The Stillness, the Quiet, and the Darkness evokes EVIL to Home In. “Skinamarink” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on July 9, 2023

The Kids Aren’t All Right in “Skinamarink” on Blu-ray!

A night of silence is disturbed when a young boy, Kevin, falls down the stairs of his two story home. Rushed to the hospital to return to the same silence-soaked house, the restless boy and his sister Kaylee search for their dad who has suddenly vanished from his bedroom. Doors, windows, and even the bathroom toilet has strangely disappeared right from sight. Feeling scarred under the cover of isolated darkness, the siblings head downstairs to sleep on the couch softly lit b0 the fluorescent glow of the television set. As they watch old cartoons, crayon, and build with large Legos, while catching a few ZZZs in between, strange noises resonate through the home, floor based objects are found stuck onto the walls and ceilings, and a twisted, omnipresent voice slips the siblings commands that exposes them the darkness from within the house.

Schismatically different from any other spine-taut chills ever experienced before, Kyle Edward Ball’s written-and-directed 2022 Shudder exclusive “Skinamarink” is no joyful and innocent children’s song in the filmmaker’s debut feature film. Based and expanded upon Ball’s 2020 short film entitled “Heck,” viewers will be enveloped and swallowed by the very core of childhood fears that plays like a fever dream, or a distant nightmare, where faces are a blur, spatial direction is nothing more than theoretical concept, and the voices around us are distorted, muffled, and cold. “Skinamarink” offers little warmth under constant blanket of darkness and leaves no room for hope when parents are removed from the picture. What’s Ball leaves behind is primordial and innate terror that rarely can be seen straightforward and lucid. The Canadian picture, which was filmed in Ball’s childhood home in Alberta, is a micro-budget production of ERO Picture Company, distributed by Bayview Entertainment, Shudder, and IFC Midnight, crowdfunded by Seed & Spark contributors and produced by “Texas Road” producer, Dylan Pearce.

Shot over the course of a week’s time, “Skinamarink” works more like CCTV footage recording the static surroundings within the scope of the lens. The cast is small, rarely visible, and when visible, they are often obscured or never directly focused upon to mint atmospheric dread. Two parents. Two children. A nuclear family becomes the objective of an omnipresent, ominous presence, but there are concerning questions about the integrity of the family that Ball incites with clues of broken household. Father and mother briefly make an appearance, or with one of them just their voice, throughout the course of the night, restricted their attendance exclusively around the children’s perspective that makes viewers shrink and become engulfed in childish fears – sometimes they are adult fears as well – of the dark and of being separated from parents. Lucas Paul and Dali Rose Tetreault as kids Kevin and Kaylee kill their seldomly seen performances with the patter of little feet running through the house and up-and-down stairs, their soft, angelic voices whispering to each other and calling out for their father, and when briefly in frame, or at least the back of their heads, they manage to complete the succinct shot just in the way Ball intends to secrete fear from our every pore amongst the quiet and stillness. “Skinamarink” is not a character-driven film in the least as Ball cherishes a chilling atmospheric horror so father (Ross Paul, Lucas’s real life dad) and mother (Jamie Hill, “Grotesque”) receive what essentially is cameo roles to establish a feeling of lost when they’re gone and are perhaps the easiest roles the two actors have ever taken and turn out to be the most eerily effective on screen and over the audio track.

“Skinamarink” experiments more with surroundings, audio and visual senses, and common inborn anxieties rather than progressed by traditional methods of character dynamics and that is where the film will be conflict-ridden and divisive amongst the niche group of diehard horror fans. General audiences will find “Skinamarink” to be a bore without much popcorn pageantry to keep short-attention spans entertained and a disembodied villain. Slow burn horror usually has an elevated element to it and Kyle Edward Ball certainly incorporates an open for interpretation access door for the deep-dive genre conspiratorialists to work overtime on reasoning and explaining “Skinamarink” to the masses still trying to process what they just experienced themselves after watching the film. Theories will run amok with the most prominent being Kevin’s fall that reduced him to a coma state and what we experience is all in Kevin’s conscious-cracked cerebrum trying attempting interpret, at best guess, the dissolution of mom and dad’s relationship. Again, this is just a theory as Ball aims for ambiguity to fester fathomable, one-solution explanations. Perhaps in a type of narrative the world is not ready for, but in my opinion, “Skinamarink” fills in what is void from modern day horror, a uniquely fresh and chance-taking pervasive eidolon scare package to revitalize genre numbness with slow burn phobias.

An original parapsychological paralyzer, “Skinamarink” arrives on a Blu-ray home video courtesy of Acorn Media International, the acquired UK distribution company of RLJ Entertainment. Presented in a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.39:1, the AVC encoded BD25 sustains a purposefully intended lo-fi A/V feature, set to the date tune of 1995, much like when SOV quality films were abundantly popular because of their cost value and accessibility. If you’re expecting depth of detail, you won’t get it from “Skinamarink’s” dense static approach that all but eliminates object definition. Delineation is scarce to an effective scare tactic to which Ball tones the film; yet, the static is not, for lack of a better word, static as the current changes within the blips, increasing and decreasing visibility for desired poltergeist potency, if poltergeist is what we want to call it. Set entirely in nighttime, sleepy home, the basking glow of tube television is the only semblance of color that emits a faint blue luminous while antiquated cartoons provide flat caricature coloring. Certain scenes are shot in obvious night vision with the spherical focus that becomes unnatural in the frame, but there’s really nothing natural about Ball’s auteur style. The lo-fi style choice continues into the English DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix that doesn’t exercise every channel. Instead, we’re back to canned content with intentional hissing, popping, and distorted tracks. Aside from a couple of innate audio recordings of a squeaking closet door, all the other ambient audio and dialogue is done after the fact in post-production to be rendered appropriately misshaped and muddled. There’s also no score, retaining realism of a hushed house sound design to pay heed to soft footsteps and other delicate and mortifying milieu noises. Depending on your audio setup, subtitles may be your friend here as the whispers are so low, they’re nearly inaudible. There are a handful of scenes that have burned in English subtitles for that very reason, but full menu English captioning is available too for the minute amount of dialogue. Special features only include an audio commentary track with the director and director of photography Jamie McRae. Acorn Media’s release mirrors the U.S.’s RLJ Entertainment’s Blu-ray with the exception of a slightly thicker Blu-ray snapper. The front cover denotes essentially what to expect in the future, a low-resolution and a blue-toned, dark, inverted screenshot image of the young boy; this scene also translates to the disc art. Encoded with a region B playback, “Skinamarink” comes UK certified 15 for strong horror and sustained threat in its 100-minute runtime. Take my advice: there’s nothing quite like “Skinamarink” outside the experimental gallimaufry but it’s sleepy time nature should not be viewed at the late-night weary hours or else it’ll lull you into a nightmare of your own.

The Kids Aren’t All Right in “Skinamarink” on Blu-ray!

EVIL is a Slice of Deep Dish Hell in “Creepy Tales of Pizza and Gore” reviewed! (Bayview Entertainment / Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on May 6, 2020

Pizza, that delicious concoction of bread, marinara, cheese, and your topping of choice kneaded and pieced together in a gooey circular of staple culinary awesomeness, has somehow found its way baked into an Italian-sans-meatball horror anthology that promises an equally saucy taste of crusted blood red gore. Five varied, harried tales of horror molded into a gruesome and terrifying VHS-style that will send chills down your spine as you swallow your first piping hot bite of pizza will either have you hungry for more or hurling out your pepperonis. These tales of macabre include the cursed audio tracks of a deadly screaming ghost, the grisly torture and murder in the name of Satan, the tragic and supernatural deaths of two ill-fated lovers, a wooded creature stalking stranded motorists, and a VHS tape that seeks revenge on its former, ungrateful owner.

Let’s take our time traveling machine back to 2014 where Italian filmmaker, Lorenzo Fassina, releases his second feature directorial film behind the horror-comedy, “Anamnesi Mutante,” transmitting by way of a five tale anthology humorously entitled “Creepy Tales of Pizza and Gore;” the titles of the shorts are “Screaming Ghost,” “Devil of the Night,” “Alone in the House,” “Wood,” and “Killer Tape.” Co-directed with producer Marco Giangiarelli, The Milan born Fassina’s background also includes being a director of a collection of short films and music videos for bands that include Italian metal bands Cripple Bastards and Viscera///, similar music scores the anthology. The eclectic tales that greatly homage horror of the 80’s that include rich in color film titles and poignant atmosphere audio mixes, each have a runtime average of approx. 10 minutes long, and offer a mixed macabre of subgenre goodness from technological horror to inanimate object horror besieged with an interlacing host, a faceless, demon-like presenter with much to say, much like the Crypt Keeper. My apologies in advance as the screener that was provided didn’t have subtitles so the host’s soliloquy goes mostly misunderstood, but by the way of editing and how the syntax is structured, one would assume the ghoulish emcee sets up the pizza eaters with the next short video nasty. “Creepy Tales of Pizza and Gore” is produced by Fassina’s indie company, DirtyTape.

Most of us in the States more than likely won’t find any familiar faces inside the confines of these five tales and, know what? That’s okay! Aside from our hell bound host, there’s not a lick of dialogue spoken, but the capability to connect with the characters and the capacity to understand the story without words is as transparent as crystal clear waters of the Venice canals. An assemble of facial and eye expressions and a well edited together script and structure by Fassina for each short provides a sustainable and a sufficient menacing mixed bag of mouthwatering horror. The largely novice cast has either worked on previous projects with Fassina before or are an unknown delight to us viewers and cast list includes Sara Antonicelli, Beatrice Cartoni, Jonathan Farlotta, Jacopo Grandi, Francesco Marra, Tommaso Meledina, Alessandro Melito, Riccardo Tiberi, and Bunny Roberts with a cherry on top topless scene for good measure.

I’m not a terribly big fan of anthologies. Yes, I enjoy “Creepshow 2,” like every other horror fanatic smuck, and I do revel in the grave zest of the low-budget spectrum, especially with compilations from directors of the “HI-8”, aka “Horror Independent 8,” that featured the bloodbath films of some 80s/90’s SOV prodigies in Ron Bonk, Donald Farmer, Tim Ritter, and Marcus Koch, but most anthologies find their unsuccessful way right toward the trash bin, condensed to third-rate releases with little-to-no marketing and hardly any surplus material in the special feature department. “Creepy Tales of Pizza and Gore” may be a foreign anthology barely making an insignificant speck in the cinema market, but certainly shouldn’t be overlooked as the derived golden age of an immensely beloved straight-to-VHS horror courses through the veins of Fassina’s reverencing anthology. The stories garnish b-reel content, but not necessarily effortless or incompetent in substance and range from serious, to tongue-in-cheek, and out right absurdity, with the latter stories being the weaker links. In all, it’s a fun and entertainment horror show from our Italian friends.

“Creepy Tales of Pizza and Gore is delivered fresh and blood warm onto DVD home video courtesy of the New Jersey based distributor, Bayview Entertainment. As aforementioned, Bayview Entertainment publicity provided a streaming screening link so the audio and video aspects will not be critique for this review, but the DVD specs include a single disc, Anamorphic widescreen presentation, with an unrated rating on an Italian language anthology that, supposedly, has English subtitles – my screener did not have subtitles. Bayview Entertainment’s DVD casing resembles entirely like a VHS-cassette with faux movie rental stickers stuck on the outer plastic. The packaging is a nice and warranted touch to a VHS-homaging anthology. There were no special features included with the screener or released in the press release. Chow down on night with “Creepy Tales of Pizza and Gore;” a validating horror anthology worthy of time and effort and reaffirming the faith in anthologies once again with wild, imaginative macabre ambitions without the stiffening efforts of pushy financiers calling behind-the-wheel shots.

“Creepy Tales of Pizza and Gore” won’t disappoint! Buy here on Amazon.com

Come With EVIL If You Want to Live. “The Zombinator” reviewed! (Bayview Entertainment/Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on April 16, 2020

In Youngstown, Ohio, a small documentary team follows popular fashion blogger JoAnne and while continuing to roll film during a friend’s wake, a fallen member of the military during combat, a horde of zombie horror storm the reception hall packed with celebratory mourners. JoAnne, the documentary crew, and a handful of JoAnne’s friends run for their lives through all of Youngstown only to be rescued by a former Afghanistan war solider, Atam, debriefing the situation of a powerful drug manufacturing corporation behind the localized crisis. The survivors soon realize that a band of greedy mercenaries, Atam’s ex-brothers in arms, are supervising the drug’s effects that will, in turn, create a money making, desperation cure in the weeks to come.

If you haven’t guessed, 2012’s “The Zombinator” is a zombie title melded with “The Terminator” franchise and helmed by documentarian and comedy writer-director Sergio Myers. “The Zombinator” is the first horror feature in the filmmaker’s videography repertoire that chips in comedic soundbites to fully absolve the zombie apocalypse film from being a strictly horror. The very reason the film’s called “The Zombinator” should have been a great comedy-horror indicator as well. Sergio Myers’ 7 Ponies Productions finances the micro-budget, semi-found footage feature that egregiously pollutes the very “Terminator” brand in a way that promotes “Lady Terminator” from being not only a grandly exploitation of Indonesian deference, but now an innate fragment of the renowned franchise. “The Zombinator” endoskeleton is not as indestructible with little-to-no homage connection other than a muscly actor donning his best Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike getup, dressed a bastardized version of the T-800 infiltrator. No machines. No time travel. No anything that approximates the franchise that would have been a cool concept of a time traveling machine hellbent on blowing zombie scum away.

The cast is virtually made up of unknowns, faces who certainly received their career start with a foot inside the door of “The Zombinator.” The talent is young and unseasoned, but hungry to make a name for themselves with melodramatic performances despite a poorly written script that’s more stationary than progressive on the coattails of the last “Terminator” film “Salvation.” While the documentary team films fashion blogger JoAnne played by Joanne Tombo, Tombo isn’t the headliner. In fact, a lead is lost in the scuffling mist of the zombie outbreak, but the top bill is certainly given to an experienced acting vet in the hard-nosed form of Patrick Kilpatrick (“The Toxic Avenger,” “Eraser”) as a military colonel squaring up against the poster boy of “The Zombinator” and the film’s co-producer, Joseph Aviel in his debut feature film. Aviel, who has doubled as Arnold Schwarzenegger in the YouTube sci-fi comedy episodes of “Terminator: Genisys: The YouTube Chronicles,” is just as monstrous as Schwarzenegger was in his prime, garbed in a pitch black trench coat, wielding a shotgun, and sporting shades inside dark warehouse and nighttime scenes – keep in mind, Aviel is not playing a machine, but a ex-soldier so there’s really no need for the sunglasses. The rest of the cast, including Aviel, are quite rigid and lost, stuck in a loop of spewing much of the same peculiarities without every changing. “The Zombinator” rounds out with Lucia Brizzi, Justin Brown (“Early Grave”), Diana Sillaots, Jennifer Sulkowski, Scott Alin (“What’s Eating Todd?”), Travis Bratten, Melvin Breedlove, Maria Desimone, and Michael Angelletta.

Recently, I caught “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” episode from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” with Patrick Kilpatrick as a hardnosed, war-torn Starfleet officer whose been part of a team holding a pivotal Jem’Hadar communications array in the Chin’toka system. The lean and towering Kilpatrick from 20 plus years ago is nearly unrecognizable as Father Time has been rather unforgiving to the actor’s midsection, but Kilpatrick still has that apathetic stare on top of a sternly contoured face graced now by an impressively horizontal and lengthy bushy mustache. Kilpatrick’s a brilliant highlight in a rather abysmal film of bleary lines on whether it’s supposed to be found footage or not horror-comedy; somehow the found footage crew are not a part of the surrounding action to the extend that zombies and the mercenaries are not aware of their presence despite standing merely a few feet away in plain view, but the survivors are clearly aware of them combatively noting to the crew to turn off their cameras …? Also, the comedic lines, such as, “getting popped by the grand fucking wizard of zombies,” seem sorely out of place, poorly timed between frantic moments of confusion, fear, and strife, and don’t really know if they’re actually intended to be funny…? Confusion doesn’t end there as Youngstown, Ohio is a hop, skip, and jump from rural, to urban, to a dam-side cabin in segued acts, scaling down to miniature and unrealistic grounds of time and space. Lastly, there’s an uneven ratio of zombie action and dialogue exposition that will bore audiences with locale-to-locate histrionics without the commingling remedy of undead mayhem equalization to lure back in the attention of wandering eyeballs and dissatisfied brains.

“The Zombinator” targets and destroys zombies with a brand new DVD home video, released this past March from New Jersey based distributed, Bayview Entertainment, with a slick looking front cover of a T-800 skull half dripping with zombie flesh surrounding a milky white eye. Unfortunately, I was provided with an online screener for review and can’t officially comment on the exact video and audio technical quality, but I will say that the found footage approach render very dark when only a couple of moving LED ring light accessories become the primary source of lighting. The underused original score provided by Todd Maki bests out much of everything else about the project with harrowing tracks baselined by zombie groans and the undetermined reverberations of distant ambience. There were no special features on the screener as well. Like a chunk of spoiled meat prime for tasteful critical fodder, there’s absolutely no wriggle room for positivity for the high concept, low output film, “The Zombinator.” Hasta la vista, baby.