pow-23225 Reviews

Imaginary (2024)

Goosebumps Horror

[2/10 · 20 March 2024]

I think we as horror fans have to find a new name for this genre. Is it Fuzzy Horror? Perhaps Tween Terrors? How about Fluffy Frights or Goosebumps Horror? Whatever we call them one thing they have to do is stop recycling. Imaginary salvages so many tropes and tricks from far better supernatural Asian horror movies that it just becomes mish-mash of stunts and jump scares that we have seen so many times before that they no longer have any impact on us regular horror fans. The only people Imaginary would actually scare or creep out are non-horror fans or kids 12 and under. Production-wise there is absolutely nothing original or fresh at all about Imaginary but then again paint-by-numbers director Jeff Wadlow (Fantasy Island, Kick Ass 2) is at the helm so we should expect cookie cutter cinema and that's what we get.

DeWanda Wise is one of the bright spots in this film as Jessica, an artist who returns to her childhood home to find the usual American supernatural horror film creepy crap that has been so done to death. Jessica's partner is Waterloo Road and The Walking Dead's Tom Payne as Max. Max is a musician and has two children from a previous relationship: always curious youngster Alice (Pyper Braun) and rebellious teen Taylor (Taegen Burns). Jessica is at that awkward phase with the kids where she is tap-dancing between wannabe friend, surrogate mom and total stranger. Her relationship with Taylor is especially tense and rocky despite Jessica trying her best to connect with her on some, any kind of level.

Alice finds a discarded teddy bear in the basement she names Chauncey and he becomes her friend as he navigates a new home, new school and new neighborhood. Although he doesn't exactly become Chucky mirroring another Blumhouse Goosebumps Horror dud in Megan, his discovery does usher in supernatural forces that eventually cause the film to go off the rails crashlanding in WTFville. Like the vastly superior Five Nights at Freddy's the monsters, creatures may be a little bizarre but they are not scary or creepy. In fact they are downright goofy as if our heroes were being haunted and stalked by Muppets.

Like the aforementioned Megan, if you are an adult, if you are a dedicated horror fan, you won't even flinch during Imaginary. Not only should you be immune to those lazy kind of jump scares by now but you shouldn't be phased at all by a drooling Fozzy Bear with goofy big teeth as this new entry in Goosebumps Horror is strictly for the kids.

Frankenstein: Legacy (2024)

Frankenstein: Legacy

[7/10 · 20 March 2024]

Frankenstein: Legacy is one of those films that will pleasantly surprise you. There hasn't been much hype surrounding it but there should be. The story alone is quite intriguing. Taking place shortly after Shelly's literary masterpiece, Dr. Frankenstein's Arctic chase of his creature has ended in tragedy. The journal which contains all of his research has been stolen and sold to the highest bidder. By hook, by crook and murder the journal changes hands again and again in a cool little sequence until it lands in those of scientist Millicent (the brilliant Juliet Aubrey). Her hubby Robert (Waterloo Road's Philip Martin Brown) is dying and Millicent sees Frankenstein's research as a way of saving, preserving his life.

Even under the constraints of the film's budget and with no lines to speak of, Philip Martin Brown does a magnificent job as the Creature. The Creature itself is a blend of what you have seen in previous films and in stage adaptions which stick closer to Shelly's creature as opposed to the characterizations we've seen on the big screen.

BTW: If you can ever check out the 2011 Royal National Theatre adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in which Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller swapped playing the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his creature, please do so. You will be glad that you did. Their rendition is one of the very best. Cumberbatch and Miller also played Sherlock Holmes in two distinctly different versions of the character for television in BBC's Sherlock and Elementary on CBS.

Legacy's Creature could have used a bit more movie magic to make him look far more imposing especially compared to some of the other characters he is supposed to be lording over but Brown deftly jumps between being a threatening beast and a sympathetic being who never asked to be reborn, he himself is a victim of sorts. The ending is more than a little bit harried and seems rushed in places but Frankenstein: Legacy is certainly a worthy chapter in the Frankenstein film library.

Skinamarink (2022)

Avoid at all costs...

[1/10 · 5 February 2023]

I cannot rate it any lower. IMDB won't let me. Boring and pretentious. It is absolutely unwatchable but what do you expect from a "movie" titled after a kids song by Sharon, Lois & Bram. I am not exaggerating when I say it is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I love David Lynch and other experimental filmmakers. I don't require linear storytelling but this is not even a movie unless you like shots of doorways, walls and whispering and nothing else. It is like staring at a wall in dark room for 90 minutes straight or watching a VR real estate house tour online. You have better things to do with your time like watching a kettle boil, watching grass grow or taking a nap.

Scare Package II: Rad Chad's Revenge (2022)

A dismal sequel

[2/10 · 20 December 2022]

Back in 2019, Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns' Scare Package was a sly prank on the horror genre. It was a refreshing anthology series that riffed on all of the genre's tropes in clever and fun ways. The sequel, Rad Chad's Revenge, offers much of the same fun but much of the enjoyment is ruined by the filmmakers' constant need to push their repeatitive personal agendas over entertainment or blood-curdling good laughs.

The framing narrative this time is a spoof of the Saw series with a deceased horror guru and video store owner Rad Chad turning his funeral into a series of daunting, deadly escape rooms for the mourners in attendance.

Of the stories presented only two are fairly well done. The first, Welcome to the 90s, has several famous horror final girls and 'Buffy' (Steph Barkley) fending off Jason, Freddy, Xenomorph, Michael Myers, Leatherface stand-in: Tony the Killer (Joshua Miller). Although it is dragged down with a lot of ham-fisted, patronizing editorial commentary which it could have and should have done without, Welcome to the 90s is the best of the four stories. The second featurette, The Night He Came Back Again! Part VI: The Night She Came Back, is a sequel to The Night He Came Back Again! Part IV: The Final Kill in the original film with final girl Daisy (Chelsey Grant) making her return.

If you shut off Scare Package 2 after that one, you won't have missed anything much. If do you venture further put on that football helmet or hard hat you have sitting around as the filmmakers continue to hammer home their agenda over and over again like Thor bludgeoning the ice giants with Mjölnir. That's ultimately why what could have been a good follow-up just becomes as irritating as Love and Thunder. Okay, nothing in filmdom could be THAT annoying but Scare Package 2 gives it a run for its money.

Terror Train (2022)

New Terror Train is Terrible

[4/10 · 22 October 2022]

Tubi's remake of Terror Train is yet another in a long line of bland, pointless and forgettable horror remakes that are nothing more than lazy, uninspired recycled knock-offs that unlike John Carpenter's The Thing, don't enhance the original vision or material in any way.

Tubi's Terror Train has no unique style, no different point of view to call its own. Except for the ending, it is as dull as watching Arnie Cunningham do body work on Christine.

Around these parts, the obscure Terror Train had a cult following. Partly because the film was made here in Canada, partly because it starred up and coming scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis and partly because a local television station used to air it every New Year's Eve. The original film was directed by Roger Spottiswoode who would go on to helm such movies as Turner & Hooch, Air America and the 007 film Tomorrow Never Dies. Because of that, his film had a level of finesse. This remake has none of that mostly because the production so cheap and so too is the talent on display. It shows in the final product which pales in comparison to the original.

The story remains pretty much the same except the remake takes place on Halloween not New Year's Eve. Years after a prank goes wrong, as they often do in eighties horror movies, a group of college students party on a moving train while a vengeful, costume-swapping serial killer bumps them off one by one. What the makers of this film decided to do was rewrite all of the dialogue so it is much, much worse especially when delivered by a cast that overall don't have much of a resume and the work they have done is mostly in Canadian television. The only standout is comedy icon Mary Walsh as the conductor Carne best known for her work on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

And because it is 2022 the producers feel the need to swap the identities of many of the characters (such as Carne who was originally played by Ben Johnson) for no logical or practical reason. That misguided, bewildering mindset probably led to the identity of the killer being changed too. Fans of the original film will immediately notice something is awry as the character is missing from the remake. Yup, they have been totally and utterly scrubbed from the plot again, for no logical or practical reason. The new explanation and reveal is not only not as clever, it is hokey, overworked in the genre and if you really think about it, makes no sense at all when the person has to be switching in and out of costume and roaming the train the entire time. The new ending is just stupid and I would expect a lot more from some of the minds who brought us the stellar Slasher series, if you ignore the awful third season.

The first Terror Train's kills were not all that bloody with Spottiswoode focusing more on creating tension and suspense in such a confined, claustrophobic space rather than gore. This remake is much bloodier and some of those effects are quite good despite the obviously low budget.

If one isn't going to add your voice to the mix, expand a story in a good way, add more style and substance, then what is really the point of remaking anything? The few remake stand-outs like Carpenter's The Thing, Cronenberg's The Fly, Romero and Savini's Night of the Living Dead, accomplish all of that and more. They respect and are faithful to the source material while putting a different spin on things. Tubi's Terror Train has no reason to exist other than to feed the streaming service content beast and as a penny-pinching cash grab that like the other dreadful remakes damages, undermines the brand and pollutes the pool.