Terrifier 3: Blowing Up Kid’s Christmas

Art the Clown, David Howard Thorton, is back and this time he is dressed like Santa Claus.

So if you want to write this film off as just another gore fest then I would say to you what did you expect? Did you watch the last two film? Personally, I think that is just people trying to be trendy by being contrarian to a popular new release.

I found this to be an improvement over the second film, but I would say that some of its issues were still there. Namely that the film has pacing problems and has Art get away in the end, this is problematic as it just feels like we are then going to have to wait for yet another sequel which is going to be yet another showdown between Art and his nemesis, Lauren LaVera. I think at this point there battle should already be over and Art should have moved onto a new group of victims ala Freddy or Jason.

I did enjoy how over the top this film took the gore, I thought the mall scene with the bomb was pretty funny, as was freezing Santa Clause, I liked the black mirror it held up to the holiday of Christmas and took every opportunity to make it as nasty as possible.

Overall, if you are a fan of the franchise you will like this one.

3.5/5

The black mirror

The gore

The comedy

Some great kills

Cons.

It is badly paced

Art got away

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Strange Harvest: The Strangest Day Of A Cops Life

Summary

A serial killer carries out an occult murder spree in California.

I thought this was an incredibly engaging horror film, it took the whole true crime craze and mixed it with found footage to do something new and fresh.

The idea of a evil serial killer is already morbidly fascinating but then mix in that they have occult powers and are trying to bring in an ancient evil God to the world and you have the recipe for a great film. For the most part the film delivers on this and is a strong horror film, particularly the final third.

However, my issue with this film is that some of its sub-plots are either knowingly or unknowingly comedic. You don’t want to laugh but they are so unintentionally funny at times that you cannot help but to. I think that this mismatch hurts the film but isn’t major enough to cause serious issues with it widely.

Overall, a fun mixing of genres but not perfect.

3/5

Pros.

A good mixing of sub-genres

It feels fresh

It has a great ending

Cons.

Pacing problems

Issues with tone

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Children Of The Wickerman: The Hit Of Frightfest

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A documentary about the making of the Wickerman and the effect it had on the sons of the director.

This film really serves a duel role firstly as a making of the Wickerman featurette and then also as reflection over the life and times of its director Robin Hardy, the father of the documentarian.

I found the making of side of things to be quite interesting it is fascinating to learn about the history of the film and how it both came to be but then also died and rose again. As a fan of horror I always love a good making of documentary.

Where things slipped a little for me was in the more personal side of it, I thought that whilst it was interesting to learn about the man behind the camera and the lives he ruined, at times it almost had a hit piece like quality to it, and that then went after the film as well. Whilst I can understand the son, the documentarian, being angry at his dad as he did some heinous things to him, I think aiming that negativity in part at the film is misplaced and hurts it as the main people watching the documentary are fans of the film. It is complicated as that raw emotion is also a selling point of the film and adds to its uniqueness.

Overall, a good documentary that other than a few missteps into being a hit piece tells a fascinating story of a film that changed the lives of a lot of people.

4/5

Pros.

It is informative

It is entertaining

It shows the effect the film has had on people

Cons.

The hit piece like moments

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Paranorman: We All Need To Listen More

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A young boy, voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee, can talk to dead people and needs to use his gift in order to save the town.

I think Laika is one of the best animation studios, mainly this is because they are not soulless CGI studios owned by massive studios like Disney, or Universal. Laika along with places like Aardman and Ghibli are some of the few truly original studios left and I think that is incredibly important. The studios talents are on full display here as we see a very gothic inspired world that also has a lot of call backs to classic Americana and the creature features of the 50s and 60s.

There is also something beautiful and timeless about the message of people hating things that scare them even if they pose no real threat to them. It makes the weak and confused message of a contemporary release like Inside Out 2 look so much worse by comparison. In my opinion that is what a lot of recent animated films are missing good central messages.

Overall, a sweet and seasonally appropriate film that is beautifully animated.

4/5

Pros.

The message

The animation

The characters

The world

Cons.

A few pacing issues

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Black Cab: Get An Uber

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Nick Frost plays a cabbie with an attitude.

This film has an interesting aesthetic but fails to do much more with it than the bog standard. I like the idea of a horror film about a cabbie driving down northern country lanes in the dark worrying about ghosts, however, in reality the film is just very standard.

I found the bulk of the film to be entertaining if Frost’s performance was a little over the top at times, however, where things really started to fall apart for me was in the third act. This is due to the time loop nature of the haunting with the ghost being made by his actions and then so one and so forth, and I found that to be a tad bit obvious from the start.

As for Frost playing against type, he is okay, it is not on the level of some funny man turned dramatic actors we have seen in recent years. I found his character to only have a few menacing moments the rest of the time he seemed either just angry or bumbling. The idea of him as a scary villain never really came through for me.

Overall, a serviceable if forgettable ghost story.

2.5/5

Pros.

The setting

The premise

The atmosphere

Cons,

Frost as a villain

The ending

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Beezle: The Witch In The Walls

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A house infested with a witch goes through generations of trauma.

There was a kernel of a good idea here, we don’t get many witch films and less so that try and unorthodox narrative approach, it plays more like an anthology than a linear narrative.

However, in execution we come undone.

I can some up the issues with this film into four key areas, the characterisation, the witch, the scares and the ending. There is a throughline of mediocrity throughout all of these things and that was a disappointment.

So first things first, the initial two segments are fine nothing special but it is clearly the third where things start to get weird. Enter Nova, Victoria Fradkin, a character who’s whole dimension is just that she’s horny and wants a kid. You could argue had this been written by just a man that it was incredibly sexist and reductive but she helped write her own material so she was okay with it. Nova, wants to have sex wearing her partner’s dead mother’s lingerie and is constantly pressuring him for sex to a point where it becomes uncomfortable. Moreover, there are a number of nude or near nude scenes that just feel almost as though Fradkin is showing off for an ego trip, and when you realise her close relationship with the director it all starts to make more sense.

The witch could have been special and unique but instead it is just another demon like figure that behaves in the same way and never really does much of anything. To role scares into this one the film relies heavily on jump scares, did you just see that face? That kind of thing, to which I thought gave it a tacky feeling.

Finally the ending is the ending of so many found footage films after becoming possessed Nova kills her husband and then I guess sits in the snow, or does some random off screen action for it all to continue with a new family. Paranormal Activity did all this decades ago.

Overall, amateurish at best.

1/5

Pros.

It has a good premise

Cons.

It is not scary

It has pacing issues

It is creepy at times

It wastes its villain

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Stop Motion: The Darkside Of Wallace And Gromit

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A young stop motion animator, Aisling Franciosi, tries to get out from under the shadow of her own mother and create her own stop motion project.

I admired the originality of this film, it tried hard to do something new within the horror landscape and within a genre that likes to repeat patterns and tropes that is to be applauded. I also thought the idea of the stop motion project coming to life was interesting and led to some really good scares.

Likewise the interspersing of stop motion shots within the rest of the normal film really helped to push the uniqueness as well as to give us some disturbing and unique visuals. I appreciated what this film tried to do even when it didn’t fully land.

My main complaint with the film would be that it followed the very overdone breakdown storyline as the lead becomes more and more insane to a point where she becomes in a sense possessed attacking those around her. We have seen this done many many times in horror and it feels stale.

Overall, a unique film with some good scares held back by a familiar character arc.

3.5/5

Pros.

The stop motion scenes

It is unique

It is well paced

Some good scares

Cons.

A familiar character arc

A wasted supporting cast

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The Substance: The Next Phase Of Ozempic

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

An aging celebrity uses the latest beauty fad to stay young and it goes horribly wrong.

I went into this expecting it to be more abstract, however, it is not. In fact it is very in your face with its point in a way you could call hamfisted. Although, I have to say though it was so upfront it never became unpleasant or groan worthy as other films might do. The scene where Elisabeth, Demi Moore, is told that at fifty it stops whilst the man, Dennis Quaid, she is sat across from discards and eats prawns in a disgusting manner is very effective.

In many senses this film reminds me of Garland’s second to last entry Men. By this I mean that about two thirds of it are golden, until the final transformation The Substance is firing on all cylinders it is sharp and witty and is very good at making a stylised point. However, then you get into the final third and things start to fall apart, as things simply move into gross out territory the point is lost and it just becomes a gore fest. I can understand why the film did this as it needs to build to something but it means that the ending just feels like spectacle rather than substance, pardon the pun, and it lessens the wider product.

Whilst I wouldn’t call it scary I do think that the body horror is quite effectively used and there were a few moments of wincing throughout.

Overall, it would have been better if It had a more understated ending but the film as a whole is still very effective

4/5

Pros.

It is effective

It has something to say

Moore and Qualley

The body horror

Cons.

The ending

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Speak No Evil: A Wasted Ad Budget

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A couple, Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy, go to the house of a couple, James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi, they barely know and whom they met on holiday, as no one does, rather unsurprisingly things go badly.

So this was a remake of a Danish film from a few years back, and I don’t know about that film but this one isn’t scary.

It continues Blumhouse’s long streak of lacklustre films. Having two major issues, firstly is the fact it doesn’t know what it wants to be, it wants to be a horror film but also have jokes and some silly comedy. This is particularly apparent with the song they choose to be the scary one for the film that plays at moments of high horror, which in the context of the film is a silly song. A horror film needs to take itself seriously if it wants to be scary, and with recent Blumhouse fare like Meg3an it is becoming to look like the studio doesn’t understand that.

Secondly, you have the issue with modern social horror, and when I say social horror I mean horror films that try and comment on modern issues, and that is they are vapid and think they have something to say when they don’t and they just all want to be Get Out. Here you have this idea of country vs city, modern vs old, with of course the traditional ways being seen as evil and backwards and the modern city folk with their therapy and vegetarianism being the good guys do you see the message yet. The worst thing is that none of this hasn’t been said before it all has, this film’s themes feel like a regurgitation of other better film’s themes.

Finally I just want to say that the way the film emasculates McNairy’s character is nothing short of irritating. So his wife, Davis, cheated on him and then controls him and the family through her neurosis all the while being told by her to stop being so angry, when he is remarkably put together. Couple this with the fact that he almost gets killed at the end of the film needing to be saved by his wife as he grovels at her feet, in the end he manages to do one heroic act to try and save his family falling and hurting himself but by that point his humiliation had been complete.

The more I sit and write this review the more the message of the film hits me and I like it less and less.

Overall, a letdown.

1.5/5

Pros.

It has some unintentionally funny moments

One or two good scares

Cons.

The message

The way it treats McNairy’s character

It is nothing you haven’t seen before

It is badly paced

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Starve Acre: Who Needs Babies When You Have Rabbits

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A grieving couple, Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark, develop an unhealthy relationship with a rabbit.

This maybe one of the best horrors this year and certainly not one to sleep on.

It is a traditional British folk horror film, with a strong emphasis on atmosphere. This leads to some great scares later on but also a wider disturbing sense to the film that sticks with you long after it has ended. Just thinking about the rabbit now long after I have watched it I feel unnerved.

Matt Smith does well as a moody lecturer, you both root for his character but he also has enough edge that you don’t fully trust him. Morfydd Clark proves once again how good she is at horror and gives a tour de force performance, second only I would say to her performance in Saint Maud. I think her portrayal of a grieving mother here is incredibly well done, it is both sincere but also a little manic and unhinged at times.

Overall, one of the best British horror films of recent years.

4/5

Pros.

Smith

Clarke

The scares

The atmosphere

Cons.

A slow start pacing wise

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