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!)

Daybreakers

Year 18, Day 280 - 10/7/26 - Movie #5,454

BEFORE: I've been inching closer to becoming a "freegan" of sorts over the last couple weeks. No, I have not been eating food found in the trash or that I got from dumpster diving behind a grocery store, I'm talking about living off of food that was served at events at the theater and then left behind by the event hosts. First there was a Broadway Cares benefit screening that had a pretty good food spread for the attendees (potential donors) and while I didn't eat anything AT the event (they threw out most of the food which had been sitting on tables in the lobby for a couple hours, for safety reasons) I did find a whole box of cooked cocktail shrimp in the fridge after, they had donated bottled water and whatever was in the fridge to the theater, which was easier than taking it with them. I had two solid meals at home that were just shrimp and cocktail sauce, which I love. 

Then there was a "Best of 2026" screening as part of the After School Special week, featuring recent films made by student filmmakers and animators, and again, there was a catered reception in the lobby. While I didn't work that event, I was there the next day and the fridge was full again, with a sign saying "Staff - help yourself" and I don't need to be told twice. I just brought home a couple containers of cubed party cheeses and sliced salami, and I made little sandwiches on toast using the broiler of my oven, for maybe three days of lunch. Finally last night we hosted a book signing for drag king Murray Hill, and when we cleaned up the green room there was a whole box of pizza items left behind, since I knew I would be working the next night I saved it in the fridge for myself, and that was dinner tonight. Times are tough and I'm not making as money as I used to, so any night where I don't have to spend $10 or $12 on dinner and can eat for free, that's a big win. 

Ethan Hawke carries over again from "Sinister". I'm starting to think maybe he's been in a few horror movies over the years...

THE PLOT: In the year 2019, a plague has transformed almost every human into vampires. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, a researcher works with a covert band of vamps on a way to save humankind. 

AFTER: Well, this movie managed to make a bit of sense somewhere among all the nonsense. Obviously I waited too long to watch this movie, because it was made in 2009 and is set in the "future" world of 2019, that ship has kind of sailed now, the same sort of thing happened with "Strange Days" which was set at the turn of the millennium, but I watched it in 2024 or 2025. Whoopsie. But somebody in 2009 gazed forward ten years and imagined a world where the vampires not only existed, but they won, they spread their curse (or blessing) and flipped the script, this was a world with more vampires than humans. That's the nature of the thing, if each vampire makes another vampire every time they feed, and then THAT new vampire makes more vampires, and so on, and so on. It's like that old commercial where the woman liked her shampoo so much that she told two friends about it, and then THEY each told two friends, etc.

And because of human nature, nobody really saw the problem coming until it was much too late - or they saw the problem and nobody wanted to take steps to deal with it. This is the pattern for every natural resource we have - oil, gas, water, food - we keep using and using and we don't take steps to conserve or replace, it's "live for today" and maybe the next generation will be smarter and come up with a solution or some common sense. Nope, ain't gonna happen. So those vampires (having a human nature, essentially) just keep drinking more blood and more blood and denied the problem for so long that in the end there was no proper solution, things had gone way too far. 

They COULD have set up some kind of system, perhaps, maybe some enterprising vampires would have established "blood banks" much like the ones we already had, only for a different reason. They could have allowed enough humans to live, signed some kind of treaty where they could work something out, we'll let a few million humans live and we won't turn them into vampires, provided they make monthly blood donations to the blood/food banks. Nope, let's just keep hunting them until there's only a tiny minority left, because "we hungee". It tracks. Instead they created a bunch of "blood farms" where a few humans are kept alive (barely) and are regularly drained to supply blood for the elite vamps. This kind of turns this whole film into a weird version of "The Matrix", except humans are being kept alive in tanks for their blood, and not for their...umm, why were humans being kept alive in tanks in "The Matrix" again?

As a result there are now some vampires who can't find fresh blood, or can't afford it, and this has caused some vampires to feed off of each other, or themselves, leading to mutations where they lose their mental faculties and turn more savage and bat-like. I'm guessing this is some kind of metaphor overall, because we see a vampire early on that is dressed like a homeless man, a street person, one of society's unhoused, and he's taken into custody to protect the other people in the city. Some screenwriter has obviously spent some time in New York...

The other metaphor that feels like it's in play here, feels like it has something to do with ICE, the situation we have now where our government has sent armed agents out into the streets of American cities, seeking out illegal immigrants who are (allegedly) a drain on our system and the cause of all our problems, even though technically we still have a free society that claims to be open and accepting of all, we need to round up the "problem" people and send them out of our country at the very least. That's kind of what happens here as the vampires in charge seek out the "subsiders", those vampires that have gone crazy and savage because of the lack of blood. The armed government soldiers police the streets, round up the savage and mindless vamps and drag them out into the sunlight, behind a truck, as a means of execution. There's just no way that the screenwriters could have predicted the rise of ICE and the U.S. government taking non-citizens into custody and making them disappear in a similar fashion. 

There's no way that this film from 2009 could have predicted COVID, either, but it does feature a vampiric plague that was started by a vampire BAT infecting people in the year 2019. Did it come from a Wuham wet market? It's weird that this nonsensical horror film about the vampires winning managed to come SO CLOSE to predicting the pandemic, like if you just replace "vampirism" with "COVID virus" then it's spot on, right? Just me? 

But looking at the overall narrative here, it's just all over the place. In most movies vampires are bad, no question, but then here they're running society, so that's...um, good?  But they're farming blood from humans, so that's bad. And they've taken out most of the humans, also very bad BUT some vampires are working on a blood substitute, so, good? Just please tell me who I'm supposed to be rooting for here, the humans or the vampires, it's all very unclear.  

Then we've got a guy who claims he used to be a vampire, and he is no longer. Is that good or bad? We think now that vampires can be cured, so that's good? But then as soon as they bring news of the cure to the corporate executives, it's not needed because somebody did make a blood substitute that works. Crap, can we all just get on the same page here? We won't NEED the blood substitute if we have a cure, or we don't need the cure because we have the blood substitute, WHICH IS IT? Jesus fuck, there's so much back and forth here. 

The ending is just the worst, I couldn't even tell what happened and by that point I'd pretty much given up on caring about it. Edward and Cormac are vampires who have been cured, so are they human again, or something else? Frankie, Edward's brother, is a vampire soldier who then bites Cormac, the former vampire. But a cured human is somehow immune to vampire bites, and the cured human blood is somehow a cure in itself, so if a vampire drinks cured blood, he himself is then cured. So Frankie is now cured. 

BUT Frankie is soon consumed by other soldiers (wait, I thought you said cured humans were immune from vampire bites, but now they are NOT?) and then Frankie is dead, but those soldiers that ate him are no longer vampires. Great, but then the guy who invented the blood substitute kills them right away - I mean GOD DAMN, what is the point of curing people of vampirism if you're just going to kill them all two minutes later?  Same goes for Charles Bromley, the head of the company that provides the blood. He's tricked into biting Edward, who has been cured. So Charles then becomes cured, great, now that he's human again, maybe he'll see things differently. Nope, he's also immediately killed by vampire troops. I mean, I can see how this thing can spread to turn everybody human again but there has just GOT to be an easier way.

Even in an illogical vampire-run world, there needs to be just one series of logical narrative events leading to some kind of conclusion here. Sure, keep dreaming. 

Directed by Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig

Also starring Willem Dafoe (last seen in "The Legend of Ochi"), Sam Neill (last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Claudia Karvan, Michael Dorman (last seen in "Killer Elite"), Isabel Lucas (last seen in "Immortals"), Vince Colosimo (last seen in "Body of Lies"), Jay Lagai'aia, Harriet Minto-Day, Damien Garvey (last seen in "Love and Monsters"), Sahaj Dumpleton, Tiffany Lamb, Carl Rush (last seen in "The Proposition"), Paul Sonkkila (last seen in "Like Minds"), Todd Levi (last seen in "Blacklight"), Wayne Smith, Mungo McKay, Emma Randall, Charlotte Wilson, John Gibson (last seen in "MacGruber"), Robyn Moore, Troy MacKinder (last seen in "Scooby-Doo"), David Vallon (ditto), Christopher Kirby (last seen in "The Matrix Reloaded"), Michael Ienna (last seen in "In the Cut"), Alex Revan (last seen in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"), Renai Caruso, Jane Wallace, Rohan Smith, Bryan Probets (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Glen Martin, Jason Chin, Konrad Whitten, Mark Finden

RATING: 3 out of 10 crossbows (the weapon of choice in the future, apparently)

Sinister

Year 18, Day 279 - 10/6/26 - Movie #5,453

BEFORE: I've got to work on my November job schedules today, because next month is going to be here before you know it. The last two months of the Movie Year are traditionally a bit of a slower time, because I've usually used up most of my slots and I'm really just interested in finding a path to Christmas and working on the wrap-up post. This year should be no different, except I'll have 15 slots in each of the last two months instead of the usual 10 - so, essentially a movie every 2 days. Or a movie every day until I hit the holiday film, and then down time. Before that I've got to get through a couple Nets games, the WNBA playoffs, and a couple festivals like NewFest and DocFest. Those are real-world events, while my own personal movie blocks are more virtual - it's important that I prioritize things that are real over movie things, which are not, especially during October. Horror movies are not real, I can't stress that enough because if I lose sight of that I'll start having night terrors that are unrelated to work. 

Ethan Hawke carries over from "Black Phone 2". This was made by the same director, only a few years before the first "Black Phone" film. 

THE PLOT: A controversial true-crime writer finds a box of Super 8 home movies in his new home, revealing that the murder case he is researching could be the work of an unknown serial killer. 

AFTER: I haven't watched too many horror films in this "found footage" genre, which I think goes back to "Blair Witch", which was a big sensation back in the day. But that was a little different because somebody made that indie movie to LOOK like the whole thing was found footage that we were all watching, it was a trick of course but a good one. Most of the time the "found footage" is an element within a larger story, in other words, we're watching somebody who's watching the home movies or whatever, as seen here. Ethan Hawke plays a true-crime author who has bought or rented the home where a family was killed, and moved his own family there so he can research his next book. But he hasn't exactly told his wife that they'll all be living inside a crime scene, I'm sure she'll be fine with it and there won't be any repercussions of that whatsoever. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? 

This film was partially inspired by "The Ring", which wasn't really about found footage, but it was about deadly footage, that 2002 film had a cursed VHS tape that killed everyone who watched it, and you know, this was a common problem back in the old days before everybody switched over to DVDs. But I think if you watch "The Ring" on streaming you also die, don't say I didn't warn you. The crime author here finds a whole box of snuff films in his attic, but, umm, who left them there? It's easy enough to think that someone in the family who lived there had a thing for watching people die, but maybe it was whoever killed them? You'd think that the police would have been through every inch of that house, looking for clues, even the basement and the attic. 

The whole family was hung in the backyard, except for one young girl who disappeared and was never found. So, did someone kill the whole family just to kidnap the girl, or what? As Ellison checks out the other films in the crate, he sees a bunch of murders, all by different methods - a family burned up in a car, a family tied to chairs and drowned in a pool, and so on - but they're all filmed in the same style, which implies the same cameraman and/or the same killer. And then after watching them as video files, in slow-motion he notices an ominous face in the background in every film, watching the deaths take place. Creepy. So is this a cult or a deranged psycho? Bigger question, why not turn the videos over to the police or FBI so these crimes can be investigated by professionals? But no, he keeps the films to himself because he thinks he can get his next book out of them. 

A little research with the help of a local deputy (the sheriff is no help, and would very much like it if the author and his family would just pack up and move away) reveals that there are unsolved murders around the country that match what Ellison saw in those films - and in each case, there is a missing child from those families. The film kind of kicks into another gear when the author finds more stuff in the attic, namely child-like drawings of each murder seen on the Super 8 films, each cartoonishly shows the family members in the pool or in the burning car or hanging from the tree as "Mr. Boogie" watches. Then an expert on the occult gets back to Ellison with information about the symbol seen on the walls in some of the films, which is linked to the Babylonian god Bughuul, who lures children into his realm and consumes their souls. 

Sure, the creepy factor is very high here, but it's also just a little pat, like there just happens to be a noted Babylonian demon-god whose M.O. fits all these murder scenes so precisely. And Ellison burns the film projector and the snuff films with lighter fluid, but the next day there's a new crate of them in the attic, and a reel of "Extended Cut Endings"? Come on, no editor works that fast, and it takes like months to reprint films from negatives and half the time the lab screws it up and just gives you a free roll of film to make up for it, am I right?  Now we've got a DEMON arguing with the studio over final cut and demanding the release of his extended cut? Give me a break...

Directed by Scott Derrickson (director of "The Black Phone" and "Black Phone 2")

Also starring Juliet Rylance (last seen in "Love After Love"), Fred Dalton Thompson (last seen in "ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black"), James Ransone (also carrying over from "Black Phone 2"), Michael Hall D'Addario (last seen in "People Like Us"), Clare Foley (last seen in "Southpaw"), Rob Riley, Tavis Smiley (last seen in "I Am M.L.K. Jr.), Janet Zappala, Victoria Leigh, Cameron Ocasio, Ethan Jack Haberfield (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Danielle Kotch, Blake Mizrahi, Nicholas King, Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Caught Stealing"), Rachel Konstantin

RATING: 5 out of 10 talk show appearances

Black Phone 2

Year 18, Day 278 - 10/5/26 - Movie #5,452

BEFORE: I'm going in cold here, I don't even want to KNOW how they could make a sequel to "The Black Phone", considering what happened at the end. Like, The Grabber is back? HOW? Well, I'm sure they'll explain it. The tagline on the poster is "Dead is just a word." and there were a lot of messages from beyond, his victims trying to put things right so I'm sure there's a very reasonable explanation in here somewhere. JK. 

But you see the beauty in my system, right? Most horror fans had to wait FOUR YEARS for a sequel, and I only have to wait two days. We live in a world of wonders. My dad used to avoid going to the movie theater by saying, "Every movie's going to be on TV, someday." And, well, he was wrong but also, he was kind of right. Now I find myself avoiding going to the movie theater by saying, "Every movie's going to be on streaming, someday." And I'm occasionally wrong but also, I'm kind of right. I only go to the theater now once or twice a year, and for me that's often for free, but only for very special movies, like "Star Wars" or Marvel - the rest I can honestly wait for, most of the time. 

Mason Thames carries over again from "Monster Summer". I had to stick yesterday's film in between the "Black Phone" movies to keep the chain from breaking, it's not a big deal, but I had to leave a path open to the next film, via Ethan Hawke, who's in a couple more horror films. 

THE PLOT: As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, his sister begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp. 

AFTER: SPOILER ALERT, The Grabber is dead. Also, the Grabber is back - the first film used the narrative device of the audience being able to SEE the Grabber's victims as they called Finney on the infamous Black Phone, as if they were in the room with him. Well, they were in that room before, and their spirit or essence or whatever, some piece of them was still "there" so we saw them as if they were there. The same goes for the Grabber in this sequel, plus we learn that he had a bunch of warm-up victims before he started working from home. 

It's 1982, four years after the incidents of the first film, and Finn is now a sullen teen who smokes a lot of pot (to deal with the trauma) and is still fighting bullies (to deal with the bullies). His sister Gwen starts to have dreams again, this time about boys being killed at a camp. Then we see a girl named Hope making a phone call, to a seven-digit number that she saw carved in ice on a frozen lake - Hope has also had dreams about boys being killed at the camp, which happens to be missing a few kids. Gwen later has a dream where she's the person on the other end of the phone call, and well, two people with the same psychic dreams, they're probably related somehow. 

Look, it's Denver, I don't know if winter camp is a real thing or not, it does not sound like a very good idea, not with the weather in the Denver area. But let's roll with it because it's the only way we're going to get through this. Gwen convinces Finn that they should become counselors-in-training at Camp Crystal Lake - sorry, I mean Alpine Lake - because that's where their mother worked and there could be more victims of the Grabber there, or something. Like the boys in the basement, their souls could be bound to Earth if they died in a horrible way and their bodies were never found. Gwen also has a boyfriend, Ernesto, who's the brother of Robin, who died in the first film, and the same actor plays Ernesto. (It's a "Landfill" situation, if you've seen "Beerfest"...)

Once they arrive at the camp, which has just closed down due to a giant blizzard (again, it's Denver, what did you THINK was going to happen at winter camp?), Finney starts getting calls from the Grabber on the camp's dead payphone, which I just realized is black-colored. This is a bit ridiculous because the phone booth is totally out in the open, like right next to a lake, you'd think it would be by the administration building or something but no, this is what we're doing. The Grabber now has the ability to make phone calls from the beyond, and he wants to get revenge on Finney. We start finding out that nothing is what we think it is, death is not the end and hell doesn't work like the Bible says, it's a very cold place where they strip away everything that makes you human and you're left with only your sins. 

The theory is that if Gwen and Finn and the camp counselor (who happens to remember both their mother and The Grabber, aka "Wild Bill" from the past) can locate the bodies of the missing boys, then that should decrease the power of the Grabber, who's possibly drawing his energy from the restless spirits of his victims. Umm, sure, that's how it works. So if you kill a lot of people you can come back and semi-live again, makes sense. The Grabber here can't be seen by most people in his vengeful ghost form, but he CAN move things in the real world, like a poltergeist, and he CAN hurt people in their dreams, like Freddy Krueger. Well, damn, how the heck do you fight something like THAT? 

Oh, and one more thing, the kids have always believed that their mother, Hope, committed suicide because of her psychic dreams. Well, the Grabber enters Gwen's dreams (or she enters his, whichever) and he shows her how her dreams led her to learn about his killing spree, so the Grabber had to kill her because she got too close to revealing his habit of kidnapping boys, then he staged her hanging to look like a suicide. It's bizarre that the Grabber actually thinks he's doing Gwen a favor by revealing this, like he's atoning for one of his sins or something, but on a more realistic level, I don't think Gwen appreciates the help. Some things it's better to now know, but I guess now the Blakes are more motivated than ever to defeat the Grabber and banish him from this plane of existence. 

They really had to come up with a sequel plot that kind of wove away in and around the story that was already told, I mean of course the Grabber had a past, serial killers aren't really born, they're made. However, they don't really say WHAT exactly it was about Camp Alpine Lake that drove him to kill, maybe it was those extra preachy Christian camp counselors. They'll really get under your skin with their Bible quoting and their narrow-minded attitude, make you so mad you'll want to kill somebody, I get it. But then why didn't he kill THEM, why pick on defenseless little boys? Umm, I think I just answered my own question. 

There's a final showdown at the lake and The Grabber skating around while holding an axe is a very difficult thing to defeat, especially since most people can't even see him. The humans are going to need some help from the other side if they're going to take him down once and for all. Again. The sequel was only planned after the first film became a success, there was no second short story to draw from, but the author, Joe Hill, wrote a follow-up story specifically made for a sequel film, in other words, inspired by the film. The director has also stated that there won't be a third film unless he's sure he can make one better than the first two - honestly, I wish every film director thought like that. 

This one kind of hits home tonight, because my mother died in May and man, a phone call from her right about now would be very much welcomed, even if she was calling collect from the Great Beyond and even if I had to find a pay phone, which is impossible these days. Or even if she was calling to tell me about some murders at camp years ago, or (more likely) some weather incident or traffic accident in NYC that I either already knew about, or wasn't affecting me at all. Heck, even if she just needed help with the crossword puzzle. Again. 

Directed by Scott Derrickson (director of "The Black Phone" and "Doctor Strange")

Also starring Ethan Hawke, Madeleine McGraw, Miguel Mora, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone, Jacob Moran (all 6 last seen in "The Black Phone"), Demian Bichir (last seen in "Land"), Arianna Rivas (last seen in "A Working Man"), Maev Beaty (last seen in "Dream Scenario"), Graham Abbey (last seen in "Take This Waltz"), Anna Lore, Simon Webster, Shepherd Munroe, Chase B. Robertson, Dexter Bolduc, Jazlyn Wong-Lee, Julien Norman, 

RATING: 7 out of 10 giant exposed heating coils (In a wooden cabin? Surely this is a fire hazard. Come on, winter camp in Colorado can't really be a thing, can it?)

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...)

The Black Phone

Year 18, Day 276 - 10/3/26 - Movie #5,450

BEFORE: Well, it took a couple days to get rolling, but I think some scary things are looming here, nothing's given me nightmares yet, which is good, but this would be the season for it. I got my one bag of Halloween candy which should suffice, if we get no trick-or-treaters and we have to eat the candy ourselves, well, I made sure to get only fun-size candy bars that we like. There's Halloween decorations in the Dollar Store, but also Thanksgiving table decorations and Christmas stuff. Why not buy all three and just decorate the house once, for All Hallows' Thanks Christmas Eve? OK, I'm still workshopping the name. HalloThanksMas? 

I'm on Movie 250 for the year, this is really the last numerical stop-over before the end, so this Movie Year will be over in just 50 movies, we're much closer to the end than to the beginning, and it will be over before you know it. Just like life at my age. E. Roger Mitchell carries over from "The Crazies". This one's been sitting on the watchlist for a couple years, so I'm going to take the opportunity to get to it, as it's already got a sequel on the Netflix. 

THE PLOT: After being abducted and locked in a basement, a boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims. 

AFTER: All right, we're finally on a horror movie that's ABOUT something, not just a bad vacation or a town full of chaos. We've got a child predator on the loose in Denver in the 1970's, his name is the Grabber, and he seems to be inspired by that Child Catcher character in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", or maybe that's just me. When I was a kid and saw that happy little Dick van Dyke movie about the flying car, I was pretty darn scared of the Child Catcher. You mean there's are people out there who dress in black and walk around with giant nets and catch kids? What the hell? I mean, I guess there are people like that out there, just not sponsored by the government, and where they put those kids and what they do to them, well, you're probably better off not knowing. 

But the timeline is right, the 1970's is about when there started to be a lot of kids going missing, starting in 1984 they were putting their pictures and names on milk cartons, because that's what you want to read about in the morning while you're eating your Froot Loops, that some kid from your class has gone missing and is currently in someone's basement, if they're lucky. More likely they're already buried somewhere and their body will never be found. (The milk carton thing lasted until the mid 1990s when somebody invented AMBER alerts.). How many "Grabbers" were there in real life that were never caught? I guess we'll never know. 

Back then, there was nothing you could really DO when somebody disappeared, sure the police were working on it, but gone is gone. You couldn't search every house, and if there wasn't any evidence to go on, what next? So there was probably a feeling of helplessness and disappointment in addition to the loss. Finney Blake here has lost both a close friend and a rival on a Little League team, but he's also got an abusive father who's drunk most of the time, and no way to track down The Grabber - oh, don't worry, he'll come and find YOU. Finney's sister, Gwen, has had a dream about a black van and black balloons, and suddenly the police want to talk to her, because they did find evidence of black balloons, and that information was not released to the press. This leads to the police questioning their father, who then beats Gwen for apparently having psychic dreams, an ability her mother had, and those dreams drove her to suicide. 

One day Finney encounters an amateur magician with a black van and black balloons (uh-oh) and I'm not sure if he fell for the Grabber's diversions, or if he went willingly to find out what happened to his friend. Either way, he wakes up in a basement room and the masked Grabber brings him food on a tray, informing him that the basement is soundproofed and there's no way out. But he MIGHT let Finney out if he follows the rules...yeah, I kind of don't think this guy is very trustworthy, call me crazy. There is, for some reason, a black rotary phone on the wall, which is disconnected and useless. So, umm, why is it there, then? 

Ah, at some point the phone DOES ring, which is confusing at first. But the call is from another victim, somehow, only that caller is confused about who they are and also where they are. Finney knows enough about the missing boys to determine that this is one of the Grabber's previous victims, and he's got some information about what's to come, and possibly a way to escape. A second call from Bruce, the baseball player, has advice to dig a tunnel, which turns out not to work, however the advice was still helpful in the long run for another reason. There's a pattern here, which is quite clever, because individually each previous victim was unable to escape, so it makes sense that their advice is insufficient, but perhaps with enough phone calls Finney could try different things, and put together something that can work. 

Meanwhile, Gwen is trying harder than ever to have one of those psychic dreams, so she can determine the location of her missing brother and relay that information to the police. Eventually the psychic energy in town (or whatever) allows her into the backstory of one of the victims, and there are enough clues within that kid's story for her to ride around the town and look for a house with a certain look and a certain house number. But, can she figure it out in time, and will the police believe her? 

This feels like "Stephen King Lite", it's a little bit of "It" and a little bit of "The Shining" and maybe a whole lot of "Stranger Things" mixed together. Well, the Duffer Brothers probably stole a bunch of things from Stephen King, too. Aha, this is based on a short story written by Joe Hill, who happens to be Stephen King's son, really that explains a LOT about it. The director apparently added a bunch of things from his own childhood, growing up in Denver in the 1970's, so that gives it a particular focus and a certain feel. It's fine, I mean I'm not quite sure how they managed to justify a sequel, but I guess I'll find out in a couple days. That's right, I've got to work another film in first, sorry. Not sorry. 

Directed by Scott Derrickson (director of "Doctor Strange" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still")

Also starring Mason Thames (last seen in "Incoming"), Madeleine McGraw (last heard in "The Mitchells vs. the Machines"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Maudie"), Jeremy Davies (last seen in "The House that Jack Built"), Troy Rudeseal, James Ransone (last seen in "Empire State"), Miguel Cazarez Mora, Rebecca Clarke, J. Gaven Wilde, Spencer Fitzgerald, Jordan Isaiah White, Brady Ryan, Tristan Pravong, Jacob Moran, Brady Hepner (last seen in "The Holdovers"), Banks Repeta (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Parrish Stikeleather, Kristina Arjona, Sheila O'Rear (last seen in "Iron Man 3"), Rocco Poveromo, Kellen Rhude (last seen in "The Killer"), Nina Repeta (last seen in "Radioland Murders"), Lukas Colagross, Mark Riccardi, Megan Petersen, Robert Fortunato, Gina Jun (last seen in "The Good Nurse")

RATING: 6 out of 10 issues of Starlog magazine

The Crazies

Year 18, Day 275 - 10/2/26 - Movie #5,449

BEFORE: OK, day 2 of the Shock Block, here's hoping for some real horror, not just a day-to-day killer thriller. I couldn't work in "The Ruins" to go with "A Perfect Getaway", but I noticed that if I had gotten to that film on October 1 somehow, today's film would still be today's film, because Joe Anderson would carry over from "The Ruins" to here. Some things are just inevitable, I guess. 

There were two films last October that were kind of like this, with people going crazy and becoming mindless killers, there was "Cooties" which had kids in an elementary school turned into zombies by eating contaminated chicken, and "Mom and Dad" which had adults turned into killers, they were kind of like two sides of the same coin. Now we've got "The Crazies", which I think I put on the list about the same time as "Cooties", I think this one is older but I just got to that one first. That's how the horror cookie crumbles...

Timothy Olyphant carries over from "A Perfect Getaway".

THE PLOT: After a strange plane crash, an unusual toxic virus enters a quaint farming town. A young couple are quarantined, but they fight for survival with help from a couple friends. 

AFTER: My instincts were correct, this film was released a few years before "Cooties", that film with a similar (?) theme. This one's much more serious, that one was more of a comedy, a zom-com. This one came out in 2010, which is nine years before the COVID pandemic, but I think now that the big shut-down is in the rear-view, I think we can definitely see some similarities. There's a big government take-over in this small town in Iowa where the plane went down (it was in the middle of the night, landed in a lake and apparently nobody even noticed. But, you'd think there would be something in the news about any plane crash, or a missing plane, right? So what does that tell you, that it's all being kept hush-hush? 

Here the transmitted virus or whatever was made as a biological weapon, perhaps if we have films like this, that's one reason people were willing to believe that COVID-19 was made in a lab and didn't come from a Chinese wild animal market in Yuhan. But we had other strains of COVID before, like COVID-17 and COVID-18, so it seems logical that once that's out there, it's going to mutate over time and turn into different strains, like the flu does. If you get your flu shot every year (which you should) you're getting the vaccine for what scientists THINK the most common flu strain this winter is going to be. There's no way to know for sure, another strain may develop and become more prominent, which means your shot was a waste of time, but still, you should probably get it. 

I remember the first COVID vaccines coming out in December of 2020, the news has reminded us that Dolly Parton helped fund the early vaccines. My wife and I were NOT in the first group of people vaccinated, I think we got our shots in February 2021, because I remember spending Valentine's Day on the phone trying to book appointments at the Aqueduct Racetrack here in Queens, NY. And I did get through on the phone, twice, and we both had medical conditions that allowed us to get our shots in an earlier group of senior citizens, even though we weren't THAT old at the time. I think we were very lucky to get the shots so early, and I remember there was snow on the ground when we took the subway to the racetrack - I went four times, twice for my shots and I went with my wife for hers as moral support. 

Anyway, somehow somebody in 2010 had a glimpse of the future, and imagined a small town in Iowa with a biological weapon of some kind in its water supply, something not directly deadly, only it tended to eat away at an infected person's brain until only the kill-or-be-killed lizard mode remained. People would retain their knowledge of using weapons, and their rage levels would be bumped up to the max, which equates to a recipe for disaster. The humanity of the person is gone, their ability to reason and resolve conflicts peacefully, putting them in constant "Mortal Kombat" fight mode. Since the first few people affected were older white men, one with a known drinking problem, it took a while for anyone to realize there was a pattern - it could have just been a form of dementia or substance abuse side effects, until they learned how widespread it really was. 

We see most of the disaster from the POV of David, the town sheriff, and his wife, Judy, who is a doctor. He's got the police training to deal with the violence and she's got the medical knowledge to maybe figure out what's going wrong with these people. David tries to convince the mayor to turn off the town's water supply, because so far the infected people were all close to the town's water source, but the mayor got his training from watching "Jaws", apparently, because since this is a farming community, the water supply is most vital. David goes to the town morgue to check in on the body of the pilot that was found in the river, only to find that the coroner is now infected and attackes him with a bone saw. 

When the government swoops in and offers to relocate all of the town's citizens, they separate David and his wife because she has an elevated temperature - but it's because she's pregnant, not infected. A bunch of similarly feverish women are taken to a facility and strapped to gurneys for everyone's protection, however this also leaves them defenseless when an infected person attacks the compound. Thankfully David has tracked down his deputy, one of the few people who avoided being relocated, and they arrive in time to save Judy and her assistant, Becca. Attempts to get Becca's boyfriend and head out of town are thwarted by more military personnel, who by now are just shooting civilians on sight, just to be on the safe side. Their commandeered car is followed by a helicopter that tries to blow them up, they seek refuge in a car wash which is also populated by infected people, and since the car is being automatically guided through the car wash at a slow speed, the people inside are like sitting ducks. The car wash employees are very angry, I suppose over time they've been overworked and underpaid. 

Taking out a black SUV with a spike strip puts the group in contact with a government employee who reveals what's really going on here, the plane carrying the biological weapon was transporting it to Texas so it could be destroyed. Russell, the deputy, is starting to show signs of being infected, so David and Judy have to make some harsh decisions about whether they can travel any further with him, and at a truck stop, the couple decides (after taking out a few more Crazies) to head for Cedar Rapids, as the government is planning to destroy the entire town, again, just to be on the safe side. The news media informs the public that the disaster in this small town was the result of an industrial accident, to prevent further panic. Sure, because who can tell the difference between a factory fire and a nuclear bomb? 

I mean, if you watch a lot of true crime stuff you hear every so often about someone killing their spouse, or a mother killing her kids and we can't always wrap our heads around the "why" of it, and then here comes a film that says maybe sometimes there is no "why", it's just that sometimes people could lose their rationale and be turned into killing machines. I'm not going to say that's comforting, but the alternative is to believe that humans just somehow snap from time to time or are so stressed out that they lose control. I saw a news report a couple days ago about a man who was stabbed five times on the subway, and I had to stay tuned just to see if the assailant was the same guy who punched me in a subway station a couple of months ago. Part of the reason I did not fight back was because I wasn't sure if that guy had a knife or a gun on him, so I didn't want to escalate the situation. 

But I guess maybe the lesson to be learned here is to stick to bottled water if there's ever any doubt about what's going on in your town. 

Directed by Breck Eisner (director of "Sahara")

Also starring Radha Mitchell (last seen in "Feast of Love"), Joe Anderson (last seen in "Hangman"), Danielle Panabaker (last seen in "Yours, Mine & Ours"), Christie Lynn Smith, Brett Rickaby (last seen in "A Million Ways to Die in the West"), Preston Bailey (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), John Aylward (last seen in "Monster-in-Law"), Joe Reegan, Glenn Morshower (last seen in "The Little Things"), Larry Cedar (last seen in "Love and Monsters"), Gregory Sporleder (last seen in "The Grifters"), Mike Hickman (last seen in "The Spectacular Now"), Lisa K. Wyatt (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Justin Welborn, Chet Grissom (last seen in "Nobody Walks"), Tahmus Rounds (last seen in "Copycat"), Brett Wagner (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Alex Van (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Jay Pearson (ditto), Tony Winters (last seen in "Gremlins 2: The New Batch"), Frank Hoyt Taylor (last seen in "Poms"), Justin Miles (last seen in "Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues"), Marian Green (last seen in "Jackpot!"), E. Roger Mitchell (last seen in "Daddy's Little Girls"), Michael H. Cole (last seen in "Trial by Fire"), Lynn Lowry (last seen in "Eating Raoul"), Chris Carnel (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Jimmy Waitman, Kathryn Kim (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Adam Dingeman, Megan Hensley, Lori Beth Sikes (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Ann Roth (last seen in "Barbie"), Mickey Cole Jr. (last seen in "The Internship"), Elizabeth Barrett, Rachel Storey, Bruce Aune, Jacqueline Sherrard, Mary Lynn Owen (last seen in "One Missed Call"), Pierce Gagnon (last heard in "Scoob!"), Matt Lintz (last seen in "Kill the Messenger"), Wilbur Fitzgerald (last seen in "Life as We Know It"), Lexie Behr,

RATING: 6 out of 10 burning cars