Swamp Thing

Year 15, Day 280 - 10/7/23 - Movie #4,562

BEFORE: OK, we're one whole week into Shocktober now, and things have gotten serious, I've seen creepy things pretending to be cowboys and creepy things living under houses and creepy things making phone calls and using up your minutes.  The nerve!  And then a real creepy Creeper who wants to eat your tongue and smell your dirty laundry, not necessarily in that order.  BAD Creeper!  Stop being so creepy!  

Now it looks like things are going to get a little - or a whole lot - sillier before the needle's going to swing back towards creepy and scary.  "Swamp Thing" is based on a DC comic book, of course, and I was just hanging out with some people from DC Comics the other night at the Al Jaffee memorial.  Hardly a place to do any networking, that wouldn't be proper.  But hey, guys, call me if you're hiring, OK?  I don't know if this film fits the technical definition of "horror", or if it's even meant to be taken seriously - all I know is I'm reaching back all the way to 1982, when I wasn't allowed to see this film because it had BOOBS in it for probably three seconds.  Then I recorded it off of TCM about, I don't know, 10 years ago?  Longer?  I put it on a DVD with "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Return of the Creature", that should give you some idea.

This film is over FORTY years old, so I've avoided it passively for that long, and actively for let's say seven years, well that all ends tonight, I'm finally going to cross it off in this weirdest of all possible weird chains.  I did say this year was going to be an odd mix of older films and newer ones, but the linking has dictated that.  Ray Wise carries over from "One Missed Call". 

THE PLOT: After a violent incident with a special chemical, a research scientist is turned into a swamp plant monster. 

AFTER: Ugh, if I'd known this film was so bad, I would have kept on avoiding it.  OK, it feels great to cross something off, but man, at the same time, what a WASTE of my time.  It's a horror classic, OK, directed by Wes Craven but there also doesn't feel like there's anything really THERE, like how do you make a 90-minute movie that just doesn't feel like it's ABOUT anything at all?  It's like wrapping up an empty box or trying to eat the air that comes in your bag of chips, rather than the chips themselves.  I don't feel satisfied after, just empty, like I went out to a buffet and stupidly filled up at the salad bar, and I couldn't even sit there for a while and get hungry again, because the restaurant was about to close.  Know what I mean?  

OK, the meat of it is that scientist Alec Holland gets turned into a plant-based monster.  Very eco-conscious, sure, if we make our monsters out of plant material, that's got to be better for the environment somehow, right?  So in that sense, this movie was ahead of its time.  But mostly it's one big chase scene through the swamps, with our monster hero popping up every time the women he had the hots for (after knowing her like a full five minutes) to bust the heads of the paramilitary unit that's chasing her.  Also, she falls down - like, a LOT.  That's called killing time, folks, turning a five-minute story into a 90-minute film, and certainly there's an art to that. 

We'll chase her on foot, we'll chase her on cars, we'll chase her on boats, but really, isn't it just the same thing, over and over again?  Chase her, catch her, Swamp Thing saves her.  Chase her, catch her, Swamp Thing saves her.  Repeat until we get close to the end of the film.  Blow up a couple of boats and let the people think they're seeing a spectacle.  P.T. Barnum would have been so proud.  Alice is working for the government, sent to investigate the death of a lab worker in the swamps, where some scientists are working on isolating a plant-based chemical that blows up real good.  Or something.  It's also great for setting scientists on fire, so yeah, umm, be careful with that.  Whoops, too late. 

Alice saves the seventh of the scientist's six notebooks, and tries to deliver it to her mysterious employers, who send a bunch of goons in camouflage to kill her.  Umm, you know if you asked her for the notebook really nice, she probably would have just given it to you, but no, go on, you do you and send in the weekend soldiers with dad bods.  (Why settle for a six pack when you can have the whole damn keg?). The Swamp Thing appears on the scene several times to save Alice, but loses an arm in the process.  That's OK, from what I hear it'll probably grow back.  

Finally the Swamp Thing, who's a lot like the Hulk only without the extensive vocabulary, is defeated by a simple net - jeez, who saw THAT one coming.  The big bad guy, Arcane, then sets out to torture Alice and the monster by forcing them to endure a great horror - a formal dinner party.  (For the love of God, run for your lives!)

Arcane having both the chemical AND the Swamp Thing means nothing, however, unless he can duplicate the process of turning a man into a plant monster - and really, come on, why would you?  Do we NEED more than one Swamp Thing?  Honestly, do we even really need the one?  What does this guy even bring to the table, or to your dinner party?  Can he cook, can he paint, does he have any notable skills other than busting the heads of the military wannabes?  Nope. 

Another test subject is tricked into drinking the chemical - come on, now, that's not really fair - and does NOT become a Swamp Thing, he becomes a much smaller monster with pointy ears.  And then, after all that, Arcane drinks the formula himself.  Yes, that's right, he saw the chemical turn TWO men into hideous monsters, then decided to drink it straight, no chaser.  What a dumb-ass.  Did he NOT just see the drink turn TWO men into monsters?  Because WE all saw it, so this guy's got a lot to learn about the experimental method.  

The convoluted explanation here is that the chemical doesn't turn you into any specific thing, it only amplifies someone's natural qualities, so it turned Alec into the thing he loved, the swamp, and the other guy, well, OK, that's where the whole explanation breaks down, now, isn't it?  Also, that's not how chemicals work, they can't be toxic to one person and not to the next.  Let me drink this arsenic, I know it just killed those three other guys but I think I'm gonna be OK.

For that matter, there's zero attention paid to any actual science, I mean I know it's a comic book movie but it still has to exist in a world where there are rules of physics and chemistry and logic, and well, it's not that kind of film.  It's set in a world where someone can be set on fire and fall into a swamp and emerge looking like a completely different person (or Thing) that's two feet taller, stronger and invulnerable and made of plants now.  Yeah, great. But then they don't even really DO anything or go anywhere with that.  Where's the damn third act?

There's a sequel to this film, called "The Return of Swamp Thing", but that's not going to link up with anything in my chain, so I'll pass.  Then there have been TWO TV series also based on this story, and a recently-announced reboot that should be part of the new DC Universe that James Gunn is putting together.  No thanks, gonna pass, I'm good.

Also starring Adrienne Barbeau (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Louis Jourdan (last seen in "The V.I.P.s"), Dick Durock (last seen in "Mr. North"), Al Ruban (ditto), David Hess, Nicholas Worth (last seen in "Heartbreak Ridge"), Don Knight, Nannette Brown, Reggie Batts, Karen Price, Ben Bates, Mimi Craven, Bill Erickson, Dov Gottesfeld, Tommy Madden

RATING: 3 out of 10 Cokes from the gas station vending machine

One Missed Call

Year 15, Day 279 - 10/6/23 - Movie #4,561

BEFORE: Well, as they say in baseball, some days you win, some days you lose, and some days it rains.  Do they say that in baseball?  We had a TON of rain last weekend in NYC, to the point where the news channels all had their weather forecasters out on the streets, downtown Brooklyn was under like three feet of water, and it was a bit like Hurricane Sandy or Hurricane Ida all over again.  Usually we sit and watch the flooding on TV in another city like New Orleans or more recently, Los Angeles, but it's different when it's YOUR city, isn't it?  I lost a day of work because the alert went out to not use the subways and just shelter in place, and I was happy to comply.  

My point is, I was trying to link to a movie like "The Black Phone", but it just didn't happen because that film didn't fit into my chain this year, and this one did.  To some extent it's the luck of the draw, I can move things around and find an order of films that works, according to my rules, but I just can't change who is in what film.  I can't control the wind, I can only move my sails to take advantage of it.  Is that something else that people say?  I think I saw that on an inspirational poster or somebody's yearbook caption once.  Anyway that's how it works around here at the Movie Year, or occasionally how it fails to work.  

Ray Wise carries over from "Jeepers Creepers 2".  

THE PLOT: Several people start receiving voice-mails from their future selves - messages which include the date, time and some of the details of their deaths. 

AFTER: Look, I never set out to become an expert on horror movies, it just kind of happened.  Discussing the finer points of THIS scary movie vs. THAT one isn't where I thought I would end up, considering my career has largely been in animation. I tried working on documentaries in college (too boring) and then worked on some music videos (too - well, too something but that's another whole conversation) and maybe if you fall backwards into cartoons that's where you're supposed to be?  I haven't made up my mind about that, it's only been 30 years so I may have to give it some more time to be sure.  My mother told me when I was a kid that I was so funny and always doing weird voices that I would be the next Rich Little when I grew up - I have done some voice work in cartoons as needed, so she wasn't that wrong, exactly.  But putting a reel together and focusing on voice-overs just feels like too much work in a way - still, sweet gig if I could somehow get it.

But we're concerned with voice-MAILs tonight, and how deadly they can be.  Our clueless victims tonight all get voice-mails sent to their flip-phones (umm, yeah, everyone here has a flip phone in 2008, that should probably be NITPICK POINT #1) and the messages all come from someone who recently died (there's a big error in the posted plot synopsis, right there) with an incorrect date and time on it.  That's because the messages come from the FUTURE, and that's the exact date and time when THEY are going to die, and the voice-mail contains the last thing they're going to say before they're horribly killed.  You know, as opposed to gently or nicely killed.  

OK, a couple of things, if we can somehow get past the fact that nobody has upgraded to a smart phone yet, in 2008. I sure can't get past that, like, OK boomer, maybe buy a real phone now, they're like free if you pick the right plan.  OK, they're not really free because they amortize the expense out over time and just add it to your bill a little each month, but you know what I mean.  But the first iPhone came out in 2007, and I realize it takes 3-5 years at least to develop and release a movie, so much like the phones themselves, this film was hopelessly obsolete the moment it hit the movie screens.  It's a wonder why Apple didn't follow up with a marketing campaign that their new iPhone is NOT haunted, in fact there's special software that can block calls from demonic entities - this is an I-phone, not a DIE-phone, or something like that, we'll come up with a better tagline, I'm sure. 

Either way, get rid of the damn flip-phone and upgrade already, would you please?  And now we also see the downside of being in one of those "Friends & Family" networks, where calls to everyone you earmarked as a friend or a family member are FREE - OK, they're not really free because probably they just upped the cost of all the other calls so you wouldn't even notice, but you know what I mean.  But when a demonic undead entity haunts your flip phone and starts making calls to everyone in your F&F network, then you may regret your choice of plan.  Well, you'll already be dead, but again, you know what I mean.  

This movie SO wanted to be "The Ring", or if it couldn't be "The Ring" somebody at least regretted the fact that the name "The Ring" was already used for a horror movie, because wouldn't that have made a better title here?  And for some reason, everybody also has the same exact ring tone on their phone, maybe this is the one that came with the phone and nobody knew how to change it (that tracks...) but man, does it suck. It's somehow even more annoying than that xylophone one that comes with the iPhones, and I didn't even think that was possible.  It's a horrible little tune that sounds a bit like it's played on a toy piano, and it's gonna drill into your brain like any earworm would and it's going to feast on whatever's in there, and then you're going to forget the name of that actress on that TV show you liked years ago. (It's Brett Butler, by the way...)

Note to self: make sure to put "The Ring" on your list of horror films to watch some day. 

"The Ring" was about some VHS tape that if you watch it, you die in a few days - so, umm, what's the point of KNOWING this if you can't do anything to change that?  Similarly, what is the point of cracking the secrets of time travel if all you're going to do with it is relay messages back into the past so people can hear themselves die and then also know the exact date and time that's going to happen?  Again, what's the point of KNOWING this if you can't do anything to change that?  There's one guy here who gets the voice-mail message of doom and he hears himself saying, "I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on..." and so of course, naturally I'm thinking he's going to get decapitated, that would only be ironic enough to be fitting.  Nope, it was a fake-out, and so was watching him cross the street, thinking he was bound to get run over, he comes BACK across the busy street to get his phone and he says "I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on..." and then he dies in a somewhat different way, with his head still attached, and like, where's the irony?  OK, maybe this movie isn't "Final Destination", either. 

Note to self: make sure to put "The Final Destination" on your list of horror films to watch some day.  There's like what, five or six movies in that franchise? Maybe next year. 

OK, but Beth is determined to NOT die after she gets her voice-mail message from her dead friend.  So you'd think, maybe the answer is to just NOT SAY that sentence?  Would that help?  Am I helping?  If she had said to her friend Brian, "Hey, maybe don't say that thing about how you'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on, maybe you won't die then," that could have been really helpful.  But no, instead she teams up with a gritty police detective who thinks that maybe his sister died the same way - she got a phone call from a dead friend and then she died and her body was out in the woods for a few weeks, so he's ALSO trying to solve this puzzle, like he thinks maybe his sister was the first to die, and they can trace the future calls via phone records through maybe 3 or 4 dead people until they get to Beth.  I guess it's nice when somebody else believes the unbelievable pattern that seems to be taking place.  

It's got something to do with a giant red marble that is found in every victim's mouth after they die.  But no, it's not a marble, it's a piece of hard candy that just looks like a marble, only the victims didn't eat any candy, also (N.P. #2) it's too big to be a piece of candy, it's somehow even bigger than a gobstopper, and so it's probably a choking hazard for adults even.  This is just another thing here that seems like it's a good idea and another part of the puzzle, but no, it's really neither, it's just another bit of randomness that goes nowhere. 

It's got something to do with a reality show where there's a reality show that claims to be about everyday miracles and the producer is really interested in the story about the cursed phone calls, but then when he gets the current victim on his show, the show turns out to really be about exorcism, and that's not the right remedy for the problem, either, because an exorcist can't upgrade you from your flip-phone or get you out of your contract with Boost Mobile.  In fact, it turns out there is simply NO WAY to get out of your cell phone contract (yeah, this also tracks) so the best and smartest thing you can do is smash your phone on the ground and step on it until it's in a million pieces.  Screw it, the phone was "free" right?  Good advice and problem solved, only now, you have no phone, you complete loser.  But at least you're out of the haunted friends and family network.  

No wait, it's got something to do with a fire at a hospital where the detective's sister was an intern, and the woman who drowned in her koi pond was also a paramedic who rescued a girl from the fire. Right?  And there was a geriatric nurse who worked there who just might be the first link in the phone chain, as she had a daughter who died and was also a victim of Munchausen's-by-Proxy syndrome or something, and there's a missing nanny-cam and the daughter who survived is suffering from PTSD, and you know what, I don't even care any more because this movie is SO all over the place and can't seem to focus on any one thing for very long.  The movie ITSELF has ADD, so how I am supposed to pay attention to it long enough to figure it all out?  Just please, decide what you want to really be about and then let me know what that is, OK?  Don't make me use the "R-word" to describe this story, it's not cool.  

I'll try to work in "The Black Phone" next October, but really, I'm not hopeful that it's going to make any more sense than this one does.  Yes, I know, horror movies are their own thing and they don't have to make sense, but this is pretty egregious even if I make allowances for that.  It's just an excuse to use some of the standard horror tropes, including the dangers of answering your phone ("Scream") and then visiting the creepy hospital ("The Cure for Wellness" and like, many others, including "Nightmare on Elm Street").

Note to self: make sure to put "Nightmare on Elm Street" on your list of horror films to watch some day.  Enough time has passed now - but that's how many movies?

Also starring Shannyn Sossamon (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), Edward Burns (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Ana Claudia Talancón (last seen in "Fast Food Nation"), Azura Skye (last seen in "Town & Country"), Johnny Lewis (last seen in "The Runaways"), Jason Beghe (last seen in "The Next Three Days"), Margaret Cho (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Meagan Good (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Rhoda Griffis (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Bart Hansard (ditto), Dawn Dininger, Ariel Winter (last seen in "Killers"), Sarah Jean Kubik, Raegan Lamb, Karen Bayer (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Alana Locke, Dave Spector, Mary Lynn Owen, Roy McCrerey (last seen in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"), Lauren Peyton, Greg Corbett, Donna Biscoe (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Edith Ivey (last seen in "Robocop 3"), Wilbur Fitzgerald (last seen in "Freejack"), Randy McDowell, Geoff McKnight (last seen in "The Clearing"), Katie Kneeland (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Jason Horgan, Kaira Akita, Luke Williams, Laura Harring (last seen in "Mulholland Drive").

RATING: 3 out of 10 crawling millipedes

Jeepers Creepers 2

Year 15, Day 278 - 10/5/23 - Movie #4,560

BEFORE: I had the honor on Tuesday night of working a shift at the theater which was a memorial tribute to cartoonist Al Jaffee, famous for his work on MAD magazine for 65 years, who died six months ago at the age of 102.  Now, I've been reading MAD magazine since I was about 8 or 9 years old, but Mr. Jaffee's career started long before that. By all accounts a very sweet and funny man, he retired in his 90's, but still drew and remained funny, joking with his colleagues at the age of 100 that he was still looking for work.  I expected a lot of noted industry people to show up, but then found out it was really just going to be "the usual gang of idiots", as the magazine always referred to their staffers and regular contributors.  That's OK, I was just happy to be there and help out and hang posters and supervise the clean-up, because this man was a LEGEND in the cartoonist world.  He invented the famous "Fold-In" art for the magazine's back cover and drew HUNDREDS of those pieces, plus wrote and illustrated countless cartoons and articles that I remember from when I was a kid.  Also, I never really stopped being a kid, so I still read MAD - but you know, for the articles.  And the fold-in.  Even though the mag has been running reprints the last few years, I still subscribe, because somebody's got to.

Anyway, I wish I could dedicate a Movie Year to Al Jaffee, but I tend to only pick actors - you know what, Al's in the running for next year's dedication, how do you like me now?  I make my own rules around here, this is still MY blog and I can do whatever I want.  Al, you're in the running, I hope nobody more famous than you dies between now and January 1, and if so, you're a lock.  

Justin Long apparently carries over from "Jeepers Creepers", at least according to the IMDB, although I don't really see how that could be possible, given the events of the first film.  Oh, well, even if he doesn't really appear in the sequel, there are two other actors who do carry over.

THE PLOT: Set a few days after the original film, a championship basketball team's bus is attacked by The Creeper, the winged, flesh-eating terror, on the last day of his 23-day feeding frenzy.

AFTER: You know, I took so long to get around to watching 2 "Jeepers Creepers" movies, that there are now FOUR films in the franchise, there's another sequel, "Jeepers Creepers 3" and also a reboot, "Jeepers Creepers: Reborn".  I can't bring myself to watch the third film, because it doesn't connect with my chain, I'd have to break the chain to watch it, and I'm not prepared to let that happen, not when I'm just 40 films away from the end of the year, and having another unbroken chain for the FIFTH year in a row.  Why go through so much trouble linking these movies just to tank the format now?  I've got plenty of other films to watch that DO connect and form a chain, that's not worth giving up JUST to see what happens in the third film of this franchise.  

Besides, the actor who plays The Creeper would carry over to "J.C. 3" but not the "Reborn" reboot, and it's great that Gina Philips came back for the third film, but I still can't really GO anywhere from there, so "Jeepers Creepers 3" would end up being a dead-end for me, as far as I can tell. So I'm going in a different direction tomorrow.  Oh, and Justin Long IS in the second film, but only in psychic flashbacks and/or dream sequences, so that explains THAT.  Three horror films with Justin Long in them does seem like kind of a lot, but it's also respectable at the same time. Right? 

This film is set during the SAME 23-day Creeper feeding cycle as the first film, because why wait another 23 years to make a sequel?  Yep, they clearly rushed this one into production, it came out just two years after the first film, and we all remember what happened with "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2", right?  The rushed sequel wasn't half as good as the original, plus it's like it wasn't even in the same genre, the found footage wasn't the focus of the film, it was just a bunch of teens who got stoned and didn't remember having an orgy/killing spree, that's like a normal occurrence if you live in rural Maryland, right?  Like, we've all been there and done that, but we didn't all videotape it backwards.

Anyway, it's the last chance for The Creeper to feed before he goes back into hibernation, so he's got to really hurry if he's going to fatten up for the next 23 winters.  So along comes this school bus full of football players and a couple cheerleaders, so that's like, perfect!  That's like a packed buffet for T.C., and they're good strong men with solid body parts that he can use to strengthen himself.  Wait, who am I supposed to be rooting for here?  The humans?  Ok, my bad.  The Creeper is so much cooler now, especially since he stopped breaking into cars and smelling people's dirty laundry, which is kind of disgusting.  Like the football players probably all showered in the locker room after the game, before getting on the bus.  Sorry, Creepo.

Before hitting the bus-shaped buffet, The Creeper has a light snack of a boy he grabs in a farm's field, after pretending to be a scarecrow.  Sneaky Creeper!  The boy's father makes it his mission to take down the Creeper, which I think explains why he doesn't relay the call for help from the bus to the police, I think he wanted to use the football players as bait, so the monster would stay in one place long enough for him to show up with a fence-post driver repurposed as a harpoon launcher on the back of a farm truck.  And this is where "Jeepers Creepers 2" starts to resemble "Moby Dick" just a bit, with the boy's father as Ahab and The Creeper as the White Whale, and if you remember the Melville novel, you know things didn't really work out well for the crew of the Pequod.  Ishmael survived, sure, but for everybody else it was a crapshoot.  It's a fair comparison, because wasn't "Jaws" also just a take on Moby Dick, if you think about it?  There are only so many plots in classic literature, after all, and battling a giant monster is one of them that gets repeated again and again.  Man vs. nature, that's what it comes down to, are we going to use our technology and intelligence to become the alpha predator, or is nature (animals) stronger in the end?  Well, maybe don't count out the whale, that's all I'm saying.

i'd say that maybe Farmer Taggart had something to do with the bus breaking down, if I didn't know better.  We did see a shuriken made of bone fragments in the tire, though, and that's more The Creeper's style.  When he first attacks the bus, The Creeper takes a javelin to the head, and he's down for a while - but he's able to absorb a severed head from the bus and use that to replace the damaged head.  Gah, there would be so many good puns here about "getting a head" or "coming out a head", but it's just not that kind of movie.  But the javelin kind of foreshadows the harpooning that's coming up in the second half of the film.  It doesn't matter, you can harpoon The Creeper, you can run him over multiple times, you can stab him in the head, but you can't stop him, he's been alive for thousands of years, which one character somehow knows psychically, and I guess that makes sense if he's only active for 23 days every 23 years, he ages differently because he spends so much time hibernating.  And moisturizing, don't forget that, it's important - he doesn't look a day over 575.

The dialogue is rather horrible and forced in both movies, but in the first film, that was a bit understandable because the filmmakers had to cut the budget and therefore a large set of stunts was cut out of the third act, and when the action moved instead to the interior of a boring police station, it was up to the actors to improvise some dialogue, and the ended up really just saying the same few things over and over.  But, umm, what's the excuse for the sequel?  None.

But it's all of the jump-scares of the first film, with really none of the originality, except for the Melville references.

Also starring Ray Wise (last heard in "Batman: The Killing Joke"), Jonathan Breck (also carrying over from "Jeepers Creepers"), Tom Tarantini (ditto), Garikayi Mutambirwa (last seen in "Clockstoppers"), Eric Nenninger, Nicki Aycox (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), Travis Schiffner, Lena Cardwell (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Billy Aaron Brown, Marieh Delfino, Diane Delano (last seen in "The Ladykillers"), Thom Gossom Jr. (last seen in "xXx: State of the Union"), Al Santos, Josh Hammond, Kasan Butcher, Drew Tyler Bell, Luke Edwards (last seen in "Guilty by Suspicion"), Shaun Fleming (last heard in "Teacher's Pet"), Bob Papenbrook (last heard in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Jon Powell, Marshall Cook, Joe Reegan, Stephanie Denise Griffin (last seen in "The Jane Austen Book Club". 

RATING: 4 out of 10 road flares

Jeepers Creepers

Year 15, Day 277 - 10/4/23 - Movie #4,559

BEFORE: Justin Long carries over from "Barbarian" and clinches his spot in the year-end wrap-up.

Come on, this is an easy one, even if I have to go back almost 20 years into his filmography.  You should have seen this coming.  This film's been taking up space on my DVR since July of 2021 and it's really time to clear it. I did dub it to DVD with "Jeepers Creepers 2" but something went wrong with the dub and the DVD just doesn't look right - it happens - so I've kept the clear digital copy on the DVR because I figured I might like to see what's happening in the movie, also this way I get to read subtitles which is always better than not, the subtitles don't seem to carry over to the DVD.  I should just go all digital, all streaming all the time but I still like having things, growing a collection of movies that somebody else will have to throw away when I die. Call me crazy.  I mean, I know my collection's not going to end up in the Smithsonian or anything but I can look at the 7 or 8 DVD portfolios and the 5 shelves of VHS tapes and think that maybe it was not all for nothing.  Just me? 

THE PLOT: A brother and sister driving home through isolated countryside for spring break encounter a flesh-eating creature in the midst of its ritualistic eating spree. 

AFTER: It's never a good idea to go down in the basement in a horror movie, nor is it a good idea to go have sex in the woods if you're a teenager, or to invite a vampire into your house, we should all know to avoid these things.  No matter how they begin, at some point the plot-developing clause "What could possibly go wrong?" gets invoked - and here a pair of siblings just innocently drives home from college, and, well, stuff on that highway goes very wrong. 

This film is set in Florida, makes a ton of sense.  Sure, it's remote, rural Florida, probably up in the panhandle, but I guess if you go to college in Florida, you don't go to Miami Beach or Panama City or the other popular hang-outs, you just go home for spring break.  Kind of like how you maybe don't watch a lot of movies if you work at a movie theater.  But jeez, Florida ain't what it used to be, between abortion rights going away and gay rights being trampled on and alligators eating babies and books being banned left and right and Trump storing classified documents at his Florida resort.  Makes you miss the old days, with hurricanes hitting the state every season, Cuban immigrants floating over on rafts and flesh-eating creatures terrorizing the highways, chopping off people's heads.  I'm sure in no hurry to return to that state. 

Man, the "Jaws" formula still works, and it's just never going to let a filmmaker down.  You not only don't see the shark for most of the movie, you don't NEED to see the shark for most of the movie, and you're not going to realize that you didn't see the shark for most of the movie.  Just shoot around it, and show us the effects of what the shark did, and that's a whole lot scarier in the long run.  But you're going to remember the shark after you see it, that's for sure.  There is an art to the building up of suspense, after all, even if that came about because the mechanical shark didn't work for many of the shoot days.  The result is all that matters.  We don't NEED to see the Creeper for most of the movie, etc. etc. 

The Creeper has some unique abilities, in addition to scaring the crap out of everybody - he (it?) has the standard super-strength, Wolverine/Deadpool-like healing abilities, and invulnerability, plus the ability to smell fear (who can tell?  He might be full of B.S. on this point) and then he can somehow tell if you've got a body part on you that he needs to add to his own body.  Wait, is that right?  How does that work, what if you're not the right blood type or something?  And let's get back to this supernatural sense of smell for a second, because he breaks into Darry and Trish's car just to smell Darry's dirty laundry.  How are we supposed to distinguish him from just your regular Florida Man who might break into your car and smell your laundry?  What if the Creeper is just a regular creep?

Plus he wears a cowboy hat and a trenchcoat and drives a truck like any regular Florida backwooods muscle-headed redneck, so this is how he "passes" for human, but then later in the movie we find out that he's anything but - he can fly and do all those other things I mentioned, so really, he's a cut above and he will cut you, from above.  The psychic lady says that he sleeps for 23 springs (years) then he gets to feast for 23 days.  So, he's a cicada, then?  A giant man-sized, man-eating cicada?  Just putting that out there to see if it lands.  And once Darry (who's named "Darry", BTW?) and Trish decide to turn back and investigate the thing they saw, the die is cast, there's no good way out of dealing with the Creeper, now that he has your scent...  And you just can't go to the police, because Florida, what good would THAT do when he can just break into the county lock-up and start feasting on the inmates?  

Oh, "B EATING U", I get it!  That took me entirely too long. It's not "beating you", it's "be eating you"!  Really, this should be a NITPICK POINT of the highest order, that a flesh-eating demon creature who only masquerades in human form would have the wherewithal to obtain a vanity license plate for his weird-ass van that would be a subtle reference that later, once he'd run you off the highway, would be eating your body parts.  I guess the Creeper just did it all for the luls?  Can you seriously imagine the Creeper in line at the DMV or filling out a form to get that exact license plate?  Come on now...

We all have our little moments in life, moments when we feel we might really be good at our jobs, despite what the boss says.  Moments where we get to shine, feel like maybe we accomplished something after all, that we didn't just waste our time on this planet.  Maybe for some people that's the chance to play "Victim #3" in "Jeepers Creepers", and I'm not going to say that's not something to be proud of, it's just not what I've chosen to do with my life.  I could still do that, get out there and hustle and get a voice-over here, a stand-in role there, but I'm not your typical actor-looking type, I admit that, and it's a long-shot at best.  I'm going to stick with what got me to where I am, where I've got a respectable list of production credits in the IMDB under my hat and I'm also comfortable working in a movie theater at a college and occasionally telling famous people where the restrooms are, or meeting that guy from that reality show I watched, (almost) purely by accident. It's fine, I'm fine, I'm doing OK.  

But when they pair me with a recent graduate who's 20 or 21 years old and I mention I've worked in animation for 30 years, it would be great if she then didn't say, "Oh, so are you retired?"  Because I feel old enough already, thank you very much, and I don't really need to be reminded that I don't have the whole retirement thing figured out yet, and honestly, with things being what they are, whether I want to retire someday or not won't be the issue, it will be whether I'm able to retire, and probably not at this rate.  Thank you SO much for reminding me that I may be too young to retire, but also I'm TOO OLD to start something new.  

Also starring Gina Philips, Jonathan Breck (last seen in "Shorts"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Eileen Brennan (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen"), Brandon Smith (last seen in "Bernie"), Peggy Sheffield (last seen in "Term Life"), Jeffrey William Evans, Patrick Cherry, Jon Beshara (last seen in "Bad Boys II"), Avis-Marie Barnes, Steve Raulerson (last seen in "The Specialist"), Tom Tarantini (last seen in "Powder"), William Haze, Kim Kahana, Chris Shepardson, Tim Phoenix, Victor Salva.

RATING: 6 out of 10 cats owned by the Cat Lady

Barbarian

Year 15, Day 276 - 10/3/23 - Movie #4,558

BEFORE: Richard Brake carries over from "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned".  This is about the time of year when I'm reminded that there are two kinds of actors - the kind who dabble in horror movies, like Jeffrey Donovan did a LOT of work in between "Blair Witch 2" and this one, including the "Law & Order" reboot - and then there are those who make it the focus of their filmography, like Richard Brake.  

Those actors with a focus on horror have a greater chance of making it to my year-end honor roll, for those with three or more appearances for the year.  Just being used as a link once is NOT enough, because that only counts for two, and it takes three to make the cut.  Those actors who are well rounded have a better chance, every year there are some people who appear in both romances AND horror, and they really have the inside track.  At the moment there is still a former U.S. President in the lead, thanks to my documentaries - ah, but which one?  And another ex-Pres is tied for second, but an actor tied with him for second will most likely surpass him.  There could be a photo finish....

Suddenly, I am reminded that THIS would have been the slot for the film "Villains" if I had not moved it to mid-March to help me with a linking emergency, I needed it to connect "Endings, Beginnings" via Kyra Sedgwick to "The Bling Ring" via Maika Monroe.  But it also starred Jeffrey Donovan AND Bill Skarsgard, so it could just as easily have connected "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned" with "Barbarian".  Thankfully, when I removed it from this part of the chain, the two films on either end shared an actor, so the chain could continue. Why, it's almost like I knew what I was doing.

THE PLOT: A woman staying at an AirBnB discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems. 

AFTER: You might not expect to see Justin Long in a horror movie, because he's spent so much time in light comedies and a few romance-films.  But you would be wrong, because he's also in at least two other horror films which I will watch after this one.  He'll make the year-end list for sure now with four appearances, and so will Bill Skarsgard, and so will Richard Brake and Jeffrey Donovan.  Everybody wins!  Umm, OK, not Kate Bosworth if she's only been in 1 romance and 1 horror film this Movie Year.  I mention this because I believe Mr. Long and Ms. Bosworth are married to each other now.  

I met Justin Long once, way back in 2003 after he had appeared in "Galaxy Quest" and the TV show "Ed" and I cast him in an animated feature, where he played the voice of a tough, motorcycle-riding 1950's greaser teen.  My boss was unfamiliar with his career playing nerdy high-school students, but then asked if he would also do a couple pick-up lines for some minor characters in a geekier voice, and Justin said, "Sure, that's kinda of my thing..."

Of course, he was also in the infamous Kevin Smith film "Tusk", and if you really need to see a man turned into a walrus-like creature, fine, go ahead, but don't say I didn't warn you away.  But having been in another horror movie (or at least a horrific movie) it really made me wonder in this film why he wasn't more aware of the dangers of going into a strange house and spending the night...

Let me also point out that this film has almost EXACTLY the same plot points as a romance film I watched in February, called "Alone Together" - namely, two people end up renting the same AirBnB for the same time period, which SHOULD be impossible, but hey, it's happened in at least two movies.  I was talking to a co-worker about "Alone Together" and they said, "Wait do you mean "Barbarian"?"  Umm, no, this movie was not called that.  "But THAT'S the plot of "Barbarian"!" they insisted, so I was forced to check it out.  Please let me confirm that although the two movies start out the same, they have VERY different endings.  I was tempted to put them together on a DVD, but sensibility won out.  Nobody ever gets the references in my "What do these two films have in common?" filing system for my DVD collection...

But I really don't want to say too much here, except that if you want to get nuts this Halloween season, you could do a lot worse than this.  As Batman said once (or twice), "Let's get nuts!"  A woman shows up at her AirBnB in a very shady area of Detroit, and there is already a man staying there, who rented it through a different agency - which itself is weird, can a house be listed on two sites?  Maybe?  I don't know.  Then the guessing game starts for the audience, because duh, it's a horror film, so where's the horror?  The man is played by Bill Skarsgard, who also played Pennywise in "It", so it is him?  No, no, too obvious, so then, is it her?  Does she have some deep, dark secret like she's really a vampire or a serial killer or a cannibal.  Come on, come on, get on with it?  When is something going to, you know, like HAPPEN?

Tess and Keith reluctantly agree to share the house, they drink a bottle of wine together, they both have ties to the modern jazz scene, things seem to be going well, except the man talks in his sleep and seems to be having disturbing dreams.  Wait, is that it?  Is he really a ghost or a werewolf or a serial killer?  Wait, is one of them dead or haunting the house or not really there?  Do I see dead people?  Morning comes and she goes to her job interview, her prospective boss is concerned that she's staying in a really sketchy part of town, and as she views it during the daytime, yeah, a lot of the houses seem to be uninhabited or falling apart or have suffered fires or something.  We drive pass some houses in rural Connecticut or Long Island sometimes and talk about how they look like "murder shacks" to us, this seems to be a whole neighborhood of them...

The rest of the film is about Tess trying to contact AirBnB to get a refund, and if you've ever tried to deal with their customer service, you may realize why one reviewer called this movie "The scariest film in years."  First she tries to call the company, but she's on hold for, like, forever.  Then she finally gets through on the phone, but JUST as a representative picks up, she reaches for her phone to turn off the speaker, and she accidentally disconnects the call.  Don't you HATE when you do that?  So she calls back, but she gets a recording that says her wait time is about 53 minutes, but her call is VERY important to the company.  Sure, she can navigate the phone menu and request a call back, so she doesn't have to stay on hold, but come on, seriously?  So she tries their web-site, but now her phone is low on battery power, AND she doesn't know the wi-fi password at the AirBnB so she has to use her data minutes?  Forget that, those things are expensive.  So OK, she logs on with a laptop but then their web-site has a chat function, and the chatbot can't quite seem to understand the problem, so it's back to the phone.  This is everybody's darkest nightmare, right?  

I'm just kidding, that isn't what happens at all.  But I had you going, right? 

A homeless man chases Tess inside, and then she accidentally gets locked in the basement, luckily she bangs on the window to get his attention, as she's got the house-key with her, therefore he can't get in to open the basement door.  They work it out, but while she was down there she discovered a secret room with a bed and a bucket in it.  Yeah, there's no really good reason to have a secret room in a house, is there?  She wants to immediately leave the house, which, yeah, sure, would have been a good idea, only then the movie is over.  Keith convinces her to stay while HE checks it out, and then he's down there for a good long time...

And that's about as far as I'm going to go with the first story, there's a second and maybe even a third story that may all connect together, or hey, maybe they don't.  A lot of crazy shit happens, but I'm not going to spoil it, you all deserve to watch the film yourself and have just as much trouble getting to sleep this month as I will. Ah, well, there's always November to catch up on my sleepy time, I only need to watch 13 movies that month.  

In the second story, Justin Long plays an actor who has recently been caught up in a sex scandal, allegations of rape by his co-star - so that TV pilot is moving ahead without him, and the legal cases ahead of him - defending the rape charge and also suing his accuser for defamation - are going to be costly.  SO he decides to check into selling some of those properties he owns in the Detroit area, because for some reason people don't seem to be very interested in renting them through AirBnB.  Gee, I wonder why.  That wouldn't be the...yep, it's the same house.  OK, this time we're REALLY on edge, waiting for the something to happen. Again.

And then there's a flashback that may explain the secret room - or hey, maybe it doesn't, you be the judge.  Eventually we can piece the whole thing together, and yeah, it's freaking nuts and very scary, but hey, that's what horror films are for.  Not everybody's going to make it to the last reel, and then we have to decide if the wrong things happened to the right people, and if we're OK with that. Or did they happen to the people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and if so, are we OK with that?  Really, there's so much we can't control, so what's the point of even trying?  

So I'm not going to give anything else away here, I just have some random musings, and you can make of them what you will: 

It's nice to see someone else still using VHS tapes.  Glad that I'm not the only one. 

AJ finds the extra room in the basement and immediately wonders if he can also rent THAT out on AirBnB.  Nice idea, but that's not going to solve all of your money problems, dude. 

There was a contestant on the new season of "Survivor" who quit the game at the end of the first episode, because she realized she did not enjoy sleeping outside on the beach and going for more than six hours without food.  I really admire this woman for her honesty - and I think that's the kind of game I would also play.  We toured a cave in Aruba while on a cruise, and the moment the door was closed (yes, the cave had a door) I immediately felt a sense of dread, as if the cave that had been standing for thousands of years and explored for hundreds would suddenly choose the day I visited to collapse in on itself. Then they said that some passages of the cave may get really tight, and for a few moments later on the tour, they would turn the lights off so we could appreciate the darkness. Nope, not for me. A man raised his hand and said his wife wanted to leave the tour, and I said I would gladly join her and escort her down the mountain.  I wasn't proud, but it's good to know your limitations - I went back down to the beach and had a soda, assuring myself that it's good to be alive and to not let anyone see you freak out or have a panic attack. And the cave did NOT collapse that day, but that could be because I took my bad paranoid juju out of the cave, so, really, I'm a hero, I saved the life of everyone on that cave tour.  By the same token, if you're in a horror movie and you feel you should leave the house, make sure that you then leave the house. 

I don't know how that "Survivor" contestant who quit is going to come back and win the game, of course, but I'm rooting for her. Got a good feeling about it. 

You also never really feel alive until you come close to dying.  Wait, is that right?  Umm, OK, I'll stick with that. I've never been sick enough to stay in a hospital, but I've been treated in the E.R. for kidney stones and for putting my head through a lightbulb (or a lightbulb through my head, depending on how you look at it.). Man, head wounds bleed A LOT, and getting the glass out of my skull took some time, but it was on the day of my 40th birthday party, and people were waiting to start celebrating - the only thing missing was ME because I was in the E.R.  But that sort of thing can change your outlook, I suppose - I got busy watching movies a couple months after that.  Get busy living or get busy dying, as that other movie said. Wait, why are those my only two options?

It's also good to know the history of your house, maybe even who owned it before you. Just saying. If I had realized that our block in Queens NY is slightly on a slope, and that all of the rain water goes from that yard to that yard to our neighbor's yard to OUR yard and then makes a beeline for our basement, I might have been more careful when selecting this house as a place to put down roots.  We had four inches of water in our basement after Hurricane Ida, and I bailed for hours, but I know I didn't bail it all, so, umm, where did it GO?  This past weekend we narrowly averted another flood in the basement, only because we cleared the backyard drain at JUST the right time.  Water still came in the house around the upstairs windows, though, so now we've got to deal with that.  I store some of my comic books upstairs, and a lot of water coming in is "no bueno" for the condition of the collection.  

Paul Simon had a song called "One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor."  I heard somebody quote that in a movie once, and I'm honestly not sure if it's meant as a comment on modern urban society, a metaphor for success and failure or just a reflection on how architecture works.  

Last thing before I go - the IMDB tells me that the title "Barbarian" can be made from only the letters found in "AirBnB".  I guess that was intentional?  Who knows? 

Also starring Georgina Campbell (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Bill Skarsgard (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Justin Long (last seen in "Clerks III"), Matthew Patrick Davis, Kurt Braunohler (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Jaymes Butler (last seen in "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"), Sophie Sorensen, Rachel Fowler, J.R. Esposito, Kate Nichols (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Kate Bosworth (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Brooke Dillman (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Sara Paxton (last seen in "Blonde"), Will Greenberg, Derek Morse, Trevor Van Uden, Zach Cregger (last seen in "Opening Night"), Devina Vassileva, Kalina Stancheva, Julian Stanishkov

RATING: 5 out of 10 cars abandoned on the street

R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned

Year 15, Day 275 - 10/2/23 - Movie #4,557

BEFORE: Jeffrey Donovan carries over from "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2", from one of his first movies to one of his most recent, 22 years apart.  This reminds me that the writer's strike ended, and if the SAG strike follows suit, then it won't be long before he'll be seen again on "Law & Order", it's then just a question about how fast episodic TV can return, the late-night talk shows are expected back much sooner.  I had a nice little break there and cleared a TON of episodes of "Chopped" off my DVR while I was half-unemployed for 2 months, but in the last week or two a bunch of reality shows I watch came back on the air, like "Survivor", "Hell's Kitchen" and for some reason, ABC also forgot AGAIN to cancel "Shark Tank".  Plus we've got "Halloween Cookie Challenge", "Halloween Baking Championship" and "Outrageous Pumpkins" to watch, because it is October and my wife and I tune in to those together around the same time I switch over to horror movies that I watch on my own.  

And yeah, I really feel like I'll be pressed for time this October, BUT I seem to have forgotten one very helpful thing - horror movies tend to be shorter, on average, than their dramatic counterparts.  Yesterday's film was just 90 minutes long, and tonight and tomorrow's films are just over 100 minutes each, so that could be the saving grace this month.  There may only be a couple films this October that are 2 hours or over, most seem to come in somewhere around 1 hour 45 minutes, and most are under that.  So OK, yeah, bring it on, as long as I don't get find something truly scary that keeps me awake, I can still get my sleep on.  And if I fall behind maybe I can just watch a movie or two while I'm on vacation, and post the reviews later. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "R.I.P.D." (Movie #1,890)

THE PLOT: Recruited by the R.I.P.D., a resurrected sheriff returns to Earth to save humanity from a gateway to hell. 

AFTER: If you want to talk about long-awaited sequels, or the longest time in-between sequels, nothing on my records may ever top "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny", which came out 15 years after the previous adventure in that franchise, and for me there were 4,533 films I watched in between installments.  But this one comes out as a sequel to a film from 2013, and I've seen 2,667 films since then, so maybe that's a distant second?  Honestly, I'm not sure but I'm hard pressed to think of any longer distances... No, wait, what about "Avatar: The Weight of Water", which came out 14 years after its predecessor, and so for me there were 3.713 films watched in-between.  So the distance between "R.I.P.D." and its sequel isn't a record, it's got to be in third place at best. 

It's been so long that I forgot most of the rules about how the R.I.P.D. works - a cop dies in the line of duty and instead of going to heaven, he gets drafted into the "Rest in Peace" Department, so really, there's no rest at all, he (or she) just keeps doing the same work as before, only this time it's for the Man (or Woman) upstairs.  They pair up a rookie with a veteran, similar to the format of "Men in Black" and, umm, every cop show ever, and then there are rules - he can't connect with his loved ones, and he doesn't even LOOK the same as before, he's constantly in disguise while he and his partner track down the escaped souls from hell and return them where they belong, using the wild Heaven-based technology to track down the "deados".  Looks like the first film did NOT turn a profit, which explains why it took almost 10 years to get the sequel made, and why it's on Netflix so soon.  

Oh, yeah, and it's based on a comic book series from Dark Horse - I tend to forget that if sometimes if superheroes aren't involved.  But doesn't a resurrected man working for the angels count as some kind of superhero?  Not all heroes wear capes, right?  Sometimes they wear cowboy hats and boots.  Sheriff Roy Pulsipher is teamed up with a woman as his superior (probably to teach him something about sexism) and to the rest of the world he appears to be an African-American woman (probably to teach him something about racism) so this is also some kind of personal growth experience for him.  Yes, personal growth doesn't stop when you die, apparently, there's still chance for further redemption, in whatever form that needs to take.  Roy was also cold toward his future son-in-law before he died, and though he never got to see his daughter's wedding, he may still get a chance to make amends. 

The deados are led by an older miner who accidentally dug too deep and struck hell instead of gold - some demon took the advantage and possessed his body, now he wants to keep that gateway open and bring out more tortured souls, turning Earth into Hell-On-Earth, but since this story is set in 1876, we all have a clue that this is not going to happen, because if the end of the world happens in the prequel than the original film would never have a chance to take place. Right? 

Roy's mentor goes by the name of Jeanne, has a European accent and claims to have been fighting deados for over 440 years - if you do a little math you might be able to figure out her identity before it's revealed.  But then, this is kind of an open secret, even Roy manages to figure it out, but then maybe he's a history buff.  Last hint, her weakness is that she's afraid of fire. Come on, don't make me say it, you should have figured it out already.  Or just watch the damn film, it doesn't even really count as a spoiler if it's so damn obvious. 

Can the cowboy and the female warrior fighting for the angels put the demons back in Hell where they belong before the blood moon, and prevent the end of the world, at least for now?  Yeah, probably, it's just that kind of picture, and I'm too damn tired from working to rate a film properly tonight.  It's going to be a Hell of a month, and really, it's just getting started....so I'm prepared to be a little forgiving, no real NITPICK POINTS.  Anyway, the plot is way too far out from reality to even call anything a goof, this film cleverly creates its own reality so nothing that takes place is out of place from that reality.  All good.

Oh, yeah, since this is based on a comic book, I really should take a minute and go through all the films I watched this year to see which other films were also based on comic books, because I'm going to need that list at the end of the year.  It saves me some time THEN if I do THAT now. 

Also starring Rachel Adedeji, Penelope Mitchell (last seen in "Between Worlds"), Evlyne Oyedokun, Jake Choi (last seen in "Money Monster"), Richard Brake (last seen in "The Rhythm Section"), Craige Els, Stephanie Levi-John, Tilly Keeper, Richard Fleeshman, Nick Wittman (last seen in "Terminator: Dark Fate"), Kevin Harvey, Nóra Trokán, Matt Silverman, Kerry Knuppe, Johnny K. Palmer (last seen in "Colette"), Zoltan Benkovics, Liz Borden.

RATING: 6 out of 10 stampeding buffaloes

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

Year 15, Day 274 - 10/1/23 - Movie #4,556

BEFORE: Conan O'Brien AND Andy Richter carry over from "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", and you can see why I chose that film to be my lead-in to the horror chain, it's because THIS film ended up on one end of the chain, and, like, how can I get HERE?  These two talk show staples provided an easy in, although I really only needed one of them, they do kind of come as a pair.  Now, here are the planned links for the rest of October: Jeffrey Donovan, Richard Brake, Justin Long, Ray Wise, Adrienne Barbeau, Stephen King, Lois Chiles, Genevieve Bujold, Jeremy Irons, Alden Ehrenreich, Keri Russell, J.K. Simmons, Bokeem Woodbine, Zoie Palmer, Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Frank Welker and Michael Madsen/Marg Helgenberger.

I know what you're thinking, some of those actors just DO NOT sound like they were in horror movies, but they were - it's just a question of WHICH horror movies they were in, because I've put together a mix here of new movies and some classic films from the 1970s and 1980s that I never got around to watching when I was a kid, or since then, and it's been quite a while since I was a kid. I was such a fragile child that I avoided horror movies for a very long time - I wasn't allowed to watch most of them, so that made it quite easy to avoid them.  I didn't really start watching them full-force every October until I started this blog in 2009, and I've been playing catch-up ever since.  The list of horror films that I still have NOT seen is still quite extensive, even after 15 years of doing this.  But let me clear these particular 25 films off the list, because they do form a chain, and then I can think about what franchises I still would like to add to the list for next year.  I'd love to do a Bruce Campbell mini-chain, for example, but it just didn't fit into my plans this year.

Tonight's film is a great example, sure, I've seen "The Blair Witch Project", back in 1999 everybody just had to watch it, because it had so much buzz.  It kicked off that whole "found footage" style of horror movies, which became a genre all to itself, to the point where some people were convinced the film was REAL, as if those three teens were non-actors who would go into the woods with a three camera set-up, so they could constantly film their own reaction shots.  Give me a break. Horror fans can be so gullible.  

But, did I ever see the sequel?  I know I haven't seen the 2016 remake, and this doesn't link to that, and I wasn't able to find another way to link to that, so that's got to stay on the list a bit longer, apparently.  But first let's scratch the sequel film from 2000 off the list.  

THE PLOT: A group of tourists arrives in Burkittsville, MD after seeing "The Blair Witch Project" to explore they mythology and phenomenon, only to come face to face with their own neuroses and possibly the witch herself. 

AFTER: If you remember the original "Blair Witch Project" movie, three teens went into the cursed Maryland woods with a very shaky camera (because they apparently forgot their tripod or steadi-cam harness) to investigate the legend of the Blair Witch, who abducted kids and made them stand in the corner or something before she killed them.  Yeah, the witch must have been a grade-school teacher before, I guess - really?  That's the fear?  Being made to stand in the corner?  Anyway, they interview some local people about the legend and then they camp out in the cursed woods - like, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? - and after some very stupid sequences where they all get scared by little sculptures made from twigs, one gets kidnapped and then - well, nobody really knows what happened to them next, because it's impossible from the amateur shaki-cam to tell exactly what happened in the end, but it scared the crap out of some people in a way that it couldn't have if professional cameramen had been used.  And the film footage is SUPPOSEDLY their "lost" footage after it was "found", but that's not possible, because there are shots in the film of all three of them so, umm, who's running the camera in those shots?  Just saying. 

Eventually people wised up (OK, well, some of them did) and realize that the film couldn't possibly have been all "found" footage, so therefore there was another camera person, and therefore those teens were actors, and oh, yeah, witches aren't real and they don't make you stand in the corner.  Really, I'm still pumped by getting that "goof" from "80 for Brady" published on the IMDB page, I should keep it going and post a "goof" for this film that just says "witches aren't real" and another one for "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" that just reads "snails can't talk".  I could really become a real pain in the ass with this - but the truth is that we hold animated films and horror films to a different standard, we allow for these breaks in reality because we want to be entertained or scared, and that becomes more difficult the more we impose reality on to the films we're watching.  It's the "suspension of disbelief" that allows us (OK, most of us) to shut down the skeptical side of our brains and just enjoy the ride.  But I usually can't do that, I know all films are fictional and therefore B.S. and I can't just switch that off. That kind of goes double for horror films - but it was the BELIEF that the first "Blair Witch" movie was real that made people so scared. 

For the sequel, a title card at the start of the film lets us know that this film is a re-enactment, with actors, but it's based on a real story (even though it isn't) but at least now we can stop wondering how they had a camera outside the van aimed through the windshield at the character driving.  Or how the omniscient camera always seemed to know who to cut to before they said their next line - see, the language of film is so ingrained in us now that most of the time we don't even THINK about this stuff while we're watching a movie, we just let the pictures go by and let the story play out without thinking about, "Well, damn, how did they get THAT shot?" but I always do.  I was thinking during "80 for Brady" about how great those actresses were, for cheering at the Super Bowl taking place, when they weren't really watching a football game at all.  Damn, that's some fine acting!  

While I'm drawing comparisons, this movie's plot is similarly all over the place - so in some ways it's the "80 for Brady" of horror films, in that it can't seem to keep its own story straight.  The van has a dented fender, no wait, the van got totalled, no the van is fine, wait now the van blew up.  WHICH IS IT?  Damn, it's the Super Bowl tickets all over again!  Good luck trying to figure out who the killer is, too, I just watch this film and I have no idea.  The excessive jumping around in time doesn't help, because Jeff is seen in an insane asylum, then he's being interviewed by the police and talking about being in the hospital a year ago, so is that the mental hospital, which would place those scenes in the past, or is he put in the mental hospital AFTER the police arrest him, which would place those scenes in the future?  Honestly, I have no idea.  

It's ironic because there are missing hours in the group's found footage, the film seems to skip ahead two hours during the night, and the overall story skips around in time, also - to the point of making impossible to re-create a coherent chain of events.  Ugh, I hate that - and I hate that I have to go to Wikipedia right after I watch a movie to learn what exactly happened in the film I just watched.  Why does everything need to be so obtuse?  

Similarly, Tristen is pregnant when the group is out in the woods, but then she has a miscarriage, and she goes to the hospital - she's out like the next day and she seems fine, but does that make sense?  Or do the scenes which follow, back at Jeff's house, take place at a totally different time?  And then Jeff makes reference during his interview by the police about it being Tristen's blood in the van, so was that from the trip to the hospital or from another incident?  Can anybody explain all of this?  No, of course not, because it's a story that never happened and it doesn't need to be coherent, it just has to have a lot of wacky and scary shit going down.  OK, gonna read the whole plot breakdown now so I can understand what happened...

OK, so as best I can determine, the group blacked out while they were camping on the site where the house of the Blair Witch (as seen in the previous film) used to be.  There's a giant scary tree where the living room used to be, which makes no sense but is still kind of spooky. The five campers get high and then black out, and wake up with no memory of the previous six hours - so far this all makes logical sense, I mean maybe their pot was laced with something stronger and they don't remember what happened.  But then they find the camera's VHS tapes under the house (where the "found" footage was found last time) and after bringing Tristen to the hospital, they go back to Jeff's place to review the tapes.  

But then they start having weird dreams, or weird breaks with reality, and they realize they're covered in pagan symbols (or they imagine that they are) and Erica goes missing.  When they review the tapes a few hours are missing, but then with a weird suggestion from Tristen they decide to watch the footage backwards and they see different images - only, NITPICK POINT, this isn't the way VHS tapes work....  But then they realize that while they were blacked out, they all participated in some kind of ritual or orgy or both, and based on their flashbacks, THEY were probably the ones who killed those other five missing tourists at the next campsite.  So, were they forced to become killers by the Blair Witch, or were they all just tripping balls?

OK, no more spoilers except to say that later the police get involved, and across the board, these teens are betrayed by their video-tapes, which tell very different stories from the events that they remember.  So are they killers, or victims, or just teens who shouldn't have wandered into the woods?  So very much is unclear here - but it's clear that the sequel was rushed into production to try to take advantage of the popularity of the first film.  But doesn't a band's second album always kind of suck, for this reason?

Very good NITPICK POINT on the IMDB goofs page - I didn't think of this but it's certainly worth mentioning - while watching the tapes, the gang sees one of their members hiding the tapes under the house.  But the tape their watching would have been one of the tapes she was hiding, only it was still in the camera at the time - so how could the tape be both in the camera and also be one of the tapes being hidden?  It couldn't.  But maybe she hid three tapes, then took the fourth tape out of the camera and hid that one in the same place?  It's possible - yet so many other things in the film weren't, it's a bit weird to get stuck on THIS point. 

You can also sort of tell what year this film was made just by the confusion in the title - if it had been released a few years earlier, it would have properly been titled "The Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows" - even though there's not a book to be found in the whole film, but that's a separate issue.  At some point the Hollywood executives commissioned some kind of focus groups and they determined that some people don't like sequels with numbers in the title, because then everyone who didn't see the FIRST film in the series is not going to go see the SECOND film in the series, because they think they'll be totally lost concerning the plot, and coming in the middle of the story, so they just don't go buy a ticket.  So they started downplaying the numbers in the titles, putting the emphasis on the new part of the title.  But then when people didn't really turn out for the sequels that were titled this way, they probably commissioned a new focus group that highlighted the new problem - now the people who DID see the first film were also staying away because they didn't realize that this was a direct sequel to "The Blair Witch Project" because the title was so confusing.  

So if this had been released a few years later, it would have been titled "Blair Witch: Book of Shadows" with no number, but with the franchise name coming FIRST, as in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" or "Spider-Man: No Way Home" - so now it's up to the fans to keep track of which movie comes in what order, there are no numbers to turn off the first-time viewers, and everybody knows what franchise it belongs to, and everyone is equally confused, until they start over with the reboot movie with no number and no chapter name.  For further reference, look at the numbering and very confusing titles of franchises like "Halloween" or "Alien" or "The Fast and the Furious", you can practically track the bad decisions made by the marketing departments. 

Well, this year's horror chain is off to a VERY confusing start - but the good news is, I'll never ever have to watch this film ever again. So that's something. 

Also starring Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "VIllains"), Erica Leerhsen (last seen in "Magic in the Moonlight"), Stephen Barker Turner, Kim Director (last seen in "Split"), Tristine Skyler (last seen in 'Cadillac Man"), Lanny Flaherty (last seen in "Men in Black 3"), Lauren Hulsey, Raynor Scheine (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Kennen Sisco, Kevin Murray (last seen in "Aftermath"), Keira Naughton, Joe Berlinger, Briiane Bowman, 

with archive footage of Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard (last seen in "Men of Honor"), Michael C. Williams, Roger Ebert (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Jay Leno (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Kurt Loder (last seen in "Tina"), Chuck Scarborough (last seen in "The Paper"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 cans of Underwood deviled ham spread (their logo was a cartoon devil, I see what you did there...)