From the EVIL Clowns to the EVIL Scarecrow. “Die’ced: Reloaded” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on November 6, 2025

Go Beyond the Short Film with “Die’ced: Reloaded” on Blu-ray!

As child, Benjamin ripped his parents to shreds with his bare hands after long stints of abuse, including cutting out his tongue to forever silence him. Now as a mute man, Benjamin remains incarcerated in a psychiatric prison, quiet behind a homemade mask, and under the care of a psychiatric doctor with good intentions. After a violent, aided escape, leaving the doctor and a nurse mutilated and dismembered, Benjamin finds himself roaming the streets on Halloween night, coming across and killing a young man for his elaborately exaggerated scarecrow costume. The imposing killer now has his sights set on a teenage girl, Cassandra, stalking her from inside the crowded venue of a friend’s costume party to invading her family home where her father is home alone. Benjamin becomes a relentless force obsessed with Cassandra and he will stop at nothing and rack up the bodies in unrestricted violence just to have her.

Back in 2023, the co-director of “The Dark Side,” Jeremy Rudd, created a 50-minute slasher short “Die’ced” that took its villainous maniac, a scarecrow mute with a penchant for maiming and slaughtering, and made him into a viral internet hit, snagging the attention of the creative producing team over at Dread. Along with some meager crowdfunded capital, roughly $3,500 out of a $75,000 goal, Rudd was able to extend his written-and-directed short film into a feature length release in 2025 and rebranded the film with the slightly tweaked title of “Die’ced: Reloaded.” Rudd, who has a 20-year career acting in front of the camera, brings his most eyed feature to his home of Seattle, Washington, set on Halloween as the backdrop for the slasher’s body pool, and utilizes Seattle surrounding specific businesses for some of his scenes, such as The Lott Coffee shop and the A&W Bottling Company in Snohomish county as key sets. Taylor Jones produces with Louis Gallegos and Jeremy’s identical twin brother, Nathan, serving as executive producers.

Acting as “Die’ced’s” frontman without a single line of dialogue, Jason Brooks stalks without being stealth as the deranged psych-prison escape Benjamin. As a character actor of many faces, having donned the mask of the iconic Jason Voorhees character in a handful of short tributes, strapped on the gloves and fedora for a quick Fred Krueger, and has played the monster countless times over and over again, Brooks follows the footsteps of the likes of Kane Hodder, a part time stuntman keen on being the on-screen villain and making the role is own. As Benjamin, there’s no qualms about the character’s imposing height and careful movements, some being gently infantile while most have an aggressive cruelty like a wild dog shaking a mouse in its jaws to literal pieces in a fit of blood spatter. In the other corner, the final girl, Cassandra is just a seemingly normal teenage girl trying to live her adolescent life by going to parties and being a sister to brother Tommy. However, there’s no way you could convince me Eden Campbell and Collin Fischer are playing teenagers. Typically, a slasher high school cast would be near the edge or just over the threshold of adulthood, but Cassandra and Tommy are way too old to be high school students with an age range of mid-to-late 20s having a noticeable, natural filled out physique of maturity. Campbell career stretch has her as a micro-scream queen of sorts from a few horror-related roles from her haunted theater debut performance in “Ghostlight” to having a significant role in the two-part Netflix series “Fear Street: 1978” based off the R.L. Stine scholastic book and with “Die’ced,” Campbell is no Lauren LaVera or Jamie Lee Curtis with her final girl character that’s pitted against a scarecrow garbed killer who’s able to take down without much to-do. The cast rounds out with Christine Rose Allen as Benjamin’s nurse and escape benefactor, John Karyus (“Lo,” “The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol”) as an unfortunately psychiatric doctor being utterly taken apart piece-by-piece, and Nigal Vonas (“Coyote Cage”) as the Cassandra and Tommy’s father.

If analyzing “Die’ced: Reload” in the grand scheme of the slasher iconography, Benjamin, the scarecrow, boils down to being an unauthorized spinoff of Art the Clown, a completely unmistakable byproduct of the widely popular, ultra-violent “Terrifer” film and subsequent franchise about a devilish smiling clown immensely enjoying eviscerating victims in all different kind of ways. With the same traditional traits of a brawny butcher running on vocal silence, Benjamin is compared to the fan favorites of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees by its filmmakers, but as far as costume and behavior style goes, along with the intense desire to craft art out of the entrails of his victims, the “Die’ced: Reload” antagonist has more qualitative measure toward Art the Clown with the Aguste face makeup that accentuates the odd shape of a distinct facial bone structure, the harlequin jester who revels in the pursued dismemberment and savagery of innocent parties, and the fact a girl/woman becomes the singled out and obsessed target that rivals the Art the Clown versus Sienna inextricable link. To further the film pretentiousness, the narrative is held together by elementary school graded glue and Scotch tape with an inexplicable twist that fails elucidation and logic and a familiar narrative that also relies too heavily on the gratuitous gore elements to carry it from beginning to end, reducing the once 2023 viral short into nothing more than a too soon hackneyed concept for 2025. The “Reload” subtitle gimmick extends the original 2023 short by 30-minutes’ worth of additional gore footage and slipping in some of Benjamin’s backstory while the narrative trunk remains unchanged, but the overall outcome bares a slapdash impression as the story isn’t as terrifying or is whole enough for the Benjamin scarecrow to scare off even a murder of cowardly crows.

”Reload” scares its way onto Blu-ray from Dread’s home video label, Epic Pictures Group, with an AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD25 that’s has definitively no issues with the compression integrity seeing pitch black negative space, delineated outlining, and a stable digital image quality but isn’t quite as sharp. “Die’ced” and director Jeremy Rudd pride themselves on their retro homage to the slasher genre of yesteryear where “Halloween” and “Friday the13th” reigned supreme and Rudd tries to emulate the effect with hazy fog, low and key lighting, and plenty of corner shadowing that impairs surface details and textual outputs. Coloring is fine but the dark tone grading hampers the hue explosion that leaves the Scarecrow, or maybe Clownish, makeup moderately subdued under the straw mop and burlap hat. “Die’ced” is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio and without a grain filter to exact a throwback 80’s slasher. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mix offers a tampered fidelity through the multi-channel system with a weaker side and back channels to focus more on the front. Dialogue doesn’t deny clarity and provides enough prominence to be the singled finest element of the audio design that really lacks the range for broader Halloween costumed killer on the loose in Seattle that winds up at a drinking party and a bottling factory without making a bigger splash in the audio pool. Special features include the original “Die’ced” short film and trailer, plus additional Dread produced film trailers. Physical packaging is a standard Blu-ray Amaray case with Benjamin’s clown-scarecrow mug menacing smiling through the arch of a bloodstained sickle garnished with one single retro VHS “Horror” sticker which perfectly denotes the extent of “Die’ced’s” throwback slashery. Epic Picture Group’s Blu-ray is region free and presents the film not rated with an 81-inute runtime.

Last Rites: I’m not seeing the viral sensation the internet saw with a hackneyed antagonist doing much of the same as those who came before, but “Die’ced: Reload” has an extreme slasher violence appeal that can temporarily quench bloodthirst and the open ending leaves more to be explored for character redemption.

Go Beyond the Short Film with “Die’ced: Reloaded” on Blu-ray!

EVIL’s the Bacon, the Pork Roll, and the Scrapple All Mixed and Slashed together! “Butcher’s Bluff” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 21, 2025

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

Film students Rodger, Nicole, and Derrick decide to head to the rural Texas town of Emerald Falls and make their class project documentary around the 28 missing persons over the years and the Hogman, an urban legend of an escaped killer now roaming the woods of Butcher’s Bluff. Bringing along their friends to make it concurring party getaway at Rodger’s family vacation cabin, the trio conduct interviews with the eccentric town locals to build a story around the Hogman myth, even ascertaining the original location for the mask Hogman wore during his first kills before escaping psychiatric prison. The more they investigate into the Hogman, the more the locals warn them to stay away from Butcher’s Bluff but in a case of curiosity killed the cat, the documentary film students and their drug-fueled, sexed-up friends find themselves being hunted with no cell service, no help within miles, and no way out of the Hogman’s kill radius.

Co-directors William Instone and Matt Rifley helm their first collaborative feature “Butcher’s Bluff,” a 2023 small town slasher reminiscent of the renaissance slasher movement of the 1980s, packed with practical gore effects, odd backwoods characters, a campy party of vice-riddled youth, and, moist importantly – excuse me – most importantly, T&A. Instone, whose all-in director, writer, and producer debut horror “Jon” from 2012 brings one man’s delusions into horrifying reality, cowrites his latest grim story with writer, painter, and overall liberal arts connoisseur Renfield Rasputin. Filmed in Texas with principal locations taking place in Bastrop, New Braunfels, and San Marcos to composition a story set in the fictional town of Emerald Falls and its rural woodland of Butcher’s Bluff. The film is a crowdfunded venture that raised an approximate $60K to cover principal shooting and post-production costs with Instone and Rifley serving as primary producers amongst an amalgamation of crowdfunded producing backers Instone’s Thunder Mountain Films, in association with Dull Knife Productions and Spicey Ramen Productions, go hog wild with their slasher horror.

As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate writer, directing, and producing “Butcher’s Bluff,” Instone also portrays the main antagonist Hogman, masked with a stitched together pig head complete with cockeyed tusks and garbed with a dingy mechanic jumpsuit and tan jacket. The Hogman is a walk-and-run chaser with a duel-sided axe and rusty, broad curved knife as main melee weapons though he’ll get his bare hands dirty from time-to-time. Instone’s not flashy with the villain and doesn’t key-light any iconic poses, stances, or stares to incite a nerve coursing fear. Hogman’s victims are anyone and everyone who enters the Butcher’s Bluff forest, from necking lovers (Jacqueline Hays and “Mallrats’s” Jeremy London), to lost pot farm thieves (“You’re Next’s” L.C. Holt, “Scare Package’s’” Christopher Winbush, “Girls Gone Dead’s” Shawn C. Phillips), to finally, but not limited to, the Rodger’s friends and classmates on their excursion investigation and party. Fortunately, the group displays different caricature tropes without going full-blown cliché. Between them you have the exuding sexy yet overly bitchy duo of Sam and Tina (a cut pixie cut but broodingly built Samantha Holland and a slender yet high-end platinum blonde Kayla Anderson), Rodger’s sex-driven, dweeb cousin Bobby (Dakota Millett) who Sam and Tina torment, the polar opposite to Bobby stud with Jake (Santiago Sky) and of course the three documentarians: Rodger (Michael Fischer), Derrick (Johnny Huang), and Nicole (Paige Steakley), each reside in their own attribute world consistently, dying the way they live, that’s very telling of their moral fiber. In additional to Jeremy London and Shawn C. Phillips, who have worked themselves into being staples of the indie genre films, other notable names to mention for their brief but key roles are Brinke Stevens (“Nightmare Sisters”), Paul T. Taylor (“Hellraiser: Judgement”), Bill Oberst Jr. (“3 From Hell”), and Bill Johnson (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II”) peppered into the rest of the supporting cast to draw in fandom.

“Butcher’s Bluff” has the necessary bone structure to be a digestible slasher, checking all the elemental boxes, and Instone and Rifley manage to technically pull off a nearly 2-hour film on a crowdfunded budget. The problem is “Butcher’s Bluff” has a hackneyed routine about it. Instead of creating something new and wonderfully, gory and diabolical, under a distinct flag of novelly progressive storytelling, every scene feels all too familiar, a telltale sign to horror fans that we’ve seen this kind of story before. From Hogman’s stony silence and indiscriminate aggression bores him as a Michael Myers carbon copy, a family in cahoots with a s flesh-stitched maniac plays the tune of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and there’s even a character moment of yelling What Are You Waiting For? aimlessly into the dark forest while spinning around with arms wide apart that oozes Jennifer Love Hewitt vibes. Add in some rather uninspiring frame, shot design, and editing and “Butcher’s Bluff” very much embodies the crowdfunded costs rather than the intended crowdfunded spirit. Now while all of this portion of the review sounds grossly negative, don’t just run for the hills to the next slasher film in line just yet as Instone and Rifley still manage to keep an engagement lock on what makes the slasher film enjoyable to behold with some decently inlaid practical gore effects, including a pleading head being sliced horizontally through from mouth to hair or a posthumous, lawn chair display of one fine girl’s nipples and eyes plucked from her body and posed on her eye-gouged out person as if giving a blood offering to the audience Gods. There’s also the inviting gratuitous T&A from Samantha Holland, Kayla Anderson, and Jacqueline Hays that keeps the old theme motif alive within the campy slasher genre as well as keeping young boys’ dreams from becoming dry.

Breaking Glass Pictures distributes the archetypical slasher “Butcher’s Bluff” onto DVD home video. The MPEG2 encoded, 720p upscaled standard definition, DVD9 really has a tough go with the compression capabilities as there’s quite a bit of data to encode/decode within a near full-time night shoot picture and color accompaniments that blend right into the darkness, melding out of a clean definition. Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, banding and splotching render a difficult deciphering of data in inkier fields. When colors do contrast or arise into lighter hues, there’s a pop of demarcation with its full potential held back by an ungraded layer. Textures are extremely fluid throughout with the prominent skin scenes offering a decent, natural look but most scenes are fuzzy as if the upscale fights the downscaling for supremacy. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound offers an adequate compression for a routine slasher with mid-level range with clear and clean dialogue overtop eerie forest soundscape of breaking branches, tree knocks, and leave crunching footsteps. The mix doesn’t convey much depth with dialogue and ambience hanging around the front channels while medium shots and some tree knocking flirt with the side channels. A mainstay slasher should have a memorable, tense-riddles soundtrack for the chase or create omnipresence fear but “Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Dinner with Leatherface” composer’s Alexander Taylor’s insipid inspiration can’t be held in the memorable bank and fails to elevate the Hogman’s imposing sheer terror. English closed captioning is available. Special features include a proof on concept trailer for the crowdfunding campaign that stars a handful of the actors from the feature film, such as Michael Fischer and Paige Steakley, and a behind-the-scenes music video that contains behind-the-scenes footage. The DVD presence is standard fair for Breaking Glass Pictures with a DVD Amaray and a one-sided front cover art, which subjectively pleasing in its retrograde mockup of an illustrated Hogman looming over a scared, running Steakley (supposedly) in her white tank top and high cut shorts. There is at least one noticeable error on the back cover that spells Paige Steakley’s name incorrectly in the credits, listing her last name as Steakely. The Not Rated release is hard encoded with region 1 and has a two-hour runtime which can appear quite long, but the pacing was not terrible and the long runtime for an indie slasher didn’t feel overly immeasurable.

Last Rites: “Butcher’s Bluff’s” has little to offer as far as the next novel and generational slasher but scratches the genre itch with a large body count, solid kills, and campy campers looking to buy, sell, and trade their vices for being violated.

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

This 600 Horsepower Outboard Propeller Runs on EVIL! “Motorboat” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 8, 2023

As Chief Brody Always Said, This Isn’t a Boat Accident! “Motorboat” on DVD today!

Messiah Ward and his cult of followers once plagued the surrounding Lake Jude for years, conjuring black magic and death in order to appease their netherworld lord. Ward’s evil is only matched by the goodness of a man of the cloth, but the pious risktaker is no ordinary priest but Messiah Ward’s very own brother, Father Thomas. Taking matters into his own had to save the souls of his community, Father Thomas mercilessly guns down Messiah Ward and his acolytes, ending his reign of terror…or so he thought. Two years later, a black and powerful phantom speedboat appears on the lake, killing those who dare enter its waters. With the help of the local lake patrol officer Barney Rayl investigating the homicides, Father Thomas must serve as the wrath of God once again to stop his brotherly possessed motorboat from hacking up any more innocent swimmers and fishers with its deadly outboard propeller.

I’ve seen my share of possessed combustible engine films with cars, trucks, and even a killer bulldozer. Hell, I’ve even seen a rubber tire on a rampage. Yet, I’ve never seen a killer boat movie until today and the Polonias are responsible for the slaughter on the seas with their latest indie schlocker, “Motorboat.” The “Splatter Farm” and “Hellspawn” director Mark Polonia and his son Anthony team up for their fifth rudimentary, lowbrow lunge at hyper-micro budget horror, crowdfunded on Indiegogo for around $5,000, and shot in the fall of October ‘22 in and around Tioga county, such as one location being Hills Creek State Park Lake to be one of three locations in creating a larger lake setting. “Motorboat” is created by Polonia Brothers Entertainment, executively produced by SRS Cinema’s Ron Bonk, through Indiegogo, and John Dagostino with Mark Polonia producing, and Elliott Monroe (“Evil Bong 666”) and Previn Wong (“Yule Log”) set as associate producers.

Like many of the Polonia Brothers Entertainment, a cast of regulars return to indulge in the tightknit production family and to give their all in providing their best performances to make micro budgets like “Motorboat” come to filmic fruition. In the roles of Priest and Harbor Patrolman are Tim Hatch (“Shark Encounters of the Third Kind”) and Jeff Kirkendall (“Sharkula”) who have once again found themselves working side-by-side on a Mark Polonia production. Cemented more into exposition than action, Hatch and Kirkendall essentially get the job done with their extensive rapport and long history working together but as developing their characters, a Priest and a Harbor Patrolman could have well been a Lake Fisherman and Pizza Delivery Man as the professions are laid waste to the script’s lesser defining ideals that are more clearly evident, such as a demon possessed motor boat offing people on and off shore. Also, Hatch and Kirkendall, as well as much of “Motorboat’s” cast, aren’t very expressive, use little gesturing, and corner themselves with monotone deliveries, taking what should be shocking scenes or jump into actions with little reactionary energy and intensity. That fairly sums up “Motoboat’s” cast as Messiah Ward is more like the 1958 Plymouth Fury in “Christine,” a motorized machine on a killing spree, with Michael Korotitsch briefly playing the character under a black or rubber mask during his corporeal scenes. The remaining cast are essentially the racked up body count boat fodder with Polonia regulars Jamie Morgan (“House Shark”), Ken Van Sant (“Sharkenstein”), Dave Fife (“Doll Shark”), and Noyes J. Lawton (“Virus Shark”).

As you can obviously see by the cast’s previous film credits, which all involved Mark Polonia, the director has a healthy fascination with the predators of the ocean, augmenting and exploiting sharksploitation from a limitless thought-bubble of narrative concepts. Surprisingly, “Motorboat” does not contain one single dorsal fin or rows of razor-sharp visual effects teeth. Polonia may have deviated from sharksploitation but never got out of the water by keeping the tide still infused with blood. Post-production blood effects, rain, and layered energy spirals are not the most skillfully composited integration but what Polonia always strives for is to make an entertaining film, to keep the viewers engaged, and could only hope that the his microbudget efforted effects, such as using a 1/16 scale RC boat as the Messiah Ward’s ship of slaughter, afforded him enough production value to eke by but how Mark Polonia, and I’m sure son Anthony also, very masterfully retains engagement for his microbudget movies is to not linger on a shot that can make the scene stale or monotonous. Granted, you may roll your eyes on lower shelf quality, but you’ll still find yourself connected to the screen as cuts are made for different camera angles, such as over-the-shoulder, behind-the-back, master shots, closeups, mediums, there’s never a single take for a long period of time to avoid idle eyes and unstimulated neuron firings. The story itself cruises along as combination of films like “The Devil’s Rain” and “The Car” leaving a fair amount of demonic or possessed destruction in its wake but can be trying at times piecing together the whole story behind Messiah Ward’s purpose and transition into either a speedboat or a demon driving a speedboat, an unclear specific of the antagonistic character, and this undercuts Father Thomas and Harbor Patrol Rayl endgame goal because we’re not exactly sure who or what they’re up against. An innuendo term like “Motorboat” suggests lighter, more in a foreplay of intentions, but SRS Cinema and Mark Polonia are abreast in another way to turn the tide toward something far more terrifying on the waters!

The one thing you can always count on Ron Bonk and SRS Cinema to pull off are immaculately enticing cover arts to catch one’s eye and that is what we have here with “Motorboat” on DVD home video. The 16×9 widescreen presented film is a MPEG-2 encoded DVD5 shot digitally with an overall clean finish. However, compressions issues do appear with minor jittery picture noise and minor banding with skin tones ungraded and appearing sometimes orange in the shot. Thrifty visual effects are you get what you pay for but doesn’t necessarily affect the watch if going in, understanding, and if a fan of the Mark Polonia fast and dirty chugalug of filmmaking. An English stereo 2.0 is wangled by the built-in camera mic that more than most the time doesn’t have too many issues with playback aside the varying and inconsistent dialogue levels despite being in the same scene as well as unable to filter an overwhelming lakeside ambiance. Post ADR was used to overlay a couple of scene dialogue tracks due to the crashing, wind-driven waves of lakeside conversing. As a whole, dialogue sums up pretty clear without serious hurdles. The two-channel speaker relays a punchy boat-toot audio byte that sounds like a Mac truck blaring its horn whenever Messiah Ward the “Motorboat” is cruising the waters and killing the people. There were no English subtitles available. Extras include an audio commentary track with director Mark Polonia who half the time soapboxes his trials and tribulations as well as champions micro-indie filmmaking while also diving shallowly into “Motorboat’s” background waters. The official trailer and other SRS trailers are also present. I’m always impressed with SRS Cinema front cover artwork as it’s very appealing, alluring, and is sometimes not truly accurate and for “Motorboat,” we have a half-submerged woman in distressed and reaching out for help in the foreground as a minacious boat barrel toward her from behind. Not insert inside and the DVD art is the same front cover image but cropped to just show the woman’s frightened, eyeshadow-streaked face. Region free with a rum-runner runtime of 75 minutes, SRS Cinema’s DVD comes unrated. “Motorboat” is pure Mark Polonia and if you’re expecting high-caliber horror, you’re going to need more than a life preserver to survive these chopping waters.

As Chief Brody Always Said, This Isn’t a Boat Accident! “Motorboat” on DVD today!

Furbish the Four Walls EVIL Lives Inside of Your Brain with “The Yellow Wallpaper!” (Hysteria Pictures / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on April 18, 2021

A prominent physician escorts his wife, Jane, and newborn child to a secluded countryside home after a severe episode of hysteria rattles Jane’s mental state. For three months in the Summer, Jane is confined to the house grounds with strict instructions to do nothing to exert herself other than to partake in a little gardening. Even writing, which was profusely Jane’s pursuit, is harshly forbidden. The bedroom she shares with her husband is nearly unadorned with only their bed in the middle of the room and yellow wallpaper ornamenting all four walls. As the weeks pass in isolation, Jane can’t escape the feeling the yellow wallpaper is creeping into her mind, imprisoning her, and driving her mad, lending her relaxing retreat from societal nervousness be laid to waste in solitude.

Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” has seen a fair share of filmic adaptations in over a span of a century since being published back in 1892, but all of those variated works have been grounded in the last four decades . Amongst the numerous shorts and a handful of features, the most notable version of “The Yellow Wallpaper” would be Logan Thomas’ 2012 interpretation, starring Juliet Landau, daughter of the late Martin Landau. That’s the funny thing about public domain property is it opens up a plethora of pathways to spin and redefine creativity to rework Gillman’s feminist tale from the artists’ voices speaking of the times when women’s mental health, and mental health in general, was perceived naively as anxiety. Kevin Pontuti steps up to the plate to take a crack at the spiraling to madness story as the filmmaker’s inaugural feature directorial of the American and Ireland co-produced celluloid from an adapted screenplay written by the director and co-written with the story lead actress and producer, Alexandra Loreth. Under the duo’s entertainment banner, Hysteria Pictures in association with Ireland’s Emerald Giant Productions, the crowdfunded “The Yellow Wallpaper” project receives the latest contemporary treatment that brings Gillman’s words back to the screen.

Co-writer and producer, Alexandra Loreth, takes the lead as Jane coming down off the ledge of a nervous breakdown but still ballooning with instability that’s stretching her fashioned societal-front seams. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also the California based filmmaker’s first feature film alongside Pontuti, basically penning Jane’s entire mindset of combating the time’s unfamiliar sexisms and mental health. Loreth crawls on her hands and knees, feign glossy, far away eyes, and be cold and distant to be in tune to a woman disassociating with herself and reality and, truth be told, portrays a convincible case that shows feature debut courage with on screen nudity and a stamina for being the focus for the entire 99 minute runtime; however these acts remain stuck in a excessive loop that roots Loreth’s character decline to one a taciturn setting, lacking range and depth to carry Jane into full metal straightjacket crazy. Opposite Loreth is Irish actor Joe Mullins as John, the physician, the only character mentioned in Gillman’s short story. Mullins impels like an automaton through the role with not a lick of zestful misogyny to contrast against. Loreth completely dominates the screen as you barely notice Mullins whisk in and out of scenes to medicate Jane or comfort her with little white lies. John’s dismissive attributes were more dispassionate with Mullins behind the wheel that leaves only half the work’s presence omitted and it’s sorely felt. In the role of Jane’s domicile caregiver, Jeanne O’Connor paves a road of sturdy era authenticity that also is fleeting from “The Yellow Wallpaper” and with her 19th century genteel aesthetics, we’re sucked into the period to keep us grounded in time. Performances round out with Clara Harte as the abstruse infant caregiver and Mark P. O’Connor briefly standing in as Jane’s doctor brother.

Pontuti and Loreth’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” targets the very essence of Gillman’s journal narrated themes of the downplayed and untapped mental health and the secondary expectations of women in 19^th century society. The differences between the 1800’s paper and 2021’s movie narratives are ever so slightly tweaked into the contemporary medium with Loreth narrating right from Gillman’s pages word-for-word in between the auxiliary scripted dialogue and the finale concluding toward a more grim avenue that will surely satisfy the more macabre of hearts. Yet, not enough material could be extracted from the short story to entice as entertainment as the adaptation lingers in monotone fashion. Jane carries on about the woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper and is shown going in circles of staring at the wallpaper, crawling on her hands and knees on the estate grounds (as describe in the short story), and just being listless throughout the entirety with her mental issues linked to post-partum and drowning in passive despair. Perhaps better suited for a short film, as many have been completed already, audiences will become tiresomely and frustratedly lost in all of Jane’s 99-minutes of tedium as there just isn’t enough to sate a feature length film unless you add embellishing bells and whistles in the realm of supernatural or the puppeteering of an unseen force symbolizing Jane’s fractured mindset. Don’t expect “The Yellow Wallpaper” to paint a gripping tale of feministic horror as the story peels off in a superannuated ream of soapbox issues.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” made its world premier this past March at Cinequest in San Jose, California. The film is shot in a modernly unconventional 4:3 pillarbox aspect ratio aka the black bars on each side of the near square image presentation. The intention by cinematographer Sonja Tsypin (“Scare Package”) was to meet the age of Gillman’s original. Yes, I know in 1892, video wasn’t exactly a thing, let alone pillarboxed formats, but aspect ratio does point the a modern adaptation into the right blast from the past direction. What is also curious about Tsypin’s photography, and I’m not positive if this is in fact intentional or not, is the lesser frame rate that induces jumps in the picture in an almost lag effect that doesn’t add much but of annoyance to the viewing pleasure. I was slightly more impressed with Robert J. Coburns score fathomed the depth of disturbance going through Jane’s head and lured out the creepy that played like a broken-melody music box. There were no bonus scenes during or after the credits. Even with a well established and powerful ending shot, a preserving memento of the patriarchy’s ill-conceived mansplaining of a woman’s mind and body, and an intrepid performance by Alexandra Loreth, “The Yellow Wallpaper” stagnates in faithfulness to Gillman’s short and doesn’t offer new and improved ideas of century old, feminist gothic literature.

Can You Survive Rob Zombie’s Evil Death War? “31” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on December 17, 2016

Traveling across a remote highway, five carnival workers journey to their next small top gig on Halloween day in 1976. Stopped by scarecrow-like figures in the middle of the road, the carnies find themselves led into a hostile trap and are kidnapped, held hostage to be poorly prepped for the dilapidated warehouse “Murderworld.” The violent death labyrinth is set for a hellish game entitled “31”, launched yearly by the sadist Father Death with Sister Serpent and Sister Dragon, that pits the captive against a series of killers, specialized in their own brand of merciless murder. To survive inside “Murderworld,” you have to stay alive for 12 hours in the dark, dank warehouse.

After a self produced campaign, a hefty amount of soul crushing crowdfunding, and a slew of production and distribution ups and downs, “House of a 1000 Corpses” director and shock rocker Rob Zombie was finally able to release this year his latest horror installment “31” since 2012’s “The Lords of Salem.” Lionsgate acquires the home entertainment rights to deliver “31” with a R-rated version of the Zombie’s claimed return to roots horror. The survival slasher, when compared to the director’s other work, capitalizes as the most seriously disturbed work to date, but the premise is not particularly original. We’ve all seen the placing of disoriented victims in a life or death game scenario before; Schwarzenegger’s “The Running Man,” based off the Stephen King novel, strikes many similarities, closely relating the two films by sheer plot alone. With Zombie’s “31,” the differences stagger between the main characters being simple carnies looking for a place in the world and “Murderworld” not being a total dystopian future of skewed justice. Instead, the shock rocker pens in his own ‘motherfucking’ motivations of satanic rituals to filthy the pot of sadism and mayhem.

Overall, I thought “31’s” characters were inviting and interesting even if they’re a cookie-cutter roster engineered by the likes of Rob Zombie. The idea is good to have five ordinary folks enduring a 12 hours bout of being hunted by a pint sized nazi enthusiast, a pair of chainsaw wielding hillbilly whack jobs, a tall German in a pink tutu and his Harley Quinn modeled femme fatale, and, then, there’s Doom-Head, portrayed by the impeccable Richard Brake. My first experience with Brake came from another facet of the word ‘doom,’ 2005’s “Doom,” to be exact, the adaptation of the popular id Software survival horror video game, and even then did Brake have the outer shell of a complete sleaze ball, dipped in an indescribable amount of pure malevolence. Rob Zombie is able to tap into Brake’s true potential with Doom-Head, an egocentric nihilist professionally suited for murder while oozing with unapologetic shamelessness. Along with Brake lies co-stars very familiar from prior Zombie films and these individuals are Jeff Daniel Phillips, deeply blue-eyed Meg Foster, and Judy Geeson from “The Lords of Salem,” the legendary Malcolm McDowell and Lew Temple from the “Halloween” remake, and, of course, Sheri Moon Zombie, the dedicated wife who stars in everything the man does from movies to music videos. Rounding out the film has Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Kevin Jackson, Jane Carr, Pachno Moler, David Ury, Torsten Voges, and “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’s” Elizabeth Daily on the docket.

The problem with the characters are not that their ‘cookie-cutter’ characters, as I aforementioned, but rather their just well, well under written. Developmentally, almost every character becomes wasted space, floating stagnantly across the 103 minute runtime. For the hunters aside from Doom-Head, they’re backgrounds are mysterious which fits the rules of “31.” Doom-Head is a different story because he’s the golden child of “Murderworld,” spoken very highly by Father Murder and graced with so much monologuing that it’s absurdly comical and, unfortunately, predictable. As far as the carnies are concerned, most of the group never blooms into relevancy and I couldn’t help but to root for most of their savage deaths. Sheri Moon Zombie’s Charly character was the slice of life, the slither hope, that showed promise. Yeah, Charly looks and sounds much like Baby Firefly, but Charly is a fantasy heroine with a modest range of emotions and when even faced with defeat, she’s stands strong.

Though I wanted “31” to exceed all my expectations with the promise of untapped brutality, here we stand with a cut version Rob Zombie’s crowdfunded film. I’m interested in what exactly hit the cutting room floor because, just taking in “31” at first viewing, every single scene could be remedied by reimplementing, if any, omitted scenes. From my understanding, Rob Zombie submitted the survival horror numerous times to the MPAA in order to purposely retrieve a R-Rating and the ending result suggests a heavily cut film: off camera moments of attack, choppy warehouse segments, unintended shortened character developments, etc. Something more must be behind the scenes that holds back a fan well-deserved and fan well-funded unrated version and I’m not totally knocking this rated Lionsgate release, but a perception has been cemented on the fact that fans were promised an unadulterated Rob Zombie spook show and ended up not getting what they paid for ultimately.

Lionsgate Home Entertainment will be releasing the Saban Films’ “31” on Blu-ray on December 20th in 1080p High Definition with a 16×9 widescreen 2.46:1 presentation and an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. A DVD version is also available. The presentation is in the detail of the image quality with only some minor dialogue loss, slightly muddled amongst the levels, in the DTS track. Certainly not a disparaging opinion, but once in close quarters, such as the carnies’ van, the ambiance hum of the engine, the tires on the road, and the jingle-jangle of objects in the van drown out parts of dialogue from Meg Froster and Jeff Daniel Phillips. An impressive 2-hour comprehensive documentary on the making of the film entitled “In Hell Everybody Loves Popcorn” and an audio commentary with writer-director Rob Zombie completes the bonus material. “31” feels like a Rob Zombie film; the rocker’s trash talking grit and loads of rockabilly swag leaves his unique brand seared into the horror scene, but Zombie’s “Murderworld” story is a promise-filled return to roots sensation for the director. Honestly, Zombie never strayed from his grungy grindhouse of inhuman torture and death origins, but only for a fleeting moment, and so “31” stays the abrasive, distasteful course that’ll speak, like in cult comprehensible tongues, to only his fan base.