The Brides of CPAP-Ula

Hotels are such a natural setting for horror that it's kind of shocking we don't get more. Maybe it's the intimidation factor of The Shining, a ghost that hangs over virtually any hospitality-themed genre flick. One solution? Lean into it.

Quick Plot: Ruthie (GLOW's Gayle Rankin) has inherited an independent hotel somewhere in upstate New York from her grandmother, who deliberately skipped over Ruthie's mysterious and by accounts, incredibly irresponsible mother. Ruthie would be happy to sell the property and move on but her girlfriend Cal convinces her to at least consider the esteemed role of hotel proprietorship. Deep in emotional debt to the loyal Cal, Ruthie agrees to take a second look.

The weather is cold and the Ubers limited, but Ruthie and Cal bring along Maddie (inconveniently Cal's ex) who in turn brings Fran (even MORE inconveniently the woman Ruthie recently cheated with) to spend a weekend surveying the possibilities while also utilizing two commercial kitchens and an indoor swimming pool.

Tangled former lovers aside, it really does sound like the perfect holiday.

Naturally, things go very, very wrong.

Are the ghosts of the reasonable amount of people who died in Comely Suites haunting the quartet? Is Fran a witch? Ruthie a chainsaw-wielding maniac? Molly Ringwald's TED-Talking hospitality guru pulling the strings?

Many questions are asked in writer/director Stewart Thorndike's Bad Things, and pretty much all of them go defiantly unanswered. This is a film that seems fully aware that it's not going to satisfy most viewers with its aggressively ambiguous finale. 

A bad ending doesn't necessarily ruin a film. I'll recommend Yellowbrickroad until my dying breath knowing full well it leaves everyone (me included) scratching their heads in the final seconds. But in the case of Bad Things, the confusion is so wild that it's pretty impossible to find any kind of satisfaction. 

I don't think that's an accident on Thorndike's part. I just don't understand the choice. 

It may have been the large empty unit surrounded by still snow, but I found myself thinking a lot about Oz Perkins' The Blackcoat's Daughter. It's another film that does tremendous things with a sort of cold (literally AND figuratively) atmosphere but never seems to find the human throughline to connect the audience to the material. 

Bad Things is a frustrating film, perhaps all the more so because I'm pretty sure it's SUPPOSED to be. Normally that would make me mad (and it doesn't NOT make me mad) but there's enough strangeness in the details of Bad Things that I wasn't, well, IRATE. I know that's a terribly unclear summation, but in some ways, it's probably the best I can do. 

High Points

So many hotel-based horror films seem to rely on the natural creepiness of Victorian style turrets or easy colonial ghosts, but there's a whole different sense of unease here in Comely Suites. The walls are muted pink, the paintings generic, bedcovers stiff...there's a lot of eeriness to mine in the utter blandness of this kind of space, and Thorndike and her production team make the most of it

Low Points

Seriously: what actually happened in these 90 minutes?

Lessons Learned

Fatherly and flirty is not the sexy combination you think it is

More often than not, it doesn't pay to stay friends with your ex

Hospitality is an experience, not a space

Rent/Bury/Buy

Overall, I can't say I liked Bad Things, but I continue to find it intriguing. There's definitely something THERE, though ultimately, the movie seems content to not give it to us. I can't particularly recommend it, but I'd be more than happy to hear someone who got more from the film speak for it. As you might guess, it's streaming on Shudder.

Maybe the Biologist Ate Your Baby

 

Like anyone with a modicum of taste, I will watch anything that stars (or is directed by) Rebecca Hall. She may very well be the best actor of her generation, and thankfully for us, horror continues to be the best place to find rich roles for women. So onward into some dark territory we go!

Quick Plot: Margaret seems to be the model of early middle age success. She's a single mother by choice to a college-bound teen daughter while acing her managerial role in a pharmaceutical research company. She runs hard, dresses well, and has full control over her sexual relationship with a married coworker. 

But like many characters Rebecca Hall plays, she's also hanging on by a thread.

It's severed when a blast from her past returns: David, the older biologist who wooed her as an impressionable 18-year-old, shows up for a medical conference and instantly throws her back into the nightmare she barely escaped a lifetime ago. 

Resurrection is one of those movies that is better watched without knowing too much of its story, and to actually describe where the film goes in its second act is meaningless without the otherworldly talents of Rebecca Hall laying it out in a jaw-dropping one-shot 8-minute monologue. It's dark, it's upsetting, and unfortunately for me, it's also a bit unsatisfying.

Before I go into details that involve spoilers, I should say that I don't necessarily NOT recommend Resurrection. It's haunting and unusual in its storytelling, and most importantly, boasts an incredible performance from one of the best actors working today. Also, I'm selfish in wanting to hear more discussion on whether it hit or missed the mark for others, so please, if you DO dive into it (streaming now on Shudder), share your thoughts in the comments. 

So, spoilers ahead.

My primary issue with Resurrection is one that comes up with a lot of women-not-being-believed stories: based on how I interpreted this one, it seems to be saying this one shouldn't. 

The film is coy with David's existence, which in itself is a bit maddening. We see no one but Margaret interact with him directly, lending plenty of support to the theory that he's not really in this space at this time, though writer/director Andrew Semans throws a bit of a cheat card with one direct reference to his presence at Margaret's office. Sometimes that kind of ambiguity feels right and even necessary, but in the case of Resurrection, it's just confusing. 

By the time we get to the film's final, violent act, the viewer has to make a choice in their interpretation. Either this is a supernatural tale and Margaret rescues her 22-year-old infant son from her ex's belly, or, certainly more likely, Margaret has had a mental crack spurred on by her daughter's upcoming transition to college, pulling her deep into the well of trauma created long ago by David's abuse and (possible) infanticide. 

I've been turning over Resurrection in my head for about a week now, and I do think that with that time, my initial annoyance has softened into more curiosity. Semans is exploring deep and rich territory with the best muse one could ask for. This is a film designed to challenge you.

High Points

Rebecca Hall, obviously and forever

Low Points

Aforementioned takeaway message

Lessons Learned

Wearing a sweatshirt is a sign of weakness

Internships, even in the biotech industry, will destroy you

Sperm donors are easy to come by if you have the confidence of a Rebecca Hall

Rent/Bury/Buy

As I said earlier, I wouldn't discourage anyone (in the right mood) from watching Resurrection. It's sharply made and riveting through its entire 100 minutes. It's rare to catch yourself holding your breath during a movie, but Resurrection demands it. I just wish it didn't leave me feeling so muddled. My initial annoyance has definitely passed though, so maybe on a future viewing, I'll discover something completely new. That in itself is exciting for a film. 

In the Company of Vampires

Allow me to make something very, very clear: I would never intentionally sit down to watch a movie written and directed by Neil LaBute. In fact, I had actually removed House of Darkness from my Hulu queue once I realized it was a product of one of my least favorite woman-hating trolls. 

But then weeks passed, it was early, and I quickly said, "this looks like a quick horror movie with a good poster," pressing play fully forgetting the entire reason it wasn't on my list.

So. Here we are. 

Quick Plot: Hap (scream king Justin Long) drives Mina (Kate Bosworth) home to her sprawling gothic castle to end their first date. He's a city boy who feels unsafe in the country, while she's an extremely confident heiress smoothly calling him out on his various bullshit. It's Justin Long: of course he's playing a smarmy bro.

They flirt, or rather, Hap thinks he's flirting by yammering away with the same effective ickiness Long used in Barbarian. Mina's sister Lucy (GET IT?) shows up to triple the date, giving Hap all sorts of typically gross ideas. He drinks whiskey, they drink...wine, and at the 80 minute mark, we get to hear a Neil LaBute male character call women cunts. Order has been restored. 

I try to approach every film with an open mind, but when an artist has spent his entire professional career dedicated to telling his audience that women are evil (and doing so with little skill), I don't know that I owe this one a break. 

I'll say this for House of Darkness: it's short. 

It has to be, since it feels like one of the least ambitious films I've ever seen. LaBute obviously comes from a stage background, so it's not terribly surprising that the script reads more play than movie, and the actual staging offers nothing of visual interest. But it's a dull play even at that. 

I had a lot of issues with Barbarian (primarily the third what-exactly-are-we-trying-to-say-here act) but Justin Long's performance was certainly not one of them. He's exceedingly good at playing exceedingly awful, which makes Hap feel like something he filmed on his Barbarian lunch break. Well, in truth, the entire movie feels like it was made over a long weekend.

There's just no real energy, no real sense of danger or even surprise. We have sisters named Mina and Lucy and guess WHAT? They're vampires. Eventually, they kill Hap. Credits roll. 

Now mind you, I have nothing against the concept of dialogue-driven horror. It's just that if that's your style, make it interesting. Make it refreshing. Make it say something, ANYTHING. 

This movie does not agree. 

High Points

Kate Bosworth doesn't get many notes to play here (remember: it's a Neil LaBute script) but she's effectively captivating with the one she gets

Low Points

...if only her character, or any of the four we meet, offered a single surprise

Lessons Learned

If you really feel the need to brag to your friend about the hot rich chick you're about to bang, consider sending a text rather than a regular volume phone call. Also, it's 2023: who makes PHONE CALLS?

Good stories need to begin with "once upon a time"

Trust me: sisters do not ever want to have a threesome with you

Rent/Bury/Buy

Considering where I stand on Neil LaBute's work, I guess I'll concede that House of Darkness isn't nearly as infuriating as I expected it to be. Instead, it's just ... there. And then it's over, and we all will likely never think about it again. 

Unlike some of his other work...

Eye've Had Enough

The Asylum is a film studio with a very particular reputation, but I've often defended their original films. Yes, their more famous mockbusters and sharknados are silly and more often than not, incredibly lazy, but here and there, their fresher low budget productions offer pleasant surprises. 

Hold Your Breath is not such a case.

Quick Plot: Back in the 1950s, a preacher named Van Hausen became a prolific serial killer with a signature move of gouging out his victims' eyeballs. He even manages to pluck out a few more on the day of his execution by electric chair.

In the present day, we meet a batch of impossibly good-looking and even more impossibly brain-damaged young adults reuniting for the first time since high school for a weekend camp trip. I can't possibly be expected to know or care about their names, so henceforth, we'll refer to them as Sun-In Dye Job Guy & His Horny Girlfriend, 

Mean Blonde, Mean Blonde's Nicer Brunette Sister, Tall Guy, Stoner, and Guy Who Looks Like Sun-In Dye Job Guy But Thankfully Wears Glasses.

They're all awful, and I really can't tell if that was intentional. 

The trip takes a turn when they pass a cemetery and Stoner is too busy stoning to heed Mean Blonde's superstitious warning to hold his breath and avoid being possessed by the soul of someone buried inside. So guess what? Stoner gets possessed by the soul of the eye-popping Van Hausen while the rest of the gang is investigating the abandoned prison that hosted his bloody electrocution.

Oh, and by "investigate" I obviously mean that Sun-In Dye Job Guy and His Horny Girlfriend have sex in the prison morgue while Mean Blonde and her Nicer Brunette Sister playfully tie Tall Guy to an electric chair as a storm breaks out. 

I spent the first half of Hold Your Breath hoping it was a self-aware joke, and the second half with the sad understanding that it was indeed a real attempt to make a horror film. An incredibly dumb and more importantly, unpleasant one at that.

We've all seen Shocker. Even the most diehard Wes Craven fan will say Shocker is very, very bad. But by golly, it's Citizen Kane when placed next to Hold Your Breath. 

The young cast is very good-looking. Their characters are jerks, and dull ones at that. The violence is mostly cheap Asylum CGI-based, which looks as bad as you'd expect, until you get to the graveyard finale and watch a floating ghost fight straight out of the Disney's Haunted Mansion ride and realize, "oh, it's even worse than I expected." The highlight for me was the prison morgue sex scene not because it was a prison morgue sex scene but because it was scored by a song called "Hold Your Breath." 

I'm nothing if not easily entertained by the obvious.

High Points

I don't know, I guess I enjoyed a hand mixer to the eyeball kill because sure, why not gouge an eyeball out with a hand mixer

Low Points

As a lifelong horror fan, I'm not one to complain about gratuitous nudity because I simply don't have the Energizer Bunny-esque funnel of energy it would demand, but Mean Blonde's Nicer Sister's murder feels incredibly icky in its topless execution

Lessons Learned

If you're in the middle of nowhere with a guard tower and fence, you're probably near a prison

Selling weed is one way to pay child support

I genuinely did learn that "Dance Hall" was slang for death row, but what Hold Your Breath taught me was that prisons go ahead and manufacture official signs for such a thing

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't know what anyone can get out of Hold Your Breath. It's mean, ugly, and pretty terrible. But hey, we're horror fans, and for some of us, that kind of description means an automatic queue add. It's on Peacock if you're one of those weirdos. 

(Cult) Family First

 

I don't expect much from a horror movie I've never heard of streaming on Peacock, but low expectations have never kept me from watching a horror movie I've never heard of so here we go!

Quick Plot: A mean little prologue gives us the POV, Michael Meyers-style of a man entering his family's house in order to murder his parents and little sister. Considering this movie's runtime is all of 86 minutes, I'll throw out a theory here that our prologue may have been a last minute "we need more minutes" move.

Next, we meet the Powells at their remote cabin. Mom Kathy (the ever feline Debra Kara Unger) is good with granddaughter Zoey and even better with a glass of white wine, while divorced husband Andrew (Masters of Horror alum Johnathon Schaech) has a different task at hand: donning a mask and kidnapping eldest son Justin with the help of deprogrammer Jeff (Stephen Dorff) for a weekend of tough love. 

Also in tow is Samantha, Justin's suffering girlfriend, and Campbell, the estranged brother who didn't get along with Justin even before he joined a violent satanic cult. As soon as the sun sets, the intervention takes a turn as Justin's "real" family shows up in animal masks and black leather outerwear to take him back.

It didn't surprise me to see the first bit of IMDB trivia describing Jackals as a 15-day shoot. Despite a surprisingly recognizable cast, there's something exceedingly quick and small about the production. That's not always a bad thing: director Kevin Greutert spent years editing and eventually directing in the Saw franchise, which infamously began down and dirty. There's certainly plenty of precedent. 

Unfortunately, Jackals clearly didn't have the time or means (or maybe even desire?) to find much meat in the material. It's a perfectly fine concept for a horror movie, and with better-than-average performances from the more seasoned cast, we end up with an adequately made cheap horror film. 

It's hard to know how good Greutert is as a filmmaker: he's responsible for both the best (Saw VI) and worst (Saw 3D) outputs in the Saw series, and Jackals demonstrates some skill but ultimately feels more like an exercise than real attempt at tension. I'm rooting for him to show us more.

High Points

It would be easy for the family at the heart of Jackals to turn into a screaming mess of dysfunction, so credit goes to the cast and Jared Rivet's script for making each Powell their own person with clearly defined feelings on the Justin situation. I wish there was more of it! 

Low Points

There's a predictable line five minutes in about how the cabin gets no reception. This is obviously a requirement for a movie like this, though in this case, the characters are referring to the antenna on the television set. It wasn't until I started looking up information on Jackals that I realized it was set in 1983. 

Why is this a low point, you ask? It's twofold: 1) the fact that nothing in the film in any way indicates it's taking place 40 years ago is telling to the style and production design, and 2) it has a subtle suggestion that the Satanic Panic was justified, which just feels offensive at this point in time. Do better, incredibly quickly made horror film no one's ever heard of.

Lessons Learned

Maybe you're crazy, or maybe you're just a mom

Guns are powerful, but have you ever tried just heating up a bottle of vegetable oil?

Masks might limit your human hunting visibility, but if you have them made from the right material, they also just might protect you from hot bottles of vegetable oil

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can't really recommend Jackals. It's, well, not that good. But it's better than any less-than-3-week movie should be, and has enough good performances to hold things together. Find it on Peacock, which somehow makes perfect sense.