Okay, you guys. You guys! I have a million dollar idea. No, a billion dollar idea! Are you ready? You're not ready, but here we go: what if--take a moment and think about this--what if... Superman... was evil? I know, right?! Groundbreaking. Revolutionary. Just think about how much--wait, what? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS HAS BEEN DONE A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE?! Fuck... FUCK!! Fine! Whatever! I'll stick with just talking about movies, then, I fucking guess.
horror
Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)
Sometimes it's hard to put into words why a movie didn't resonate with me. Using a recent example, Antlers was a perfectly fine movie with a pretty basic ending, but it just didn't live up to my expectations. And that's the case with Broadcast Signal Intrusion. The creepy atmosphere is on point, but the ambiguous ending just didn't land. And I'm usually a huge fan of ambiguous endings! So let's analyze what I think didn't work.
Antlers (2021)
Anticipation makes the heart grow fonder, or something like that. Back in 2020 when the plan was to go to a movie theater each week--you know, before the world ended--Antlers was a movie I was pumped to see. It's a mainstream wendigo movie! That's a cryptid I am inordinately fond of! And thankfully, the anticipation paid off better than The Lodge, because this movie is certainly passable.
Old (2021)
Saying you're not a fan of Mr. M Night Shyamalan's later work is a pretty basic opinion these days. No one enjoyed The Last Airbender; and while The Happening is generally pointed to as his worst film, I will go to my grave saying Lady in the Water is objectively worse. So I did not have high hopes for Old when I first heard about it. And now that I've seen it, I can say that it's another disappointment from a man who had so much potential. What a twist.
Evil Toons (1992)
I would like to lodge a formal complaint. I was promised porn stars in a cheesy horror movie fighting to survive against evil cartoons brought to life, and yet there was only one titular evil toon. Yes, there is the suggestion that the Knockoffronomicon has more sinister animated beasties, but I'd argue that's still false advertising. Well att least I got to listen to some godawful rock music... Okay, maybe I should start from the beginning.
Butt Boy (2019)
So, uh... hey. How you doin'? Well, I'm doing just fine! Sorry there hasn't been a post on this blog since... October? Holy hell. I burned out real hard, got super stressed at work, and now I'm in the process of moving! So sadly there hasn't been that much time or energy to keep this blog up to date. I'm hoping once the move is done things will change, but I make no promises. All I can say now is that every so often a movie will stun me in such a way that I'll have no choice but to brush the dust off this site and talk about it. And so it is with Butt Boy, a movie about a man who puts anything and anyone up his own ass.
FleshEater (1988)
And so we end October of the Living Dead the same way we started: with Mr. Bill Hinzman. Remember back in Night of the Living Dead when I said to keep him in mind for later on? Well, that time is now! The man who played the first "ghoul" we see made a career out of that appearance, culminating in this film that he wrote, directed, and starred it. It's currently freely streaming on Tubi, so that kind of tells you the quality.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Finally, some good fucking content. After slogging through Night of the Living Dead and The Return of the Living Dead sequels, I set some time aside to watch an actually good movie near the end of October of the Dead (and also a really bad one, but we'll get to that on Halloween proper). Shaun of the Dead is a parody of all the other zombie movies and stands out as a really fun watch. You know what? I keep going back and forth on it, but I think this is officially my favorite zombie movie! Honestly not sure why it took me so long to fully realize that.
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005)
And so with what is effectively Return of the Living Dead V, this stupid franchise is over. Return of the Living Dead started off as a horror comedy that veered more towards teen horror in the later sequels. But what if we could have both? What if they made a zombie horror movie that's also a teen comedy? Too bad "teen comedy" in the mid 2000's meant lots of boobs and pot. What else was I expecting for October of the Living Dead...?
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)
Whoops! This one's a little late, but here it is. Anyway, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis is the fourth movie in the Return of the Living Dead franchise, filmed at the same time as the fifth film, Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. And they're both certainly movies that exist! They're not good by any stretch of the imagination--none of these movies really are--but they're still marginally better than Return of the Living Dead: Part II. Now I'm imagining that faint praise on a movie poster...
Chwineka Watches 