, a scene which also recalls Sarah Michelle Gellar seeing the Fisherman everywhere in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Just a fun slasher movie from start to finish (although the tagline more of a mission statement than a fact).

Blurbs-of-interest: Canadian mini-icon Lynne Griffin appears as Grandma in the first scene, having been in the original Black Christmas and also Curtains back in the day. Patrick Dempsey was in Scream 3.

Reviews

Celtic Chants, Glowing Scarecrows, Haddonfield…

June 15, 2023 Hud Leave a comment

THE CURSE OF HALLOWEEN JACK

2019/15/78m

“He returns… and this time, no one is safe.”

Director/Writer: Andrew Jones / Cast: Derek Nelson, Patrick O’Donnell, Peter Cosgrove, Tiffany Ceri, Jason Medani, David Link, Alastair Armstrong, Phillip Roy, Jessica Michelle Smith.

Body Count: 18+

I only discovered while writing this up that this is actually a sequel to the previous year’s Legend of Halloween Jack, which I guess addresses some of the question marks floating above some of the lore and dialogue you see in this one.

So it goes, two years after a murder spree in the small British town on Dunwich (neighbouring settlement: Haddonfield), a group of face-painted cult members succeed in resurrecting the murderous scarecrow from where his body was buried by randomly American local detective Earl Rockwell. They’re then all shot dead by some cops.

The town has banned Halloween on the back of the tragedy, so some kids, including the mayor’s daughter Danielle, throw their own rager, which is crashed by the smiling scarecrow, who then hunts Danielle to the police station, kills some people there, before being lured to a house by an eye-patched seer-of-doom. Something about Celtic mythology bloodlines, must be killed by member of his own bloodline with a sacred dagger blah blah blah.

The constraints of the budget clearly affect the end product, from some terrible reaction-to-horror acting, apparent death by having an iPhone pushed about two inches into the mouth, and a killer who looks like a plush Halloween toy, but it’s not so bad. The Fog-pretender score is pretty good and it has an endearing cheapness about it which should be encouraged rather than pulverised.

And Jason Medani is very easy on the eye.

Reviews

2! 4! 6! 8! Who do we decapitate?

April 27, 2023 Hud 2 comments

BRING IT ON: CHEER OR DIE

2022/91m

Director: Karen Lam / Writers: Alyson Fouse, Rebekah McEndry, Dana Schwartz / Cast: Kerri Medders, Alexandra Beaton, Missi Pyle, Alten Wilmot, Sierra Holder, Rudy Borgonia, Marlowe Zimmerman, Makena Zimmerman, Sam Robert Muik, Madison MacIsaac, Tiera Skovbye, Erika Prevost, Samuel Braun.

Body Count: 11

Laughter Lines: “What are you – telepathetic?”

Quasi-spoilers. That the 20-years-earlier past trauma in Cheer or Die occurs in 2002, after the first of seven Bring It On movies that have been released – all straight to DVD with the exception of the pretty damn awesome original – makes me feel old with a capital “say it again, love?”. Rihanna’s in one of them, Hayden Panettiere, someone from Buffy… They each pit a down-on-their-luck cheer squad against some evil rival team and the big finale usually plays out at a competition.

In the seventh instalment, however, the Diablo high school squad have been banned from doing anything worth watching by their tyrannical principal (Pyle) since a death at just such a competition in 2002. Irked by their lack of success, the team decide to practice off site at the abandoned Elk Moore High.

When one of the co-captains eats a pom-pom, the other, Abby, has to lead the team. But someone dressed in the mascot’s uniform is choking, skewering and axing members of the squad. Who could it be? I pegged it from the moment the character appeared, so don’t expect a surprise. Or threat. Even with two killers working together, they must be the least imposing wackos in horror history.

With PG-13 violence, an encompassing cheapness (one girl is partially drowned in a toilet, but her hair is bone dry in the next shot), and lacking even the trademark cheer-themed toxic put-downs of its brethren, there’s sadly nothing to do a back handspring with round-off over here.

Reviews

The End of an Era. Again.

October 14, 2022 Hud 2 comments

HALLOWEEN ENDS

2022/18/111m

Director/Writer: David Gordon Green / Writers: Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride / Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton, James Jude Courtney, Kyle Richards, Michael Barbieri, Karaun Harris, Michael O’Leary, Michele Dawson, Joanne Baron, Rick Moose.

Body Count: 18

The Final Chapter, The Final Nightmare, The Final Friday – we’ve been here before, even more than once in the same series. It doesn’t feel that long ago (but probably is) that Halloween H20 was supposed to be the closing word on Michael Myers. But it made bank, so he regained his severed head, but the series soon died again.

The second reboot, taking the series off into its fourth possible timeline, in 2018 was also supposed to be the last one. It was fine, flawed here and there, but carried an aroma of crispy fried finality. It made bank, so suddenly two further sequels were announced. 2021’s delayed Halloween Kills delved deep into fan service and then some weird allegory around vigilante mobs. Laurie didn’t share a single scene with Michael – it just… strange, but housed a couple of decent scenes to just about earn a pass.

Ends though… My, my, my where to begin? Big spoilers ahoy. Well, it begins a year later – Myers is AWOL, Haddonfield has become a bit of a depressed state where everything gets blamed on The Boogeyman or his legacy. Into a simple babysitting gig walks Corey, a slightly dorky student, who replaces the unwell first choice to look after rich kid Jeremy, whose pranks ultimately lead to the kid falling to his death.

Three years later, Corey is a social pariah, hated by the locals and wasting his potential. He runs into Laurie when she wades into a confrontation with some entitled douchey teens and introduces him to Allyson, with whom Corey instantly sparks, their mutual sadness connecting them at an unseen level. Laurie soon sees a darkness in Corey that reminds her of you-know-who, threatening her new found Zen outlook on everything.

When Corey meets you-know-who, subsisting in a sewer pipe, instead of becoming another victim, they too have a meeting of the minds and embark on some bizarro twin-killer spree, taking out those who have wronged Corey in some way. Stranger still, the murders seem to go totally unnoticed, and when Corey decides his own scarecrow mask isn’t up to it, he steals Mikey’s and dons himself an official tribute act.

This is where Halloween Ends becomes ‘okay’ – in the same way Resurrection worked as a goofy, fun slasher movie if you divorced it from its forebears, Corey-as-Michael puts in a few decent kills, first offing Ally’s manager and the young nurse he’s sleeping with, then the douchey teens, his overbearing mom, and a shit-talking shock jock who sassed him a day or so earlier.

Knowing Laurie is trying to prevent Allyson from leaving Haddonfield with him, Corey’s final call is at their shared house and Michael, clearly just wanting his mask back, isn’t far behind. He and Laurie fight, and she finally gets him where she wants him, resulting in a town-wide procession to rid themselves of the Myers curse once and for all. And the ending is final. It has to be… If we get Halloween Re-Resurrection in four years, fuck knows how they’ll find a workaround to explain this one.

Jarring tonal shifts have plagued this new trilogy, from ballistic body counts, overly sadistic murders, that ‘Evil Dies Tonight!’ nonsense, and now the new Yoga-Laurie, although her early scenes just hanging out with Allyson and Lindsay are probably where the film feels most relaxed and natural. It’s almost like a ‘Haddonfield’ TV series was condensed into two hours, and between the not-awful scenes of Kills and Ends, there could have been a decent last outing, but the whole 2018-22 reboot cycle has been the epitome of needlessness.

Look out for Julian and the reappearance of a character we thought was no longer even alive…

I never thought I’d say this of a JLC-starring Halloween movie, but this is the worst in the entire series. Remakes included.

Blurbs-of-interest: Michael O’Leary was in Fatal Games; Joanne Baron was in iMurders.

Reviews

47 Christmases later…

June 17, 2021 Hud Leave a comment

IT’S ME, BILLY

2021/43m

“You always knew he’d call back.”

Directors/Writers: Dave McRae & Bruce Dale / Cast: Victoria Mero, Shelby Handley, Malaika Hennie, Caro Coltman, Bryan Charles Peter.

Body Count: 2

I know it’s June, but here we are.

Fan films have come a long way since the days of a few friends, dad’s camcorder and a cheap dime store mask. As studios dither and overthink their franchises, resulting in legal disputes and long delays (*cough* Friday the 13th *cough*), fans with talent took matters into their own hands and the past few years have seen some low-rent output that’s arguably often better than what millions of dollars from a Hollywood studio could buy.

Into this hall of fame can be welcomed It’s Me, Billy, which gives us a 47-years-later sequel to seminal proto-slasher Black Christmas. College girls Sam, Emma, and Justine tried to access the house on Belmont Street where Sam’s late grandmother, Jess, was the sole survivor of the 1974 murders.

They journey on to Jess’s remote house in the wake of the woman’s death and before long receive a strange phone call from what sounds like several insane voices arguing with one another. Expectedly, Sam is soon on her own trying to fend off an insane killer until we’re escorted to an interesting final revelation that nods towards the distinct possibility of another follow-up in the future?

It’s Me, Billy certainly looks and sounds the part, with its snow-dusted exteriors of jagged trees and empty roads; the score is a strong echo of the ’74 film and every little creak of a floorboard is like a cacophony of clanging metal pans in the dark. It’s also well acted by its primary cast of three.

The coda is interesting but negates the film somewhat, as it all leads up to a moment where the film simply stops when it’s just about to spark to life. This sense of incompleteness is a disappointment but if there’s a future plan here (a la Never Hike Alone) then great. And it’s still better than the 2019 ‘remake’.

Reviews

1 2 3 … 21 »