A Little Too Late

totally killer 2024

TIME CUT

2.5 Stars  2024/92m

“This murder is set on repeat.”

Director/Writer: Hannah Macpherson / Writer: Michael Kennedy / Cast: Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Griffin Gluck, Megan Best, Samuel Braun, Sydney Sabiston, Katem O’Connor, Michael Shanks, Rachael Crawford.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “Do I make it on broadway? Do I get married? Shall I invest in Blackberry?”


VHS vs. Betamax. Laserdisc vs DVD. Freddy vs. Jason. Most successful things have their counterparts or rivals, and it’s usually victory for the one that makes it to market first, leaving the competitor in the dust, even if said competitor took the time to finesse a better product.

Such is sadly not the case when it comes to Time Cut, a title which was around quite sometime before it went into production, but crucially long enough for Totally Killer to slink right in there and score a touchdown for a time travelling slasher movie. In that film, Kiernan Shipka is inadvertently zapped from 2023 back to 1987 where she tries to prevent the future murder of her mom.

In Time Cut, overprotected teen Lucy is zapped from 2024 back to 2003, where she tries to prevent the murder of the sister she never knew, the killer never identified. While the plots are staggeringly similar on paper, and both girls seek help from a handy high school nerd to get the time machine working so they can go back to their own time, and the killers don shockingly identical masks – where am I going with this?

time cut 2024

It’s undeniable, they’re almost twins, although where Totally Killer wisely lampooned all the colourful cliches of the late 80s, Time Cut can’t quite manage to do the same for a year that honestly feels like it was a few weeks ago, and eschews the comedy for a more sentimental route. We still get Heely shoes, the pain of a dial-up modem, Buffy posters on walls and Vanessa Carlton on CD, but there’s comparably little to laugh at. The fashions weren’t that outlandish, the hair not that big, the music still pretty cool.

The best asset here is Lucy’s realisation that, should she save her sister, she might cease to exist herself, as their parents wouldn’t have needed to ‘replace’ their lost daughter. This leaves her with an additional moral dilemma, as her interference in the other murders has already resulted in one doomed person saved, but another killed when they originally weren’t.

time cut 2024

The outcome isn’t entirely predictable, but is perhaps poured on a little thick and with extra treacle, but this is likely in an effort to differentiate itself, with more focus on the relationship between two sisters who never existed at the same time.

Decent but clearly existing in the shadow of the film that got there first with a better era to be beamed to. Final word: burning mix CDs will always be better than, what, curating a playlist!?

Blurbs-of-interest: Megan Best was in Seance; Samuel Braun was in Bring It On: Cheer or Die; Rachael Crawford was in Slasher: Flesh & Blood. Christopher Landon, writer of Happy Death Day and Freaky, produced.

Poe. Pleasence. Carradine. …Reagan?

buried alive 1989

BURIED ALIVE

2.5 Stars  1989/91m

“Some secrets are best left buried, but will they stay there?”

Director: Gerard Kikoïne / Writers: Edgar Allen Poe, Jake Chesi, Stuart Lee / Cast: Robert Vaughn, Donald Pleasence, Karen Witter, John Carradine, Ginger Lynn Allen, Nia Long, Bill Butler, Janine Denison, Arnold Vosloo, Dee Dee Eybers, Roslynn Farrell.

Body Count: 6


One of several Poe adaptations produced by Harry Alan Towers in South Africa in the late 80s (another being the slasher version of The Masque of the Red Death), this take on the short story The Premature Burial has a killer in a Ronald Reagan mask (!) bricking up the ‘runaways’ from the Ravenscroft reform school for girls.

Into this mess comes young new teacher Janet Pendleton (former Playboy playmate Witter) who, when she’s not trying to keep the wayward girls in line, keep the director’s smarmy hands off her, is seeing visions of swelling brick walls, ants crawling up her legs, and an old man trying to grab her. Donald Pleasence is a dotty old professor who seems harmless – but is he?

A good cast of familiar faces tries its best, and there are some nice visual flourishes, but Buried Alive is hard to navigate as a viewer, with the slasher sensibilities kinda murky (though death by eggbeater is amusing) and the motivations of some characters seem to chop n’ change as time goes on, ultimately resulting in a not very surprising revelation of who the killer is.

buried alive 1989

Acting ability yo-yo’s between competence of Vaughn, Pleasence, Carradine, in his last role, and, in her first, Nia Long, to Witter’s squealy heroine, and one of the girls who seemed to have been re-dubbed completely – check out the half-assed ‘scream’ when she’s bricked up. Witter’s biggest issue seems to be keeping the hands of various male characters off of her.

Blurbs-of-interest: Carradine was also in The Boogeyman and Silent Night, Bloody Night; Ginger Lynn Allen was later in Evil Breed; Bill Butler was in Friday the 13th Part VII and Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III; Arnold Vosloo was the titular character in the late 90s Mummy franchise; other than being Dr Loomis, Donald Pleasence can be seen in Alone in the Dark and Phenomena.

Political Theater

founders day 2023

FOUNDERS DAY

2.5 Stars  2023/15/107m

“Change is here.”

Director/Writer: Erik Bloomquist / Writer: Carson Bloomquist / Cast: Naomi Grace, William Russ, Devin Druid, Olivia Nikkanen, Amy Hargreaves, Jayce Bartok, Andrew Stewart-Jones, Erik Bloomquist, Adam Weppler, Emilia McCarthy, Catherine Curtin, Tyler James White, Kate Edmonds, Dylan Slade.

Body Count: 9


In 2014, someone sent me a concept trailer for Founders Day and a link to their Facebook. Assume it was someone from the production, but as time went by, I never heard about the film and wondered if it just failed to garner funding or summat… In a tale of persistence, the film finally came out almost a decade later – and got a theatrical release! Mild spoilers follow.

The cutesy small town of Fairwood is embroiled in an embittered mayoral election between incumbent Blair Gladwell, and ‘time for change’ rival Harold Faulkner, who is hellbent on family image, to the point of almost alienating his teenage kids. One night, his daughter Melissa is slain in front of her girlfriend Allison, by a Founder-masked, robe-clad out-of-the-box wacko, who beats her to death with a gavel before tossing her body off a bridge.

founders day 2023

Politics, however, waits for no one, and the campaigning continues with various accusations tossed around, which are complicated when Gladwell’s daughter becomes the next victim. At each murder scene, excerpts of nursery rhymes are left on sheets and walls. Further victims with no real connection to either candidates are dispatched and bereaved Allison assumes a sort-of final girl role, stumbling across murder scenes, being chased by the loon, and investigating suspects, which range from teen love rivals, to stoic political aides, and the requisite inspiring teacher (Russ, who rocks a sort of Hal Holbrook thing and is probably the most interesting of the characters).

Founders Day is a nice looking film, but a confusing one. A large roster of characters ensures that we either learn little about them, or they disappear for extended periods of time. By the end, once motivations and rationale have been communicated, I had to watch the scene over again to comprehend what I was being told.

founders day 2023

Speaking of the killer, the unmasking moment was a surprise I didn’t predict, and the film does us the courtesy of some flashbacks to show ‘how they did it’, albeit seemingly missing one crucial detail mentioned earlier that is left unexplained. The killer’s reasoning also may require a little more knowledge about town-level American politics than I have.

An interesting idea, certainly taking a different path than most, but the result is rather incoherent and suffers, not from pacing issues per se (though it runs almost two hours), but bouncing all over the place like a pinball, never stopping long enough to get to grips with much and leaving waaay too many unanswered questions in its wake. Good soundtrack though.

Blurb-of-interest: William Russ was in Cruising.

PLL: FFS

pretty little liars summer school 2024

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS: SUMMER SCHOOL

1.5 Stars  2024/383m

“It’s gonna be a killer summer.”

Created by: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Lindsay Calhoon Bring / Cast: Bailee Madison, Chandler Kinney, Zaria, Malia Pyles, Maia Reficco, Mallory Bechtel, Alex Aliono, Jordan Gonzalez, Derek Klena, Ben Cook, Ava Capri, Antonio Cipriano, Noah Alexander Gerry, Annabeth Gish, Elias Kacavas.

Body Count: 9

Laughter Lines: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you in the middle of a full-on spiral?”


Six months after the Millwood Massacre, the sisters-in-horror Imogen, Tabby, Faran, Noa, and Mouse have been taking self-defence classes, group therapy (with a therapist who utters such wondrous insights as “I’m hearing frustration” and “I’m sensing some anger”), and, much to their chagrin, summer school, as they all flunked. All of them. Remember, this group can’t possess an outlier, everything has to align. With Millwood High giving zero fucks about what happened to them, their ‘hot girl summer’ is cancelled.

Clearly their stupidity isn’t restricted to academia, as they’re fucking collectively dumb enough to stand in front of a mirror and chant ‘Bloody Rose’ five times after an over-referenced website named Spooky Spaghetti (make a drinking game for how often it gets a mention and you’ll rapidly be off to A&E with alcohol poisoning) reports OG killer ‘A’, skinned his mother’s face, and so now she’s back for revenge blah blah blah. But why? The five of them had fuck all to do with what originally happened to any of these people anyway.

pretty little liars summer school 2023

One by one, the girls are ‘tested’ by Bloody Rose, even after swearing they’d share everything with one another, they persist in venturing off to investigate old cabins, homeless encampments, deserted stores, and hang out with new pop-up boyfriends who turn up out of the blue and are immediately trusted. So much so that more than once the girls sit around and discuss their sexless sleepovers before updating each other on the person WHO. IS. TRYING. TO. KILL. THEM.

(Who is the killer? Think Scream 2, they’ve just about Xeroxed it)

pretty little liars summer school 2023

Elsewhere, a local religious cult is hoovering up teens, including mutual acquaintance Kelly, whose mom has gone all Margaret White, and Faran’s surprisingly not-gay dance partner; then the girls get jobs, but relatively high-powered ones, considering they’re supposed to be fifteen and sixteen years old: Tabby is made manager of the cinema, while Faran becomes lifeguard captain at the pool after out-swimming the boys and beating them in arm-wrestles, even though their biceps are larger than her entire torso. A recurring theme through Summer School is that all males are inferior to the five leads and must apologise to them on every available occasion.

There are few bright spots – one of the girls is chased down a path of thorny rose stems during a Friday the 13th marathon at disused summer camp, and the score from Part 2 (rightly declared the best one by Tabby) is used to soundtrack her attempted escape. The infrequent murders are liberally bloody, and the finale with one of the girls on the run goes well, but none of the victims are main characters, so why even care? The stakes barely register.

pretty little liars summer school 2023

Not-so-subtle horror references are dropped incessantly, with the cinema reportedly playing nothing but 80s horror flicks. For all Tabby talks about the genre, the core five repeatedly fall foul of just about every cliche in the book. Worst line in this regard: “Final girl energy Laurie Strode realness!”

By a huge distance though, the main problem here is the group itself. They’re no longer likeable, put-upon youngsters banding together against bullies and a wacko. They’ve become an insufferable clique of entitled brats who excel in group hugs and speeches about sisterhood (“All for one and one for all!”) but, for anyone outside of the fold, come across as bullies in their unrelenting efforts to get their own way, and repeatedly assert their dominance over any and all menfolk. It’s got a very embittered and exclusive tang to it, all the while the characters parroting inclusivity without any realistic gestures on their part that don’t happen to serve their own needs, and managing to lecture various bit-parters on how they should conduct themselves.

pretty little liars summer school 2023

Mercifully, plans for a third season were cancelled after this disaster.

Blurbs-of-interest: Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa wrote the screenplay for the 2014 Town That Dreaded Sundown.

YA-BANG!

never hike alone 2 2023

NEVER HIKE ALONE 2

3 Stars  2023/73m

Director/Writer: Vincente DiSanti / Cast: Thom Mathews, Vincent Guastaferro, Andrew Leighty, Anna Campbell, Vincent DiSanti, Lauren Wickel, Ben Kascandi, Bryan Forrest, Tracie Savage, Larry Zerner.

Body Count: 12


Never Hike Alone was the best surprise in 2017 – a Jason-centric half-length film that wasn’t amateur night; a stripped back, cut down, recollection of Friday feels. It worked. It worked better than some of the official instalments!

Three years later, a shorter prequel, Never Hike in the Snow debuted to rope in a couple of other Crystal Lake alumni for its world building and, another three years on, the closer-to-feature-length sequel rolls in.

Beginning before the events that ice off the first, poor Tommy Jarvis (Mathews, my favourite actor for the role) is still tormented by dreams that Jason Voorhees lives on. Working as a paramedic at Wessex County Medical Center (where Axel and Nurse Morgan met their grisly ends 40 years earlier), he sympathises with a doctor colleague, whose son is missing (the kid who hiked in the snow).

never hike alone 2 2023

When Tommy and two younger medics are called to help a delirious hiker rescued from the forest, we get to see Jason lay his workmates to waste all over again and then stalk after Tommy and Kyle as they head back to the clinic.

Local Sheriff Rick Cologne still sneers at the legends until he and his deputies come face to face with ye masked one when he shows up in the ER and takes most of the remaining cast out, leaving Tommy, Dr Hill, and Kyle to lure him back to Camp Crystal Lake to stop him for good. Again. But this fosters the long awaited re-utterance of “wherever the red light goes… ya-bang!” from Cologne against Jason… who’s bound to be receptive to that threat, right?

never hike alone 2 thom mathews vincent guastaferro

In terms of production polish, it’s remarkably on par with its brethren – drones really have transformed indie filmmaking! – and can boast an aesthetic that would fool Joe Public into being ‘just the next Friday the 13th with comparable ease’, although a series of bizarre on screen typos seems to plague it (see the news scroll that says ‘missing deputy believed to be among missing’!) Pernickety grammar fascism aside, we get cameos from Tracie Savage and Larry Zerner (from Part III) alongside actors from other Hike films and even other Jason fan movies. It’s like a little family is growing, hopefully to the point where whomever owns the rights this week takes their ideas onboard, as they’re doing a damn sight more with Jay.

never hike alone 2 tracie savage debbie

never hike alone 2 larry zerner shelly

Blurbs-of-interest: Thom Mathews was also in Final Summer; Anna Campbell was in Jason Rising.

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