Review of Countdown

 

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Countdown is an American supernatural horror movie written and directed by Justin Dec and released in 2019. In this chiller, a group of hard-working people find an app that tells them when they're going to die. 

At a party, a teenager named Courtney (Ann Winters) is in peer-pressured into downloading an app called Countdown that tells her when she'll die. It gives her three hours to live. No biggy, she'll just refuse to go with Evan (Dillon Lane), her boyfriend, into his car, as he's drunker than Cootie Brown, therefore outsmarting the app and changing her destiny. Or so it seems. But Courtney receives a message on her app that says she's broken the user agreement. At home, she's killed by an unseen phantom as her time runs out. Then Evan crashes his car. A branch impales the seat where Courtney was supposed to sit.

Evan Rachel Wood lookalike Quinn Harris, our good-hearted angel-of-mercy protagonist (Elizabeth Lail), disbelieves Evan's claim that the app accurately products one's death. Evan skips his surgery at the hospital and is told he's violated the user agreement. Then he tries to escape the hospital but is haunted by Courtney's ghost and is killed by the entity. 

Nurse Quinn enters the morgue and finds out Evan's time ran out on the app. Unfortunately having downloaded the app herself, she is given a short time and refuses to go with her family to her mother's grave, trying to change her fate. Again, the messages comes: you've violated the user agreement. She destroys her phone, gets a new one, then finds the app has downloaded itself.

After she escapes an attack of a demonic entity in the parking lot of the cell phone store, she meets young Matt (Jordan Calloway), whose Countdown app says he'll die in eighteen hours. This is when they learn the countdown's broken if the user tries to change the future. Then Doctor Sullivan (Peter Facinelli) sexually harasses her, then tricks the hospital staff into thinking it was the other way around. 

Quinn and Matt find Father John (P.J. Byrne), who figures out the app is linked to a demon named Ozhin, previously summoned by a Roma woman who told a prince when he'd die. Quinn and Matt meet again with the Padre and find if someone else dies before their countdown ends, they get to live. 

Time for Quinn to give comeuppance to Doc' Sullivan.

If you haven't seen this gem yet, enjoy!

Polaroid Movie Review

 

 

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Polaroid is a 2019 supernatural horror film based on the 2015 short film of the same title, directed by Lars Klevberg, the screenplay written by Blair Butler. The storyline follows high schooler Bird Fitcher, who's gifted a Polaroid camera from hell. She comes to realize that those who get their picture taken with it meet a horrid death. 

Sarah (Madelaine Petsch) and her bestie, Linda (Erika Prevost), go through a box of her dead mother's stuff when they find an old Polaroid camera. Being a typical teenager, Sarah has a photo taken of herself in lingerie for her boyfriend. But who's that shadow figure behind her? Sarah meets a grizzly end via the phantom that night.

Bashful high School student Bird Fitcher (Kathryn Prescott) is gifted an old Polaroid camera by her co-worker, Tyler (Devi Santos), who bought it from a garage sale. Said camera has the initials RJS carved into it. Bird takes Tyler's picture, then notices a weird smudge in it. 

Bird goes to a costume party with her friend, Kasey (Samantha Logan), and meets the latter's other friends, Devin (Keenan Tracey), Avery (Katie Stevens), and Bird's high-school crush, Connor (Tyler Young). Tyler's murdered by the ghost, and his photo comes free from the shadow, which has moved to Avery's picture. The entity hunts them down one-by-one.

Bird and Connor play detective and find that the camera was owned by photography teacher Roland Joseph Sable from their school in the past. Said teacher had been accused of torturing four students and killing three of them. Then they turn against each other, Connor and Devin fighting for the camera, and Devin is accidentally snapped by the cursed thing. Devin is arrested and attacked by the entity in his cell.

Bird, Connor, and Casey discover Roland's wife, Lena Sable (Grace Zabriskie), still lives. They visit her and find the camera actually belonged to their daughter, Rebecca Jane Sable (Emily Power), who'd been slow and had formed an attachment to the camera, but had been bullied by other students who took inappropriate pictures of her, causing her to commit suicide. But Sheriff Pembroke (Mitch Pileggi), one of the kids who tried to save her, now grown up, reveals to them that Roland molested his daughter, and the students had tried to rescue her. 

If you haven't already, you've got to check this movie out! Enjoy! 

Walden Movie Review

 

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Walden (previously called The Stenographer) is a 2023 American horror movie written and directed by Mick Davis starring Emile Hirsch and Shane West. It's about a mild-mannered court reporter (Hirsch) who becomes a milquetoast serial killer who murders killers who get off scot-free in court due to loopholes and technicalities when he develops a brain tumor. 

Walden is painfully shy, but driven, attending a stenographer class trying to break the world record of 360 words a minute with 361. He comes damn close. His friend Judge Boyle (David Keith) wants him to spend his time on something more productive, finding a Miss Right. In time, one of the young women in the stenographer class corners him, questioning him on why he's so laser-focused. Unfortunately, he blows her off.

But then the brain tumor hits, and he begins to date the woman who cornered him, the lovely-and-wealthy Emily Duperon (Kelli Garner). A romance ensues. 

Walden is a praying man but, frustrated at these monsters walking away from convictions, he tells God he won't be praying anymore, and good luck with your do-nothing strategy.

He commences killing murderers who beat the system, including a crackhead who torched his three-year-old daughter in an oven, then gets out and buys a new oven. Walden ties him up and fries his head in said oven. 

Yet the murders continue after the brain surgery. When Walden, now a drinker, finally got laid, I was so happy for him. And if Detective Bill Kane (West), and his vivacious partner, Sally Hunt (Tania Raymonde), catch him, what are they going to do, give him a medal? I would.

If you haven't seen it already, go for it! I found it a special film in the same vein of Slingblade. Enjoy!

Review of Under Paris

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Under Paris is a new French shark thriller that can hold its own with any fish movie out there--and you know I love my scary fishies flicks--a 2024 film directed by Xavier Gens and written by Gens, Yannick Dahan and Maud Heywang.

Grieving, genius scientist Sophia Assalas (Berenice Bejo), working with the river patrol, must figure out a way to save Paris and Olympic triathalon swimmers from becoming chum as an overly-large shark appears in the river Seine. The breeding rate is astronomical, the female sharks engaged in parthenogenesis, the ability to breed without a male.

The movie opens with Sophia's team trying to save the ecosystem in the ocean, then all her men--including her husband--are gored to death by too-large sharks that aren't supposed to be there, who've bred stealthily.

When Sophia, working with eco' warriors, endeavors to get the Seine closed and the triathalon cancelled, the mayor, Anne Marivin (Le maire de Paris) pulls a Jaws and cares more about making money than saving lives.

What results is a bloodbath with some of the greatest shots I've ever seen and gore unparalleled. Foreign films really are the best (not better than Jaws, though)! 

Enjoy if you haven't! It's on Netflix!

Review of Fall

 

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I had heard that Stephen King gave this one high praise, but also that Google was bragging about it, so I decided to check it out. I'm so glad I did. 

Fall is a 2022 thriller written by Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank, and directed by Scott Mann. The movie showcases two young female thrill seekers who climb a 2,000-foot-tall television broadcasting tower and become stranded at the top. 

The movie opens with a mountain-climbing scene with vivacious protagonist Becky Conner (Grace Caroline Currey), her bestie, Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner), the hot, bosomy blonde, and Becky's husband, Dan (Mason Gooding), who falls to his death. 

Becky crawls into a bottle until her father, James Conner (played by Neganesque Jeffrey Dean Morgan) endeavors to bring her out of it, not allowing her to drive home drunk. We learn her dad wasn't too keen on her late husband.

Hunter shows up to save the day and recommends they climb that old tower, for it's just the thing to bring Becky out of her blue funk. Once there, they find the tower to be too rickety . . . and the stairs fall away after they reach the top. During their struggles to be rescued, Becky learns that Hunter used her wiles to get Dan to cheat--proving her father correct--and that she got Dan to say he loved her, which was something Becky had failed to do. 

Check it out if you haven't: it's killer! Literally!

Smile Movie Review

 

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Smile is a film that left me unable to imagine a woman smiling without an evil grin. It's left its mark on me for more than a few days. More like a lifetime. Smile is a 2022 psychological, supernatural horror movie written and directed by Parker Finn and is his first full-length flick, based on the short film, Laura Hasn't Slept (2020).

At a psych' ward, therapist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) meets grad' student Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey), who tells her she just saw her professor kill himself. Laura states she's being terrorized by an invisible entity that appears as various grinning people. She screams, in panic mode, then smiles that evil grin and cuts her own throat. 

On the 'morrow, Carl, a patient, smiles like Laura and screams that's she going to die. Rose calls the orderlies to restrain him, only to find out he's been asleep. Afraid for her sanity, her supervisor, Dr. Morgan Desai (Kal Penn from Harold & Kumar), forces her to take a week off work. 

Yet the hallucinations continue. She goes to seek help from her former therapist, Dr. Madeline Northcott (Robin Weigert), who finds that her hallucinations come from seeing her abusive-and-mentally-ill mother's death from an overdose.

When Rose attends her nephew's birthday party, her dead cat's said nephew's present, petrifying the other guests. Rose's mind becomes afire and squirms with bugs, the breakdown being exacerbated by seeing one of the guests copping that evil grin. 

The shit continues to hit the fan from there. I'm sure everyone's seen this film by now, but if not, this is a definite must-see.

Enjoy!

Crucible of the Vampire Movie Review

 

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Crucible of the Vampire is a 2019 British horror film directed by Ian Ross-Mcnamee and written by Darren Lake, Ian Ross McNamee, and John Wolskel. It was released with a remarkable lack of fanfare. 

A young, beautiful woman named Isabelle (Katie Goldfinch), who's also a museum curator, is sent by her professor (Phil Hemming) to a creepy old house to inspect a crucible used by a necromancer (Darren Lake) buried in the eerie manor.

The head of the house, Karl Scott-Morton (Larry Rew), welcomes her heartily, but then proves himself aggressive and threatening, even creepily insisting Isabelle go out to the pub one night. What could go wrong? She ends up being ogled and chased by young Tom (Aaron Jeffcoate), but Tom means to warn her about the evil in the manor, and Karl, furious to find him on his land again, marks him.

But Karl's vivacious daughter, Scarlett Scott-Morton (Florence Cady), looks at Isabelle suggestively after kissing her mother, Evelyn Scott-Morgan (played by MILF Babette Barat), goodnight at the dinner table and makes forward passes at her the whole time she's there, which leads to . . . 

. . . well, let's just say this movie is more of a lesbian soft porn than a horror flick.

A flash to the past finds the necromancer working a charm with the crucible in the forest, and soon is confronted by a witch hunter and civil war soldiers, the makeshift Cotton Mather accusing him of witchcraft, punishable by death back then, knowing he's brought his daughter back from the dead, as she haunts the forest.

They hang him high.

Back to the present, and the necromancer's daughter haunts Isabelle ghostly, is a vampire, and so is Scarlett, though not undead yet. This turns into a nightmare made flesh, and Isabelle soon regrets coming to the manor, and can't escape. 

If you enjoy watching lezzies get it on, you'll probably love this one. If not, I'm sure you'll be disappointed, especially with the confusing ending. 

Enjoy checking it out!