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Gays n’ Dolls

January 5, 2022 Hud Leave a comment

CHUCKY

2021/365m

“A classic coming of rage story.”

Directors: Don Mancini, Dermott Downs, Leslie Libman, Samir Rehem, Jeff Renfroe / Writers: Sarah Acosta, Kim Garland, Don Mancini, Nick Zigler, Harley Peyton, Mallory Westfall, Isabella Gutierrez, Rachael Paradis / Cast: Zackary Arthur, Bjorgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Teo Briones, Brad Dourif, Devon Sawa, Fiona Dourif, Jennifer Tilly, Lexa Doig, Rachelle Casseus, Alex Vincent, Christine Elise, Barbara Alyn Woods, Michael Therriault, Carina Battrick.

Body Count: 27

Laughter Lines: “You’re pathetic. You’re nothing. You’re Teddy Ruxpin with a knife.”

While the TV series adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer was doubling as a cure for insomnia on Amazon Prime, the SyFy Network was raking in viewers with an eight-part continuation of the Child’s Play series that, excluding the 2019 reimagining, had sat dormant since 2017’s straight-to-DVD Cult of Chucky, which had left a lot of unanswered questions. Unavoidable spoilers must follow.

We should be thankful original creator Don Mancini has stayed with his property through its controversies, critiques, and general lack of visibility, despite easily having the best continuity through any of the major horror franchises that came out of the 80s.

Cult left us hanging after Chucky finally managed a successful possession of a living body, in this case poor Nica, who had been blamed for murdering her family. Escaping the clinic with Tiffany, as Andy Barclay was too late to rescue them, they also left behind a number of walkin’ talkin’ stalkin’ Good Guy dolls.

In the now, one such doll turns up at a yard sale in Hackensack, NJ, hometown of Charles Lee Ray. Awkward teenager Jake picks it up, intending to turn it into one of his homemade art pieces, constructed out of doll parts. When his alcoholic father intervenes, shy Jake finds companionship in Chucky, who quickly does away with his dad, making it look like an accident. Jake is sent to live with his rich uncle’s family, including his sporty cousin and secret-wielding aunt. At school, Jake is tormented by nasty mayor’s daughter (and girlfriend to his cousin) Lexy, but finds solace in the company of true crime podcaster Devon, son of a Hackensack PD detective.

Chucky plays the long game, trying to get Jake to don the knife and start slicing, committing murders of his own when he feels like it: The maid falls face first into the upturned knife drawer of a dishwasher, a detective is stabbed to death with syringes, the junior high principal is decapitated…

Tiffany and Nica later come to town and move into the childhood home of Chucky’s, while Nica slips in and out of consciousness, battling for dominance over her body. Hot on their heels, Andy and Kyle are hunting down and destroying the remaining possessed Good Guy dolls before they can convince more kids to kill.

There are a gazillion more plot threads to Chucky, ranging from neglectful parents, secret cancer diagnoses, an unlikely kinship between Jake and Lexy once she too discovers Chucky’s evil. At the forefront though is the brave decision to make our 14-year-old lead openly gay. Expectedly, dark corners of internet chatter moaned and whinged, seemingly unaware the ‘series they loved’ was created by a gay man, one who has clearly waited almost 35 years to be able to inject some of his own experience into the story. Chucky attempts to leverage this, providing sympathetic commentary about Glen/Glenda (where are they?) and also his own boyhood, with flashbacks showing his first murders and meeting Tiffany. In these scenes Fiona Dourif stands in for her father to great effect.

The series ends with the door more than slightly ajar for an evident second series, which slightly compromised the big finale set piece, set during a screening of Frankenstein and featuring a unique spin on the concept of a pain in the ass. Things don’t unfold the way you might think they will based on how the penultimate episode ends, but it’s still fun stuff, with Dourif Snr on form as the voice of Chucky, spewing some excellent lines throughout. Any B-movie series that succeeds in bringing back so many alumni should be applauded. There are only maybe a handful of other surviving characters they could possibly even dredge up at this point.

One overlooked point of contention is the legend of Chucky himself. In Seed, Hollywood was producing a movie about him, but everyone acts oblivious to the presence of the sometimes-prolific doll that keeps turning up at murder scenes. You’d think there’d be no way any parent would trust one of these things with a six-year-old.

Blurbs-of-interest: Devon Sawa was the lead in Final Destination; Lexa Doig was the lead in Jason X; other than Bride, Seed, Curse, and Cult, J-Till was also in Far from Home and The Caretaker; Brad Dourif’s other slasher appearances include both of Rob Zombie’s Halloween films, Color of Night, Chain Letter, Trauma, Urban Legend, and Dead Scared.

Reviews

We don’t care what we did last summer

November 25, 2021 Hud Leave a comment

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

2021/380m

Directors: Johanna Stokes, Lana Cho, Phoebe Fisher, Sara Goodman, Shay Hatten, Chaconne Martin-Berkowicz, Gary Tieche / Writers: Logan Kibens, Craig William MacNeill, Benjamin Semanoff, Lois Duncan (novel) / Cast: Madison Iseman, Brianne Tju, Ezekiel Goodman, Bill Heck, Ashley Moore, Fiona Rene, Sebastian Amoruso, Cassie Beck, Brooke Bloom, Eric William Morris.

Body Count: 10

Laughter Lines: “What’s with all the screams, Neve Campbell?”

A proposed second adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer helmed by Mike Flanagan (of Hush, Oculus, and The Haunting of Hill House notoriety) was floating around for a few years, a script was ready to go, reportedly going at Lois Duncan’s novel from a more traditional perspective. Whatever happened to that, it never seemed to advance and the idea of a teen TV series floated to the top, produced again by Neil H. Moritz.

As with all of these things, Pretty Little Liars always seems to get namechecked as a source of inspiration. I never watched past the first episode of that show so have little context, but those I know who did stick with it groaned that it outstayed its welcome by repeatedly tacking on extra layers to the mystery. Scream – The TV Series was just about okay (and also featured Brianne Tju), but the idea behind I Know… seems more suited to a multi-episode arc than most other slasher ventures.

Come Autumn 2021, Amazon Prime released an episode a week to a rather dismal reaction from most corners. Let’s dive in… Spoilers in the road ahead – careful you don’t run them down.

Episode 1 introduces us to Hawaii and our core teen cast, who are celebrating graduating high school at a lavish party thrown by rich girl Margot’s mother. In attendance is her gay best friend Johnny, intense intellectual type Dylan, drug dealin’ Riley, good time girl Lennon and, lurking, Lennon’s shy identical twin sister Alison. It’s quickly established that the sisters are Yin & Yang, with Lennon popular, liberal with drugs and sexual fluidity. When she screws Alison’s long term crush Dylan, they argue and she storms out. Wait… who storms out?

Clambering into a jeep wasted, the five teens rocket down the freeway and run over Alison, who’s inexplicably in the middle of the road at night. Panicking as Julie, Ray, Helen, and Barry once did, they elect to place the body in a cave that floods to wash it out into the Pacific and tell everybody Alison ran away. The cave was also the scene of a mass cult suicide some years earlier that may or may not have been what killed the twins’ mom. Their grumpy dad, Bruce, isn’t particularly forthcoming, but you know we’ll find out eventually…

One year later, Lennon returns from her first year of college and finds a severed goats head in her closet and ‘I know what you did last summer’ scrawled on the mirror. DUH DUH DUUUUHHHH. And at the end of episode 1, the entirely unsurprising revelation that this is in fact Alison is tossed to us like crumbs. Some blah over a piece of jewellery, taking her sister’s jacket and her nasty words to heart, Alison decided to pretend to try on fun loving, popular Lennon for size.

While Alison continues to pretend she’s Lennon, we learn that her father is in on the secret, something around it being more believable troubled Alison would disappear. She reconnects with her friends and shares the threat. Suspects are quickly slotted in: Riley’s attitude-tastic mom, Courtney, local weirdo Clara, who saw the teens that night, the Sheriff who is screwing Bruce, and dorky deputy Doug, whose investigative skills might jeopardise the killer’s scheme. Dylan, too, has gone understandably weird.

The group begin to receive texts ‘from Alison’ and eventually at the end of the second episode, the killing begins. There’s no fisherman, no cool mask, and in visual scope terms, no killer – they’re completely off-camera, which will clue in seasoned viewers to narrowing their suspect field down a bit.

A few days later, Lennon’s body appears in the ocean in front of the family guesthouse. Considering she’s been dead a year, the corpse is remarkably well preserved, leading Bruce to confront weird Clara, who admits she kept it with her all this time and was treating it for transition into the next life (this part-explains the honey on the poster).

More murders occur, including a grisly double at the memorial service for ‘Alison’, death-by-slushie machine, one poor sod killed on the toilet… All the while, the remaining members of the group can’t get their shit together to investigate cohesively. Questionably, they continue to laugh about stuff, do drugs, hook up, play pranks while snooping around a suspect’s house…

Your friend is dead. People wish you dead. What are you doing?

Crucially, the major black mark against this iteration of the story is that the characters are assholes. Every last one of them. Had there been a decent, believable reason for Alison to become Lennon, it might wash, but she literally just alters her attitude to become bitchy and mean, leading on various suitors and seemingly unfazed by the growing body count. Whereas the 1997 film focused on the damage done to the characters’ lives by their secret, these kids seem to give no fucks whatsoever, extracting any sense of morality or accountability.

Some bloody crime scenes are interesting, but the murder set pieces are minimally allotted any time or tension – no chase scenes are possible given the lengths the camera goes to to keep the killer out of the frame, leaving this a stalk n’ slasher without much stalk and a base level of minimal slash.

Ultimately, the killer’s identity isn’t totally predictable, thanks to some misdirection earlier, but the motive is fuzzy and shallow to the point there’s a tacked on piece to camera by the character at the end revealing how they did it. Although, watch back again and you’d see that they fudged it – the killer reacts in horror at one murder, but nobody else was with them, so why even bother acting shocked? Stranger still is the coda shared by the surviving characters, a sort of cynical “happily ever after” that flies directly in the face of the motive Alison was on the receiving end of one scene prior!?

Reviews

New Direction

February 18, 2021 Hud One comment

WRONG TURN

2021/110m

A.k.a. Wrong Turn 7; Wrong Turn: The Foundation

“This land is their land.”

Director: Mike P. Nelson / Writer: Alan B. McElroy / Cast: Charlotte Vega, Matthew Modine, Bill Sage, Adain Bradley, Emma Dumont, Dylan McTee, Daisy Head, Tim deZarn, Amy Warner, Adrian Favela, Vardaarn Arora.

Body Count: 20

Laughter Lines: “Remember it’s pizza-movie night. The boys picked something with… inbred cannibals.” / “Again??”

Stand by for a direction you didn’t expect with this series reboot, shot with the suffix of The Foundation, but then just given the same title as the 2003 original so’s not to end up in Children of the Corn territory with an endless array of “what number is this??” confusions. Try not to trip over some of the minor spoilers.

After five sequels of largely sub-par quality that weaved an ever more head-scratching timeline of events, it’s goodbye to Three-Finger, One-Eye and Saw-Tooth and hello to a mountain dwelling community of… people. That’s it really. People who live on the mountain, keep themselves to themselves, but don’t take particularly kindly to interlopers. That said, they’re not deranged murderers either, simply defenders of their land and way of life. They are… THE FOUNDATION.

From the off, it’s evident that the budget and creative thinking has been massively overhauled (and the film even got a one-day theatrical run), as we join Matthew Modine’s stressed out father, driving into a small town by the Appalachians looking for his daughter Jennifer and her friends, who haven’t been heard from in six weeks. Echoes of the more sinister parts of the original (and the Friday the 13th reboot) abound as folks tell him people go missing a lot around there and never turn up – so STAY. ON. THE. TRAIL.

Of course, a diversion to go and look for some historical monument leads to an encounter with THE FOUNDATION and a log flies down the hill, killing one of the group gruesomely. Believing it to be an accident, but now lost, they camp for the night and wake up to find all their phones and one of their friends AWOL. Another trap is triggered and various panic and confusion culminates in short-tempered Adam beating to death a member of THE FOUNDATION with a log.

The surviving friends are captured and put on trial by the elders, who all hang out in animal skulls and camo-garb (for hunting, they say), saying that nobody was going to kill anyone, but nevertheless sentence Adam to death and the others to ‘darkness’, which means the eyes are gouged with a hot poker and they’re left to fend for themselves in a cave. Jennifer manages to negotiate for herself and boyfriend Darius and they become members of the Hotel California that is… THE FOUNDATION.

Back to the present we come to join Jen’s dad as he ventures into the wilderness to find her, and the rest of the film follows their escape attempts, with some unexpected allies recruited along the way.

The differences between Wrong Turn of olde and this reboot are stark, from being thirty whole minutes longer, there are no mutant inbred cannibals (see that Laughter Line – original writer McElroy’s sassy swipe at what’s been done to his vision?) and this steps as far as it can from being a backwoods slasher film, rejigging the entire franchise concept. Rustic traps do continue to feature for fans of inventive squishings and there are some spine tingling scenes involving the disguises used by the forest dwellers.

Good performances from Vega, Sage, and Modine pretty much compensate for all of the ropey amateur-hour acting of the interim sequels. However, the crowded supporting cast means that most of the others fade into the background: Two of the hikers are a gay couple (male for a refreshing alternate to the repetitive girl-on-girl stuff from Wrong Turn 4), but do little other than hold hands a couple of times before being summarily killed off; the others amount to little more than angry guy, quippy girl, and ideal boyfriend.

An interesting premise with some nice ideas about societies that could’ve used a little more exploration. Will future instalments follow on with THE FOUNDATION or can we expect the ever-rubbery-masked trio of people-eaters to return?

Blurbs-of-interest: Bill Sage was also in Fender Bender. Writer McElroy scribed Halloween 4.

Reviews

Slice Versa

December 11, 2020 Hud Leave a comment

FREAKY

2020/102m

“Basic switch. Killer new look.”

Director/Writer: Christopher Landon / Writer: Michael Kennedy / Cast: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Celeste O’Connor, Misha Osherovich, Uriah Shelton, Katie Finneran, Alan Ruck, Dana Drori, Melissa Collazo, Kelly Lamor Wilson, Magnus Diehl.

Body Count: 11

Laughter Lines: “You’re black, I’m gay – we’re so dead!”

Where Happy Death Day would cut away, Freaky is here to provide the slashes and slits we missed in this ‘from the director of…’ recipient of the crown, which is a hop, skip and a jump from a time loop dilemma to ye olde body swap dilemma. The title should tell you as much: it was shot as Freaky Friday the 13th before being cropped down.

And of course, it being ready to go in The Year That Time Wouldn’t Fucking Pass By Swiftly Enough 2020, a big opening was screwed up and it mostly landed on VoD platforms. Sad times. It’s a good thing then, that Freaky is all kinds of fun!

The legend of The Blissfield Butcher, who has struck around Homecoming “every year since 1977”, is dissected by two teen couples partying at rich girl Ginny’s house and they quickly fall victim to a hulking loon in a mask not a million miles from something right outta Jason’s wardrobe. Before he leaves, the Butcher takes an antique dagger that Ginny’s collector-father had on display.

We then meet high school sad sack Millie, who is watching life go by to support her alcoholic mom, who is still not over the death of Millie’s father a year earlier. Older sister Charlene – a local cop – is all rules and discipline. But fortunately Millie has best friends Nyla and Joshua to count on. She pines for the attention of off-the-shelf dream-jock Booker, is teased by nasty rich girl Ryler, and cruelly humiliated in front of the class by her shop teacher.

After mom passes out and forgets to pick Millie up after the big game, the Butcher shows up and stabs her with the enchanted dagger. The moon clouds over, the sky churns, and they both receive an identical stab wound simultaneously: Millie is now inside the 6ft5 Butcher’s body, he is in that of a 5ft5 teenage girl. Hi-jinks shall ensue.

While Millie tries to stay incognito as locals recognise him/her from the composites drawn up of the killer, ‘Millie’ returns to school, all lipstick and bad-ass leather jacket. The boys drool, Nyla and Joshua write it off as PTSD, and ‘she’ starts killing ASAP, starting with Ryler, who is shut into one of the school’s cryo chambers (!?), and topples over, shattering into a gazillion pieces, when Millie-as-the-Butcher finds the body. Then goes mean Mr Shop Teacher, although he nearly makes it, as ‘Millie’ discovers the body of teen girl has its pitfalls in the brute strength department.

Real Millie manages to corner Nyla and Joshua and convince them that she’s stuck inside the Butcher’s body. Some research and a convenient Spanish teacher help resolve that the spiritual knife – La Dola – will switch souls and after 24 hours the spell will become irreversible. They need to capture Fake Millie to transfer things back to equilibrium.

Naturally, things aren’t that simple: The dagger is in police custody and even after successfully subduing ‘Millie’, the band of heroes – now including Booker – hatch a plan to switch things back, but ‘Millie’ clearly has other ideas.

Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son, It’s a Boy-Girl Thing, and however many versions of Freaky Friday are floating around: Like all of the characters stuck in their mom/dad/enemy’s body, Millie learns about herself, her suffering family, and even enjoys the lil bit of power being a huge guy affords her (the scene with the bathroom bully is great). Vaughn is good as the girl trying to operate her newly acquired huge frame, never camping it up too much, while Newton slots into the cold-hearted psycho role with ease, but it’s O’Connor and Osherovich as Millie’s BFF’s who steal most of the scenes they’re in.

Likeable through and through and, like Landon’s earlier films, it tessellates nicely over more than one genre type, proving there are still a lot or quirky variations on the teen slasher available.

Blurb-of-interest: Vaughn played Norman Bates in the 1998 Psycho remake.

Reviews

Fan Service

November 13, 2020 Hud Leave a comment

FRIDAY THE 13TH: VENGEANCE

2019/94m

“More than a fan film.”

Director/Writer: Jeremy Brown / Writers: Stacy Brown, Dustin Glen Montierth, Jason Brooks, T.C. De Witt, Mike Meade / Cast: C.J. Graham, Kelly Tappan, Luke Schuck, Steve Dash, Jason Brooks, Christian Sullivan, Natalie Schnelle, Tabitha Bastien, Ray Hopper, Jon A. Ravenholt, Diana Prince, Dan Feldmeir, Senae Loutsis, Ellen Smith, Tommy McLoughlin.

Body Count: 39+

Laughter Lines: “Maybe we should ditch the bikes and cut through the woods?”

I’ve often thought that many of the problems that have beset the Friday the 13th series might be solved if the series just became a straight-to-video show. It’d likely mean these lengthy gaps between entries would be reduced for one thing.

It seems that, tired of waiting, some folks have decided to go it alone. Never Hike Alone and its recent follow up showed how much can be achieved on micro-budgets, and Vengeance – a film actually longer than most of the originals! – landed looking like I’d expect DTV Jason to present: A little more rustic around the edges, with the requisite cheap horror trope of added lesbianism, and a redonkulously high body count.

Weaving a tale between the available elements, this really is a love letter chiefly to 1986’s Jason Lives, picking up in 2018 and running with the excised idea of Jason’s daddy Elias Voorhees making his long awaited debut. This point confused me somewhat – as he’d surely be around 90, but then there’s something about multiple death certificates too, so is he a ghost?? Either way, Jason resurrects from the bottom of Crystal Lake and wastes no time in squishing, impaling, hacking, and tearing limb from limb everyone he encounters. The local sheriff (the late Steve Dash, from Part 2) is keen to chalk things up to bear attacks.

Not too far away, Tommy Jarvis’ daughters Angie and Ashley are worried about their missing pa. Angie’s Jason-obsessed friend Rob agrees to help her search for him, rounding up relatives of other survivors: nieces and nephews of Ginny, Chris, and The Final Chapter‘s Rob. They’re sold on stopping Jason so head off into the wilderness where they cross paths with a Crystal Lake tour group.

Jason, meanwhile, has hacked his way through another tour group, and a chain gang of inmates clearing the forest, while Elias (CJ Graham) is busy hunting down the very counsellors responsible for his son’s 1957 drowning, who we get to see in a cute flashback where people say ‘fuck’ a lot more than they probably would have done back then.

Vengeance is pure love for the lore around the movies, from the font used in the credits, to the score BY HARRY MANFREDINI!!! and some truly head-tilting ideas for denouements courtesy of the J-man. My only real complaint is that it’s a very ‘busy’ film, with multiple parties in play at any one time, sending the coroner’s backlog stratospheric and a sense of futility for a couple of seemingly important characters who are summarily killed before they achieve anything, making their presence seem superfluous. It’s neither here nor there though, the people behind this have laid their adoration out for all to see and it’s something really worth the time of any Crystal Lake fan.

A sequel followed in 2022.

Reviews

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