The First Omen

Year 17, Day 283 - 10/10/25 - Movie #5,167

BEFORE: I'm going to count this one as another Friday film, essentially I'm doubling up, and I was only able to get ahead of the count because I took a pass on working at NY Comic-Con, which is still going on, it's only halfway done. Geez, I guess the convention found a way to happen without me after all. I did get to pick up a shift at the theater yesterday after saying no to NYCC, so it may be a good thing that I didn't take that job. Burned toast and all that - anything else good that comes into my life this weekend is a similar bonus and that would help prove the theory about burned toast, I guess. Here's another good thing, I'm ahead on movies and therefore I won't fall behind when I go to North Carolina for a week this month. 

Here's another good thing, being ahead on the movie count allows me to send another birthday SHOUT-out, this time to actor Charles Dance, born on October 10 in 1946, and therefore turning 79 today. I hope he has some cake and some burned toast. 

More good news, tonight's film was a last-minute addition, but including it means I can drop that film in November I want to drop and add it back to a February chain, and I can then also drop that other film I want to drop and use it next year to link Christmas movies - if I'm one film short at the end of the year, I have something else I can add, so I think I'm locked in for the rest of the year now, when I get to the end of October I'll recount everything to be sure. 

Ralph Ineson carries over from "The Pope's Exorcist", where he provided the voice for the demon Asmodeus. Tonight he plays a priest, so clearly he's accustomed to both sides of the equation. 

THE PLOT: A young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, but encounters a darkness that causes her to question her faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate. 

AFTER: This is the prequel to the 1976 film "The Omen" that we never really needed, or I guess if you like this one it's what we never really knew we needed. But every franchise now needs to have its "Rogue One" type of film, which explains how we got to where the whole damn thing started, or where we THOUGHT it started, and we apparently need to know how it REALLY started, which was some time before that. 

Think about it, the first time we see baby Damien in "The Omen", we know he's been switched with the ambassador's baby that was born dead, but then where did Damien come from. They say he was the spawn of Satan, but did they mean that literally, or just spiritually and therefore figuratively? Well, the makers of "The First Omen" mean that VERY literally, and they show his, umm, conception here, and it's not for the faint of heart. 

Apparently there was a whole cult within the church that wanted to bring about the birth of the Antichrist, but why exactly, we're just never going to find out. There's stuff here about a radical faction of Catholics, trying to create fear and drive people back to the Church, because I guess attendance on Sundays is starting to dwindle. So, they need Satan back on earth, in human form, because that's going to put asses in the pews on Sunday morning. I don't know if that's believable, it seems kind of lame. Why not have a faction of the church that's trying to bring Satan back because then that would mean the rapture, the end of the world, and they, being good church-going Catholics, could ascend to heaven?  Only bringing Satan into human form feels a little bit like a sin, so I guess that wouldn't work, you've been very naughty priests and nuns, trying to get Satan born! But I guess then they could just go to confession and get back in God's good graces, they've got like 35 years to do that before Damien is an adult who's trying to locate and kill the Christ child. 

A couple of things just don't really fit here, one is the timeline, they're trying to get Damien born in 1971, but somehow just 10 years later, in 1981, he's an adult in "The Final Conflict"? How can he be both 10 years old and 30 years old at the same time? And why set this story in 1971, what's the significance there? An American girl is sent to Italy to become a nun, why did she have to travel to Europe, why can't she become a nun in America?  Sure, there's an answer, but it comes along much later. 

The other thing that doesn't work is they're having nun candidates mate with the devil in order to deliver Satan's baby into the world - but Satan is already HERE, that's who they're having sex with, so umm, if he's already here, what's with all the nun-raping?  Or is that just for funsies? What Margaret learns about another nun at the abbey, the orphan Carlita, is that Carlita is one of the Satan-mating experiments, all grown up, so she's the daughter of Satan. But all the nunfoolery so far has produced only female babies, and apparently the Bible says that the Antichrist needs to be a boy, which is pretty sexist, why can't the Antichrist be a girl? Typical Catholics, so stuck in their gender roles, am I right?  

But then the rogue priests land on a genius idea, if they make Satan have sex with his own daughters, that adds an element of incest to the mix, and that could be the secret to making a truly evil Antichrist boy baby. Well, I suppose that sounds crazy enough to work. Let's line up all those nuns who are also the daughters of Satan and lets get to it!  I hope you realize I'm kidding, because this is all pretty sordid stuff tonight, very scandalous with all the nun-raping and the Satan-spawning, and maybe send the kiddoes off to bed before watching this one, just saying. 

As with last night's film, there's a secret underground chamber below the abbey that contains all the Church's most secret, umm, secrets. And if those files ever got out, man the news would rock the world and possibly bring organized religion to its knees - which apparently is OK with some priests who spend a lot of time on their knees. But how deep does the conspiracy go here, and who benefits from it all?  We never really find out because any nun who gets too close to the truth suddenly gets the urge to either hang herself or set herself on fire, sometimes both at the same time. 

Also, there are a lot of "accidents" when other people seeking the truth get too close - I remember there was an accident in the original film where a plate of glass came loose from a truck and took a guy's head right off. To be fair, he was investigating the Church's conspiracy, so he was kind of asking for it. This prequel starts off with something along the same lines, you think at some point even a priest might realize the need to wear a hard hat when there's construction work being done on the church. And you would be dead wrong, and he would just be dead. 

It's a really long walk here just to get everybody to the exact moment where the 1976 film "The Omen" starts, but that's what a "Rogue One" film is intended to do, God forbid we leave any tiny little explanatory plot point out, geez, this generation of movie-goers, we have to hold their hands and explain every little thing to them. "Waaahh, I don't understand!" Go read the Wikipedia plot summary, you little simps. Not everything needs to be seen on camera to be understood, but it's obvious the filmmakers behind "The First Omen" disagree. 

Directed by Arkasha Stephenson

Also starring Nell Tiger Free, Sonia Braga (last seen in "Angel Eyes"), Tawfeek Barhorn (last seen in "The Rhythm Section"), Maria Caballero, Charles Dance (last seen in "Child 44"), Bill Nighy (last heard in "The Wild Robot"), Nicole Sorace, Ishtar Currie-Wilson, Andrea Arcangeli, Guido Quaglione, Dora Romano (last seen in "Mafia Mamma"), Michelangelo Dalisi (ditto), Anton Alexander (last seen in "Exodus: Gods and Kings"), Mia McGovern Zaini (last heard in "Blonde"), Eugenia Delbue, Charita Cecamore, Federica Santoro, Mario Opinato (last seen in "Paul, Apostle of Christ"), Rachel Hurd-Wood (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Nicola Garofalo, Milena Bozic, Dobrila Stojnic (last seen in "The Machine"), Alberto Tierrez, Ljiljana Zujic, Eva Ras, Miodrag Rakocevic, James Swanton,

RATING: 4 out of 10 angry protestors

The Pope's Exorcist

Year 17, Day 283 - 10/10/25 - Movie #5,166

BEFORE: OK, New York Comic-Con is a no-go for me this year, maybe I'll never go back, who knows. Instead I worked the opening night of Newfest, which is a festival devoted to LGBTQ material, I'm not directly connected with that movement, but I can still support their rights to assemble and watch films about other people with similar inclinations - it's what makes America great, our differences and our recognition that all people have rights, not just the ones we agree with or who look like us or who live like us. That includes the pursuit of happiness, and for many people the path of that pursuit is rainbow-colored, and that's OK. Ya dig? 

It's just another gig, really, crowded like Comic-Con only less nerdy and more fabulous. As long as I get paid for my time, who cares what the gig is?  I mean, I wouldn't work a Nazi festival or an anti-human rights festival, but I don't think there are any gigs like that. Anyway, the opening night party is still probably going on somewhere in Manhattan, they don't tell me where because I don't need to know, I just want people to clear out of the theater so I can lock it up and go home and watch a movie. Ya dig?

Russell Crowe carries over from "Kraven the Hunter". 

THE PLOT: In 1987, Gabriel Amorth, the Vatican's leading exorcist, investigates the demonic possession of an American boy in Spain, and discovers a secret the church has tried to keep buried for centuries. 

AFTER: This film is allegedly based on two books written by the "real" Father Gabriele Amorth, the 1990 book "An Exorcist Tells His Story" and its sequel, but come on, aren't all exorcism movies just re-makes of the classic William Friedkin film "The Exorcist" from 1973?  In the same way that all shark attack movies are based on "Jaws" and "Clueless" was really based on a Jane Austen novel? Of course, that 1973 film was based on a 1971 novel by William Peter Blatty, and the book is now looked at as very controversial, the author was inspired by a story he heard about an exorcism that was performed on a possessed child, however when a journalist later investigated this supposed "real" exorcism, he found evidence that the boy had serious emotional problems stemming from his home life, and there was no evidence to support the demonic possession.  Well, you know how stories tend to grow with each retelling, it sounds likely that the "real" exorcism was something of an urban legend that grew and grew. 

Demonic possession is referred to in many cultures, however there is the possibility that what we're witnessing in a "possessed" person is just some altered state of consciousness, loss of personal identity and awareness combined with a dissociative disorder, the subject may even believe that they are possessed as a way to explain how they're suffering from some kind of chemical imbalance or physical pain. My parents both suffer from congestive heart failure, my mother's had it longer but my father has it too - in that state a lot of fluid builds up in their bodies, and when my sister took my father to a hospital they gave him a diuretic to reduce the fluid, however it affected his state of mind, made his dementia worse and he was very angry and convinced that the nurses were trying to kill him. Just one dose of this diuretic can cause withdrawal symptoms that include body tremors, panic attacks, anger and confusion -  plus he was hyper and wired when he was ON the medication and he had to be restrained. This was not normal, but if this can happen to an elderly man, it can also happen to a small child who ingests a toxin or a drug or has a bad reaction to one, and that could look a lot like demonic possession, I think. Other similar effects could be caused by epilepsy, schizophrenia, Tourette's syndrome, or drug abuse. 

But for the faithful, the easiest way to explain things is by putting God in charge of the world, and if you have God, then you have to have the Devil, because people need to feel like they're in charge of their fates - they need to choose the path of righteousness and turn their backs on the wages of sin, or it all means nothing in the end. OK, so right there's a big contradiction, who's in control, God or man? God made the universe, God put everything in motion, he made a heaven and a hell but he left the ultimate choice between them up to US?  Nah, not buying it. We're just dust specks floating around an enormous void, standing on a big rock that's being carried on the cosmic wind. Where does God exist, out beyond the edges of space, so far we can't even see it with the new super-telescopes? Then how the hell do we get to heaven, our energy can't travel that far, not at any speed. And hell's down below, inside the earth? Well, sure, it may be hot down there but nothing can survive in the pressure and heat of earth's molten caramel core, let alone the souls of the wicked. It's all based on concepts that early man came up with long ago, before he had any science to prove or disprove anything. Who told us the universe works this way, where the pious ascend and the wicked are cast out? God told us? Well, that's mighty convenient, like a self-proving theory - I'd like to see some corroboration, please. The Norse believed that the Earth was just a branch of the World Tree, and the universe was created when a giant cow licked an iceberg or something, God creating heaven and earth and all the animals in seven days seems equally as far-fetched. 

The exorcist here, Father Amorth, freely admits when he's called before a church tribunal that the vast majority of the exorcisms he performs are not genuine. Some "possessed" people just have mental illnesses, others just need attention, and still others just need to be reminded that God cares enough about them to send someone to cast out their "demons" and forgive their sins. OK, great, maybe this guy is being honest about being a liar, which also seems like a contradiction, but I get it. He's using the framework of exorcisms to bring God's message to the people, how he'll care for them in this life and the next, provided they go to church, confess their sins and not let their mind and body be taken over by "demons" like addiction, casual sex and homosexuality, and all the other stuff the Vatican doesn't approve of. 

But then the film goes on to show us the 1%, the one exorcism that involves an actual demon, one who knows things about Amorth's history that nobody else could know. When Amorth is called to Spain to help a young boy seemingly possessed, the boy makes references to a pig that Amorth tempted a demon to possess so that he'd leave a teenage boy's body, and then he shot the pig, presumably destroying the demon or sending it back to hell. He also knows Amorth's secret shame of not believing a mentally ill woman in the past who asked for Amorth's help, but he didn't believe her and she died by jumping off a building. He also taunts Amorth with memories from World War II, and since the kid is only like eight years old in 1987, how the heck could he even know about that? 

OK, so maybe this demon is the real deal. Amorth and the local priest, Father Esquibel, have to somehow learn the demon's name in order to cast it out, perhaps an examination of the former abbey that the boy's family lives in will reveal something - sure, by all means, let's start in the spooky catacombs of this religious building, it's not like they'll find a bunch of skeletons from the Spanish Inquisition along with information that will completely change what we all know about that period in history...

But except for this stuff, the confrontation with the demon follows pretty much the same path as the one seen in the original "Exorcist" film back in 1973 - the older, more experienced priest teaming up with the younger, naive one to say the prayers, resist the temptations and tricks of the demon and command it to leave the child's body and return to Hell. The special effects are way, way better, but essentially it's the same exact story. Amorth offers himself up to be possessed instead of the boy - symbolically he IS the pig from the opening sequence, he is also Father Karras from the 1973 film, only with a more positive outcome.  But the two priests find when they report back to the Vatican that there is now a map to all of the other "evil" sites around the world that need to be visited and re-consecrated, so prepare yourself for a sequel I guess. 

Directed by Julius Avery (director of "Overlord")

Also starring Daniel Zovatto (last seen in "Laggies"), Alexandra Essoe (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Franco Nero (last seen in "Letters to Juliet"), Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Laurel Marsden, Cornell John (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Ryan O'Grady, Bianca Bardoe (last seen in "Gran Turismo"), Santi Bayon, Paloma Boyd (last seen in "The Cold Light of Day"), Alessandro Gruttadauria, River Hawkins, Jordi Collet, Carrie Munro, Edward Harper-Jones, Matthew Sim (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Victor Solé (last seen in "In the Heart of the Sea"), Tom Bonington, Andrea Dugoni, Pablo Raybould and the voice of Ralph Ineson (last seen in "The Creator").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Cardinals (the priests, not the birds, but they're here too)

Kraven the Hunter

Year 17, Day 282 - 10/9/25 - Movie #5,165

BEFORE: Funny story, I had a plan for today and the next three days because I was going to work at New York Comic-Con, which is a four-day event, today through Sunday. I've worked that event for the last 20 years (or almost 20) and I only missed one year because they screwed up my paperwork and my boss and I didn't get our usual booth. It's a crazy, exhausting event but it's also a lot of fun, and you can get hooked on the adrenaline rush of it all. Plus, I never had to pay for a ticket in all that time, because paying for the booth comes with badges for the workers, and as long as we got enough badges to cover my boss and me and our helpers, that was fine.

Now, I quit that job six months ago, but the adrenalin fix kicked in, and old habits die hard. A co-worker at the theater usually works for the event, doing crowd control and giving people directions and such. When I was under-employed, I figured I could do that too, so I signed up to work all four days, but I didn't hear anything from the company that was hiring staff until maybe three weeks ago. Someone left me a voice-mail saying they were from a recruiting company, and that kind of set off a red flag - I didn't realize at first they were recruiting for NYCC, and I've had bad experiences with recruiters, so I left a couple messages but maybe didn't try hard enough to make contact. 

My co-worker gave me the e-mail of her contact, so I tried again and landed a phone interview. Great, that will be four solid days of work in October, I can make some much-needed cash. But then my theater job booked me solid for the three days before and the four days after, so that would mean like 10 days of hard work in a row, with no breaks. And with the condition my legs are in, I'm not sure I could stand up for four days straight at the convention center - when I used to work a booth, at least I could sit down for half of the time.

So it killed me to do it, but I politely declined the crowd work at Comic-Con, what would it get me if I made $800 but it took me two weeks for my feet to recover? Suddenly four days off in the middle of a busy October seemed like a better idea, I could rest up and get ready for a busy week at the theater, and an even busier November when my new second job kicks in, too. Also, now I could hang out with a friend on Friday, relax on Saturday and take my wife out for an early birthday dinner on Sunday.

My point is, even though I'm not going to be there, it's time for New York Comic-Con - and what film turned up in the chain tonight but a Marvel Comics film. It's about one of Spider-Man's villains, and maybe it won't be the greatest movie ever made, but it's a comic-book movie, just in time for NYCC and that should mean something - and in three days, I've got another comic-book movie for the LAST day of the con. What are the odds of THAT happening? 

Roderick Hill carries over from "The Munsters". 

THE PLOT: Kraven's complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff, starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared. 

AFTER: Well, I'm already 1/3 of the way through this year's horror chain, and I maybe forgot to mention that it's really horror movies plus whatever other movies I need to help make the links and keep the chain alive, and quite often that means comic-book movies need to step in. Sure, sometimes it's documentaries that are needed, in past Octobers I used docs about both Stephen Spielberg AND Brian De Palma to make the chains I wanted, and I fell back on the fact that Spielberg directed "Jaws" and produced "Poltergeist" and De Palma directed "Body Double" and "Dressed to Kill" and "Carrie", so the docs could get grandfathered in on a technicality. Comic book movies are considered fair game, too, because they have scary villains that sometimes seem like horror movie characters. These are my rules, after all, I make them up, I decide what counts. 

But if you think back on some of the more memorable Spider-Man stories with Kraven in them, especially "Kraven's Last Hunt", they play out like comic-book horror stories. Kraven shot Spidey with a GUN and buried him in a grave, our web-slinging hero had to dig himself out of the coffin and track down Kraven, who I think ended up committing suicide after. But nobody really dies in comics, they just resurrected him or found his long-lost son to take over his persona and costume, or they time-traveled or re-booted the series or somebody cast a magic spell and made him alive again.

Anyway, there were notable Spider-Man stories with Kraven in them, but this is a Kraven story without Spider-Man in it. Why? Because it's set in the Sony Spider-Verse, which is still not the same as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Soon, soon, there will be a story that unites all the universes, or takes a bit of that one and mixes it with a bit of that other one, based of course on which actors still want to keep renewing their contracts, and then the X-Men and the Avengers can team up to defeat the Spider-Villains, or whatever they want to do. But for now the characters that Sony wanted to develop live in the Venom-verse, which is also the universe seen in "Madame Web" and also "Morbius" I think. It's a pretty boring place with no Spider-Man in it, but then we have the Spider-Verse movies that tell us that EVERY universe has a Spider-Man of some kind, except this one? That seems very lame. 

Look, a great hero needs a great villain to fight, and the opposite holds true, too. What good is Kraven if he's not hunting a giant man-spider? Instead they have to pit him up against another version of Spidey's Rhino villain, and another villain from the comics, the Foreigner. As stupid as this version of the Rhino is, it makes sense for the Hunter to fight an animal themed villain, it makes no sense at all to put him up against the Foreigner. Come on, the Spidey-verse has so many other animal-themed characters he could hunt down, like the Jackal or the Vulture or the Grizzly, the Lizard, the Scorpion, Doctor Octopus, the White Rabbit, the Black Cat, I could go on and on, so I will. Tarantula, the Beetle, the Puma, Kangaroo, the Man-Wolf, Vermin, Hammerhead, the Gibbon, Human Fly, Mindworm, Swarm, and the whole Serpent Society if you want to open it up to Avengers villains that Spider-Man must have faced at some point. Any of these would have been thematically better than the Foreigner, whose sole super-power is to be able to hypnotize anyone for three seconds, so he can get the drop on them. Lame. 

But Kraven's kind of at a loss here, too, because his main super-power seems to be some kind of super-parkour, like he can jump off a building and grab something on the way down to break his fall, or he can climb a mountain or a castle wall super-quick because he's great at balancing and grabbing stuff and thinking fast. Still, compared to having animal-like senses and professional level tracking skills, parkour is still hella-lame, sorry. 

It's also very confusing, Kraven is a hunter and he was raised by his father to hunt animals, but then he reached that point in life where he wanted to reject everything his father stood for (relatable) so he chose to hunt down other hunters, and then all bad men in general, except he forgot to put his father on his list of bad men. Well, once somebody points out that little contradiction to him, he's at least willing to make up for it by seeing that his father dies, I guess better late than never, right?  That's it, that's the movie, Kraven kills a bad man in a Russian prison, then he kills a bunch of poachers, then Foreigner and Rhino, then circles back to his father, which is really where he should have STARTED in the first place. But the story is full of contradictions, especially where this whole father-son relationship crosses paths with the human-animal relationship. Does Kraven love animals or hate animals? I can't really tell, he needs a much clearer manifesto or something. He only kills men who kill animals, or he only kills men who dress up like animals? Both? 

Then he puts on a costume made from the fur of a lion, so he's a complete hypocrite, I think. But he can't be a conservationist who kills poachers and also wears fur, logic won't allow that. Don't even get me started on his relationship with Calypso, because her story is even more convoluted, she's a voodoo priestess, she was trained as a psychic or tarot card reader, but also she's a lawyer, you've got to PICK ONE of these things, or two, maximum. The other thing that carries over from the comics is that Kraven's younger brother will later become a different Spider-Man villain, but it's a long way to go from being a singer who can imitate other singer's styles to being a criminal mastermind who can impersonate anyone. Bit of a stretch, but we won't ever see him become successful until the sequel to this film, which they will never ever make. 

Look, all is not lost here, because they still could make MCU movies that bring all the universes together, but right now it's a bit of a SECRET when those WARS will begin. You get it? Until then, we only get these stand-alone films that go nowhere because they aren't really given anywhere to go. It's like they can't possibly score a narrative home run, they can only make it to third base and home plate is in an entirely different stadium. For now. 

Directed by J.C. Chandor (director of "Triple Frontier" and "A Most Violent Year")

Also starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson (last seen in "The Fall Guy"), Ariana DeBose (last heard in "Wish"), Fred Hechinger (last seen in "Nickel Boys"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "The Eye"), Christopher Abbott (last seen in "Poor Things"), Russell Crowe (last seen in "Unhinged"), Yuri Kolokolnikov (last seen in "6 Underground"), Levi Miller (last seen in "A Wrinkle in Time"), Tom Reed (last seen in "Unlocked"), Billy Barratt (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Diaana Babnicova, Murat Seven, Damola Adelaja, Guillaume Delaunay (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Dritan Kastrati, Anita-Joy Uwajeh, Susan Aderin, Elizabeth Appleby, Waleed Hammad, Michael Shaeffer (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Rachel Handshaw (last seen in "The Son"), Odimegwu Okoye (last seen in "Havoc" (2025)), and the voice of Masha Vasyukova.

RATING: 5 out of 10 African buffaloes (who somehow got lost and ended up in Russia?)

The Munsters

Year 17, Day 281 - 10/8/25 - Movie #5,164 - VIEWED ON 9/20/25     

BEFORE: I had to watch this one in September, because I saw the alert on Netflix that this film would be leaving that platform on 9/27. Well, thanks for the heads-up I guess but that doesn't really work for me, since I had plans to watch it in October. Ah, but WHICH October? I tried for three years and couldn't link to it, so I kept saying "next time maybe" and sure, there's a danger in planning too far ahead, because eventually everything will scroll off of every platform and we'll all turn to dust and bad movies will live on in the Great Server in the Sky. Or they'll just go to Tubi, whichever. But since it was a for-sure link in my 2025 horror chain, I figured I'd better watch it during its final hours, because there's a chance it might not pop up anywhere.

Also we're planning to go out of town for a week in October as usual, visit my parents and hit the North Carolina State Fair, so having a couple films already watched will help me stay on track, despite losing 7 or 8 days of access to a computer. Knowing that this film was about to disappear made me do a little triage, like what can I watch ahead of time, what's quick and available now that I can pre-review, what film can I drop because it's not helping with the linking this month but could serve a more necessary linking purpose next October? 

Jorge Garcia will carry over from "Cooties", I think, if things go well, and then Roderick Hill will carry over to something else. God willing.

THE PLOT: Reboot of "The Munsters", which followed a family of monsters who moves from Transylvania to an American suburb.

AFTER: God damn, this was really terrible. I programmed this and now I don't know why. Nobody wanted a reboot of this campy old 1960's TV show, except maybe the director. Simply nobody out in the audience, and that's millions of people, wanted to see more of these characters. It's stupid across the board, and slapstick humor really should have died with this show or Jerry Lewis. 

Worse, even fans of the show were not clamoring for an origin story. The show never had one, they just threw a bunch of characters together and said that a Frankenstein Monster could be married to a vampire and they have a werewolf son, and that was the end of it. It was funny (back then) and maybe nobody even thought about the logistics of a monster family, like how is that all going to work? They have a dragon for a pet and a crazy uncle, and how much more can we steal from "The Addams Family" and not get sued? "The Munsters" was kind of like "The Outer Limits" to the more popular "Twilight Zone", if something works then somebody else is going to rip it off, but they just won't do it as well. I think the funniest stuff about the old TV show was the jokes they DIDN'T make, like they had a daughter who was totally normal, as in non-monster, and they never explained that or even referred to it. What was her deal? Was she adopted? Some kind of mutant? 

The film does not get off to a great start, because they start with the creation of Herman Munster, and they use the same bit as "Young Frankenstein", where the inept lab assistant steals the wrong brain from the morgue... He was supposed to steal the brain of a dead astro-physicist, Shelly von Rathbone, but as luck would have it, that man's stand-up comic brother, Shecky, died on the same day and wouldn't you know it, ended up in the same morgue. What are the odds? There can't be more than 10,000 morgues all over the world because people die all over the place. 

Meanwhile, a vampire named the Count (no name?) is trying to solve his 150-year-old vampire daughter's love life, she went out with a very old vampire named Count Orlock and it was disappointing, to say the least. I thought all vampires were suave and seductive and could hypnotize ladies into their bedrooms and such - why would vampires date each other? Anyway, they watch "Good Morning Transylvania" together and witness Dr. Wolfgang's reveal of the Herman Munster creation, who tells bad jokes badly, but still slightly better than he did when he was alive. (He "died" on stage, metaphorically, in addition to dying for real, I guess.) Lily falls in love with the brutish bad comic, what could possibly go wrong with this relationship?

Meanwhile, the Count's ex-wife is a gypsy fortune-teller and she tricks the Count's werewolf son, Lester (how many times has the Count been married?) into signing over the Count's castle to pay his debt to her so she can turn it into a casino. Well, I think we can all see what's coming, it would be obvious to a blind bat. 

Herman's career takes off and Lily goes to see him perform with his punk band - this is confusing, is he a stand-up comic or a punk singer, or somehow both? I can't name one person who is both of these things. They date for a week in a montage that looks like it came from a bad 1960's beach party movie, and they go on vacation to Devil's Island, where Herman proposes. During the wedding the "big twist" is that Lester the werewolf gets Herman to put up the Count's castle as collateral for some business deal, but really he's signing away the castle (which he DOES NOT own, so that can't possibly be legally binding...)

It's a long way to go with a reboot, the characters HAVE a Transylvanian castle already, so why not just leave it there?  The plot has to bend itself over backwards to get them to lose the castle they already have, forces them to move to Los Angeles and start over, only to somehow put them in a spooky broken-down house in a cul-de-sac that looks a bit like the castle that they used to have.  

Then there's more forced plot points, because they have to explain how they got a full-fledged dragon to live under the stairs as a pet. Not that anyone was ever wondering about how this happened, so there was no real reason to explain this, but the Munsters honeymoon in Paris, where they capture a creature that was living in the Paris sewer system, and somehow they're able to bring this baby dragon with them to America and it doesn't get confiscated at the border. 

Herman was hoping to get work in Hollywood, I guess because he had both a comedy career and a punk band in Transylvania?  But the only job he can find is digging graves, so naturally this sets up the TV series perfectly, it's like the "Rogue One" of Munsters stories. OK, maybe the funniest bit in the film is that they arrive in L.A. on Halloween, so they see their new neighbors partying in spooky costumes and assume that they're all monsters and freaks, the true horror comes the next morning when Halloween is over and they realized they have to live among regular Americans, the true "monsters". 

This feels like what you might get if John Waters made a horror film. Is that the vibe somebody was going for? Like, completely ridiculous and campy but also with an underlying soft message about being accepted for being different? You know, with a bunch of cameos from the director's friends and also a bunch of wanna-be actors or ones that never really hit it big? Because this really kind of feels like "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" mixed with "Hairspray". Just me? 

Directed by Rob Zombie

Also starring Jeff Daniel Phillips (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Sheri Moon Zombie, Daniel Roebuck (last seen in "River's Edge"), Richard Brake (last seen in "Barbarian"), Sylvester McCoy (last seen in "Dracula" (1979)), Catherine Schell (last seen in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"), Cassandra Peterson (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Tomas Boykin, Levente Torkoly, Jeremy Wheeler (last seen in "Poor Things"), Roderick Hill (ditto), Laurent Winkler (ditto), Mark Griffith (last seen in "Colette"), Viktor Egri, Norbert Veszelszky, Attila Torok, Marton Vincze, Dave Thompson (last seen in "Rocketman"), Fred Coury, Renata Gratz-Kiss, Val McDaniel, Adrian Neven Du Mont, Marika Farkasinszki, Zoltan Koppany, Judit Dobos, Dusan Vitanovics, Maomi Neven Du Mont, Jonny Dawson, Gyorgy Hermann, Adam Zambrzyscki, Laszlo Nadassy, Bence Balogh, Dora Koves (last seen in "Radioactive"), Miklos Kapacsy.

and the voices of Butch Patrick (last seen in "The Phantom Tollbooth"), Pat Priest (last seen in "Airport"), Dee Wallace (last seen in "Spielberg") with archive footage of Lou Costello (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Boris Karloff (last seen in "House of Dracula"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 magic potions (that don't work right)

Cooties

Year 17, Day 280 - 10/7/25 - Movie #5,163

BEFORE: This is another one of those films that was stored on my previous DVR when it crashed - thankfully most of the missing films seem to be on Tubi now, so it's good that I never took them off the list. This is the second time this week that Tubi has saved the chain, so, well, thanks guys, that's worth watching a few ads. They're doing good work over there at Tubi, saving movies that fall off of cable's radar or Netflix's voluminous (but not infinite) scroll.

Alison Pill carries over from "Trap". I'm aware that it's impossible to do a horror chain now without stranding a few films, there's nothing I can do about it. I've already made "Bones and All" impossible to link to, and now by watching this film with Elijah Wood I'm stranding "The Last Witch Hunter". I just have to move forward and hope that new films will come on to the list that create new linking opportunities, and then next August (or before) I can assemble a chain that will cover next year's horror slots, however many of them there will be. Thankfully, it keeps working out, but that may not happen at some point. Eh, who am I kidding, there will always be more than enough horror movies to watch!

THE PLOT: A mysterious virus hits an isolated elementary school, transforming the kids into a feral swarm of mass savages. An unlikely hero must lead a motley band of teachers in the fight of their lives. 

AFTER: OK, so this is kind of the answer film to "Mom and Dad", which had parents filled with the sudden, uncontrollable desire to kill their children. This one turns that around and features a virus that turns children into zombies of a sort, with an uncontrollable desire to kill adults, umm, and eat them. Yeah. Not just their parents, but also the teaching staff at school - perhaps especially the teaching staff, I mean, who among us hasn't secretly wanted to kill a teacher at some point in their childhood? Every once in a while you just encounter a teacher who's either a total tool, or terrible at their job, or is holding you back in some way. Not often, but this could easily happen to anyone during a 13-year stint in the public school system. 

But this is also an exaggerated version of how teachers see the children - they're gross, violent and completely out of control. Right? Plus they're little germ factories, if one of them gets sick then you can almost guarantee that they'll ALL be sick within days. They wipe their noses on their sleeves, they eat their own boogers, and they don't cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze. And the parents don't see ANY of that, or they pretend not to, so teachers really should get hazard pay, just for being in the same room with these "monsters" for 6 hours a day, and I bet it feels a lot longer than that, every time. Two months vacation just isn't enough for our nation's teachers, plus they're probably all overworked and underpaid to boot. The whole educational system probably needs to be burned down and rebuilt from the ground up, with a focus on the teachers' mental health. But no spoilers about the ending here. 

Then on top of that, there are kids with autism, kids with ADHD, kids with dyslexia, kids with other special needs, and kids who are bullied, kids who are bullied, kids who are going through puberty, kids who need more attention, kids who have gotten too much attention, ugh, that all seems like a lot. But don't forget about peanut allergies, gluten allergies, milk, soy and shellfish allergies, kids who go vegan just to be woke, kids who are hypoglycemic and other kids who just eat too much. I was in that last category, except if I smelled parmesan cheese back then I would instantly vomit, so there was probably a janitor who cursed my name on pizza Fridays. 

What's amazing is that somebody threw all this together and came up with a zombie film (essentially) that also remarkably predicted COVID five years in advance. The film has to explain to the viewers what a "pandemic" is, but of course, now we all know first-hand. Just replace "Wuhan wet market" with "Illinois chicken processing plant" and it's spot-on. Oh, well, replace "zombie appetite for human flesh" with "potentially deadly flu-like symptoms", and then this film would have been 100% on point. But kids killing and eating adults is just an extreme version of what happened during COVID, a lot of kiddos probably came home from school and unknowingly infected Pop-pop and Meemaw, and some of those senior citizens died as a result. There's no way to prove that, but most schools pivoted to remote learning for two years, just to be on the safe side. 

(Also, the chicken processing plants in the U.S. have had their share of contamination issues, so this film is actually double-predictive. When you factor in worker injuries from sharp tools and repetitive tasks, environmental issues, the use of disinfectants and cleaning chemicals, biohazards like blood and feces, and the cold conditions required to reduce bacteria, those places are more dangerous to work at than coal mines used to be. How many times have we heard about recalls on chickie nuggs? This could be the most believable plot point in the film.)

But there's still a comedy at the heart of this film, the similarities to the actual COVID pandemic are uncanny but also completely unintentional. There's a love triangle between Clint, the substitute English teacher (and wannabe horror writer) his high-school crush Lucy (also a teacher) and her P.E. teacher boyfriend, Wade. Other characters are comical stereotypes like the closeted gay, panicky teacher, the Republican Karen teacher who hates that she can't teach creationism to her class, the vice-principal trying to be the hip, cool administrator who also has to take away cell phones, the stoner crossing guard and the health teacher who's so socially awkward he needs to read a book about how to carry on a conversation. It's hard to pick the weirdest one in the bunch, but hey, maybe you've worked among a sitcom-like group of weirdos, I know I have. (And if you don't know who the weirdest one is, it could be YOU.)

Completely far-fetched and also totally relatable is a great combination. So many depictions of kids killing teachers, followed by the reverse of teachers "killing" zombie kids, at least they take the time to explain that these kids are essentially brain-dead, so that makes it all OK. Maybe it really shouldn't work but it's so gonzo and over-the-top that it's very entertaining, it rises above the subject matter, somehow. If you can turn off the guardrails in your mind and just come along for the kooky ride. There's plenty of room in the giant dual rear-wheel truck, so hop in.  

NITPICK POINT: At one point in the movie, the teachers distract the zombie kids by tossing a bunch of medications, including Adderall and Ritalin, into a room, and a few minutes later, all of the zombies are asleep. Umm, nice try but this seems like wishful thinking, a case of a screenwriter needing a thing to work a certain way, except it doesn't. Neither drug has sleepiness as a side effect, although adderall does cause more dopamine to be released from neurons, so it could have a calming effect, but both drugs are intended to increase focus and attention, so that sounds more like the opposite of the effect seen here. But, who knows, maybe the zombie thing changed their entire brain chemistry around?

I should point out that I was an associate producer of an animated feature called "Hair High" that was set in an Oregon high school, the story features two students who were killed on prom night and come back as zombies during the next year's prom. We promoted the film as a "zom-prom rom-com" - I really thought that was a clever bit of marketing and it would catch on. You can still find the DVD for sale on the secondary market or buy one at the animator's live appearances like NYCC, but also there could be a BluRay re-release next year, which would mark 20 years since the original release in theaters. So please watch for that. 

Directed by Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion

Also starring Elijah Wood (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Ezra"), Jack McBrayer (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Leigh Whannell (last seen in "Aquaman"), Nasim Pedrad (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Ian Brennan, Jorge Garcia (last seen in "Get a Job"), Cooper Roth, Miles Elliot (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man"), Morgan Lily (last seen in "X-Men: Days of Future Past"), Sunny May Allison, Armani Jackson, Peter Kwong, Kate Flannery, Matt Jones (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Rebecca Marshall (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Jake Brennan (last seen in "Dark Skies"), Mark Christopher Lawrence (last seen in "The Pursuit of Happyness"), Aiden Lovekamp (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Lauren Stovall, Jared Breeze, Nikita Ager, Angela Bullock, Elizabeth Bogush, Boni Yanagisawa (last seen in "Flight"), Lauren Katz, Brian Henderson, Tammie Baird (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Ashley Rae Miller,

RATING: 7 out of 10 magic shrooms

Trap

Year 17, Day 279 - 10/6/25 - Movie #5,162

BEFORE: Last night (OK, this morning) I had a dream about a college-age girl with dark skin who was wearing a school uniform and she was stealing vehicles and causing mayhem. When I first saw her she was driving a Zamboni, and I guess I had just passed the guy who should have been driving it as he went off-shift, so I guess the moral is to never leave your keys in a Zamboni. Then later in the same dream I was standing on top of a building and I saw a delivery truck that was jumping from one building to another, only it didn't make it and it crashed to the ground, on top of a police car I think. I think I knew who was driving the truck, so if this young woman turns up in anyone else's dream, please let me know ASAP. 

Marnie McPhail carries over from "Dream Scenario". I worked a guild screening the other day for the new Springsteen biopic, and no, I didn't get to watch it, and no, Jeremy Allen White was not there. But the director, Scott Cooper, was there, and I checked the IMDB and it turns out I've accidentally seen all of his movies, from "Crazy Heart" to "Hostiles" to "Black Mass", "Antlers" and "The Pale Blue Eye". I can't say the same for tonight's director, M. Night Shyamalan, but I think I've seen MOST of his. I have "Old" but it's been very difficult to work that one in to a horror chain - I'm working on it, though, maybe next year. 

THE PLOT: A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize that they've entered the center of a dark and sinister event. 

AFTER: Serial killers, they're just like us, right? Wait, what? Should they be, is that the question? Can they live among us, have a family, look and sound like regular people, until for some reason we don't understand, they just want to / need to kill? Do we all have this capacity within us, as seen in "Mom and Dad", it just needs to be released by some chemical or impulse or improper provocation and, just like that, you've become a killer? Well, yes and also no, because this film shows an FBI profiler trying to pick this guy out of a large crowd of 20,000 people at a pop music concert. (Estimated capacity of the TD Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, where they filmed this as a substitute for the fictional "Tanaka Arena")

But the real question I have is - would the police in Philadelphia, or any city, put such a major event on any kind of lockdown, just to catch a serial killer? It seems to me, like, even if they KNEW for sure, 100% that "The Butcher" would be at this event, is that enough justification to flood the place with cops, set up check-in points, have snipers standing by, and increase event security to such a degree that it would be inconvenient to all of the guests?  I kind of doubt it, from what I've seen from working events over the last few years, I would figure there might be a better way to do this - for example, just take a photo of everyone entering or leaving the concert, how many dads could that be?  Then they'd have information and photos of maybe 5,000 men (tops) and then they could check them all against the profile and narrow it down to 10 really solid candidates to check out. 

The next question is - can a serial killer compartmentalize his life, so that he's that thing on one day, and a devoted husband and/or father the next? Or maybe even be both things on the same day, is that possible? Most of us have work and then we go home, and maybe we act differently in those places, but come on, this seems a bit extreme, to think that this guy wouldn't take his work home with him, or spend so much of his life pretending to be someone or something other than who he really is. I'm kind of skirting around a few things here because I don't want to spoil the reveals.

You just know with an M. Night Shymalan film that there will be reveals, and then a big twist at the end, it's what he's known for. "The Sixth Sense", "Lady in the Water", "The Village" "Signs", they all had that big narrative turn near the conclusion, something that will make you question everything you've learned up to that point, or maybe one BIG reveal to put all the little reveals to shame. We've come to expect that from him, to the point where the biggest twist he could put into one of his movies now would be to have NO twist at all. You feel me? 

I will say this all feels very contrived during the first half, which is all spent at the concert. Once the action leaves that location, really, it's a whole different story. The actress/singer playing the part of Lady Raven, the headliner, is the director's daughter, and that feels extremely self-serving in addition to being a bit too convenient. Sure, while you're making a horror movie (of sorts) about a serial killer by all means, use that as an horror-tunity to pimp your daughter's album. Really, it takes a lot of nerve to be a film director, so we probably shouldn't be too surprised by all of this. If you can promote yourself, you can also promote your daughter, but still it feels very very wrong. Wouldn't any success in her musical career mean more without daddy's help? 

Also, what's the goal here, to humanize serial killers? To suggest that they deserve a steady job and a happy family life, that they might have the same goals and hopes and dreams as everyone else? That's a really slippery slope, I wouldn't even touch it because that whole concept is so, so dangerous. Do we talk about Ted Bundy in terms of how attractive he was, or how well-dressed he occasionally was? Do we credit John Wayne Gacy for how well he put on his clown make-up? Do we give credit to the Unabomber for how good at hiding he was?  All of these things are simply beyond the point, like saying Hitler was a good dancer, who cares? It doesn't matter because mass murder is WAY more important. 

Like, don't even START making a movie if you're going to try to make me root for the serial killer over the cops, it's a terrible idea. You can try to get me to like him, but why would you even DO that? It makes no sense. Sure, "Dexter" was a big hit on - I want to say Showtime? - but he was a serial killer who killed serial killers, so that's kind of a different thing. The other killers should NOT be made the central focus of a movie, and that goes for "The Butcher", too. Bad idea, scrap it and start over, please. I think I'm probably better off as NOT thinking about serial killers as people who are also capable of having happy families and taking their daughters out to pop concerts when they get good grades. 

This is still a guy who will cause a kitchen fire and burn a concession stand employee if it will distract the police for a few minutes. This is still a guy who will threaten a pop star if she tries to call for help or turn him in. And this is still a guy who will LIE and say his daughter had a fatal illness if that means she'll be asked up on stage during a special song. So this is not a good guy, not somebody we should be rooting for in any way, and yeah, also a serial killer, so there's that.

The inspiration for this movie came from Operation Flagship, which was a sting operation conducted in 1985, where law enforcement officials invited known fugitives to a fake event at a convention center, offering them free NFL tickets and a chance to win a trip to Super Bowl XX, however there was no real event, and 101 fugitives were arrested instead. Well, sure, that may have been a great success, but that's a completely different thing than locking down a REAL concert with thousands of innocent fans, just to catch one criminal that MIGHT be there.  

A lot of times I just questioned how the operations of a concert venue were depicted here, like would they really store t-shirts for this ONE singer down in the storeroom, when she's probably at this venue for just one or two nights? The boxes of her merch were probably shipped in, or came in with the tour buses, so why wouldn't they just take them straight from the buses to the t-shirt kiosks? No need to put anything in storage. Also NITPICK POINT, the pop star is made to walk outside a long distance, from the tour bus to a stairway that would presumably take her to her dressing room, but all along the way, the public can see her from a high vantage point. This would never be allowed in case some fan decided to shoot her along the way. Most likely her bus would be directed to park inside the arena's garage to prevent exposure to the public and keep the star safe.

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan (director of "Knock at the Cabin" and "Glass")

Also starring Josh Hartnett (last seen in "Die Hart"), Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Alison Pill (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Hayley Mills, Jonathan Langdon (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Mark Bacolcol, Kid Cudi (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Russell "Russ" Vitale, Marci Bennett (last seen in "Godsend"), Vanessa Smythe, M. Night Shyamalan (last seen in "Knock at the Cabin"), Lochlan Miller (last seen in "Women Talking"), Steve Boyle, David D'Lancy Wilson, Nadine Hyatt, Michael Brown, Hailey Summer, Olivia Barrett (last seen in "Priscilla"), Allison Ference, Harley Ruznisky, Joseph Daly, Mateo Arias, Milan Deng, Ajanae Stephenson, Khiyla Aynne, Bobby Manning, Maya Lee O'Connor, Lauren Brady, Valentina Theresa, Erica Wilson, Dominique Brownes, Lara Zaluski, Timilehin Olusoga, Joshua Peace (last seen in "The Big Hit"), Evan Stern (last seen in "Robocop" (2014)).

RATING: 5 out of 10 police walkie-talkies

Dream Scenario

Year 17, Day 278 - 10/5/25 - Movie #5,161

BEFORE: It would be very easy for me to drop in another Nicolas Cage film here - and also make sure that it's a horror film. "Longlegs" just made it to my streaming watchlist, it's about a serial killer, and "Arcadian" is another one, a post-apocalyptic film. That would sure solve my problem about not being able to drop the film I want to drop in November. However, it's not the BEST solution, because based on the limited number of days in October, thanks to an upcoming vacation, that would push me over the legal limit for horror films this year. Also, both of those films look like they could help me link more films next October, or perhaps the October after that - I can't help but see the possibilities with those casts, they could really help me turn a few small chains into one BIG chain, and each year, that's the challenge that gets harder. 

So Nicolas Cage carries over from "Mom and Dad", and I'm just going to watch TWO films with him now, and one more later in October. These three films used to be consecutive, but remember that I had to change around my horror chain this year due to a bad link, however I was able to keep MOST of the same films, but remove four of them, replace those four with a different four, and shuffle things around a bit.  So I'll follow a new link tonight, but Mr. Cage will be back here in about 9 days with another comedy-horror hybrid. Makes sense? 

THE PLOT: An ordinary family man finds his life turned upside down when strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. 

AFTER: OK, so this is not an outright "horror" movie, but it's got some elements that are sort of horrific, as the dreamscape is full of nightmares as well as dreams - but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

It's a real thinker of a movie, though, because it puts forth a concept that seems like it should be impossible - hundreds, thousands of people maybe, are having dreams about a very normal man named Paul Matthews, who is a professor of evolutionary biology at a mid-level university. This phenomenon suggests that there is some kind of collective unconscious, or subconscious, that would allow people to visit one another during their sleep cycles, although it's never really established if Paul is somehow traveling through other people's dreams, or if it's just the idea of Paul that's coming to them at night. Both seem equally unlikely, and since Paul doesn't understand how this can be possible, it's safe to assume he's not doing this intentionally, nor does he have some kind of super-power telepathic ability.  

Once the first few friends of Paul mention that they've been having dreams about him lately, and a couple of those people get together and realizing that they share this, that this becomes a measurable thing. Then once the news breaks, more and more people are able to identify the person they've seen in their dreams, however at some point the "Mandela effect" comes into play, some people may claim incorrectly to have seen him at night, others may believe that they've experienced this, but instead have been influenced to believe this from news reports or social media.  The memory is a tricky thing, like you may or may not be able to remember your dreams, or they may fade after you've been awake for an hour and your brain manages to sort out what's real and what isn't. 

Also, assuming that Paul is visiting other people's dreams, how is he doing this, even if it's unintentional?  He doesn't seem to DO anything in people's dreams, not at first anyway, so what then is the point of him being there? Is this how his brain sorts things out, by taking a walk through other people's fantasies and observing? If he's a scientist, maybe he has a natural propensity to investigate human behavior, and therefore thoughts?  And if that's the case, why doesn't he remember what he sees in other people's dreams when so many other people are able to remember him being in theirs?  

Then a few things happen to Paul that change his (unlikely) positive outlook on life - he meets with an old colleague who's getting ready to publish a research paper on the behavior of ants that seems remarkably similar to research that Paul did back in college, however he never followed through by publishing it, and he can't quite bring himself to accuse her of plagiarism. Then Paul has coffee with an ex-girlfriend, Claire, and she wants to publish a paper about the dreams she's been having about him, so this probably makes him feel like a test subject, in addition to a scientific loser who's never published anything on his own.  

Then the news story breaks about him appearing in so many dreams at night, and things start to snowball - he's contacted by an advertising agency that wants to manage/exploit him and/or sell the rights to his life story, both of which could be very lucrative for him. But he's got concerns about how this will all be handled, because he still wants to leverage this somehow to publish a more scientific sort of book, and also not be a total sell-out. This is quite honorable of him, but also very stupid when you think of how much money influencers get these days for filling their social media accounts with advertising. Hell, every network's morning shows AND the evening entertainment shows like "Access Hollywood" and "Entertainment Tonight" all have five minutes of "deals" in every episode, which is just a repackaged home-shopping network, and it's quite shameless. So naturally this ad agency wants to see if they can use Paul to shill to everyone in the country while they sleep - I mean, that's eight hours EVERY DAY where people aren't being advertised to at all, they really should do something about that, it's an untapped market. 

Things get worse - a crazy man who may (or may not) have had dreams about Paul breaks into his house and threatens to kill him, also one of the women who works at the PR firm claims to have had erotic dreams about Paul (which Paul certainly would remember if he could) and tries to re-enact them in real life, however it ends poorly. And too soon, if you catch my meaning. On top of this, Paul's ex-colleague publishes her article, and all of this causes a change in Paul's presence in the dreamscape. Instead of just passively observing people, the dream Paul starts becoming violent and sadistic, and once people start reporting these dreams, he's perceived as some kind of middle-class Freddy Krueger, though he's done nothing intentionally wrong, and may not be responsible at all for trying to kill people in their dreams, this could be just the way dreams work, but the damage is done. His students stop coming to his class and claim to have PTSD, and this leads the college to place him on academic leave, despite him having tenure. 

Paul attempts to issue a public apology, but it's so cringe-worthy and "self-serving" that it does more harm in the public eye than good. He should have followed the Louis C.K. model, just disappear for a few years and by then there will be so many more cancelled people who did much worse things that you can get un-cancelled. Seriously, who did more damage, Louis C.K. or Diddy? One's going to jail for four years, rightfully so, and the other was just in career jail for a while - but he started touring again just two years later, and now he's out on tour again and would seem to be back. David Letterman similarly cancelled himself for a few years and then ended up with a Netflix show, so I think the key to improving your image may lie in taking some time off, the audience sometimes has short memories. I mean, Letterman was no Jeffrey Epstein, but he fooled around some, however he also admitted it and tried to make amends. 

Back in the film, Paul ends up on a book tour, he finally got his book printed, however it's about the dream phenomenon that he somehow started, and not about animal evolution in any way. Still, he gets to travel the world on the publisher's dime and it only cost him his marriage and maybe his self-respect. Still, a lot of people would take that trade-off, just saying. There's a bunch of stuff in this film that doesn't make a lot of sense, but did we expect "Being John Malkovich" to make sense? No, of course not, it's a step outside of reality for two hours. As for me, I saw my ex-boss last night at an event at the theater, so I know who will be making an appearance in MY dreamscape really soon.

Directed by Kristoffer Borgli

Also starring Julianne Nicholson (last seen in "Blonde"), Lily Bird (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Jessica Clement (last seen in "Life" (2015)), Star Slade, David Klein, Kaleb Horn, Liz Adjei, Paula Boudreau (last seen in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"), Marnie McPhail (last seen in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"), Tim Meadows (last seen in "Mean Girls" (2024)), Dylan Baker (last seen in "The Benefactor"), Maev Beaty (also last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Marc Coppola (last seen in "The Bling Ring"), Krista Bridges, Noah Lamanna (last seen in "Luckiest Girl Alive"), Nneka Elliott (ditto), Jeremy Levick, Jim Armstrong, Ben Steele Caldwell, Agape Mngomezulu, Stephen R. Hart (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Leah Stanley, Sofia Banzhaf, Al Warren, Thomas Mitchell, Dylan Gelula (last seen in "Her Smell"), Michael Cera (last seen in "Barbie"), Kate Berlant (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Caleb Weatherbee, Cara Volchoff, Greer Cohen, James Collins (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Jennifer Wigmore (last seen in "Dick"), Ramona Gilmour-Darling, Jessie-Ann Kohlman, Alton Mason (last seen in "Elvis"), Noah Centineo (last seen in "Black Adam"), Josh Richards, Amber Midthunder (last seen in "The Marksman"), Nicholas Braun (last seen in "Get a Job"), Lily Gao, Philip van Martin, Richard Jutras (last seen in "No Good Deed" (2002)), Nicole Leroux (last seen in "Moonfall"), Jordan Raf, Domenic di Rosa (last seen in "Pieces of a Woman") and the voice of Talia Schlanger.

RATING: 6 out of 10 zebras in a herd