horror Archives – Page 18 of 26

Review: ‘Fear of Rain,’ starring Katherine Heigl, Madison Iseman, Israel Broussard and Harry Connick Jr.

March 24, 2021

by Carla Hay

Katherine Heigl, Madison Iseman and Harry Connick Jr. in “Fear of Rain” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

Directed by Castille Landon

Culture Representation: Taking place in Tampa, Florida, the horror film “Fear of Rain” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A schizophrenic teenage girl in high school becomes convinced that a neighbor (who also happens to be one of her schoolteachers) has kidnapped a young girl and is holding her captive in the neighbor’s house.

Culture Audience: “Fear of Rain” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching tame horror movies that have a lot of missteps and dumb endings.

Eugenie Bondurant and Madison Iseman in “Fear of Rain” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

Stop if you’ve already heard this idea for a horror movie. A young female (usually blonde, usually pretty) begins to wonder if she’s going crazy because she’s convinced there’s a killer on the loose and she might be the next target. It’s a concept that’s been overdone to the point of it being a bad cliché. But that didn’t stop writer/director Castille Landon from recycling this concept and making the lackluster and unimpressive horror flick “Fear of Rain,” which has an ending that is truly moronic.

The cast members of “Fear of Rain” seem to be trying to make the best out of a terrible script. And the film’s cinematography, production design, musical score and other technical production elements are adequate. But all of that is not enough to improve the movie’s overall substandard direction.

It’s a repetitive slog of teenage schizophrenic protagonist Rain Burroughs (played by Madison Iseman) trying to convince people that things she’s seen are not part of her mental illness. The scares in this horror movie are basic and not very original. And the movie bungles a potentially good mystery with an almost laughable showdown and a bunch of nonsense that leave major questions unanswered by the end of the film.

Taking place in Tampa, Florida, “Fear of Rain” opens with a scene of Rain (who’s about 16 or 17 years old) being chased through the woods at night by a hoodie-wearing man whose face is obscured. He grabs her by the legs, drags her, and ties her hands and legs with belts. Then he buries Rain in a shallow grave. But when he leaves, she’s able to climb out of the grave.

It turns out that this horrific experience is just a nightmare that Rain is having while she’s strapped to a gurney in a hospital. While she’s restrained, a hospital attendant injects an unidentified drug into Rain’s arm to calm her down. Get used to this “it was only a nightmare” trickery when watching “Fear of Rain” because this dumb movie has plenty of it.

Rain’s worried parents are in the room with her as she’s getting sedated. Even though Rain is clearly mentally disturbed, her parents Michelle Burroughs (played by Katherine Heigl) and John Burroughs (played by Harry Connick Jr.) ignore all advice to put Rain in a psychiatric facility. It’s unclear how long Rain has been diagnosed as a schizophrenic, but most schizophrenics start showing symptoms in adolescence.

Dr. Ellen Pangloss (played by Enuka Okuma), the hospital psychiatrist who evaluates Rain, tells her that Rain’s “episodes get increasingly worse each time you go off your meds.” Rain tells the doctor that her meds “make me feel like a zombie. I can’t paint and I can’t feel anything.”

Dr. Pangloss is empathetic, but she warns Rain: “One more misstep and the state is going to institutionalize you.” What exactly has made Rain so dangerous to herself or society? The movie never really explains, but there are some hints throughout the story.

When she’s back at home with her parents, Rain (who is an only child) hesitantly goes in her bedroom, which looks like someone trashed the place. She has a flashback to the meltdown that she had in the bedroom, where she got so violent that her father had to physically restrain her. It’s implied that this incident is what landed her in the hospital.

Rain’s father John tells her that he has plans to clean up her bedroom, but in the meantime, Rain can stay in one of the house’s spare rooms. Both of her parents lecture Rain about how important it is for her to keep taking her medication. Rain’s mother Michelle has a more disciplinary attitude about it than her father does. But there comes a time when even John loses his patience with Rain.

Rain likes to paint portraits as a hobby. She’s shown spending some mother-daughter bonding time with Michelle, whose portrait Rain has painted. At home, Rain is fairly obedient and the only thing she rebels against her parents about is taking her medication. Rain agrees to start taking her meds again because she knows it’s possible that she could be involuntarily put in an psychiatric institution if she has another psychotic break.

At school, Rain is a loner and an outcast. Students gossip about her behind her back. When she returns to school and is near the lockers in the hallway, Rain accidentally drops a medication bottle and all of her pills spill out on the floor. Some students stare at her with mild disgust or ridicule as an embarrassed Rain picks up the pills from the floor.

And the movie predictably has a “mean girls” scene, where Rain tries to sit down next to some girls in the school cafeteria, but they won’t let her. Rain then goes outside to eat by herself, and she’s approached by a fellow student named Caleb (played by Israel Broussard), who strikes up a friendly conversation with her. Caleb and Rain have never met before, but he seems to know who she is.

Caleb asks Rain if she wants to play tarot cards with him. It’s an unusual way for a teenage guy to approach someone, but Rain doesn’t mind thinking that Caleb could be an oddball because he is kind and respectful to her. You know where this is going, of course. Caleb becomes Rain’s love interest. However, she’s afraid to tell him that she’s schizophrenic.

Meanwhile, Rain has a teacher at school named Dani McConnell (played by Eugenie Bondurant), who seems happy to have Rain return to her class. It’s hinted at but not described in detail that Rain and Dani had a past altercation (which is not shown in the movie) where Rain physically assaulted Dani, who filed a complaint but decided not to press charges. It’s one of the violent incidents that’s part of Rain’s troubled history that could be used against her if she’s involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution.

When Rain and Dani have a moment alone, Dani expresses that she genuinely wants Rain to have a healthy recovery, and they should move forward from any differences they might have had in the past. Rain seems to want the same thing. But when Rain is at a drugstore, viewers see that Dani is there too. And unbeknownst to Rain, Dani is staring at Rain in a very creepy way.

You know what that means. Rain and Dani are going to have some type of conflict again. One night, shortly after Rain and Dani have their “reconciliation” talk at school, Rain sees something very disturbing from her bedroom window: The house across the street has a girl, who’s about 5 or 6 years old, trapped in the attic. Rain sees the girl yelling for help at the attic window before a shadowy unidentified adult snatches the girl away.

And guess who lives in that house across the street? Rain’s teacher Dani. And why is it suspicious that Dani would have a child in her attic? Because Dani is a spinster who lives alone and almost never has visitors.

Rain is so freaked out by what she saw that she tells her father and insists that they go immediately to Dani’s house to investigate. John is very reluctant because he thinks that what Rain saw was probably a schizophrenic hallucination. But she tells her father that she wasn’t imagining things, so they go over to Dani’s house.

Dani is calm when answering the door. John apologetically tells her that he and Rain have stopped by to check if everything was okay because Rain saw someone in the attic. Dani willingly shows them her attic, which is filled with dolls. Dani explains that her grandmother made these dolls by hand, and the dolls were passed on as an inheritance to Dani.

Dani also says that she hasn’t been in the attic in several years. Rain looks at the attic window and notices that there are fingerprints in the dust on the window. As John and Rain look around the attic, they don’t see anyone else there. Rain wants to search the rest of the house, but an embarrassed John tells Rain that it won’t be necessary. He apologizes to Dani for disturbing her. And then he and Rain leave.

When Rain gets home, she and John have a big argument. She’s certain that Dani is lying because Rain said that in the attic, she saw a 2018 almanac, which contradicts what Dani said about not being in the attic for several years. Viewers have to assume that this story takes place within a few years of 2018. John doesn’t think that the almanac is enough proof.

John yells at Rain, “There’s no one up there! It’s your mind playing tricks against you! Please stay away from that house! If she files another complaint, the state is going to put you in the hospital!”

Meanwhile, Rain continues to have nightmares that take place the woods. In one such dream, a group of people in the woods stare at a painting of Rain that comes to life. And the movie shows another scene in the woods where maggots come out of someone’s hands. These are very mild scares and don’t add anything to the story, especially when viewers find out how the movie ends.

At school, Rain is now terrified of being near Dani. When Rain accidentally bumps into Dani in the hallway, Rain’s horrified reaction is as if she bumped into a serial killer. And at some point in the story, Rain finds out some things that convince her that Dani kidnaps and murders children.

Meanwhile, Rain and Caleb become closer. Rain confides in him about her suspicions of Dani, while continuing to keep her own schizophrenia a secret from Caleb. The Caleb character is basically a retread of the nerdy and nice boyfriend character that Broussard has in the “Happy Death Day” horror movies, where he also plays the loyal believer of the young and pretty protagonist who has visions of crimes that other people say are delusions.

Caleb has a few odd quirks (he doesn’t have a cell phone and he’s unusually fascinated with tarot cards), but he’s supportive of Rain and he tries to keep an open mind when she tells him things that sound very far-fetched. Rain convinces Caleb to go to a local library with her to help her look up missing kids nationwide to see if they can identify the girl whom Rain says she saw in the attic window. They find a photo of a missing girl from another state named Malia Robinson (played by Hudson Rodgers), and Rain is convinced it’s the same girl.

Even when Rain starts to act more paranoid, Caleb is patient with her, but he does express some skepticism when Rain begins to sound really crazy. At school, when Rain sees some cops on campus, she crouches down behind a car and tells Caleb to do the same to hide from the cops. Why? Because she says the cops are looking for her.

Things really go downhill from there, as Caleb and Rain try to play detective and further investigate (translation: spy on) Dani. And then, there’s an asinine plot manipulation where Rain begins to wonder if Caleb is real or in her imagination. Viewers who make it through watching “Fear of Rain” until the horrible end will wish it wasn’t a reality that they wasted time watching this entire messy garbage pile of a movie.

Lionsgate released “Fear of Rain” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on February 12, 2021.

Review: ‘Witch Hunt” (2021), starring Gideon Adlon, Elizabeth Mitchell, Abigail Cowen, Echo Campbell and Christian Carmago

March 23, 2021

by Carla Hay

Gideon Adlon and Abigail Cowen in “Witch Hunt” (Photo courtesy of Momentum Pictures)

“Witch Hunt” (2021)

Directed by Elle Callahan

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional California city of Thirteen Palms, the horror film “Witch Hunt” features a predominantly white cast (with a few Latinos, Asians and African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A teenage girl is conflicted over her mother illegally hiding witches in their home to prevent the witches from being arrested, deported or murdered by government officials.

Culture Audience: “Witch Hunt” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in horror movies about witches and with teenage main characters, but the movie isn’t very scary and squanders the story concept with a rushed and disjointed ending.

Christian Carmago and Elizabeth Mitchell in “Witch Hunt” (Photo courtesy of Momentum Pictures)

“Witch Hunt” has a very interesting concept that would have resulted in an outstanding horror film if it had been handled in better ways. The concept is that in the United States, witchcraft is illegal, and a teenage girl has mixed feelings about her mother being part of an underground network that hides witches who are targeted for arrests, deportations or executions. It starts out as an intriguing horror movie with timely allegories about immigrant controversies in the U.S., but then it monotonously slides into a disappointing hodgepodge of ideas ripped off from other movies. “Witch Hunt” had its world premiere at the 2021 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival.

The performances in “Witch Hunt” are far better than the movie’s plot, which tries to be edgy with social commentary and feminist sensibilities. But “Witch Hunt” ultimately becomes a watered-down “cat and mouse” game with baffling inconsistencies, weak horror tropes and characters making nonsensical decisions. And a character in “Witch Hunt” obnoxiously reveals (without spoiler alerts) the ending of the Oscar-winning 1991 classic thriller “Thelma & Louise,” which has a surprise ending that shouldn’t be revealed to viewers who don’t know how “Thelma & Louise” ends and who haven’t asked for this spoiler information.

Written and directed by Elle Callahan, “Witch Hunt” opens with a red-haired woman in a hangman’s noose who’s being burned at the stake in front of a courthouse somewhere on the East Coast in the United States. A small crowd has gathered to watch this horrific spectacle. A man dressed in a government uniform lights the fire.

In the crowd, the woman’s daughter (who’s about 12 or 13 years old and also a redhead) cries out, “Mom!” Meanwhile, before the woman perishes in the fire, she calls out several times, “Christ!” The visual effects in this scene are somewhat cheesy, but it could be more easily forgiven if too many other scenes weren’t such a letdown.

It’s later revealed in the story that the woman who was burned at the stake was convicted of practicing witchcraft, which is a crime punishable by death in the United States. The Bureau of Witchcraft Investigations (BWI) is in charge of finding and arresting witches. Only women and girls in this story are targeted for being witches. And almost all the witches happen to have red hair. It’s a pretty big plot hole, because if most of the witches in this story have red hair, then that would make it easier for the authorities to find them.

After this scene of a witch burning at the stake, the movie then cuts to three months later in the fictional Southern California city of Thirteen Palms. (“Witch Hunt” was actually filmed in Los Angeles.) Some mean girls are harassing a student in a high-school classroom during a U.S. history class. Two of the girls throw a wadded-up note at a redhead girl named Abby (played by Sydney Wilder). When she opens the note, she sees the words “Witch Bitch” surrounded in flames. Why the animosity toward Abby?

The “mean girls” clique consists of group leader Jen (played by Lulu Antariksa), who is stuck-up and vindictive; Kelly (played by Bella Shepard), who is spoiled and conceited; and Sofie (played by Anna Grace Barlow), who is shallow and somewhat empty-headed. It turns out that Abby has caught the eye of Jen’s ex-boyfriend Paul, who broke up with Jen three months earlier. When Jen sees Paul and Abby flirting in the school hallway, Jen tells cattily tells the other mean girls that Abby is a “slut” and practically snarls, “What does he see in her?”

Another teenager who hangs out with this snooty clique but who doesn’t bully other people is Claire Goode (played by Gideon Adlon), who is a free thinker and isn’t afraid to question out loud some of the government’s policies for witches. One of the policies that’s on an upcoming voter ballot is Proposition 6. A “yes” vote for Proposition 6 is in favor of allowing the California government to deport the children of convicted witches to Mexico, where witches are legal and are given asylum. The proposition came about because many people believe that being a witch is a biologically inherited trait, not just practicing a set of beliefs.

In the United States in this movie, there’s literally a witch hunt going on and deep-seated hatred against witches. During a school break, Claire, Jen, Kelly and Sofie watch a viral news video of a witch being caught by a mob at the U.S./Mexico border. “Witch Hunt” doesn’t get too graphic with its violence (this movie is clearly aiming for an audience that includes a lot of underage teenagers), but based on what’s shown, it’s implied that the witch was probably tortured and possibly killed by the mob.

Claire seems to be conflicted about how witches are being treated in this society. On the one hand, Claire believes that witches are criminals. On the other hand, she doesn’t believe that they should be tortured and killed just because they’re witches. Based on what Claire tells her friends and her mother, she thinks that witches should be locked up or deported.

There’s a reason why Claire has mixed feelings about witches. Her widowed mother Martha (played by Elizabeth Mitchell) has been hiding witches in a secret section of their home. The witches are smuggled in large wooden crate boxes by people in an underground network that are pretending to deliver office-sized bottled water dispensers in the boxes. Claire tells her mother to stop helping witches because it’s illegal and dangerous, but Martha ignores this request.

Martha handles the intake of the smuggled witches, but Claire knows everything that’s going on and is worried that they will get caught. Martha’s ally in the underground network is a man named Jacob Gordon (played by Treva Etienne), who transports the crate boxes to and from the Goode family home. He also takes empty water dispensers from the home, to make it look like he’s collecting bottles for recycling.

Claire has identical twin brothers named Corey (played by Cameron Crovetti) and George (played by Nicholas Crovetti), who are about 8 or 9 years old. They are examples of the many underdeveloped and ultimately useless characters in the movie. The twins add almost nothing to the plot. And the “mean girls” clique also ends up not being a very important plot device for the movie.

During the course of the movie, three witches are shown as those who’ve been smuggled into the Goode family home. The first witch is Gina (played by Ashley Bell), who appears to be in her 30s. Gina speaks in a strange language and has a palm-sized blue butterfly as some kind of magical creature. It’s implied throughout the story that Claire is irritated that these smuggled witches are taking up space in the home, as well as taking up her mother’s time and energy. Gina is eventually smuggled out of the home, and her fate is shown in the movie.

After Gina leaves, two other witches are smuggled into the home: Fiona (played by Abigail Cowen) is about 17 or 18 years old and her sister Shae (played by Echo Campbell), who’s about 12 or 13 years old. Fiona and Shae are hiding because they are orphans whose mother was executed for being a witch. It should come as no surprise to viewers (and it’s not spoiler information) that Fiona and Shae’s mother was the same woman who was shown burned at the stake at the beginning of the movie.

Fiona and Shae would be directly affected by Proposition 6, which looks like it’s going to get voted into law, since the majority of the population hates witches. Claire ends up becoming friendly with Fiona, but Claire is a little creeped out by Shae. One night, Claire wakes up in the middle of the night and is startled to find Shae staring at her, as if Shae is in a trance. Fiona makes an apology on behalf of Shae and explains that Shae is a sleepwalker.

Claire’s quick friendship with Fiona isn’t adequately explained, since the movie makes a big deal of showing how Claire is prejudiced against witches, and it’s the main reason why there’s friction between Claire and her mother Martha. One minute, Claire is calling witches “criminals.” The next minute, Claire is hanging out with Fiona as if they’ve been best friends forever. It’s quite an abrupt about-face that doesn’t ring true.

Of course, a movie like this has a chief villain who is fanatical in his intent to hunt down witches. His name is Detective Hawthorne (played by Christian Carmago), who’s from the BWI. He doesn’t hesitate to commit police brutality to get what he wants.

Detective Hawthorne uses some kind of magical thermal pocketwatch to detect a witch’s presence. If the watch detects low air pressure, then that means a witch was recently there or recently did witchcraft there. It’s not a very clever detective tool for this story, because witches could be smart enough to cover their tracks by manipulating the air pressure.

Unfortunately, Detective Hawthorne is written as a very one-dimensional, predictable character. There’s no suspense or backstory for him. And so, viewers just get Detective Hawthorne being a very hollow antagonist right through the inevitable showdown toward the end of the film.

“Witch Hunt” attempts to draw parallels between bigotry toward witches and real-life bigotry toward undocumented immigrants who pass through the U.S./Mexico border. The hatred of witches is shown in ways that are overtly violent. For example, Claire and other students are out in the schoolyard when they witness a witch getting shot for trying to escape from a Border Patrol detention bus that was passing by the school.

The witch hatred is so out-of-control, attempted murder is allowed to test if people are witches. There’s a scene where BWI officials are at Claire’s high school to try to kill female students who are suspected witches. They strap the girls to wheelchairs, throw them in the school swimming pool, and see if any of them can escape from the wheelchairs during a certain period of time. If any of them can escape, that’s “proof” she’s a witch.

If any of them can’t escape and might die by drowning before the wheelchairs are pulled out of the water, the attitude is, “Oh well, too bad if someone dies.” It’s another terrible plot hole, because it doesn’t take into account that parents of innocent children would be outraged by this type of violence inflicted on their children at school. And not to mention that a school would be sued for these barbaric tactics.

The bigotry against witches and suspected witches also comes out in hate-filled conversations from seemingly “pleasant” neighbors. A nosy neighbor named Cynthia (played by Deborah May) comes over to the Goode home and tells Martha that she heard that someone in their neighborhood was caught smuggling witches over the border. Martha pretends to agree with the bigotry of Cynthia, who says about the witches: “I don’t understand why the Mexicans are giving them asylum. They’re not refugees! They’re criminals!”

But for every scene that adds a touch of realism, there are two or three scenes that are dull or illogical. For example, in one scene, Kelly from the “mean girls” clique is shown trying to buy a ticket at a movie theater, but she’s barred from entry because the employee at the box office tells Kelly that her name is on a list of suspected witches. Claire sits on a bench nearby and watches as Kelly angrily denies that she’s a witch.

First of all, considering all the murderous violence against witches in this witch hunt, it’s kind of bizarre that there’s an entire scene showing that this society punishes suspected witches by not letting them go to the movies. If you think about it, witches who are persecuted in life-or-death situations are supposed to have bigger problems than not being able to go see a movie. And it doesn’t make sense that the government would go to all that trouble to ban witches from movie theaters, when there are other types of banishment that are much worse that could’ve been shown in this movie.

The scene is also illogical because even if movie theaters had a list of names of suspected witches, it doesn’t explain how people could get around that blacklist by paying cash or by using someone else’s bank card to buy tickets. Does that mean that people in this society have to show a photo ID every time they go to the movies and there’s a master list of blacklisted people that all movie theaters have? It’s never fully explained and it’s just a poorly conceived scene overall.

And in another illogical scene, Claire and Fiona sneak out and go to a bar that serves alcohol, even though there’s no explanation in the movie for why these obviously underage girls were allowed in the bar. And why would Fiona agree to this if she’s supposed to be in hiding? In this bar scene, Claire is surprised to discover that Fiona has never seen the movie “Thelma & Louise,” starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon as two best friends who go on the run from the law after one of them kills a man who attempted to rape the other friend.

This is the scene in “Witch Hunt” where Claire blabs the whole plot of “Thelma & Louise,” including the surprise ending. (Viewers of “Witch Hunt” will find out later why Claire gave away all this spoiler information.) But what’s really ridiculous about this scene is that Fiona decides to do some attention-grabbing magic tricks in the bar, such as levitating liquid in a glass. Why go to a bar to do these tricks when they could’ve done all of that in a private location?

And then, the witchcraft is taken up several notches. Fiona suspends time and gets several bar stools to levitate up to the ceiling. Fiona then allows the bar stools to suddenly drop, just as she lets time to start again, while the bar patrons react in shock as they see the chairs fall from the ceiling to the ground. (These tricks are shown in the “Witch Hunt” trailer.) Claire and Fiona quickly run out of the bar, as if they just played a prank.

Of course, as gimmicky as these witch tricks are in the movie, it actually makes no sense for a witch who’s supposed to be in hiding to pull these kinds of stunts in front of people in a public place. Fiona might be a stranger to people in the bar, but Claire is more recognizable in the community. It doesn’t take long for word to spread that Claire is hanging out with a witch. And you know what that means when Detective Hawthorne finds out.

“Witch Hunt” has some scenes that are supposed to be spooky but just come across as a little bit amateurish, considering all the high-quality scares that are in plenty of other horror movies. Coincidence or not, Adlon was also in 2020’s “The Craft: Legacy,” another not-very-scary witch movie that had problems with its screenplay and direction. As the main character in “Witch Hunt,” Adlon’s acting is perfectly adequate, but Claire’s personality isn’t very memorable.

There are long stretches of “Witch Hunt” that are boring, while the last 15 minutes are rushed to cram in the climactic showdown and a last-minute explanation for something that was obvious throughout the film. And one of the worst things about “Witch Hunt” is when Martha makes a decision toward the end that’s completely contradictory to her purpose in the movie. Children might enjoy this movie more than adults who want a compelling and believable story. Ultimately, “Witch Hunt” panders to people who don’t have enough life experience to notice the big plot holes in the film.

UPDATE: Momentum Pictures will release “Witch Hunt” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on October 1, 2021.

Review: ‘The Night’ (2021), Shahab Hosseini and Niousha Noor

March 13, 2021

by Carla Hay

Shahab Hosseini in “The Night” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“The Night” (2021)

Directed by Kourosh Ahari

Some language in Persian (Farsi) with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the horror film “The Night” features a predominantly Iranian cast of characters (with a few white people and one African American) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A married couple and their baby daughter stay in a creepy hotel for the night and experience unexpected terror.

Culture Audience: “The Night” will appeal primarily to people who like ghost stories and don’t mind watching a horror movie that takes a while to get to the movie’s biggest scares.

Niousha Noor in “The Night” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

Some horror movies put frightening scenes early on on the movie to hook in viewers, but the horror flick “The Night” has a “slow burn” type of terror that is best appreciated by people who have the patience to watch the entire movie. There are some scenes that drag and get a little too repetitive before the reason for the ghostly haunting is revealed, but it’s worth the wait to find out the secret. “The Night” (directed by Kourosh Ahari) is also a rare horror movie that’s told from the perspective of Iranian immigrants who are living in the United States.

“The Night” (which Ahari co-wrote with Milad Jarmooz) takes place in Los Angeles, but Hotel Normandie (where most of the movie is set) has an eerie, timeless quality to it that makes it look like it could be in almost any Western country. The opening scenes of the film, which takes place at a casual dinner party, show that the married couple at the center of the story have a tight-knit social circle of fellow Iranian immigrants. Babak Naderi (played by Shahab Hosseini) and his wife Neda Naderi (played by Niousha Noor) are an attractive couple in their 30s who are the parents of a 1-year-old baby daughter named Shabnam (played by Leah Oganyan).

Also at the dinner party are two other couples: Babak’s brother Mohsen (played by Alain Wachnevsky); Mohsen’s wife Elahe (played by Kathreen Khavari); an emergency-room doctor named Farhad (played by Armin Amiri); and Farhad’s wife Sara (played by Gia Mora). The dinner party is being held at the house of Mohsen and Elahe. And the three couples are playing a murder mystery game.

After the game is over, the women talk amongst themselves about their children, while the men talk about their work. It seems like a perfectly normal gathering, which is the movie’s way of showing that Babak and Neda have been leading a relatively stable life until they make the fateful decision to check into a certain hotel. When it’s time to go, the couple say their goodbyes for the night.

Babak is slightly drunk, so Neda is nervous about letting him drive. Farhad says that they can stay over at his house for the night, but Babak insists that he can drive home. Why doesn’t Neda drive? It’s implied that she doesn’t have a driver’s license. While their car is heading back to their house, some typical horror movie tropes start happening.

A shadowy-looking animal (which looks like a chicken) suddenly appears in the middle of the street. Babak tries to avoid hitting the animal, but there’s a noticeable sound of something being hit by the car. When Babak gets out of the car to see what happened, there’s no sign of the animal or anything that had been hit by the car. But there is a black cat lurking nearby. This black cat will be seen more than once during the movie.

This near-miss car accident already has Babak and Neda on edge when they notice that their car’s GPS doesn’t seem to be working correctly. The malfunctioning GPS is a minor plot hole because the movie doesn’t really explain why Babak and Neda would need a GPS to find their way back home. Maybe they’re so new to the area that they still need a way to navigate the streets of Los Angeles.

At any rate, Babak and Neda agree that it’s best that they don’t risk any more possible accidents while Babak’s judgment is impaired, so they decide to stay in a hotel for the night. They check into the nearest hotel that looks good to them. It’s Hotel Normandie.

As soon as they arrive, a homeless man (played by Elester Latham) standing outside the front door approaches Babak and Neda and babbles incoherently. It unnerves the couple, but the vagrant appears to be harmless and he doesn’t ask them for money. This homeless man shows up again later in the story.

Right from the start, the hotel gives off ominous vibes. The hotel’s interior is very dark and the lobby is deserted, except for the hotel receptionist (played by George Maguire), whose name is never disclosed in the movie. The receptionist tells them that the only space available is not a hotel room but a suite, and Babak says that’s okay. The check-in process starts off as normal, but then the receptionist tells Babak and Neda about the hotel’s very unusual policy for guests.

Guests cannot leave the hotel at night, unless they ask the receptionist on duty for the key to open the front door, which is locked from the inside at night. The receptionist tells Babak and Neda that under no circumstances can they open the front door on their own at night. This warning would be enough to set off red flags to most other people, but maybe Neda and Babak are just too exhausted to care. Instead of finding a less restrictive hotel, they decide to check into Hotel Normandie.

Babak and Neda are given Suite No. 414. It doesn’t take long for some unusual activity to start happening. At first, these incidents are not scary as much as they are annoying to Babak and Neda.

They hear a lot of running in the hallway and thumping noises in the room above them. When Neda opens the door, she sees a 5-year-old boy (played by Amir Ali Hosseini) standing in the hallway. The boy asks for his mother, and Neda asks the boy if he’s lost, but he runs away without saying anything more.

When Babak takes a shower, he notices that the tattoo on his left inside arm has the red marks of skin irritation. And then he gets a nosebleed. Neda has a matching tattoo, which has some significance later in the story.

Because of the noise, Babak has trouble sleeping, so he goes downstairs to the lobby with Shabnam to get some water for the baby. What kind of hotel suite doesn’t have bottled water? It’s another plot hole, or maybe it’s the movie’s way of showing how clueless Babak is that something isn’t right with this hotel.

The lobby is still deserted except for the receptionist, who asks to hold the infant. He picks up the baby and cradles it. The receptionist starts rambling to Babak, and that’s when it finally sinks in with Babak that this hotel is very creepy.

The receptionist tells Babak that that he’s witnessed a lot of tragedies, such as the 2015 terrorist attacks at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris and 2017’s Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The receptionist also said that he was at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas in 2017 during the mass shootings. (It’s a reference to when suspected sniper Stephen Paddock committed mass murder by shooting people from his Mandalay Bay Hotel into the outdoor Route 91 Harvest concert.)

“Oh yes, I’ve seen a lot of death,” the receptionist says with crazy eyes. “But the worst is the death of a child. That’s repugnant. Sometimes, there’s no way out. It’s like quicksand: The more you struggle, the deeper you get in.”

An alarmed Babak naturally takes the baby away from the receptionist. The receptionist responds by saying, “I’m sorry if my words disturbed you. Have a peaceful night,” before walking away. Shortly afterward, Babak looks through the lobby’s glass front door and sees a woman in black standing behind him. He’s startled, but when he quickly looks behind him, the woman has disappeared. (According to the film credits, the woman in black is played by two actresses: Cara Fuqua and Boshra Haghighi.)

These bizarre encounters aren’t enough for Babak to want to check out of the hotel and go somewhere else. It’s implied that Babak thinks that he might have been hallucinating because he had been drinking alcohol. But as more strange things start happening, Babak becomes convinced that it’s not because of the alcohol he consumed earlier that night.

Babak and Neda try to complain to the front desk about the intrusive noises, but no one answers when they call. When they go downstairs in person, the receptionist is nowhere in sight. The spouses eventually call the police. A cop (played by Michael Graham) shows up to investigate and he acts as if their complaints are an unfounded nuisance. But then something happens with the cop that makes it clear once and for all that there’s something very sinister going on at this hotel.

“The Night” might get some comparisons to director Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic “The Shining,” because both movies are about a married couple with a young child, who are all seemingly “trapped” in a haunted hotel. The mysterious boy in the hallway is also a nod to the mysterious twin girls who appear in the hotel hallway in “The Shining.” And both movies show hints early on that the husband has some “issues” with mental stability and wanting to always in control. “The Night” is nowhere as suspenseful or impactful as “The Shining,” but at least there’s more of an explanation for why this haunting is taking place.

However, the weakest part of the plot for “The Night” (and this is usually the biggest problem with movies about people in haunted places) is it doesn’t make sense that the people under attack didn’t try to leave earlier. There’s no logical explanation for why Babak and Neda didn’t think about checking out of the hotel when things got so weird and uncomfortable for them. At least with “The Shining,” the excuse was that the hotel was in a remote area, and a blizzard made leaving the hotel nearly impossible.

The acting performances in “The Night” elevate some of the flimsier parts of the movie’s plot. Because so much of the story is focused on Babak and Neda, “The Night” relies heavily on the performances by Hosseini and Noor to make this a convincing horror story. Fortunately, they deliver with realistic emotions, even if their characters in the movie don’t show a lot of common sense.

Ahari’s direction dangles just enough mystery to keep viewers curious enough to find out why this family is being haunted. However, it would be very easy for anyone watching this movie with any distractions to get bored or lose interest. “The Night” is a movie best experienced in a room with no distractions and with the biggest screen possible.

Some viewers might find the very dark lighting in “The Night” to be effective or annoying. (It’s in contrast to “The Shining,” where some of the scariest scenes in the movie took place in brightly lit rooms.) However, “The Night” musical score by Nima Fakhrara succeeds in helping create an unsettling mood throughout the movie. The big reveal in the film is not as surprising as it is heartbreaking. And the impact that this revelation might have on viewers is what makes “The Night” a horror movie that wants people to think about issues that are larger than a ghost story.

IFC Films/IFC Midnight released “The Night” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on January 29, 2021.

Review: ‘Smiley Face Killers,’ starring Ronen Rubinstein, Crispin Glover and Mia Serafino

March 6, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Smiley Face Killers”

Directed by Tim Hunter

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed California city, the horror flick “Smiley Face Killers” features an all-white cast of characters, most of whom portray middle-class college students, and a few portraying vicious serial killers.

Culture Clash: A young man who’s a soccer player at his university is being stalked by serial killers in a van.

Culture Audience: “Smiley Face Killers” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching bottom-of-the-barrel horror films that are boring and use a misleading gimmick to get people’s attention.

Crispin Glover in “Smiley Face Killers” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

The first thing that people should know about the horrendously dumb “Smiley Face Killers” is that this movie actually has nothing to do with the real-life Smiley Face Killers theory. It’s a theory that’s mentioned in the movie’s prologue: Since 1997, more than 150 young men across U.S. college campuses have drowned under suspicious circumstances. Because symbols of smiley faces were spray-painted at the scenes where many of the bodies were found, numerous people have come to believe that these deaths were caused by a serial killer or serial killers who use the smiley face as their signature.

One of the worst things about “Smiley Face Killers” (and there are many terrible things about this movie) is that it’s just a substandard slasher flick that has nothing to do with mysterious drownings. The people who are killed in the movie are stabbed, shot and/or bludgeoned to death in ways that have been seen before in hundreds of other horror movies. Therefore, the “Smiley Face Killers” filmmakers (including director Tim Hunter and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis) not only deliberately made this time-wasting film very misleading but they also failed to deliver anything original or suspenseful in the movie.

The movie begins with a gratuitously violent scene of a goat, pig and dog being murdered by an unknown person whom viewers can assume is the story’s main killer. The next scene takes place in Santa Cruz, California, on September 23, 2016. A young man walks to his car in an empty parking lot at night. A white van drives up next to him, he’s kidnapped, and then his dead body is shown discarded outside on some rocks near the California coast.

The next scene takes place in Santa Clarita, California, on March 14, 2017. It’s night and a young man is on a sidewalk and talking on his phone to a female friend as he walks several feet behind some of of his pals. They all look like they’re headed to a party or some other place to hang out together. And then, the same mysterious white van appears, pulls up next to the guy on the phone, and you know the rest.

Next, viewers are introduced to the movie’s protagonist Jake Graham (played by Ronen Rubinstein), an undergraduate student in his junior year at the fictional California University in an unnamed city. (Woodbury University in Burbank, California, was used for the movie’s campus scenes.) Jake is first seen doing laps in the school’s swimming pool. Does this mean that his swimming skills will come in handy at some point in the story? No.

Jake’s main sport at the school is actually soccer. Jake and his teammate/best friend Adam (played by Garrett Coffey) are two of the better players on the university’s soccer team They also like to party. After Jake finishes his swimming exercises, Jake and Adam are seen in an outdoor eating area. Adam asks Jake if he got the “E,” as in Ecstasy.

Jake says yes, but the drug dealer was “quite the weirdo,” and Jake is having second thoughts about doing Ecstasy. He tells Adam: “I don’t know how smart it is taking E on a Friday night when the next morning we have soccer practice.” Jake says he doesn’t even feel like going to the party that he and Adam planned to attend that night. Adam replies, “Come on, we’re not getting wasted. We’re just doing a little mellow E.”

Of course, Jake changes his mind and goes to the party, because every slasher movie with college-age people has to have the obligatory scene of people partying while a killer is on the loose. And then there are also the expected sex scenes. In “Smiley Face Killers,” the sex isn’t as explicit as it is in other slasher flicks, because Jake has “performance issues.” Jake goes over to the student house where his girlfriend Keren (played by Mia Serafino) lives, they go to her room to have sex, but things don’t happen the way they want.

And because of Jake’s “performance issues,” it’s here that viewers find out that he’s on the antidepressant Nardil. Jake’s mental illness is never fully explained in the movie, such as when he was diagnosed, if he has other psychiatric issues besides depression, and how it all affects his life. In the end, it doesn’t make a difference in this idiotic film, because the killer on the loose isn’t asking for people’s medical histories.

“Smiley Face Killers” wastes a lot of time with a dull storyline about problems in Jake and Keren’s relationship. Keren is upset because Jake has told her that he’s stopped taking his medication, and then he reluctantly tells her he’ll start taking his meds again. Jake is upset because he’s found out that Keren still keeps in friendly contact with her most recent ex-boyfriend Rob (played by Cody Simpson), who might want to get back together with Keren. Viewers will be upset the more time they spend watching this movie because most of it is a monotonous slog.

Throughout the movie, viewers see that the mysterious white van has been driving around campus near places where Jake is, but Jake is oblivious until one night the van starts following him while he’s on his bicycle. He’s able to lose the van, but this dimwit isn’t on alert and doesn’t do anything to protect himself. You already know that there will be another time when he’s going to see that white van again. And when he does, his reaction is one of the worst things about this annoyingly bad movie.

Jake gets other clues that he’s being stalked. He starts getting random text messages that say variations of “The water is calling you.” He immediately assumes that it’s a prank that Rob is playing on him. Rob vehemently denies it when Jake accuses him. That leads to Rob and Jake having a predictable argument.

Jake starts to wonder if someone really is out to get him. Keren thinks that Jake’s mental health is deteriorating because he might or might not be telling the truth about taking his medication. While all of this is going on, Adam still expects Jake to party as if they don’t have a care in the world.

Jake shares a house with a 30-year-old grad student named Devon Holmes (played by Daniel Colvin). One day, Jake comes home and finds a strange map in his bedroom. The map has smiley faces drawn up and down the coast of California. Jake assumes the map belongs to Devon, and he’s slightly annoyed that his housemate would leave this map in his room. And not long after that, the murder spree happens on and near the college campus.

It’s not a spoiler (since it’s in the movie’s title) to say that there’s more than one killer involved. It’s obvious from the first 10 minutes that the killers are the same people who are in that white van. Crispin Glover portrays the mute and unnamed leader of this murderous team. This creepy killer is the one who’s most likely to step out of the van and slaughter someone. The only spoilers for this type of mindless movie would be to reveal who dies and who doesn’t.

“Smiley Face Killers” is one of those horror flicks filled with people who are good-looking in a way that’s unrealistic of what most real California college students would look like. It’s the type of movie where there’s no diversity, and all the college students with speaking roles look like physically attractive actors instead of real college students. And the people in these student roles seem to have been chosen more for their looks than their acting skills, because the acting in the movie is unbelievably bad.

It’s also one of those movies that embodies everything that people ridicule in repellently awful horror flicks. Everything is extremely predictable, the violence is mind-numbing, and the people who are being chased in the movie make very dumb decisions. “Smiley Face Killers” is an example of a reprehensible movie that tries to cash in on real-life tragedies. But even in this ripoff movie, the filmmakers couldn’t even get the details right of what happened in the real deaths that are believed to be part of the Smiley Face Killers theory. The only mystery about the film is why the producers wasted their money to get this worthless junk made.

Lionsgate released “Smiley Face Killers” on digital and VOD on December 4, 2020. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on December 8, 2020.

Review: ‘Paranormal Prison,’ starring Todd Haberkorn, Paris Warner, Don Shanks, Corynn Treadwell, Easton Lay and Brian Telestai

February 20, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Paranormal Prison”

Directed by Brian Jagger

Culture Representation: Taking place in Boise, Idaho, the horror flick “Paranormal Prison” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and one Native American) representing the middle-class and working-class.

Culture Clash: A group of YouTube paranormal investigators, who are led by a cynical skeptic, visit an abandoned prison that is supposedly haunted.

Culture Audience: “Paranormal Prison” will appeal primarily to people who will watch any horror movie, no matter how terrible or boring it is.

Corynn Treadwell and Paris Warner in “Paranormal Prison” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

Horror movies have a reputation for being extremely derivative because so many of them recycle the same ideas that dozens of other horror flicks have already done. Slasher flicks have a maniac on the loose. Ghost stories have a group of people trapped somewhere with a spirit that’s supposed to be terrifying. And so, with originality not usually being a characteristic of a lot of horror movies, these movies should at least have some level of suspense and plenty of scares. Unfortunately, “Paranormal Prison” (directed by Brian Jagger) fails on every level of what makes a good horror movie.

“Paranormal Prison” looks like a student film that was made without any experienced filmmakers giving much-needed suggestions on all the improvements that should have been made to this embarrassing dud. This 70-minute movie is a terrible bore that, at best, should have been a short film instead. If you want to watch a feature-length movie where almost everything except for the last 15 minutes consists of people monotonously walking and talking in what’s supposed to be an abandoned prison, then go ahead and waste your time watching “Paranormal Prison.”

“Paranormal Prison” borrows heavily from the “Paranormal Activity” concept, including repeatedly using screens that show icons for recording activity and battery life, to replicate video recordings from the camera-operating perspective. The very thin plot of “Paranormal Prison” is that four paranormal investigators go to an unnamed abandoned prison in Boise, Idaho, to find out if the stories are true about the prison being haunted. The investigators are all in their 20s, except for their leader, who’s in his 30s. They are the staffers for a YouTube channel called The Skeptic & The Scientist, whose purpose is to debunk paranormal activity stories.

The four people on this excursion are:

Matthew (played by Todd Haberkorn), also known as The Skeptic, who’s the group’s cocky and obnoxious leader. Matthew is financing the YouTube channel with his trust fund money. He constantly likes to tell the other people on the team that they have to do what he says because he’s paying for everything.
Sara (played by Paris Warner), also known as The Scientist, is a self-described “tech geek.” She has invented a paranormal detection device that she will test for the first time in the abandoned prison.
Ashley (played by Coryn Treadwell), the channel’s sound technician, is a military veteran who joined the paranormal group after experiencing a personal tragedy that she talks about in the movie.
Jacob (played by Brian Telestai), the channel’s camera operator, is romantically involved with Ashley, even though his boss Matthew has a romantic interest in her too.

Matthew and Sara are the co-hosts of The Skeptic & The Scientist. Matthew doesn’t believe in ghosts, while Sara is open to the idea of ghosts existing if there is scientific proof. Even though Matthew and Sara co-host the channel, he never lets her or anyone else forget that he’s in charge. Because Matthew doesn’t believe that spirits exist, he doubts the effectiveness of Sara’s invention, which she calls a syncotron kinetic energy testing computer.

The abandoned prison that these paranormal investigators will be visiting was shut down in 1973, after its last big prison riot. The prison had a section for men and a section for women. According to a montage of local citizens being interviewed in grainy video footage, there was a government cover-up of a 1939 riot at the prison, where three prison guards were killed during this riot. Ever since the prison was permanently closed, it’s become known as a haunted site, and tours are given to the public.

The prison is said to be haunted by serial killer Mary Beth Flake, a local heiress from the early 1900s who was convicted of murdering several people (including her husband) because they were opposed to her suffragette activities for women’s right to vote. The abandoned prison also has an eerie reputation because people who make any recordings inside the prison find out after they leave the prison that their recordings are blank. The prison is about to be torn down and condominiums built in its place.

The Skeptic & The Scientist team members are the last people who’ve gotten a permit to film inside the prison before the building will be demolished. The four paranormal investigators go to the prison and are greeted by an assigned park ranger whose last name is Shtog (played by Easton Lay), and he gives them a guided tour of the run-down facilities. This begins the long-winded majority of this tedious movie, where it’s nothing but all five of them going from room to room while filming and talking. They’re supposed to be the only people in the prison . But are they really? The crew sets up some surveillance equipment, and not much happens for most of the story.

During this tour, Shtog tells them more details about Mary Beth Flake, whose photo is shown several times in the movie, as if it’s supposed to be scary. The local folklore about Mary Beth Flake (played by Amanda Fitch, because you already know that this movie will show her as a ghost) is that she is always associated with four roses. There’s a bushel of four roses growing year-round outside the prison that are supposedly kept alive because of the spirit of Mary Beth Flake. And the local legend is that if any of the four roses start to go away, that means trouble is coming.

Over the years, people who had ghost sightings at the prison reported smelling roses before they saw the ghost. The four roses are there when the team arrives at the prison. But it should come as no surprise that one of the four roses has gone missing while these visitors are inside the building. Sara is the first to notice the missing rose. She becomes frightened and asks the other people who has the flower. The other people there deny that they took the rose.

During the tour, the investigators see a large male mannequin lying on a bed in a prison cell. Shtog explains that the mannequin is of a real-life prisoner named Black Wolf, a Native American who was incarcerated during the same time as Mary Beth Flake. According to Shtog, she hated Black Wolf because he wasn’t white, and the two became mortal enemies. Predictably, Black Wolf (played by Don Shanks) is more than a mannequin in this movie.

During the long stretch of time when not much happens in the movie, there are some very weak attempts to bring some scares, by showing glimpses of shadows. Matthew mouths off a lot and becomes more and more irritating as the story goes on. Sara’s invention is supposed to work by showing a green light if it detects humans and a blue light if it detects a paranormal entity. But it’s questionable if they really need this invention because these paranormal investigators still get ambushed. And there’s at least one predictable “fake scare” scene in the movie.

“Paranormal Prison” director Jagger wrote the movie’s screenplay with Randall Reese, and it’s their first feature film. This lack of experience shows in the worst ways. “Paranormal Prison” is an example of a badly made movie that’s ruined by unnecessary filler. And certain details that should have been intriguing, such as the story about the four roses associated with Mary Beth Flake, end up being irrelevant to the movie’s conclusion.

The acting performances in this movie range from mediocre to downright awful. The filmmakers deserve some credit for not having sexist horror clichés of making the male characters the smartest ones who always come to the rescue of “weaker” female characters. In “Paranormal Prison,” the female characters are more intelligent than the male characters. But that’s not saying much when all the movie’s characters are stuck with forgettable dialogue, and the acting just isn’t very good at all. And because almost the entire film takes place inside a run-down building, there’s nothing impressive about the movie’s production design.

The last 15 minutes of “Paranormal Prison” are rushed, with scares and chase scenes crammed in, almost as afterthoughts. And a backstory is quickly introduced to explain why the prison is haunted. But these plot developments are too little, too late. “Paranormal Prison” is an apt title because viewers unlucky enough to watch this entire movie will feel like they’re trapped in a jail cell of unnaturally horrible and repetitive boredom.

Gravitas Ventures released “Paranormal Prison” in select U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on February 19, 2021.

Review: ‘The Sinners’ (2021), starring Kaitlyn Bernard, Brenna Coates, Brenna Llewellyn, Aleks Paunovic, Lochlyn Munro, Michael Eklund and Tahmoh Penikett

February 19, 2021

by Carla Hay

Brenna Llewellyn, Natalie Malaika, Keilani Elizabeth Rose, Jasmine Randhawa, Kaitlyn Bernard, Brenna Coates and Carly Fawcett in “The Sinners.” (Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media)

“The Sinners” (2021)

Directed by Courtney Paige

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed North American city, the horror flick “The Sinners” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few people of color) representing the middle-class and working-class.

Culture Clash: In a conservative Christian town, seven teenage girls form a cult-like clique where they each represent the seven deadly sins, and then members of the group start getting murdered.

Culture Audience: “The Sinners” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in independent horror films that are suspenseful and make the most out of their low budgets.

A scene from “The Sinners.” Pictured in front row, from left to right: Carly Fawcett, Kaitlyn Bernard and Natalie Malaika. Pictured in second row, from left to right: Jasmine Randhawa, Keilani Elizabeth Rose, Brenna Coates and Brenna Llewellyn. (Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media)

Before anyone dismisses “The Sinners” as just another horror movie where a bunch of teenagers get murdered, consider that it skillfully takes on religious bigotry and sexual oppression while balancing it with an intriguing mystery, gruesome horror and even some touches of comedy. It’s not an easy balancing act, but “The Sinners” mostly succeeds in being a memorable independent horror film in a sea of mindless slasher flicks.

“The Sinners” is the feature-film directorial debut of Courtney Paige, who wrote the screenplay with Erin Hazlehurst and Madison Smith. Paige is also an actress, which might explain why the casting is better than most low-budget movies of this type. Some of the acting is amateurish, but the dynamics between the actors look more authentic and natural than a lot of horror movies that could care less about character development or chemistry between the actors.

The story of “The Sinners” centers on a clique of seven girls who are classmates in their last year at a Christian high school in an unnamed city in North America. (The movie was actually filmed in Paige’s Canadian hometown of Kelowna, British Columbia.) These teenagers call themselves The Sins, and they have each assigned themselves to represent one of the seven deadly sins. They are:

Grace Carver (played by Kaitlyn Bernard), the group’s assertive blonde leader, represents the sin of lust. It’s ironic because Grace, who is the child of a strict pastor, is a virgin, but she has a secret love that’s considered taboo in her religion.
Tori Davidson (played by Brenna Coates), who sometimes dresses as an emo or Goth, represents the sin of wrath. She’s the tough-talking rebel of the group, and she’s in a secretive romance with Grace.
Katie Hamilton (played by Keilani Elizabeth Rose), who is very spoiled and materialistic, represents the sin of greed. She likes to make others feel inferior by bragging about what her wealth can buy her.
Molly McIvor (played by Carli Fawcett), a compulsive eater, represents the sin of gluttony. She is very self-conscious about her looks because she’s not as thin as the other girls in the group.
Robyn Pearce (played by Natalie Malaika), a passive follower, represents the sin of sloth. She wants to go to a good college but is too lazy to study, so she cheats instead.
Stacey Rodgers (played by Jasmine Randhawa), who often compares herself to other people, represents the sin of envy. Her loyalty depends on what she can get out of it.
Aubrey Miller (played by Brenna Llewellyn), a quiet redhead who becomes a target for the others’ bullying, represents the sin of pride. The other members of the Sins turn on Aubrey when Grace decides that Aubrey is a snitch.

Aubrey is the narrator of the movie, which opens with a scene of Aubrey being kidnapped by the other Sins, who are wearing masks. This kidnapping ends up being the catalyst for much of the horror that happens in the last third of the film, when certain members of the Sins are murdered, one by one. This isn’t a slasher film where the murderer is revealed from the beginning. There are several people who could be suspects.

Out of all the members of the Sins, Grace is the one whose home life is shown the most. She lives with her parents and three siblings in a very oppressive and religious home ruled over by her father Pastor Dean Carver (played by Tahmoh Penikett), who demands that everything has to be done his way. Grace’s mother Brenda Carver (played by Loretta Walsh) is passive, but she has compassion and often acts as a peacemaker when Dean and Grace get into arguments.

Grace’s older sister Hannah (played by Karis Cameron) sometimes shares Grace’s tendency to be sarcastic and rebellious. By contrast, their younger teenage brother Luke Carver (played by Maxwell Haynes) wants to be the family’s “goody-two-shoes” child and is ready to tattle on Grace and Hannah to their father if he sees them doing anything wrong. The youngest child in the family is a baby boy, who’s briefly seen in the movie and whose name is not mentioned.

At the beginning of the movie, Grace has broken up with a fellow student named Kit Anderson (played by Dylan Playfair), who is still pining for Grace because he keeps calling her and trying to get back together with her. Some of the students, including the other members of the Sins, are aware that Grace and Tori are more than friends. However, Kit is in denial that Grace could be a member of the LGBTQ community and ignores the rumors that are swirling about Grace’s sexuality.

Grace and Tori have to keep their romance a secret, because they go to a religious high school (where all the students wear uniforms and have classes where they study the Bible) and they live in a very conservative Christian community. Tori and Grace canoodle in bathroom stalls at school, and their study sessions in Grace’s bedroom have some snuggling and kissing. Grace’s pastor father doesn’t really approve of Tori, who’s the type of student who will get sent to the principal’s office for blurting out impatiently in class: “Jesus, are you done?”

Grace’s father also doesn’t really approve of Grace’s part-time after-school job working at a flower stand called Andy’s Flower Stream. The business, which operates out of an Airstream trailer, is owned by a bohemian type named Andy Lund (played by James Neate), who’s a laid-back and friendly boss. Andy lives in the trailer with his hippie-ish girlfriend Summer Dobson (played by Jen Araki), who encourages Grace to walk in bare feet and feel “love and light.”

In a voiceover, Aubrey says about Summer, who used to be Aubrey’s babysitter: “I always had a creepy feeling about her. You know the people who always claim ‘light and love and positive.’ Well, they’re usually the most broken.” But the person Aubrey dislikes the most is Tori, because she thinks Tori is a hateful bully.

The top law enforcement official in town is Sherriff Fred Middleton (played by Aleks Paunovic), who provides some of the movie’s comic relief because he tries to be imposing but he’s really kind of a goofball. He’s first seen in the movie when he shows up in the empty classroom where his wife Maggie Middleton (played by Elysia Rotaru) is a teacher at the high school. (Maggie is also Andy’s sister.)

Maggie walks in the classroom and tells Fred, as she unbuttons her blouse, that they have nine minutes before the students arrive for the next class. Fred and Maggie, who’ve been trying to start a family, end up having quickie sex in the classroom. It’s played for laughs because Aubrey, who sees Fred leave the classroom and guesses what he had been doing there, asks him what he has on his collar. He quickly looks to see if a stain is there (there isn’t) and figures out that Aubrey was just trying to embarrass him when she tells him that she tried to go into the classroom but the door was locked.

Aubrey keeps a journal of her innermost thoughts. And all hell breaks loose when Tori and Kathy steal Aubrey’s journal. Certain incidents lead the other Sins to believe that Aubrey has been snitching on them. And when they find out what Aubrey has to say about them in the journal, their suspicions seem to be confirmed.

First, they lure Aubrey into a “study group” session which turns out to be an excuse to harass and haze her. Then, they kidnap Aubrey and take her to a remote wooded area, where things spiral out of control, but Aubrey manages to escape and goes missing. And then, other members of the Sins start to disappear and are brutally murdered.

Sheriff Middleton and his Deputy Douglas Sanders (played by Taylor St. Pierre) end up clashing with the higher-level government detectives who are sent to investigate the murders. The outside investigators are Detective Zankowski (played Michael Eklund) and Detective O’Ryan (played by Lochlyn Munro), who treat the sheriff and the deputy like incompetent yokels. Middleton and Sanders think that they’re being undermined by arrogant big-city types who don’t know the community. Meanwhile, as these two factions have their power struggle, more of the Sins get killed.

“The Sinners” makes great use of cinematography by Stirling Bancroft to create an atmosphere of foreboding beneath the pristine and orderly exterior of this suburban community. (There’s a recurring image of a rose stuck in the mouth of dead girl that’s particularly striking. It’s probably why the move was originally titled “The Color Rose.”) The movie’s production design and costume design are well-done, given the film’s small budget. And the whodunit aspect of the mystery is not as predictable as viewers might think it is.

There’s only one scene in the movie that seems awkward and out-of-place. It involves Grace having a secret occult meeting with two women and one man who look at least 10 years older than she is. It’s never explained how a sheltered preacher’s kid like Grace came to find these people or how long she’s known them. And the scene ends up being irrelevant, given what happens at the end of the movie.

The actresses who portray the seven Sins are convincing as a pack of “mean girls” who are “frenemies,” with their loyalty to each other always in question. As Tori, Coates stands out with having the most realistic acting and also the most obviously complicated character. On the one hand, Tori is exactly the type of bully that Aubrey despises. On the other hand, Tori has a very tough-but-tender side to her that’s loving with Grace and very protective of her. Their secret romance adds another layer of terror and anxiety in the story, since the unforgiving homophobia in their community makes Grace and Tori afraid to be open about the true nature of their relationship.

“The Sinners” is definitely not a horror classic on the level of director David Fincher’s 1995 film “Seven,” another macabre thriller with the seven deadly sins as its theme. As far as slasher films go, “The Sinners” can be considered slightly better than most. And it’s also a promising feature directorial debut for Paige, who shows she has a knack for telling a gripping horror story in a way that can capture people’s interest from beginning to end.

Brainstorm Media released “The Sinners” on digital and VOD on February 19, 2021.

UPDATE: Lifetime will premiere the movie under the title “The Virgin Sinners” on August 21, 2021.

Review: ‘Saint Maud,’ starring Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle

February 10, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Saint Maud”

Directed by Rose Glass

Culture Representation: Taking place in unnamed city in England, the horror film “Saint Maud” features a predominantly white cast (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and upper-middle-class.

Culture Clash: A hospice nurse in her 20s is convinced that she can communicate with God, but her religious beliefs sometimes conflict with other people.

Culture Audience: “Saint Maud” will appeal primarily to viewers who like “slow burn” horror films that leave a lot that’s open to interpretation.

Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle in “Saint Maud” (Photo courtesy of A24)

There’s never any question that something is very wrong with the mental state of the title character in the psychological horror movie “Saint Maud.” The problem is that Maud doesn’t see anything wrong with herself, as long as she’s getting all the guidance she needs from the deity that she thinks is in communication with her. “Saint Maud” (the feature-film debut of writer/director Rose Glass) is a haunting story about the fine line between religious fanaticism and losing touch with reality. Throughout this well-acted film, Maud often blurs those lines, sometimes to devastating effects.

“Saint Maud,” which takes place in an unnamed city in England, never reveals how or why Maud (played by Morfydd Clark) became obsessed with Christianity and the idea that she can communicate with God. The main things that viewers find out about Maud is that she’s a woman in her 20s who works as a hospice nurse, a profession she’s had for about a year. She previously worked in a hospital, where a terrible incident happened that was related to Maud having a mental breakdown. This breakdown isn’t shown in the movie, but it’s discussed by Maud and a former co-worker named Joy (played by Lily Knight), who knows some things about Maud that Maud doesn’t want other people to find out.

Maud lives a solitary life in her sparsely furnished studio apartment, where she spends most of her free time praying, reading the Bible, and engaging in other religious practices. She has a shrine that includes a crucifix of Jesus Christ and illustrations of saints and other holy people. Much of “Saint Maud” is narrated with her voiceovers, where she usually sounds meek and soft-spoken. But all is not tranquil in Maud’s world.

This chaos is clear from the movie’s opening scene, when viewers first see Maud: She looks crazy and almost like she’s in a trance. And she’s crouched on a bathroom floor with blood on her face and hands. The movie eventually shows what led her to get to this horrifying point. Until then, viewers of “Saint Maud” get taken on a ride of her slow descent into pure madness.

Near the beginning of the movie, Maud is shown as the caretaker a wheelchair-bound patient named Amanda Köhl, a former dancer/choreographer, whom Maud describes in a voiceover as “a minor celebrity.” Amanda, who is in her 50s, lives alone and has no children. There are vague references to Amanda’s past as a bon vivant with an active social life. But now, Amanda is struggling to cope with the reality that she’s dying, she can’t dance anymore, and she’s even losing her hair because of the cancer. That doesn’t stop Amanda from being somewhat of a chainsmoker.

Maud explains in a voiceover that she doesn’t care for creative types because they tend to be very self-involved. In that respect, Amanda fits that description. But it’s obvious that Amanda’s moodiness and difficult attitude has a lot to do with the pain and trauma of having stage 4 lymphoma of the spinal cord. Amanda lives in a village by the sea, in the type of Gothic mansion that’s often see in horror movies. Even though Amanda could be isolated, she welcomes having visitors.

And that’s a problem for Maud, who thinks it’s best for Amanda to live the type of quiet and hermit-like life that Maud has when she’s in her own home. Even though Maud hasn’t been taking care of Amanda for very long, Maud shows a very possessive and manipulative side in how she handles her relationship with Amanda. Maud acts inappropriately jealous when Amanda has visitors who show a sexual interest in Amanda.

One of these visitors is named Richard (played by Marcus Hutton), who dotes on Amanda and around the same age as she is. Richard used to be one of Amanda’s suitors. It’s clear that Richard still has feelings for Amanda, but there’s no romance between them. In fact, Amanda is somewhat rude to him and at one point tells Richard: “Don’t be an idiot.” When he leaves, Amanda tells Maud that Richard is a “pompous asshole,” and Amanda makes a snide comment about Richard’s hair plugs.

The other visitor is more problematic for Maud because Amanda is very fond of this person. Her name is Carol (played by Lily Frazer), who’s about 25 years younger than Amanda. When Carol comes over to visit, and she and Amanda are heard laughing in Amanda’s bedroom, Maud spies on them and sees that Amanda and Carol are lovers. It isn’t long before Maud comes up with a scheme to try to get Carol out of Amanda’s life.

Maud isn’t as uptight as she first appears to be, because there’s a scene in a bar where a very different Maud emerges. She’s literally got her hair down, she’s drinking beer, and looking for some sexual company. One night at the bar, she meets a man (played by Jonathan Milshaw), they exchange looks, and the next thing you know, she’s giving him a hand job in the bathroom. They don’t even bother to find out each other’s names.

And then on the same night, she goes home with another man (played by Turlough Convery) and has sex with him. What’s the name of the man who’s this one-night stand? Christian. Oh, the irony. During their sexual encounter, Maud starts to hallucinate, she has a little bit of freak-out, and Christian tries to calm her down, just so he can keep having sex with her.

Back in Amanda’s home, Maud projects an image of being very religious and modest, almost like a nun. Amanda even jokes that Maude could be Amanda’s “savior.” Amanda senses that Maud is a born-again Christian or a recent convert. Maud confirms that she’s recently become a devout Christian when Amanda asks her about Maud’s spirituality. And when Maud confides in Amanda that she can feel God’s presence, Amanda says she can feel it too. But is Amanda telling the truth or just playing along as a way to amuse herself?

“Saint Maud” is one of those movies where there’s an unreliable narrator, and what might be seen on screen could be a hallucination. As the story goes on, there are scenes of Maud in literal agony and ecstasy as she gets deeper into her religious obsession. Sometimes she pants heavily and writhes on the floor as if she’s in an orgasmic state. Sometimes she engages in some self-harm that might be too hard to watch for people who get easily squeamish.

Clark gives a memorable performance as the tortured Maud, who tries to appear “normal” on the outside, but is falling apart on the inside. Ehle gives a more straightforward performance as Amanda, who has a cruel streak but who also admits her flaws and tries to make amends when she can. It’s obvious from the beginning of the movie that things are not going to end well, but viewers will be curious to see how bad things get.

“Saint Maud” has its gory moments, but most of the movie’s horror has more to do with losing one’s grip on sanity rather than any violent acts that might be in the movie. Glass shows a lot of promise as a director who can tell an intriguing story. Where the movie falls short is in leaving questions unanswered about Maud’s background to give some context of what led her to this point in her life.

There was that incident in her hospital job, but it’s never explained if she discovered religion on her own or was taught. There’s no mention of Maud having any family, friends or love interests. There’s no sense of what kind of upbringing she had or how long she’s had issues with mental health. A little backstory for Maud would’ve gone a long way with this movie.

However, what will keep people interested is the fascinating range of emotions that Maud shows in her present life. She’s one of those “quiet people” whose rage comes out in flashes, from her face distortions when she’s alone, to how she lashes out when things don’t go her way. The visual effects in the movie are used sparingly, but when they’re in the movie, they make an impact.

Some viewers might be surprised by how long it takes before any real violence happens in “Saint Maud.” That would be missing the point of this horror film. This isn’t a dumb slasher flick with a killer on the loose. Sometimes the most terrifying things can happen in the trappings of a sick mind.

A24 released “Saint Maud” in select U.S. cinemas on January 29, 2021. Epix will premiere the movie on February 12, 2021. “Saint Maud” was released in Europe and Canada in 2020.

Review: ‘The Village in the Woods,’ starring Beth Park, Robert Vernon, Sidney Kean, Richard Hope, Therese Bradley, Timothy Harker and Chloe Bailey

February 10, 2021

by Carla Hay

“The Village in the Woods”

Directed by Raine McCormack

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed part of England, the horror flick “The Village in the Woods” features an all-white cast representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A husband and a wife are stranded in the woods and arrive at a hotel, where some very strange things start to happen to them.

Culture Audience: “The Village in the Woods” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching forgettable and badly written low-budget horror films.

Robert Vernon, Richard Hope, Therese Bradley, Timothy Harker and Chloe Bailey in “The Village in the Woods” (Photo courtesy of 4Digital Media)

Getting trapped in the woods has become such a horror cliché that any movie with this concept should deliver something that’s truly unique and entertaining. Unfortunately, “The Village in the Woods” doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from the hundreds of other horror flicks that are based on a concept that people are trapped somewhere by evil forces. The movie’s cinematography, production design and music are all very solid, but “The Village in the Woods” can’t overcome its sloppily written screenplay, uneven pacing and some very wooden acting.

“The Village in the Woods” (directed by Raine McCormack, who co-wrote the screenplay with John Hoernschemeyer) begins with a married couple driving through the woods at night, somewhere in England. (The movie never names the city, but “The Village in the Woods” was actually was filmed in several locations: East Sussex, Kent and Somerset.) The woods are dense with trees and fog. And just as you would expect to happen in a horror movie, the couple’s car runs out of gas.

The spouses are named Jason (played by Robert Vernon) and Rebecca (played by Beth Park), who both look like they’re in their 30s. And they’re annoyed by the inconvenience of their car not working. But then again, when you’re in a horror movie and you run out of gas in a sinister-looking forest at night, it’s probably your fault. It can’t be blamed on any evil entities that might be waiting for you. And, of course, in a movie like this, cell phones can’t get a signal. Jason and Rebecca decide to sleep in the car and wait until the morning to get help.

The next morning, Rebecca and Jason walk through the woods until they find a large, shabby-looking Victorian-style hotel called the Harbour Inn, which looks like it’s seen better days. In a foreshadowing to come of their opposite points of view, Jason calls the hotel “brilliant,” while Rebecca calls it a “dump.” They decide to go into the hotel anyway and see if they can get help.

From the get-go, Rebecca is uncomfortable with the surroundings and wants to leave as quickly as possible. She gets even more freaked out when she spots an elderly man lurking nearby, as she and Jason walk toward the hotel. Just as soon as she sees this man, he disappears.

Before Jason and Rebecca even set foot at the front door, they are greeted outside by a middle-aged woman named Maddy (played by Therese Bradley), who immediately recognizes Rebecca and greets her warmly, by exclaiming, “Rebecca, we’ve been expecting you!” Rebecca seems a little caught off guard, as if she doesn’t recognize Maddy, but she pretends that she does.

Maddy immediately notices that Rebecca is wearing a turquoise ring. Maddy asks Rebecca if Kit gave her the ring, and Rebecca says yes. Maddy then adds, “I remember her wearing it.” Meanwhile, viewers are thinking, “Who is Kit? Where is this story going?”

Rebecca mentions the strange man that she saw. Maddy says that Rebecca and Jason shouldn’t pay attention to him, because he’s just an eccentric widower named Arthur (played by Sidney Kean), who lives at the hotel. Maddy explains that Arthur moved there after his wife died, “and we’ve been trying to get rid of him ever since.”

Jason tells Maddy that they need some gas for the car, and she willingly obliges by giving them some petrol in a can. However, when Jason puts the gas in the car, it still cannot start. And so, Jason and Rebecca go back to the hotel to figure out what to do next. Rebecca isn’t thrilled about being stuck there, while Jason is more willing to go with the flow and figure things out as they go along.

The movie slowly goes downhill from there. And by slowly, that includes the sluggish pace and the stilted way that many of the actors speak, with awkward pauses. It’s not the worst acting in the world, but better actors would have at least made this movie more engaging to watch. As Rebecca, Park is the actor in the cast who’s the most convincing, but that’s not saying much because the movie isn’t written very well, in terms of plot or dialogue.

One of the biggest flaws of “The Village in the Woods” is how the screenplay introduces plot developments and then leaves them dangling. For starters, Jason and Rebecca don’t even try to find any phones once they’re in the hotel. A hotel that doesn’t have phones is something that would be noticed right away by people who are stranded and their cell phones aren’t working. It’s a big plot hole. The hotel also doesn’t have electricity, which would be a major hassle for Jason and Rebecca, but they don’t even mention these inconveniences.

And in the beginning of the story, Jason and Rebecca appear to have the intent of getting gas for their car and going on their merry way after they leave the hotel. The movie doesn’t mention what their final destination plans are, but it’s made clear that they didn’t intend to stay at the hotel. In fact, the first few scenes of the movie make it seem as if Rebecca and Jason got lost and were not looking for the hotel but “stumbled” upon it by chance.

But then, the story takes an abrupt turn when it’s shown that Rebecca and Jason actually did plan to be at the hotel because they’re con artists who are after some money. They really did run out of gas for their car though. It’s never explained who Rebecca and Jason are supposed to get the money from, but Jason insists that staying at the hotel is the only way they can get the money.

Their con game is never fully detailed except that someone in this couple is impersonating a supposed heir to a fortune. It’s easy to figure out who the imposter is even before it’s revealed that this impersonation is going on, but this con-artist couple doesn’t seem to have any real plan on how to get the inheritance. It’s all just a vague smokescreen so the entire movie can have Jason and Rebecca stuck in this hotel in the woods.

Maddy keeps talking about inviting all of the villagers over to the hotel for a welcome party for Jason and Rebecca. You’d think that when someone says “all of the villagers,” that would be mean a crowd. Wrong. It turns out all of the other villagers consist of just three other people, who all appear to be in their 50s and 60s. This is a low-budget movie, but it’s still a bit of a stretch to have only four people as the entire number of residents of a village.

One of the other villagers is Charles (played by Richard Hope), who seems to be a friendly type. Charles is also Maddy’s lover, as Richard finds out when he overhears Maddy and Charles having sex in a room at the hotel. The village population is rounded out by Vince (played by Timothy Harker) and Anna (played by Chloe Bailey), who also appear to be a couple. All of the villagers have fake smiles and creepy stares so it’s obvious that they’re not as nice as they first appear to be.

“The Village in the Woods” drags on for too long with scenes that show Rebecca becoming increasingly desperate to leave the hotel, while Jason insists on staying. Arthur is a hermit who loiters around the hotel and provides some of the inevitable jump scares when Rebecca turns around and sees that Arthur has been staring at her. Can Arthur be trusted? The movie makes it too easy to figure out early on who the villains are.

There are some flashbacks to a witchy woman named Jenny (played by Katie Alexander Thom) and how she factors into the story. By the time she shows up at the hotel, some secrets have been revealed. And what happens at the movie’s conclusion (which is too rushed) will surprise very few people. The ending seems hastily cobbled together, in contrast to most of the movie that slowly crawls along with not much happening.

Given its low budget, “The Village in the Woods” makes very good use of location, since the atmosphere throughout the film is definitely spooky, as is the cinematography by Jamie Hobbis and Berndt Wiese. Writer/director McCormack, who also wrote the movie’s chilling music, did a competent but not outstanding job with Oral Norrie Ottey on the film editing.

The movie’s visual effects are adequate and not an embarrassment. The filmmakers overdid it on the fog effects though. There’s more fog in this movie than a concert festival with Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on the bill.

With all of these technical elements working cohesively, it’s unfortunate that “The Village in the Woods” did nothing unique or imaginative with the movie’s forgettable story. There are too many over-used clichés in the plot, and the character development is non-existent. During the course of the movie, viewers learn almost nothing about Jason and Rebecca except that they’re con artists and Rebecca wants to be a mother.

Horror movies should not just be about the scares. Viewers have to be invested enough in the characters to care about what happens to them. And it’s hard to care when the characters are as vague and hollow as they are in “The Village in the Woods.”

4Digital Media released “The Village in the Woods” in the U.S. on digital, VOD and DVD on January 19, 2021. The movie was originally released in the U.K. in 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U9S6yWyEQU

Review: ‘Cactus Jack,’ starring R. Michael Gull and Samson Kay

February 4, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Cactus Jack”

Directed by Chris Thornton and Jay Thornton

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2016 in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “Cactus Jack” features an all-white cast of characters representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: An angry white supremacist lets a documentarian into his life and then inflicts terror on the filmmaker.

Culture Audience: “Cactus Jack” will appeal primarily to people who think it’s entertaining to watch a feature-length film with a flimsy plot and non-stop hate speech.

Samson Kay in “Cactus Jack” (Photo courtesy of Cactus Jack Film LLC)

The horror film “Cactus Jack” attempts to have raw social commentary about the evils of racism by making the story’s villain an angry white supremacist. The problem is that the movie—written and directed by brothers Chris Thornton and Jay Thornton—didn’t do enough with this concept to make it worthy of a feature-length film. What should have been a short film is stretched into a movie where about 70% of it is nothing but a white supremacist character spewing hate speech non-stop.

The ranting by the movie’s title character, who’s nicknamed himself Cactus Jack (played by R. Michael Gull), becomes extremely repetitive and boring, and it shows an appalling lack of imagination. This Cactus Jack character is not to be confused with the real-life WWE wrestling star Cactus Jack. It isn’t until the last 20 minutes of this approximately 80-minute “found footage” film that the plot switches to have some horror action. But then, it’s too late to save this monotonous and ultimately pointless movie.

Chris and Jay Thornton made this director statement in the “Cactus Jack” production notes: “Philosophically, ‘Cactus Jack’ is intended as an extremely relevant, thematic zeitgeist treatise and meditation on media and manipulation and on the violence we are capable of once hate hijacks the human mind. It’s an exploration of generational hate, the hubris of the spectator, and, ultimately, an explosive exposé on the institutional hate, racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and propaganda endemic in the United States of America.”

That all sounds very lofty-minded, but the actual results in “Cactus Jack” are that the movie is less concerned with giving thought-provoking insights into bigotry and more concerned with constantly regurgitating the unhinged ramblings of someone who’s a bigoted idiot. “Cactus Jack” is not the noble film it pretends to be. Just like mindless slasher flicks that glorify violence with as many murders as possible, “Cactus Jack” is really just a showcase to glorify how much disgusting hate speech can be crammed into this movie.

If there’s a small percentage of people who watch “Cactus Jack” and think this movie is entertaining or enjoyable, they are most likely the type of people who are not automatically hated by white supremacists. People are more likely to give the repulsive hate speech in this movie a “pass” as entertaining if this hate speech isn’t something that a white supremacist would say about them. However, in the context of this movie, the hate speech doesn’t further the plot. It’s just a time-wasting gimmick.

The real name of the racist character in the movie is never revealed, but he calls himself Cactus Jack later in the story, when his hate-filled rants go viral and he gets some Internet fame. It’s unknown if this racist character or this movie’s filmmakers were aware that Cactus Jack is also the name of the record label owned by African American rapper Travis Scott. Oh, the irony.

The movie’s very simplistic plot is that Cactus Jack is a middle-aged white supremacist loser, who’s unemployed and lives with his widowed mother in an unnamed U.S. city. And he deliberately hasn’t left the house’s basement for the last six months. “Cactus Jack” was actually filmed in Milwaukee. Not that it makes a difference, because almost the entire movie takes place in the basement.

The movie takes place in 2016, before and after the U.S. presidential election. Cactus Jack, who believes in starting a race war, makes it clear that he’s a Donald Trump supporter. At the beginning of the movie, Cactus Jack is being interviewed by an amateur filmmaker named Chris Sandberg (played by Samson Kay), who wants to make a documentary about Cactus Jack.

Chris isn’t seen on camera very often for the first two-thirds of the movie, but he can be heard talking when he isn’t on camera. Chris found out about Cactus Jack because their mothers go to the same church. Chris’ parents are divorced and he doesn’t seem to have much contact with his father. This wannabe filmmaker is intrigued by the idea of someone who has refused to leave a house basement for months. Chris wants to know how Cactus Jack is able to live this way.

Because so much of the movie is about Cactus Jack’s non-stop ranting, Chris can barely get in any words while he’s interviewing Cactus Jack for the movie. Chris’ first meeting with Cactus Jack is Chris’ way of finding out if this demented racist is really as bad as he heard about from his mother. And to Chris’ fascination and horror, Cactus Jack is even worse than he imagined.

How does Cactus Jack make money? He says he gets money through cryptocurrency, and he hints that he’s involved in illegal activities. How does he eat? He has the basement stockpiled with enough non-perishable food, like an extreme survivalist. The basement has a kitchen, a bathroom and a bed. Cactus Jack says he’s never had to leave the basement for the past six months, but that’s questionable, since he’s not exactly an upstanding, trustworthy person.

Cactus Jack despises anyone who isn’t a white, heterosexual Christian male. His putrid and repetitive monologues are basically different ways of expressing the same hateful things. And he says this is the reason why he wants to live like a hermit: “Why would I want to live out there? I’ve got everything I need right here. I’m my own man. I know how to exist and thrive without aid.”

Anyone can see that he’s shut himself off from other people because he probably can’t handle being in the real world. Because in the real world, there are people of all races, genders and religions who are better off and happier than bigots who let their lives be poisoned and consumed by hate. It’s a reality that he obviously doesn’t want to accept.

After an intense session with Cactus Jack, Chris films himself as he’s parked his car, and he’s practically giddy over all the controversial content that he’s filmed for the documentary. Chris literally pants about Cactus Jack: “He’s serious. He’s mining the real, raw shit … There’s something there that we need to learn. We need to all hear from him. There’s some disconnect there. If we can just find it, now’s the time to get in there.”

And the salivating continues, as Chris says: “This guy is pure hate. It’s like the drug of hate, and if we can figure out how he’s getting high off of it, maybe we can start pulling that shit out … It’s like a science project.” Chris will soon come to regret trusting Cactus Jack.

The misogyny of Cactus Jack is most evident in how much he despises his mother, who is never seen on camera because she remains upstairs. (She can’t stand him either.) His racist rants are occasionally interrupted when he and his mother yell at each other. Based on what Cactus Jack says, his mother (voiced by Linda Cieslik) is a retired teacher, and she has physical ailments that often leave her bedridden.

And he has a lot of resentment toward his mother because he thinks his dead father should have left the house to him, not to her. Cactus Jack tells Chris that he owns the house and lets his mother live there. But it’s obvious that Cactus Jack is lying, because if he really owned the house, he wouldn’t be living in the basement. Cactus Jack also hates his mother so much that he probably would’ve kicked her out of the house if he really owned it.

The mother doesn’t hold back on how much she detests her son. In one of their vicious verbal arguments, she calls him a “fucking loser,” a “pathetic lowlife” and a “disgusting coward.” She then screams, “I hated you since the moment you were born! I wish you were stillborn!”

Little by little, Chris finds out more about Cactus Jack’s family background. Cactus Jack’s father was a heavy drinker, whom this bitter son describes as “weak” because “he always liked to take the easy way out … My old man ran from everything.” It should come as no surprise when it’s revealed how Cactus Jack’s father died.

Eventually, Cactus Jack shows Chris a trunk filled with a secret stash that was owned by Cactus Jack’s father, who (not surprisingly) was a hardcore racist too. In the trunk are an Abraham Lincoln mask, Nazi memorabilia and weapons. And because this is a horror movie, of course what’s in the trunk will be used by Cactus Jack.

Chris films Cactus Jack calling talk radio stations to spread his racist rhetoric. Cactus Jack uses aliases when he does these on-air rants. It’s just another way that the movie drags out the hate speech without much purpose but to fill up time. During their first few meetings, Chris didn’t tell Cactus Jack his last name. But when Cactus Jack asks what Chris’ last name is, and Chris hesitantly says his last name is Sandberg, that’s when Cactus Jack starts to wonder if Chris is Jewish.

Chris is occasionally nervous around Cactus Jack, but Chris is essentially an enabler who seems more concerned about exploiting Cactus Jack’s hate for the documentary rather than stopping the hate. It’s what this entire movie does too, because it reeks of exploitation to cash in on controversy from extreme racism. Even though Cactus Jack keeps telling Chris that he’s planning to commit violent acts and Chris knows about Cactus Jack’s stockpile of weapons, Chris doesn’t seem concerned about warning law enforcement about Cactus Jack’s plans because he wants to keep filming Cactus Jack for the documentary.

It isn’t until Chris’ life is in danger that he finally sees how destructive Cactus Jack can be. Whatever Chris does after that is really just for his own self-preservation, not because he cares about fighting bigotry and preventing violent racism. It’s why this movie has no real heroes, which is probably what the filmmakers intended while trying to pretend this movie is a “thematic zeitgeist treatise.”

Cactus Jack ends up imprisoning and torturing Chris. (This isn’t spoiler information because it’s in the movie’s trailer.) What happens next is easily predictable, because a “found footage” horror movie almost always means that someone is going to end up dead. The last third of the movie tries to rush in some horror suspense, but even that gets almost as repetitive as the racist rants that stink up the movie.

“Cactus Jack” is edited almost like a music video, with a lot of quick cuts, especially during the torture scenes. This editing technique is distracting and annoying for a movie of this subject matter. The cinematography and production design are nothing special. And the acting is mediocre, although Gull is much more convincing in his role as this angry bigot than Kay is in his role as an enabling filmmaker who gets in way over his head.

People who make exploitative and gimmicky movies about racism like “Cactus Jack” often like to say, “Oh, look at this horrible racism. We’re shining a light on how bad racism can be.” But it’s an intent that doesn’t ring true if the people who make these movies don’t practice what they preach and can’t be bothered to have a racially diverse filmmaking team.

Racism comes in different forms. It can be aggressive (like the type that Cactus Jack has) or it can be subtle, like the type of racism that filmmakers have when they make a movie about racism and then they have all sorts of weak excuses for why they don’t work with a diverse group of people. People who enjoy this movie the most have to take a good look at their own lives and see if they’re not that much different from the horrible bigot in this movie, based how diverse (or not) they choose their social circles to be in the real world, not online.

It’s a hypocrisy that needs to be examined, but hypocrites often deny they’re part of the problem, and they’re too busy pointing fingers at the obvious racists. It’s too bad that “Cactus Jack” took a lazy, obvious and ultimately ineffectual approach to the societal poison that is racism. And just like the title character, what this movie has to say just adds up to hateful garbage.

Prickly Pear Productions and Rosa Entertainment released “Cactus Jack” on Vimeo on Demand on January 22, 2021.

Review: ‘His House,’ starring Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku

January 28, 2021

by Carla Hay

“His House”

Directed by Remi Weekes

Some language in Sudanese with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in England and in South Sudan, the horror flick “His House” features a predominantly black cast of characters (with some white and Latino people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A refugee husband and wife flee from war-torn South Sudan to England but find a different kind of horror in their new home.

Culture Audience: “His House” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in horror movies that are more about dark psychological issues and society oppressions than bloody gore.

Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku in “His House” (Photo by Aidan Monaghan/Netflix)

At first, the horror movie “His House” might appear to be a standard horror flick about a haunted house. There’s the surface-level plot that is common in movies with haunted house movies : A married couple moves into a new home, which is plagued by spirits that cause terror. But “His House” (the feature-film debut of writer/director Remi Weekes) delves much deeper than just the protagonists’ usual dilemma about what to do about the ghosts. It’s also a blistering meditation on trauma, both self-inflicted and that which is imposed by society.

In the beginning of “His House,” married couple Bol Majur (played by Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù) and Rial Majur (played by Wunmi Mosaku) are shown fleeing their native South Sudan by boat with other war refugees. They land in an unnamed part of England, but are quickly detained by immigration authorities. Bol and Rial are told by a condescending immigration official Mark Essworth (played by Matt Smith) that they will be freed from detention under certain conditions. “This is bail … not citizenship,” Mark tells the couple.

In exchange for their freedom, Bol and Rial are placed in a run-down housing development, where they are assigned a nearly empty house that’s also in a state of disrepair. The U.K. government has also assigned jobs to Bol and Rial, as a condition for the couple not to be deported. Living in the house comes with strict government rules: No guests, no smoking and no candles.

Mark tells Bol and Rial that they should feel lucky because this house is much larger than what the government gives to an undocumented immigrant couple. Rial is immediately suspicious. “Why are we so special?” she asks Mark. He replies, “You must’ve hit the jackpot.”

Bol and Rial try to make the best of the situation by looking at this new chapter in their lives with a positive attitude. Rial comments, “We will be new here.” Bol adds, “Born again.” However, it’s hard to overlook that the one-bedroom house is such a dump. It’s dirty, the wallpaper and paint are peeling, and the house’s electrical connections don’t always seem to work properly.

During the couple’s first night in the house, it becomes immediately apparent that things aren’t quite right there. Bol hears the sound of someone humming and then rustling sounds. And then, a bat flies through a hole in the wall after he sees a vision of Rial on the floor.

The area around the house is desolate and bleak. The neighbors keep to themselves, and so do Bol and Rial. The movie gives a slight feeling of disorientation when Bol visits a barber and asks him if they’re in London. And the barber gives a strange answer: “Why not?”

As time goes on, Bol and then Rial start to see frightening visions of people in the house. Sometimes the people appear to be hiding between the walls, while other times the people appear in the same rooms. During one startling incident, Bol finds behind peeling wallpaper that there’s a long rope attached to seaweed. He then sees a blonde girl doll, which a mysterious hand then quickly grabs and pulls back into the abyss.

Bol and Rial are terrified to tell people what they’re seeing in the house, because they don’t want to risk looking like crazy immigrants. If they report the house as haunted, they could be even more at risk for being deported. And they can’t move from the house, as per government rules that Bol and Ral agreed to, in order to avoid being deported. The best that Bol and Rial can do is report that the house is experiencing electrical problems, with the hope that government officials who come to inspect can possibly find the root of the problem.

As part of their government-sanctioned asylum, Bol and Rial get medical checkups. During Rial’s visit with a doctor, she explains why she has unusual marks on her body: While in South Sudan, she marked herself with the signs of both warring tribes so that she wouldn’t get killed. The idea was to confuse any possible captors about which was her real tribe. Later in the story, it’s revealed that before fleeing to England, Rial watched her entire family in South Sudan get murdered during a brutal massacre.

The rest of “Our House” gradually uncovers more layers to the story, and the details won’t be revealed in this review. However, it’s enough to say that there’s a family curse and a dead daughter that have a lot do with why Bol and Rial might be haunted by the spirits who inhabit the house. And certain characters aren’t necessarily who they first appear to be.

“His House” also has the added depth of being an immigrant story of people who are in a foreign country that they both admire and fear. In movies about haunted houses, the people being plagued by these ghosts are usually there of their own free will and won’t move because they’ve got too much invested financially in staying in the house. “His House” flips that typical narrative by making it a movie about people essentially forced to live in a haunted house, on orders of a government. This immigrant couple was seeking freedom in another country, but the irony is that in this new country, this husband and wife have essentially held captive by a government which is controlling their lives.

The movie is also about how trauma can be its own kind of prison. At various points in the story, viewers are left to wonder what might be “real” and what might be a hallucination. And as the visions get more threatening and oppressive, Bo and Rial have different ways of handling everything. “His House” plays guessing games about who might be more mentally unbalanced: Bo or Rial?

“His House” writer/director Weekes brings a “slow burn” terror to the story that has enough scares to make it a genuine horror movie. The movie does not get bogged down in too much bloody gore, which is the direction that many other movies of this type might go. Even though the house is dilapidated, Weekes brings almost a stylish gloom to the atmosphere when the ghosts appear.

“His House” is also not a typical haunted house movie where, one by one, people get killed in the house, because the Majurs are very much isolated in their new home. Dìrísù and Mosaku turn in admirable performances, especially when more of this couple’s background is revealed. The movie’s acting is effective, but the story’s real impact comes from the lingering feeling that people can move to different places, but they can’t really escape from emotional baggage.

Netflix premiered “His House” on October 30, 2020.