​Barbarian is one of those awesome movies that’s got thrills and scares and suspense, but…it doesn’t make any sense.
Which is to say the creators of it are likely making a bet that you’ll be too distracted by the flash and bang and guts and gore appeal of it to notice that the plot doesn’t hold up to any sort of scrutiny. The logistics just aren’t there.
It starts off with Tess– Georgina Campbell aka BabyBerry (the way certain younger generation of actors resemble an older one, she’s a split imagine of the Ms. Berry) getting to her Airbnb rental only to find that the place has already been let out and now she has to share.
It could be worse, though – Tess gets to share the place with Keith, who seems lovely and woke and respectful and all that. Keith is played by Bill Skarsgård, an actor who doesn’t look like anybody, including his famous father and brother.
In fact, Bill Skarsgård is awesome because there’s a certain changeable quality to his handsomeness where it can go either way: he can be a legitimately nice guy or a creep. Pennywise, anyone?
Anyway, in the light of day, the adorable rental turns out to be the only place standing in a nightmarish burned down neighborhood. That’s just one of the creepy elements, leading up to a spectacularly creepy basement showdown.
And I do not use the words spectacularly creepy lightly. This movie has one of the most awesomely terrifying basements in horror movie history. A real beauty…that nightmares are made of.
Pivot.
A seemingly random scene set at least four decades back with a creepy tall dude stalking a woman.
Pivot.
AJ played by Justin Long (back from the land of random romcoms, just coms, etc. to his Jeeper Creeper stomping grounds) is driving down a scenic coastal highway when he finds out that he’s been accused of rape. AJ, is an actor and the more we learn about him the more we see how accurate that accusation might be. AJ is unrepentantly scummy, a sh*tshow of a person.
And now he’s about to lose all his money is lawsuits, so he goes to Detroit to liquidate some property and guess which property he owns? That’s right, somehow, for some reason, he owns a creepy Airbnb ​ house.
And its horrible basement.
Cue in further nightmares.
Ultimately, it’s monster madness slash survival thing and it’s all very compelling and super fun, but….it doesn’t make any freaking sense.
 
Ok, so now that you know all those things about the movie, you should go watch it. Then come back and read the rest of this review.
Again. CAUTION. The following paragraphs will give away some of the plot’s twists and turns. OK? Ok, let’s do this.
 
Why does AJ own a house in a horrible neighborhood of Detroit? How does the place survive as Airbnb ? Does no one ever check the area? Does no one ever check the basement?  More importantly, does no one EVER notice that the tenants are going missing? Sure, the cops in the movies are depicted as useless at best and negligible at worst, but the people who come to stay are from other areas. They presumably have families. And no one looks for them?
Or are we to believe that the basement mommymonster has never killed before the events of the movie?
Why hasn’t anyone checked the basement? Like when the house got sold or any time before or since?
How can someone survive in a basement, however vast the basement may be, unnoticed and without seemingly any income or means of getting necessities, for decades?
What about two somebodies?
And the breeding experiment which seemingly gave birth to the basement’s mommymonster doesn’t work within a timeline. If the mommymonster has been living there for 40 years and she is a result of a series of inbreeding, when would her father had to have started? We’re not talking some missing toes or developmental and/or mental glitches, we’re talking a living nightmare.
If the father started in his late teens or early twenties, then why does the flashback feature him 40 years ago (presumably the age of the mommymonster)?
If not, then yikes, and the creators of the movie do not understand how DNA works.
Where does the mommymonster get milk? Where do they get anything in that basement? Not like she can raid the neighborhood no one is living in, except for one homeless dude.
Why hasn’t she ever attacked the cleaners that presumably take care of the Airbnb in-between renters? Or she did, and no one notices either?
Why hasn’t anyone come looking for Tess or Keith in the two weeks they’ve been missing? Tracing their stay location would have been easily enough done.
There’s probably more I’m not thinking about right now, but those are the main things. If anyone has any good answers, I’m all ears.
 
And yet, despite being a very logical person, I had oodles of fun with this very illogical movie. And you might too. The barbarians are at the gates. Let them in.

​I love horror movies about as much as I hate modern country music. Passionately.
So this intersectionality intrigued me. Sequin-blazed, eardrum-piercing twang Nashville twisted tale of the dangers of fame and ambition utilizing a considerably terrifying presence of Katey Sagal to the max. Ok, sure, bring it.
But then again, outside of doing its best to exploit the “woman unhinged” scenario, this movie (yet another one is a long series of Blumhouse for Prime disappointments) just doesn’t offer that much.
First off, it stands to mention, there’s nothing supernatural at work here. All the thrills and scares are man…well, womanmade.
That woman is a has-been country star, once upon a time a part of a popular country sister act, and since then unseen, unheard of, shut-in. You know, all the more to add to her cult-like status with the fans.
Among these fans are Leigh and Jordan. A country duo trying to get places. One’s pretty, one’s pretty talented. An uneven dynamic that they’ve been able to make work so far, but they are stuck at the small potatoes level. They need something special to go further. And what’s more special than a duet with their favorite star? One no one has heard from in years. What a story that would make.
So, the girls bake a pie and set off to say Hi. And then the nightmare unspools. Psychological manipulation, drunken mayhem, fighting, and yes, singing (the cast can sing and twang) ensues.
It sounds campy, right? It is. Or it might have been but the movie’s writer/director inexplicably chose not to lean into that instead opting for a high-strung hysterical dramatics that don’t quite land anywhere all the way. An extreme version of a Lifetime movie, maybe?
This movie is a Katey Sagal show all the way and Sagal (the real star of the production) is perfect here. There’s something naturally terrifying about her imposing frame, her crudely sculpted features, the somewhat unnatural way in which she’s aging wherein her tapping fingers (utilized heavily in the movie) belong to mitts far older and wrinklier than some of her face. When you combine that with her character (a woman who has soaked in bitterness, resentment, regret, anger, and solitude for decades), you get a strikingly disturbed individual with more issues than NatGeo and an appetite for chaos.
She’s eager to offer guidance that may seem instructional but is in fact a twisted revenge scenario. It’s personal. And it isn’t. It’s Dutch sister against the world. And oh yeah, it’s the South. People have guns and are not afraid to use them.
But Sagal’s efforts aside, the movie falls flat no matter how feminist it wants to be. I mean, it is all ladies, both the stars and creative team. The couple of men cast members are largely irrelevant foil. The movie seems like it wants to say something but then it just lets out a wail and stops. Ending up with all the poignancy, originality, and complexity of a modern country song. Which is to say none.

Umma is one of those highly conscientious, very well meaning and sincere movies that ramps up dramatics so much, it tends to forget it’s meant to be scary. It’s a slow-simmering pot set on so low that it doesn’t seem to ever come to a boil.
Which is to say that while conceptually interesting and well-acted, the movie never really wows or excites or even scares.
What went wrong with this tale of motherly love at its creepiest?
Well, let’s see…
The idea goes like this. A Korean-American woman (very decent Sandra Oh) lives remotely and very, very off-the-grid with her teenage daughter (adorable, peculiarly named Fivel Stewart of Atypical fame). A woman used to once be an accountant, but then developed a paralyzing fear of electricity and turned to bees. Now they got a booming apiary that hunky local shop owner played by Dermot Mulroney is helping her sell.
Decent enough of a life all around, albeit much too limiting and limited for the daughter. But then again, daughters pay for the peculiarities of their mothers. That seems to be the theme here.
Then a Korean uncle shows up telling Oh’s character than her mother died and leaving her with a creepy suitcase. And that just seems to open up a really nasty can of doodoo.
Turns out Umma (Korean for mother) was a bitter mean witch (used allegorically and for rhyming purposes) who never learned to feel at home in her adopted country after immigrating from Korea and took her unhappiness out on her daughter. And apparently afterlife isn’t much homier, so she’s determined to haunt her daughter from the grave.
Then the movie remembers it’s supposed to be scary…Enter some ghostly and possession elements.
The moral (rather obvious and heavy handed) is that all women eventually turn into their mothers if they are not careful and drag their own ugly business out generationally. It may be accurate, but it isn’t enough and certainly not enough to sustain this movie, which manages to feel slow at just 83 minutes.
Objectively, it would have probably been fine as a short, 20 or 25 minutes. It would have probably been fine as just a drama. But the first-time writer/director Shim obviously overreached here, trying for a sort of serious cinema with cheap jump scares, and it just didn’t quite work. Even with a producer as genre legendary as Raimi. Not very exciting and slow, but it'll work wonders if you can't fall asleep.

​A perfect example of a sort of drivel Netflix tends to specialize in, Day Shift is neither clever nor original nor especially good. It’s just loud, flashy, and in your face stupid in a way that says, “I cater to the lowest hanging fruit and I’m loving it.”
How unoriginal: well, it’s a typical buddy action thriller comedy, where those buddies are also the odd couple.
You got you hip and smooth Bud played by Jamie Foxx who, now in his 50s, has apparently forgot to age. Bud is a vampire hunter – this is established in an crazy opening scene which is just one prolonged fighting sequence. However, he isn’t very good at following rules – of course, he isn’t rebel, rebel – so he doesn’t get good shift and doesn’t make good money. And he needs money, desperately, his insanely hot estranged wife is giving him grief over it. And he’s got a young daughter to think about.
Enter Seth, your classic millennial nerd played by the classic millennial bro Dave Franco. Now that he more talented brother got cancelled, Dave is all we got, people. Dave aka Seth is a hip dresser and a sh*t fighter. Seth is a desk jockey at the vampire hunting company Bud works for and he gets, wouldn’t you know it, paired up with Bud to make one comically mismatched superteam.
The thing is, it isn’t that comical. It’s almost not funny at all and that includes the always amusing presence of Snoop as a killer cowboy. The movie ramps up on action to cover up for the fact that it’s fundamentally neither funny nor clever nor good. Clichés are riding clichés to the grand bombastic finale and a happy ending for all. Well, except vampires, obvs.
Dumb, crass, loud – this movie is essentially the way other nationals describe American tourists. It’s a movie that, despite its obviously sizable budget, manages to come across both corny and cheap. So, if it’s cheap thrills you’re after, go for it. Otherwise, pass.

​The goal was to watch mostly horror this October, but I Came By is kinda sorta horrific in its own right. It’s certainly very, very dark. And quite disturbing, too.
To be fair, the darkest, most disturbing, and by far most horrific thing about this movie is that it takes The Earl of Grantham aka Sir Crawley of Downton Abbey and turns him all kinds of evil.
I mean, here he is, leaned out and tanned, as another Sir, this time a respectable well-known judge with impeccable track record, and a secret. Or more like a hobby.  A murderous hobby.
And he gets away with it until he is targeted by a local graffiti artist duo on a mission to tag up the wealthy and make them feel unsafe in their own (insanely expensive) homes.
The duo separates shortly after…because one of them didn’t know how to use protection and is going to be a dad. But the other graffiti rebel is still at it and he just can’t seem to leave the judge alone.
This character is played by peculiar fishy (once Danish prince) George McKay, who parkours and decorates like a pro, except that all he ever does is the same tag that reads (very stylistically) I Came By.
So, no Banksy, but still, the guy has a mission. Otherwise, he a perfect loser, who at 23 has no job, no plans, still lives with his mom, and unleashes all of his teen-like angst onto the beleaguered woman (played by the always lovely Kelly McDonald).
But this one thing with the judge he just can’t let go off, and eventually he drags his mum and his best mate into the mess too. And…I can’t say any more than that without giving away crucial plot details.
So, since this is mostly a suspense thriller does it work as such? Yeah, mostly it does. It’s nice enough visually, well acted, and tends to shy away from cutesy prepackaged easy solutions. And conventional happy endings.
But the main draw here is Bonneville who at long last gets to stretch his acting muscles and go as sinister as all get out, quickly switching his easy-going posh charm into menace and back.
The movie itself appears to have a message and a strong social conscience, but the class differences and assault on privilege and all that tend to be steamrolled under the actual goings on of the movie. McKay’s Toby isn’t a sort of rebel one can get behind, because he’s too much of an angsty ass. His best mate has more of a backbone to his character but he isn’t featured as heavily or as centrally. And the mother storyline is just purely horrific…from learning about her son’s secret life to stepping into it.
So the overall effect isn’t as clear and precise and message-driven as it might have meant to be. But overall, it’s entertaining enough, so, you know, come on by.

​Another King adaptation, right in time for the creepiest season of the year. Netflix has been doing decently with those, but the operating word there is decently. With both King and son of King’s adaptations, that is. From the disappointingly teeny Locke and Key to the middling In The Tall Grass and other things I’m not thinking off right now.
This one is right on the money in that it is technically well done, well acted, and well meant. The later denotes a certain sincerity of tone and faithfulness to the source material done primarily through heavy voiceovers.
I mean, you do feel like you’re watching an adaptation of a story; it has that tone, it has that mood. Which isn’t a terrible thing because as far as storytelling go, you can’t go wrong with King.
And so, in this adaptation, a screenwriter/director with a serial killer style three name moniker and a thoroughly mediocre yet productive career, brings back King’s own young Bill Denbrough from the recent IT remakes as a wide eye good as it gets sort of kid gets some…unique opportunities.
First one being: after a chance meeting in church, he gets to read books out loud to the local billionaire, played by the always great Donald Sutherland.
Second, he gets a sizeable inheritance.
Third, he gets a phone line seemingly connecting him to the dead so that he can exact vengeance on those he believes deserve it.
Let the crisis of conscious begin.
Except that no, not really, this isn’t that nuanced of a production. It also isn’t anywhere as creepy and unsettling as its source material, King’s novella If It Bleeds.
I mean you can tell right by the title. If It Bleeds is an awesome title, it’s original and evocative. What the movie ended up with is merely…descriptive.
This movie also takes its time and makes you question whether a cinematic adaptation should ever take longer than the reading of the original story might.
But overall, it’s fine. It’s perfectly decent and that seems to be the bar the adaptor/director was trying to clear. And, although nice isn’t normally a word one might describe King’s work, this movie is quite thoroughly nice.
Though definitely, definitely and seemingly deliberately more of a drama than something scary, with scary elements studiously downplayed and dramatics turned up.
The message here seems to be the danger of mobile phones. King has, in fact, done this before. It took an entire novel and resulted in a really crappy Cusack/Jackson adaptation, so, technically, this is an improvement on all accounts. And yes, phones are garbage, addictive and dumbing down, but where would we be without them? Still, if you want a reminder of just how unnatural it is to have that sort of connectivity to the world (this side and beyond), there’s this movie to remind you.
Ta-da.

​I must confess I haven’t read the novel or seen the original. I know, I know, but still…in a way that gives me a unique perspective to review this movie purely on its own merit.
And so, purely on its own merit, this movie is a failure. Outside of the effort it takes to buy Zac Efron as a father (Efron has so many muscles, but they just don’t seem to stretch that way), outside of the try-oh-so-hard 80s pastiche including the cheesy dual-tone of John carpenter theme and stylized credits, outside of the choppy incomplete seeming plot…it’s just missing something.
It’s missing a lot.
It’s missing the mark.
The eponymous child character is great. And yes, she does start fires, lots of them. She has plenty of other powers too. Her parents were experiment subjects whose abilities were induced, but she was born that way.
Young girls with superpowers are an awesome premise, Just look how much mileage Stranger Things got out of it.
But this vehicle doesn’t go too far. Doesn’t have much of an oomph.
The movie is bland, bland, bland, from dialogue to action. Not a single inspired thing about it. Watches slow too, like put-me-to-sleep-several-times slow. And that’s considering its compact length, too.
Blumhouse usually offers more. More fun, more eerie thrills, They do things on tight budgets but tend to be clever about it, doing more with less. This one apparently didn’t get the memo.
Disappointing me. Disappointing the box office.
Remakes seem to be obligatory in this day and age. Technically, Firestarter waited longer than most, almost 40 years. And well, the wait proved unworthy of the result. Not that anyone was even waiting, were they? Wasn’t the original perfectly good? Plus, there’s always the book. You know, if you’re so inclined.
But either way, this damp match of a movie will not be starting any fires.

​Ah, sequels. The refuge of mediocrity.  The lazy way of producing new material. Horror is a genre especially beleaguered by sequels and remakes – occasionally decent, frequently crap.
Boy 2, alas, firmly lands in the former category.
A peculiar scary movie that refuses, almost purposely, to scare. It’s slow in a way that makes its compact length of 86 minutes seem longer and bland in a way that barely resembles and no more than ghostly echoes the quite decent original Boy movie.
The thing is, dolls are inherently creepy. That’s just one of those facts of life. So Boy 2 has most of its work done already the second Brahms enters the picture, but no, even that doesn’t seem to help. The doll maybe creepy but all by its demonically possessed self can’t seem to manage to elevate this snoozefest.
It begins with a brutal home invasion/attack that leaves both mother and her young son traumatized. The mother begins to have nightmares, the son stops speaking. The father, guilt-ridden for not being there, takes them away to a country estate. (Presumably the dichotomy here is that dangerous things occur in cities and countryside is bucolic and safe, which might have been the case had these people took some time to research the place they chose to stay in.)
Anyway, sure enough, no one does their research beforehand and so the two of them end up in a place with some dark history. And then their boy finds The Boy and…well, this is where a good movie would get interesting.
Joey Potter/ former Mrs. Cruise / Katie does her best in the role of mother and her best usually involves a certain winsome charm that worked well on TV and in an occasionally in movies like the pleasantly quirky Miss Meadows and here it just doesn’t work, leaving her wide eyed and weepy and ineffectual. (Basically, really earning her Raspberry award nomination.) The father played by The Mentalist’s (and presumably other things he’s done since?) Owain Yeoman could have been anyone at all for all the non-existent heavy lifting he has to do here.
Their son, though, a preternaturally pretty boy, seems to have been cast based on his uncanny likeness to Brahms doll. And I mean, uncanny. You’d think that alone would be a boundless fount of creepiness, but it’s only used to some effect.
The overall production meanders sleepily sidestepping every chance to escalate things and the finished result is peculiarly tame.
The movie didn’t just disappoint me, it disappointed the box office too. The director wants to make another one to round out a trilogy, but based on this, it seems that The Boy (the original) should have been left as one of those are genre standalones.
The most peculiar thing is that this movie was written by the same person as the first one. Why and how remains unclear. Paycheck?
Anyway, go ahead and skip this one. Don’t tarnish the memory of the far superior first movie. Don’t waste your time. Unless you can’t sleep, then by all means…