Tag Archives: horror movies

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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!

A New Drug, A New Promised Cure, a Result of EVIL Side Effects! “Mirror Life: Modern Zombies” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Mirror Life” on DVD from Cleopatra Entertainment!

An experimental drug known as Dumitor has the promise to cure all known ailments but while the animal testing proved encouraging, scientists Donovan and Taylor need to prove their miracle formulation on people.  The formulation creates a mirror reversal of the right-handed nucleotides and the left-handed amino proteins in the biological DNA sequence that could contrary the effects of chronic sickness.  Halfway through the experiment trial, Dumitor appears to be working until one of the participants comes down with hallucinations stemmed by an overload of endorphins resulting in violent behavior.  A failed lockdown and execution of all infected puts the world on the precipice of a pandemic and video journalist Tracy aims to find out what happened to her cousin, one of Dumitor’s trial members, who has mysteriously disappeared.  As Tracy gets closer to the truth, the pandemic spreads, the violence spreads, and the coverup to debunk accusations and prominent names out of the media has turned to desperate aggressive measures by Dumitor’s benefactors.

Based on the actual scientific and controversial theory called Mirror Life and transposed as the basis for the 2025, American horror-thriller, “Mirror Life,” the movie, depicts the cinema sensationalized effects from the synthesized molecular theory put into practice on the human body and mind as the be-all and end all cure for persistent ailments, turning usually mild-mannered and sensible people into crazed and delusion killers being masked under a whitewashing umbrella.  Also known as “Mirror Life:  Modern Zombies,” the film is written and directed by former amateur boxer turned filmmaker Kazy Tauginas in what would be listed as his debut writing credit and directorial.  With that being said, “Mirror Life” is actually a doubled up and mirrored concept of itself in some weird kind of way as a different cut of the Brian Kazmarck written-and-directed “Terminal Legacy” from 2012 that has Tauginas as the story creator.  The plot above is essentially the same with the original shoots being spliced with the integrated documentary investigation from Jordan’s cousin Tracy and her cameraman, interwoven as a non-linear parallel extension to the original concept and re-released with a new title, with the genre hot term zombie thrown into the subtitle for good measure.  “Mirror Life” or “Terminal Legacy” part deux is a production from Crapshoot Productions, New Lease Films, Ugly Puppy Productions and Open Fire Films, produced by Aidan Kane, Louise M. Peduto, Nat Prinzi, Stanislav Puzdriak, Brian Smith, and Kazy Tauginas.

Tauginas also costars in the film as Jordan, a surviving trial participant and Tracy’s missing cousin who finds himself chin deep in Dumitor contagion and a prime target in a containment massacre of his fellow trial mates Lindsay (Tationna Bosier, “Supernaturalz:  Weird, Creepy, & Random), Rosemary (Elise Rovinsky, “Fog Warning”), and Keith (Corey Scott Rutledge) when disturbing signs of infection show.  The small sample group have a decent dynamic with Jordan and Lindsay become hot for each other, Keith donning the bad boy antagonist persona, and Rosemary bringing up the rear as the withdrawn woman as they interact with the three doctors conducting the experiments in a cautious and courteous Dr. Taylor (Cuyle Carvin, “Dolls”), a more confident formulation scientist Donovon (Bristol Pomeroy, “Devil and the Nail”), and a more charge-forth with testing and results in Dr. Campbell (“The House on Tombstone Hill) who have their own contentious dynamic when fast and loose trial and error butts heads with steady-as-she-goes testing.  The original “Terminal Legacy” shot cast has their story spliced with a documentary style investigation by Jordan’s concerned cousin Tracy, played by Courtney Cavanagh who was also in anthological spinoff short of “Terminal Legacy” subtitled “Lost Souls” which doesn’t connect with the Kazmarck feature.  Both “Terminal Legacy” and it’s subsequent, unconnected short tread into being a lesser-known version of the popular sci-fi horror series and movies of “Black Mirror,” hence the word mirror being used to attach “Mirror Life” onto the success of the Charlie Brooker written and produced creation.  The cast fills out with Lawrence Ballard, Sally Greenland, Erica Becker, Mako San, Marc Reign, and Brian O’Neill.

Two shoots from two different times mashed together to form a single narrative structure doesn’t come without any issues, also being a non-linear story that toggles time and characters also doesn’t help.  Yet, “Mirror Life” bulldozes its way to being sound with little overlap puzzlement and only sustaining portions of a la carte plot holes.  Kazmarck’s 2012 script and direction nail a successfully conceive pre-apocalyptic thriller narratively designed like a Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” released a year prior snuggly fit into the “Black Mirror” like mold.  Where “Mirror Life” becomes a choppy is with the present tense portion of the shot of video documentary, added in as surplus offshoot to perhaps clean up and close out “Terminal Legacy” with fleshier reel and complexity toward the coverup concept.  By using interchangeable lensed cameras and mock security CCTVs, the spliced in sections create a whole new aesthetic and feels that grasping connection to the original film.  Plus, Tracy’s connection and motivation doesn’t appease her drive to make a documentary or even explain why the compulsive, go-getting cousin is compelled to do the extra leg work for her cousin other than their quickly mentioning their blood relation; there needed to be a deeper conversation of exposition out of Tracy’s emotional vault to get the audience on her side for hounding doctors, sneaking into apartment buildings, and the, essentially, putting herself and her crew in harm’s way for Jordan.  In short, “Terminal Legacy” had the makings of a sufficient sci-fi and apocalypse thrills and chills but without actually seeing the film in its entirety, there’s no way to know if the Kazmarck production went into being development hell, shelved for budget reasons, or had a more incongruous outcome that warranted a redo.

Cleopatra Entertainment distributes “Mirror Life:  modern Zombies” onto DVD home video with a MPEG2 encoded, upscaled 720p, DVD 5.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, image quality ranges from a third person graded digital capture, a first person raw digital capture, and pseudo-CCTV filter.  For lower DVD storage and the range of perspectives, compression issues are limited to smaller banding issues albeit plenty of darker and negative space opportunities for those milky arch lines to appear.  The grading, however, has a bit of milky residue but not terribly soaked but does keep the black saturation diluted.  Textures around skin and clothing have limited emersion with a smooth or slightly splotchy limitation from the 5-gigabyte compression that has a feature plus bonus content and a soundtrack menu.  For Cleopatra Entertainment, “Mirror Life” is a rights only distributed release, meaning they do not own the music, or rather soundtrack, from the parent company Cleopatra Records.  However, the mix is still an encoded English Dolby Digital 2.0 that has some bite in decibel volume but still can’t quite compare to an uncompressed stereo with “Mirror Life’s” gun-firing, fist-throwing, and the infected guttural sounds; however, the Dolby compression factors into saving space for a decent picture and its accompanying special features.  More importantly, dialogue comes through clearly and prominent.  Bonus features include a director’s DVD commentary, outtakes, deleted scenes, a slideshow, and theatrical trailer.  Cleopatra Entertainment has been constant on packaging with a standard DVD Amaray containing stark and intriguing cover art, especially with “Mirror Life’s” Kerry Russell and Alexandria Deddario-esque Sally Greenland appearing manically and sepia toned with a pair of scissors on the DVD and disc cover.  There are no other physical supplements on the region free DVD that houses an 89-minute, unrated feature.

Last Rites: “Mirror Life” mirrors itself from 2012 with a retouched version of the original film, “Terminal Legacy,” with little-to-no differences and another name slapped on in the director’s section. The horror comes from an effective, scientific relevant story of side effects and coverups but does the Modern Zombies subtitle really, and I mean really, come into play here? It’s a stretch to say the least.

“Mirror Life” on DVD from Cleopatra Entertainment!

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

“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!

Protect Yourself from EVIL Because “Tonight She Comes!” reviewed! (Jinga Films – Danse Macabre – MVDVisual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Tonight She Comes” is Now Available on DVD! Purchase Here!

Two women looking to spend quality debauchery time with their friend at her family’s rural cabin arrive find their friend is nowhere to be seen or heard from but they do discover a lost mailman asleep on the cabin porch on his first day.   As the trio yuck it up with plenty of booze and flirtation around the campfire, locked out of the cabin with still no sign of their girlfriend, the day turns to night and they’re eager to get into each other’s pants for an alcohol fueled fling.  Unfortunately for them, their lost friend just showed up naked out from the adjacent lake.  What usually would be an invitation for an extended good time, the naked friend is stained head to toe in blood and determined to kill anyone in her path.  In their escape, they run into a backwoods family of black magic occultists trying to fix their titanic satanic mistake before everyone dies.

If a campy, gory, backwaters horror engulfed in occult get your filmic scary movie juices flowing, then “Tonight She Comes” should be at the top of your must-watch list.  The 2016, American-made feature from writer-director Matt Stuertz takes the cabin-in-the-woods trope to the extreme to the likes of a farcical feat many have tried but only a few achieve.  “Tonight She Comes” is Stuertz’s sophomore picture behind the cleverly titled found footage horror “RWD,” or “<<RWD,” as in the rewind symbol you’d typically see on VHS players, and has since his bloodthirst for horror with the practical effects-driven and supernatural terrorizing of a young woman in this year’s “Human” and is currently in production with a gory vampire flick, “Wake Not the Dead.”  Gory is Stuertz niche tinged with a repulsive tone that’s not just splatter nor intestinal evisceration.  Cinematographer Chris Benson and sound designer Jamison Sweet, of the St. Louis-based production company Lamplight Films, and Twenty Eighteen Seventy-Six’s Stuertz produce the film.

What’s neat about the progressing script, acutely angling 90 degrees to keep the story fresh and unsuspecting, is the principal leads constantly change hands.   By conventional standards, the young, good looking, white male mail with a pleasant disposition in James (Nathan Eswine) places audiences on that path with a post title opening of the inexperienced, first-day-on-the-job James doing his route diligently despite difficulties locating an address.  Also, in comparison to his dimwitted and degenerate best friend Pete (Adam Hartley, “The Slender Man”), James is a pedestalled prince.  As the day turns to night, James begins to show cracks in his gallantry and the baton is roughly passed to the rough around the edges but tough as they come Ashley (Larissa White, “Charlatan”).  In another dynamic duo curiosity, her best friend in Lyndsey (Cameisha Cotton) drunkenly sluts her way to the end of the whiskey bottle and toward the inside of James’ pants, demarcating the horror tropes between the two pairings by sticking up and out the perverted goofball and the alcoholic promiscuous while keeping in protagonist good graces and staid James and Ashely up until the baton is passed along again inside the trio of an occult practicing backwoods family who messed up a reincarnation spell and inadvertently resurrected a powerful, murderous demon.  Between the family-first Pa, Frances (Frankie Ray, “Bad Haircut”), the near silent big brother, Philip (Brock Russell) and the rational sister, Felicity (Jenna McDonald), the protagonist shift lands in the lap of the younger sister who takes charge in a show of no nonsense command and force that deserves respect for a role that’s usually diluted or wasted in isolated cabin horror.  Each actor performs exactly on Stuertz given script with the cast rounding out with former model Dal Nicole in her full birthday suit for most of her screentime as the Kristy inhabited demon plodding to kill in a nonstop wrath.  

Most audiences and critics will pan “Tonight She Comes” as nonsensical drivel touting a gauntlet of gore and a fixed nudity to carry it into a favorable edge with fans.  All I have to say about Matt Stuertz script and vision is it breaks the conventional stereotypes into shattered shards and uses those shards as gouging, bloodletting weapons.  On it’s face, “Tonight She Comes” appears to be another run-of-the-mill cabin-in-the-woods horror with throwaway characters and many vague plot points that don’t have an encircling reference.  Stuertz purposefully throws cation to the wind and makes the movie he wants to see, a no-holds barred blood fest geared to obliterate the tropes and only provide slivers of important information, just enough to pass the bar to the next round of ironfisted thrashings.  The story never allows the sediment to settle between the character action and dialogue debauchery, the eclectic and interesting POV shots, the diabolical practical effects, the sparingly used but effective visual effects, the continuously guess where this story is heading and, of course, the unabashed eye candy that is Dal Nicole fully nude in full time.  The other thing that can bog down viewers, and rightfully so, is the time check title cards that are supposed to tick down to the moment the demon emerges into the fold, turning the events of youth fun into a grind of survival. Randomized and spelled out, literally, the interjected times don’t seemingly match the span of time passed on screen.  What should take a few minutes between scenes, the title card states hours had passed; I’m not positive if this is part of Stuertz’s trope lampooning or not but this portion excels as more distracting from its theme-bombing track.

Another great and gory to the extreme release from the collaborating collective of Danse Macabre, Jinga Films, and MVDVisual.  “Tonight She Comes” comes to a new DVD release that’s MPEG2 encoded, 720p standard resolution, on a DVD5 and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Not peak image quality by any means of available formats out today, solidifying this DVD release a roll back to a lesser picture quality, but digital capturing goes without saying that DVD can still be a formidable format in regard to picture quality.  Likely, you will not see too much different between standard and high-definition but there are subtle areas of contrast, such as the black areas does contain faint banding and the details don’t inlay a zing of crispness like they should.  A film that starts off with a title card reading, THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD… AS HELL, the DVD does the statement and Stuertz’s film justice with an uncompressed English 5.1 surround sound mix that highlights on and hits upon the important sound effects, screams, and building discordance, tumbling minor tone, and spiny synth-rock and 80’s horror-inspired score of Wojciech Golczewski (“We Are Still Here”).  Dialogue lands with prominence amongst the clatter and chaos layers that gives a real sense and elevation to the dialect of Jenna MacDonald’s tough backwoods occultist.  Not much in the way of depth as mostly everything is taken to the extreme volume, actions far and near, but range is aplenty by spanning the innocent swashing of alcohol in a bottle to the splatter of brains on the wall, from the crackling of fire to the gnarly rip of flesh being torn apart, and the robust force of bullets being fired to the deluge of menstrual blood filling a cup.  Yes, it’s one of those movies!  English subtitles are available for selection.  Special features include a Matt Stuertz commentary track, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes and raw footage look with cast and crew interviews with some still in character wardrobe, the Stuertz’s short film “Slashers,” and the teaser and theatrical trailer.  The DVD packing is about as generic as they come with the naked silhouette of the titular villainess standing in front of not the cabin the film in not the forest this movie takes place.  The arrangement is reminiscent of an “Evil Dead” knockoff.  The tall DVD Amaray case has nothing more to note in terms of physical prowess.  Aforementioned, this DVD is a rollback release in a few ways, and one is, unfortunately, the rating with a Rated R cut with a runtime of 84 minutes whereas previous releases were not rated clocking in at 90 minutes.  However, as far as I can tell, the Jinga Films, Danse Macabre, and MVDVisual does offer region free playback unlike early editions locked in at region 1.

Last Rites: If looking for something not too serious, checks all the gory and gross boxes, has decent practical and visual effects, and bares skin, “Tonight She Comes” is a fierce, ferocious, and fight-to-the-death option worth the viewing calories!

“Tonight She Comes” is Now Available on DVD! Purchase Here!

Rash Decisions Permeate EVIL’s Presence. “When Evil Lurks” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / 4K UHD Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“When Evil Lurks” 4K UHD Blu-ray for Purchase!

Two brothers in a small, remote community discover a neighboring man infested and rotting with a demon inside the body.  Fearing evil will spread once the birthed demon is free from the bloated and pus-oozing human host, they move the body miles out of town with the help of an impatient and bellicose farmer, but when they lose the body, a dark violent force spreads across their rural outlook, beginning with the horrendous death of the farmer and his pregnant wife.  Escaping to the city, the two brothers hightail out of town, picking up family along the way, only to unintentionally spread evil from contamination by the rotting body.  Local folklore has a set of established rules, seven rules in fact, when face-to-face with a demon and they enlist a reclusive woman, a proper cleaner of the rotten, to help them against the clinging evil determined to never let their family go unscathed. 

The 2023 released, heavy demonic and folkloric horror from Argentina, entitled “When Evil Lurks,” tells the whole story of a family’s past regrets, the road-splitting life choices they make, and the consequences that follow using graphic, unabashed violence and a campiness that’s corrosive to the soul.  Demián Rugna writes-and-directs “When Evil Lurks,” aka “Cuando acecha la maldad,” after his breakout hit “Terrified” from 2017.  The Buenos Aires filmmaker continues to push a singular amalgamate of wide-range tradition and horror to the extent the world has never seen, and he continues to shoot on location from his own country, mostly in or around his home municipality.  Fernando Díaz of Machaco Films alongside Roxana Ramos under her founded production company Aramos Cine with the support of the national cinema institute, the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales or the INCAA, and the streaming horror service and productions, Shudder.

“When Evil Lurks” primarily follows Pedro and Jimi, two brothers living on the outs of their own lives stagnantly inside their rural family home.  Ezequiel Rodríguez (“Legions”) sports a grizzly beard as the lead, older brother Pedro who frantically and desperately needs to get his family away from the spreading evil while returning to collaborate with Rugna “Terrified” actor Demián Salomón tracks as a more youthful footloose, Jimi, not tied down by a family or even a girlfriend but rather is dialogued as free lover amongst women.  Every character they encounter exposes them to the evils that lie ahead, or generally around the vicinity, as the this rotten, as they label the formless rotten presence that is solely an inhabitant of people and animals alike, can jump to another host if the rules are not followed, with the most common rule being broken is using gun powder to kill the possessed rotten.  Up for to be demonic fodder is Pedro’s estranged family who have alienated him because of his ambiguities’ surrounding possible unforgivable crimes and family abandonment.  The latter speaks more specifically to his severely autistic son Jair (“Emilio Vodanovich, “Fever Dream”) Pedro once hated himself for spawning, per his ex-wife and restraining order enacting Sabrina (Virginia Garófalo, “La Vagancia”), but his Pedro’s pre-narrative occurred change of heart sends him frantically into the fire to save his children Jair and younger brother Santino (Marcelo Michinaux, “Fever Dream”).  Also demonically targeted is Jimi’s once city affair now turned socially isolated former cowwoman-turned-rotten cleaner Mirta (“Silvina Sabater, “The Wrath of God”).  Mirta pivotally provides audiences insight by solidifying what other characters only know by hearsay or try to understand intuitively about the rottens, or the possessed, and how it spreads and what rules to follow.  Without Mirta, a lot of the supernatural circumstances involving children, the insidiousness, and the mindset of evil.  Other cast members interlocked with the gruesome violence and gut-wrenched storytelling is Luis Ziembrowski (“The Rotten Link”), Paul Rubinstesztein (“Portraits of the Apocalypse”), Isabel Quinteros (“High Heels”), Lucrecia Nirón Talazac, Ricardo Velázquez, Desirée Salgueiro (“Luciferina”), Federico Liss (“Portraits of the Apocalypse”), and Berta Muñiz (“Plaga Zombie”) as the voice of the bloated rotten Uriel.

“When Evil Lurks” accompanies with it a strong theme of children replacing their parents or adults in a metaphorical, supernatural demon enriched context.  Children are drawn to the demon as the demon is drawn to children, a verbatim more-or-less statement said by Mirta about the rotten, or demon, that shows children as it’s bewitched devoted servants and protectors, like little underage Renfields, who try and trick adults off the rotten’s hidden location or carry out for more sinister acts.  One of those acts is literally devouring adults which becomes a regular theme throughout seen with Jair and Eduardo, and even in anecdote told by Mirta about a previous witness to a rotten’s case of regurgitation.  In a way, the demon is a child itself being birthed into the world under a swelling and oozing Uriel’s sinew and viscera and indulges in childish acts of fibbing, mischievous tricks, and playful portents that happen right under our noses and can be shocking to the system as we want to believe what our children, our flesh and blood, have to say but there’s always that inkling of untruthfulness in our minds. Rugna couples the manipulation with bold, visceral violence, even some on children, and a grotesque folklore inflamed by poor and naïve choices by those who don’t understand or are unwilling to fully comprehend the extent of consequences that follow because of their hastiness to act, solve, and be rid of a threat.  “When Evil Lurks” clearly points out our innate flawed existence and makes abundantly clear our mortality with our progeny to dominate the world. 

Second Sight Films emerges “When Evil Lurks” onto a 4K UHD Blu-ray.  The BD66 is HVEC encoded with an ultra high-definition, 2160p resolution and presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio 2.39:1.  Second Sight Films produce the high dynamic range with Dolby Vision, approved by director Demián Rugna.  The result is immense image immersion that inarguably has the wherewithal for a fluently stable color timing, a range of depth, and phenomenal detail.  Every aspect of what is on screen is crisp to the bone and Rugna’s violence, under Mariano Suárez’s eclectic cinematographer eye that builds toward suspense, benefits from the grisly faced display.   Audio fidelity through a Spanish DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio holds and delivers exact reproduction.  Plenty of back and side channel clinks and clunks to establish a presence created coincidingly with the image.  Dialogue is unobstructed, confidently paced, and above the layers whenever appropriate with Pablo Fuu’s score sneaking int folkloric tones and a despairing timbre and tempo there in the mix but subconsciously eats away the soul of the viewer.  Optional English subtitles are available and accurate but in moments of great hasty dialogue, the rhythm of display can be quick.  Special features include a new audio commentary by cinematic academic Gabriel Eljaick-Rodriguez, four new interviews with director Demián Rugna It Was Always There, actor Ezequiel Rodríguez Tragedy is Inevitable, actor Demián Salomón We Made a Movie, and actress Virginia Garófalo Stripped to the Bone, and a video essay by UK film podcaster Mike Muncer Terror and the Unknown in When Evil Lurks.  There are no during or after credit scenes.  The 4K UHD Blu-ray release comes in a black UHD Amaray with a new monochromatic art rendition of young Vicky holding the leach of the French Mastiff, same as the pre-release promo still for the film.  There are no internal supplements with the region free release that has a runtime of 100 minutes and is UK certified 15 for Strong Horror, Bloody Violence, Gore, and Language.

Last Rites: There’s no stopping death. Our children will replace us no matter how hard we try. A seemingly evil accursed death will come for us all and the choices that are made will be the design to our destruction. Director Demián Rugna sees the path and knows “When Evil Lurks” it has us completely encircled with no escape, no hope, and no compassion. How soon we choose to parish depends on how rash and unwise our decisions are in the grand scheme of life.

“When Evil Lurks” 4K UHD Blu-ray for Purchase!