Christmas With the Satanist Side of the Family

Are you aware of JUST how many cheap horror movies were made in the 1980s? 

Sure, you say. I was a video store kid! I've seen them all!

Unless you actively use tubi, I assure you, sir or madam, you have not.

Quick Plot: Like any smart low budget movie, we open with a remix of public domain holiday music. A group of ominous people clad in robes forms a sacrificial circle where toddler Matthew is led to the center. Cops stop the slaughter right as adult Tom wakes up in bed 40 years later.

This has been his annual Christmas Eve nightmare, but it doesn't stop his family's road trip. Into the station wagon goes Matthew, his chain-smoking father Henry, wife Kathy, teen daughter Erin, and bratty son Billy. Along their route, a pair of policemen stumble on a mysterious vagrant (possibly named Clarence) squatting in an abandoned hotel in the ghost town of Sutterville. The cars pass each other just long enough for the stranger to do some telekinetic ubering, detouring Tom's car to Sutterville as the cops take their prisoner into custody.

At the station, Clarence uses his powers to send a woman hanging up Christmas lights to her death. No one seems to be too bothered by this.

Meanwhile, Tom's family is not doing so well. Their car now broken down in an empty town, everyone gets a bit irritable. Henry worries about his son's soul (and his own heart problem), Kathy gets snappy, teen Erin is bored, and Billy is befriended by a creepy little girl we last saw push prologue Matthew into the satanic circle. Tom seems ready to snap, and that's before he watches a rattlesnake threaten his daughter only to turn into a rubber toy.

I had never heard of Family Reunion until I shuffled through some horror titles on Tubi. On one hand, I can see why: this isn't a particularly good movie, nor is it so memorably Microwave Massacre bad that it would land on a cult list of hidden gems. 

That being said, I had some fun with this. The early family scenes feel surprisingly genuine, which is especially interesting considering this is the sole credit for both child actors (Kaylin Cool and A.J. Woods). Writer/director Michael Hawes seems to also have limited output to this film and a related one, which is a bit of a shame. 

I'm not saying Family Reunion is a good film. It's not really even 'good' by micro-budget 1987 standards. The second half loses most of the momentum and the 90 minute runtime somehow feels like a typo. But it has an endearing energy about it that will make for a pretty satisfying low expectation watch, providing you have a certain softness for this era. 

High Points

It's not that I actually LIKED the Andrews family (young Billy spends the first half of Family Reunion aggressively trying to give his grandfather a heart attack) but I really did find their interactions weirdly charming 

Low Points

Chekhov's Law of Heart Conditions is pretty clear about foreshadowing, which makes it all the weirder that the elderly Henry simply disappears from the action halfway through the movie

Lessons Learned

All medical doctors can do is diagnose fevers

Bullets can't harm a good satanist, but fists sure can

Vagrants keep history alive

Rent/Bury/Buy

Family Reunion is the exact type of '80s horror movie you hope to discover on Tubi. Yes, that pretty much means exactly what you think. Enjoy!

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Barbi

When summer hits, it's time for sharks.

I don't make the rules. 

But occasionally, I love them.

Quick Plot: It's 1946 down under when a quartet of gangsters crashes their stolen bounty deep into a river. Leader Bull Maddock (played by Jake Ryan who I have to believe is known as the Australian James Gandolfini) hires a struggling and scrappy diving company to retrieve the goods. The price is right, even if the details are obviously sketchy.

On the team is enthusiastic Clara, quiet Jimmy, and kind but usually drunk Ernie. 

In the water is a bull shark. 

That's essentially the plot of Fear Below, a genuinely fun little 90 minutes. Written by Gregory Moss and Matthew Holmes (the latter who also directed), this is the kind of zippy little genre flick that satisfies the exact itch you needed scratched. The good guys are likable and quirky, the bad guys are charismatically mean. The shark action isn't as sharp as you might like in a shark movie, but that's where the genius of the setup comes into play.

Fear Below is the kind of concept I love to discover in a genre film: a threat we know in a setting we rarely see. By placing the action in the 1940s, we get layers of added intrigue that raise this above the usual "there's a shark in the water" fare. Our characters are WWII vets. There are racial and gender dynamics that affect each interaction, and the limited technology means there are never any easy solutions. 

More importantly, Fear Below just has a great attitude. I'll take more please. 

High Points

We don't get too much backstory into our characters, but the scraps and actors' charms are just enough to keep us fully invested and rooting for a win

Low Points

I queued up Fear Below because I saw "heist + shark" and thought it would be a dumb good time. Had I any inkling of its 1940s period setting, I probably would have watched faster. All this is to say that "Fear Below" is a terribly bland title, only slightly more interesting than the even emptier poster art. Where was the marketing department on this one? 

Lessons Learned

It's never too early for nicknames

People are never more creative than when they've got a gun to their head

Working in a river is like working in a cave

Rent/Bury/Buy

Fear Below isn't a new classic, but it's quick and fun watch well worth your time. Find it on Hulu.

Spoiler Alert That the Title Is Not a Spoiler Alert

Sometimes you quickly pick a movie to start your warning and after the two minutes of Amazon commercials, decide it's too late to turn back...even after you see the WWE Studios logo.

Quick Plot: Two very attractive people on a road trip stop for the night to have carefully positioned sex in a dumpy motel. One of them is unnamed but played by Luke Evans, while the other is named Betty. They have some kind of confusingly quiet passion that involves Luke Evans loving another woman and Betty whispering about it.

Nearby, a gang of incredibly stupid thieves begin to rob a large house when the owners show up unexpectedly. Hotheaded Flynn wastes no time shooting them up, much to the chagrin of leader Hoag (the always welcome Lee Tergesen). Later that night, they bump into Betty and Luke Evans at a dive bar. Flynn senses a payday and runs them off the road in the hopes of torturing out some bank passwords. Little does he know what he's gotten his team into.

Turns out, Luke Evans is not just a handsome but quiet lover: he's a cartoon slasher. 

We're talking rip off a guy's ear, stab you with a clipboard, stow away in a giant corpse villain. We don't know why he does what he does, but he's quite good at it. Side hobby? Kidnapping pretty young women to play mind games in the hopes of Stockholm Syndroming them into falling in love/ Or fighting love and wanting independence?

Don't think too hard about this. It will just hurt. 

No One Lives was directed by the very dynamic Ryuhei Kitamura, whose gonzo Battlefield Baseball was a blast (American horror fans would probably know him better for the meh Midnight Meat Train). For me, No One Lives falls somewhere in between. 

I didn't enjoy this movie in the least. BUT, for what it's trying to do, I can't say it doesn't entirely succeed. 

Luke Evans is a star. Classically trained, exceedingly handsome, and boasting of film charisma, he takes No One Lives a very long way to feeling like a real movie. I didn't like the tone Kitamura went for, but I can't say the movie doesn't find it quickly and keep the energy up throughout. 

The characters are stupid. Their actions, pretty senseless. Aside from wrestler Tyrus in a small role, No One Lives doesn't necessarily feel like it should come off as a WWE production except, well, it definitely does. The dialogue might have been written by locking a dozen teenagers in a basement with a copy of Playboy, Nietzsche, and Final Draft. 

For me, that wasn't an enjoyable thing. But if it's YOUR thing, then you'll probably enjoy this movie.

High Points

2012 feels a little late in the torture porn cycle for this level of gore, but if that's what you're looking for, I can't say No One Lives does it poorly

Low Points

Sigh. I'm not generally expecting great dialogue from anything that has the WWE Studios logo on it (though maybe I should since Mike Flanagan's Oculus somehow fits that bill) but let's be very clear: when all of your characters (including the ladies) constantly refer to every female onscreen as a b*tch, you've told me everything I need to know about how the production feels about women

Lessons Learned

A team player and total sociopath are easily confused

If you want to be respected, join a book club

The worst thing about the common criminal is that he's mediocre

Rent/Bury/Buy

No One Lives is a very silly movie that certainly doesn't lack enthusiasm. Watch the trailer to see if it's right for you. 

Keep the River (of Blood) On Your Right

I have a soft spot for horror movies about pretty, awful (meaning both physically pretty and morally awful) people fighting for their lives in beautiful jungles. River of Blood, could your premise be more me?

Quick Plot: Somewhere in southeast Asia (for some reason, that's as specific as we get), white men are plowing down some trees when much more athletic natives take them down. 

It's a river of blood!

Nearby, two attractive couples are enjoying their vacation breakfast at a luxury resort before heading out for a boat -- excuse me, kayak -- excursion with tour guide Nick. Ritchie has just sold his company and is eager to lord it over the bitter Ajay. Ajay is having an affair with Ritchie's wife Jasmine and is eager to keep it quiet so he can hold onto his job working for his wife Maya's father. 

Do all attractive person friendships involve so much backstabbing and bitterness? Or is this just a White Lotus effect?

The couples embark down the river under Nick's guidance with strict warnings about the dangers of the nearby cannibal tribes, who not only hunt outsiders, but do so in a slow, terrorizing way to keep their prey alive for training purposes. 

You can guess where it goes from here. 

Written by Tom Boyle and directed by Howard J. Ford, River of Blood is a tricky sort of film. Much like Ford's The Ledge and The Dead series, it's shot beautifully and seems to have great reverence for just how powerful its setting is on film. As an actual viewing experience, it's quite lovely to look at.

The characters, on the other hand, are pretty darn challenging. 

From a performance perspective, everyone is doing their job. But couldn't their blueprint be better?

Louis James's Ajay is one of the most insufferable characters I've seen onscreen in quite a while. Again, the acting is FINE. But why do I have to watch him play THIS PERSON? 

I know what you're thinking: so we can root for him to experience a ridiculously elaborate and painful death. Well...

SPOILER ALERT

One of the strange things about River of Blood is the actual pacing of its latter half. We expect our quintet to start shrinking til we keep a final girl or two, but instead, for all the buildup of how this tribe plays with its prey, we get two fairly quick, low tension kills and one dramatic self-sacrifice that doesn't add up when you do the fight math. 

There's something slightly admirable about River of Blood ending with an otherwise irredeemable (and always insufferable) character making a selfless decision. But this movie isn't really complex enough to make that hit. I spend 88 minutes hating Ajay and powering through the action knowing that surely, he'd get a violent comeuppance. Instead, he makes a noble decision that has that-Titanic-raft-could-have-held-Jack logic to it and we barely see him suffer. Come on!

High Points

Did I mention that River of Blood looks really, really good?

Low Points

Did I mention that the characters in River of Blood are incredibly unlikable?

Lessons Learned

Karma means that even if you can't find a bowl of rice in the jungle, if you're a horrible person, your cell phone can be dried out just in time to reveal your secrets

Blond hair does incredibly well in humid southeast Asian jungles

Baby pythons are harmless and also rather adorable

Rent/Bury/Buy

I watched most of River of Blood on an elliptical machine at the gym, because few things are more motivating for a workout than a movie where fairly fit people are put to a physical test to not be eaten (my fear of cannibals is merited because I'm fairly certain my foodie appetite means that I would be absolutely delicious). As that kind of watch, this was entertaining. It's also frustrating, especially being now the fourth Ford film I've seen where I've found myself wishing it focused on characters that weren't so stomach turning. Make of that what you will! The movie is streaming on Amazon Prime. 

I Thaw the Thaw

Remember when there was basic cable, and then slightly fancier cable channels, and then REALLY gourmand stuff like HBO? And then those became artifacts because the world turned to slightly fancier cable channels to Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime? Well are you ready to now know that it's not even Amazon Prime anymore, but Prime, or MGM+, or something called Howdy?

Yeah, I don't know what it is either, but I had a 7-day test run so why not watch one of its titles before catching the email reminder I set for myself to cancel?

Quick Plot: After a cold open where Val Kilmer reads to us from his journal, the credits give us a Dawn of the Dead 2004-style montage (sans Johnny Cash) of the world on decline due to global warming and bioterrorism. Is this the end of times?

Just just yet. Up in the Canadian arctic, Dr. David Kruipen is doing field studies with his team, waiting on the arrival of a few college students and his estranged daughter Evelyn. When the untimely death of a polar bear leads to the discovery of a near-the-surface wooly mammoth, David freaks out. Some kind of parasite is lurking just under that ancient skin, and it's not here to make friends. 

David tries to cancel the school trip but it's too late. Evelyn hitches a ride with pilot Bart and students Ling, Frederico, and Atom only to arrive and find a near-empty station. The only sign of David's group is a dying Jane, David's partner. She's not looking good. 

Things get pretty The Thing-y quickly. Turns out, the polar bear and mammoth carcasses are riddled with tiny bugs that quickly reproduce and lay eggs under their targets' skin. Unable to resist a wilderness selfie, Bart is already infected, with Ling following quickly. Frederico calls in a helicopter rescue much to the protests of Evelyn and Atom, who realize their escape could lead to global infection.

I watched The Thaw on a lazy Sunday morning with fairly low expectations.  It came out during Val Kilmer's unremarkable straight-to-streaming era from a writer/director (Mark A. Lewis) with a pretty skim resume. Also, it was streaming on Howdy, which I will continue to say, whatever that is. 

Imagine my glee at realizing The Thaw was okay! Sure, the bugs are as CGI as you'd imagine from a lowish budget Canadian sci-fi horror of the late aughts, but Lewis wisely doesn't lean too hard on these critters as its main source of terror. There's some pretty gnarly, possible practical effects showing the actual eggs and bites that are far more horrifying. 

Perhaps more importantly, The Thaw has a very clear point of view. Yes, its global warming stance is pretty heavy-handed but...you know, we're 17 years removed and it's not like things have gotten better. There are worse things a horror filmmaker can be than politically charged about a genuine environmental concern and how society continues to ignore it. 

High Points

Having seen my share of these kinds of movies, I assumed that Evelyn was being set up as the prissy spoiled teen ill-equipped for the arctic. Between the writing and Martha MacIsaac's performance, it was refreshing for her to quickly reveal more layers. Yes, Evelyn has what it takes to be a physically strong and clever final girl, but we also get to see a surprisingly rich understanding of how she sees the world, one that actually informs the overall theme

Low Points

I can understand the thought process of having hot young people in your movie for the sake of, you know, hot young people, but aside from Evelyn and a little bit of Atom's quick backstory, it feels like The Thaw might have worked better sticking with the adult characters

Lessons Learned

An phobia is something you have since you're a kid

Nothing is worse than still hating your dad after he dies

You can't just chop off body parts

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, I'm not suggesting anyone should pay for Howdy or risk a free trial and forget to cancel, but I would certainly recommend The Thaw for, you know, a lazy Sunday morning. It's not necessarily a hidden gem, but for 94 minutes, I was mostly entertained. 

But Do Any Raccoons Live In This City?

 

I tried to play the original Resident Evil Playstation game once. It did not go well.

The opening? Awesome. A full zombie setup dropped into a spooky gothic mansion? SIGN LATE TEENS ME UP.

There was a small problem: I couldn't get past the very round. 

After a few years away from Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, my video game skills had decayed. Have you SEEN a Playstation control? A plane's cockpit has fewer buttons!

Needless to say, I have next to no experience with the Resident Evil games. I've seen (I think?) all of the live action films up to this one, and generally had a good, occasionally great time, even without any narrative context. To see a new zombie movie in the theaters in 2002 was a shockingly exciting moment in time. It was a subgenre that had, for so long, been restricted to VHS rentals. This was before 28 Days Later made it across the Atlantic Ocean, before The Walking Dead would turn civilians into undead obsessives. 

The world was a different place.

I sound very old.

Quick Plot: Young Claire and Chris Redfield are growing up in the Raccoon City Orphanage with only each other to lean on. When she realizes she's about to become a test subject, Claire runs away, returning some years later via hitchhike in the form of well-dressed and ridiculously well-haired Kaya Scodelario. 

Chris had stayed behind under the care of orphanage president/mad scientist  Dr. Dirkin, played by the always ominously Aryan Neal McDonough. Now a strapping young man, Chris is part of the local special ops force with pals Jill Valentine and Albert Wexler. Also in town is Chief Irons and rookie cop Leon Kennedy.

My understanding, based on how the movie always slows down when a character's name is stated, is that these names are very, very important for those who have played the video games. For Luddites like me, they just sound a little silly.

It doesn't take long for hell to break out in town. Claire has some insider information from online forums that Raccoon City, about to become a ghost town once Umbrella Corporation relocates, has a sordid history of dangerous pollution and illegal medical experimentation. Naturally, she arrives right in time for the town's remaining residents to start turning.

 

Set in 1998, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City admirably commits itself to using CGI technology fitting of its era. Some quick research reveals the film's budget was continuously reduced from conception to filming, apparently forcing the hand of director Johannes Roberts (he of the slightly disappointing 47 Meters Down and surprisingly great The Strangers: Prey At Night) to make constant cuts. That might also explain the dialogue.

No, you don't necessarily need dollars for good writing, but if your movie keeps losing scenes and transitions, then your script simply has to include exposition. Does it have to be handled as clumsily as this movie? Probably not. By the third time a character stops to say, "You might be wondering how I know so much about this," the only way forward is to imagine an onscreen ticker digitally added that reads "JUST KEEP REMINDING YOURSELF: IT'S BASED ON A VIDEO GAME. IT'S BASED ON A VIDEO GAME. IT'S BASED ON A -"

I say this all with a fair amount of affection because you know what? I enjoyed this stupid movie!

Is it at the level of Street Fighter? Nothing is. Is it many sonic booms above Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li? Well yes, but really, what isn't?

This movie does not look very good. Its screenplay went through dozens of rewrites and every frame seems to still show a red pen edit. There is no real world where a dignified person could call Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a good movie. But much like (most of) the original Paul W. Anderson series, it's fun. As the kids never seem to tire of saying, it understands the assignment, even if its studio could only scrounge up a few broken pencils to complete it. Sure, I was never scared, but I was also never bored. That's something!

High Points

I don't envy any actor trying to balance their performance in a video game genre movie, but for the most part, the cast manages to maintain some form of dignity, occasionally as human beings (Tom Hopper's Wexler), comic relief (the always welcome Donal Logue as Irons), or in the form of the reliable coolness of Kaya Scodelario

 

Low Points

I don't see a reason to harp on the same things any real critic would call out here (the fact that the movie isn't, you know, traditionally very good) so instead, let's point out something that will never not infuriate me: that every character behind the wheel cannot keep their eyes on the road. HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING FROM THE DESCENT?

Lessons Learned

A chat room is a place on the internet where people chat

You never know what you'll find in first class

Nothing feels better than your big brother's football helmet

Rent/Bury/Buy

It's hard to know who will or won't enjoy this iteration of Resident Evil. Fans of the game will likely spot every easter egg faster than Gaston when hungry, but does that mean this is a good adaptation? I have no idea. Is it a good action horror movie? Not really, but it's never dull! For me, this was a satisfying 100 minutes, and I'm disappointed that there won't be a sequel from the same team.