Monster Summer

Year 18, Day 277 - 10/4/26 - Movie #5,451

BEFORE: Well, based on all the hits I'm not getting, I'm thinking this is kind of an off year for horror films. Maybe other people just aren't ready for Halloween yet, it still feels far away, but really it's not. Maybe not everyone pre-games like I do - I admit that by the time I get to October 31 I'm usually burnt out and ready for ANY other kind of movie, but that's my problem. 

Maybe it's the luck of the draw in films, last year I had high-profile films like "Sinners" and "Nosferatu", and the two "Smile" films, those were all big box-office draws. I had some serious star power, like Russell Crowe in two films and Nicolas Cage in two, Rooney Mara and Nicholas Hoult and there were TWO Marvel films, "Kraven the Hunter" and "Fantastic Four: First Steps". Also I had to pivot when a link failed and there were some tense moments, like was the year-long chain going to break with just two months to go? 

This year, so far I've just had a bad vacation film and a town gone killer crazy, it hasn't exactly been top tier horror stuff, but you know, maybe it's a slow build. There's creepy scary stuff coming, I can see it and feel it. Not expecting too much tonight, but you know, there's 20 more to come as Mason Thames carries over from "The Black Phone".  Still I'm looking at what I'm NOT going to get to this year, like "Weapons" and "Backrooms" and 2 "Pet Sematary" films, "It Follows" and "It Comes at Night", "The Substance" and "Bugonia" and "A Quiet Place: Day One", even "The Slender Man" and "The Babadook", I'll never get to all of those at this rate. So yeah, the biggest fear to be found on the horror list is still FOMO, the fear of missing out. 

THE PLOT: When a mysterious force begins to disrupt their big summer fun, a group of friends team up with a retired police detective to save their island. 

AFTER: Well, we got Mel Gibson tonight, that's some serious star power for a horror film that's just a bit scarier than a "Goosebumps" film. And Lorraine Bracco probably doesn't get called to make a lot of horror films, I wish she could have had a bigger part here but she didn't get cast as the main villain here, that could have really been something, but she just plays a children's book author, maybe she wasn't available for a longer shoot and just wanted a short vacation in Martha's Vineyard as a perk. Then there's Patrick Renna, who's cast as a Little League umpire, and that's clearly a nod to his role in "The Sandlot", which is very clever. He's been in a bunch of TV ads lately, and he does get movie roles, but I think the fact that he still looks just like that kid from the old film is somehow both a blessing and a curse. See also Peter Billingsley from "A Christmas Story". 

Then we've got Kevin James, who has an uncredited role as the editor of the town newspaper, but essentially it's the same role as the mayor in "Jaws", an authority figure who refuses to believe that there's some evil menacing the town, and won't publicize it because of the effect on tourism. It's been over 50 years, and movies are still using the same plot points from "Jaws", we saw this in "The Crazies" too. And what's up with Kevin James, did making all those silly movies like "Paul Blart" just destroy whatever acting credibility he had? Why the need to disappear into a role and not let your name be used in the credits? He could accomplish the same thing by not being in the movie at all. Wasn't there that promotion recently for a film where he pretended to just be a fourth grade art teacher that LOOKED like Kevin James? Dude, we know it's you.

Whatever, man - Kevin James and Mel Gibson both make the year-end countdown tonight by appearing in their third movie this year - Kevin James was also in the Adam Sandler doc and Mel Gibson was in the Sigourney Weaver doc and the Eddie Murphy doc. Hey, if you make the playoffs late in the season, it doesn't exactly matter how you do it - or so I've heard. 

Anyway, a bunch of thematic things carry over from "The Black Phone" along with Mason Thames, like the fact that he plays Little League (or high-school baseball, whichever) in both films. Also, even though we've moved from Denver to Martha's Vineyard and from the 1970s to the 1990s, the town's children are still disappearing. In "The Black Phone" it was a physical disappearance and in this film they're getting mentally erased, like they've checked out of life, or their energy is being drained, but it's still kind of the same idea. And nobody believes the group of kids that sort of knows what's happening but can't really prove it without evidence - the kids who are mentally not there are diagnosed with a form of PTSD, and I can't recall if that was a thing in 1997, like was that a year where parents were more worried about ADD or autism or maybe dyslexia? 

There's a mysterious stranger staying in Noah's house, his mother rented out the top floor for the summer, and naturally it's easy to suspect that the shady lady with the raspy voice who dresses in black is a witch, like maybe she lives in SALEM the rest of the year? Especially when you cast a top actress in that role, and in a lesser movie, sure, the out-of-towner would be the witch, the kids would confront her and she would reveal her true evil self and her penchant for eating children, there would be a showdown and somebody would pour a bucket of water on her and we could all then get back to business, roll the credits. Ah, but I said this was a step ABOVE the normal children-oriented "Goosebumps" type of movie, because all that would be just a bit too easy. And we've seen it before. Thankfully this is a little more complex than that. 

NITPICK POINT: It's a bit confusing to have two main characters with similar names, Eugene and Gene. I know coming up with believable fake names is hard, but why not just change one to avoid any confusion? 

NITPICK POINT #2: Wondering whether a witch counts as a monster is maybe a bit like asking whether a hot dog counts as a sandwich. We've got meat, we've got bread, we've got toppings, it's just not traditionally sandwich-shaped. If an open-faced sandwich counts as a sandwich, then a hot dog IS a sandwich. A fairy-tale witch maybe used to be a human, as in the Salem witch trials, which were all bogus, BTW. In the movies a person can be corrupted into a monster by devilry or witchcraft, though this is different from a "monster" like a troll or a goblin or a kraken. If a werewolf is a monster, then a witch is a monster. 

This is important because it relates to the title of the film, on one level we're promised a monster in the title, and we get a witch. It's fine - but maybe there could have been a better title. "Witch Summer" doesn't really hit the same, maybe "Season of the Witch" or something could have worked better, but that title was already taken. Also, then we would go in expecting a witch movie, and at first the kids here don't know WHAT they're dealing with, is it a demon or a ghost or a sea monster, it puts us on the same level as the kids, so again, it's fine. Ooh, the IMDB says that the original title for this was "The Boys of Summer", which is kind of good, it ties in with the whole baseball thing, but then the nod to being a horror film would be lost. 

It's still kind of a family film, but it's a bit more like "Fright Night" or "The Goonies" than "Goosebumps", which is a good thing overall. And clearly we're all living in a post-"It" and post-"Stranger Things" world, and that's good too.

Directed by David Henrie (last seen in "Walt Before Mickey" and "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2")

Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "Film Geek"), Julian Lerner (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Abby James Witherspoon (last seen in "Secret Headquarters"), Noah Cottrell (last seen in "Skyscraper"), Nora Zehetner (last seen in "The Brothers Bloom"), Lorraine Bracco (last seen in "The Union"), Emma Fasano, Spencer Fitzgerald (also last seen in "The Black Phone"), Patrick Renna (last seen in "You Gotta Believe"), Ashley Rae Trisler, Gavin Bedell, Gary Weeks (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Bobbi Baker, Kelly Collins Lintz (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Nico Tirozzi, Lilah Pate, Abrielle Josephine Cincotti, Kevin James (last seen in "Playdate"), Barbara Goodson (last heard in "I Lost My Body"), Violet Berlus, Stacey Stewart and the voice of Lara Fontes.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Red Sox pennants on the attic wall (hang in there, guys, you only have to wait 7 more years...)