I Know What You (COV)DID Last Summer

 

Having found Sick pretty mediocre, I wasn't sure if I would actually write about it. Then I realized I had a good post title and now, well, here we are.

Quick Plot: It's April 2020, that magical time in recent history when we finally realized the severity of the coronavirus and accepted that life would, for the immediate future, be very, very different. This is especially true for young college student Tyler, who worries about hand sanitizer during his tense foray for groceries only to come home and be murdered by a mysterious masked man with a grudge.

Separately, his classmates Parker and Miri are heading to Parker's perfectly remote and sprawling country retreat to wait out the rest of lockdown (you sweet summer children you). Before you can identify anything about these girls that makes them interesting, the aforementioned stabber has found them, and this time, he's not alone.

Director John Hyams comes with a whole lot of experience directing horror television (including the delightful Chucky). Working with a script from Scream creator Kevin Williamson and Katelyn Crabb, he certainly seems to understand the basics of crafting a small stakes slasher, wisely keeping a brisk running time under 90 minutes.

I just wish I cared.

It's possible that I've officially passed into the grumpy old lady phase of horror movie reactions. I watched Sick a few days after turning one year older, and very quickly found myself grumbling about the fact that I had to Google new teen text acronyms. Like the most recent Scream (or Scream V, for those of us still bewildered as to this series' naming convention), I found myself distracted by just how much these characters did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't particularly like them, and the film's big reveal does nothing to help that. More importantly, I didn't find them interesting.

Now before you become unable to picture as anything other than the female Abe Simpson (I hate onions and would never wear one on my belt, even if it WAS the style at the time) please believe me when I say I like young people! I'm inspired by Gen-Z! They're inheriting the world at its very worst and seem far more ready and willing to make it better.

Parker and Miri, though, just exist, in the same way that the fairly bland protagonists of, say, Graduation Day or Edge of the Axe exist. Not every slasher needs a Gale Weathers or Tommy Jarvis, but when the story is so lean and the action is good but not great, it helps to have something to put your hook in.

High Points

I'm sure it's a moment that's already been heavily meme'd, but yes, the "where's your mask?" qualifier amid chaos is worth a chuckle

Low Points

Without spoiling the third act reveal, the calendar math in every direction is pretty unforgivably flawed

Lessons Learned

The lights on your router illuminate when you send email (did everyone know that but me? Is that a real thing? HOW OLD AM I?)

Cling wrap is a broken leg's best friend

The best way to protect yourself in a home invasion is to keep your counter fully stocked with potential projectiles

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was left pretty underwhelmed by Sick, but it's perfectly adequate if you're just looking to land on a new slasher. Find it on Peacock if you care. 

Hail Caesar (Salad Horror)

 

The "pretty people in peril slasher" is the Caesar salad of the horror world. Stay with me for a moment on this.

It's always available on the menu/catalog, and you're never REALLY excited to consume it. But there's a comfort in knowing it will have certain elements (parmesan cheese/an alpha male dying horribly, crunchy croutons/a complicated backstory for its villain) and every now and then, a satisfying surprise (that twist! real anchovies!). It might be disappointing, but it will rarely miss its fairly unambitious target.

Thus do we take a ride on Hell Trip. 

Quick Plot: A group of twentysomething "Americans" (with very rich non-American accents) land in Africa for vacation to instant bad news. Their tour leader Adam is several hours late and they're only a few minutes into their drive when the van breaks down, forcing them to trek 8 miles through the jungle where, well, very little actually happens. 

They eventually make it to their resort only to find it abandoned. The hosts have left a note explaining the whole staff left for a funeral, so the group takes advantage of the now open bar and convene outside for a barbecue. Finally, the slaughtering starts. 

That's pretty much Hell Trip in a nutshell. Filmed in South Africa with a camera lens that was apparently first dipped in the water dish you use to rinse off a paintbrush, it comes with a fresh setting and dour point of view. The young actors put their best attractive feet forward, but there's no one to latch onto, with half-hearted attempts at any character building quickly lost once the action (finally) kicks in.

Director Patrick Garcia (co-writing with assumed brother George Garcia) clearly enjoys working in the genre, and the way Hell Trip's final act unfolds suggests there's some more potential down the line. Horror fans of the "I'll watch anything" variety will find some enjoyment, but it's far from the smoothest safari ride.

High Points

Once the movie's switch flips to the final hunt, the actual execution (pun somewhat intended) of the violence is done quite effectively, with faster paced attacks that make much more sense than dragging out every death

Low Points

There's a lot to pick on in such a beginner project as Hell Trip, so let me focus on two crimes that occur in the opening five minutes:

1- Credit choices that rather pretentiously list out entire character names in a very difficult to read red font

2- Having a character throw up in full graphic detail multiple times. For a movie that barely hits feature length, this means something like 5% of running time is spent on vomit

Lessons Learned:

Being in the military will make you emotionless

Never confuse bad luck with not actually checking the voltage 

When a story is exciting, The New York Times is known for using exclamation points in their headlines

Always disinfect a wound before it gets infected 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Hell Trip isn't going to do much for anyone, but at least its final twenty minutes pack some excitement. If you're scraping the bottom of the Amazon Prime barrel, it's got a very minor serving of protein. 

Camp Bacon

Is They/Them the cleverest titled slasher film of all time? If your first instinct is a shrug, let me remind you that it's pronounced "They Slash Them" and now, I see you nodding, and indeed, we are one. 

Quick Plot: Welcome to Whistler Camp, a scenic but horrid place where LGBTQ+ teens are subjected to conversion therapy. They attend willingly...to an extent. Some of the kids genuinely want to be "cured", while others have been threatened by their parents if they don't comply. While the staff initially presents themselves as not the worst human beings in the world, that's soon revealed to be a ruse.

Not surprisingly, camp director Owen is the worst. Returning to summer woods after 42 years, many degrees, and still no Oscar nominations, Kevin Bacon leads a small batch of well-meaning sadists to teach the females how to bake and the males how to shoot. Nonbinary camper Jordan observes the action carefully, hoping to get through the week to be legally emancipated from their parents while helping a few fellow campers along the way. 

If they survive, of course.

It's summer, it's camp, and there are attractive teens in spades. Naturally, that means we've also got a masked killer slashing through the cabins. Of course, that might feel like a relief when the planned activity in the next cabin over is electro-shock treatment.

They/Them is the directorial debut of veteran screenwriter John Logan, whose diverse credits range from 1999's Bats to Oscar nominated films like Gladiator and Hugo. That is indeed what we call range.

It's hard to go too far into discussing They/Them without spoiling its reveal, though I'd be surprised if most horror fans don't clock it as soon as the carnage starts. I'll dance around the details, but if you prefer to go into a movie fully unspoiled, stop here.

They/Them is a well-made movie: the dialogue is clever, the cast is dynamic (and diverse in more ways than one), the visuals are executed quite well. As a film, it's enjoyable. But if you came here for a horror film, you'll likely be disappointed. 

As you might guess, the real horror of They/Them is less an axe-wielding maniac and more Bible-thumping bigots. That makes for a triumphant tale that lets you cheer, but also, you know, not an actual scary slasher. It's exciting to watch talented young actors who would normally be designated to early canon fodder get a full space to shine and SPOILER ALERT not be brutally murdered. But also, since all of the victims are the villains, the fear factor erodes pretty quickly.

The experience brings me back to an important day in my own childhood. I was about seven years old when my family rented Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (this was not an unusual occurrence in the Intravia household). If you recall, this is the first installment in the franchise where children are actually enrolled in Camp Crystal Lake, which should have amped up the impending doom. Instead, it completely killed the terror of Jason Voohrees because that film establishes an important rule: Jason doesn't kill kids.

This devastated first grade me.

How could I ever watch another Friday film knowing I was safe? What was the point? Chucky wanted to possess a kid my age, Poltergeist kidnapped a little girl and allowed a clown doll to strangler her brother. Cat's Eye had me convinced the only thing protecting me at night was the family cat. We identify with horror when we feel in danger, but when Jason showed us the lines he wouldn't cross, the tension is off the kiddie table. 

All this is to say that a key part of many horror films is connecting the audience to the victims, establishing that line of empathy that reminds viewers that were they living in the world on camera, they would be in grave danger. When a genre film toys with that rule, it can certainly still be valid, but it ultimately turns us into distant spectators. Justice might be served, but this slasher doesn't do its job.

High Points

It would have been very easy to introduce the staff of Whistler Camp as immediate monsters, but Logan's script (and especially Bacon's performance) offers them just enough nuance to be more interestingly human

Low Points

See the aforementioned explanation of how this doesn't feel like the kind of horror film it wants to embrace

Lessons Learned

Knowing your Sondheim doesn't make you an ally

Rich kids drink dirty martinis

Never trust a groundskeeper with a ventriloquist dummy collection (actually, never trust ANYONE with a ventriloquist dummy collection)

Rent/Bury/Buy

They/Them is admirable in a lot of ways, and I certainly had a good time watching it. But you do have to go in knowing you're not actually getting a camp slasher designed to scare. Have at it on Peacock. 

I Axe the Questions Around Here

 

How is it possible that in 2022, a horror diehard who grew up a mile away from one of the country's best independent video stores with the largest horror selection in the state of New York can STILL discover '80s slashers for the first time? 

Humanity is an endless well of wonder. 

Quick Plot: A promising opening murder follows an ill-fated cigarette puffing nurse through a deadly car wash, where an Uncle Fester-ish masked killer chops her up before the credits can roll. We're off to a neat start!

And now, our movie. 

Meet our hero(?) Gerald, an early internet adapter and all-around jerk. Gerald lives with his grandfather? Uncle? Random old man he likes to harass? It's unclear, but we know this much: Gerald is obsessed with computers and is only mildly less horrible than his best friend Richard, an exterminator who despises his much older, much wealthier wife.

Is there anything less pleasant than hearing someone talk about how much they hate their spouse? Yes, I can think of one: watching said jerk publicly seduce a much younger woman who has no reason to be charmed by a man she knows to be married (and a jerk). 

Anyhoo, Gerald and Richard begin dating Lillian and Susan (a pair of local sisters with incredibly low standards) while our axe murderer continues his reign of terror across town. The sheriff is reluctant to take any action, hoping he can pass each death off as an accident or suicide, but by the time six female bodies have piled up in pieces, the jig is up. 

Could it be Gerald, whose prescient computer obsession and gross sandwiches screams "the boy ain't right?" Lillian's mysterious institution-confined cousin with a childhood swingset head injury? Her shifty father? The shiftier town priest? MAYBE THE INTERNET CAN HELP!

Maybe, and I won't spoil the reveal, but it's 100% the best thing about this oddball of a movie. 

Directed by José Ramón Larraz as a co-production between the US and Spain (and filmed in both countries), Edge of the Axe is, in a word, a hoot. There's a mix of decent and laughable acting (though some of that may have been equally hilarious dubbing) that makes the amateur quality kind of charming, and the recycling of sets from one home to another is something that low budget fans have no choice but to salute.

High Points

I don't know that any of it really adds up, but the big reveal is pretty grand, especially for its time. Bonus points for a killer freeze frame final shot

Low Points

Look, I know we had lower standards for our leads in '80s slashers, but there's nothing redeeming about the ones we have here: Gerald is awful, and Lillian's immediate infatuation with him makes us question her sanity well before the film does

Lessons Learned

Nothing offers the promise of a serious relationship more effectively than wearing a gray-on-gray sweatsuit on your first date

The beauty of country music ballads is that they don't have to rhyme

You know it's true love when you start dressing like your new sweetheart just a week into your courtship

Rent/Bury/Buy

Edge of the Axe is occasionally a good slasher, occasionally a pile of garbage, and entirely something that deserves any '80s horror fan's eyeballs. Have at it on Amazon Prime. 

Nail Gun Massacre (but not that one)

 

You know how you never really outgrow your childhood vices? For some it's nail biting, others, party bowls of cheese puffs, and most of us horror fans, cheaply made slashers set in wooded areas. 

Yup. Who says you have to grow up?

Quick Plot: Graduating high school senior Dominic is using his father's remote cabin for a fun weekend with his crush Ilsa, Japanese exchange student Mariko, and her boyfriend Kenji. His charcuterie plans are thrown asunder when Ilsa shows up with a batch of uninvited guests: her new older bro squeeze Dwane, unrequited crush Marcus, odd pal Rumor, stoner Eli, and smoker Sara.

With the PlayStation broken and radio non-iPod ready, the group decides to kill time the old-fashioned way: a parlor game of Dead Body. Naturally (since the film's title is "Dead Body") things get quite real: Mariko, Kenji, and Dominic are quickly found slain, and with doors locking from the inside, it's clear that the murderer is one of their own.

Dead Body is directed by newcomer Bobbin Ramsey from a script by Ian Bell and Ramon Isao, and clearly, this was made for less than the catering budget of a Marvel film (or even the cast payout for a BlumHouse one). We're pretty much restricted to one house and some woods, with actors you might have seen as character witnesses on Law & Order. Most of the violence occurs under so much darkness that there clearly wasn't too much of a need to go broke on fake blood.

And yet, much like the similarly tiny and game-themed Witch-Hunt, Dead Body manages to be far more entertaining than you might fear for a title you've never heard of streaming on Amazon Prime. It's under 90 minutes and moves exactly how you'd want this kind of dead "teenager" movie to move.

Some of the early arguments about what is actually going down feel repetitive (not ideal in such a short film), but one could argue that there's something of a point to that. I haven't played Dead Body in years, but the film makes it feel like an oral version of Clue, which adds an interesting spin to a fast mass murder mystery.

The characters are idiots, and most on the mild scale of likability, but the young(ish) actors (seriously, I did a few double takes when I realized they were supposed to be 18-year-old graduates and not celebrating a 10-year reunion) are good enough to help the material along. This isn't a hidden gem or new classic, but if you're looking for an old-fashioned slasher on cheap hypderdrive, Dead Body more than satisfies.

High Points
There really is a lot to admire in terms of how Ramsey made such efficient use of what had to be a teeny budget

Low Points
I'm not fully sure what to make of the film's treatment of its two Japanese characters, who exist solely to have a lot of sex while their very white friends discuss how they're always having sex because that's what Japanese people do. It's actually less racist than I'm making it sound, but still...it just sits weird

A Note of Exemption
Time and time again, I've expressed rage at the new trend of opening a movie on a flash of violence that occurs 2/3rds of the way through the running time before flashing a "24 Hours Earlier" note to start proper. It feels cheap and sometimes genuinely spoils certain plot elements and usually, accomplishes nothing but presumably assures an impatient audience that yes, there will be violence in what might be a slow-burn. That being said, Dead Body does indeed open on such a scene, but this is the rare case where it doesn't hurt the storytelling. Instead, it just lets us know from the beginning that this is a whodunit, something the movie doesn't really hide.

Lessons Learned
You apparently don't have to be that smart to get into Harvard

Never underestimate the user-friendly quickfire power of a nail gun (as if we didn't already know)

It never hurts to bring a shovel for a weekend trip, even if you won't have to use it to dig poop holes

Rent/Bury/Buy
Dead Body sits very nicely in the "this was a good elliptical machine watch" at the gym. Find it on Amazon Prime when you're working out.

When Legends Go Hollywood

After the incredibly pleasant surprise I had in revisiting Urban Legend, it seemed like my duty to watch the rest of the series. Part 2: Final Cut is now streaming on Shudder, and boy oh boy does it justify that $4 a month price.

Quick Plot: At an unnamed, clearly Canadian film university, a batch of students are working hard on their final projects in the hopes of winning the all-important Hitchcock Award. Auteur Travis thinks he has a shot, with his competition being horror hack Tobey, legacy jerk Graham (JoSEPH Lawrence), and hard-working but uninspired Amy. 

Amy's screenwriting block gets broken after a pleasant chat with a familiar face to Urban Legend fans: it's Reese! Loretta Divine is back in action, having been fired from Pendleton University for her refusal to comply with their coverup of 8 student deaths. 

Reese tells Amy all about her 1998 adventures, which prompts Amy to put together her own urban legend-inspired slasher. Coincidentally, just as her filming starts, Amy's pals start dying in elaborate style, though save for your basic kidney ice bath, the kills are more film-based than campfire tale.

Final Cut is based off a script by team Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson, who also delivered The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Hellraiser: Inferno. It's clearly of the Scream (or more specifically, Scream 2) ilk, focusing more on film references than the folktales of its predecessor. 

It's a switch that pays off just fine. Sure, there are winky moments of "let's talk about movies," but there are also plenty of visual references that go unchecked, letting film fams nod in appreciation without having everything explained to them as if they were in a film 101 class. Director John Ottoman is far better known for his work editing and scoring films (including, I say with a measured groan, a lot of Bryan Singer's work). This remains his only directorial gig, which is surprising because you know what? It's really fun.

We're still rounding out the '90s, a time where our lead's hip fashion involved a sweater tanktop over a long-sleeved tee and film students considered insulting George Lucas a cardinal sin. In the fine tradition of horror sequels, the film is loaded with before-they-were-famous 2000 faces, including Eva Mendes, Anthony Anderson, and Anson Mount. More importantly, the horror itself has a sense of humor.

Ottoman has a clear understanding of slasher fundamentals, staging some genuinely suspenseful sequences with a spirited wink. Films about film students can often feel obnoxiously self-aware, but Final Cut feels aware that, you know, films about film students can feel obnoxiously self-aware. I don't think Final Cut tries to act smarter than its slasher brethren. It seems to know it's far from the scariest or funniest of its ilk. It's a movie made to have fun with its concepts, and on that front, it works incredibly well. 

High Points

I'm a mark for a good horror sequence on a dark ride, and Final Cut makes outstanding use of this with an old timey miner-themed tunnel of love (with strong Pirates of Carribean overtones, no less)

Low Points

As someone who grew up on a hearty dose of late '80s/early '90s soap opera storylines, I love a good "twin that looks absolutely identical because it's just the same actor" trick, but considering how much fun Final Cut has with itself, it's weird that the Travis/Trevor character is so darn dull

Lessons Learned

Wasted in the only way to fly

I don't ever want to judge another woman's sexual details, but I feel like you're doing something wrong if your sexual fantasy dream involves you wearing unflattering granny panties

Never outright TELL the jaded 911 operator that you've awoken in a tub of ice cubes with a missing kidney. Just say, "I've lost a lot of blood" and let the paramedics take it from there

Rent/Bury/Buy

I had a blast with Urban Legends: Final Cut, from the opening rug pull to its campy coda. Onward to Bloody Mary!