It’s an exciting time be at the multiplex. The DC universe is exploring body horror, Nathan Fielder is exploring re-enactment, our ancestors are exploring wicker spouses and contemporary audiences are exploring new adaptations of Jane Austen’s classics.

I know what you're thinking

Who cares, what's the new killer spider movie like?

Crawlers is a movie about killer spiders taking over an apartment building.

I paid money to see it.

I did this because I have a mild but chronic case of arachnophobia and I feel obliged to go see every killer spider film that makes it into cinemas no matter how dubious the quality appears.

And Crawler’s quality looked pretty Dubious. Not only does it have trailers full of spiders that look like they’re from Spirit Halloween, it has the exact same premise as Infested, the killer spider movie that came out three years ago.

So, in I went with my expectations on the floor and I was ……reasonably entertained.

I also squirmed and shuddered a lot because there are lots and lots of scenes of killer spiders in bed sheets, in shoes, in shirts, in toilets, in teacups1 in hair and in every dark cupboard or crack in the wall that someone decides to lean in and get a closer look at.

Yeah, in any scene where you get a good look at them, the spiders mostly look fake. But there’s plenty of scenes where what you see is brief enough to make any arachnophobic amygdala go berserk. Also, the spiders manage to completely block several hallways with webbing and that does not look fake.

But, the story ….and the characters…. that matters too, right? What are they like?

The Plot: Serena (Matilda Lutz) is the superintendent of a large apartment building presumably somewhere in NYC or perhaps somewhere in Europe where everyone speaks English

She doesn’t particularly enjoy being a superintendent, Her actual passion is music, we know this because she frequently plays a guitar that has “Music will save you” written on it

Mr. Rossmore (William Miller), the slimy landlord departs for a weekend in Aspen and leaves it to Serena to manually inform all of the tenants of the imminent rent increase.

When Serena discovers the rotting body of a spider victim on the floor, she calls the authorities who think it must be some sort of outbreak and proceed to seal everyone inside. They also shut off the internet, cellular reception and air drop a gigantic tarp over the building so nobody can see outdoors. They are, however, kind enough to shove paperwork under the door that apparently explains why they have the legal right to do all of those things

Being trapped against their will infuriates and terrifies the tenants, but not so much that they stop pestering Serena to fix their plumbing and air conditioning.

So Serena keeps fixing and then she comes across another spider victim and then she comes across some spiders who try to make Serena victim number #3.

She escapes and manages to inform most of the building about the spider menace and soon everyone breaks into different factions trying to survive and escape

Crawlers has a better assortment of disposable characters than you usually get in a killer spider movie, it has a tech bro with a pet snake (Sam Lucas-Smith, a art podcaster (Gregg Sulkin) and best of all, a dominatrix (Melina Matthews).

It’s not spoiling anything to reveal that everyone in the dominatrix’s faction survives longer. She has all the whips, brushes and sparking devices that make gimps cry for more, but also keep bugs at bay. Also, Bondage gear is exactly what you want to be wearing if you have to worry about being bitten or getting stuck in a web.

Killer spider movies fall into two categories, the ones that make an effort to be somewhat believable (Kingdom of the Spiders, Arachnophobia) and those which cheerfully bend the laws of nature (Eight-legged Freaks, Sting, Curse of the Black Widow)

Crawlers is that second type of Spider movie. It isn’t great cinema, but it’s fun. If you liked Crawl, a film of similar quality about crocodiles in a crawlspace, you’ll like Crawlers too.

The best part of the movie is Matilda Lutz, the amazing scream queen who played the lead in Revenge. She is playing a very different character here, but pulls it off flawlessly

The second best part of the film is the hysterical text crawl at the beginning full of statements like
“Spiders are everywhere! You’re never more than three feet away from one. There's probably a spider under your seat right now!”

The Tea: If a fear of spiders makes you think twice about putting a teacup to your lips, skip the tea and gaze at artist Sarah Duyer’s terrifying spider teapot.

The Snack: This movie will turn you off eating anything except pesticide.

Happy Day of the Dead!!!

Today I want to look into an unsolved 90s mystery.

Why was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho remade?

in In 1960 Alfred Hitchcock subjected American audiences to a visceral image that had never been in a Hollywood movie before.

A toilet flush.

If you’re thinking “yeah, that is pretty gross” I should emphasize that the only thing in that toilet were tiny pieces of paper.

The famous flush occurs in Psycho, shortly after Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) checks into a motel.

Crane has stolen over $400 000.00 cash from her employer and suddenly has a moment of regret.

She sits down and starts writing a confessional letter, but ultimately decides she’s gone too far to turn herself in. She tears up the paper and drops it into what soon becomes the first toilet flushed on film.

Then she decides to take a shower.

45 seconds later another visceral image occurs and Psycho becomes a radically different movie.

Psycho became a classic overnight.

38 years later, someone at Universal decided to commission a remake and hired Gus Van Sant to direct it.

This decision generated a lot of outrage, but nonetheless the film was made and released.

What was the 90s version like?

The Plot: Marion Crane (Anne Heche) is a poor real estate secretary whose boss asks her to deposit $400,000.00 cash.

Instead, Marion pockets the money and drives to a used car lot, exchanges her car for a new one and drives and drives until she’s so tired she has to stop at the first place available which happens to be called Bates Motel.

Marion is the motel’s only guest and the only staff is the proprietor, a very eccentric man named Norman (Vince Vaughn) who lives in a creepy looking nearby house with his elderly mother.

Norman loves his mother but she’s driving him crazy.

On the pretext of sparing Marion from eating alone, he invites himself into her room and has dinner with her.

Through most of the meal, Norman complains about what living with his jealous, domineering mother is like.

Marion politely encourages Norman not to be bullied, but is desperate to be alone and ushers Norman out at the first opportunity.

Then she panics and starts writing a confessional letter, but ultimately decides she’s gone too far to turn herself in. She tears up the paper and drops it into a toilet which is probably the 439-thousandth, or so, to be flushed on film.

Then she decides to take a shower.

If this seems identical to the original Psycho, it is.

So much so that Joseph Stefano is still credited as the screenwriter and Bernard Hermann is still credited for the score.

A title card at the start of the movie insists that it takes place in 1998 and while it is cast with Julianne Moore, William H Macy, Viggo Mortenson and several other actors who were working in that year, the movie looks and sounds like a film from 1960.

Mostly

There is some very brief nudity that wasn’t in the original, as well as sudden images of goats and time elapsed storms, presumably meant to symbolize something scary.

And during the famous scene where we finally meet Norman’s mother, there is a spider crawling on her face which will be terrifying for arachnophobes.

For what it’s worth, Anne Heche is very good at playing Janet Leigh.

Vince Vaughn tries very hard to play Anthony Perkins but is much too tall to pull it off.

When we see his silhouette standing next to the Bates house he looks like a giant that could kick it to pieces.

Psycho 1998 was a bomb and for years many people wondered why Gus Van Sant had agreed to make the film.

In 2012, Roger Ebert wound up having breakfast with Van Sant at a film festival in Kolkata.

Ebert asked him why he’d agreed to remake Psycho and was told “So a less experienced director wouldn’t have to.”

Ahhh, so the film was remade poorly on purpose, by a director established enough to not have his career ruined when the film did badly.

It was remade in just the right way to discourage all future remakes and sequels of a masterpiece that deserves to be left in peace1

So, in away, Psycho 1998 is a classic after all.

Sometimes I wonder if I am too bitter to watch movies.

On occasion I feel a like a joyless, jaded, curmudgeon who cannot appreciate the intangible wonders of humanity.

I feel this way when I am unmoved by romances that make others weep

when I am stone faced hearing comedy that makes others collapse in laughter

and when I’m skeptical that a movie character can stop the apocalypse with human sacrifice, even when all the narrative evidence implies that they can.

A Knock at the Cabin is a movie made by M Night Shyamalan, whose style is very distinct.

He has directed 18 movies, 16 of which are magical realist stories that hinge on moral dilemmas.

Most have twist endings, although A Knock at the Cabin does not.

Shyamalan is a bit of a polarizer.

People tend to love or hate his movies.

There’s nothing so unusual about that.

Many prolific filmmakers provoke the same reaction.

But people who love Shyamalan’s movies often make me feel like I’m missing something.

Maybe I am.

I once asked someone why they enjoyed his movies so much and was told “Because every one of his films is a perfect bed time story.”

When I raised my eyebrows, they doubled down on this argument repeating “A perfect bed time story” possibly for the sake of resonance. And then they dismissed me.

I wasn’t very convinced by that Bed time story defense, but it stayed with me, I remember it over a decade onwards.

I do like some Shyamalan films such as the Sixth Sense, but I don’t think that would work as a bedtime story.

Trap definitely would not.

But, A Knock at the Cabin, which might be Shyamalan’s most violent film, proceeds with a strange sort of pacing that does indeed make it seem like it’s being read to you, albeit by someone who means well but didn’t read the story first.

If it were a bed time story, it would probably sound a little like this

A Knock at the Cabin?!?!?!?!

by M Night Shyamalan,

Once upon a time there was a very happy family.

There was an optimist named Eric (Jonathon Groff), a pessimist named Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their adopted daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui).

One day they all went to

A Cabin in the Woods!!!!

They had a lovely time.

They watched their favorite TV shows,

they went swimming

they ate their favorite food

and whenever they all got tired of that

they would sing “Boogie Shoes”.

But suddenly there was a knock!

“Don’t answer that, said Andrew. It’s probably Jehovah’s Witnesses!”

Eric smiled widely, gave his grumpy partner a pat on the back

and opened the door wide.

Standing outside were four big bad wolves!

Well, not wolves exactly, more like horsemen.

No, not Bojack Horsemen!!!

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!

But the family didn’t realize this, because these horsemen looked like ordinary people,

except for one who looked like Dave Bautista.

He was the one who did most of the talking.

He said

“You must understand that we are not hateful,

We are not violent,

We do not wish you dead

But the world will end today

unless you’re bludgeoned in the head

Not all of you, just one.

Do not think of it as murder

Think of it as something fun!”

Drôle as it was, the pitch didn’t work

Andrew said,

“Go away, you homophobic jerk!”

“That’s how you feel now,

it will be different in the end.” Said another Horseman,

one who looked like Harry Potter’s friend.

“We know that truth is difficult to find

So, we’ll kill ourselves in front of you

until you change your mind.”

And sure enough, the red head knelt

and screamed with his last breath.

“A part of humanity has been judged!”

And his peers beat him to death

The one who looked like Dave Bautista wept and shook his head.

“Look at what this selfish family did!” he said.

He turned on the TV,

to a live news bulletin

showing mega tsunamis

destroy most of Oregon.

“This is your fault!” screamed the Horsemen

“You made the world wetter!

“And it’s going to a get worse before it gets any better!”

Next up was a horseman with big weepy eyes (Abby Quin)

“I have a kid! she said

and two cats!

Please don’t let me die!”

Hearing all of this made Eric feel guilty

he said “Maybe she has a point,

and she asked very nicely.”

But Andrew replied “This is absurd!”

No one has to die!

Not us and not her!”

But the other two horseman grabbed the weepy one

and cut off her head

“Look what you made us do!” they said.

On TV now there’s a virus worldwide.

“You can cure it, said the horsemen,

if you commit homicide!”

Then Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird)

the next horseman, spoke

In a serious voice,

certainly not a joke, she said

“I don’t want to kill you in front of your daughter.

Are you thirsty, would you like some water?”

“You can trust me because I am a nurse.

Do the right thing

Put yourself in a hearse!”

Okay I’ll stop the bed time story now.

I’ll admit I simplified the plot of AKATC a little, but not very much.

I won’t spoil anything further except to say that the movie really does feel like it’s being read to you.

Like all seven of the characters are speaking with the same voice.

The end of the movie is very weird.

It’s filled with tears of joy and celebration that don’t seem earned and don’t make sense given how the rest of what happened in the cabin turned out.

Still, it does have potential as a bed time story, albeit if some additional characters were added, such as Nicolas Cage as the next door neighbour or Nathan Fielder as a documentary filmmaker, or perhaps M. Night Shyamalan as himself!

The Tea: Believe it or not, Maya Tea makes a Four Horseman Black Tea blend, perfect for staying awake while contemplating homicide for the good of the Earth.

The Snack: An entire box of Krispy Kreme donuts. The shame of eating a full dozen will make your sacrifice a little easier.

It’s the final Monday1 in October! The month where we at B-Movie Tea review scary movies that go bump in the night!

Today’s scary movie provided a sobering revelation.

I should read more.

I haven’t read a book, or even a comic book in over a year.2

Why?

It’s partly because sometime in 2022, after decades of 20/20 vision, I woke up to discover I couldn’t read anything smaller than 11-point text.3

I was in denial for months, but when I finally got glasses it felt, so, so good to be able to read again.

So, why haven’t I been reading?

Do I not like it anymore? Am I doomed to an Audible subscription.

Questions like these weigh heavily on the soul and can lead to disturbing self-reflection. It’s best to just blame everything on a silly movie like Verity.

Verity is all about reading. A significant percentage of the movie is Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) reading the diaries of Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway).

The better parts of the movie show flashbacks set to narration by Hathaway who is having great fun as a campy soap opera villain.

But then there are the parts where the camera is literally panning left to right over the diary text4 with Dakota Johnson superimposed on it like a ghost. It’s as if you’re meant to read along with her.

And when Johnson reads something particularly scandalous she makes a shocked face right into the camera, as if to say “OMG! Did we just read that!”

It’s weird.

It kind of feels like an edgy reboot of Reading Rainbow.

But what are the dark secrets of Verity Crawford?

Are they truly so vile that they can only be experienced through the written word? Would witnessing them do permanent damage to your soul?

The Plot: Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling NYC writer who is technically successful. She’s published, she has an agent, and she has a busy schedule of interviews and readings.

But not enough people pay for her work. There are no residuals. She’s behind on her rent. It’s stressful.

One day, her agent sets up a meeting with a client offering a ghostwriter contract.

It turns out to be the publishers of Verity Crawford, a writer of best-selling trash-novels who apparently needs help finishing her next book. Present at this meeting is a man named Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), who Lowen knows from a chance encounter. Turns out, Jeremy is Verity Crawford’s husband.

Jeremy insists his wife is a big fan of Lowen’s work. He drives Lowen all the way to his mansion in rural Vermont5 and there she meets Verity.

Verity is catatonic, the result of a recent car accident. She spends the day being moved from bed to bathtub to wheelchair by caregivers. Lowen asks Jeremy if Verity has a chance of recovering. Jeremy says ‘no.’

He invites Lowen to move into their home so she can see the world as Verity used to. She’s even invited to use the same desk Verity wrote from.

While rummaging through this desk, Lowen discovers a USB key containing Verity’s unpublished autobiography, a confessional full of terrors.

I won’t spoil exactly what those are, but will provide two hints.

1. Verity was a really, really bad parent.

2. Verity might not actually be disabled.

Every time Lowen reads a new confession she makes a scandalized ‘O’ face at the camera, then screams because suddenly she sees a reflection of Verity standing up or looking right at her. But the moment she turns to face the dastardly novelist, Verity is back in her wheelchair, motionless.

It all builds to a ‘page-turning’ conclusion where Lowen shows the USB key to Jeremy and then the audience has to watch him read all that Helvetica hypberbole.

I will say this for Josh Hartnett, he is very good at making an increasingly sad-angry face while reading the awful truth.6

Verity is a movie that makes you want to avoid reading.

It also makes you wonder what the writer was thinking.

By writer, I do not mean Colleen Hoover who wrote the airport book, this movie is based on. I mean screenwriter Nick Antosca, who usually writes really scary, visceral scripts.

What made him want to work on this?

There is only one scene in this movie that feels like something Antosca came up with.7 It’s a scene near the beginning when Lowen is on her way to meet Verity’s publishers. She stops at a traffic light and seconds later is doused in blood from a cyclist struck by a car, right in front of her.

It’s a powerful scene, but it cannot save this silly convoluted movie that makes you hate the alphabet.

So to prove that Antosca is indeed a fantastic writer, I will link to a short story he wrote called The Quiet Boy, which is a quick read and disturbing enough to keep you awake for hours!

It’s the third Cheap Movie Tuesday in October, the month when we1 at B-Movie Tea review scary film that go bump in the night.

There is absolutely no reason a nightmare can’t become the American dream.

It happened for the Lutzes.

In 1975, Kathy and George Lutz were the parents of three young children.

The couple was burdened with many serious financial difficulties, notably finding a place to live.

To their surprise, they found a reasonably priced house in Amityville, an affluent community in Long Island.

The property in question was a Dutch Colonial mansion with five bedrooms, two garages, a swimming pool and a quirky attic featuring two windows that sometimes, when viewed from outside, looked like glowing eyes.

There were no structural problems.

The house was cheap because the previous owners, a family of six, had been murdered there a year earlier.

But, the Lutzes felt the deal was too good to turn down. They asked a priest to bless the Amityville home and moved in.

28 Days later they drove away in a panic, abandoning all their possessions, which they feared had been possessed by a haunted house.

They wanted to share their story, so the Lutzes struck a deal with Hollywood script doctor, Jay Anson who turned their paranormal claims into a “nonfiction” book called, The Amityville Horror.

There may have been some embellishments.

The book was very, very popular and quickly adapted into a film that became one of the biggest blockbusters of 1979, despite the “true story” element of the narrative being very much in doubt.

And despite that it sucked.

The coming years saw a plethora of more sophisticated haunted house movies, notably The Shining and Poltergeist, that made Amityville seem hokey and trite.

But royalties from the book and movie continued to accumulate, the Lutzes became lux and the Amityville legend refused to die out.

It also had a gift to offer horror movie makers: public domain.

Because the Amityville Horror was “a true story” (and parts of it were true, the Lutzes did buy a house in Long Island) no one could turn it into intellectual property. Which means that absolutely everyone has the right to make an Amityville film.

Even you, if you feel like it.

So far, there has been one official sequel to and one official remake of the Amityville Horror.

And yet there are 22 haunted house movies with the word ‘Amityville’ in the title.

What?

Oh.

Apparently, there are now 23.

Adam Riot Thorn’s Amityville Outhouse is 70-minute no-budget satire that simultaneously embraces and ignores the source material.

The Amityville mansion predates indoor plumbing, so it must have had an outhouse at some point.

Amityville Outhouse is the film that both dares to ask whatever became of that facility and also….

I’m sorry what was the question?

The Plot: Joe (Duncan Bruce) is wandering through the woods and really, really has to defecate, but tragically he is allergic to most types of grass and foliage.

He feels fortunate to happen upon an old-timey looking Outhouse. The kind made of wood with a crescent moon shaped opening on the door.

But just before he enters, he is stopped by a raving woodsman (Adam Thorn) who warns that Joe is about to unspool the devil’s toilet paper.

Joe has to go so bad he doesn’t care. But the woodsman cares and begins telling a series of scary tales that turn this movie into an anthology film.

The first two stories do not involve Amityville or the haunted outhouse in anyway. (Although there is a notably disturbing pink ukulele).

It is kind of amusing when we return to the woods between tales and see an increasingly sweaty Joe desperately trying to maintain continence.

The final story does indeed concern the titular toilet, and the fate of those who sit upon it.

It went a few places I didn’t expect, notably outer space, but it was amusing.

Amityville Outhouse is a no budget movie.

If you know what those are, you also know that giving them any kind of rating is a Sisyphean task.

Does it help if I say that it’s better than The Gingerdead Man but not as good as Velocipastor?

Perhaps it is more useful to note that it is the second-best film with Amityville in the title.

The best one has 100 parapsychologists getting sucked into a basement portal to hell and a co-star role for Meg Ryan.

There’s no way to compete with that.

The Tea: Rather than recommending a tea to go with this one I will re-emphasize the public domain issues via noting that there is apparently a film called Amityville Tea Bag

The Snack: What is associated with both Amityville and outhouses? Flies of course! So have some Frankford Gummy flies!

Scuba diving is messed up, it is alarmingly easy to kill yourself doing it

I’ve only done it once, when a scuba company offered me both a major discount and on-the-dive training.1

I had no idea what I was in for. I thought the breathing apparatus would be some kind of airtight mask secured to my face. Turns out the oxygen ‘regulator’ is held in place by nothing but the diver’s lips and those lips must be clamped constantly, or water pours into their lungs and they die.

It also turns out that swimming with a 40-pound oxygen tank on your back is difficult and climbing out of the water with one is even more so.

At least for me it is. People who scuba dive regularly seem to have no trouble with it. They also seem to be really, really fit and strong.

So if you’re writing a screenplay and you need one of the characters to be an uber-macho ‘Jock Dad’ who has contempt for his skinny, bookish son, I guess it makes sense for that character to be a professional scuba diver.

Except….does it? Does it, really?

In Whalefall, Josh Brolin plays ‘Mitt’ the bad scuba Dad. As the movie begins Mitt is in the late stages of a terminal illness. Rather than dying in bed, he takes his boat out to sea and leaps overboard.

He leaves behind his wife Zara (Elisabeth Shue) his adult daughters Eva (Jane Levy), Nan (Emily Rudd) and a skinny, bookish son named Jay (Austin Abrams) who will eventually be swallowed by a whale.

Jay refuses to attend his father’s funeral. Later on he is unwilling even to accompany his mother to visit Mitt’s grave. His Mom and his sisters want Jay to get over his ‘childish anger’. But they don’t know what Jay went through.

They weren’t forced to shotgun entire cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon then crush the empty cans against their foreheads until they bled. They weren’t publicly shamed for spending time with friends instead of scuba diving. They weren’t repeatedly told they had ‘soft lungs’ because they wanted to go to university instead of doing whatever Mitt did to make money.2

Jay despises his father, but also feels guilty for rejecting him. And when he overhears his sister crying that there’s nothing but an empty box in Mitt’s grave, Jay snaps and decides he’s going to fix everything by finding and retrieving his father’s body.

So, without telling anyone, he puts on scuba gear and leaps into the ocean, hoping for the best.

But, the best is not what he finds. He finds a giant squid that grabs onto him as it desperately tries to escape the closing jaws of a sperm whale.

This particular whale is determined. It really wants calamari for lunch and if the only way to have some is with a side order of skinny, bookish guy then so be it.

And that’s how Jay winds up in the whale’s belly.

First, the good news, it does not turn out that Josh Brolin’s character has actually been alive all this time because the whale swallowed him too. That would’ve been pretty corny.3

There’s nobody inside the whale with Jay except a jellyfish and that squid who grabbed him earlier. Don’t worry, neither have dialogue. The squid has a nasty attitude though and it decides Jay is to blame for its current predicament.

So, poor Jay is hit with the double whammy of being attacked by a sea monster while being trapped inside another sea monster.

Is this an escapable situation?

Finding out is the reason I wanted to see this movie.

More good news. At times, Whalefall looks and sounds nightmarishly real and the suspense is impressive. Particularly when Jay tries climbing out but moves in the wrong direction and lands in a pool of stomach acid.

But now the bad news.

Mitt, may not be in that whale with Jay, but Jay winds up having several imaginary conversations with Mitt and4 through these, the two men resolve their differences and learn to both respect and love each other as father and son.

I found this part of the film pretty lame, it wasn’t very well done. I mean Josh Brolin is screaming “You have soft lungs!” at his son and I don’t think it’s meant to be funny.

I don’t think Elisabeth Shue’s character was meant to be funny either, but she has this strange distracted energy that suggest she’s really not particularly interested in her husband or son and that she might actually be playing her character from Coyote Ugly.

Austin Abrams is fine. He was much better in (Zach Creeger’s) Resident Evil but he is believable as a frightened guy in an incredibly unsurvivable situation

Whalefall is based on a novel by Daniel Kraus, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Brian Duffield. I’ve heard the novel is extraordinary, so I am surprised this movie didn’t turn out better, especially since Duffield did such a good job adapting Aaron Starmer’s Spontaneous in 2020.

But it is what it is.

And Whalefall is worth catching if you’re on a plane, or if you need to be reminded just how dangerous scuba diving can be.

But I would feel remiss if I didn’t point out that this scenario is incredibly unlikely because whales don’t eat people. And not like sharks which almost never eat people, but sometimes do. Whales don’t eat people at all.

What I am saying here, is that this film could’ve been about a macho Dad who is a matador and cannot understand his skinny, bookish son and the feeling is mutual until one day that son is swallowed by a bull and has to remember painful conversations with his father in order to devise an escape plan.

That isn’t really a plausible story, but it’s just as plausible as Whalefall.

Bullfall doesn’t work as a title though.

It’s cheap Movie Tuesday! Yay!

And also, Boo! Because it’s the second Tuesday in October when we1 review cheap scary films that go bump in the night!

But before we get into that, a word about ball pits!

It seems like society’s patience for ball pits is really running out.

As a kid, I never experienced ball pits. I’m not a parent so, truthfully, I have no idea if leaping into a chasm full of dayglo-plastic spheres is essential for a happy childhood or if it’s a fad that’s long outstayed its welcome.

But it does seem, more and more, that anecdotes about happy ball pit experiences are being replaced with horror stories about cleaning them or about what is uncovered in ball pits that are not cleaned regularly.

So it was inevitable that ball pits would play a crucial role in a horror movie. I’m actually surprised it took so long.

Other Mommy is a horror movie that doesn’t succeed in every way, but it succeeds in making ball pits terrifying.

Jessica Chastain plays the movie’s titular monster and she has a moment rising out of those rubber balls where she looks scarier than Martin Sheen rising from the river in Apocalypse Now.

There are underwater scenes where drowning characters can’t escape the ocean because the surface is completely covered with rubber balls, and a scene in a car where someone is almost crushed when rubber balls inexplicably fill the interior.

At other times the balls spontaneously appear in the fridge, in the bed or underfoot, reminding the audience that Other Mommy has been here and possibly still is! It’s quite well done. You can almost see Stephen King kicking himself for not putting a ball-pit chapter in ‘It’.

Of course, it’s not just balls, there are other parts of Other Mommy that succeed and I will get to those, but first I need to address that Other Mommy takes place in a world that makes no sense, or at least, I hope it doesn’t.

The Plot: Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) is a young child getting ready for her first day at a new school. She’s planned a small introductory speech about herself and asks her Mommy and Daddo2 (Jessica Chastain and Jay Duplass) if she can practice it for them

In the speech, Bela references a scar on her back, the result of an accident that happened on a picnic with Mommy and Daddo. Her parents tell her not to mention it because that might make them look like bad parents. Then they tell her to make something up if anyone asks about the scar.

“But isn’t that lying"?” asks Bela. Her parents tell her that sometimes lying is okay.

Later that night, when Bela is alone in her room, she talks to an imaginary friend named “Other Mommy”.

The next day Daddo is working from home and even though it’s only noon he’s had a lot of weed. Suddenly he smells smoke and finds a pot of macaroni that’s been left to boil so long it caught fire.

He scolds Bela for using the stove without asking. Bela insists “Other Mommy did it” and when Daddo asks where Other Mommy is, Bela points under the counter and Daddo sees Other Mommy (Jessica Chastain) who looks exactly like his wife, or rather, exactly like John Carpenter’s The Thing trying to impersonate his wife.

Daddo takes this the way Shaggy from Scooby-Doo would. He screams and bolts away so fast he literally runs through a window. Then he uses his cell to call in a SWAT team and also to ask Actual Mommy if she can come home early.

The SWAT team doesn’t find Other Mommy. Neither does Actual Mommy who is convinced this whole situation is proof Daddo smokes too much pot and boy does she give him a piece of her mind.

But later on, Other Mommy crashes Actual Mommy and Daddo’s wedding anniversary and raises hell. The guests flee in panic except for “Uncle” Frank (Arian Moayed)3 who invites everyone to stay at his house while Mommy and Daddo argue about whether to call Ghostbusters or Lin Shaye.

In the middle of the night, Other Mommy manifests at “Uncle” Frank’s place, wakes Bela up and informs her that Actual Mommy and “Uncle” Frank are having an affair (which is true). This makes Bela angry so she asks Other Mommy to make Uncle Frank go away. Other Mommy says she will.

A few minutes later, Other Mommy makes a bowling ball out of Uncle Frank’s head and drags his body all over the house before finally making him explode in his own man cave. Cognizant of the fact she’s doing this in front of a child, Other Mommy turns Uncle Frank’s viscera into golden confetti.

This frightens Daddo and Actual Mommy so much that they decide to do the one thing they were never going to do under any circumstances, visit Grandma. (Karen Allen).

Grandma is really rich. She lives in a three-storey beachfront mansion that has bifurcated staircases and silk brocaded walls. She also believes in ghosts, seances and won’t let anyone in her home until they remove their socks and let the guard dogs sniff their feet.

Still, Grandma is who you want around in a situation like this. Not only does she immediately accept the existence of Other Mommy as fact, Grandma knows what Other Mommy wants, which is to possess Bela. But she cannot do that unless Bela agrees to it.

To get rid of Other Mommy, Grandma calls Lois the Exorcist (Dichen Lahmen) who arrives in a fancy SUV with a squad of paranormal experts who all have the confidence and enthusiasm of one of those reality TV home-reno teams. Other Mommy ectoplasms them all to death which really disappoints Grandma because she really wanted to help with this one particular thing.

Now, Actual Mommy and Daddo decide the only thing that makes any sense4 is to go back home, organize all their hardware tools on the dining room table and face off against Other Mommy as a family.

So….

Who do you think deserves the blame here?

Not director Rob Savage or screenwriter Nathan Elston. Not James Wan. Not even Jay Duplass. All of these men are doing only what has been acceptable, indeed only what has been essential, to make popular movies for 21st-century attention spans.

Apparently, it is no longer necessary to suspend audience disbelief. If it improves the story’s pacing, the whole world just immediately accepts the existence of demons. Anyone who disagrees is a communist.

While the men of Other Mommy may be blameless, the women deserve praise5. I am not being facetious. Dichen Lahmen and Karen Allen are both really bringing their A game here and as for Jessica Chastain, this is her best performance.

I know, I know, she’s had some really good performances before. She was really good in a movie called Dreams that came out earlier this year. But Other Mommy gives her the opportunity to play a demon with a human face. A demon constantly trying to mask its urgent need to possess a human body, and mask it with a face exuding unconditional love.

It is a camp masterpiece performance, as good as Isabelle Huppert in Greta or Octavia Spencer in Ma.

This movie is a very entertaining experience. You should see it and see it soon because Other Mommy probably won’t be in theatres long. Other critics are raking it over the coals and I can’t really blame them. There hasn’t really been a movie this ridiculous all year. Even Killer Whale and One Night Only are sensible by comparison.

Wait a minute, Verity, I’m not sure Other Mommy is as ridiculous as Verity.

But that is a discussion for another time.

The Tea: Bubble Tea of course, one of the pink or lavender flavours. Better yet, have one with popping boba!

The Snack: Your choice of arancini, falafel, bitterballen, matzo-ball soup, Gulab Jamun, or baseball steak. Anything really, as long as it’s ball-shaped!

Hello Scarestack, and Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to each and every one of you.

This year, I am thankful Kyle Ryan invited me to participate in……..

In 1986, Alan Moore opened The Watchmen with the image of a blood-spattered smiley face. It recurred again and again throughout the comic, until that happy yellow circle ceased to be ubiquitous 70s kitsch and became an 80s symbol of tension and dread.

It was brilliant

But Moore wasn’t the first person to do it.

In 1981, smiley face stickers were also used in The Howling. They were stuck to nearly every surface as territorial markings made by a man who was figuratively and literally, a monster.

The Howling’s legacy is the ‘hip and campy werewolf movie’. That, and being the film that would eventually lead Joe Dante to directing his masterpiece, Gremlins

And yet, The Howling is also pretty disturbing, even 45 years later.

Why?

You can credit Rob Bottin’s revolutionary makeup effects, or cinematographer, John Hora’s terrifying use of light and shadow. But I think what really makes the Howling eerie is being such a product of its time. That time being 1981.

That year there was growing suspicion about many new-age and pop psychology movements that thrived in the 70s, particularly EST, Scientology and the Hare Krishnas.

There was also a lot of murder. In 1980, the homicide rate in America was higher than any year before or since. “Serial killer” became a term heard every day on the news.

The public was angry and scared, and a movie about an outwardly normal-looking person suddenly changing into a bloodthirsty monster, resonated more than it had in many years.

Eager to cash in, Avco Embassy Pictures started a low-budget production called The Howling, based on Gary Brandner’s werewolf novel.

Original writer/director Jack Conrad kept turning in scripts the studio hated. He also insisted he would somehow shoot the movie using real wolves which had everyone confused and terrified.

Conrad owned the rights to The Howling, so Avco Embassy couldn’t fire him. Instead, they promoted him to Executive Producer and replaced him with young filmmakers, director Joe Dante and screenwriter, John Sayles.1

Avco Embassy told Sayles to completely rewrite the script and that as long as it was still about werewolves, they didn’t care what changes were made.

What they did care about was speed, because Warner Brothers and Universal were already in production on big-budget werewolf movies.2 Executives were convinced The Howling’s only hope to compete would be getting into theatres first.

So The Howling was written, cast, shot and edited in four weeks. It opened on Friday March 13, 1981, getting a significant jump on not only the big studio werewolf projects but also on Friday the 13th Part 2!

But was it any good?

The Plot: The movie begins with a woman alone at night. Karen White (Dee Wallace), is a news reporter on her way to interview a serial killer named Eddie (Robert Picardo).

Eddie has promised to call Karen at a phone booth on the corner of Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard which, in 1981, was a red light district full of grimy porn shops. Because it’s 1981, it was also full of phone booths, but Karen easily figures out which one Eddie will call.

The phone rings, Karen answers. Eddie tells Karen he’s waiting in a peep show room at the back of a porno shop across the street.

As Karen enters the room, a voice tells her to sit. She does and from behind, Eddie grabs her by the shoulders, restraining her.

“Please, Eddie, I want to see you.” says Karen

“Not yet” says Eddie.

He drops some coins into the slot and a horrific movie starts playing. Eddie talks about his victims, calls them weak, and ephemeral. Eddie tells Karen she’s different and that he wants her to see him ‘as he truly is’.

Eddie removes his hands. The shadow he casts on Karen is suddenly much larger.

“Turn around, Karen” He says.

She does and screams.

And then Eddie is shot in the head.

Karen was wearing a wire. She acted as bait for the police

Eddie is dead. Karen is a hero, but now she’s traumatized. She can’t work. Every time she tries to sleep she has horrible dreams.

Dr George Waggner (Patrick Macnee) is a pop psychologist who frequently hawks his books and seminars on Karen’s show. He invites her to spend two weeks at “The Colony”, his northern California retreat where participants are taught to surpass personal limitations by getting in touch with their ‘inner animal’.

Karen decides to bring her husband, Bill (Christopher Stone) which will turn out to be the biggest mistake of her life.

Bill is the sort of guy who seems perfect if you aren’t married to him. He’s fit, handsome, smart, charming, and has a good job. He is also scum. He cheats on Karen frequently. He also hits her. Later, when Karen is in trouble, he isn’t on her side.

The Colony turns out to be kind of ridiculous. By day, everyone does highly emotional group therapy. At night, the women play the fiddle while the men go hunting in the woods.

Both Karen and Bill are smart enough to see Dr Waggner’s Colony is a cult. What’s a bit less obvious is that he’s losing control of it. The real authority is wielded by T.C. Quist (Don McLeod) and his sister Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks) who are both alarmingly aggressive and feral.

When Karen admits to being creeped out by the Quists, she’s warned they have an older brother who is even more intense. When Karen learns the older brother’s name is Eddie she thinks, ‘Wow, that’s a weird coincidence’. But then a colleague calls with disturbing news. The serial killer’s body has vanished from the morgue. It also comes up that his full name was Eddie Quist.

Or perhaps it’s better to say that his full name is Eddie Quist, because Karen is suddenly hearing from colony members that Eddie has returned. Apparently, he really wants to see her.

Now Karen wants to run, but the colony insist she isn’t going anywhere. Not until she sees them all ‘as they really are.'

The Howling’s werewolves were different from typical movie lycanthropes in many ways. They could change at will. They didn’t need to wait for the full moon or even nightfall. Bullets could ‘kill’ them, but unless they were silver, the damage was only temporary. Some, like Dr Waggner, fought hard to control their urges, but most revelled in the harm they could do.

Elisabeth Brooks was particularly scary as lupine femme fatale, Marsha Quist.

Robert Picardo’s performance made my skin crawl. I kept reminding myself, “He’s just the bald hologram doctor from Star Trek! “He’s just the bald hologram doctor from Star Trek!” Which worked fine until the transformation scenes, notably this one.

The Howling was a huge hit, and it almost accomplished at lot.

Not only was it almost the scariest werewolf film of the 80s, it was almost the funniest. Hollywood makeup legend, Rob Bottin almost pioneered the best onscreen lycanthrope transformations. Mark Mangini almost recorded cinema’s most terrifying wolf howls.

In fact, for the 24 weeks between March and August 1981, many people felt The Howling had accomplished these milestones.

But then An American Werewolf in London came out.

AAWIL was scarier, funnier3, gorier, had better editing, better special effects, better sound effects, better dream sequences and, most painfully, better onscreen transformations4. Transformations that were so good it motivated the Oscars to create the award for Best Hair and Makeup design. Transformations that were so good, they haven’t been matched in 45 years.

It seemed that An American Werewolf in London eclipsed The Howling in every way, except perhaps by having the lousiest sequel. But in 1997, An American Werewolf in Paris came out and took that distinction too.

Thank you all so much for reading. Don’t forget to check out the Scarestack Posts. This is a link to an amazing interactive calendar with the full schedule.

It’s the first Cheap Movie Tuesday Wednesday of October!

October is the month we1 focus on scary films here at B-Movie Tea. Today’s cheap movie straddles both the aughts and the twenty-teens! And it just might be the goriest film of both decades.

But before I talk about it, I feel the need to briefly mention another cheap film that should’ve been even gorier, but wasn’t.

I first heard about the Human Centipede sometime in the summer of 2009, when it came up during brunch.

I was eating scrambled eggs and bacon and trying to tune out a friend talking about an upcoming movie about three people surgically conjoined anus-to-mouth-anus to-mouth to form a ‘human centipede’.

At the time, I suspected the film didn’t actually exist, but a few weeks later I saw the Human Centipede’s truly disturbing poster and realized it would soon be crawling towards a cinema near me.

The movie’s marketing was very memorable. The posters were decorated with numerous unsourced quotations claiming it was the most disturbing film of all time and that it was “100% medically accurate.”

Naturally, I felt obliged to watch the Human Centipede but not without some trepidation, because even though I watch a lot of shocking content, I was worried this might be a bridge too far.

The worries were misplaced. Believe it or not, the Human Centipede is actually pretty tame2. Most of the “100% medically accurate” stuff happens offscreen. This was a relief, but also a disappointment. Part of me was hoping to be horrified. I imagine most people who willingly watched a film titled ‘The Human Centipede’ were expecting the ‘ne plus ultra’ of body horror and were probably disappointed with what they got instead.

The Human Centipede was supposed to be the maximum gross-out movie of the decade, but it was grandly upstaged by a film that came out shortly afterwards, Piranha 3-D.

Unlike the Human Centipede, Piranha 3-D was not marketed particularly well.

Was it connected to the 1978 movie, Piranha? If yes, was it a sequel or a remake? The answer was never clear.

The film was originally supposed to be released in April 2010, but was delayed until the end of August, a time generally reserved for the very worst movies.3

There had been plans to promote the film in July at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, but convention programmers canceled because the footage they saw repulsed them.

So, Piranha 3-D arrived in theatres looking like it was going to be pretty bad, but I went anyway because I watch all the creature features.

And I was really, really freaked out.

The Plot: It’s Spring Break at Lake Victoria and the small Arizona town is inundated with drunk teenagers looking to fraternize. Sherriff Julie Forester (Elizabeth Shue) and Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) attempt to keep things under control, but when the partially eaten corpse of Fisherman Boyd (Richard Dreyfus) washes ashore, they realize there might be something in the water.

Sherriff Forester’s son, Jake (Steven R. McQueen) has a crush on Kelly (Jessica Szohr), the girl next door. When Kelly accepts an invitation onto the yacht of sleazy adult filmmaker, Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell), Jake decides to go with them even though his instincts are against it.

Meanwhile Sherriff Forester teams up with seismologist Novak (Adam Scott) and Marine Biologist Dr. Goodman (Christopher Lloyd) and discovers that the lake is filled with a deadly species of pre-historic piranha long thought extinct.

Grabbing some megaphones, they race to beach and beg the Spring Breakers to get out of the water.

Everyone laughs at them but then one of the revellers is attacked by something that sucks her down through the hole of an inner tube and suddenly everything turns red.

I thought Piranha 3-D would be a goofy comedy with cartoonish violence. The first 70 minutes of it were, but then the tone changed abruptly.

There have only been three times a movie frightened me so much I debated leaving the theatre, the original Jurassic Park, 28 Days Later and Piranha 3-D. The first two movies scared me, Piranha 3-D had me wondering if I was going to barf.

Somehow, I failed to notice that the film was directed by Alexandre Aja, the famous (notorious) French director known for Haute Tension, Mirrors and the gruesome 2006 remake of the Hills Have Eyes.

Aja`s films are known for gore that looks very, very real. Don’t imagine what you’ve seen in typical slasher or zombie films, imagine what you’ve seen in really graphic car-safety PSAs. When the movie’s infamous carnage scene arrives and the piranha begin to feast, it looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting has come to life.

Watching all those partially devoured people pulled from the water, go into trauma and bleed out was so viscerally upsetting I still remember it. And some of the most horrifying scenes didn`t even involve the fish. I still feel queasy every time I think about what happened after the metal suspension wire snapped. Or when that one swimmer’s hair gets caught in a boat propeller.

Piranha 3-D is the ideal scary film for Grand-Guignol enthusiasts. For a superior piranha film, look up 1978’s Piranha, Joe Dante’s first feature.

Dante’s killer fish movie is lots of fun4, but I don’t want to get into that today because next Monday5 I will be writing about the movie Dante made immediately afterwards, The Howling.

It’s my contribution to “Fall of the House of Scarestack”.

See you next week

The Tea: Lemon Balm tea is ideal for both soothing trauma warding off nausea

The Snack: Goldfish crackers with the red dipping sauce of your choice.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to die by falling into lava?

Would you vaporize before you even reached it or die slowly as you sank? And if the latter, would you go silently like Gollum in Return of the King or screaming all the way like Stan Olber in Volcano?

October is the month at B-Movie-Tea, where we1 review scary films that go bump in the night.

So, I had to think a while about whether Will Arbery and Roman Gavras’s, Sacrifice qualified as such a film. But I didn’t think too long because any movie where the antagonist’s goal is to hurl people into an active volcano is probably scary enough.

I was still cautious about whether Sacrifice was worth reviewing or even worth seeing, because the buzz wasn’t great. Truthfully, it was a bit ultra-damning.

I really wanted to see Sacrifice in September 2025 when it premiered at Tiff. The premise was Chris Evans, Sam Richardson, Selma Hayek, Vincent Cassel and John Malkovich all playing celebrities (possibly themselves) attending a charity gala inside an abandoned marble mine that is hijacked by a cult who wants to sacrifice celebrities to a volcano god. The high priestess of this lava sect was played by Anya Taylor-Joy.

Promotional stills for Sacrifice showed Taylor-Joy wearing a blonde mullet wig and wielding a machete while Evans begged for mercy on his knees. The gleaming-white floor, walls and ceiling of the marble mine made it all look ultra visceral. Sacrifice seemed like a perfect movie. Getting tickets to the first screening was impossible.

I don’t recall if there was a second screening

I do recall reviews that were extremely negative and many critics refusing to review the movie at all. Very quickly, Sacrifice became the bomb of the festival. It was purchased by Netflix, but no release date was ever announced and soon all talk about the movie went quiet.

Usually when a film full of movie stars causes that reaction, it is a special type of failure. Not a bad film with a few good elements. Not a film so bad that it’s funny. This type of failure means a long, dull film that has no discernible meaning. An objectively inaccessible movie.2

Was Sacrifice one of those movies? If yes, I needed to know.

The Plot: Mike Tyler (Chris Evans) is a movie star enduring some backlash. His last movie was a big hit, but Tyler felt it was commercial garbage. To let the world know, he decided to walk around in his underwear, setting random buildings on fire with a flamethrower.

Mike’s agent, Oliver (Sam Richardson) has handled damage control. Oliver believes that after months of therapy and medication, Mike is finally ready for a comeback. Oliver is currently escorting Mike to a charity gala to fight climate change.

In the limo ride to this gala, Mike fretts about his thinning hair, which pleases Oliver tremendously. He’s grateful that his star client is once again fixated on superficial things.

But at the gala, Mike is pestered by wealthy socialite, Gloria Bracken (Selma Hayek) and then publicly insulted by her husband, tech mogul Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel).

Triggered, Mike storms the stage and screams at everyone, calling them hypocrites, parasites, predators, phoneys and demanding ‘real change’ over and over again until he runs out of breath and flees to the washroom.

For Oliver this is a crisis, but emcee Anna (Miriam Silverman), keeps the gala going as though nothing was amiss. Then she introduces the night’s entertainment, Charli XCX as ‘sexy mother nature’ who leads a chorus of nubile young dancers to gyrate amongst the dinner tables. It’s all so interactive that when the room is stormed by people in matching jump suits who are waving machetes, everyone assumes it’s just part of the show.

Well, some people suspect something’s off, so Anna picks up the microphone to calmly announce that it is in fact, just part of the show. Seconds later, her arm is sliced off by Joan (Anya-Taylor-Joy).

Now that she has the room’s attention, Joan explains why the gala has been hijacked. She accuses everyone present of being complicit in the destruction of the environment and tells them they deserve to die.

She also goes on to explain that a super volcano will soon erupt, ending all life on Earth unless several sacrificial victims from this event are pushed into the lava and one ‘hero’ jumps willingly.

“Who among you, is this hero?” asks Joan. Right at that moment, Mike returns from the washroom.

I enjoyed Sacrifice quite a lot. Anya Taylor-Joy is fantastic as a religious fanatic devoted to gods of her own making. She is insane, but also convincingly smart enough to plan a hijacking, kidnapping and vulcanology-based ritual sacrifice the local authorities are powerless to stop.

Chris Evans initially seemed like the wrong fit for a role that should’ve been played by Zach Galifianakis, but as the movie continued my opinion changed. Evans is really good as an aging, narcissistic actor losing his sanity, who has an intense desire to be relevant and on the right side of history even though he has no idea what either would mean.

While both Taylor-Joy and Evans are believable in their roles, their characters are not likeable and I think that’s why Sacrifice has attracted so much animosity. Also, many critics expressed disappointment with the hijackers were a lunatic cult and not righteous revolutionaries, but I don’t think the hijackers were meant to be the focus of Sacrifice. The focus is Mike Tyler whose warped priorities and mid-life crises make him the most dangerous character in this movie.

Mike desperately yearns for a role that shows everyone just how good an actor he is. As the ‘hero’ of this volcano cult, he may have finally found that role.

Actors who are passionate about their craft and aim for authenticity are usually wonderful company. But occasionally I meet one whose ambition is really off-putting, particularly when it is accompanied by narcissism and poor mental health. Actors like that make me think “Well, I guess it’s good that you went into acting and not teaching, politics or religion.” Sacrifice is about these sorts of actors.

I haven’t seen any other films from Romain Gavras3, but Sacrifice reveals a considerable gift for direction. He gets a great performance from Swedish rapper Yung Lean as a crazed cult member and Welsh actress Jade Croot is extraordinary despite having no dialogue at all.

Netflix did eventually give Sacrifice a streaming date, October 164. But Sacrifice also started an almost completely unadvertised theatrical run last weekend. If you feel like seeing a big screen movie but feel uncertain about spending time and money on Digger, Verity or Beware Boiuna, look for the smallest cinema in your multiplex, that’s where Sacrifice is probably playing.

If you need to convince someone to see it with you, tell them Selma Hayek’s in it and the plot is basically “Joe vs the Volcano” only scary.

It is October!

The Month of Terror! The 31-Days-of-Dread! The Harbinger of Decemberween!

The Fall of the House of Scarestack!

It is the month where we1 at B-Movie Tea, focus on scary movies that go bump in the night!

Today’s scary movie is directed and co-written by Zach Creeger.

Last year, Creeger wrote and directed ‘Weapons’, a horror-comedy that was a huge hit despite not being part of an established franchise. This is something almost unheard of in 21st-century Hollywood.

Naturally, Creeger’s reward for making an original blockbuster was being hired to make a movie that was part of an established franchise.

Resident Evil is a well-worn franchise that features many classic video games but its movies are all on the same tier as the Underworld or Cabin Fever films.

Except for this one, because Creeger was given freedom to make it his own.

The Plot: Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a gig worker who delivers organs from one hospital to another.

At the end of a particularly long workday, Bryan is offered double pay to make one last delivery, but only if he has a vehicle that can handle mountain roads and heavy snow.

Bryan does not have that kind of vehicle, but says he does so he can get the money.

While driving up the mountain, Bryan answers a phone call from his girlfriend, Michelle (Sara Paxton) and learns she is pregnant.

‘It’s your body. It’s your choice.’ says Bryan, in a tone of voice that clearly states ‘It’s your problem. Leave me out of it.’

This makes Michelle angry, which motivates Bryan to use a more compassionate tone of voice, which takes a lot of concentration so Bryan doesn’t notice the pedestrian ahead of him until she bounces off his windshield.

Bryan stops the car and races to see if the pedestrian is still alive. She isn’t, but this is a Resident Evil movie, so it looks like she is.

The injured woman (Andrea Miltnerová) grunts, moans and also moves, but only with great difficulty. Bryan decides the most sensible thing to do is put her in the passenger seat of his car and take her to the nearest hospital, after he’s completed the delivery, of course.

But then a cop (Johnno Wilson) pulls Bryan over.

The injured woman is a zombie, of course and Bryan’s interaction with the cop provides the distraction she needs to claim her first victim.

(Zach Creeger’s) Resident Evil is filled with so many terrifying scenes. There’s one where a huge picture window reveals a zombie racing towards us from a great distance, another where hundreds of the undead leap off the roof of a four-storey building and liquefy on the ground. Then there’s that scene in the maternity ward. That one was almost too much.

Resident Evil might have been a depressing experience if viewed in solitude. Fortunately, I watched it in a packed theatre. Nearly everyone talked throughout the film, but that was actually a good thing. It made the film more frightening and it made a lot of the movie’s humour funnier.

The stars of that audience were an elderly couple who both watched from their mobility scooters. They provided memorable commentary like 'She splatted all over the wall!" and constantly shouting 'Nope!" whenever someone on screen said something hopeful.

So many people hate people who talk during movies. I don’t. Hearing people react in real time almost always enhances the experience. Some of the best movie dialogue I’ve ever heard came from the audience.

The only people I hate who talk during movies are people who aren’t talking about the movie on screen

You don’t need to know a thing about the Resident Evil video-games to enjoy this “PlayStation’ film. And you don’t need to have seen any of the previous Resident Evil movies, and in fact, with a few minor tweaks to the screenplay, this film could be a sequel to The Thing. Yes, I realize what I am saying there.

Cregger is excellent at writing characters you rarely find in horror movies. He writes excellent satire too. Are gig workers actually delivering hearts and kidneys the same way they deliver Uber Eats.
It wouldn't surprise me at all.

I’m not sure what Zach Cregger’s next project is going to be. Perhaps he’ll make another original masterpiece. But if he keeps going with pre-existing brands, I hope he does some more video game adaptations.

I’d love to see what he could do with Pac-Man or Q*Bert.

The temperature is dropping, the pumpkins are spicing, the leaves on the trees are decomposing, soon they will all be blood red.

Also over is the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, or Tiff as it has come to beknown in the current century.

This year I bought a Rush pass and tried to see as much as I could.

I’ve already written about four of the movies I saw1, Below, River, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother and Bucking Fastard, but I managed to see an additional 14 I’ve decided to spend this Cheap Movie Tuesday talking about.

Each of these films was either the ‘most’ or the ‘____est’ of the various experiences I like to have while out at the movies. If that doesn’t make sense now, it will by the end of this post

(Most Unique) The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.

Nigeria has the world’s third-largest film industry but somehow I made it all the way to 2026 without seeing a single Nollywood film. Fortunately, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives made a great first impression.

How would you feel if you sat down to a fancy dinner with fancy guests and suddenly there was a pissed-off chicken running all over the table? Now, how would you feel if you were accused of loosing that bird upon everyone?

This is one of many indignities faced by Bolanle (Omowunmi Dada), a young university grad who decides to become the fourth wife of 45-year-old business tycoon Baba Segi (Odunlade Adekola). His other three wives take an instant dislike to Bolanle and embark on a mission to make her life hell, which includes, but is certainly not limited to, the poultry incident mentioned above.

TSLOFBSW is funny, has suspense, great characters, and provides fascinating insight into modern polygamy and why someone might choose to marry into it. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is getting a wide release in the USA and Canada this December. You need to see it!

(Coolest SWAG) Coward

It’s World War I and a short, skinny soldier named Frances (Valentin Campagne) avoids death in the trenches by singing and dancing for his superior officers. Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia), a tall and burly soldier, is permitted to dance alongside Frances while recovering from a hand injury. Frances and Pierre fall in love and have a secret affair. But Pierre’s hand is healing and the medics insist he’s strong enough to return to the front. Pierre is convinced this means certain death and plans to desert, which means certain death by firing squad, but only if he’s caught. Pierre doesn’t want to run alone, but convincing Frances to join him might not be possible.

This film was decent, but I’ll always remember it for having the best promo-souvenirs of the festival. The whole audience was given faux vintage envelopes filled with faux vintage photos of Frances and Pierre. It was really sweet.

(Scariest) The Spiral

The best horror movie I saw at TIFF was easily The Spiral, an incredible fusion of St Maud and The Monkey’s Paw.

Jasmine Trinca plays Anna, a wealthy mother whose strong, beautiful, talented children are the envy of parents everywhere. But one day her youngest daughter is in a horrible accident and as Anna sits in the waiting room the news gets worse and worse.

In the hospital chapel, Anna encounters a strange woman who never introduces herself (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi,). She offers to save the daughter, but only if she is permitted to harm someone else in Anna’s family.

Anna tells this crazy person where to go, but in a moment of panic, accepts the offer.

Anna’s daughter “Miraculously” recovers. Anna starts to think that nameless lady was just a hallucination2

Alas, Anna’s family is indeed fated to something worse.

(Weirdest) The Alpha Gang

Mumblecore wunderkinds, the Zellner Brothers clearly had a blast shooting this strange film in abandoned post-Soviet structures all over Eastern Europe. It’s about aliens who travel an unfathomable distance through time and space and manifest in the bodies of Lily-Rose Depp, Riley Keough, Lea Seydoux and Dave Batista. It’s not as good as it sounds, but you’ll probably never guess how Chris Pine winds up in the movie.

(Goriest) Kick On

This was probably the second scariest film at Tiff this year.

On their way to a night of wholesome debauchery, a group of young Australians decide to buy some drugs. Someone knows a guy, who knows a guy, who lives on the other side of town on the 9th storey of a condo tower. Getting there takes so much effort that nobody thinks twice, not even when ‘the guy’ turns out to be Ray (Nikolai Nikolaeff) a psychopath with a collection of guns and a life full of traumatic aggression he’s been waiting for the right moment to unload. Wouldn’t you know it, tonight is the night and suddenly heads are exploding in vivid, graphic detail.

(Most impressive very-last-final-ending scene). Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo

The great Takeshi Miike contributes the third entry to the dubious ‘Bad Lieutenant’ franchise. Shun Oguri plays the titular bad guy and proves a more than worthy successor to Harvey Keitel and Nicolas Cage.

Oguri is an alcoholic father with a gambling problem tasked with tracking down Ishizuka (Shotaro Mamiya), a serial killer who grinds his victims into meatballs and leaves them on roof tops to feed the birds.That would be stressful enough, but Oguri is also black mailed into helping undercover FBI agent (Lily James) find a US senator’s daughter (Liv Morgan) who has come to Tokyo to use hard drugs and embark on a killing spree.

The final third, of BL:T isn’t as good as the first two thirds, but the ending-ending, the part at the very end, is phenomenal.

(Most Popular) La Bola Negra

A really long, but really strong epic that moves back and forth from the present day to the Spanish Civil War. Amazing performances and some truly impressive magical realism3 Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close both have really cool bit parts. This won the audience choice award and will probably be nominated for Best International Film

(Shortest and Strangest) Short Cuts: Strange Cuts

This is the shorts program devoted to the weirdest and scariest shorts. The standouts were Thien An Nguyen’s The Dream is a Snail, about a subculture of people who bet on snails as they ‘race’ across a human body and Filip Anthonissen’s Melk, a 3-D animation story where everyone looks like characters in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, particularly the Devil.

(Most Pleasant Surprise) Crystal Lake

I almost skipped this one because it isn’t a movie, it’s the first two episodes of a TV Show. I also almost skipped it because a Friday the 13th TV show sounded like an awful idea4. Hearing that it would be about the life of Pamela Voorhees, made it sound even worse. But I had second thoughts when I found out A24 was involved and the show runner was Brad Kaleb Cane5

I’m glad I saw it, because this show is fantastic. Gorgeous cinematography flawlessly reproduces the look and feel of early 70s grindhouse cinema. Linda Cardellini is a fantastic lead and impressively resembles a younger Betsy Palmer. The vibe and dialogue are campy, but the gore is very serious. It drops October 15 on Peacock in the USA and Crave in Canada.

(Hottest Take) Carrie

The other TV show based on a horror movie classic has Mike Flanagan as a showrunner. To Flanagan’s credit, he doesn’t try to tell a story that’s already been told. This version of Carrie takes place in the present and offers a different perspective on the story. Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan) is a more sympathetic character this time around, as is the bully Kris Hargensen (Alison Thornton). Carrie (Summer H Howell) is not as sympathetic as before. Bonus: The Highschool Principal is played by Matthew Lillard.

(Most Scathing) The Chambermaid

Radu Jude’s new film does not disappoint. His satire is as cutting and harsh as ever. This film, about the life of a Romanian nanny working for ‘liberal’ parents in France might be his most scathing film to date.

(Most Violent) Half

A gang of brutal motorcycle pirates terrorize the backstreets of Kerala. One day they carjack two siblings (Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj), torture them, violate them and leave them for dead. The bandits come to regret that decision because Rai and Sajeev are half-vampires and can’t be killed. When their bullet holes heal, the brother-and-sister kill team embark on a vengeance spree that might be the most violent ever filmed. The deep fryer death will haunt your dreams, as will the part where a bandit is forced to kill himself with his own elbow.

And that was Tiff 2026, good night.

The Most excellent tea: Heavenly Cream, a black tea blend mixed with bergamot, bourbon and vanilla. Sloane’s makes a good one

Gooiest Snack: A peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich is the ideal gooey film festival snack. Keeps well in tin foil, ziplocks, saran wrap or even wax paper and is delicious at 7:00 AM, noon or midnight.

On Day 3, I wrote that Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother had the best title in TIFF 2026.

I might have been too hasty.

Bucking Fastard is the latest film by Werner Herzog.

It isn’t a documentary, but it isn’t exactly fiction either, more on that in a bit.

Bucking Fastard is about Joan and Jean Holbrooke (Kate and Rooney Mara), two adult sisters who live together, dress alike and speak in unison. They only speak in unison.

This behavior has made the sisters pariahs and both are well into their 30s before they experience romantic love. And when they finally do, the sisters do what they’ve always done, they share.

Their communal lover is a handsome drunkard named Gareth (Orlando Bloom). Gareth loves having tandem girlfriends, but one day he falls for another woman and decides to marry her.

The sisters don’t take that well.

They initially spend long hours standing outside Gareth’s house, silently at first, like those twins in The Shining, but later on they wail loudly in despair. When that doesn’t work they try to burn his house down

This leads to Gareth seeking a restraining order and a court case where the girls are permitted to testify at the same time but wind up in contempt of court for calling Gareth a “Bucking Fastard” from the witness stand.

Kate and Rooney Mara are both phenomenal here.

Speaking in unison is much harder to do then it looks. They both make it look totally natural.

They also exude the innocence of two people whose disability has socially isolated them from the rest of society.

When the court case turns the sisters into viral stars, they are suddenly surrounded by a lot of people with bad intentions, influencers who want to exploit them as well as dirty men of all ages.

Fortunately, the girls have Aunt Louise (Marion O’Dwyer) who lives in the countryside who invites them to move in with her.

At this point the movie becomes very different. The girls still speak in unison but are no longer surrounded by anyone who finds that odd or even notices.

This gives them space to do things that give them purpose like raising a pet fox or manually digging a tunnel through a mountain.

The odd narrative shift seemed jarring at first, but what I didn’t know was that the Holbrooke sisters are based on two real people, Greta and Freda Chaplin.

Like the twins in the movie, the Chaplin sisters wound up on trial for harassment and went viral1 for screaming “Bucking Fastard” from the witness stand.

Post trial, they had much less happy lives than their movie counterparts. Nobody offered them sanctuary in the countryside. They were stuck with their mental illness in an unforgiving urban environment. Werner Herzog had tentative plans to make a documentary about them, but the project never came together. Greta passed away in 2007, Freda in 2020.

The first half of Bucking Fastard is a very amusing dramatization of true events.

The second half is Herzog’s attempt to envision better lives for two people who suffered from severe mental illness.

If awards were given for best movie title, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother would win 2026 very easily. It has a title’s most important quality. It is impossible to forget1.

That said, the reason nobody gives out title awards, is because nobody goes to see a movie just for the title.

Fortunately, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother also has the best trailer of 2026. It reveals very little about the film except extraordinary fight scenes. Voice over narration explains the title and makes clear that whatever kind of movie this happens to be, it’s going to be something you haven’t seen before.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet. Here it is

YMYMYM is one of Tiff’s buzziest films. I tried getting advance tickets, but that was impossible. So, I joined the rush line three and a half hours before the movie began and that got me in... barely.

Was it worth it?

For me, it was2 and for half of the audience too, I suspect.

But the other half bolted out of the theatre the moment credits were rolling.

This movie is very tense, very violent and it deals with lots of subjects, but particularly religion, in a way that is going to make a lot of people very uncomfortable.

I have no idea how it will fare in wide release. My guess is it will either disappear immediately (like a lot of amazing movies do) or become really huge.

If huge, it will provoke a lot of anger.

And also, lots of conversation about whether Mahershala Ali and John Cho should receive Oscar nominations3

The Plot: Kadija (Shakirah DeMesier) the mother of three children, succumbs to an illness and dies. Her widowed husband, Latif (Mahershala Ali) decides to leave his career to raise his family.

But that is difficult, because Latif is a hitman. His employers don’t take resignation well.

Latif is a devout Muslim.

When questioned about how he reconciles his faith with his career, Latif has very articulate arguments about why his occupation isn’t Haram. But he doesn’t seem to believe them. Both his father, Abdul (Giancarlo Esposito) and brother, Talib (Tramell Tillman) are deeply ashamed of him which hurts Latif immensely. To keep the respect of his children, he goes to extreme lengths to ensure they have no idea what he does for a living.

Shortly after retiring, Latif is approached by a pimp named Hatty (Abubakr Ali) who wants him to kill a rival named Hwan Yoon (John Cho).

Latif declines even though saying no to Hatty is dangerous. He is part of a very powerful family.

Hwan Yoon is dangerous too, and despite Latif’s great effort, they do end up in conflict.

Initially, Latif thinks Hwan Yoon is just another gangster. He’s actually the leader of a Christian militia that stalks and murders ‘ungodly’ people. Hatty the pimp is his next target.

Hwan Yoon is not your typical Christian fanatic. He’s covered in tattoos. His teeth are covered in grills. His speech is riddled with profanity and he uploads social media content designed to threaten his enemies.

Characters like this are usually absurd caricatures, but John Cho plays it totally straight and the result is terrifying. Cho is convincing as someone who really believes Jesus wants him to kill and is also as someone intelligent and charismatic enough to control a ‘clergy’ of like-minded killers.

I was tense every moment Hwan Yoon was on screen. He is one of the best villains of the decade. John Cho deserves an Oscar for this.

Mahershala Ali is also extraordinary as the deeply conflicted father who loves his children, loves his faith but is unable to separate himself from violence.

As the conflict between Hwan Yoon and Latif escalates, this movie becomes almost unbearably intense and it doesn’t let up until a very emotional, unpredictable ending.

Writer/Director Bassam Tariq has made something truly unique here.

You need to see Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

The second day of Tiff began with another second choice.

The rush line for new romcom ‘Everybody Wants to F*ck Me’ actually looked kind of hopeful, but it didn’t work out.

But that was a good thing because it meant I got to see Joshua Giuliano’s River.

River was the first horror movie to premiere at TIFF 2026.

The one review I’d seen, from The Guardian, was lukewarm, comparing the River unfavorably to Obsession, the horror premiere hit of TIFF 2025 and the most financially successful horror movie of 2026.1

With all due respect to the Guardian, whose critics usually write refreshingly honest reviews, I have to disagree. River is a very good horror movie. At the screening I attended the audience oscillated between total silence and screaming.

The Plot: Three siblings are on a boat in the middle of a river, getting ready to scatter their father’s ashes.

The younger two, (Jane Levy and Max Mattern) both in their 20s, are grief-stricken. The eldest (Jessica Rothe) who is in her 30s, has a different opinion of her recently departed dad and can’t resist venting.

This leads to tension and fighting and just when they’re about to fire up the motor and call it all off, they discover they’re out of fuel.

This river is very remote. Nobody can get cellular reception.

The dysfunctional family now has two choices, waiting for another boat to pass, or swimming to the shore.

The younger two opt for waiting, which makes the older sister furious. She thinks it could be days before another boat comes by and the last thing they all need is to be stuck here when the sun’s gone down.

She decides to swim for it and gets halfway across the river before she notices a masked man standing on the shore, holding a knife.

She starts swimming back to the boat. The masked man dives into the water and swims after her.

And this is as far as I’ll go with describing a very scary movie about being trapped in the middle of nowhere with a monster.

The actors are all really good, which is always a major benefit, but is absolutely essential for a movie that aims to be terrifying.

This is Joshua Giuliano’s first feature, but he received a lot of attention previously for his short film, In Sound We Live Forever, where he brilliantly tells a horror story using narrative and editing techniques usually found only in scary PSAs

Many people are referring to River as a slasher film, which I don’t really agree with. You can’t have a slasher film with only three (non-slasher) characters and besides, River feels way more suspenseful and southern gothic2 than any slasher movie.

That said, it features the best horror movie yo-yo scene since Friday the 13th Part III

Oddly, I am spending a lot of time at TIFF, watching TV.

I have tickets to see the premiere of Mike Flannagan’s Carrie later this week as well as Crystal Lake, the prequel to Friday the 13th.

It was my intention to start TIFF with a movie, specifically with Fjord, which won the Palme D’or at Cannes in May. But one glance at the rush line, which stretched at least three city blocks, made it clear I wasn’t going to get in.

So I joined the rush line for, Below, Josh Hartnett’s new mini series set in a tiny fishing village in rural Newfoundland.

It feels weird introducing anything by mentioning Josh Hartnett. I mean no disrespect, Hartnett is a very good actor, but any reference to him always reminds me of Mary Holland from Happiest Season

And speaking of Happiest Season, Mackenzie Davis, who played Kristen Stewart’s closeted girlfriend in that film, is playing the romantic lead in Below.

She plays Fonda Howander, the sexy Marine Biologist who has eyes for Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett), a hunky widower who frequently asks Fonda to examine his ice hauls..

Calvin is an ‘ice cowboy’, which is an actual job. It involves using a fishing boat to lasso stray chunks of ice berg1

Calvin has three grown children.

Jay (Rohan Campbell) who lives in Fort McMurray, Mary (Ruby Stokes), who lives in Montreal and Wade (Charlie Heaton) who lives in rural Newfoundland with Calvin because he has really bad, untreated ADHD and can’t really support himself.

Jay and Mary are both home visiting.

Mary has brought her boyfriend Noah (Kaleb Thorne) who is secretly planning to propose to her. Jay has brought home dangerous men he owes money to. He manages to keep that a secret from his family even though he routinely looks like he’s been beaten up really badly.

To be fair, there’s a lot of distraction going around. The provincial government is trying to bribe everyone to move to bigger cities because they don’t want to pay for rural infrastructure2.

And then there’s that giant ice berg that has suddenly run aground in the harbour. Everyone is fighting over how best to make money from it.

All of this sounds like pleasant enough fodder for a TV series about regular human beings, but I was mainly interested in Below because the plot also involves a sea monster, specifically, a kraken3

Monster-movies are hard to pull off. Monster-TV shows are harder. Sea-Monster-TV shows are really, really hard. Can you name any?

Fortunately, Showrunner Jesse McKeown knows how to properly incorporate a giant squid into a family drama.

The first sign something’s off is a fishing net coming up full of lobsters, pollock and a half eaten moose.

How did that get there?

The next sign is two annoying tourists who decide to go for a sunset hike along the coast and are never seen again. Well, they do find some pieces of them.

As with most TV shows at TIFF, only the first two episodes were screened, so a lot remains unknown. I have no idea if Mary and Noah will get married, if Jay will escape his debtors, How Natasha Henstridge eventually winds up in the story4 or if Calvin and Fonda get together5

And I have no idea what the fiendish shellfish looks like because Director Jamie Childs is being monster-movie smart and not showing too much of it.

That said, there are some surprisingly gory images of squid victims

And one terrifying view of a giant eyeball.

Below starts streaming on Netflix October 8.

You should watch it

It is the ideal appetizer for Whalefall!

3

Well…..to put it very mildly, I was not prepared for this.

Before watching Buddy, all I knew was that it was a horror movie and the bad guy wore a onesie.

I expected it to be terrible.

Late August/early September horror movies are usually terrible1.

I certainly didn’t expect a movie as layered and intelligent as Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. I didn’t expect a scary movie either.

What I didn’t know, was that Buddy was co-written and directed by Casper Kelly, who made the unforgettably disturbing faux-sitcom Too Many Cooks in 2014 and released it on the unsuspecting masses in the middle of the night during infomercial programming. If you’re one of the few people who hasn’t seen Too Many Cooks, you simply must correct this, ….but you might want to put it off until after you’ve seen Buddy.

Buddy is more effective when you have no idea what’s coming.

The Plot: With a flourish of upbeat music, an episode of a children’s TV show called “It’s Buddy” begins.

Dated hair styles, wardrobe and video quality all suggest this show is from the early 90s, around the time Barney & Friends was popular.

Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and Wade (Caleb Williams), two children who are characters on the show, discuss an upcoming dance party hosted by ‘Buddy’. Freddy doesn’t want to go because she’s shy and thinks her dancing will look silly.

Wade suggests she seeks Buddy’s help, because Buddy knows how to fix everything. Just then, there is a poof of magic and a six-foot-tall, orange, fuzzy, anthropomorphic unicorn appears. This is Buddy, who speaks with the voice of Keegan-Michael Key.

Buddy leads Freddy through a cheerful musical number about bravery and self esteem and sure enough, all her fear is erased. Now she can’t wait to go to the dance party.

That’s when another child named Josh (Luke Speakman) wanders onto the set. Josh is in a bad mood. He doesn’t want to go to the dance party. He wants to be left alone.

Just then, there is a poof of magic and suddenly Josh is wearing sneakers covered with glittery blue sequins. Buddy tells Josh he’s wearing magic dancing shoes and now he’s sure to have all the best moves! But Josh angrily yells “What is wrong with you? I want to be by myself!”.

Buddy tells Freddy and Wade to go inside the club house. They do and whoever is filming this program goes with them. In the club house, the dance party begins and is led by an enthusiastic anthropomorphic rabbit named Betty Bunny (Jimmica Collins). Wade and Freddy have a great time dancing. They barely notice when Buddy arrives sometime later, looking dishevelled and preoccupied.

Just then, there is a poof of magic and another child (Madison Skyy Polan) appears. She tells everyone her name is Hannah and she loves to sing and dance. She’s accepted instantly and in moments it’s like she’s always been part of the gang.

All seems well, until Freddy steps outside and notices something weird sticking out of a garbage can. It’s a book Josh was holding during his argument with Buddy. It’s covered in blood.

Freddy tells Wade and Hannah, who tell her to ask Buddy about it, But Freddy doesn’t think that’s a good idea, so they go to Nurse Nancy (Phuong Kubacki) one of the only adult characters on the show not dressed as an animal.

Nurse Nancy is certain this is all a misunderstanding and says she’ll talk to Buddy about it later.

When later arrives, the kids secretly watch the conversation from a window. They see Buddy throttle Nurse Nancy to death and then fatally bludgeon Clocky (Rachel Appelbaum), an anthropomorphic wall-clock who witnessed the attack.

Moments later, Buddy is back outside and resumes his joyful musical personae as though nothing happened, but the kids are too terrified to go through the motions. They are sobbing with fear. That’s when Buddy stops pretending and the kids realize they have to run.

Escape isn’t easy because the only world these kids know is the club house and the surrounding yard. Once they hop the fence, they find themselves in a prop forest full of talking flowers and dubious marionettes. It’s terrifying but being away from Buddy gives the children valuable time to think clearly. They realize they can’t remember their families or any of their lives before joining “It’s Buddy”.

Also, why did they join It’s Buddy? How did they join? They’re all old enough to understand they are (presumably) actors on a TV show, but are they? Nobody has any memories of ever being off set or out of character. And why has nobody ever seen Buddy with his mask off? It is a mask, right?

The kids desperately run towards distant skyscrapers, hoping to find someone who can help.

But Buddy’s knows these woods better than anyone and he’s in pursuit.2

At this point, you probably have one of two questions:

1. Is this movie really as disturbing as you’re making it sound? A: Yes and if that makes you uneasy, you should probably not watch Buddy. In fact you should probably stop reading this review. Read this one instead.

2. Why the hell did you spoil everything? How am I supposed to enjoy this movie now? A: I have not spoiled anything. I’ve described, maybe, 10% of the story. I left out several unpredictable plot twists and characters. I didn’t even reveal how Clint Howard and Michael Shannon eventually wind up on screen!

Also, I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is the right verb for watching Buddy. It’s an excellent horror movie, one of the year’s scariest, but it’s nerve wracking the whole way through.

Much of that is due to the child actors, Delaney Quinn, Tory Jacqui Malone, Luke Speakman, Tristan Borders, Madison Skyy Polan and Caleb Williams. They are all extraordinary. At first, they all give the stilted performances common on children’s TV shows. But when the situation turns dangerous, they all look genuinely terrified. They are all believable as children who have to act and think like adults, because actual adults can’t or won’t.

Keegan-Michael Key is perfect as the voice of Buddy. His friendly personae is so convincing, he actually sounds sincere when he says he’s forgiven the kids, which he frequently does, usually right before a scene of almost unbearable violence.

Buddy is Casper Kelly’s second feature and it is a masterpiece. The movie juggles meta concepts, multiple narratives, horror, gore and comedy without ever breaking the suspense. It would’ve been so easy for Buddy to degenerate into goofy camp or a routine slasher film. Instead, Casper Kelly brilliantly expresses what it’s like to be a child in the presence of dangerous adults. And how movies, books and TV shows meant ‘for kids’, can actually be terrifying, even traumatizing.

If you were a child who couldn’t stand puppets, clowns or strangers in funny costumes trying to hug you, Buddy might be the scariest movie you ever see.

The Tea: Passionflower tea is good for calming the nerves. Serve it piping hot so that, if need be, it can also be flung into the eyes of an approaching predator.

The Snack: Instead of eating, you are advised to focus on the rhythmic patterns of your breath, which will keep you grounded and assist you in distinguishing hallucinations from what is actually happening. Definitely avoid eating any flowers, no matter who suggests otherwise or what their arguments happen to be.

Last weekend, my local multiplex reduced all general admission tickets to $5.00! I suspect it was an attempt to increase popcorn sales. If yes, the attempt was highly successful. All cinemas were packed and all cinema floors were sticky with popcorn bags like it was the 20th Century once again!

Naturally, I took advantage of the discount and saw a pile of movies. I saw Buddy1, Coyote Vs Acme 2, Fall 2: Deadpoint3, Onslaught4 and the newly restored IMAX re-release of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira.

The five-dollar fares didn’t cover the IMAX upgrade, so watching Akira actually cost $13.00, but that didn’t bother me. I thought I would have the massive IMAX theatre pretty much to myself while everyone else fought over the cheap seats.

I was wrong, the IMAX screening of Akira was slammed. The only available seats were in the very first row, not the ideal place to take in a subtitled movie. But not many movies, subtitled or otherwise, begin with the visceral overload of Akira.

I first saw Akira in 1995, when I walked in on a group of friends watching a VHS copy. I arrived during the riot scene near the beginning, the part where happy puppies from a TV commercial are juxtaposed with violent attack dogs scrambling over gridlock traffic and anti-riot police shoot a man so many times, his body disintegrates. That scene is immediately followed by a strange being who is somehow both a child and a decrepit old man, letting out a scream loud and powerful enough to shatter all of the glass on a skyscraper, sending it down onto the crowd below where it kills and maims hundreds.

Up to that point in my life, I don’t think I’d seen anything so violent. And I’d definitely never seen animation look so vivid and convincing.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

My friends laughed at me, one said “It’s Akira, you’ve seriously never seen it before?”

So I sat and watched and even though the plot was too advanced for me to follow the first time through, my mind was blown.

I understood some of the story, that the film’s antagonist, Tetsuo was developing super powers. That the military wanted to imprison and study him. That a lot of people with nothing to lose, thought Tetsuo was some sort of god and wanted to be in his cult.

I understood that Kaneda was someone from Tetsuo’s previous life, back when he was just a regular guy. I understood that Kaneda was compelled to either talk Tetsuo out of mass-murder or be the one who kills him.5

I did not understand any of the intense body horror that occurs in the final 20-minutes, but I was still mesmerized by it.

On rewatches, I learned that the movie took place after nuclear war, and was set in the year 2019. I spent years wondering why Katsuhiro Otomo chose that year and if Akira had any connection to Blade Runner6, the other dystopic movie set in 2019.

Every time I watched the film I’d experience some new visceral overload, some brief scene I’d missed before like microscopic footage of an animal cell gradually morphing into the city of Neo-Tokyo or Tetsuo testing his new powers on those unfortunates outside his hospital room.

But many parts of the story remained opaque. So, to understand as much as possible, I decided to read the source material, the Akira manga, all 2200 pages of it.

It was a fantastic read. But adapting it faithfully would require at least seventy episodes of a TV series, which could actually happen today, but was unthinkable in the 80s. It is beyond impressive that Katushiro Otomo was somehow able to take his book, which is over a foot wide and distill it down into a two-hour movie featuring many characters and themes from the Manga, but omitting the majority of both.

A lot of the omissions are unfortunate, I would’ve loved to see anime versions of Chiyoko, the six-foot tall revolutionary who rescues her comrades by driving a tank through 14 houses or Lieutenant George Yamada, the Japanese-American spy gathering intel on post apocalyptic Tokyo, but major edits clearly had to be made.

For over two decades, Warner Bros had the rights to make a live action version of Akira. After multiple stalled attempts involving everyone from the Hughes Brothers to Taika Waititi, the studio finally decided to let the rights expire in 2025.

I can’t say I’m unhappy about that. I’m normally pretty good at ignoring bad Hollywood adaptations, but it would be kind of harrowing to see an Akira movie similar to The Last Air Bender or Aeon Flux.

I think the best possible adaptation of Akira came out last Friday, the original movie restored for 4K and Imax screenings. For a significant percentage of my life, I’d watched a visually revolutionary film on small screens. It was extraordinary to finally see it the way it was meant to be seen.

And it was pretty cool to not be the only person who wanted that. Apparently the Akira re-release was the 10th highest grossing film of the Labour Day Weekend!

This was surprising, because even though the influence of Akira is apparent in everything from The Matrix, to Chronicle to M83’s Midnight City video, I wasn’t sure the film would still be impressive today. The revolutionary concepts Katsuhiro Otomo explored in the original Manga have since been copied and expanded on in so many other mediums, so many times I was worried it would all seem middling and dated in 2026.

Fortunately the animation is not dated at all. Neither is the extraordinary score by musician collective, Geinoh Yamashirogumi. And as for the story, it isn’t dated, it’s easier to understand.

If you haven’t seen Akira, or haven’t seen it in a while. Make time for the IMAX re-release. It might make your year.

So, Ridley Scott’s new horror/sci-fi opus, The Dog Stars is out and apparently, it isn’t very good.

I don’t personally know this to be true. It’s just what I’ve heard.

Ordinarily, this would be very disappointing news, it’s always sad when a great storyteller’s new horror movie doesn’t work. Fortunately, horror movie fans don’t really need The Dog Stars right now, because there are actually many great scary movies in the multiplexes this September.

Take Colony for example, the latest zombie movie directed by Yeon Sang-ho

10 years ago, Yeon Sang-ho freaked everybody out with ‘Train to Busan”, a film about a zombie outbreak spreading rapidly through a high speed KTX train. ‘Colony’ is about a zombie outbreak spreading rapidly through a Gangnam skyscraper. Not only is Colony good, it successfully does what another great storyteller unsuccessfully tried 10 years ago. I am referring to the movie, ‘Cell’, one of Stephen King’s few attempts at the zombie genre and one of his most unloved movies.

Like Colony, Cell is about fast moving zombies using a collective hive-mind to hunt in packs.

In both Cell and Colony the zombies are controlled by the main villain. In Colony, it’s a mad scientist who wants revenge on humanity. In Cell, it’s a cell phone-wielding phantom called “The Man in the Red Hoodie” who might be the devil or “the president of the internet”.

As you can probably tell, Cell suffered considerably from goofy storytelling. And I haven’t even brought up the scene where Stacy Keach drives a sprinkler truck full of gasoline back and forth across a field of sleeping zombies

The zombies in Cell are all infected by an electromagnetic pulse that comes from cell phones, fairly acceptable as far as zombie McGuffins go. But to hammer the ‘evil phone’ vibe home the zombies constantly jog in circles around cell towers and scream ring tones as a battle cry. It’s really silly.

The zombies in Colony are all infected by slime molds.

Slime molds1 are microscopic life forms that feed on rotting organic matter. Slime molds are extremely puzzling because they are neither animal, vegetable, nor fungi. The closest lifeforms they resemble (somewhat) are amoebae. Slime mold do not posses brains or organs of any kind and yet they manage levels of cooperation, communication and even learning that should only be possible with intelligence2.

Also, they make great zombie movie villains because they’re really, really gross looking. They’re called slime molds for a reason.

Colony’s zombie McGuffin is Slime Mold that has been bioengineered to infect, kill and reanimate human beings.

The Plot: Unemployed professor, Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), has a weird relationship with her ex-husband, Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo). She resents him for being a bad spouse but still takes his career advice. Earlier today, she let him drag her to a bio tech company’s press conference where CEO Kang Woo-chul (Kim Jong-tae) talks gleefully about how his company has trained slime mold to store and transmit data.3

Gyu-seong is certain the CEO will give Se-jeong a job if she just talks to him for five minutes.

Se-jeong tries, but Woo-chul ignores her and steps into an elevator. Gyu-seong pushes Se-jeong in after him, but before she can say anything, the CEO is tackled by Seo Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan) the mad scientist who invented the tech savvy slime mold only for Woo-chul to steal all the credit.

Young-chul rants and raves about wanting revenge, not just on Woo-chul, but the whole world, and also about humanity being a flawed, inferior species because they are so bad at communicating with each other4. Being stronger and faster, Woo-chul manages to lock Young-chul in an office, but not before getting stabbed with a syringe full of new slime mold the mad scientist has been working on.

Moments later, Woo-Chul is running around on all fours, sinking his teeth into anyone he can. Minutes later he has infected dozens.

Not Se-jeong though, she quickly jumped onto an elevator headed back down to the mall concourse!

When she arrives at basement level, her ex-husband is standing there looking all smug but before he can ask ‘Well? How did it go?’ other elevators reach the concourse and disgorge swarms of zombies and now there’s no time to do anything but run.

They wind up hiding in a clothing store where a security guard named Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) and his computer scientist sister Hyun-Hee (Kim Shin-rok) are also hiding. Hyun-Hee is paraplegic and was pushed from her wheelchair during the zombie attack.

All survivors have functioning smart phones which allow them to learn that the military has barricaded the building and is shooting anyone who emerges, infected or not.

Surviving this is going to be difficult. Se-jeong realizes it might only be possible with help from the man who created these monsters, who is trapped in an office several storeys above them.

Yeon Sang-ho is a fantastic story teller. In Colony, he takes the absurdly oversaturated zombie movie template and fills it with characters who are believable and are not normally in stories like this. Guessing who will and won’t survive is nearly impossible, which makes the film exponentially more suspenseful.

Sang-ho has also invented some uniquely disturbing zombies. They constantly drool and vomit slime mold, which clings to walls and hangs from ceilings in gooey strands resembling spider web. Some unfortunate almost-survivors demonstrate that it pretty much is spider web when they accidently brush against some and alert hundreds of zombies to their exact location.

Stephen King’s Cell was an attempt to put a new technological spin on the zombie genre and pay homage to W.D. Richter and Phillip Kaufman’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It didn’t work, but 10 years later, intentionally or not, Yeon Sang-ho has accomplished both objectives with, Colony. As a bonus, he’s made it completely unnecessary to watch The Dog Stars.

Yes, I know it is unfair of me to assume a film I haven’t seen is bad. I will probably get around to watching The Dog Stars eventually, but not for a while. Certainly not while “Buddy’ is in theatres.

I’ll talk about that 96-minute fuzzy nightmarescape tomorrow.

The Tea: Fight slime mold with tea-fungus, AKA Kombucha. I recommend any blueberry flavored brand, but not blueberry-pomegranate or blueberry-acai, those almost always suck.

The Snack: This film takes place in a skyscraper, indulge in the vending machine snack of your choice. You can’t go wrong with Cheez-Its.

Cheer up.

There is a very high chance you are a better actor than Jason Statham.

But don’t let it go to your head, because there is just as high a chance Jason Statham could kick your ass1.

Also, Jason Statham isn’t really even supposed to act.

He isn’t an actor, he’s a movie star.

He is Hollywood’s most important movie star

This isn’t up for debate. I don’t care how many tens of millions Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise or Leonardo DiCaprio were paid to be in anything. That might mean they have Hollywood’s best representation. It says nothing about their star power.

But if not money, what metric determines a movie star’s radiance?

Why is Statham number one?

Because he is Hollywood’s only movie star who is also a genre.2

If you say ‘this is a Jason Statham film”, everyone knows exactly what kind of film you are talking about.

Plot details can vary wildly, the supporting cast can feature anyone, Dwayne Johnson, Dwight Yoakam, Helen Mirren, a megalodon, it doesn’t matter. A Jason Statham movie is a Jason Statham movie.

In Statham movies, bad guys get pounded3

Which bad guys? The kind that every Jason Statham movie has, the real monsters of the world. Mobsters, hitmen, people who cut you off in traffic, people who dress shabby. Statham bludgeons them all with his fists while always keeping that eerily charming smirk.

But the latest Statham movie, Mutiny, is a little different. And people aren’t really going to see it.

Why is this?

Some people believe it’s because two days before the official release date, Amazon accidently put the film on their screening site and left it there for hours.

But others point to another ‘problem’.

Mutiny doesn’t have a happy ending.4

And that calls into doubt whether it’s a Statham film at all.

The Plot: Cole Reed (Jason Statham) is the private bodyguard of billionaire shipping magnate, Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram) and his son and heir, Kameron (Chaneil Kular).

Cole is deeply sad because his father recently passed and now he has nobody. Grateful for the many times Cole has saved his life, Tibu publicly presents Cole with a luxury watch and declares him ‘part of the family!’

But later the same night Cole and Tibu are ambushed by eight assassins.

Cole kills all of them, but not before one shoots Tibu in the chest, ending his life.

The corrupt cops who arranged it all, quickly frame Cole for the murder, but he dodges arrest by stealing the identity of one of those assassin’s he killed.5

When Cole learns the dead-bald-hitman had plans to escape on a cargo vessel, he stows away.

And soon he is out to sea with a boat full of mostly-bald bad man, human scurvy, really.

Also onboard is First Mate Angie (Annabelle Wallis)

Angie is pissed because she took time off to celebrate her daughter’s birthday, but the dispatcher threatened to fire her if she didn’t take this last minute assignment and now she has to be at sea for a week.

Angie has friction with Captain Madsen (Roland Møller) who she thinks dislikes her because she’s a woman, but actually it’s because he’s the ringleader in a human trafficking operation that every other part of the crew is involved with and he doesn’t want her catching on.

Also, he ordered Tibu’s death.

Statham eavesdrops on all of this until somebody coughs or something and he finally teams up with Angie to pound these evil sailors.

But the boat’s on course to meet with even more dangerous pirates. Do Cole and Angie have any chance against them?

This is a Jason Statham movie, of course they do.

In Mutiny, Jason Statham frequently kills with his bare hands, but also uses a cooking ware set, cooking oil and in a particularly inventive scene, a padlock.

It all builds to a glorious finish where Statham and Captain Madsen fight to the death…but, then the ending happens.

And Cole learns something awful, something that questions the value of everything he’s done. And Statham’s smirk stops.

Mutiny was supposed to come out in January when goofy Statham fare usually rules the box office.

But depressed test-audience reactions got the release delayed until August where longer daylight hours and multiplexes full of Spider-Man movies would presumably help make it all a little less depressing.

Is Mutiny the ‘Relay’ of 2026?

I don’t think it’s that good, but I’d love to hear your opinion.

The Tea: Taiwanese Oolong, one of the few teas that doesn’t turn to crap on long sea voyages

The Snack: An egg white omelet with asparagus and Wellbutrin