Year: 2006
Rating: 8.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Attempted sexual assault, blood/gore/death, car crashing
Summary: Members of a military sales company go to do a team-building weekend in Hungary. However, there's more waiting for them in the woods than the cabin they'll be staying at...
For horror comedies, you usually expect it to be around an 80/20 ratio of comedy and horror. This is one of those rare cases where it felt like a 50/50, and not only that, but done really really well.
This movie managed to weave actual horror with good humor all throughout. You can argue the first half was more comedy and the later part was more horror, but in general, I think it still managed to pull off both in each half. I really felt like it was also a unique and fresh take on your typical “go to a new place and horror ensues” type of story. I also feel like it established who the characters were pretty well and in good timing.
Year: 1985
Rating: 4.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Blood/death/gore/murder, sex, nudity, sexual assault(? Genuinely I couldn’t tell what was going on some scenes), sexual harassment, nazis/holocaust mentions, flashing images
Summary: God and Satan discuss three different stories to decide the fates of the people in them while on a train.
This is an anthology, so I’ll be discussing each part separately:
"The Case of Harry Billings": I’ll be honest I was so confused about what was going on for the duration of things. When I finally understood the story, I was kind of like, “yeah, alright”. It felt almost like a Guignol-esque affair and done better, I think it could’ve been decent. The acting and the whiplash of the plot were a bit too much for it to be fully enjoyable. There was a scene of like body parts and it was actually pretty decently done sfx (... In terms of body parts. There were some heads that looked pretty silly). Probably give this alone a 4/10.
"The Case of Gretta Connors": This starts out with a grown man annoying a woman and sexually harassing her. The woman, Gretta, is an aspiring actress and she goes with him, stars in porn. A guy named Glenn sees one of these movies and seeks her out, falling in love with her. They date, which annoys the agent, and he gets Gretta to bring Glenn into a weird death club, where the members do various russian roulette-esque games (in an attempt to kill him). The first thing of this death club is enduring some bug that the members are warned not to move, as it will either attract or detract the bug and they want to be impartial (yes, they move their mouths and shoulders during this scene-). The bug flies out the window and kills some random guy who’s about to get laid. The next is some electro-shock game, which kills one of the members. This whole thing puts Gretta off and she decides she wants to marry Glen. The pair is captured by the agent and forced to endure another death game involving a construction ball. This instead kills another member of the club. The story abruptly ends and we get a wrapup that Gretta went off with a nice guy, who I guess is not Glenn. 4/10
"The Case of Claire Hansen",: Claire, a devout catholic and surgeon has nightmares about the nazis. A man, Mr. Weiss, sees someone he recognizes on TV and gets the police to help him track him down, stating he killed his family in Germany years ago. The police officer is skeptical given that the man looks similar but its been around 35 years, so he should’ve aged. Mr. Weiss takes it upon himself to go after him with a gun. Instead, he comes face to face with some monster and gets impaled and killed. Claire gets called in to observe Mr. Weiss’ dead body, which has a 666 mark. The anti-aging dude and Claire watch Claire’s husband, James, talk about god being dead and publishing a book about it. Some rando dude named Papini comes to James’ office with the same tattoo Mr. Weiss had at his time of death. The cops attack Papini and arrest him. Claire hears this commotion and is plagued by weird visions, seeing the same critter Mr. Weiss saw. Some girl the anti-aging guy hooks up with sees his hooves and screams. Knocked unconscious, shes thrust out of a limo. The policeman who helped Mr.Weiss investigates Mr. anti-aging to no avail. The girl’s boyfriend who was thrust out of the limo goes searching too but gets attacked by some beast. Claire gets a rambly message warning her from Papini. The pit of hell opens up to take Claire, but it seems like another hallucination. Claire goes to pray and she gets told she has to fight satan. Papini goes to do battle, we find out out he's a monk and he gets killed. At a point I stopped taking notes because it was getting kind of boring lol. Claire ends up dying in the end. Probably a 3/10.
This is all tied together via God and Satan sitting on a train deciding everyone's fates. It kind of reminds me of a proto-Devil’s Carnival. There’s also a weird train full of people playing 80s rock nonstop… And it’s done almost like a music video. It feels very whiplash-y tonally and actually ends with the train crashing and everyone dying. The whole thing with God and Satan is really not so special to mention, it’s really what you’d expect from something like that.
All in all: The first 2 stories were at least enjoyable. 3rd was really a mess, but had some fun stop-motion scenes. I expected this movie to be a LOT worse than it was going in. I’m not saying this as it’s a great movie– by no means at all– but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. An interesting thing about the movie is it was cobbled together scrapped movies from years prior… Which explains some things about it LOL.
TLDR; I’ve seen a lot worse horror anthologies.
Year: 1980
Rating: 2.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Infidelity, drugs, sexual harassment, sexual assault of an intoxicated person
Summary: In a futuristic world, an up-and-coming music duo Alphie and Bibi is split up as they both are willing to sacrifice different amounts for fame.
I’m sure I mentioned elsewhere– I’m not someone inherently against musicals, nor do I have a particular affinity for them. For a musical to work, I feel like either you have to have a strong script or strong musical choices. I can’t say this movie has either of them honestly. At best, some songs were okay; At worst, a lot of songs were just headache-inducing too-low-brow-for-even-’That’s-What-I-Call-Music’. I will give them one thing though, the choreo and filming was decent! I actually really enjoyed the visuals for what I think was “"Showbizness"”-- one where it’s like a hellscape with Garden of Eden references (more on that too).
The one song in the movie that I’d personally call okay– Coming– is kind of undercut by the fact that it plays during a scene where a woman [Pandi] assaults Alphie who’s intoxicated. So what could’ve been a decent number is kind of ruined by the rest of the scene being quite uncomfortable... And to which there's no real acknowlegement of this being horrific. I also do not for the life of me understand how after this, Pandi has a random change of heart and helps Bibi, who has been swept up in fame and away from Alphie.
There’s not much else to say for the music– but even thinner than that is the plot. The pacing is all over the place for me– A decently quick start, a very, very slogging middle act, and a very quickly rushed finale. I remember early on, the part where Bibi, the main girl, kisses Dandi, another performer, and everyone sees thinking just “And why the hell does Alphie want her so badly…?” Genuinely I think that weird footing kind of disinterested me from this “love story” (Not to mention neither were very likeable? Alphie was annoying and weird at times, Bibi was just… a shell of a person). I think also the part where Bibi was like “Noo we don’t need a lawyer, he [ Boogalow, the talent exec guy] is just gonna take 50%”-- like…. Huh???
The middle which focuses mainly on Alphie’s “hero journey” is just kind of boring. I don’t have much to say. A lot of it is him whining that no one wants to buy his songs and then whining about Bibi getting famous with some strange dystopian elements mixed in but to be honest they’re not done well enough to talk about. The ending is its own beast because very quickly within about 10 minutes or less, we get Bibi running away from stardom to find Alphie, they get hitched, a year passes, and then suddenly Boogalow and the cops are after them. Suddenly, they're saved by a man named Mr. Topps (good name for a seme– but in this case it’s supposed to be God lol.) who suddenly shows up in a flying car and is like, “Dw, I got this” and like… Freezes Boogalow and his guys and everyone who’s deemed as “the good people” go to… Heaven? I’m not sure. Honestly, the suddenness is only comparable to when you’re in 5th grade roleplaying and someone says “Um actually my character is god and so all your attacks are null and void”. An absolutely baffling choice.
The one thing I can say in praise of the movie is I do really think they had a fun wardrobe and sets at times. But, on the same note, I have to say that enjoyment, namely of the visuals, is tampered by all the villains being heavily coded as LGBT vs the very “normal” and straight guy who fights against them. Whether this was the intention or not can be argued but it did feel very weird at points, especially given the major religious themes of the movie.
All in all: Once the fun of the visuals wears off, you’re left with a pretty boring story and overall very mediocre songs. It’s only 1h30, but it felt like a slog to get past a point and genuinely not a really good experience. I watched this right after Night Train to Terror and honestly? The one song they kept playing over and over in Night Train To Terror was so much more enjoyable than what this movie offered… Which is pretty sad considering only one of these movies is a musical.
Year: 2023
Rating: 6.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Blood/Gore/Murder
Summary: A woman haunted by her past runs away and finds work in a secluded motel. However, it seems as though the past is following her...
Night Shift is one of those movies that was good… Up until the later half. I felt genuinely very interested in the story up to that point and I was excited to see where it was going. I really liked the acting and was really into the characters, especially the relationship of the main two girls, Gwen and Alice, and the strange characters looming. They also did a good job of a foreboding atmosphere and capturing the feeling of being alone at night.
However… I think the twist kind of undercut the movie. It’s not that it didn’t make sense; There were definite hints towards the twist (which is that Gwen is an escaped patient from a mental hospital and she was the one who killed her family, not this man she made up who she thought was stalking her). Personally, I just also don’t like twists that are “this is actually because of mental illness”. It’s a shame because up until that point I was genuinely interested– and honestly, it’s hard to make stories that are teeing up to be about the paranormal good. I genuinely think if it had stuck to that, it’d be a lot more interesting.
The only other thing I will say is I do kind of wish the ghost special effects were better. It’s not like they were terrible… But they kind of reminded me too much of Spirit Halloween decorations for it to feel scary.
Year: 1982
Rating: 5.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Sex, Violence, Death, Fatphobia
Summary: Two men take care of a morgue on a nightshift. When a local pimp dies, they end up helping the prostitutes under him work safely via their morgue.
Night Shift is a movie I wanted to like but I don’t really think it worked out too much for me. It’s not that it’s egregiously bad even… It was just… Okay. I think there were parts of it that felt very dated amd ruined the enjoyment (mainly with discussions/treatment of women lol even from the ‘good guys’... Where the main guy cheats on his fiance without a shred of remorse at any point. I knew he’d dump his fiance, but come on now at least break up with her after cheating.).
Plot wise, I’ll give it its flowers in terms of I’ve never seen a movie about prostitution set in a morgue. Nothing bad to say about the acting or anything, and the music is so of the time that I can’t harp on it so much because it really does add to it.
Year: 2008
Rating: 2.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Sex, murder, gore, body horror, lots of flashing lights
Summary: Three guys who work at an ad agency go into the woods to find inspiration. However, this trip soon becomes dark as paranoia seeps in.
God this movie was so boring. I’d say a good 90% of it was just incredibly boring and another one that was just tiresome to get through. Around the 40 minute mark I genuinely was thinking about turning it off and going for something else. I really should’ve done that.
I can give this movie two credits: 1. The scoring was pretty good and atmospheric! 2. I liked the infomercial-esque scenes. Everything else… Was just unimpressive. The majority of the movie was like watching paint dry, hoping that this was worth it… And it just wasn’t. The end of it was just a messy and poorly done surrealistic cobbled together mess that just did not work. The acting was overall bad– varying degrees of course [The one guy’s girlfriend was the worst IMO; incredibly stiff and just annoying]. None of the characters were really interesting or enjoyable… The plot was very thin and didn’t really go anywhere of meaning.
Year: 2017
Rating: 4.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Sex [no genitalia] and discussions of it, murder/death/gore, mentions of suicide
Summary: Students investigate the local legend of Ao Oni and it's origins, but the history is a lot more sinister than they suspect.
When I first came across this movie, it’s because I wanted to watch the live action version… This is not that! Instead, this is something more akin to a 1 hour MMD video with voice acting. It does take a bit to get used to, but honestly, it could be a lot worse (thinking of you, Mekakucity Actors TV ep 9/10).
The story is very different from the game and that kind of threw me at first– it revolves around a group of friends who are investigating the Ao Oni legend for some school thing. Honestly, the first 30 minutes of set up are kind of slow, especially as I had to get used to the visuals. However, I did find the second half a lot more enjoyable as the action started.
The first part is basic set up; The characters talk about wanting to get in contact with the creator of Ao Oni for their project. He has a mysterious death that gets ruled suicide. There’s some like school pretty guy who the boys in the group are all jealous of (who we later find out does biotech…?). One thing that threw me was this school the film primarily takes place in has a lab in the basement for some reason (despite… seeming like a more rural school…?). The group go around investigating, ectect.
When the action hits, it does hit! I will say that! I don’t know, something about the weird gore textures they got in an otherwise MMD-esque style kind of were interesting. The actual Oni looked… A bit silly but I can’t be so mad.
I think the more insane part of this is this whole twist where the pretty boy we find out has been having sex with a plant and then having sex with other students apparently to be like a pollinator…? I don’t fucking get it. Very strange and weird part of this whole thing.
All in all, is it a good movie? No. Did it make me laugh? Yes. I can’t say I hate it, and you know, that’s better than what I was expecting.
Year: 2024
Rating: 8.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Death, Homophobia, Religious abuse, Nudity/Sex
Summary: Students investigate the local legend of Ao Oni and it's origins, but the history is a lot more sinister than they suspect.
I had a ballpark of what I was getting into when I turned on this film. Not to immediately start a review by mentioning another movie, but when I was a child I watched the director’s [Adam Elliot] other work, Mary and Max, a movie that’s vibe has for years remained vivid in my memory when so much else is a blur. Having watched this film as well, I can really say Adam Elliot is a master at tugging at heart strings and emotions.
This film primarily concerns the life of twins Grace and Gilbert who end up separated due to a string of sad events. The film manages to overall balance these scenes of bleak depression with moments of joy and connection. I found myself tearing up and then just crying at the end of it. I had a feeling I knew in a way what the ending would be, and even though it was what I thought– genuinely I’m happy and not at all upset that’s the direction it went. It’s really just a bittersweet movie that feels very human and natural while having interesting characters scattered about (Lovelovelove Grace and Pinky’s friendship!).
I think this is a movie that it might be better to go in knowing it’s a tragi-comedy, but it does it really well, all in a rich claymation style.
Year: 1982
Rating: 5.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Sex/Nudity, F-slur [derogatory usage],
Summary: A year in the life of several students at Ridgemont High.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a movie that is really one of the most iconic of the 80s and this was my first time watching it. To sum it up… It was alright. Not the best, not the worst I’ve seen. The characters were interesting; In particular, I liked Spicoli and his dynamic with the history teacher. The main romance was a bit annoying at times– personally I just don’t like 1. When someone cuts into someone their friend likes and then faces very little repercussion to their friendship 2. Romances where it’s like… The person doesn’t really like the person, has a bad experience and then goes back to the person they didn’t really like and it is presented as a nice thing.
Aside from that, I mean, it was fine. Not much else to say.
Year: 2025
Rating: 7.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Gore/Blood/Death (specifically both parental and child death), physical abuse (mentions and shown), car accidents
Summary: After the death of their father, siblings Andy and Piper go to live with a foster mother. The foster mother is reluctant to take the Piper who notices something isn't right with the foster mother and her other kid, Oliver.
I went into this movie with overall low expectations. While I don’t have a review of it, previously, I watched the director’s other film, Talk To Me, and didn’t really care for it (tldr: Thought it had great effects and an interesting idea but the plot annoyed me). However, I have to say, this movie was pretty good! I think it had a good grip from the start in terms of plot and phenomenal acting. The whole concept of what was really going on I thought was pretty easy to guess– (in fact, I guessed it at the tub scene.)-- but I think it carried through well, so finding it out didn’t ruin the rest of the movie for me. I really, really, really liked the complex relationship of the siblings, Andy and Piper. I felt it was realistic and I think the more context that was added really helped flesh out their former home life and make it interesting.
I’d say there were two things that stood out as being a bit annoying to me— 1. Unless I wildly overlooked something… Nothing really was said about Andy and Piper’s other parents?... By that I mean: Andy and Piper are step-siblings, married in with Andy’s dad and Piper’s mom. However, we never hear anything about Piper’s mom, nor the other half of Andy and Piper’s parents' previous relationships… And it seems as if they don’t have any extended family for some reason. It really does feel like a weird oversight and I couldn’t help but think about it. Another thing– and it’s honestly easier to forgive but did bug me: I really don’t get why no one in the hospital when Andy got injured… Bothered to ask any sort of intake question about “Do you feel safe at home?” Like, it could be different country standards or just stretching for a movie, but I go to do fuck all at my primary and they ask me do I feel safe at home– so it seems a bit weird that this 17-year-old comes in with a head injury and no one asks about it.
Complaints aside– I really think it was well done. I think the special effects were very gruesome as well, but not overbearing in terms of having to look away because it was too much. I think the actors they picked were wonderful (Laura pissed me off that whole movie– and good for her, the actor did amazing!!). I can say I really came away feeling more confident in the director’s abilities in storytelling after this and I’m more looking forward to see what they’ll do in the future.
Year: 1983
Rating: 4.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Physical altercations, light nudity
Summary: A Romeo and Juliet inspired story about a preppy valley girl who falls in love with a city punk.
I’m going to be honest I spent a good chunk of this movie just laughing at Nick Cage. The plot was just okay, nothing super groundbreaking and just felt very of its time. Nick Cage really did steal the show away… He just embodied such goofiness despite his character being this cool punk guy… It’s not a bad movie per se, it just didn’t really vibe with me aside from him being goofy.
Year: 2025
Rating: 7.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Stalking, Kidnapping, Murder/Blood/Violence (specifically also gun violence and violence via fire)
Summary: A stalker of a famous celebrity seeks to marry his beloved by any means nessisary.
Borderline was a lot better than I expected! I think it’s one of those movies that when you just are along for the ride it’s fun vs. actually thinking of logistics of things (because there were quite a few moments that made me kind of annoyed when I was thinking in a more real life scenario. Namely, when the Aunt didn’t just drive off after someone shot a gun like 20 feet away without a silencer… Like… I really think you could probably hear a gunshot over some low car music lol, not to mention the guy coming back without the father with him.) I really think the acting was good and the script worked out really well in a way that I felt was interesting. I didn’t expect how a lot of things played out, which was nice. I also didn’t mind at all how they did the time skip stuff– which can get tedious when it’s not done right in my opinion.
Overall just a nice watch!
Year: 1985
Rating: 8.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Sexual harassment, dead animal (fetal pig in jar) , Suicide attempts
Summary: After getting dumped by his girlfriend of 6 months for the captain of the ski team, teenager Lane figures it's either commit suicide or try and win her back.
I really liked this movie. I remember it very vaguely from when I was a kid, but I couldn’t really remember much of the plot (for reference, I must’ve been like…7-10? In the range between video rental and mailbox Netflix both being the go-to way to see older movies.)
Anyway– this movie is really fun. I’ve learned I don’t really gravitate towards a lot of 80s movies, at least ones that made a name in pop culture. However, I really really enjoyed this one. I think it had a lot of interesting and quirky characters and was just really funny and had a plotline that kept me immersed all the way through. I really like the different animated segments– in fact, most of the movie felt like an over the top cartoon. The premise is quite grim, but they really do manage to keep it lighthearted despite being a movie largely about someone being suicidal.
10:47pm .. .. // 0 9.01.2025