Tag Archives: halloween

EVIL Loves to Clown Around. “The Jester” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Jester” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Days before Halloween, a man hangs himself from off a bridge.  His funeral not only services the wake for his grieving daughter Jocelyn but also brought out his estranged and aggrieved daughter Emma, Jocelyn’s half-sister from a failed marriage their father had abandoned when Emma was very young.  Jocelyn reaches across the aisle to connect and to bond with the peripheral Emma, but the scorned older half-sibling only expresses anger and confliction over feeling grief for man who no longer wanted to be a part of her life until the very end after reaching out a few times to make amends.  Emma and Jocelyn soon discover that a malevolent, supernatural trickster, known as the Jester, was somehow involved with their father’s untimely demise and now, on Halloween night, the Jester is following and toying with them in a playfully sadistic manner, preying on the one thing that bonds and also disconnects the sisters from being content. 

Based on his 2016 three chaptered shorts of the same name, writer-director Colin Krawchuk pulls from the best parts of those shorts, sprinkles a little more sadism on top, and creates his debut into full-length feature film with this titular antagonist, “The Jester,” at the center.  Co-written with longtime collaborate on various shorts as well as “The Jester” shorts is Michael Sheffield, who also brings to life the Jester’s amusing animated animosity and flamboyant cryptic personality from script to screen.   “The Jester” represents a theme of tormenting guilt for this afflicted and those surrounding the person and is symbolized by the absurdity of a clown masked fool in a gaudily colored top-hat and cheap suit with a deviant chip on his shoulder.  Film in and around the Frederick, Maryland area, “The Jester” is a product of Cinematic Productions, based in local Maryland region, and the Dread Central acquiring entertainment company, Epic Productions, under the Dread genre label with Carlo Glorioso, Patrick Ewald, and Katie Page producing with Mary Beth McAndrews and Eduardo Sánchez (director of “Satanic Hispanics”) executive producing.

Through the years of cinema, a plethora of personalities have emerged all vying for our entertainment seeking eye and while most, especially in the indie market, recycle the very idiosyncratic eccentricities of notable characters or extract some inspiration for blatant misappropriation into their own performance, every once and awhile comes a role that can be undeniably fresh, engaging, and unpredictable.  That’s how Michael Sheffield’s Jester presents to me as a versatile villain with broad expressions and precise stratagem that even by not saying a single word in the entire runtime still manages to have us on edge with just what’s up the Jester’s playful, prestidigitate sleeve.  Sheffield’s tall and lanky stature greatly suits the Machiavellian complimented by the outlandish vestments and wooden cane.  As an unceremonious symbol of guilt, the Jester becomes the obstacle between half-sisters from both sides of their father’s railroad tracks.  Delaney White’s introductory feature film begins her off as Jocelyn, a well-liked, sympathetic, and balanced young woman who can’t help but want to connect with an older half-sister she never knew.  Lelia Symington (“Brut Force”) couldn’t portray older sister Emma anymore opposite as a daughter holding onto a rightful grudge against a father who abandoned here at a young age.   That same bitterness extends to the more affable and kept cherished extension of her father, to Jocelyn, but an innate emotion eats at Emma, an inexplicable pang for his death that drives her to pique when she shouldn’t care less about her deadbeat dad and that manifests into deadlier, dastardlier demons, or at least one dressed-up, duplicitous, and dapper demon.  Matt Servitto, Lena Janes, Mia Rae Roberts, Sam Lukowski (“You’re F@#K’n Dead!”), and Cory Okouchi (“Ninjas vs. Zombies”) fill out “The Jester’s” roles.

Once the end credits started roll, I immediately research “The Jester” like I do with all the films I review to try and go beyond just the film with information, trivia, connections, see other reviews and public opinion, etc.  Why?  Because I’m a hardcore nerd, but what I found in the public comments about the film, especially on Letterboxd, is that many compared “The Jester” as a rip of Art the Clown from “Terrifier.”  Initially, a small voice inside my mind, processing the images from my visual cortex, thought the very same the mass majority did, or does rather.  Quickly, I nipped that fleeting resemblance in the bud because of a couple of reasons: “Terrifier’s” whole gag is gore-drenched for purely shock value as Art the Clown terrorizes and kills those in his path whereas “The Jester” represents more between the lines of guilt, loss, and connecting with what matters between the disfiguration of a dysfunction relations and the other reason is both films nearly sprout at the same time.  Yes, “All Hallows Eve” was released three years prior to Krawchuk’s short films and while it’s unknown whether the director was inspired by Damien Leone’s first pass, “All Hallows Eve” didn’t quite overflow the social media cup like “Terrifier” did a few years later.  Many in the horror community compare “The Jester” to “Terrifier” despite the latter not having been coined until the same year as “The Jester’s” shorts films were released.  Sure, Art the Clown and the Jester share similarities, such as a form of a clown mask and have malevolent supernatural abilities, but the blanket comments are like saying just because Jason Voorhees wears a mask, uses a knife, and doesn’t say a word that he is a clone of Michael Myers.  Overall, “The Jester’s” understated tone with a no holds barred harlequin has decent dark humor due in part to Michael Sheffield’s charade of an act and precision special effect, editing, and camera angles.  Where “The Jester” struggles is where it hurts the film the most and that is with an ending that just drops off the edge of the cliff without a ton of closer that really wraps Jocelyn and Emma’s story neatly nor offers a satisfyingly open-ended dangler for more violent jest.   Perhaps 7-years too late after the release of the shorts, “The Jester” will see push back as a facsimile but I implore you, the readers, to give the Colin Krawchuk feature more than just a bias-gazing once over. 

Epic Pictures’ genre label Dread releases “The Jester” on an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 that’s presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  As much of the film takes place at night, details are heavily reliant on the lighting and the compression encoding.  While “The Jester” is not the epitome of sharp edge delineation and detail with a supercharged color palette, the encoded shingles retain a pullulating scheme of adequate grading and detail keeping artifacts to a reduced level within the slightly softer image. The heavier image compression is fastened to the three shorts in the bonus content with horrendous basins of splotchy patches. Two English Dolby Digital audio tracks come with the release: a 5.1 surround sound and a 2.0 stereo. Each render about the same with the 5.1 slimming down and isolating channels for specific back, front, and center audio assignments. No issues with the clean and clear dialogue through the digital, interference-free registering though most of the conversations are one-sided with the Jester’s mime expressions. English closed caption subtitles are available. The three Colin Krawchuk and Michael Sheffield 2016 shorts, as I said multiple times already, are included in the special features along with the official trailer and other Dread previews. The standard Blu-ray Amary has a hard-lit Jester face to exact ever fold of the mask smack on the front cover with a bare insert pocket and the pressed disc art fanned out with the Jester’s antique playing cards imprinted on top. The region free release has a runtime of 80 minutes and comes not rated. Clever, entertaining, and devilish, “The Jester” acts the whimsical clown of conscience-stricken torment with an indelible joker different from the rest of the villainy pool.

“The Jester” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Watch Out! EVIL is Coming for Your Dysfunctional Family! “The Bloody Man” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Better Behave or “The Bloody Man” Will Get You!  On Blu-ray at Amazon.com.

Set in the 1980s, Sam doesn’t cope well with life without his recently deceased beloved mother.  Getting along with his new stepmother proves to be challenging at best, his older brother continues to disregard him as an insignificant pest, his little sister gets under his skin in playing with his action figures without consent, and the school bully makes his life that much more difficult.  The young boy’s unhappiness spurs him into desperate measures by reciting a spell passage on the back of his favorite comic book, hoping the passage truthful to conjure up his deepest desire – to bring his mother back from the dead and fix a broken family.  The passage instead summons a demon, the Bloody Man, who seeks to rip fractured family apart even farther until their eventual dissolve and demise.  Able to possess and take shape of his stepmother, Sam must reunite his family in order to save not only his siblings but also his stepmother from fragmenting into nothingness and death at the hands of a demented demon trickster.

An homage to all things 1980s, “The Bloody Man” is a modern-day resemblance of one the more recent golden ages of cinema with a synth-laden soundtrack, all the popular play toy trinkets and new wave styles of the era, and a magazine loaded millimeter film stock shot in attempt to remove as much of the digital aerodynamics as possible in contemporary times.  Daniel Benedict, the director of the Halloween-themed slasher “Bunni” involving a sexy, leather-cladded, fishnet stockings wearing costume killer with bunny ears, takes a step back from extreme slashers and hops into more family-oriented terror with the protagonist heroes being kids stepping up against the forces of evil, think of films like “The Gate” or “Ernest Scarred Stupid.”  Not as slapstick as the “Ernest” droll-troll paragon of ritualized Halloween movie lineups, this crowdfunded project can be a little more vicious in delivering on the lines of the same heartwarming message that instilled into us from the Jim Varney 30-years-ago, that love is key in overcoming darkness.  Benedict pens and helms the 2020 production with wife Casi Clark, aka Casi Benedict, co-writing a script that loosely pulls in and indirectly references Benedicts’ collaborated efforts on a He-Man inspired fan made short “Fall of Grayskull” into their boogieman story.  The Benedicts’ production company Red Serial Films confects the film into fruition with Mercedez Varble, Jason L. Watson, Garrett M. Johnson, and Rihannon Crothers producing. 

Despite not having top bill on the film, David Daniel leads us through the angsty complications of a new family dynamic as well as being the centric force of rebuilding a crumbling household as the middle child, feeling every bit like the world is against him, Sam Harris.  Daniels debut feature and leading role depicts well the internal argumentative aspects of having to go along with a life-forming change no child should ever go through, the death of a mother, and that sends him and his family careening toward dissolution despite his cheerful father’s overly confident optimism.  The top bills go to a pair of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” alum who both play mother to Sam.  Lisa Wilcox (“A Nightmare on Elm Street:  The Dream Master” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street:  The Dream Child”) and Tuesday Knight (“A Nightmare on Elm Street:  The Dream Master”) switch back-and-forth, between flashback-and-present, Sam’s biological mother and his new, soon to be, stepmother.  Surely, it comes to reason that the Wilcox and Knight names not only provide a couple of “The Bloody Man” selling points for die hard Freddy Kruger acolytes but could also be seen as an homage to the Robert Englund franchise with a similar living between two planes of existence nightmare antagonists hunting down a house full of kids, using unhappiness as a vessel rather than dreams.  Though not scarred by full body burns, wielding a finger bladed glove, and sporting a dirty striped sweater and fedora, the Bloody Man has his own characteristics being a black magic sorcerer.  Dressed traditionally in a snug black Chinese robe and blood running down his wild eyed face, Nicholas Redd enlivens the Bloody Man on a playfully perturbing level but the script doesn’t allow Redd to deliver the Bloody Man’s full potential while also not cutting the villain fully into the fold until the nearly last act.  Instead, the Bloody Man is reduced to a few here-and-there appearances, some one-liners, with half of the character’s screen time awarded to Tuesday Knight in a duality role as the Bloody Man uses the caregiver’s looks to draw in the Harris children.  Redd has promising lunacy that’s sorely underutilized in more ways than one and in so much so, the film itself shouldn’t be titled after the character.  “The Bloody Man” remaining cast includes Sam Hadden, Olivia Sanders, Jeremy Carr (“Calm Before”), Dominick Wilkins (“6 Feet Below Hell”), Dan Eardley (“Retro Freaks”), KateLynn E. Newberry (“O9en Up”), and Ellie Parker (“Bones and All”).

I’m all for a quasi-kid friendly horror of the same antithetical vein as “Monster Squad” or “Gremlins” where the subject matter borders the edge of being too risky, eking above the terror threshold for children who would be roughly the same age as the story’s principal leads battling for the very reconciliation of family before the Bloody Man kills them.  “The Bloody Man” lurks under the veil of being lighthearted in contrast to the brushing scenes of severed, sentient arms, blood streaking down various maniacal faces, a mildly gruesome decapitation, and moments of good ‘ole fashion terror that may induce nightmares for anyone under the age of 12.  A child’s lack of sleep because they’re waking up with fright-filled sweats will for sure not provide parents any favors, but Benedict skirts a fair amount of gore and does imply the significant damage and death offscreen almost as to shelter general audiences’ eyes for a broader invitation to watch the movie and, as mentioned previously, the titular bad guy doesn’t make an appearance until much later in the story that has been setup comically with a wrestling fanatic principal, Perry’s godawful verbal teasing, and a lot of 80’s inspired shots that nailed the decade’s analog paint job – a silver lining against the night terrors.  Honestly, the third act also drags out the culmination of events.  For such a small house, the Bloody Man chasing the Harris kids might as well taken place in a labyrinthine mansion, but the ground level with basement rancher slows down the hide-and-seek or maybe the Bloody Man is just really bad at childish game as the kids could stay in rooms for extended periods of time, even playing pretend with toys at one point, and in not once instance, does the Bloody Man bust in to snatch up a tyke to terminate.  Where “The Bloody Man” also struggles is buttoning up the summoning of the soulless sorcerer who’s conjured up by a mere passage reading off the back of Sam’s favorite Barbarian Man comic books.  The comic, which is introduced as a fairly over-the-counter object, holds this mystical darkness that must be conjoined with a family’s spiraling.  Yet, the story contradicts itself as the Bloody Man pursues another broken home that didn’t warrant the reading of the comic’s back cover passage, creating some confusion on how the cruel chaser of disconcerted children operates on a phantasmic plane.

As far as 80’s-inspired films go, “The Bloody Man” can run with the best of them, even with Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” and Wild Eye Releasing sees fit to drop a special edition Blu-ray of the Daniel Benedict comedic chiller.  The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD25 is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  What makes the film feel decade authentic and that can suck you into it’s existence is Benedict’s decision to shoot either in 35mm or with a 35mm digital overlay that has characteristic dust speckles and a fine grain.  Image quality remain at a consistent color and black levels with a few flare ups of compression artefact issues, such as splotches in darker scenes, in squeezing this long runtime film onto a BD25 along with an atypical accompaniment of Wild Eye Release robust extras.  The bitrate does have large swings from lower teens to upwards of high 20s Mbps.  Yet, details generally come through with enough depth to create visual spacing between objects.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo renders adequate for a narrative that doesn’t have a ton of range with an intimately tight story surrounding Sam and his siblings but is complimented greatly by Johnathan Fan Octo Evans retro-synth soundtrack with an oscillating pulse and a crescendo of tension, solidifying even more the 80’s inspiration. English subtitles are optionally available. The special features include a director’s commentary with Daniel Benedict, a gag-blooper reel, a local newscast behind-the-scenes segment, various promotional videos from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Barbarian Man toys, an emulated One to Grown On based PSA show from the 80s, and a Showbox promo with the original trailer bringing up the tail. One last bonus scene is also at the end of the credits so stay to the very end. The physical features include a clear Blu-ray snapper case with latch that houses glow lit Harris kids geared up to tackle the looming Bloody Man, or that is my assumption of who that is on the front cover as that figure looks nothing like the Bloody Man on screen. A more true-to-form Bloody Man is on the cardboard slipcover in another retro illustrated, compositional mockup with a similar layout as the actual Blu-ray front cover. Inside the snapper case, the reverse front cover has a still image from the movie, typical of many Wild Eye Releases, a folded one-sheet with the additions of Tuesday Knight and Lisa Wilcox amongst the child leads, and a disc art pressed with the unknown version of Bloody Man. The region free release comes not rated and has an excessive runtime of 133 minutes, contributing to the pacing issues of the last act. “The Bloody Man” doesn’t exactly live up to the moniker in this tame throwback but what the film has is a mighty nostalgia that brings back feelings of a superlative horror age that was once, and still is, goosebump arousing.

Better Behave or “The Bloody Man” Will Get You!  On Blu-ray at Amazon.com.

EVIL is Released When the Rent is Due! “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Spooked by “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” on Blu-ray!  Purchase at Amazon.com!

Massachusetts native Laurel has been living in New York City for a few months with a roommate she barely knows or sees because of their opposite work schedules.  When Laura discovers her roommate’s dead body in their shared apartment, the living space no longer feels comfortable, and the uneasiness keeps her awake long after the police and coroners remove the body that has left them baffled with a cause of death.  The mystery of her roommate’s demise, the agony splayed on the corpse’s face, and knowing her lifeless body has been undiscovered for at least a couple of days just next door to her room leaves Laura shuddered to the point of reaching out to her ex-boyfriend to hear a friendly, comforting voice, but bizarre and supernatural occurrences slip Laura in a state of panic and fright with a presence that has suddenly haunted her urban home and with the unearthing of her roommate’s black magic paraphernalia and a demonic symbol under her bed, Laura just uncovered a hidden nightmare that would have been a life saver if listed in the roommate wanted newspaper ad.

Atmospherically creepy and part of the reason I don’t like having roommates, “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is the little known, highly effective supernatural haunt horror from writer-director Kurtis Spieler.  Spieler has crossed our paths previously with the 2013 released lowkey thriller under the guise of a werewolf with “Sheep Skin” distributed by Unearthed Films and the review came out on top with a positive write up that noted the film as “a fresh suspenseful spin on lycanthrope mythos.”  Since then, the American filmmaker has re-directed and completed the 1984, John Liu unfinished cult and martial arts actioner, “New York Ninja,” for a Vinegar Syndrome exclusive release and has also preceded his dead girl paranormal enigma model with “The Devil’s Well” that has a similar plot but with a found footage medium.  Spieler’s latest venture provides the opportunity to work again with a couple of actors from “Sheep Skin” under the banner of Invasive Image with the director co-producing alongside longtime collaborator and Invasive Image co-founder, Nicholas Papazoglou, and one of the film’s principal leads and “The Sadist” screenwriter, Frank Wihbey. 

“The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is one of those indie films that snags and headlines a genre icon to thrust the title into the spiraling coil of a massively oversaturated low-budget horror pool in the hopes that the film sticks to the now desensitized fans who have been burned too many times too often by radioactive junk.  The tactic is not always necessarily nefarious or a fool’s paradise to lure in fans into a schlock storm of insipid independent media as “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” proves that though the original “Friday the 13th” actress and scream queen, Adrienne King, might be the top billed, the actress is definitely not the star and the film still manages to provoke a keen spine-tingler with a lesser known and younger cast dipping their toes into the what King has already lapped twice, if not three times, over for decades.  King’s name becomes the proverbial foot in the door for new, upcoming talent for audiences to be exposed to, such as with Laura Dooling playing as, well, the spookily chipped away, panic-induced Laura.  Dooling immerses us into her character’s complete physical cutoff from friends and family as a woman stewing in an uncomfortable sixth sense that surrounds the disturbing faculties of her roommate’s death.  Dooling nails the superb chiller despite the one-sided act with no other cast to react off of for the majority of the runtime, paralleling her character’s isolation with her own to root out goosebumps unaccompanied.  King and Frank Wihbey head up the detective detail as the around-the-block Detective Richards and the fresh understudy Detective Miller.  The older woman, younger man character dynamic rides a similar trajectory to their professional colleague one and I’m not talking about cougars, if that is where your mind take you.  Though she certainly can be a cougar if she wanted to, King is more of a mentor on camera than she is off camera, playing the seasoned detective who warns the ambitious Miller not to get involved with active case women.  Wihbey’s a suitable fit as the double-edged sword eager rookie to King’s cooler, calmer approach to bestow path-treaded wisdom for a reason.  One of the highlighted performances stems from “Sheep Skin” actor Michael Shantaz, a tall and intimidating presence that sizes up Dooling’s terror tenfold from the very first scenes of the deceased’s dazed boyfriend Derrick crossing the threshold into Laura’s apartment.  Subdued and stony-faced, Shantaz adds to the tangible terror in contrast to the paranormal one at hand, yet both are ostensibly woven from the same thread.  Fellow “Sheep Skin” actor Bryan Manley Davis along with Jasmine Peck and Jennie Osterman (“Dickshark”) fill out the cast.

I’m always intrigue, or maybe just easily entertained, by titles that goad into viewership for the simple fact of fulfilling title-spurred questions with answers.  The title “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” elicits many unexplained uncertainties that become an itch you can’t scratch until the end credits fade to black.  I want to know who is the Dead Girl?  Why is she dead?  What’s terribly important about the specified Apartment 03?  Do the Dead Girl and Apartment 03 correlate more significantly somehow in the story?  All these internal queries, prompted by a non-generic, puzzling title, are just cascading through the mind in a deluge of I-gotta-knows and for the most part, the team behind the quaint thriller does rub the itch to a smoothed over satisfaction while also working the edits, the angles, the sound design, and the lighting toward a decent scary movie.  What’s fascinating about the story is the exploration of the immediate after when Laura is left shivering in shock, solitude, and a sense of grim thought knowing she’s been living with a corpse for the last 48 hours.   She hits all the stages of a post-traumatic situation by reaching out to family and friends, diving into comforts like making tea or taking a shower, and even finding ways to keep busy and remove the macabre image from her mind by cleaning up the crime scene herself.  That portion of etching into Laura’s psyche distracts her in an ironic, detrimental way because as she attempting to self-soothe by any means possible, she oblivious to the grotesque presence coming and going and in-and-out of the negative space with its body jerking as it glares at Laura with blood running down it’s shirt.  Laura is also not cognizant of the things that go bump in the night as they barely make a blip on her radar or trigger her into a deeper stage of fright until it’s too late.  The climatic ending stretches the story further into love hexes and demonic contracts that perk up the ears in interest as the story gets into the nitty-gritty of details of what’s happening and why but doesn’t quite reach the finish line of resolve with a deflated conclusion that supposed to leave you shocked when it really just leaves you. 

Not your typical bottom-of-the-barrel budgeted or gore-drenched debauchery Wild Eye Release, “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” looks and feels like a big-budget ghost film with all the muscle-seizing suspense.  The bold independent home video distributor delivers the Kurtis Spieler picture onto a Blu-ray collector’s edition, which, again, is atypical for the label.  The AVC encoded, high-definition, 1080p Blu-ray is presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Spieler has defined himself as a master of the negative space and, fortunately, there’s no lossy image from a deficient compression, leaving a crisp view of the lurking, crooked dead entity soon to fill the void or not as the director tends to position the camera for an uncertain possibility.  Details are relatively good within a muted color scheme and many of scenes are dark lit, bordering on a neutral to high contrast with a palpable delineation, with only the dead girl’s room projecting a stony mustard illumination and spotted moments of candle and hand torch lighting.  Other scenes, more so involving Detective Richards and Miller, dip into the cop-noir with gel and back lighting that looks vivid and mysterious on screen.  The surprisingly backwards tech of the English language LPCM stereo relies heavily on dialogue than ambient jolts of jumps scare sounds though there are a few, effective examples about and is balanced well with the dialogue that is a little on the mumbling side but comprehensible and free of obstruction, interference, sound design, or otherwise. The dual channel stereo works and is adequate for the size of the picture that doesn’t require a multi-channel audio format as there are no explosions, whirring bullets, or a large cast to create depth range.  Soundtrack composed by Connecticut based, VHS-inspired synthwave artist, Brian Burdzy – aka Satanic Panic ’81, delivers a low and lively and often deadened (pun intended) but rhythmic sound reminiscence of John Carpenter scores that gives Spieler’s film a very “Halloween” vibe. Aforesaid, Wild Eye Releasing doesn’t accompany a ton of special feature material with their releases unless on their Visual Vengeance sister label but the seemingly new special edition line, in conjunction with a regular standard release, bears more supplementals for the storage.  An audio commentary with filmmaker Kurtis Spieler , a behind-the-scenes featurette featuring cast and crew retrospective interviews of their time on the film, Spieler’s 2011 short western thriller “No Remorse for Bloodshed” (though mistitled on the back cover as “No Remorse Bloodshed,” Take 3S Video – a montage of actress Laura Dooling humorously pretending to be clipped by the marker clapper on third takes, an image gallery, and Wild Eye Releasing trailers of “Smoke and Mirrors,” “Wicked Ones,” and “The Bloody Man.”  The physical aspects of the release include a clear Blu-ray latch snapper with a macabre illustration of the titular dead girl holding a knife on the front cover, as you’ll see in the image below for the trailer.  The cover art is reversible with a still image of Laura Dooling in one of the more thrilling scenes on the reverse side.  Inside the snapper insert is a folded mini poster of the SE’s O-case slipcover with another illustration of two more characters in a 70s inspired retro design.  The region free, unrated film clocks in with a 72-minute runtime – an easy, breezy thriller with punch.  “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is a perfect selection for a Halloween night movie. An eerie apparitional residuum that’s character-driven, tense, and thoroughly carried by the small cast.

Get Spooked by “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” on Blu-ray!  Purchase at Amazon.com!

You Must Put EVIL to Fire! “You Are Not My Mother” reviewed! (Magnet Releasing / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Quiet and meek Charlotte lives with her granny and mother in Northern Dublin, Ireland. When Charlotte’s mother spirals into one of her depression fits after dropping off Charlotte at school, her mother disappears without a trace only to return a day later, wandering into their home in the middle of the night. Happy to see her mother acting jovial, the teen aims to reconnect the mother-daughter bridge that has long been under disrepair due to severe mental depression, but she then notices a string of fits, fits not concerning depression but of violent, erratic behavior too frightening for Charlotte to believe that this person who came back home in the middle of the night is the same person, her same mother. When her Granny suspects that mom has been replaced with a changeling, Charlotte and her new best friend Suzanne seek to uncover her mother’s true self on Halloween night when the barrier between our world and the spiritual world is at its thinnest.

There are many customs and cultures surrounding Halloween for various countries. Sometimes, the day that most of us horror fans look forward to every 31st day of October every year isn’t always about dressing up in costume, obtaining bags upon bags full of candy, doing mischievous pranks, or even sitting down to marathon the Michael Myers’ “Halloween” franchise. For UK, specifically in Northern Ireland, bonfires light up the land on Halloween,” or what is called Samhaim, for an array of reasons, one more traditionally being to keep evil spirits from crossing over from their dimension and into ours when the “All Hallow’s Eve” barrier between the two realms near kiss in proximity. Today’s Irelanders set ablaze bonfires more for an extravagant, beer-drinking party than to defensively thwart the uninvited spirits from gliding into our world and this becomes the Halloween backdrop for Kate Dolan’s written-and-directed, debut feature length folklore horror film, “You Are Not My Mother,” as a battle against the supernatural hidden in plain sight as one of us, a doppelganger. Dublin-based Fantastic Films (“Vivarium”) and the sweeping Screen Ireland compose as the film’s production companies with “Vivarium” and “Sea Fever’s” Deirdre Levins as producer.

The touch and go fragile battlegrounds of where children tiptoe on already severely fractured eggshells around their parents debilitating and volatile depression can be tough to capture on screen.  The voyeuristic hesitancy of sunken melancholy keeps the child around the fringes and ever guessing their parent’s rotating state of mind and “The Green Sea’s” Hazel Douple, as the teenage daughter Charlotte, nicknamed Char, and Carolyn Bracken (“The Dublin Murders”), as the unstable mother, connect strongly with that unnatural relationship imbalance.  Douple is perfectly reserved with Char’s mother’s erraticism, witnessing, and conveying a different response with just her eyes, every emotional stage washes over her mother from listlessness to jovial dancing to complete abusive rage, a range Bracken unnervingly does so frighteningly well.  Eventually, Char would need to realize the truth that her mother’s manic behavior is not solely due to a mental health issue but a malevolent fairy issue and need to break the chains of restraint to save the only parent she has left.  There’s no mention of a father figure throughout the narrative and could only speculate that the father either past or hightailed the relationship due an infinite amount of reasons with one being more prominent against mom’s harmful instability.  Amongst the multi-generational, female-driven, character story is the top matriarch in Granny, played by “Citadel’s” Ingrid Craigie, who is positioned awkwardly as a bypassed presence and not really substantial weight bearing down on the contentious tension in the house they all share together.  Granny’s off-putting and mysterious ever since the opening scene with a layer of understanding and occultism hardly tapped into or even with a slight of exposition as she builds talismans and goes off to visit a friend to discuss Char’s mother.  Paul Reid (“The Ritual”), Jordanne Jones, Katie White, Jade Jordan, and Florence Adebambo co-star.

“You Are Not My Mother” continues to be a tsunami of new wave UK horror washing onto the shores of theatrical, digital, and home video platforms and any film that starts with burning a baby just might be okay in my book.  No, I’m not a psychopath, I just like to be overcome by dreadful content; yet, though the Kate Dolan cinematic accession as a feature film writer-director doesn’t start with perfection with the story burdening more wrinkles than the direction  I’ve already touched upon the mishandling of Granny and her connection to a supernatural belief goes without say that her role as mediator falls severely short of development key to Char’s total comprehension of her mother not really being her mother due to XYZ reason.  The backstory also tries to reinstate itself into the present story but can’t shape up from its gelatinous yarn, giving little for Char and the audiences to work off of and take all that is happening with good faith on face value. There are continuous instances of this weak bridge connection between characters and events as we also see between Char and a school bully Suzanne who instantly become best friends after a single shared connection that’s not poignantly stabbing, but for the narrative, it’s enough for Suzanne, who wants chewed gum and stuck it on Char’s school notes or help set a photograph of her mother on fire, to open up a soft spot instantaneously without a hurtle to overcome.  Where “You Are Not My Mother” succeeds is in the character and story driven parameters without relying heavily on gratuitous special effects with enough practical to scare the wits out of you and firmly no CGI to supplement the creation of Carolyn Bracken’s facial dysmorphia, like a disturbing happy face emoji, as a replaced mother.

“You Are Not My Mother” is a Halloween movie, an Irish folklore Halloween movie, prickled with Samhain traditions at the very core of Kate Dolan’s story.  The film is slated for a March 25th release in theaters and on demand from Magnet Releasing. The 93-minute folklore horror is equally matched by its rifting, soul-stirring composition from the Belfast-based and worldly-sound of Die Hexen who also double-dips as sound designer, blending sometimes delicate but often jarring synthesized ensemble of sound. Narayan Van Maele’s cinematography has an overcast austere, almost icy, in the rendering of what is usually a lush in greenery and rich in historical, old-world place, but the Maele’s wide and long shots are engrossing accompanied by a tighter edge that often feels cramped when inside the house, good for close quartered domestic contention in the family drama parameter. There were no bonus scenes during or after the credits for this film. If not for Carolyn Bracken and Hazel Douple’s fiery and lucid performances to keep glued to, “You Are Not My Mother” would simply fall apart at the seams, squandering much of the Irish folklore that already hangs by a thread.

Meir Zarchi Returns With Another Round of EVIL Exploitation! “I Spit On Your Grave Deja Vu” reviewed! (Ronin Flix / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Forty long years have passed since the sexual assaulting atrocities of Johnny Stillman and his gang were committed on the young and beautiful Jennifer Hills.  Empowered by her horrific tale of survival with the release of a new tell all book of how she outwitted and took homicidal revenge on her rapists by luring them in with her sexual persuasions, Hills finds herself back in familiar terrorizing territory being kidnapped by Johnny’s devoutly vindictive widow and three living relatives of the gang that once ganged raped and brutally beat her, but she’s not alone.  Captive with her as collateral damage is her famous supermodel daughter, Christy.  Both are caught up in an eye-for-an-eye revenge plot where being lethal is the only means of survival and with a long history of resentment, rooted deep inside Johnny’s kin, fighting back will take every ounce of resilience and strength against a community of hellbent sociopaths. 

Circa 2005-2006 is around the time I first bared witness to Meir Zarchi’s 1978 controversial exploitation shocker, “I Spit on Your Grave.”  Popping in the DVD popped open my eyes to the world of graphic vengeance and the submission to primal, carnal whims inside the human-on-human violence context.  Before Zarchi’s film, which is also known as “Day of the Woman,” and even Wes Craven’s “The Last House on the Left,” this neophyte’s description and knowledge of horror was limited to the stymies of broadcast television that only aired edited and censored slashers like the “Friday the 13th” and “Halloween” series or supernatural presences of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Poltergeist.”  Never has the likes of “I Spit on Your Grave” been a red pill option into the vast horror matrix for this then college kid who glazed over with the façade of sleeping through studies and worrying over trivial matters involving the opposite sex.  In a way, Zarchi was a kind of Morpheus to me when I started purchasing physical media that opened my eyes and my mind to the rape and revenge facet in horror hidden behind the commercial veil.  In 2010, a Zarchi produced reboot saw more light in the commerciality and spawned two sequels in its wake, but not until 2019 did Zarchi get back to writing and sit back in his director’s chair to helm an official, yet less commercial, sequel entitled “I Spit On Your Grave Déjà Vu” or “Day of the Woman Déjà vu” that was produced by his limited company banner, Déjà Vu LLC with son Terry Zarchi and Jan O’Connell producing.

The long-awaited sequel reteamed Zarchi with original lead actress, and also ex-wife, Camille Keaton, distant relative of the famed comedy and stunt actor, Buster Keaton.  Camille Keaton, who looks phenomenal in her 70s during production, steps back into the infamous Jennifer Mills role that made her a household name amongst grindhouse-horror community.  Though completely nude for most of the 1978 film, that part of her performance takes a step back for a new actress to pave a new path in the saga.  Obscure indie scream queen Jamie Bernadette (“Axeman,” “The Bunnyman Massacre”) is ceremoniously passed the torched as the new riches to ragdoll as the Jennifer Mill’s unhappy supermodel daughter, Christy, who becomes haplessly snagged into her mother’s unforgotten past.  Bernadette offers a variable beauty and a diverse poise that doesn’t make Christy a carbon copy of Jennifer Hills, but the actresses deliver the same apathetic venom of a woman scorn.  More of a carbon copy is the four backwoods bumpkins fuming over Jennifer Mills’ vindictive dissecting of their dead relatives.  The gang is spearheaded by Beck, played by Maria Olsen who, like Bernadette, has made a name for herself in low-budget horror having roles in films such as “To Jennifer,” “Starry Eyes,” and “Gore Orphanage.”  Olsen projects Becky as the gas station attendant from Hell, someone you don’t want to interact too long with as you’re pumping gas in the middle of nowhere, but Becky is not a woman of a few words who constantly has to remind us, to the blistering point of annoying, that she must avenge her late husband’s sinful murderess.  The rest of the gang didn’t impress much after that.  Jonathan Peacy has a chance to shine from out of the extra and bit part shadows as the crazed and hyperactive Kevin, brother of Stanley from the original film, and while Peacy channels his best Al Leong look, Kevin is ultimate a big detrimental goof with small dog syndrome than actual menace.    The last two aren’t any better with a lackluster act by Jeremy Ferdman as Andy’s cousin and “Tales of Frankenstein’s” Jim Tavaré’s rather befuddling downplay of Matthew’s mentally disordered father, Herman, who teeters back and forth between morals with a jumbled underlay of piety.  There are not many sane performances in a rather loose and unbridled Zarchi follow up with a cast that rounds out with Alexandra Kenworthy, Roy Allen III, and Holgie Forrester.

Performances aside, “I Spit on Your Grave Déjà vu” is also a cacophony of yelling as the script, from paper to pronunciation, reaches top of the lung levels with every bit of dialogue from every player in this tussle of who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes down to justifications of killing.  Zarchi’s sequel lacks the tact his first film achieves so delicately with Mills post-assault softer approach to lay waste her assailants.  “Déjà vu” satisfies its own revenge kicks with little subtly in trying to be outrageous, outlandish, and off its rocker as the confrontation between Christy and the gang becomes a rancorous grudge match.  What concerns me most about “Déjà vu” is the year in which this sequel takes place.  Between the 1978 original and the 2019 follow up, 40 years have passed, but the characters don’t fit any of Father Time’s natural aging characteristics on the surface.  Becky looks okay as an early to mid-60s woman despite Maria Olsen’s actual age being early 50s at the time of filming and release.  Herman is another one that sneaks into fathomable constructs as a character living a farmer’s life in the latter half of middle age, but I question whether Kevin and Scotty were even born yet.  The two youngsters barely seem to be out of their 30s and the same can be said for Christy where much more of her life is revealed as the story progresses.   If following the script logic, I would assume the story takes place in the 90s, but certain technologic advances, like modern day touchscreen phones, suggests no earlier than late 2000s.  As a whole, time and space don’t appear to exist on any reasonable plane for the film with characters able to bump into each at random intervals despite being a densely wooded and rural location and, for all you cinematographers out there, if your location is supposed to be rural, don’t shoot in at a cemetery with a massive grave footprint with a stream of cars speeding down a busy suburban street.  You instantly lose the illusion.  Zarchi’s intentions were clear to only echo the original while allowing for individuality with a brasher onslaught of right versus wrong, eye for an eye, and misguided righteousness for injustice, but the execution crumbles with excruciating results, never reaching the same poetic justice the first film accomplishes so graphically grafted. 

As far as rape and revenge exploitation is considered, “I Spit on Your Grave Déjà vu” gets about as down and dirty and ugly as they come.  Cult movie curator, Ronin Flix, delivers the Meir Zarchi sequel onto Blu-ray home video, presented in 1080p, full high definition, with a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio.  A+ for natural lighting, skin tones, and overall appeal, Pedja Radenkovic’s cinematography is about as uninspiring as they come artistically, but, as a personal preference, the shots are more organic, raw, and less distracting from the content that’s much more abrasive and interesting.  A more natural framework also more time for Russell FX’s practical effects to be showcased without enhanced imagery.  As long as the details are there (they are), no damage is concerning (there wasn’t), and the framing made sense (for the most part), “Déjà vu” can be considered a win for Radenkovic.  The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio soundtrack for “Déjà vu” is a blessing and a curse.  Dialogue clarity is excellent and there’s a wide range to exploit, forgive the punned term, each channel with great balance, but remember what I said about all the character yelling?  Also, with the higher bitrate DTS, the quality is too good for some of the applied ambient effects like the exhaust sputtering of an old Ford pickup that sounds way too fake and way too close despite its positioning in the scene. The region A, not rated Blu-ray is stored on a BD50 due in part to the film’s massive 148 runtime and the inclusion of special features that include a new audio commentary with film critic and “The Last Drive-In” host Joe Bob Briggs, select cast interviews, the making of the film, behind the scenes footage from producer Terry Zarchi, and the theatrical trailer. Is “I Spit on Your Grave Deja Vu” the long-awaited sequel to Meir Zarchi’s first film? I’d say they’re two totally different exploitation entities cut from the same cloth with ties only in names and some flashbacks alone, but both films would make for a great double bill that starts with a harrowing, nothing-to-lose, woebegone toned, revenge thriller complimented with a lukewarm and unfocused follow up to help come down off the original’s gripping ultra-violence high.

Ronin Flix’s “I Spit on Your Grave Deja Vu” Blu-ray available at Amazon.com!