Finale

 The other 30 movies I've watched this year have all been mostly dumb. That's my fault because I threw the list together in a night (my personal time is very limited as of late). Nonetheless, I stuck with it and now I'm at my final film. Honestly, the most intriguing of them all.

The Platform

I swear this was once a cooking show

    A man volunteers to be 'assigned' to what is called a Vertical Self-Management Center in exchange for a diploma. No idea what school requires this, but I think after you've seen this movie, you'll feel he should have just studied and taken the final. 

    The premise of this alternative accreditation is simple: A veritable feast of the finest foods prepared under the most strict standards is placed on a platform. The platform lowers to the next lower level every 2 minutes. Since there is no limit to what can be eaten, the lower levels get nothing but leftovers. And the farther down it drops, over 300 levels, the less food there is. Needless to say, cannibalism is a normal thing. Strangely, guard rails aren't a concern either. It's an interesting concept and they played it off very well with a slightly ambiguous ending, but it doesn't harm anything. Like I've said in the past, it's hard for me to comment on good movies.

And now I'm out of movies!

Tomorrow: A day in which our hero reads a book...

Welcome to the Public Domain

Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey 

    This is where we are in society. A well loved story character from our youth has graduated into the public domain, and that means make a damn horror movie out of it. Steamboat Willy's getting the same treatment in 2025 and the film will be called Screamboat. Ha.

    In the first 12 minutes, we get the background story and 2 killings! Christopher Robbins wanders around a forest as a kid and meets a bunch of weird and janky half-human, half-animal hybrids and decides to befriend them, help them, and bring them food. Over the years, Christopher grows older and eventually moves away. This causes the Humanimals to nearly starve to death. To get by, they sacrifice one of their members to eat so they could survive. Turns out, they're not good as self-sufficiency and Eeyore makes the ultimate sacrifice. After that, they turn their back on humanity and stop speaking words, with one last vow to murder the fuck out of Mr. Robbins. Fast forward to Christopher and his fiancé wandering the same woods so that she could meet his old buddies...which they promptly kill his friend while he acted like a bitch and didn't lift a finger. You picked the wrong man, girl! They drag him into the woods and do things to him.  And this being a horror movie, that means it's now time to send the next set of young people into the game. The rest is an hour of yelling, running, screaming, killing...you get the idea.

    Is it good? It's OK, but it's really just another horror movie with guys wearing bad masks. They try to pour on the psychological torture, but it's in vain because I'm just not buying into it. It's a silly premise and you tried to be like Rob Zombie. Just don't.

This is supposed to instill fear?!?

And while I'd like to say all is not lost because they put out a sequel in 2024, we all know how well that usually works. Hint: It doesn't! 

Final: It's like Cube, but flatter....

Not the slayer you were expecting...

Slayers

    First of all, why are  your sound levels so messed up? Wisper dialog then blast explosions and dubstep to tell me a funny vampire story. Set your levels, bro!

    Billed as a horror comedy, it seems to be mostly satire. And that's fine, I like that. The story as follows: Streamers are invited to a jackass billionaire media & pharmaceutical kings home home for an interview or some such. However, Elliot Jones, bad-ass vampire hunter on a vendetta intercepts them and warns them it's a family of vampires. Naturally, they laugh him off, throw down a bunch of hash-tags and continue to be the most annoying people, road tripping to their doom. I'm completely OK with that. 

Shit! Wrong Slayers.

    The point of the meeting is for Billionaire is to offer the Barbie and Ken members of the Stream Team a job promoting their new perfect drug that prevents all disease.  However, not all is as it seems and the drug is actually a purifier for human blood, making it that much tastier for consumption.  OH, and they also want to do a body swap with the streamer couple ala FreeJack. I don't know what this movie needs more: Emilio Estevez or Mick Jagger. Anyhoo, it's up to (mostly) Elliot to save the day, kill vampires, and keep as many people alive as he can. Ehh...he did OK...there was a couple of survivors. Good enough. Most of them really had it coming anyway.

Shit! Wrong Thomas Jane. 
There's just no good gifs of this movie.

    While it's funny in a way, the youthy internet influencer angle is ran into the ground and tiresome after awhile. But...still maybe worth your time.

Wednesday: Not your Grandaddy's Pooh

Satanic Panic in Italy

 The First Omen

    There are 5 Omen films, and only one of them is remarkable, the first. After that, it's been a sparadic stream of sequels  that haven't been as interesting as the first. And that, my friends, is the why and how of prequels. Hence this 2 hour back story that we technically already had in the first film, but now in visual form with detail...lots of detail. That's why it's so damn long! And summing it up is a bit of a challenge without being snarky...

....so snark it is

    Nun-in-training moves to Rome to become a full fledge nun. She meets a strange girl that people avoid and bad things always seem to happen around her. After snooping around you find out the strange girl is your half sister, you both have the mark of the devil, Oh, and you are preggos with twins, one girl, one hell-spawn. It turns out 'Ol Scratch had to do the dirty deed himself and probably didn't even use a breath mint. The good news is you only have to keep 1 of the kids and you know what happens to the other. I'll give you a hint: His name rhymes with 'Damien'.

Tuesday: It's nice to see Thomas Jane working...

It's sadly not porn...

 XX

It wouldn't be a Halloween movie list without an anthology.

The Box

Nosey little kid asks what is in the box a fellow passenger on a bus is holding. He opens to box and the kid looks in. Whatever was in that box just put him and eventually his family on one of the most effective crash diets you've ever seen

The Birthday Party

Mother of the year finds her husband has died, right before her daughters birthday party. She does the right thing and hides the body. Wacky hijinks ensues and there's even a Panda suit for the furries.

Don't Fall

4 friends go to the desert for an expedition and just HAD to find a cave painting of some demon thing that later becomes real and kills the acrophobic one. Then it puts on the dead woman's skin and proceeds to murder the fuck out of everyone. On the plus side, she no longer has a fear of heights.

Her Only Living Son

Cora, as she now wishes to be known, has a son that likes to rip off classmates fingernails. Weird hobby, right? Anyhoo, it turns out the little guy's dad isn't who she thinks it is. If you picked Satan, you would be correct. And since Jr. is turning 18, daddy's coming to visit. He comes, they refuse him, and he kills them. Happy Birthday! This is a spiritual sequel to Rosemary's Baby, apparently. I guess when you don't ask for permission, you can bill it however you want.

And there it is. Four stories that are 'meh' at best. The only really remarkable thing about this film is the bumpers between segments. They're all stop motion and creepy as hell. You'll love those. The rest is forgettable. OH, and searching for gifs proved...interesting.

Monday: When you go to far forward with a franchise, you have to go back...

...A vapid piece of crap!!!

 90210 Shark Attack

...and the shark couldn't get there soon enough. An expedition for marine biologist students in Beverly Hills goes wrong. Mostly because there's not much marine biology in B-Hills, but also because of a 'shark'. But first, our list of potential, and preferred victims is as follows:

    The Horny-Tards. They think and act as a single unit. 

    The Nerdy Girl (she's really not)

    The Weirdo Girl (eh...she's moody and has a secret)

    The Film Maker (nobody will miss this luke warm milk sap)

    The Dork (uselessness second only the The Film Maker)

    The Teacher (I think she did porn in the 80s)

    Who really cares about the plot when the acting is this bad? Do you care there's a subplot to get Weirdo Girl to talk about some bad shark-related thing happened to her and her dad a couple of years ago? Do you care The Teacher is screwing The Film Maker? All of this is complete nonsense and is overshadowed by the fact that the movie is called 90210 Shark Attack...and it was 45 minutes before the fucking "shark" finally showed up! The movie is only 75 minutes, what the hell were they waiting for? You want to see the shark? OK....

It's always the moody ones

    What the hell is this, you might ask? Turns out The Weirdo Girl was cursed to be a morphing shark. You see that, right? This is the kind of budget where someone sold their Kia Sorento to finance the CGI. FFS, even late '90s Animorphs did a better job. 

    And with that floundering thud, we end Shark Week and move on to our final 5 films for this years list.

Sunday: Dos Equis...

Priest Vs. Shark

 Noah's Shark

Nobody wins in this...NOBODY.

    Stupid jackass priest loses his gig as a TV exorcist and falls into a group of people raising money for an expedition to the resting place of Noah's Ark. Little did he, or any other completely sane person know that the Ark is protected by a demonic shark.

    Oh for fucks sake, Jeff Kirkendall...this fucking guy again. This ass-wipe has shown up in several kooky shark movies and it just pisses me off. 

The twat on the left. Why can't he be on fire?!?

    He takes it serious, but...he's fucking terrible! The supporting cast continually out-acts him in every scene. Find a goddamn day job! How does this chum-bucket keep getting cast in these movies? You look and sound like you should be working as a guidance counselor in a small midwestern junior high school. The only positive I can supply about his performance in this film is YES...he's really good at playing a creepy priest. 

    As always, I'm begging for the end credits as soon as the opening credits end. I'm pretty sure you can find something better to do for 72 minutes than watch this shit-show filmed on a gen-1 I-phone.

Saturday: Shark week comes to a close with.....