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“Alexa… kill those people.”

June 29, 2023 Hud Leave a comment

M3GAN

2022/15/102m

“Friendship has evolved.”

Director: Gerard Johnstone / Writers: Akela Cooper, James Wan / Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Lori Dungey, Stephane Garneau-Monten, Amy Usherwood.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “I have a new primary user now: Me.”

That’s right – it sounds exactly like Child’s Play. And Dolly Dearest. And Annabelle. Actually, this campfest has more in common with the 2019 Child’s Play reboot than any of the others, as the age old tale of our reliance on technology coming back to bite us in the ass. But this one is better.

Starting as it means to go on with an all-out assault courtesy of the commercial for a Furby-like toy, PurrPetual Petz. Nine-year-old Cady irks her parents by playing with the talking, tablet-integrated toy during a roadtrip to a ski lodge, which ultimately turns fatal.

Shortly after, Cady is sent to live with her aunt Gemma, a toy designer who gifted her the annoying thing and is clueless about raising a child, let alone a bereaved one. They connect over one of Gemma’s early inventions, a robot controlled remotely. Cady’s uptick in mood inspires Gemma to revisit an AI companion she’d been working on as a side project – Model 3 Generative Android: M3GAN.

Gemma introduces her prototype M3gan to Cady, pairs her with it, and in no time at all she has a new friend who spews facts, reminds her of chores, sings her ballad versions of Titanium and Bulletproof, and hangs around looking a tiny bit sinister. The trope of ‘protect the human’ programming inevitably leads to interpreting all outsiders as a threat, starting with the neighbour’s aggressive dog, just as Buddi started with a claw-happy cat in the Child’s Play redux.

A nasty pre-teen bully is next to cross the line and ends up being chased into the road and slammed into by an SUV. Gemma begins to suspect M3gan’s configuration might need some work, but finds the doll is against having the hood popped, and learning that M3gan is interfacing with various digital assistants and household smart appliances. However, Gemma’s boss has set up a showcase to show M3gan to the world, planning on retailing her as a stand-in nanny to rich families at $10,000 a pop. M3gan, of course, has other plans.

More people die, M3gan sashays down corridors with confident swagger, stopping at one point to grace a fleeing victim with a dance. If you thought Chucky’s hokeyness was the height of camp, strap in: The bitchy snap-backs, the shades, the digital hijacking of a Ferrari that she zooms off in… I haven’t cackled with glee at a film this much in a long time.

A rare January horror release that made bank, thanks to smart marketing (and TikTok), this won’t be the last we’ve seen of this doll. Whispers of teaming her up with her red-headed cinematic grandpa are already doing the rounds.

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

Vaxxis of Evil

May 30, 2023 Hud Leave a comment

SICK

2023/83m

“You’re not safe inside.”

Director: John Hyams / Writers: Kevin Williamson & Katelyn Crabb / Cast: Gideon Adlon, Bethlehem Million, Dylan Sprayberry, Joel Courtney, Marc Menchaca, Jane Adams.

Body Count: 6

It’s funny how some reactions to any media that chooses to incorporate elements of the COVID pandemic attract people who slate it for this reason only, because they believe it was a hoax/overwrought or whatever. It doesn’t mean that what happened around the world didn’t happen or should be erased from history just because some quarters don’t believe it was real… Spoilers ensue.

Regardless of your stance on the virus, or how it was handled where you live, Kevin Williamson (co)wrote this scaled down, cat-and-mouse heavy little slasher pic, which takes place at the start of the pandemic in April 2020. In a nice reflection of Williamson’s go-to Scream openings where a young woman is tormented and then murdered, a college age man padding around the empty shelves of a grocery store, navigating the arrows on the floor, keeping his distance – he then receives an anonymous text message which seems like it’s from someone he knows… someone who’s in the same store…

He’s summarily attacked and slain and we skip to a couple of college girls exiting campus to stay at a remote lakehouse Parker’s father owns. Her friend, Miri, is slightly more serious about precautions but the girls kick back at the lush cabin until Parker receives a strange, anonymous text. She blocks the number and the day goes on. Then a truck pulls up and someone starts banging at the door.

Turns out it’s Parker’s frat boy love interest, DJ, who is concerned she’s not into him as much as he is into her. Peeved by the incursion, the girls let him stay on the couch but it soon becomes clear there’s another person in the house. The stalker attacks and the kids flee and much of the remainder of the Sick is largely tense chase scenes as the girls crawl through broken windows, across rooftops, fall, swim, break in, break out and eventually come face to face with their assailant.

Curiously, a few of the negative reviews I read did the usual thing of saying the characters are dumb, however instead of striking the killer and knocking him out, then dropping the weapon and tottering off, Parker continues pounding the fuck out of him until no amount of CPR is going to help. Elsewhere, the girls do not hesitate the strike back with violence when needed, rather than run and cower.

At a tight 77-ish minutes (plus credits), Sick only really applies the brakes and head-tilting ‘huh?’ moment when it comes down to meeting the killers and learning their motive, which, rather than the potentially frighteningly simple psycho making the most of the lockdown, all comes down to the breadcrumb trail of a fatal COVID infection. It feels like the film could have made a little more out of the situation, although a scene where a possible rescuer refuses to let a fleeing victim into their car if they’re not wearing a mask was strangely hilarious.

Still, it affords Williamson to recall Laurie Metcalf’s iconic Mrs Loomis histrionics to a slightly lesser degree and a possible homage to Friday the 13th the killers are named Pamela and Jason.

The minimalist approach of the project shows just how much can be achieved using so little.

Reviews

Doll Domination

May 12, 2023 Hud Leave a comment

CHUCKY – SEASON 2

2022/381m

Directors: Jeff Renfroe, Samir Rehem, Don Mancini, Leslie Libman, John Hyams / Writers: Don Mancini, Kim Garland, Rachael Paradis, Mallory Westfall, Nick Zigler, Alex Delyle, Isabella Gutierrez, Amanda Blanchard / Cast: Zackary Arthur, Bjorgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Brad Dourif, Devon Sawa, Fiona Dourif, Jennifer Tilly, Bella Higginbotham, Rosemary Dunsmore, Lachlan Watson, Alex Vincent, Christine Elise, Andrea Carter, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Meg Tilly, Barbara Alyn Woods, Carina Battrick, Billy Boyd.

Body Count: 15

Laughter Lines: “You’re worried about me? There’s a corpse in the closet and a killer doll on the loose – I’m worried about me.”

Given the ajar ending of Season 1, it was pretty clear that we’d be coming back to the valley of the dolls, which rapidly ties up how things were left off, with Andy in the truck o’ Good Guy Dolls, at (doll) Tiffany’s gunpoint. He succeeds in driving it over a cliff and everybody thinks the nightmare is over.

Several months later, Jake and Devon have been fostered by other families far apart, while Lexy is attending therapy at the behest of her politically-thirsty mom and liberally popping pills to get through each day. When the three of them reunite on Halloween, Chucky reappears to finish them off and ends up detonating a bomb that kills Jake’s pre-teen foster brother. Naturally blamed and written off as problem kids, the trio are packed off to the Catholic School of the Incarnate Lord – Charles Lee Ray’s boyhood residence – ruled by the rather dogmatic Father Bryce (Devon Sawa, but reportedly no relation to either of his earlier characters).

Bad kids galore should provide a buffet of meat for Chucky to torment, a la the military academy seen way back in Child’s Play 3, but instead Season 2 embarks on a rather restrained path, with the few remaining dolls being quickly dealt with and, in one case, deprogrammed and turned into a Good Good Guy, who Jake quickly believes, along with new team member, Nadine.

Meanwhile, Tiffany struggles to prop up her Jennifer Tilly identity, and, when non-binary twins Glen and Glenda arrive for a visit, they’re accompanied by Jennifer’s real-life sister Meg, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, Sutton Stracke, and a mysterious butler. The episode openly excludes the other narrative entirely, functioning as a bizarre farce that ends with quad-amputee Nica being liberated, while Chucky ‘presents’ to the audience. It’s a weird bump in the road, exploiting Tilly’s comedic muscle, but sadly really sucks you out of the flow, reminding me of a review I saw way back when that posited the series has become a bit of an in-joke that only Tilly and Don Mancini are in on.

Things eventually realign: Kyle and Andy return, the priests and nuns finally face up to the reality of Chucky, the kids fall out, make up, fall out, make up, and then it kinda stops with one episode to go. In the finale, we leap another few months forward, to Christmas, back in Hackensack, where the final Chucky doll makes a play for the kids one last time, and Tiffany, now wanted for murder, tries to get her mitts on a new doll to transfer herself into.

Where the movies had slowed to an instalment every few years, the demands of a 10-part series and all of the criss-crossing storylines built up over thirty-plus years becomes an entanglement difficult to write itself out of. Consequently, the result is choppy and peppered with ideas and concepts seen in earlier movies as various character motivations collide. Dare I say, Mancini might need to kill some of his darlings for the next season to up the stakes.

Blurbs-of-interest: Dourif’s other slasher film credits include Color of Night, Trauma, Urban Legend, Chain Letter, Dead Scared, Rob Zombie’s Halloween and its sequel; Jennifer Tilly was also in The Caretaker and Far From Home; Devon Sawa was Alex in Final Destination; Meg Tilly was in Psycho II.

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

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