The Curse of Bridge Hollow

Year 18, Day 287 - 10/14/26 - Movie #5,461

BEFORE: We're trick-or-treating again tonight, the Chain wants to get that out of the way because there are scarier movies to come, I assume. Tonight we're in the town of Bridge Hollow (rather than, umm, Sherman Oaks?) and we've got another oddly assembled cast of comedy people, musicians and that girl who played a little sister in "Stranger Things". Well, she's a teenager now, as if I didn't already feel very old. 

Rob Riggle carries over from "Cursed Friends". 

THE PLOT: A teenage girl, who accidentally releases an ancient and michievous spirit on Halloween which causes decorations to come to life and wreak havoc, must team up with the last person she'd want to in order to save her town - her father!

AFTER: Yeah, we're still kind of at the amateur level of scariness here, I'm getting definite "Goosebumps" vibes off of this one, though it's not officially connected to that horror book franchise in any way. But the big attraction in those books and movies is often something inanimate coming to life and in this case, it's Halloween decorations. Which is only a problem if you've just moved to a town that takes decorating super-seriously, like one house has a whole tableau of slow-moving zombies from "The Walking Dead" and another has a whole football team's worth of skeletons with shoulder pads in the the front yard. 

For teenager Sydney Gordon, it's almost enough to make her glad her family has moved out of Brooklyn (and to, umm, where, exactly?) where she was never allowed to celebrate Halloween, because being on the science club was more important - and for some reason, she can't do both. Her father is a man of science, a science teacher to be exact, and it takes him way too long, practically the whole movie, for him to believe in magic and demons and inanimate objects coming to life, despite him witnessing it again and again. But the young members of her school's Paranormal Society inform Sydney that her family is moving into a haunted house, and that leads Sydney to go and check out the attic, where she finds a treasure chest with a jack o'lantern-like object in it, which she lights in an act of defiance against her father because she's determined to join in the Halloween fun. 

All this really gets her is grounded, with the added bonus of the magic lantern somehow bringing a plastic vampire bat decoration to life, which flies away and spreads the "animagic" to the other decorations in town. When they investigate the origin of the lantern, it brings them to a nursing home where the granddaughter of the woman who died in their house still lives, and that elderly woman tells them about Stingy Jack, who once was seeking a soul from Earth to take his place in the afterlife, but fortunately Madam Hawthorne was a witch or a spell caster of some kind, and she was able to banish him back to the afterlife. Thank God everybody knows not to light his lantern, because then that would be really bad. Whoopsie. The next thing you know, the giant spider decoration on top of the nursing home would be turning into a real live giant spider that would attack everyone. 

By some wild coincidence, the school principal turns out to be a collector of occult objects, and just happened to purchase an antique spellbook lately, which, imagine that, happens to contain the banishment spell they need - what ARE the odds against that? They get the spell, however that football team full of skeletons attacks at the exact same time, and the spell book gets kicked into the fireplace. Now they're going to have to conduct a seance to speak to Madam Hawthorne so she can tell them the spell. Well, at least there's a work-around. Thank God nobody's going to put a giant scary jack o'lantern head from the pumpkin carving contest on top of a Stingy Jack statue, man, that would be REALLY bad if that decoration were also to come to life, just like every other decoration in town. Oh, wait...

Yes, this is very far-fetched. Yes, every turn of events is telegraphed quite amateurishly. But it's a movie for KIDS, I think, and kids aren't really masters of subtlety after all, they kind of need everything spelled out for them, even the spells. You can pretty much guess the rest, Stingy Jack re-animates himself in the giant pumpkin-headed statue, he attacks the ONE person that both Sydney and her father care about the most in order to use her soul to take his place in the afterlife, so he can take over the whole world using Halloween decorations. If only the man of science can find it inside himself to believe in magic, to believe in spell casting over science, then we might just have a chance to counter-act all this madness in town. 

I JUST recorded all of the "Scary Movie" movies (umm, except the most recent one) and damn, this would have been a great opportunity (OK, maybe not "great", but at least an opportunity) to work them in, with Marlon Wayans carrying over. The Wayans Brothers started that franchise and then lost it for a while, but then got it back, and there IS a through-line through all those movies. However, I'm committed to the "Final Destination" films this year, so I just can't work those in this Movie Year. I'll have to keep them on the list and try to get to them in a future Shocktober, the chain has other plans and I have to let them happen. 

Directed by Jeff Wadlow (director of "True Memoirs of an International Assassin" and "Fantasy Island")

Also starring Marlon Wayans (last seen in "Respect"), Priah Ferguson (last seen in "The Oath"), Kelly Rowland (last seen in "Think Like a Man"), John Michael Higgins (last seen in "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues"), Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "The Out-Laws"), Nia Vardalos (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3"), Abi Monterey, Holly J. Barrett, Myles Perez, Helen Slayton-Hughes (last seen in "Moxie"), Dougie Dawson, Pfeiffer Yaeger, William Finn Carmichael, Jonathan Kite, Douglas Hodge (last seen in "G20"), Kay Hall, David A. Cooper (last seen in "J. Edgar"), Dave Sheridan (last seen in "Sex Drive"), Keil Oakley Zepernick, Nickolas Wolf (last seen in "Landscape with Invisible Hand"), Mark Steger (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire"), Gordon Tarpley (also carrying over from "Cursed Friends"), Steven I. Dillard (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Phoenix Jd Gabe, Ralphael Lester, BobbyD Souris, Chris Williams (also last seen in "Respect"), Sam Zheng (last seen in "Jerry & Marge Go Large")

RATING: 5 out of 10 sugar-free and dairy-free and gluten-free bakery treats. 

Cursed Friends

Year 18, Day 286 - 10/13/26 - Movie #5,460

BEFORE: I'm suddenly at the crossroads of horror and comedy, because this made it onto the horror list based on the title, but now I'm looking at the cast and realizing that this was a movie made for TV, and it aired on Comedy Central once in 2022 and then never aired again. Well, it's been living on Paramount Plus, because Paramount owns Comedy Central after all. It doesn't look all that great, but we'll see, it's about a curse at least so I've got something to hang my hat on. 

If I'm late posting tonight, well, it's my wife's birthday and we're going out to dinner, her favorite steakhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My birthday is still a week away and we'll be in North Carolina, so I'll get to choose the restaurant then. I'm fine with a Chinese buffet but we'll see. 

Harvey Guillen carries over from "Companion". 

THE PLOT: Four friends wake up on Halloween and realize the predict-your-future game they played in 2002 is coming true in disturbing ways. They must band together to help each other escape the wild fates that have turned their lives upside down. 

AFTER: Sure, this isn't an obvious horror film, like there are no monsters or demons or killer camp counselors, it's a comedy, even though it's not that outright funny. Well, it aired on the COMEDY Channel, didn't it? Yeah, umm, don't forget to make sure your comedy is funny, please take my advice, I know what I'm talking about. 

The four friends (OK, three friends and one girl's brother) who hung out in junior high get back together after 20 years apart. Erica's been living in New York City, but she just got a design job for a West Coast company and if she can go full-time she may move back to her hometown - so it's a great time to get back together with Mikayla and Andy, and her brother Josh is squatting in the family home, so anyway, the Core Three (plus Josh) are back together. And they find an old game/book that they used to play, called "M.A.S.H." which stands for Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House - you write down a bunch of choices for yourself in the future, like where you're going to live, who you'll be married to, what your job will be, etc. and then the game eliminates all of the choices but one, and supposedly that's your future. (We used to do something similar when I was a kid, with those folded up pieces of paper with numbers on them, maybe you know what I'm talking about.)

The flashback shows how Erica got the book while trick-or-treating, instead of candy, from that house with the weird-looking lady who maybe was also the author of the book, Stacy Friendship, who maybe also was a witch or a conjurer or a gypsy, all that is a bit unclear. But after they re-discover the M.A.S.H. book and see what their future predicted for them, they wake up the next day and find those situations coming true - like Erica's fate was to become a plumber, and she finds she accidentally packed the wrong Halloween costume, not Princess Peach but Mario, who is a plumber. Mikayla's listing said she would be married to Joey Fatone from N'Sync, and that same day guess who comes into the sandwich shop and flirts with her? Andy's fate was to be married to one of their male teachers, which I'm assuming was a bit odd at the time since he hadn't come out yet, but now seems very prophetic, and sure enough, Mr. Knight is still in town and they keep bumping into him. So the "curse" seems to be that everything that was predicted by the book is (sort of) coming true, or a least becoming a possibility. 

Again, it's not outright scary, if anything what scares these adult friends is the fact that maybe they suddenly have no control over their lives, they've done OK for themselves so far in their careers and relationships (well, except for Josh) and to suddenly be under the influence of whatever random dice roll or selection process decided their fate years ago in a Mad Libs-style book, well, sure, that can be a bit frightening. You thought you were making good choices for yourself, and now it turns out that none of that matters, the curse says your life has to be a different way now, if the book said you would hold the record for longest fingernails, well, guess what, that's your life now. 

What's a little weird is that they've kind of imposed the "Groundhog Day" rules over this little class reunion, like no matter what Bill Murray tried, he couldn't stop February 2 from starting over again, not until he truly changed inside or had the perfect day in Punxsutawney, PA or whatever. These four learn from another of the book's victims, however, that the poem inside the book demands a sacrifice, one of them is going to have to kill one of their fated spouses in order to break the curse. (They try going to see Mikayla's psychic, Shamrock, to break the curse, but he's pretty useless and also a con artist, of course.). This information is given to them by Lizzie Lennox, who's serving time in an asylum for committing a murder because a book told her to. But she claims that she broke the curse and now her best friend, Nikki Evans, is not a monster truck driver with triplets - except that he actually is, and he claims that there's no escaping the fate that the book has chosen for you. Just learn to live with it, that's the best you can do. 

The bad news here is that this film is woefully inconsistent, like it's firing in all different directions at once where the rules of curses are applied. Like does it even count as a curse if you don't mind having super-long fingernails and being in a relationship with Joey Fatone? Maybe there's a downside to that, but then if there is, please show it to us!  A lot of the dialogue feels like it was improvised, and the characters also can't keep their own stories straight, like Andy is an overweight fitness instructor in L.A., and how does that even work?  And he's obviously gay, but he's also terrified of being gay? This isn't the 1970's, it's very accepted these days, but I guess he has to learn to accept himself. Also do these "friends" even like each other? Because it's often hard to tell, they insult each other all the time and they bear 20-year old grudges, and that's not really a fun look. 

Also, did reality really change (twice) or did the four friends all have the same dream? This is very unclear, but they do fall asleep together and wake up together, so you know, it's possible. Hell, even "The Wizard of Oz" couldn't decide if Dorothy really went to Oz or if the whole trip was just in her imagination - I would have voted for it all being a dream, if not for the "Wicked" movie, so umm, thanks for that? But, good news, this is a film that takes place ON HALLOWEEN, like there are Halloween parties all over town that are important to the plot and Mikayla takes her daughter trick-or-treating. Well, there are TWO Halloweens in the film, one from 20 years ago when the friends get the book, and the one in the current day. So great, we're right on track except for the fact that Halloween is still 18 days away. Well, how was I supposed to know? 

Directed by Laura Murphy

Also starring Jessica Lowe (last seen in "Desperados"), Nicole Byer (last heard in "The Twits"), Andrew Lewis Caldwell (last seen in "My Best Friend's Girl"), James Austin Johnson (last seen in "Lorne"), Kathy Griffin (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Nikki Glaser (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Nicole Richie (last seen in "Summer Camp"), Layla Mohammadi, Sterling Sulieman (last seen in "In Time"), Jon Gabrus (last seen in "Bombshell"), Joey Fatone (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3"), Ken Marino (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Will Arnett (last heard in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Rob Riggle (last seen in "Big Miracle"), Madeleine Guilbot, Kennedi Butler, Oscar Daniel Reyez, Teddy Gatewood, Colter Lee, Kim Griffin, Aaron Eisenberg, Ari Loeb (last seen in "Zombieland: Double Tap"), Ruha Taslimi, Lela Hoffmeister, Alison Rich (last heard in "The Mitchells vs. the Machines"), Dan Black (last seen in "The Naked Gun"), David Banks, Tanner Swagger (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), Cayden Romero, Gordon Tarpley (last seen in "Army of the Dead"),

RATING: 4 out of 10 baby goats

Companion

Year 18, Day 285 - 10/12/26 - Movie #5,459

BEFORE: After this I'm halfway through the horror chain for this year - this makes 12 out of 24. But how many horror films have I watched since I started this crazy project/habit? If this is Year 18 that means 17 years have gone before, a quick estimate of 30 films per year would make 510, which seems like a lot. The real number is probably less, because there were some years early on where I skipped the genre entirely, I wasn't really ready to get into it. And then in more recent times I've cut the number down because of vacations taken in October, combined with an inability to form a Shock Block that's more than 25 films long. 

A quick search by genre on IMDB's Advanced Search page tells me the number is more like 373, however I have a feeling that's a bit short because I've counted some films as horror films that the IMDB doesn't, they have this category called "psychological thriller" for films that aren't exactly about demons or monsters, films like "A Perfect Getaway" or tonight's film would not count as a horror film on IMDB, but I'll drop it in there. So possibly it's a bit closer to 400 films, which is pretty respectable, considering I didn't much care for horror films when I started this.

Sophie Thatcher carries over again from "Heretic", that film's going to be hard to beat. 

THE PLOT: A weekend getaway with friends at a remote cabin turns into chaos after it's revealed that one of the guests is not what they seem. 

AFTER: We're going to have to talk about A.I. now, or S.I. or whatever we'll be calling it a year from now. It's nothing new as a topic, we just figured through the 1980's and 1990's that in the future, there will be robots. Nobody saw drones coming back then, or mobile units that would deliver our food, and we imagined flying cars, not self-driving cars, but whatever. Really, "South Park" nailed it when they had Cartman pretend to be a robot named Awesom-O and adults kept asking him if he was a "pleasure robot".  The time between humans inventing something and then wondering if they can sleep with it gets shorter and shorter, so yeah, at some point we'll be. combining the Real Dolls with robotics and it won't be perfect, not at first anyway - the only question really is "How soon?"

There are clues from the start that this woman is a robot, she's got an uncanny insight into the weather, speaks many languages and says things like "I just wasn't built that way" even if she's mostly unaware that she is a robot, (or an artificial human, or maybe "synthetic individual" will be in fashion when the time comes). Honestly, I was aiming for the "M3GAN" movie and I kind of missed, I got here first. That other one's harder to link to and I don't imagine the sequel will make it any easier. Iris is programmed to love Josh, and she's programmed with a generic meet-cute memory of how they first encountered each other at the grocery store. As we learned in last night's film, when you remember something you're really basing your memory on the last time you thought of that event, not the actual event itself, but perhaps it's a different story if the memory is a file on your internal hard drive. 

There's no year mentioned here, of course, because nobody knows when this technology will be viable, to allow a robot into your home and it cooks for you, does whatever you want (yeah, even THAT) and it showers and dresses itself and believes itself to be human. Over time, it may become self-aware enough to figure out its identity from the clues in the situationship, but it depends on how high you set its intelligence meter. If you want to have intellectual conversations about Tolstoy novels and Bergman films, set the dial all the way up to 100%, but then your "F-bot" might be smart enough to realize it's a robot. Whoopsie, but you can reset it to factory defaults just by holding your thumb behind its right ear for five seconds. Either way, you've got a companion droid that is imprinted on you and you alone, it's not going to cheat on you (umm, unless you want it to, you sick freak) and you can make it do all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping - if you're basic and stuck in those outdated gender roles. 

You can then go about your business and work late and take time for yourself and not have to worry about your companion, they'll be there for you when you need them, and if you're tired or just want to be alone, you can just say, "Go to sleep" and they'll shut down for a while. You know, it's probably best to keep them on a normal human-like shutdown cycle, it helps their battery life if they recharge on a daily basis. 

Josh has "modded" his F-bot, though, sure that's what some people do with their cell phones or computers, but if you're not careful, you could damage the device that way. What Josh did was remove the part of her programming that prevented her from harming humans (through action or inaction), and really that was Rule #1 of robotics, according to Isaac Asimov. Rule #2 was obeying orders from humans UNLESS doing so interfered with Rule #1 and Rule #3 was self-preservation, unless that interfered with Rules 1 & 2. It's important to mention this as we stand on the cusp of the A.I. revolution, and people are randomly making claims that A.I. can "kill everyone" within a certain number of years. THIS is why the industry needs safeguards, as eventually people are going to get tired of just using A.I. to make fake porn and we get more closer to wanting to have actual sex with robots. 

Once the safeguards are gone, Iris finds herself in a situation where someone else at the lake house wants to, umm, make use of her talents, and she does not exactly know how to react, she knows that she only wants to be with Josh, so attention from someone else is technically sexual assault, and she defends herself, accidentally un-aliving someone, as the kids say these days on the interwebs. No spoilers beyond this point because I think some of the plot twists are pretty good here, and I'm not going to give them away. But the character remains sympathetic here for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that somebody messed with her programming. 

Iris, now aware that she is an artificial being, manages to get Josh's phone in order to use the app to increase her intelligence, now at least she may be able to think her way out of this, rather than be collected by the robot manufacturers and decommissioned or re-programmed. She determines that if she can make it to Josh's self-driving car, she can get home or drive somewhere else and start a new life for herself, only it's just not going to be easy with Josh and others trying to stop her, as part of a larger scheme. 

I mean, there's a lot to think about here - we've come a long way since "The Terminator" (there are some obvious visual references here to "Terminator 2") and also a long way from "Ex Machina" - I don't know if we're ever going to get HERE, because films set in the future often act as cautionary tales, and thus they maybe prevent the events depicted from happening. I guess we'll all find out together. 

Directed by Drew Hancock

Also starring Jack Quaid (last seen in "Novocaine"), Lukas Gage (last seen in "Smile 2"), Megan Suri (last seen in "72 Hours"), Harvey Guillen (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Rupert Friend (last seen in "Jurassic World: Rebirth"), Jaboukie Young-White (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Matt McCarthy (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie"), Marc Menchaca (last seen in "The Creator"), Woody Fu, and the voice of Ashley Lambert (last heard in "The Bad Guys 2").

RATING: 6 out of 10 available language options

Heretic

Year 18, Day 284 - 10/11/26 - Movie #5,458

BEFORE: Well, I greatly enjoyed my extra day off today, courtesy of the WNBA. No Liberty game today because the Atlanta Dream swept the best-of-five playoff round, instead I got to go to Long Island with my wife where she bought cigarettes, then we did some shopping and had a nice lunch at Texas Roadhouse. I've still got three shifts at the theater before we go out of town for a week, and we've got her birthday this week, I'm hoping to do a focus group to raise a little extra cash, and tomorrow's one of those former holidays that's fallen out of favor. 

I'm getting a little worried because the President is talking about doing away with daylight savings time, and I have said in the past that I would support any candidate who would take that position, so now I'm wondering if I have to become a Trump supporter to avoid being called a hypocrite. I think my only possible out here is the fact that he's not suggesting we do it for any logical reason, like the fact that it doesn't save energy or lives, he just wants to scrap it because it's too hard for him to change the clocks twice a year, or he's tired of paying people to do that for him and he's too dumb to figure it out. Another possible out is that he's talking about just keeping DST in place all year round, rather than switching back to Standard Time and staying there, which would make more sense. 

I know what you're thinking, it doesn't matter, because he can't run for President again - I firmly believe that he WILL, despite what the Constitution says. And anyway, Presidents are allowed 10 years in office, not 8, which is a codicil in place to help anyone who was a Vice President who became President when someone else died - they can have up to two years after ascending and then serve two full terms. So I think Trump WILL run again, and Michael Bloomberg has already shown him how to do it. Bloomberg was the mayor of NYC for two terms, and then ran a third time, which should have been illegal due to term limits, but he changed his party to Independent, as if that made him a different person or something, and then ran again and won again. Nobody stopped him, nobody sued him, there was no class-action taken against him, and so Trump could easily pull the same trick. By the time the courts settled everything, he'd be midway through his third term. It could happen - now THAT's nightmare fuel. 

Sophie Thatcher carries over from "MaXXXine". 

THE PLOT: Two young Mormon women are drawn into a game of cat-and-mouse in the house of a strange man. 

AFTER: This is a very clever film, all in all. It kind of serves as both a horror film and a treatise on comparative religion, which kind of is the biggest casualty here. After a pair of Mormon women visit a man who says he is possibly interested in converting, they end up debating with him over the finer points of religious theory, and then realize they are essentially trapped in his house, with no means of escape. The front door is locked, and the man, Mr. Reed, says it's on a timer, much like a bank vault, and it can't be opened. Furthermore, there is metal in the walls which prevents their cell phones from working, and one presumes that the house is also sound-proofed and such. Uh oh, this is starting to seem a bit like "The Black Phone". 

Sisters Barnes and Preston are welcome to leave if they want, at some point they've figured out that pretty much everything Reed has said is a lie, like he said his wife was in the other room but she's very shy, and she's made them some delicious blueberry pie - but now they're assuming that there's no wife (which means they broke their Mormon rules by entering a house with no woman in it) and even worse, there's probably not any pie, either. Reed suggests they leave via the back door of the house, only they'd have to work their way through several rooms and hallways, and God only knows what might be back there. This guy might have a sacrificial altar or a torture chamber back there, or worse. 

But no, it's just a library, and there are in fact two doors in back, but they'll have to choose the right one, and listen to another speech about the true meaning of religion. Yep, that really sounds worse, why couldn't it have been a torture chamber? Reed already knows a great deal about the Book of Mormon, in fact he seems to have studied ALL of the world's religions, allegedly in his search for the best one. But I think something funny happens when you study all of the religions, you might come to the conclusion that they're all false, which sure, seems likely, or even weirder, maybe they're all true. Maybe gods draw their power from believers, so maybe Yahweh and Jesus and Buddha and Satan are all in competition with each other to see who can get the most followers. But that's crazy, right? Anyway if you discount one religion as bunk you kind of have to discount all of them, it's the simplest answer, Occam's Razor, there is no God. The universe came about naturally and science explains the stars and the planets and life exists on Earth only because we're a certain distance from the sun and it developed over millions of years and stopped developing once we had television. Devolution NOW!

Ah, but it's not that simple. After an explanation about the "iterations" of religion that uses both the board game Monopoly and the song "Creep" by Radiohead as touchpoints, Reed offers the women two choices - one door marked "Belief" and one marked "Disbelief". Note that neither one is labeled "Exit". If they believe in religion they should choose accordingly, and if they're willing to admit their religion is bogus, they should choose the other door. Yeah, I pretty much picked up early on the fact that neither door was going to lead them outside. This guy is either a genius or a madman, or possibly both, and he's got a bunch of tunnels in his house that we haven't seen since the Minotaur's maze in ancient Crete, or possibly the passages seen in the film "Barbarian". Why do the stairs lead DOWN? Oh, because he lives at the top of a hill. Sure, and if you believe Moses parted the Red Sea and Jesus walked on water, I suppose you'll believe anything. 

It's also worth pointing out that if you don't believe in any of the religions, then you also don't believe in sin, and under those parameters, what evil would someone be capable of doing? There would really be no limit under those conditions, and that's kind of what we're dealing with here. Such a person would kill these women, or rape them, or keep them locked up for his own amusement. Geez, and he seemed like such a nice guy at first, too, but that's kind of the point. What evils lurk in the hearts of man? Only the Shadow knows...and this guy. I don't want to give away too much here, because this really needs to be experienced, but in a way it reminds me of "The Menu" or "Opus" or "The Black Phone" in that one really unhinged person is running the show, however he wants, and all the other people can do is play along and hope to find a way out, choose their moment or whatever. As long as that person has his audience, someone to hear his views on the world and what a messed-up place it is, not to mention that everything you think you know about life and death and the afterlife is probably wrong. 

Or is it? Some of the events that follow would seem to suggest that there IS something beyond death, only it's also very possible that it's just another deception, a magic trick of sorts. Which is all that religion really is, in the end, it's not even a magic trick, it's a belief in magic tricks that somebody did thousands of years ago, like appear to die and get resurrected, or appear to turn water into wine or appear to make a blind man see. And then somebody came along and said, "Wow, that was a really good magic trick, I should write that one down because I think we can build a religion around that, and sell people the promise of eternal life while we take their money." Come on, deep down you know it's true. And I say this as someone raised Catholic, I was an altar boy and my father was a deacon and my mother was the church organist. But at some point I decided to think for myself and see that the religion was based on the story of the magic tricks. 

To believe that there is no God, other than the one humans created in their stories, yeah, it's truly terrifying. It means that maybe there's nothing after this world, you die and that's it, you're done and there will be things you never got to accomplish and quite possible the world will forget about you unless you did something really spectacular or extraordinary. But that's also very liberating, I mean you can still pray if you want and wish for good things to happen to you or to other people, just bear in mind that nobody is listening and it has no effect on changing reality. It might make you feel good to hope for good things, but it's probably more effective to try and make good things happen yourself. And there's an upside, if there's no God then there's no Satan, no demons or vengeful angels or an eternity of burning in hell or being bored in heaven. Then there are no monsters except savage animals, terrible people and the ones in our imagination. 

There is one other possibility, which this film also raises, if only for a few minutes - that the world is a simulation or some kind of advanced computer program that we're all living in, "Matrix"-style. Then if we die in this reality, we're out of the program and we still exist somewhere larger, and that's our true form. Well, either we find a glitch in the matrix and prove that our reality isn't really real, or we just keep on going and we'll find out at the end whether there's anything else. The saving grace is that if there's nothing else, we won't be aware of it, we'll be blissfully unaware. Sorry to harsh your mellow but still feel free to check out the film, it's got some good ideas in it. A lot of bad nasty stuff too, but you know, some good ideas. This is probably the type of film you get after the "Saw" franchise makes a jillion dollars, but I haven't seen those films yet, I've been avoiding them. 

Directed by Scott Beck (director of "65") & Bryan Woods (ditto)

Also starring Hugh Grant (last seen in "Paddington in Peru"), Chloe East (last seen in "The Fabelmans"), Topher Grace (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), Elle Young (last seen in "A Score to Settle"), Julie Lynn Mortensen, Haylie Hansen, Elle McKinnon (last seen in "Wonder"), Hanna Huffman, Anesha Bailey (last seen in "The Interview"), Miguel Castillo, Stephanie Lavigne, Wendy Gorling,

RATING: 7 out of 10 loose wooden matches

MaXXXine

Year 18, Day 283 - 10/10/26 - Movie #5,457

BEFORE: If I'm posting late today, it's because I'm going out to a beer festival in Brooklyn, which I hope turns out to be better than the one I went to in Staten Island last month, the one that ran out of beer - and BBQ - after about an hour and a half. Really, really poor planning, I must say - or was it? I noticed that the people with VIP tickets were still being served while those of us with general admission tickets got generally screwed. Anyway, I'm hoping to make up for that today by drinking ALL the beer, and we'll see how long it takes me to find my way home and recover. We're going to find out. 

Kevin Bacon carries over from "They/Them".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "X" (Movie #4,879") and "Pearl" (Movie #4,880)

THE PLOT: In 1980's Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks L.A., a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past. 

AFTER: OK, I'm back from the beer festival, but it took me MUCH longer than it should have to get home. My usual subway train, the one I live closest to, is down for the weekend, I knew that going in, but of course I didn't know that back when I bought the ticket. So I had to figure out a combination of two buses to get to this particular place in Brooklyn, one bus I was already familiar with and the other one, not so much, but what's to know? I just needed to know where it linked up with the one I usually take to go drinking at the Navy Yard and how far it would drop me from today's event. I got there in 90 minutes, OK I was a tiny bit late, but not much - and why did it take me over two and a half hours to get home? The event ended at 4:30 pm and I didn't walk into the house until 7:15 or so. I'm pretty sure I didn't black out somewhere, I was getting more and more sober during the trip home, it's just that the damn bus has to stop every two blocks to let people out, and the subway just doesn't. That's got to be it. I did pop into a restaurant and use their restroom between buses (and it's a good thing I did) but that doesn't account for the missing hour. Then I took a two-hour nap when I got home, so really, that's the whole day gone. BUT I have tomorrow free, the NY WNBA team, the Liberty, lost the second round of the playoffs, so Sunday's shift is cancelled. I really had mixed feelings, like I wanted to root for the team but I was also kind of rooting for an extra day off. Oh well, I volunteered for that shift, so I still get points for stepping up.

Anyway, I watched "X" and "Pearl" two Octobers ago (Mia Goth's birthday is October 25, please wish her well) and at that time I debated whether I should go out of my way to watch the third film in the pseudo-series, I think it was just on HBO Max at the time, which was maybe called just "Max" at the time. But I had my chain to Christmas all figured out, and I didn't want to drop anything, so I passed on "MaXXXine". I figured as long as I circled back to it within five years, no big deal, and it only took me two - AND this film serves a purpose by getting me closer to my final destination this month, which will be the "Final Destination" movies at long last. You see that, it turns out that The Chain was playing the long game, it saved this movie for when I needed it, it's funny that way and I should trust it more. Like tonight I'm tempted to get off the path I'm on because I see how this film could link to the recent "Frankenstein" film (via Mia Goth) and the more recent "Weapons" (via Clayton Farris). But then I don't think I'd make it back to the "Final Destination" films in time, so I'm going to go with my gut and save those films for a future year, perhaps they'll link up with each other or more films in two or three years time. 

So today I'm closing the book on the "X" trilogy, where Mia Goth played a couple different characters, both Maxine and Pearl, who was the older lady in "X" and then "Pearl" went back in time to tell us her twisted killer back-story. I'm sure every actor would love to be in a series like this, where they play a few different characters and do a lot of weird stuff to show their range, it's like Michael J. Fox in "Back to the Future" and if you're lucky, you get like ONE of these in your career, unless you're Eddie Murphy, in which case you can have as many as you want. But let's focus on Maxine and Pearl. Maxine was the only survivor of that Texas adult film star massacre a few years back in 1979, and apparently she's still a person of interest, because somebody is roaming around the seedy streets of L.A. looking for her. I mean, you can watch this film without knowing what exactly went down before, but for the full effect, you really need to watch all three movies. 

This final (?) film in the series is set in 1985, during the real-life killings of the Night Stalker, and honestly it's a bit unclear at times whether the stalker seen in this film is the SAME Night Stalker that was in the real-life news, or a different one. I mean, the ending here makes it kind of clear that there were two people, and one was specifically looking for Maxine Mink, for reasons. I'm just saying that there are a lot of killings in this film, and they don't break down exactly which ones were done by the Night Stalker and which were done by the Maxine Stalker. Anyway, Maxine's friends who are also strippers and/or porn stars keep trying to get her to join them at a party somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, there's a rich guy in from out of town who's paying girls a lot of money, but then some of them start turning up missing, or dead and dumped in a very nice cemetery with Satanic symbols carved into them. 

This couldn't have come at a worse time, Maxine has just landed a role in a REAL (non-porn) movie - OK, it's a horror movie but those are good too, a lot of actors got their break from being in horror movies. Jamie Lee Curtis, John Travolta and that Bacon fellow too, I think. So Maxine is not going to let some stalker killing her friends ruin her chances of becoming a household name. Yeah, umm, sorry, but you can't really expect to be a household name after doing x-rated films, unless you're Sylvester Stallone I guess. But other people like Marilyn Chambers and Ron Jeremy could only go so far. (Side note, with NY Comic Con going on right now, today could be the anniversary of the time we had a real porn star signing stuff in our booth, it was Julia Ann. She got a lot of attention and drew a bunch of people to come see our DVDs.)

The stalker leaves behind a VHS tape which contains the "Farmer's Daughters" film that Maxine and her now-dead friends were trying to make six years before, as if somebody's trying to blackmail her or link her to those murders. A private investigator then contacts her in person and tells her to be at a specific address that night, or her past will be revealed to everyone. But rather than go to that address, Maxine contacts her agent, who steps in and makes sure that private investigator meets an untimely end in a car crusher. Very "Grand Theft Auto". But all of this is still making her late for work on "Puritan II" and disappointing that film's director, who's threatening to replace her in the role. 

So she decides to resolve things over the weekend, she eventually DOES go to that address, with a couple of cops following her, and well, no spoilers. This film doesn't have that many secrets left and I'm not going to blow them here. But all in all, this is kind of weak sauce compared with what went down in "X" and to a lesser extent, "Pearl". Diminishing returns on sequels, I suppose, or perhaps someone was just running out of story and trying to extend what didn't need to be extended. The director initially teased that there would be a fourth film, but has since changed his plans. Well, we do have to prioritize, and "Smile 3" is maybe a little bit more important, don't you think? 

Nice cameo from the "Psycho" house, though, it's good to see a Hitchcock reference these days. There's also a house here that appeared in the movie "Body Double". 

Directed by Ti West (director of "X" and "Pearl")

Also starring Mia Goth (last seen in "Infinity Pool"), Elizabeth Debicki (last heard in "Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway"), Moses Sumney (last seen in "Creed"), Michelle Monaghan (last seen in "The Best of Me"), Bobby Cannavale (last seen in "Unstoppable"), Halsey (last heard in "Sing 2"), Lily Collins (last seen in "Mank"), Giancarlo Esposito (last seen in "The Electric State"), Simon Prast (last seen in "X"), Sophie Thatcher (last seen in "The Tomorrow Man"), Uli Latukefu (last seen in "Next Goal Wins"), Chloe Farnworth (last seen in "Nostalgia"), Deborah Geffner (last seen in "Southside with You"), Ned Vaughn (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Larry Fessenden (last heard in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Toby Huss (last seen in "Sword of Trust"), Charley Rowan McCain, Daniel Lench, Brad Swanick, Susan Pingleton (last seen in "Shadows and Fog"), Zachary Mooren (last seen in "Cat Person"), Marcus Lavoi (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Taylor Kowalski (last seen in "The Secret Life of Bees"), Pegah Rashti, Alison Wonderland, Kristin Carey (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Cecilia Kim, Clayton Farris, Chelsea Brea, Vera Myers (last seen in "The Fabelmans"), Meredith VanCuyk, Allen Waiserman 

and archive footage of Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Reggie"), Tipper Gore and Dee Snider. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 religious protestors

They/Them

Year 18, Day 282 - 10/9/26 - Movie #5,456

BEFORE: I'm already 1/3 of the way through this year's ShockBlock, since I'll be out of town for a week later in the month I'm limiting myself to 24 films this year - but it took a great deal of planning just to come up with a chain of 24, I don't think 30 was possible given the (slowly) dwindling list of horror films. I think I can only maintain this for 6 or 7 more years, tops. 

Kevin Bacon carries over from "Leave the World Behind", because of course he does. Really, if you check IMDB, Kevin Bacon hasn't been in THAT many movies, I know that goes against conventional wisdom, because of that game we think that he's connected to everyone and he's been in darn near everything, but the numbers don't support that. I'm a big fan and I've even seen his band play live, but when you take out short films, TV shows and music videos, he's been in what, 75 or 77 movies? It's still a lot, but it's hardly a record number. Really, it's quality over quantity and I respect that. He's popped up here at the Movie Year only 33 or so times, just saying. 

Part of life is about coming full circle, I think - wasn't Kevin Bacon in one of the early early "Friday the 13th" movies, way back when? I've been avoiding those films...

THE PLOT: A group of teenagers at an LGBTQ+ conversion camp endures unsettling psychological techniques while being stalked by a mysterious masked killer. 

AFTER: The proper way to say the name of this film is "They-SLASH-Them", which has to be some kind of play on words, given the appearance of a "slasher" character at the camp. Very clever, and this film is clever in many ways, across the board. Taking down the whole gay conversion thing, which is definitely a sacred cow that needs to be turned into cheeseburgers, even if those are meatless cheeseburgers with soy cheese on them. Jesus, even I know that's a bunch of B.S., you can't "pray the gay away" and even the suggestion that you can is offensive to a whole bunch of people. What a bunch of hypocrites the boomers are, maybe even the millennials too, because everybody started telling their kids they could grow up to be anything they wanted to be, only, umm, not THAT. How many times have we seen even liberal parents who don't want their kids to be gay or trans or non-binary because it's not what THEY know, it's not what THEY want for their kids. Well, shut up because it's just not about you any more, is it? 

I remember being 21 and at college and still a virgin (not for lack of trying, but you know, I did kind of give up after a while) and I couldn't WAIT to start my life again as a sexually active person - so I imagine for gay people it's twice as bad, there's this feeling inside you and experiences you want to have and society keeps telling you no, you can't have that or you should not feel that way. Of course, I saw the other side of that a few years later when my first wife came out, and I was the one saying, "No, you can't have that" or "You should not feel that way." I soon realized how futile that was, once the door was opened and those feelings were expressed, there was very little I could do about it but show her the door and then try to move on. My experiences are my own, though, as well as my personal feelings about people coming out or having new gender identities or preferences or whatever. But I try above all to be respectful of other people's processes and transitions. Just this week I was managing the event with drag kind Murray Hill, and I'm pretty sure they were born female, but I noticed they used the men's room, and I'm fine with it, whatever. I'm not going to bust anyone, everyone should feel comfortable in their own skin, even if they're so far into another persona that they can't be seen out of costume. You can identify as Batman if you want and use Bruce Wayne as your cover, I don't care. 

Anyway, there are a few kind of clever things going on here - obviously there's an attempt to get in on the zeitgeist, with so many people these days identifying as queer or trans or non-binary, I mean I think it was a lot simpler back in my day, you were either one thing or another, male or female, gay or straight, attached or single. Now there's not just space in-between, there are many different spaces in-between, all with different names, for all the people who just feel like they're NOT one thing or the other, but something else. It's kind of like there used to be just Republicans and Democrats, and now we have Liberal Republicans and Conservative Democrats and then there are socialist Democrats and Reform Republicans, and then some people who don't want to join either party or any party at all. Anarchy, that's kind of what it is, and I mean there's gender anarchy, too. Maybe it's all good long-term, who can say? A film reflects the time when it's made, though, so this film is going to TRY to represent what's going on in the anarchy of gender, but still it's got to at least appear "woke" and not break any taboos. Time was you could spot the killer in a movie, it was probably the messed-up queer person, you know, because they're messed up. Remember how Norman Bates dressed up like his mother? We can't say for sure that the character was gay (the actor, sure) but he did wear a dress, and in those days, that was enough. 

Times have certainly changed, and you probably can't make a gay person the killer any more, that would be homophobic and non-representative. This was probably taken into consideration when writing out this screenplay. What's weirder is that I don't think they allowed gay characters to be portrayed as the victims, either, because that would be similarly non-productive, and it would have been taken as TOO representative - "Oh, so you mean all gay people are weak and can't defend themselves, is THAT the takeaway?" It just feels like some screenwriter had to walk a very fine line here, because anything it says about one gay character is going to be taken as a slam against ALL queer people, like most other stereotypes (Mexicans are lazy, British people are stuffy, French people are promiscuous) there was a time when they were used as story shortcuts, but mostly you just can't do that any more. 

There are some good points made here too, like how is a camp going to work with a male dorm and a female dorm if you've got males who used to be females and vice versa? Do you just let everyone go by their birth gender, or their current anatomy, or how they identify?  Jordan, the main character here, is non-binary, so that's a big problem, they don't know which dorm to sleep in. The camp counselors here are accommodating though, maybe a little TOO accommodating. Never forget that they're still a gay conversion camp, no matter what they say, their goal is to make gay people less gay or more straight, or at the very least, to make them feel bad about themselves. So whatever slasher is stalking people in the woods, the real evil here is the camp itself, we can't lose sight of that. But who would have a problem with the gay conversion camp and its staff? JK, there's probably a long list of people. 

On day two, one camp attendee is outed as trans, and forced to change dorms. That should really tell you all you need to know about the staff, they're playing by the old rules, and judging people according to their birth anatomy, not how they identify. Well, there are the old school people and some of them are not doing their best to learn the new rules of society. After group therapy, where each camper needs to explain who they are and why they're in conversion camp, the camp therapist (the wife of the head counselor) does her best to belittle each one of them in private sessions and make them ashamed of their queerness. Again, not cool, so at some point I think we're all rooting for the slasher. The next day the boys (and those who identify as boys) are taken out to shooting practice while the girls (and those who identify as girls) are taught how to bake a cherry pie. The staff just seems to be riding them at every opportunity, trying to reinforce the old gender rules on them, that may work on some of them, but it won't work on ALL of them.

By the time that evidence is found that beatings and torture were commonplace at Camp Whistler, at least in the past, the campers are ready to try and escape the camp, maybe the only thing preventing them is the fact that nobody knows what lurks in the woods, and who the slasher is ultimately trying to kill. That's all that I'll say about the plot, but I might have already tipped a few things here, because we already know that this film is going to be queer-positive in the end, which kind of limits the story possibilities and it's not hard to figure out what's going to happen to the camp in the end. In this day and age of equality and anarchy and (eventual) acceptance, there's really no other way. I'll give it an extra point for being ground-breaking and willing to "go there", wherever "there" is, but then I kind of have to take away a point for tying itself up in so much wokeness that the story really trips over itself. 

Directed by John Logan

Also starring Theo Germaine, Anna Chlumsky (last seen in "The End of the Tour"), Carrie Preston (last seen in "The Holdovers"), Quei Tann, Austin Crute (last seen in "Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul."), Anna Lore (last seen in "Black Phone 2"), Monique Kim, Cooper Koch, Darwin del Fabro, Hayley Griffith, Boone Platt (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Mark Ashworth (last seen in "The Dirt"), Brooke Jane Taylor (last seen in "Reptile"), Steven Anthony Washington, Sofia Palmero (last seen in "You're Cordially Invited"), Jack Caron (ditto), Destiny Danielle, Noe Cameron, Sofia Riba, Heaven Lupita Stamps, Juan de Jesus, Janelle Beaudry, Karin Justman, Scott Andersen (last seen in "A Family Affair"), Dominic Bell, Bailey MB (last seen in "The Electric State") and the voice of Kiki Lee, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 pairs of handcuffs (used in a team-building exercise)

Leave the World Behind

Year 18, Day 281 - 10/8/26 - Movie #5,455

BEFORE: When people learn that I watch horror movies all through October, they ask, "Wow, don't you get nightmares?" Well, no, not really, nothing similar to the movies I watch, though that did happen when I was a kid, I had nightmares about Dracula and Frankenstein's monster and a few killer ones after watching "Poltergeist". Last night I did have a stress dream for sure, but it was a work-related one. In the dream I found out that my ex-co-workers were all back working for my ex-boss, the animator, at the studio where I worked for 31 years. So then I was back there too, in solidarity I guess, or perhaps I was hanging out and got tricked into working there again, I just know I felt the stress once again of running an animation studio that is always running out of money, and I felt the fear of not knowing how much longer the company can stay in business without income. Then this kind of morphed into the "city dream", I had to get across town for work and while it definitely looked like a city, none of the buildings or streets were familiar. 

Ah, I just found out that the New York Comic Con has started, this explains a lot, my body and my brain are still in that mode of expecting this big event around this time each year. I wasn't even consciously aware of the exact dates, but somehow my brain knew and it tormented me with the stress dream of working in the studio, packing up the merch and getting it all across town to the Javits Center. Thanks a lot, brain. 

Ethan Hawke carries over again from "Daybreakers", that's five in a row, that's enough. 

THE PLOT: A family's getaway to a luxurious rental home takes an ominous turn when a cyberattack knocks out their devices and two strangers appear at their door. 

AFTER: This film is three years old, it's probably been on the main list and the horror sub-list for nearly that long, but you know, that's how long it takes sometimes to get to something after it's on the list. I've already crossed off numerous films this Movie Year that have been on the list for five times that or even longer. Three years is nothing, really. "Daybreakers" has probably been kicking around the list for a while, getting that one sorted was something of an accomplishment, look how many Ethan Hawke horror films I had to schedule just to cross THAT one off!  

At first I thought this was going to be something of a "Bird Box"-like film, you know, the one with Sandra Bullock facing off against aliens or whatever that nobody could see - which itself was something of a knock-off of "A Quiet Place". But this one isn't like that at all, despite similarly having an A-list actress who hasn't done a lot of horror films. Then I thought maybe this is more like "The Rental" or "Barbarian", where people are forced to share space due to a mix-up with the rental agency or the AirBnB site and it leads to a bunch of mistrust and some other bad, nasty things. And this is SORT OF like that, only this is maybe more like "Knock at the Cabin" where people are vacationing peacefully when they're visited by strangers or strange things and they learn that maybe the apocalypse is taking place back in the cities.  

Look, I don't know why Julia Roberts would take a role as a racist Karen, I really don't. She's actually pitched as someone who hates ALL people at first, except maybe her husband and kids, but that's not really a good look either, is it? She definitely has some mistrust for the people who show up unannounced and claim to be the owners of the house, is this BECAUSE they're black or is that just a coincidence? Sure, I get it, you rented the house and didn't expect the owners (or whoever) to drop by, but since there's kind of a big emergency of sorts going on in the world, I think maybe you have to make some allowances, just saying. 

For the first half hour of the film (the first day at the rented vacation home) the only big problem is that the cable and internet are out. I mean, not working at all, no on-screen message from the cable company or the internet provider, no timeline for the service coming back, everything's just dead. I mean, you take a vacation so you can re-connect with your spouse and kids, right? And if everybody's on their phones and screens, that's counter-productive. So it's not really a big deal at first, let's get some groceries, drink some wine, play a couple board games and then tomorrow we'll make some inquiries about when the service will be restored. Ah, but that's not all, the GPS systems are out, there's no news available on the phone about whatever emergency is going on in the city, and if it's a blackout, sure, we get it, but you'd think at least you could turn on a battery-powered radio and get some kind of update, but nope. 

The owner of the house, G.H. Scott, and his daughter are allowed to stay the night (in their own house) despite Amanda's protests. Scott offers to refund them half of their rental fee, which is a good deal as long as they get to stay there and sleep in the best bedrooms. Well, they are all settled in there, and this way nobody has to go find a hotel. The next day Clay will drive into town and get a newspaper or some kind of update on the situation, and Mr. Scott will visit his neighbors and check in on them. Yeah, this is a terrible idea because the GPS systems aren't working either, so Clay gets lost and G.H. learns that his neighbors' house has been destroyed by flood and impact damage caused by so many planes crashing into the beach. So pretty much any plane in the sky over the East Coast at the time of the blackout was unable to land safely. And if the GPS is out, that means the satellites were hacked or taken offline, so how far does this thing go? 

The next few acts of the film are filled with a bunch of "WTF?" moments, somehow the event is messing with the migratory patterns of animals, so there are deer congregating HERE and a bunch of flamingos gathering over THERE, it's tough to say where they came from, because you don't usually see a bunch of flamingos on Long Island. Then a tremendous noise shrill noise is heard everywhere, hurting everyone's eardrums, and nobody can determine what's causing it or what effect it will have on them. Attempts to drive back to New York City are thwarted by a highway full of self-driving Teslas that have gone rogue and crashed into each other, filling up the Long Island Expressway. So it's really hard for the two families to determine if they'll be better off just staying indoors and not going anywhere, or if they should be taking some other actions to protect themselves. 

NITPICK POINT: Once you go any real distance out on Long Island, it's impossible to see the NYC skyline. We're led to believe that these people drove out almost to the Hamptons but yet somehow can still see what's happening in Manhattan, and nope, that's just not possible. Like I live in Queens, NY and I can see the Manhattan skyline, technically I am ON Long Island, but what most people consider to be "Long Island" is further east, and the Hamptons are about 90 miles east, there's just no way they would be able to see the skyline of Manhattan. 

The question remains, who had the resources to carry out this cyber-attack, if that's indeed what it was. The Iranians, the Koreans, the Soviets? Don't really expect any clear answers here, because the movie is not only way too long, it still finds a way to end before anything is solved or resolved. No spoilers here, but damn, what a waste of over two hours if there's no real resolution and we're left to wonder about the fates of the characters. I'm also going to go right into panic mode the next time my cable and internet are out, that's for sure. Bigger questions remain also, like who lives in that shed? Where did the deer all go? What was the Spanish woman saying? And should I be stocking up on canned food and bottled water? 

Directed by Sam Esmail

Also starring Julia Roberts (last seen in "Love Again"), Mahershala Ali (last seen in "Jurassic World: Rebirth"), Myha'la (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Farrah Mackenzie (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Charlie Evans, Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Marty, Life Is Short"), Alexis Rae Forlenza (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Vanessa Aspillaga (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Josh Drennen (last seen in "Madame Web"), Erica Cho (last seen in "Nyad"), Orli Gottesman, Sam Esmail,

RATING: 5 out of 10 shelves of DVDs, which do not require the internet to be watched (YES! I'll be well prepared when this day comes!)