At Least We Don't Have to Study

 

Sometimes you just need some zombies. It's just life.

Quick Plot: Sloane is having a rough December morning. Her butter is hard, her father abusive, and her suicide note still needs one more draft. It's almost a relief when fast zombies show up to sprint through her small Canadian town.

She manages to make it to her school where a few classmates have found safety. There's some cafeteria food, running water, and windows that are fairly easy to secure. Also, depression and the justifiable dread that life is short.

Based on Courtney Summers' 2012 novel, This Is Not a Test is written and directed by Adam MacDonald, the prolific creator of Slasher who demonstrated a great understanding of teenage angst in Pyewacket. On paper, this movie offers a LOT: the charming Olivia Holt in the lead, a nostalgic 1998 setting, and a good old fashioned simple zombie story that can always serve as a solid background.

So why is This Is Not a Test so...blah?

It starts with the timeline. A December date is great for giving us some sad snow and tonally conflicting cheery holiday decorations, but This Is Not a Test barely acknowledges it. The kids wisely keep the lights off in their school to not call attention to their hiding space, but this also means the film's coloring is unbearably, glumly gray. 

The young actors try, but they're not served well by a script that can't seem to decide who any of them really are. Early ringleader Cary shows some shifty morality in the beginning, butting heads with a town mother in a way that makes for the film's most interesting conflict. But that's done before Act 2, and Cary seems to spend the rest of the movie in the background before making a grand but confusing choice in the finale. 

The rest of the kids aren't given much more. Olivia Holt feels miscast as the shy, suicidal Sloane. There is some complexity in the relationships between the kids (a sibling pair, some romance, the addition of a teacher to really twist things around) but there just isn't any real development between them. I'm guessing the novel had more heft that the film kind of assumes without providing. It's just an extreme lack of anything definitive to give a perfectly fine group of young actors.

I didn't necessarily dislike This Is Not a Test. It held my attention, but by the end, I felt so disappointed by what I didn't get, especially considering the talent here.

High Points

While not groundbreaking, the zombie action is generally handled quite well (especially when you've seen as many low budget genre movies as I have). There are even some interesting ideas about how they seem to be evolving in 'napping' to wait out their prey

Low Points
I've said it before and I'll most certainly say it again: I hate blood spatter on a camera. All it does is call attention to the fact that you're watching a movie and the director thought this was cool

Lessons Learned

When you're smart you don't have to cheat on a test

Just because you're no longer someone's teacher doesn't mean you should instantly comment on how pretty she is

You can always find extra clothes in the drama department

Rent/Bury/Buy

This Is Not a Test is a slightly better-than-average zombie movie, but that's in part because there are a LOT of very cheaply made zombie movies. It will certainly scratch that very particular undead itch that most horror fans experience every few months, but once you sit back to think about the film, it dwindles. Find it on Shudder if you're curious. 

Hello Mudduh

 

Summer means a lot of things, including me using it as a reason to watch any horror movie set in a sleepaway camp.

Quick Plot: Our backstory comes via a creepily enthusiastic local news anchor reporting about the anniversary of the massacre at Camp Twilight. Seriously, she's REALLY excited about it.

Some years earlier (if I'm understanding this movie's timeline?), a young couple disappeared while skinny dipping. The next night, another pair (bitter middle aged moms who hate their families) were enjoying some much needed beers in the same spot when a figure in black drops by to murder them.

The keystone rangers are fumbling through some clues, but not quickly enough to stop the next visitors: a batch of failing high school students forced to attend a weekend trip at the same cursed location under the watch of principal Warner and enthusiastic teacher Miss Bloom (producer and co-writer Felissa Rose, who obviously knows a thing or two about sleepaway camps). 

The teens grumble and grope while their numbers begin to dwindle. Who could it be prowling the campgrounds in a sweatsuit that looks like it had to have the logo ripped off right before shooting?

Woof, Camp Twilight is not good. The acting makes RuPaul's Drag Race sketches feel positively Shakespearean, while the violence is so quickly staged that we barely register a character's in danger, let alone already stabbed to death. And the reveal...oh my, the reveal.

I actually won't spoil Camp Twilight, because honestly, while you might see the ending coming, it's probably the only real interesting thing the film has going for it. But let me discuss, without naming names, the coda.

After the massacre ends, the film goes on for another five minutes with audio newscasters telling us more developments in the case as the camera watches a car drive on a coastal highway. Over the course of these five minutes, we learn that our killer escaped, a survivor was institutionalized, our killer was spotted, our survivor was released from custody and then arrested (seriously, that one happens in one report), and that our killer was spotted again. I understand any low budget film cutting corners, but by god, there has got to be a better way.

High Points

Felissa Rose seems like a very cheerful and lovely person

Low Points

She's in a very bad movie

Lessons Learned

Just because you're a good enough athlete to have a full athletic scholarship doesn't mean you're able to outrun a slasher walking briskly

The best place to keep your convenience store gun is right in an open cubby

Florida detectives are not only bad at their jobs: they're also terrible at hemming pants

Rent/Buy/Buy

I'm sure there's a small contingent of horror completists who feel compelled to watch every slasher. That's really the only type of person who should watch Camp Twilight. It's on Amazon Prime if you're that kind of weirdo, or, I guess, if you're a parent to one of the actors? 

Of Course He Doesn't Look Like His Profile Picture

It's inevitable that any streaming service will start to make its own content (yes I hate that word, but in this scenario, it feels correct). Occasionally, word on the internet is that they're surprisingly good. Thus, I queued up one of the more notable new entries. 

Quick Plot: Like many young women, Paola stumbles through the world of app-based dating with high hopes and deep disappointments. Finally, she seems to have found a classy, attractive, and normal match. 

Considering this is a horror film called "Match", you'd be correct in having your doubts. 

Paola and mystery date Henry agree to meet at his house. He's a caring guy who doesn't like to expose his ailing mother to COVID germs, which Paola finds charming. When she knocks on his door and meets aforementioned mother, things are less so.

Clad in a dingy bathrobe, Lucille is not immediate mother-in-law gold. She's rude and clearly racist. After a glass of wine and awkward conversation, Paola catches on: she hasn't been texting Henry.

Before she can swipe right, Paola passes out. She awakens in restraints as Lucille wheels her into Henry's room to start making grandkids. 

Henry doesn't quite look like his picture. 

Henry looks like Elizabeth Sparkle's little brother on an off day.

Trapped in a house that might have shared an architect with the setting of The People Under the Stairs, Paola struggles to escape in time for her father's surgery. Outside, her sister Maria suspects the worst.

Refreshingly, Match did indeed meets the expectations I had in being better-than-you'd-expect-when-you-hear-the-words-'Tubi original.' Director Danishka Esterhazy strikes a tricky horror comedy tone that's quite careful about balancing the awfulness of Lucille's crimes with the absurdity of the situation. The script felt zany in an interesting way, so I wasn't too surprised to discover it came from Al and Jon Kaplan, the same team behind the hilarious Silence! The Musical parody of Silence of the Lambs.

Match isn't perfect. The story gets a bit bumpy by the third act, and I thought the ending (no spoilers) was slightly darker than it needed to be. That aside, this was indeed a refreshing watch. The film even manages to navigate its offscreen sexual violence in a way that doesn't feel exploitive. There's a lot working here.

High Points

Sure, those of us watching a horror movie are probably screaming "FINISH HIM" at our expected final girl after she knocks her tormentor out, but Match actually uses this early moment to make a point about Paola. She can't just kill a deformed man she barely knows because she's a kind human being who isn't necessarily prepared to, you know, murder. Humberly González sells this decision quite well, and it goes a long way in us understanding what kind of person Paola is

Low Points

I understand the need to up the body count, but throwing new characters in at the last minute has mixed results. Natalie is a blast and brings out more of Lucille's awfulness, but Ryan's presence is just confusing

Lessons Learned

Watching too much TCM will lower your guard around romantics

Remove wine stains by dabbing, not wiping

Life is easier when you have good vomit aim

Rent/Bury/Buy

Match is a high recommend, and guess what? It's free with a few commercials on Tubi. Have at it. 

Island Living (& Dying)

A tense star-studded triangle on an isolated island involving paranoia about contagious disease? 

This is my love language.

Quick Plot: Kate and Martin are an unhappily married but excessively attractive couple taking a quiet break on the isolated Blackholme Island. They spent happier times there some years before and are hoping to recover from the recent tragedy of Kate's miscarriage.

Obviously, that goes swimmingly.

Kate is distant. She pounds away at an anonymous article on her laptop, keeping Martin at arm's length. He tries to make the best of it (mostly by frying messy eggs) but it's clear a weekend trip is no marriage counselor.

Even though the sweaters can do a LOT of work. 

Things are looking even dimmer after the cottage's generator fails and a mysterious soldier washes up on their shore. 

Armed and covered in blood, Jack awakens to deliver some bad news: there's a deadly outbreak on the mainland. Jack aggressively boards up the cottage while Martin and Kate try to figure out if they've found a savior or psychopath.

I love a story like Retreat. The plot synopsis immediately called to mind Right At Your Door, one of my favorite modern Twilight Zone spins. We know as much as Martin and Kate, so we're equally torn between Jack being the danger or being right the whole time. 

Director Carl Tibbetts (best known to me from the brutal White Bear installment of Black Mirror) seems fairly at home with his tension and setting. Retreat is both claustrophobic and wide open, which is how any isolated island thriller should be.

It's also, unfortunately, incredibly unpleasant. 

Retreat is a dour, dour film. Thandiwe Newton and Cillian Murphy are incredible performers, but they're playing characters who haven't cracked a smile in ten years. Their relationship is all tension even BEFORE Jamie Bell shows up with a gun.

For a bit during its middle stretch, Retreat is quite involving. Those of us who have seen these kinds of movies before have plenty of ideas about which way things might be going, but that doesn't stop us from constantly shifting our alliances and theories. The reveal (no spoilers) even packs in a nice twist that I didn't quite anticipate. So that's...good.

Retreat is...good. It's fine. It's beautifully shot, well-acted, and gets its job done in just over 90 minutes. Unfortunately, its job is just misery.

Scotland can be dreary, and it feels like that mood just coated all of Retreat's spirit. It's a mean film. To its credit, it doesn't fall victim to every pitfall (Martin and Kate's relationship, for example, proves to be stronger than you might think) but there's simply pure darkness once the film hits its last act. I simply didn't need this. 

High Points

When your cast is basically three actors, it's really, really helpful for them to be very good actors

Low Points

Boy did I not need this level of absolute misery in my life today

Lessons Learned

When spilling your deepest secret on a laptop, it's probably a good idea to enable some password protection

Chekhov's Inhaler will always be in play for any film featuring an asthmatic 

Never take a cottage vacation without packing a few board games

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't know who Retreat is really made for. It's made WELL, but it's sad and mean and never gives you that real bit of tension you might get from similar stories. It's there on Hulu if you feel like you need a mood killer. 

Play Ball (Amongst Other Things)

A murder mystery starring Roy Scheider set around the Astrodome? Color me intrigued.

Until I watched the actual movie.

Quick Plot: Things are grave in Galveston. Attractive blond women are turning up dead on the beach, each one sliced up with a large hook and leaving a pocket filled with a cryptic handwritten note. 

On the case is Detective Mike Seaver, a former minor league ballplayer who still has a deep affection for the Houston Astros. Work is hard enough without the complications of his engagement to Roxie, a woman young enough to be the daughter of his high school ex-girlfriend. He can still remember the day they met: she was learning how to ride a tricycle. 

Yes, it's icky, and no, the film doesn't really seem to understand that. It's so much more fun to make mother-in-law jokes!

Mike is on the case, along with a corrupt and/or cowardly police force and a LOT of sexy tenor saxophone. Will he be able to stop the killer before he inevitably targets Mike's own young blonde? And what does it all have to do with the Houston Astros?

Directed by Peter Masterson, Night Game feels like the kind of movie made for tax credits. Its most defining feature is the fact that it's filmed in Texas, which certainly has some humid charm. Scheider is playing a role far less interesting than Brodie or Fosse, but he manages to maintain our attention by finding the right chemistry for each of Night Game's many subplots.

And there are so many! 

The script (by Spencer Eastman and Anthony Palmer) feels like several pages of airport paperbacks were tossed in the air and someone frantically shoved a few into a binder while rushing to catch a plane. There's a running storyline about salvaging the honor of Mike's long-dead dad that goes absolutely nowhere. Mike's annoyance at wedding planning with a mother-in-law from hell (or, you know, HIS OWN HIGH SCHOOL). Even the fact that Mike once had major league dreams barely seems to matter for the case which, in case you forgot, should be a pretty big deal.

There is a certain joy to be found in some of Night Game's very dated rhythms. Cops eating ice cream cones while interrogating suspects. Coroners who love their jobs and the other patrons at the bar who would rather not hear why. '80s wedding attire.

This is not a good movie, and it's frustrating because it has a shocking amount of talent and opportunity at play. Still, even when the story is dull, the film is such particular artifact that it somehow never bored me.

High Points

I'm a sucker for an atmospheric funhouse chase (probably a result of me watching Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse and The Care Bears Movie in the same formative year) so I'll give ample credit to Masterson for his staging of Night Game's high point

Low Points

There are so many decisions one can make when it comes to writing a love interest in a thriller that I just can't understand why Night Game decided to commit so wholeheartedly to this one

Lessons Learned

You can tell a lot about a person by their remains

In the late 1980s, being overweight really just meant being brunette

Giving somebody a television set doesn't mean what it used to

Rent/Bury/Buy

Night Game was far from satisfying, but there was something vaguely interesting to me about its time and place (even if it had no idea what to do with either). If a messy, meandering thriller that loosely involves the 1989 Houston Astros has any appeal, find it on Amazon (or Tubi, because not surprisingly, this is indeed on Tubi).

Protein Power

 

My name is Emily, and three things I love are horror movies, cooking, and figure skating drama.

What You Wish For has two out of three, so so far, we're in good shape. 

Quick Plot: Dissatisfied hotel chef Ryan visits his more successful old culinary school pal Jack at a beautiful estate somewhere in South America, where Jack is working a catering gig. The fellas meet an attractive roaming Brit named Alice and promptly take her home to judge their cooking.  

Jack seems to have it made. His bank balance is well into the seven digit range, but he's also quite lonely and sad about the state of the world. After an intimate late night conversation, Ryan awakens the next day to discover Jack swinging from a noose.

Faced with loan sharks hot on his (and mother's) tail, Ryan makes a move. He cuts down his friend and surfs dark net blogs for advice on how to take over Jack's identity and bank account. Things seem to be going well enough until Jack's employers arrive with high expectations. 

As you might guess from the title, Ryan hasn't exactly calculated his plans too well. 

Jack's gig is financially rewarding but morally damning. His company hosts elite tasting menu dinners for extremely wealthy connoisseurs of, you guessed it, human flesh. The protein must be local. The chef must hunt it. And just to be safe, there should always be a backup in case of spoilage. 

Writer/director Nicholas Tomnay's previous work was The Perfect Host, which tread similar territory (though with far less cannibalism). Both films demonstrate a clear, specific aesthetic and fascination with the slippery decisions we make on a complicated moral scale. There are certainly less interesting themes to explore in horror!

High Points

Similar to The Perfect Host, Tomnay's main character is rather carefully drawn in terms of our sympathy. It would have been very easy to make Ryan more or less likable and give the audience a clear direction in how to judge his actions, but What You Wish For is so thoughtful about how to paint him. Clearly, Ryan has made some mistakes in his past, but he also has his mother's life in his hands. It's just enough to keep him understandable in a way that jumps in right as he has to make REAL decisions that truly define who he will ultimately be

Low Points

I suppose it's not their story and therefore of little interest, but it feels a tad off to paint the wealthy diners without any real color

Lessons Learned

Expect a lot of roasted chickens at the Marriott

The best part of cheating is the possibility that you will be caught (perhaps even by a very handsome local detective)

There's no disguise for sashimi

COVID Alert

There's a certain tell for films that were made during the high days of the pandemic, and you'll primarily notice it in 2-person conversation scenes where you find yourself wondering why you only ever see one character speaking in frame at a time. It had to be done at the time, but it's weirdly unnerving now.

Rent/Bury/Buy

As a regular viewer of The Food Network, I found myself really enjoying What You Wish For. Tomnay shows such a confident hand in exploring these kinds of morality tales while keeping everything visually riveting. It's a high recommend from me and findable on Hulu.