Political Theater

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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

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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!

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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.

Commander & Chief & Chucky

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chucky season 3 2024

CHUCKY – SEASON 3

4 Stars  2023/358m

“The country is Chucked.”

Created by: Don Mancini / Cast: Zackary Arthur, Bjorgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Devon Sawa, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Gil Bellows, Jackson Kelly, Callum Vinson, Michael Therriault, Fiona Dourif, Alex Vincent, Carina Battrick, Annie Briggs, Kaleb Horn, John Waters.

Body Count: 48

After the relatively disappointing second season, I didn’t hold out much hope for the continuing saga of a possessed doll and the hordes of friends and foes of his caught up in a never ending killing spree. So it was with glee that the third season, released in two lots in 2023 and 2024, is easily the best to date.

Things were left off with Chucky surprising Tiffany and Caroline in their New York hideout, while Nica watches and plots but, before he can kill Tiffany, the cops arrive and arrest ‘Jennifer Tilly’ for the murders carried out at her house.

And now? Some months later, Chucky is the property of Henry, first son of President James Collins, and living it up in the White House, calling himself Joseph, name of Henry’s recently deceased brother. Henry is scared by the prospect of ghosts haunting the place and the family begin to show concern after a member of the secret service apparently shoots himself in Henry’s bedroom, and then the president’s secretary disappears. Meanwhile, Jake, Devon, and Lexy are in the care of their teacher, Miss Fairchild, while looking for both Chucky and Caroline. When they spot him on a news bulletin, they set about getting into the White House via the older Collins son, Grant.

chucky season 3

Episode 3 finally clues us into why Chucky is bothering at all. After an absolutely hilarious taxi cab scene (with guest Kenan Thompson as the driver), Chucky discovers he’s beginning to age and both Voodoo for Dummies and a voodoo doc advises that dabbling with a Catholic exorcism has angered Damballa, and he needs to make an ultimate evil sacrifice to get back in his good graces. Initial attempts at killing in an evil place (the Amityville House) fail, and so Chucky rationalises that more evil has been conducted from the White House, so offering up six souls there should do the trick.

A gruesome ‘accident’ at the Collins’ Halloween party – and a possible homage to the mirror-ceiling denouement from Bride of Chucky – should fulfil the criteria but Chucky continues to age, losing his hair and starting to look more like a Terrahawk than a Good Guy Doll. Tiffany, meanwhile, uses voodoo from death row to get the guards working for her in a bid to escape. In a final call with Chucky, she recommends he try going out with a bang, and so he makes a bid for the nuclear codes to take the world with him when he goes.

chucky season 3

Any further plot points would spoil a lot, but suffice to say the youthful trio of Hackensack kids aren’t going to standby and let it happen. There are seances, trips to ‘the other side’, and of course scores more deaths before things end with another face from the past (albeit in a different role) and a promise for season 4.

What has given season 3 a major leg up from before is wit. Already notable for the occasional fourth wall breaches and cultural commentary, this time the writers really go for the jugular with non-stop jibes, gags, and full on call-outs. The best of which is when an ageing Chucky flicks through TV channels from his bed, first encountering The Boy, then Dead Silence (“this guy didn’t even get a franchise!”), and finally M3gan (“this little bitch stole my bit! Fuck you Muh-three-gan!”) A medium is later described as being hired by Taylor Swift after each of her breakups, and during a dream sequence where Chucky exacts revenge on Andy, we get this gem of an exchange:

  • “You’re my white whale, Andy, my Moby Dickhead!”
  • “Are you actually trying to make a literary reference!?”
  • “No – it was a fat joke.”

chucky season 3

The gore level is off the charts as well, beyond the catastrophic multi-fatality chandelier accident, people drink bleach, get their heads fried, eyes gouged out, electrocuted, drowning in elevators of  blood… It goes on.

Devon Sawa returns in yet another role (well, three roles) as President Collins, while his wife is played by one of the nuns from S2, and the VP by Lexy’s dad. Gil Bellows, from Ally McBeal, basks in his role as a skeezy fixer, and Brad Dourif gets to appear beyond vocal contributions alone during the scenes on ‘the other side’, which was also nice to see. A lack of Andy and Kyle (the former seen only during the dream) is curious, but will hopefully be addressed in the future. Where the hell can he go next!?

Blurbs-of-interest: Devon Sawa was in Final Destination; Jennifer Tilly was also in Far from Home and The Caretaker.

“Anyone walking their dog at 4am is clearly a sociopath.”

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girl a the window 2022

GIRL AT THE WINDOW

2.5 Stars  2022/85m

“Fear thy neighbour.”

Director: Mark Hartley / Writers: Terence Hammond, Nicolette Minster / Cast: Radha Mitchell, Ella Newton, Karis Oka, James Mackay, Vince Colosimo, Andrew S. Gilbert, Sharon Johal, Lachie Millar, Lauren Goetz.

Body Count: 5

Laughter Lines: “They should honestly question the dog walker. Anyone walking their dog at 4am is clearly a sociopath.”

Moderate spoilers. A teenage girl applies some makeup, feeds some coins into the slot of a photobooth and prepares to look hot. Over her shoulder, a dead body is stashed at the back of the booth, one eye gouged out.

Six months later, that girl’s best friend, Amy, slowly getting over the accidental death of her father and suffering from claustrophobia because of it, keeps a diary of the movements of her and her mom’s neighbour/love interest, Chris. He takes his van out in the early hours and returns a couple of hours later. Creepy.

But the Clockwork Killer, who has laid to waste six local teens, hasn’t struck in half a year. When a necking couple in a lovers lane are attacked, the boy is found dead, but the girl is missing, taken by the wacko for further experimentation in a grubby cellar someplace.

girl in the window 2022

Amy becomes convinced Chris is the maniac after hearing screams in the night, but neither her mother, nor the cops believe her, chalking it all up to PTSD and an overactive imagination. But both she and we have seen Disturbia, so some Scooby Doo’ing of his property winds up with her locked in the back of his van…

This Australian export is more thriller than slasher, with the Zodiac-type killer only laying to waste three victims for the runtime, and a significant lack of suspects meaning that when the identity of the loon is revealed about halfway through, it’s entirely unsurprising. Like, Cherry Falls level unsurprising.

Girl in the Window toys a little with dark Aussie humour, which is funny in places, most of which stemming from Oka as Amy’s sarcastic best friend, but also leaves the film unevenly rocking back and forth without a real sense of belonging. Nicely polished, but a little underbaked.

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