So the kaiju is a half-turkey/half-shopper hybrid. That helps.... a little.
Black Friday had the potential to be a fun and memorable addition to the horror-comedy genre. The premise of retail workers battling zombified Black Friday shoppers is clever, relatable, and ripe for satirical commentary on consumer culture. Unfortunately, the execution leaves much to be desired, resulting in a film that struggles to rise above mediocrity.
A great movie if you're part of the "under the sweater/over the bra" crowd, but even they won't remember that they saw it.
Tarot (2024) is an absolute masterclass in how not to make a horror movie unless you are just providing background noise for teenagers to make out. If you ever wondered what happens when you throw every horror cliché, plot hole, and half-baked character motivation into a blender, this is it. The result is a film so dumb and poorly thought out that it almost circles back around to being entertaining—for all the wrong reasons.
From the get-go, Tarot feels like a checklist of horror tropes. Creepy old woman? Check. Spooky house? Check. Jump scares every five minutes? Double check. It’s as if the writers Googled "horror clichés" and decided to use every single one, especially stealing from Evil Dead and Final Destination. But that’s not even the worst of it. The plot is an incoherent mess, with gaping holes large enough to drive a truck through. Characters make baffling decisions with motivations that seem to change depending on the scene—or, more likely, on the whims of whoever was holding the pen that day.
The acting? Let’s just say that calling it appalling might be too kind. Every line is delivered with the enthusiasm of someone who just realized they left the oven on at home. The humor, if you can call it that, is cringeworthy at best. It feels like the movie is trying desperately to be self-aware, but instead, it comes off as painfully awkward.
And yet... there’s something about Tarot that makes it oddly watchable, at least for certain audiences. If you’re a fan of bad movies, you’ll probably find some enjoyment in how ridiculous it all is. It’s also the perfect flick for teenagers looking for an excuse to make out in the back row of the theater while pretending to watch the screen.
In short, Tarot is a trainwreck of a horror film, but if you enjoy watching a disaster unfold, you might just find yourself entertained—for all the wrong reasons.
Over the top action:
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A horror movie that thrills its audience with...uh....hmmm...sewing? Oh and a demon is summoned out of loneliness and a desire to have tea parties with dollies. This is so unbelievably bad.
"Annabelle" (2014) is a cinematic catastrophe that makes you question the very fabric of horror filmmaking. From a plot that can only be summarized as "a cult summons a demon who likes to play with dolls," to characters so insipid and carelessly written that you'll find yourself wishing for their swift demise, this movie is a masterclass in how not to make a horror film.
Gary Busey does some crimes, gets the chair and with the help of his momma hatches a very dubious but tasty way to enact his revenge against those that he did crimes against. I don't know. Look he's a talking murder cookie. What do you want here?
Ok this isn't exactly Macbeth here. Its a Charles Band movie called The Gingerdead Man. Its ridiculous. I think you know the level of intellect that is being tossed at you. You shouldn't be that surprised to know that this movie is a stinker. But what you might not expect is...that its kind of fun. Well why wouldn't it be? Well because of a slew of similarly stupid movies that have come out in the last 20 years. Some gimmick like Sharks From Mars or Tiny Tim But He's a Murderer or Octopusindomikhan or Dead People Who Are Famous Fight Vampires or... well you get the idea. The Asylum is especially to blame for this and you all know how we feel about their lazy garbage. So The Gingerdead Man likely has been on your radar in the same vein as their crap. But...its really not like their crap.
Snoop takes us on a horror ride in an anthology shaped Cadillac as he collects to souls of the damned to be his neighbors as he rules the subdivision, The Hood of Horrors, in hell. Get ready for a grotesque block party!
So go into this knowing that it only cost $5 million in 2006. That's not a ton of money. With that knowledge in mind, this is an very tight efficient little package. You've got animation (not cheap) and a cavalcade of guest starts (not cheap either) and some seriously clever makeup and effects (also not cheap). Director Stacy Title did a very good job of keeping this thing on track and seamless.
Freddy Krueger he is not. What the Candyman actually is and how he works is as big of a mystery as Amelia Earnhardt's disappearance. Nothing makes sense!
What is Candyman? Well we know that he was murdered for the mistake of being born black. Ok, so he comes back as the spirit of racial injustice vengeance? Nope. The person he kills that drives the narrative is an impoverished black woman. Ok. Well what else? They murdered him by covering him in honey and bees stung him to death and he seems to have a real affinity for the buzzy bugs. So is he bees? Maybe, but if he's bees then why isn't other Candymen (yes there are other Candymen as shown in the ending) also bees? Nope. Only he's bees. He also poops bees and actual poop which is pretty weird.
It's Evil Dead part III (only in Italy) and has absolutely nothing to do with it. It also has nothing to do with Hoff being Hoff nor Linda Blair being Linda Blair. Nor does it have to do with a plot that makes any sense. Nor does it have to do with being enjoyable.
Witchery (or La Casa 4 in Italy - thus the sequel to Evil Dead) is the baffling tale of a fallen actress whom lives in an island hotel and becomes a witch at some point and then attempts to perform a ritual to either close the gates to Hell or summon Satan to provide the seed for the anti-Christ. It's really impossible to tell what the hell (or not hell) is going on here. You've then got Hoff and Blair running around in the hotel trying to piece together what's going on while avoiding death and trying to escape.
Most will see this as a Monkey's Paw retell but it's really and truly just a recut of Teen Witch but without all the singing and dancing and then they made it so much crappier...crappier than Teen Witch. Yup.
Some movies are prime for knocking off, right? See the endless list of Jaws and Conan movies from late 70s and 80s. See any Roger Corman movie post-Star Wars. Sure, you won't work very hard on it and make just a few bucks but hey, that's easy money.
Bugs, bugs, bugs!!! This movie is chock full o' bugs! Large bugs, small bugs, bugs as big as your head - hell bugs that are MADE of your head. Heads that are made of bugs. I got bugs under my skin and bugs on my brain. Hope you like bugs.
The Nest falls into the "body horror" genre as far from being a body horror film as one can be. This should fall into the "its JAWS but bugs are super cheap to work with" genre. Its just the JAWS plot but with bugs. Yes there is a smidgeon of body horror but its not exactly From Beyond. However, there is a lot of good here.
Clint Howard delivers ice cream and one liners as a murderous Schwann's delivery guy. Is he the Pied Piper or just every other ice cream man? With top cops, Jan Michael Vincent and Lee Majors II on his case, how can he possibly get caught?
While we're not entirely sure what this movie is, we can tell you one thing - it's a lot of fun. It doesn't rise to the so bad it's good level that Troll 2 does, but that's likely to Clint Howard being too talented - but it definitely falls into that same category and tone. The two would make a great double feature.
Freddy is back and this time he lulls us to sleep with whale song and LBGTQ social commentary! It begs the ultimate question - does Freddy actually appear in this movie?
Freddy 2 is an absolute bonkers experience and through-out is a complete and utter-turd. At no point does it make sense that it was a commercial success and likely should have destroyed the Freddy franchise (and thus would have prevented the LOTR trilogy from happening) but somehow was a massive win for New Line and kept the doors open for another ten years. I guess that really states to the allure of Mr. K.
Well hello, Mary Lou. So good of you to drop in and see me. Wait what are you doing??? Why do you have the powers of all the X-Men combined? Are you like an evil ghost Rogue? How do you work and what is your reason for existence???? Argghghgghghg.....gurgle, gurgle.
The above is a perfect summation of what each character should be asking the spooky-ghost or spooky-demon or spooky-ghost-demon that is Mary Lou, a 1950s prom queen who got burnt up like Freddy and lives in a suitcase for 30 years only to return and enact dubious revenge upon various 80s teenagers whom had nothing to do with her death. Why Mary Lou chooses to do anything she does is beyond us and where she got her spooky-powers is another problem. Lastly, we really can't even begin to decipher the ending in which Mary Lou gets (what the movie tries to tell us) everything she wants, only to pull a Jason and not be dead so that she can take a road-trip with the kiddies.
Buckle up for banana business as were-monkey-wolves try to throw a killer birthday party. Every body is invited. Leave your head at the door. It'll be a bloody good time. Ok..well unless Christopher Lee and some townies are party-crashers. Then you'll get shot up pretty good.
When you put Reb Brown next to Sir Christopher Lee, and then have a bunch of guys in Planet of the Apes costumes pretend (or not?) be werewolves, you're destined to have a mind-boggling mess on your hands. This thing is bafflingly bad. The events that transpire are sorta clear, but why they happen is absolutely nonsense. Best we can determine is that a lady's birthday orgy gets interrupted because he brother shows up.
Six (count them - SIX!) Oscar nominated actors took a look at this garbage script and STILL signed up to do it. It's absolutely nonsensical. It's painfully boring. And it ALL sucks butt. Blech.
It's like they tried to say something in this film but had no idea what that was before they reached the end of the writing, so they just crammed in a bunch of nonsense to try to make a statement. If anyone can decipher what that statement is....
A couple ding-dongs find a box with some stuff in it, so their only choice is to summon a crappy version of Slender Man and have him chase them around until 3:33am. Meanwhile you've got Grandma upstairs complaining about the trouble-makers in Selma, absolutely no reward if you beat the game, and a villain with dubious intentions. Hope you all like lengthy rules!
Soooo many rules! The length of the rules of summoning Midnight Man need to have a team of professional editors go through them. You might run out of ink in your printer. BUT there's a myriad of holes within them. For instance, Midnight Man will leave you alone after 3:33am. Is that GST? What time measurement system is he going by? Will a sundial work? Or can you just use your cell-phone? What about time-zones? What happens if someone else summons Midnight Man in Italy and Chicago? What's he do when he's NOT summoned?
A faceless board-room guy (probably the one that fired James Gunn) is also a tree-man, octopus, tarantula with very dubious motivations, but likely he's actually the ghost of Chalton Heston, arboriculturist.
Slender Man the movie was doomed before it came out the gate. There is no way to pay this much fan service to the original creepy-pasta while trying to make a sensical story. Once you put Slender Man into an environment that must have some sort of back-story and character motivations and that old bummer, the Protagonist/Antagonist diatribe you've got no choice but to make your new horror icon look about as clever as the bird in the desk of The Wicker Man.
When your mom has a beard on her knee from a man who may or may not be your dad or Santa, you're best option is to obsess over Christmas until you're in your thirties and then you go all Buffalo Bob so that you can become the actual Santa. Not just copy cat. Actually Santa.
Christmas Evil is arguably one of the strangest Xmas films ever created. It was made a time when horror movies tried to play on any holiday and the jingly time was no different. See (but don't watch) such films as Santa's Slay, Santa Claws, Don't Open til Christmas, Black Christmas, etc... However there's a complete banana-factor to this feature.
"Don't do down that path, yah", the strange drunk man with dubious ambitions said to the new residents. Later he would take them on a wondrous adventure to bury a kitty-cat that he himself murdered. It was the strangest thing that week until the dead son came back as Little Lord Fauntleroy with super-powers.
Pet Sematary is just another in a long line of Stephen King movies that raked in the cash but not one theater attendee bothered to pay attention to what was happening on screen. The entire plot is bananas (and falls squarely into "the idiot plot") but that's the least biggest draw for fans of our show. It's all the elements around the plot, ie. the truckers who are clearly trying to break speed records, the undead cat that is just like any other cat, Gage acquiring super-powers upon being reanimated and that the family never asks "Who the hell is this Judd Crandall guy anyways?"
We wrap up our Spooktober with a staple from a staple franchise and one of the strangest big box office horror films ever made. This is just a strange film starring "Jason" with lots of head choppins, boobs and a cast of some pretty unusual characters.
So Jason V is one weird film and frankly astounds that it ever frightened anyone...even children. It's seriously gentle in its horror, the plot is not frightening, Jason is not intimidating, and the gore is pretty mild. The MPAA really didn't help out this film at all as it's seriously cut down.
Cat people. It's a movie about cat people. Written by horror master, Stephen King, it's arguably the most comedic horror film ever made. You thought Dreamcatcher was rife with errors...buckle in, folks.
Sleepwalkers is absolutely bananas. We'll just say right now that this is a must-do film for fans of crummy movies. It's a laugh riot. For instance, let's just put it out there that the chief action star of this film is a house cat, named Clovis. Clovis rivals Chuck Norris, Schwaz, Stallone and Van Damme in the pantheon of 90s action stars. I'm not joking.
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