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Thanksgiving (The movie)

So I just saw this horror movie and surprisingly it managed to be better than I expected. Which is doubly surprising since its based on the “fake trailer” that Eli Roth did way back in 2007 for the movie Grindhouse.

Combined with the amount of time relevancy that had passed and the excessively over the top hilarious cheese factor from the fake trailer, there was a good chance that this movie was going to suck a lot or be very mediocre compared to the fake trailer which had the benefit of not being very long so Eli could just shove in all the good bits (His exact words when first asked to do the trailer in 2007)

So it’s a slasher movie at its core and they do the whole “Who is the slasher” thing as opposed to the unstoppable supernatural slasher ala Jason/Freddy. Honestly, it’s pretty easy to guess who the slasher is from the start (Or close to the start) even if they try to throw in red herrings every now and then. But you’re not really watching this for the mystery factor anyway.

One thing that they don’t do which was very welcome was they didn’t do the whole Scream meta/breaking the 4th wall bullshit that has gone on far too long in fucking horror movies. 

Like yeah a few times it was alright (Though I never was a fan of it) but seriously just have a regular slasher movie, we don’t need some faggot going on about a goddamn play by play of “the horror movie rules”

Of course that’s the trouble with slashers, they’re fairly predictable so they need to really stand out to be half way memorable. Having gruesome unique kills typically works, along with a theme.

Thanksgiving does manage to achieve this for the most part. 

The other big one is how entertaining the slasher is himself (Or herself sometimes). “John Carver” is alright I suppose. He’s no Art the Clown, but the whole killer pilgrim thing works for him. He’s ultimately just a normal guy not an undead terminator, but he does pull off a few “impossible slasher tasks” in at least one major instance since he changes up his style which you don’t normally see since slashers tend to be a bit one dimensional with how they kill. 

Oddly, the victims aren’t even excessively annoying. I mean you don’t really care if they get killed still, but there’s really only a couple where you’re like “Yeah I’m glad they’re dead.”

Now if you’re at all into horror movie and have been for a long time because you’re OLD like me, you’ll probably wonder if the movie had any of the stuff that was in the Grindhouse Fake Trailer and the answer to that is, they do have a few scenes. 

Some of the bits aren’t in there at all, and two of the more infamous scenes from that fake trailer have been toned down, which wasn’t too surprising since this was going a bit more for a mainstream audience and you can’t have butcher knives going into a cheerleader’s pussy or the killer fucking a corpse cooked like a turkey. 

They also were playing this movie a bit more serious than the fake trailer, so the intentional over the top dialog is mildly toned down a bit, though they do have the killer at one point saying “There will be no left overs.” Though it really missed the opportunity to say “White meat, dark meat, all will be carved.” when he’s got the black guy and the white folks hostage. 

It still does have the dark humor moments, most notably near the beginning which sets everything in motion anyway. There’s a mild massacre at the Right Mart (This world’s Walmart I guess) store during a Black Friday which is sort of funny.

Anyway, if you’re into horror movies with enough bloody kills to appease your inner Khorne, its worth watching.

And here's the fake trailer from Grindhouse if you haven't seen that before (I know some of you are still practically babies on this site)

Thanksgiving Grindhouse Fake Trailer

This about sums it up.

Silent Night (The movie)

So after realizing that Napoleon was just going to be a cuckfest, I wisely skipped that movie and waited until Silent Night came out instead.

Well I saw it and while it was about what I expected based on the trailers, there were a few bits that made it stand out a bit.

The main thing is it has absolutely no dialog, other than screams, grunts, groans, muffled voices and maybe some unintelligible lyrics from a song playing in the background at one point.

While I knew the protagonist wasn’t going to be able to speak, I didn’t know they were going to do that for everyone in the movie. But again, it’s a revenge action flick, you really don’t need much talking anyway.

Speaking of the revenge plot, if you’ve seen the trailers, the protag’s son gets killed in a gang war shoot out. The movie actually starts off a little after that scene happens since the protag is chasing down the gangster’s cars (Which are still shooting it out) and ultimately the gang leader lives and shoots the protag in the neck and leaves him for dead. And well, we go from there.

After that bit, its sort of a slow burn until the last half hour. You see a lot of grief, followed by consuming rage and preparing himself for REVENGE. Naturally this doesn’t have a great effect on his marriage, so by the end of it all, he’s pretty much got nothing left but revenge.

And seeing as this is a revenge flick, you sort of already know how its going to end. This one though probably tries to go a little more on the emotional side though since it really tries to emphasize that he’s pretty much destroyed by the death of his son and he’s not coming back from this, even if he “wins”.

The dude isn’t Keanu Reeves (Or Charles Bronson, if you’re BOOMER enough to remember the original Death Wish series). There’s more than a few times where in his beginning stages of revenge he’s not the one man killing machine even if he’s trained himself to be one. He fucks up a few times (More than a few times).

Of course by the last half hour of the movie, it’s a bloodbath shootingfest.

Besides the obvious comparisons to John Wick or ye olde Death Wish movies, one movie series that obviously had some influence was the original Mad Max. Despite this taking place in present day America, there is actually a lot more car combat than I was expecting. That was cool of course, but more than just that, there’s a music box that the protagonist keeps winding up occasionally, which reminded me of what Mad Max did in the Road Warrior.

There’s sort of a “B-plot” too, involving a detective that works the gangland unit investigations. I sort of thought he might be in it a little more than he actually was, but his role is pretty minimal. Isn’t really until the end where he becomes helpful.

The detective is also a black dude, so it probably makes the movie look a little less “racist” if he’s helping an angry blonde white guy killing a bunch of brown people. Though to be fair, the protagonist’s wife (and dead son for that matter) are Mexican and the ones he's killing ARE violent criminals, so it’s not really racist. That’s just a hilarious coincidence. (Fully expect to see some faggot critics saying that it's RACIST for the very thing I just mentioned though)

Anyway if you’re into revenge action movies, it’s worth a watch.

Godzilla Minus Zero (The movie)

Well after everyone in the discord raved about this movie (And by everyone, I mean Malk and Cricket) not wishing to look like an outsider, I decided to follow the norms of the community for today by going to see Godzilla.

And it yeah, it actually was pretty cool. Honestly, I haven’t really been invested in Godzilla movies for a long time. I used to watch the old ones on TV when they came on Creature Feature or some similar horror based Saturday afternoon/night show back in the day.

A lot of the later ones just haven’t caught my attention too much. Last one I saw and really only in passing was King of the Monsters and it was meh.

If you know anything about Godzilla movies, then you know the plot is pretty simple. It’s a giant radioactive lizard destroying shit. Sometimes he’s fighting other monsters. (He’s not fighting other monsters in this one)

I think this one worked for me on a few levels. For one, Godzilla sort of wasn’t even the main focus. I mean he was, but the story itself revolved more around the tortured protagonist.

And granted I’m not excessively into the whole ongoing angsty protagonist bit for most movies, but the fact that this guy was a kamikaze pilot who failed to do the whole kamikaze thing and was upset about his cowardice (As well as failing to shoot Godzilla the first time he met him), made it a little bit more interesting. Not to mention this is a guy who was serving under the AXIS POWERS at one point, which technically made him a villain protagonist. (Okay, probably not, but more on the nationalism tones later)

All the other characters were fine too in the roles that they played. Didn’t find any of them to really be useless or annoying. The fact that it was set nearly right after WW2 made it a little different too.

Basically the American government are too focused on the Soviets to help in a military way and the Japanese government doesn’t want to help directly so they’re trying to keep the whole thing quiet. (Lol good luck keeping Godzilla quiet) so it’s up to the common Japanese folks to handle Godzilla with a few bits of military equipment that they’re allowed to use.

While its not like the movie was celebrating the Rape of Nanking or Unit 731, the movie definitely has a nationalistic bent to it. They try to temper this a bit by the characters fighting Godzilla occasionally criticizing the Japanese government rather than the military/people, but yeah, it’s still there and honestly that makes it even better. There's been talk of Japan lately wanting to re-militarize in a major way, so I'm wondering if the movie was a statement about that.

Hell, I mean if they don't have a military, how are they going to protect themselves from giant reptiles?

Speaking of Godzilla, probably what made this movie more appealing is the fact that it’s Godzilla being a “bad guy” again. I know they flip back and forth with him a lot. Usually he’s a good guy if other monsters are involved, but really I like seeing the back to basics, giant lizard just fucking up Japan because fuck you that’s why. It's sort of funny how he powers up like some sort of Pokemon for his breath weapon though. It's not just a radioactive fire beam either now, it's basically a small nuke.

The ending of the movie was even wholesome.

Anyway, yeah I liked it a lot.

The Iron Claw (The movie)

Alright, so this is essentially about a family that was into professional wrestling and also how each one of them died one by one (Save for one).

So its a feel good movie for the holidays!

Anyway, if you’re into wrestling like I know a few of you are, you might already know about the Von Erich family and the “curse” they had. Whether you actually believe in such things or not, one can certainly say “Yeah, their family sure had a lot of tragedy.”

I’m not spoiling anything since their story has probably been better documented on something like Darkside of the Ring, but the movie is still worth a watch, especially if you want to compare it to the real life situation.

Which brings to the point that the movie probably in the interest in not being a complete depression quest fest, toned down some of the aspects.

For one, they focus on 4 brothers Kevin, Kerry, David and Mike, when there actually was a 5th brother named Chris. (And I’m not even counting the 6th one who was technically the oldest, Jack Jr. that died by getting electrocuted when he was about 6 years old) Having one less brother that popped his cork certainly tones down a little of the tragedy.

What they sort of did was combine Chris into Mike’s character since both of them weren’t really quite as gung ho about being wrestlers and were shoved into. Granted all the of the brothers were, but those two just didn’t have the talent/desire at all and in both cases it lead to suicide due to frustration/injury/depression/etc.

Then there’s some of the stuff surrounding the deaths. In David’s case, he’s officially said to have died of a rupture of the intestines which is what they go with in the movie. However, there’s another story that he died of an accidental drug overdose while in Tokyo for a match with Ric Flair and one of the other wrestlers (Bruiser Brody) flushed the drugs down the toilet trying to cover for him. And David also had a daughter who died, which isn’t in the movie, but again its another example of there was no way they could include all the damn tragedy.

Also from most things that have been said and written about him, their dad, Fritz Von Erich was a 1st class ASSHOLE to his sons. Now it does show him to be definitely one of those competitive sports dads that pushes his kids hard and uncompromising, but the movie probably didn’t show how bad he really was. Hell, the brother who wasn’t in the movie, Chris was way shorter, had asthma and brittle bones, but he got shoved into wrestling by his dad due to Mike dying (And Mike got shoved in due to David dying!) he had no business in the ring.

Yep, Fritz was a major dickhead. Funny enough back in his wrestling days, he’d taken on the persona of a Nazi heel hence the name Von Erich. Guess it came natural.

Now while the movie takes more of Kevin’s point of view which is understandable since he’s the only one that lived and it does show how popular he was, I honestly don’t remember him at all (Really don’t remember any of the brothers except one I’ll get to in a moment). Probably because it was still during the wrestling territory days and he just wasn’t on the channels that I watched since the Von Erichs were more famous in Texas and the southern states. I didn’t really get into watching wrestling until around the rise of WWF which was more prominent in the northern states.

Which is why I always figured Kerry (Or the Texas Tornado as he was known) was the most successful of the bunch considering he made it to the WWF during its height, but as always the business is fickle and he had a shitload of drug problems mostly due to the pain that he was wrestling with no foot.

He’d lost it in a motorcycle accident even before he made it big, so its sort of impressive he actually made it and was genuinely popular for a few years in WWF. I know back then none of us had any idea he only had one fucking foot. Of course that’s all thanks to no internet back then and the magic of TV and putting on a good show.

However like I said, the good years didn’t last and he was addicted to drugs, marriage failing, possibly going to jail for parole violation so he shot himself since he figured he was going to die soon anyway and figured he’d join his brothers. They didn’t include his conversation with Brett Hart who thought at the time that he’d talked him out of killing himself (Brett said his daughters would need him more than his brothers would.) But I noticed they kept WWF references to a minimum anyway.

In the end of course they focus more on Kevin “breaking the curse” by focusing on his own family.  Ends with a mention of him having 4 kids and 13 grandkids. Technically only 2 of the kids were his, the other two kids were from his brother Kerry, but you get the idea. They managed to replenish enough Von Erichs to make up for all the dead ones.

There was also the mention that the Von Erich family had been inducted into the WWE Hall of fame back whenever that happened.

Doesn’t mention that Fritz and his wife got a divorce just before Kerry committed suicide. After several dead sons, I guess she was finally done with his bullshit.

Well anyway it's a movie, so I didn’t expect it to be completely accurate to begin with.

It probably would have beaten Thanksgiving in body count. Lol.

Or rather part 2 of the new Dune adaptation.

Not much to say about it, other than I actually liked this second part better than the first part. Always cool to see Christopher Walken in a new movie as well.

Again about the only major complaint is the portrayal of Baron Harkonnan who just really comes off as bland compared to the 1984 movie or the mini-series. Oddly I think his nephew Rabban got slightly more focus than him or Feyd during this adaptation. And Feyd just sort of showed up to get killed.

Anyway, it's essentially a story about a civilized white guy saving a bunch of sand dwelling brown people from degenerate gay pedophile rulers in his quest for vengeance. Oh and there's some giant worms. What's not to like?

Time to necro this thread since there were actually some movies worth going to see this month. I guess I’ll go in order of when I saw them.

Last Night With the Devil

This one I went in expecting to be pretty good and it actually delivered. Always nice when that happens.

This one is set in the 70s and is done in a found footage format, though it isn’t like that bullshit Blair Witch Project shit. It’s supposed to be the unaired episode of this famous talk show “Night Owls with Jack Delroy”

Basically Jack is a down on his luck talk show host who is currently trying to beat Johnny Carson in the ratings game and he’s failing miserably. Things get worse when his wife dies of cancer and his drive starts going out the window because of it and he also start focusing on less serious talk show interviews and going for shock value shit like fake psychics and such.

Of course it all comes to a head on this very last show that never aired.

You sort of already know this is all going to end in tragedy due to it being a found footage film anyway, but as they say it’s the journey that counts.

This movie does a really good job of capturing the 70s talk show scene and what was considered the “wacky fringe” element at the time. In real life there definitely were a lot of fake psychics and such popping up on these shows claiming they could bend spoons and all that shit. There was also a well known skeptic called James Randi who used to go around debunking all of them.

They got a character very similar to Randi and another guy who is more of a conglomeration of all those fake psychics, though he looks the most similar to a man named James Hydrick, even dressed like him and had the same pedo mustache (Appropriate since Hydrick actually was a big fucking pedo)

Around this time the whole interest in the occult and SATANISM started becoming big too, so that was another added element and it really wouldn’t be complete without a little girl being possessed by some demon/devil.

Also kept the footage looking like something out of the 70s too so overall it’s really good at maintaining period piece setting, which is probably what made me like it the most since I do remember some of that time period (And because nothing completely changes when a new decade starts, a lot of that late 70s stuff was still carried over into the early 80s).

As far as gore/blood content, it mostly saves that for the end and even then it’s not too much.

Worth a watch.

The First Omen

Now with this one I actually wasn’t expecting much. I figured it would be mediocre at best and complete shit at worst. Turned out to be way better than expected which is also nice when that happens.

This one also takes place in the early 70s, but it had to anyway since if you’re familiar at all with the original “The Omen” series that one started in the 70s and this is supposed to be a prequel to it.

As a general rule a prequel can easily fuck up continuity if you’re not paying attention to shit. This one does do some minor retconning, but to be fair even the immediate sequel to the original Omen did a bit of retconning, so meh. Plus you can sort of get away with it a bit more in horror movies.

This one would also be another one where you know how it’s going to end because Damien is going to get born no matter what happens to set off the events in The Omen, but again it’s journey that’s important.

So there is a twist in it, but really it’s pretty easy to spot early on. I imagine this was done to try to make the movie less predictable due to the outcome being certain. It doesn’t make the movie bad or anything, it’s just you already see it coming especially if you’ve watched enough horror movies with devil/demon shit in them.

One thing I did like which isn’t really a spoiler is they apparently decided to ditch the whole cabal of devil worshippers setting up the birth of the Anti-Christ plan from the original movies to a group of fanatical Catholic Church priests, nuns and cardinals doing it.

So why the hell would they do this?

Well the Catholic Church used to be a major power for thousands of years and in more recent times it’s become a lot weaker. These folks want the power that the church used to have in the olden days. They decide the only way to combat secularism is to prove that shit in the Bible is real and they figure they can get people to believe and come back to the church is by giving the people something to fear.

And the best way to do that is to bring about the birth of the fucking Anti-Christ! They also figured they’d be able to control him so things don’t get too out of hand. Basically bringing just enough evil into the world so people will go back to church.

This as you might expect is an incredibly BAD plan.

Anyway, this one has a few more bloody bits than the other demon movie I just mentioned, but spaces it out a bit more throughout the movie. Might as well spoil this bit since it was sort of surprising that they showed it, but at one point you get a HUGE CLOSE UP of a vagina with a demon hand coming out of it.

It isn’t often they put something like that in mainstream horror movies so it definitely got an extra point for me because of it.

Overall, it’s worth a watch, especially if you’ve already watched the other older movies in the series. And if you haven’t, those are mostly worth a watch as well. The first two are cool. The third one is sort of meh and don’t even bother with the fourth one since it sucks a lot. The Omen remake is okay, though they make Damien a little too obviously evil in that one, worked better when he just seemed like a clueless little kid.

Civil War

And finally I just saw this one and it could have gone either way, but thankfully it ended being cool.

First off I sort of came in thinking the movie was going to be semi-left wing propaganda, but the movie does a pretty good job of staying politically neutral. I imagine that’s why they had California and Texas allied with each other to keep you wondering how the fuck the President fucked up so badly to make those two ally with each other. You sort of only get a few hints of what he did such as disbanding the FBI, bombing American citizens, staying in power for a third term and a few other things.

Basic premise is its a road trip movie with a bunch of war journalists. Two of them are trying to get to DC to do an interview with the president, the old fat journalist is trying to get to Charlottesville to get a story from the front lines. And finally there’s a young girl who is an aspiring war journalist who manages to tag along too.

It’s a series of pit stops where they encounter various people and have to deal with what happens to be going on at the time at these locations. They’re mostly “safe” due to their Press IDs, but much like in real life that isn’t a certainty when bullets are flying or dealing with people who don’t give a shit. The action shoot out scenes are done pretty well and the final showdown in DC is even better.

While you do get to learn a little bit about the main characters, you still don’t learn much. While it’s not really a case where you don’t care if they live or die (Hell there was one character I was surprised they survived), but they don’t seem important in the scheme of things, and maybe that was the point. Even the President (THE VILLAIN) isn’t all that impressive the few times you do see him. Ultimately the movie is probably carried more by the premise rather than excessively strong characters.

And maybe because of that, the movie almost felt like a video game. Especially since the young female character looked like Ellie from The Last of Us (Hell, she even looked a little like Ellen Page who that character was clearly modeled off of) and the way she’s going about snapping pics towards the end of the movie just seemed very video game like. (AKA Dead Rising) The pit stops they make felt a little like that game Road 96 which is based around a series of pit stops on your way to escaping a country in the midst of a civil war/rebellion.

Arguably the most memorable character is the one from the trailer and if you’ve seen the trailer, you already know it’s the soldier with the red tinted glasses asking “What kind of Americans” they all are and he’s just some unnamed soldier.

In any case, it’s worth a watch.

Saw Anatomy of a Fall. Super cool movie with basically only perfect performances all around. Makes it even weirder that that fucking lightweight Emma Stone cinched the Oscar. Gonna watch Killers of the Flower Moon next probably 

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (The movie)

There isn't too much to say about this one other than if you've liked the other 3 movies in this new series, then you'll most likely enjoy this one as well.

This one jumps ahead a few centuries from the last one so nature has pretty much reclaimed everything at this point and the apes have just about forgotten all the shit they learned from humans (So they aren't carrying rifles around anymore and they haven't got any industry to make bullets anyway)

The main plot follows a young chimp called Noa from a relatively peaceful tribe that trains eagles until a king ape's soldiers arrive. Yep, basically they're following in the footsteps of humans. Speaking of which, some of those hairless apes pop up too and intrigue ensues.

Anyway, won't give away too much more. It's definitely a very nice looking movie as far as the landscape and scenery goes too.

Definitely liked it a lot and looking forward to another movie in the series. There were 5 in the original series, so the next one might wrap it up.

Hopefully they have gibbons in the next one, there was a brief mention of them.

They keep making bonobos the major villain leader apes in this series which is odd since in real life they're generally considered the most peaceful of the apes, but maybe there's some sort of irony at play there. I'm guessing making them all sexual degenerates like how they really are would interfere with the PG-13 ratings the movies go for though.

I always wanted to see some evolved mandrills in the series, but unfortunately they're not part of the great apes and are merely just really large (and dangerous) monkeys so they don't get to evolve to be some badass beserker warrior class. (They already got perma-warpaint)

I was worried Disney was gonna shit out another crappy reboot in a critically acclaimed franchise as they have done so often lately but somehow they didn't ruin it.

Furiosa (The Movie)

I’ve often said the post apocalyptic genre is probably one of my favorites to the point where I’m pretty forgiving even if it ends up not so great be it movies, tv shows, video games, etc.

So I was fully ready to see the Furiosa movie and forgive all its many faults, though as it happily turned out it really didn’t have many. If anything this might be better than Road Warrior which was the best of all the Mad Max movies. (I’m still not certain that Furiosa actually did beat Road Warrior yet though. Still going back and forth on that one)

What helped is this one had more story going on in it as opposed to just recreating the tanker chase scene for two hours because it was cool in Road Warrior. Yeah I really like the vehicle combat shit too, but I enjoy those scenes a lot more when there’s other stuff also going on in the movie. The storyline doesn’t need to be complex (and it certainly isn’t in this case) it just needs more than one long action scene.

Other thing that was different from the usual Mad Max movies is there really isn’t a main “good guy” faction at all in this one. All the major factions are wasteland assholes fighting each other. Sure Furiosa and there’s another guy who is essentially “I can’t believe it’s not Mad Max” who are “good” but they’re pretty much by themselves and just working for one of the larger wasteland gangs.

There was probably only one major thing that happened near the beginning of the movie which Furiosa did that was so fucking retarded that it made me think “Well, this movie is going to be average at best.” but it managed to redeem itself greatly as it went on. Which a lot of movie don’t even manage to do after fucking up. (And of course if she hadn’t acted so fucking retarded in that one instance, we wouldn’t have had a movie at all)

The movie also made a few surprising references to the old Mad Max game that came out years ago. Dunno if the video game is considered canon since there's debate about that, but I guess a few of the characters are now in at least an altered form.

Overall it was a cool movie and I liked it a lot.

In a Violent Nature (The Movie)

Hey, did you ever want to see an artfag version of Friday the 13th? Well that’s this movie.

Now I should clarify that calling this movie an artfag film isn’t really the insult it sounds like, but more of a warning of if you are into horror movies, you should sort of go in with a certain mindset. Also Im going to be “spoiling” this a bit, but not really since at it’s core its still a fucking slasher movie so you should already know what to expect.

Most of the movie is basically shot in such a way that it’s following the slasher (But more on that later). So basically imagine a Friday movie that follows Jason the entire time. Now the camera isn’t strictly always focused on him, since it does have moments where it’s focused on the victims, however in these cases, the slasher is still in the area watching them, so he’s always around in some capacity, whether directly or indirectly.

As for the slasher himself, he’s basically Jason. Has similar deformed face, slow methodical walk, same build, etc. (His name is even Johnny) He’s modeled more on the current undead Jason rather than the living one since he starts off rising out of ground because someone fucked up his resting place by taking a gold watch that his dad gave him as a kid.

Later he gets his favorite mask and killing implements (Hatchet and two large hooks connected by a chain) as one does.

And the movie plays out like a normal slasher would except with all the artsy style camera shots of him stomping about in the forest. So it makes the movie feel a lot slower paced, though it’s not a continuous camera following him around since that really would get boring, they’ll often cut the shots to speed up time for him to get to his destination.

But the main reason why you’re going to a slasher movie is to see the dumb ass victims get killed, (And they definitely do some dumb ass things) so the real value as always is how good are the kills. 

Well, they’re suitably gruesome or at least most of them are. 

A couple of them could be classified as dull or mundane, but there is definitely a super gory one that I hadn’t seen done before that stands out. Now I won’t spoil this one, but using a recent horror example of explicit gore, think of something Art the Clown would do in Terrifier and this kill ranks up there. I’m going to guess that particular kill was the one that caused someone to literally vomit in terror.

So for me the movie was fine, I wasn’t disappointed to watch it and I don’t mind seeing something different being done with the slasher genre, however it does sort of fuck up in the end. Not enough to ruin it, but I’ll get into that.

Alright going to spoil the ending, but like I said not really because you already know there’s going to be a Final Girl in a slasher movie.

So where the movie for me sort of fucked up is it stopped following the slasher and then switched to following the Final Girl at the end.

Though you don’t really know that’s the case since you assume that he’s probably still chasing her, however he really isn’t. She just thinks he’s still after her, even when she gets rescued by a random pick up truck you sort of think it’s all a build up that he’s just hiding in the pick up truck’s bed, but no he’s effectively out of the picture.

Now not too long before the last major kill, one guy who knows about Johnny explains to the final girl that you can’t just give the gold watch back to him, you have to put him down and then lay the gold watch on the place where you buried him to keep him in place.

After seeing the last of her friends getting brutally killed, the Final Girl drops any plan they had to try to kill Johnny and just runs off. She also leaves the gold watch next to the can of gas she had to set him on fire.

As it turned out just giving this undead murderous retard his dad’s watch was EXACTLY what you were supposed to fucking do! The final shot is the gas can and the watch no longer there implying that after Johnny was done chopping the chicken soup out of the last victim, he turned around saw his dad’s watch, took it and then went back to rest in his original grave.

The End!

Now the last 10 minutes (Or however long it was) where it’s focusing on the Final Girl’s escape antics can be seen in a couple ways. If you’re going with the arthouse approach, it was probably trying to subvert expectations and build up tension, etc.

However for me, it was just pointlessly dull since I don’t give a shit about the final girl and up until that point the “gimmick” was following the slasher around, not her. A better ending would have showed her running off like usual, but instead Johnny hears her, turns around, sees the watch and takes it, has the camera follow him like it has been, but this time going back to his resting place effectively creating a “bookend” since that’s how the movie started.

And if they wanted to add more artfag stuff, they could have even had another little flashback for him with his dad talking to him like they did earlier in the movie.

Anyway like I said, I didn’t mind the movie. Wouldn’t be one I’d go out of my way to watch again though.

The Bikeriders (The Movie)

So I already read one review that mentioned this movie is basically Biker Goodfellas as if it was told solely from Henry Hill’s wife’s perspective and that isn’t really inaccurate. I actually did get a Goodfellas vibe with how it was going about things, but there’s still a ton of differences.

Most importantly it isn’t nearly as good as Goodfellas, though it’s not bad, just that it would have to do a lot more. A WHOLE lot more.

The movie is based on the rise of the real life Motorcycle gang, “The Outlaws” though they call them the Vandals in the movie. It mainly has the girlfriend of one of the prominent bikers telling the story to a journalist, though the journalist himself is semi in the gang to at one point, but that was during the old days when you could leave a gang a lot easier. And he ended up leaving right before things started to change with the biker culture.

Like with most things, the club started just as more of a fun thing with the leader basically getting the idea after he watched the movie “The Wild One” with Marlon Brando when he played a biker.

Back in the early days the bikers were basically a bunch of dudes that liked to ride motorcycles, hang out, drink and basically do a lot of male bonding. A lot of them had a streak of rebelliousness in them for whatever reason, though keep in mind most of these folks still had real jobs (Mechanics being obvious) and families. So the early bikers probably had more of a “code” on just how far they were willing to go as far as being a criminal is concerned.

Of course like with anything as soon as more noobs see this shit and want to join up to be cool, things change and eventually you get psychos joining up who just want some back up when they go and commit murder, rape and the like.

The main focus is on the biker leader, his desired heir apparent and the heir’s girl who is telling the story. The heir basically the “ideal” biker in that he doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything except the club, he’s definitely ride or die since he doesn’t take off his vest/colors even when it would be a good idea to not wear them.

However, he’s also too ideal of a biker since he’s truly one of those “free spirit” types that doesn’t want the responsibility of being in charge or anything like that despite the aging biker leader wanting to take over eventually.

Of course the flip side is his girlfriend who once was a regular housewife and turned into a motorcycle mama when she saw the Heir one day. I’m saying housewife, though I’m not exactly sure what she does, I feel like she must have a real job of some sort since she lives in a house by herself. She does have a man when she first meets the biker dude, though he takes off soon after and it’s not really clear if they’re actually married or not. She still has the house all throughout the movie even when she’s by herself.

Anyway she ends up wanting him to leave the club on many occasions and go to Florida where he can work as a mechanic with his cousin, but again he’s a free spirit so he’s not listening to her either.

Besides that triangle, the movie just follows the various monkey shines the Vandals get up to.

As I said though as the years go on, the club starts to get a bit more violent due to all the noobs joining who are all trying to prove how tough they all are, plus a lot are vets coming home from the Vietnam War and all that entails. While the biker leader is about the only one of the old guard that’s tough enough to sort of keep up with the changes, he ends up alienating his heir apparent who takes off entirely abandoning the leader and his girlfriend.

Ultimately the biker leader/founder gets killed by some snot nosed kid that he disrespected years earlier who wanted to join but got turned down. The kid went and joined the Vandals in another chapter and then challenged the Chicago leader for leadership. In traditional fashion they are supposed to settle it with fists or knives. The kid goes with knives and I sort of thought the old leader seeing that he wasn’t really able to lead like he used to and how this new kid is hungry for power, that he was going to just let the kid kill him. Die a warrior’s death in true club fashion so to speak.

But nope, he was definitely going to fight him, however before that happens, the kid shows up and just pops a cap in his ass. Which is basically the symbolic end of the “Golden Age” of biker culture. From that point, bikers are all just criminal thugs. The old guard either falls in line, die or drop out of the club. (The kid takes over and turns it into a proper gang.)

As for the heir apparent he ends up hearing about the death of his old friend and shows up again on his girlfriend’s doorstep and he cries for the first time she’s ever seen him cry. (Breaking down those toxic masculinity barriers) And he ends up leaving the gang permanently (He was a still a Vandal when he took off before, he just left the chapter rather than the gang) and moves to Florida with her and becomes a mechanic in his cousin’s garage.

And she’s happy living in boring ass suburbia and he gets to live the rest of his life like a schnook.

The End

Yeah basically it ends where presumably you would have seen more criminal action with the biker gang, but if you want that, go watch Sons of Anarchy or Mayans M.C. I guess.

The movie’s alright though.

Alien Romulus (The Movie)

I actually saw this a month ago, and just never got around to writing a review since I busy running the Fallen Land game at the time.

It's actually been awhile, but I probably should say something about it out of a sake of completeness.

I actually liked it better than I thought I would. Interquels are the easiest to fuck up when it comes to the "quels" department. If you actually give a shit, you have to make sure it doesn't fuck up the preceding events AND the events that come after. It's not an easy task most of the time, hell I know first hand having done it multiple times with stories.

But this one actually did do a fairly good job of avoiding all that, while still being a cool enough Alien movie in its own right. I think they managed to have at least one reference to every other movie in the Alien franchise. The major one being the Ash android. (And he says the line at one point)

The character were fine and served their purpose. I wasn't really annoyed by any of them too much. There was enough violence to keep the bloodthirst sated too.

In any case, I guess I'll just end with saying I liked the movie. I probably would have bothered more with a longer review if I'd done this right after the movie, but there you go.

Terrifier 3 (The Movie)

Well out of all the horror movies I’ve seen this year, I’m pretty sure this one just beat them all. And I can’t imagine any others coming out for the remainder of the year are going to do any better.

So for those that might be in the dark about this movie or franchise in general, Terrifier is basically a slasher movie series involving a killer clown imaginatively called “Art the Clown”

The series has become fairly infamous for being one of the bloodiest horror movie series in recent years. Possibly of all time. It’s not just the kill count either, it’s also the quality of the kills as well. Shit gets REALLY graphic and doesn’t pull away from that fact. It also falls a bit on what they call the nihilistic side.

There definitely is something about the films that give a faint aura of merciless cruelty Mexican cartel murder video style. About the only thing that offsets it a bit, is the fact that Art acts just goofy enough that it takes a bit of the sting out of what you’re watching. Then again the gore is usually so over the top it starts becoming bloody hilarious.

Granted I’m also usually laughing at some of the shit Art does so my sense of humor is warped anyway.

Also I’ve come to the conclusion that after this movie, Art the Clown is definitely a slasher villain that has finally reached the same slasher icon status as Jason, Freddy, Michael and Leatherface. There really hasn’t been one since those four.

(And no I’m not fucking counting all the faggots that played Ghostface from Scream even if he somehow wormed his way into mainstream recognizability with the rest. As for Chucky, yeah he’s okay, but he’s ultimately a fucking doll and not even a very creepy looking one in the scheme of things, which is why they started going the semi-meta horror comedy route with him)

The movie also wasn’t given a proper rating so it avoided getting the gay NC-17 rating and just was “Unrated”. Back in 80s there were quite few horror movies that did this to avoid getting an “X” for too much gore. So it’s a nice throwback to that time as well.

Alright on with the actual movie.

So this one pushes firmly into the supernatural element more. Granted when you got unnaturally strong slashers that can’t be killed, you’re dipping a bit into the supernatural anyway, but this more like heading into demon territory rather than “mysterious unknown force” (Like say Jason)

Art is definitely a demon of some sort (Or at least one is controlling the body its inhabiting) and he’s got a helper in this one, though it’s still him mostly doing the killing, but his assistant is along for the ride and does a bit more of the talking when its required since Art’s as mute as ever.

While you probably wouldn’t have to watch the first two movies to understand what’s going on, it probably would help clear any minor questions you’d have about the storyline since this one does expand on the general plot that they went with starting with the second movie. It at least follows the 2 survivors of that one, though the “survivor” of the first movie is in it too, but well I already mentioned Art had a fellow demon helping him now.

Chances are you’re probably only going to see this, if you saw the first two anyway. They ended this third one on a bit more of a cliff hanger, though they did that with the other movies too, but that was more along the lines of “Art’s not really dead, look!” which is common in horror in general. This one ended with the final girl definitely needing to go on a “quest” of sorts to tie up unfinished business.

It’s a fine simple plot for this sort of movie though anyway.

As for the gore, well I already mentioned the series is pretty infamous for it. They put their bigger budget to good use. Kills are definitely just as if not more gruesome than some from the last two movies in the series.

There’s usually at least one absolute bloody mess style murder in these movies and this one probably has more than one, though one in particular stands out. Art and especially his demon companion are a little grosser in this one, which seems fitting given that the demonic entity stuff is better established. Demons should definitely be wallowing in being disgusting on top of reveling in being cruel (And they both definitely do that)

Also in another throwback to old 80s style horror, he kills a few kids in this one. 70s and 80s horror movies, especially the lower budget ones usually gave zero fucks to adding kids to the body count. Terrifier 3 does likewise.

Now you don’t actually see said kills, but you definitely do see the bloody aftermath of it. And in one case, the off screen squishy sounds of an axe chopping (And that’s something that happens like in the first 10 minutes of the film)

So to sum up, obviously I liked it a lot and if you’re into all this edgelord torture porn shit with no redeeming social message other than to remember that clowns are evil, well then you should go see it too.

Not sure if you've seen it, but I recently got forced into watching midsommar, and since you seem to like horror movies itd be cool to see your review of it. 

Yeah I saw Midsommar. I liked it better when it was called The Wickerman (The 1973 one, not the horrible Nicky Cage one)

Nah, actually I still liked Midsommar, though again it felt like it was an updated version of The Wickerman. I sort of liked the director's first movie, Hereditary more.

Oh yeah, I've seen hereditary as well, that was really good. With hereditary I found it scary because I couldn't see a way in which they could survive (except praying to jesus, literally) lol. With midsommar it felt like they weren't necessarily messing up, but if Rambo was in midsommar or someone the least bit physically a competent fighter, they'd have more than a good shot lol. I couldn't see that with hereditary. 

Conclave (The Movie)

Alright so I do occasionally watch something other than horror (It's true!) so I figured I'd break up the horrorfest with this one.

The Conclave is basically a drama with some mystery going on in it. It's apparently based on a book, but yeah of course I didn't read it. Hell, I didn't even know about the book until just now.

Its got a couple of old school actors in it like Ralph Fiennes and John Lithgow. They used to play in a shitload of movies back in the past so it felt like a movie from the old days (When things were better of course)

Since I knew nothing of the movie going in other than it involved Vatican politicking shenanigans. I sort of thought there was going to be a murder involved since that's usually how these Catholic Church centered dramas go, but other than the old pope dead in the beginning, it's just a normal secret dealing conspiracy sort of thing. No murderous monks or anything bloody like that.

Anyway it's basically a bunch of cardinals vying for the big pope seat. You got the liberal faggot one, the scheming centrist, the basic conservative, and of course the based fanatic who wants the church to go back to the old days (Again, when everything was better of course)

Finally in the middle all this is Ralph who's overseeing the conclave to choose the next pope and he's surprisingly getting votes too even though he doesn't really want the job.

So there's quite a few things going on, from an unknown cardinal popping up from Kabul that nobody knew about, accusations that one of the cardinals got relieved of all his duties just before the pope died, and a couple other skeletons. Ralph of course ends up being that "truth above all" type and just continues digging deeper to uncover stuff until the final twist outcome of who wins the pope seat.

And after that twist, there's one last twist.

Yeah, I can't really go into too much detail on the movie since it is a mystery so saying more would just give stuff away. Overall I liked the movie but I will say I didn't really like the twist of who finally won the pope seat mainly because it didn't seem like they would have that many supporters. (The final twist after that was fine though)

Also would have liked to have seen the fanatical cardinal go on more racist crusader rants because extremists always tend to be more amusing.

If you're into mystery dramas and got 2 hours to spare, it's worth a watch.

Yeah all the stuff I did mention is brought up within the first few moments of the movie so none of those are really spoilers.

Heretic (The Movie)

Heading back to the horror genre but still keeping the religious theme, Heretic is a movie about 2 young Mormon girls who knock on the house of some old guy who seems friendly at first, but of course quickly starts tormenting them.

He also does this in a trolly type fashion while chuckling a bit at his own dark jokes the entire time.

And while I've been making THIS joke in the discord, this really did seem like an extreme version of my interaction with poor Suranna here. He even uses damn boardgames in this process at one point.

So yes of course already I liked the movie and I hadn't even gotten through half of it yet.

Hell, towards the beginning of the movie there was a bit (So this isn't a spoiler) where some other girls make fun of the more "wholesome" Mormon and pull her pants down making remarks about her wearing magic underwear. I laughed so hard when that happened, took awhile for me to stop actually since it shows her afterward still sniffling about it. Lol.

In any case, the old guy is basically challenging the girls on their faith and religion in general, setting up a whole twisted game about it.

There is a small mystery of why he's exactly doing this which I won't mention I guess, unless Suranna who apparently is seeing the movie as well wants to chime in and we can have a nice wholesome discussion about it. Perhaps over a game of Monopoly.

Anyway definitely liked the movie a lot. Was actually way better than I thought it might be.

Heretic (The Movie): A Mormon's Thoughts

As End has said, I also went and saw Heretic not long after he himself saw the movie, and I came out of it satiated. I wouldn't label the movie as perfect, but it came close and is one of the better movies of 2024. I'd probably even consider it to be one of my personal favorites. Also, my movie review isn't as spoiler free as End's, so I recommend checking out the movie first if you desire.

SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD

Overall the movie is about religion and faith, and has used members of the LDS church to prove its point. It was surprisingly not so much about bashing on Mormons in general as I expected it to be, and was more about religion as a whole. I think the movie would have been the same had it been Jehovah's Witnesses or some other missionaries of a different faith as the main characters. But the movie was basically just one big long discussion about theology, philosophy, the role religion has in the world and what it means to individuals(I guess that's still theology), existentialism, and funnily enough even the idea of simulation theory was brought up once. Of course it was this with all the added psychological elements, plus the cat-and-mouse game that Grant and the two missionaries go through.

I thought the representation of Mormons in the movie was very fair, and often scarily accurate. Some of the things that the more 'wholesome' Mormon girl said came straight out of your typical mormon girl upbringing (My upbringing). In the beginning of the movie when the two girls are climbing a flight of stairs to get to Grant's house, one mentions that her future husband will get hotter with every step she has to climb. One of the few mormon girl inside jokes are that every time you have to do something that is somewhat challenging, your husband is now guaranteed to be hotter because you went through with it. Lol. Even the way the two girls were talking about pornography in the beginning was very innocent, and they were both always making sure to be very polite to Hugh Grant, even though the both of them were going through all of his psychological mindgames. Think Lucy from the Fallout show - being very optimistic and bright while going through the horrors of the wasteland. By the end of it they had shed their politeness, so I guess Grant was successful in at least part of what he intended.

The movie went a lot farther into some horror aspects than I expected, but I was pleasantly surprised by them. There wasn't so much of an actually boardgame that the two girls would be forced to play as I original thought, than just a discussion of Monopoly and an analogy of how it relates to religion. That would have been interesting to see. You landed on my property, I will now pull out your fingernail! Lolol. 

The execution and narration was great. There were no plot holes, things that were brought up once were brought back in an interesting way, and even the ambiguous ending left nothing to be desired. There was, however, no explanation as to why Hugh Grant would go through the trouble of tormenting these girls, other than him being a delusional religion-obsessed fanatic, and during the entirety of the movie I was expecting an explanation (Hugh Grant did spend a lot of money making his house into some weird torture labyrinth, and I assume it wasn't for parties). I did find some fan theorys online where Grant used to be a Mormon, and his wife died to some sort of faith-related activity, and now he captures and tortures Mormon girls to prove a point about how God isn't real. But of course it was just a theory, so I guess we'll never know unless they decide to make a sequel.

But overall I would have to give this movie a solid 8.5/10. It has its imperfections, but was an enjoyable experience, and like End said was way better than expected. I recommend it to any horror fans, or people who would rather watch something interesting for their Theological Studies thesis paper lmao.

The mystery bit of why he was doing it I was referring mostly to was the idea of if they were going stay grounded in the real world (He's just nuts for reasons they never completely explain) or if the movie was going to go the supernatural route of some sort. Specifically he was worshipping something older than any earth religion (Basically Cthulhu shit)

Even when she called him out on changing the bodies, there was still the possibility he was some cultist performing some sort of elaborate ritual.

Though of course it ended up sticking to a non-supernatural setting.