Craving (2023)
6/10
A lot of fun!
11 April 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Al Gomez, a producer and actor in this movie, sent it to my attention with an interesting premise: What may seem like your typical micro-budget attempt at horror, Craving is a much bigger film comparable to the horror movies made in the 1980s.

Well, I'm in.

And yeah, when your title sounds like the American name for Paul Naschy's Night of the Werewolf, well, I'm also in.

It all starts the night after the story we're about to watch, as a rural bar is covered with blood, internal organs, a several foot and one frightened survivor. What happened to get everything to this point?

As Les (Felissa Rose!) and Shiloh (Rachel Amanda Bryant) tend bar, four strangers -- all obvious addicts, all very armed -- show up and barricade the bar. It feels like Feast, but the story moves in its own direction quickly.

Will (Xavier Roe), Mac (Kevin Caliber), Frenzy (Ashley Underchuffler) and Gail (Holly Rockwell) and Gail (Holly Rockwell) take over the bar and tell the assembled patrons -- including Travis (Gregory Blair), Hunter (Al Gomez), Rudy (Frankie Guzman) and Rylee (Miranda Bourke) -- that something horrible is tracking them. Meanwhile, a man outside by the name of Red (Greg Tally) is shouting on a megaphone that one of the four is a monster and everyone is in danger.

There are a ton of people -- nearly too many to keep track of with all the flashbacks, yet they all get their own unique moments and have characters instead of just being fodder -- all gathered around just one location. And then, when the gore happens, wow. This movie in no way skimps or holds back or the tension, as the addicts inside start going through withdrawal while whatever group lies in wait outside gives them an hour to give up the monster.

Director J. Horton (VHS Violence), who co-wrote this with Gregory Blair, knows how to film a horror movie and washes this all with bright red and blue light directly from the promised 80s. It looks incredible and the monster looks awesome, which it better, because it's on screen for such an extended period of time. I also loved the end credit sequences and that the title comes up just like Demons. So much of the cast and crew worked on The Campus together and that's good, because the ease with which they worked together created something really fun here.
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