Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Even More Home Invasions.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

Even More Home Invasions.

Last year…

I recommended some of my favorite Home Invasion films…

Since then…

I’ve found even more to recommend to you…

And for me…

There’s two types of home invasion movies that really get it right…

There’s the, Oh-Shit-The-Person-Inside-The-House-Is-Scarier-Than-The-Ones-Invading type…

And the, Okay-You-Invaded-My-House-And-Tortured-My-Family-Now-I’m-Gonna-Kick-Your-Ass type…

Both types work for me, and those are the ones that rise to the top of this increasingly popular sub-genre…

Now…

It’s not always awesome when a theme or a style becomes a sub-genre…

Take found footage for example…

But sometimes…

When it is a theme or a style that kicks ever-loving, blue-eyed ass…

 

Especially one as intense as home invasions…

 

That is some pretty awesome shit right there.

 

Let’s take another chronological look at the best, most surprising, and most original, Home Invasion Movies that you may not have seen…But should.

 

Mother’s Day (2010) – A few years after making the next three sequels to the 2004 film, SAW…Darren Lynn Bousman directed this film…Loosely based on a true events…This is a story about three brothers who have been incommunicado with the rest of their family for a while, and don’t realize that their family home now belongs to someone else…After the youngest brother gets shot in a robbery…They flee to that family home…Where Beth, played by Jaime King is throwing a birthday party for her husband, Daniel, played by King of the Purge, Frank Grillo…The brothers take the couple and their friends hostage while they wait for their mother to arrive and give them further instructions…Good ol’ Mom is played by Rebecca De Mornay, who turns in a performance that makes her character from the Hand That Rocks The Cradle look all sweet and innocent…She is the stuff of nightmares, people…Seriously…I hadn’t seen her in anything for years…And when I saw her in this, I was blown away…She is the twisted, and crooked, scoliosis-riddled backbone of this film…You gotta check it out.

 

In Their Skin (a.k.a. Replicas 2012) – In this film…A family who is bereft after the loss of a child…Goes to stay in their luxurious summer cottage…Showing up rather early in the season…they assume that they are the first, if not only family there…They quickly discover how wrong they are when they meet a truly bizarre couple and their equally bizarre son…Now although they receive a multitude of red flags that these strangers are really quite strange…Due to political correctness and an overly polite sense of obligation…They invite them in for a truly interesting evening…Let me tell you…The cast in this one is amazing all the way around…Selma Blair (Hellboy) and Joshua Close (Diary of the Dead) play the couple who have been invaded by James D’Arcy (Agent Carter) and Rachel Miner (Supernatural)…It is an interesting twist on the home invasion sub-genre…And it is definitely worth watching.

 

No One Lives (2012) – This is one of those films that peels the layers away gradually…And when all is revealed…All Hell breaks loose…Ryûhei Kitamura, the director of The Midnight Meat Train…Has made a home invasion film that pits Luke Evans (Dracula Untold) against a gang of small time criminals…When these petty thieves steal what belongs to him…He invades their home with the express purpose of getting it back…Oh yeah…And killing everyone dead…Evans does a great job as the killer made of cold steel…In fact…He is the quintessential psychotic anti-hero…This film is a blood-soaked hootenanny and it is one of those flicks that goes down good on a Friday night after a few beers…When things take off…And the movie gets right down to it…It is a non-stop cavalcade of violence and gore…And let me tell you, folks…When you are in the mood for that sorta thing…That right there…Ain’t such a bad thing.

Cold In July (2014) – Those in the know…Are aware of my love of the East Texas genre author, Joe R. Lansdale…His novels and short stories have been a part of my life for over twenty years…I first discovered him as the writer of some early episodes of Batman: The Animated Series…I then read his collection of short stories, Electric Gumbo…And I was hooked…His novels blur genre lines…There are elements of the supernatural in his crime novels…And there are pulpy crime characters in his horror novels…Wanna talk original? He’s the creative genius behind Bubba Ho-Tep…In this one…He tells a dark and gritty tale that was adapted by two of my horror icons, Nick Damici, and Jim Mickle who made some of my favorite flicks of the last decade…In this one…We see a home invasion, that at first glance is a simple burglary…One that was intercepted by the gun-toting home-owner played by Dexter’s Michael C. Hall (sporting a mullet and a porn stache…Hey he’s got a good excuse…This takes place in East texas during the late 80’s)…What transpires afterwards is a dark and twisted cover-up that slowly unravels in ways that were clever, creepy, and unexpected…After doing this film, Mickle and Damici went on to create another Lansdale adaptation…Hap and Leonard, which has been renewed for a third season on SundanceTV.

 

Tiger House (2015) – So a house is invaded by a gaggle of criminals led by two brothers…Played by Dougray Scott (Fear the Walking Dead), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool)…They have invaded the home for the sole purpose of taking the homeowner hostage to gain access to the bank that employs him…What these crooks aren’t prepared for…Is the presence of Kelly, played by Skins and the Maze Runner series alum, Kaya Scodelario…She is the girlfriend of Mark, the banker’s son…And is not supposed to be in the house…She begins her journey trying to avoid being discovered…But as threats to her boyfriend and his family escalate…She transforms into a full-blown ass-kicker…The second to last thing these twisted and violent thugs expected was to be battling it out with a recently injured, barefoot, and pregnant teenage girl…The last thing they expected was to have their asses handed to them.

 

The Blood Lands (aka White Settlers 2015) – When I saw Pollyanna McIntosh for the first time…She was a candidate in the most vicious job interview that I have ever seen…That was 2009’s Exam…And after that she has been…A filthy feral cannibal, in both Offspring, and The Woman…A cop, in Let Us Prey…A psychotic girlfriend, in the aforementioned TV series, Hap and Leonard…And most recently, the leader of the Trash People, in The Walking Dead…But in this one…She ones again demonstrates her range and flexibility as an actor…She plays an average, normal wife, who moves into a rural Scottish farmhouse with her husband…The house comes with a lot of history…And unfortunately…It also comes with a band of hostile locals wearing utterly frightening pig masks who want this young couple the fuck out of a house that they consider theirs…McIntosh does an amazing job of holding her own…Kicking some ass…And suffering through the difficult task of surviving a brutal home invasion…This is a very original and suspenseful addition to the home invasion sub-genre…And the ending…To say it was unexpected…Well that folks…Would be an understatement.

 

13 Cameras (2015) – I’ve had all kinds of landlords in my time on Planet Earth…Ones that don’t give a shit…Ones that give too much of a shit…Ones that can’t stop bothering…Ones that can’t be bothered…But never had one like this…Gerald is the landlord to Ryan and Claire…A young couple expecting their first child…He doesn’t just seem uber-creepy…He actually is uber-creepy…You see…Gerald has installed all kinds of cameras (pretty sure there’s thirteen of ’em)…And uses them to watch the every move of this young couple…Now this couple isn’t all that likeable…And you know what…That’s a good thing…Because when this slimy creep that they call Mr. Landlord invades not just their privacy, but their home as well…You won’t get too broken up if something happens to them…And here’s a shocker for you…Something happens all right…Stay tuned for the upcoming sequel…It’s called…You guessed it…14 Cameras.

 

Hush (2016) – This intense and original nail biter of a home-invasion flick was part of my How The Hell Did They Survive??? night of recommendations…It was all about horror films that had unlikely survivors…Maddie, played to perfection by Kate Siegel, who co-wrote the film with her husband Mike Flanagan, who directed this, and the most recent Stephen King adaptation, Gerald’s Game…In this film, Siegel portrays the personification of an unlikely survivor…What can a woman who has lost her hearing do to survive a home invasion? Man, that was such an unsettling element that these two artfully added to the film…You cannot hear your attacker approaching…And you cannot hear yourself making a shit-ton of noise while trying to hide…It ended up taking the film to a much higher tension level than I was prepared for…But through it all…As the psychotic intruder played to chilling perfection by John Gallagher Jr. (10 Cloverfield Lane)…Is killing the handful of people that surround this woman’s rural home…Maddie does almost as impressive a job in striking back at her assaillant…As she does at fucking up along the way.

 

Don’t Breathe (2016) – This is home invasion done to perfection…It starts out like a normal heist film and swiftly descends into an insurmountable, unsurvivable cluster-fuck horror film…In the way that unsuspecting Arkin planned on simply cracking the safe and taking a walk in The Collector…This film has a trio of unprofessional burglars who attempt to score some dough from a dilapidated, and decimated Detroit domecile…What waits for them within those peeling and crumbling walls is more than they ever expected…And maybe even more than they can handle…Fede Alvarez directed Jane Levy in his first film, the remake of Sam Raimi’s immortal classic, The Evil Dead…And he brought her back for his sophomore effort, as the strong and ferocious female lead, Rocky…In this film, she goes toe to toe with this blind beast of a man, played by Stephen Lang…And somehow…Someway…she holds her own against him…But not to worry…No matter how this one turns out…There’s more on the horizon…Here’s what the director said about a sequel…”We just started, but we know exactly where it goes. But we won’t tell you right now. But there will be more Don’t Breathe for sure.”

I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017) – This Netflix original film marks the directorial debut of Macon Blair…He’s an actor that is regularly seen in Jeremy Saulnier’s films…His breakout role was in Saulnier’s 2013 film, Blue Ruin…In this one…Melanie Lynskey plays Ruth…A nursing assistant who is the victim of a home invasion that results in her laptop, her meds, and her grandmother’s silverware, being stolen…After a pathetic response from local police…Ruth, along with some rather bizarre help from her rather bizarre neighbor, Tony, played by the ninja star wielding, Elijah Wood…The pair soon become the ones invading the homes…In an attempt to get answers and Ruth’s belongings back…This less than dynamic duo wind up tossed in the middle of a shit storm with some seriously nefarious ne’er-do-wells…And let me tell you…It sure was fun to see Jane Levy from Don’t Breathe playing one of those ne’er-do-wells…This is a smart…Funny…Well-written first effort from Macon Blair…If you don’t believe me…Check out this quote…From the beginning of the film…They are the last words of Mrs. Hamble…One of Ruth’s patients…On her deathbed…

“…They shoved this country right down the fuckin’ stinker. Keep your gigantic monkey dick out of my good pussy.” – Mrs. Hamble

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: It’s A Horror Movie…Do You Know Where The Children Are?

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

It’s A Horror Movie…Do You Know Where The Children Are?

When Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm came out…

I was nine years old…

Just a few years younger than Mike…

And I identified with him…

Because I identified…

With his fear…

 

But now…

 

I am a father…

And a grandfather…

And when I watch a horror film where children are in mortal danger…

The fear I felt when I identified with Mike…

Completely pales in comparison…

To the sheer terror…

That I feel now.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, It’s A Horror Movie…Do You Know Where The Children Are?…In the years following Phantasm. 

.

The Gate (1987) – This cult classic is the perfect answer to the question…”What’s the worse thing that could happen to the kids while we’re away?” When Glen, played by a very young, Stephen Dorff, and his sister, Al are left alone for the weekend while their parents are away…Glen and his thrash-metal obsessed pal, Terry discover a bizarre hole in Glen’s backyard that just so happens to be a gateway, that when it is opened, will allow evil gods to enter their world…Tibor Takács directed this film, and the follow-up sequel…And with the help of special effects guru Randall William Cook, used some really awesome effects like stop-motion animation, and forced perspective shots…Which remains one of the big reasons why this film has stood the test of time…The other is that it almost feels like it is supposed to be a kid’s movie…It’s like Jumanji with demons…It’s like Zathura with zombie workmen…It’s like…Well…You get the point…Either kids in the 80’s were made of sterner stuff…Or parents in the 80’s gave zero fucks…Because this film would never be able to be marketed to kids these days…And that my friends…Is a sad thing.

 

Child’s Play 2 (1990) – A couple of years after Don Mancini, the man who has managed to keep this franchise alive for almost thirty years, wrote the screenplay for the original film…He returned with a script for what I found to be a truly enjoyable sequel…Alex Vincent returns as Andy Barclay…He is heading into foster care while his mom is in the looney bin, and the Play Pals corporation is attempting to deal with the bad press of one of their “Good Guys” doing “Bad Things.” Andy’s foster parents are the awesome Gerrit Graham (Terrorvision, Chopping Mall), and Jenny Agutter, who played the sexy British nurse and love interest to David Kessler in American Werewolf in London…And as nice as they are…They are not equipped to deal with this demonic doll…But they have another foster kid, Kyle…And she might just be Andy’s only hope…This film is a ton of fun…Starting with the incredible opening sequence where Chucky is refurbished…Hands down one of the best opening title sequences, ever…And ending with the nail-biting final scenes…Both of which take place in the toy factory…It’s like an amusement park…Except there’s an evil doll possessed with the spirit of a serial killer, running around, trying to kill you…So…Basically…It’s like fuckin’ DisneyWorld.

 

Bereavement (2010) – This film is a prequel to Stevan Mena’s 2003 film, Malevolence…In this film, which I consider to be superior to the original…We get to meet Martin Bristol before he became the menacing monster that we saw in the first film…He is a small boy, who suffers from a rare condition where he feels no pain…He is abducted and taken under the wing of local psychotic, Graham Sutter, played to perfection by Brett Rickaby (True Blood)…He’s sort of like Obi Wan Kenobi…But instead of light sabers…He has a slaughterhouse full of rusty, blood-soaked murder weapons…We then meet unsuspecting teen, Allison…Played by, Alexandra Daddario…Who moves in with her uncle, who is played by none other than the king of kick-ass himself…Michael Biehn…Just a few houses down the road…She sees young Martin in the window of the abandoned slaughterhouse and eventually investigates the horrors within…This film has an incredible cast…And an original slasher origin story…But slithered under everyone’s radar like a crazed copperhead…If you haven’t seen it…Please do.

 

Deliver Us From Evil (2014) – Following his film, Sinister, which contained the freakiest home movies ever…Scott Derrickson gave us this film which sort of smells like a straight up cop procedural at first…But slowly shrugs off the uniform and becomes a dark and disturbing tale of supernatural possession unlike anything that I have ever seen…When I say that this film goes to some pretty dark places…I’m not kidding…I mean…The sight of a mother hurling her own toddler into the lion enclosure at the Bronx Zoo…Was enough to convince me…Anyway…The basic story here is about a cop, played by Eric Bana, who discovers a series of bizarrely related and supremely supernatural events that are linked to a group of Marines that unearthed something decidedly evil from a cavern in Iraq…Playing the antagonist in this film is the uber-creepy Sean Harris…Whose work I have been following since he starred in Christopher Smith’s 2004 debut, Creep…And in this one…He does it once again…His performance sends frightening shock waves through anyone who watches it.

 

Emelie (2016) – Okay…This was my first evil babysitter movie…Sure Rebecca De Mornay played an evil nanny in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle…And so did Jenny Seagrove in the 1990 film, The Guardian…But not a babysitter…Why the distinction, you ask? Well…A nanny comes with references and a resume…Sits down for a series of lengthy interviews…But a babysitter…A babysitter is literally just a random teenager that a parent entrusts to watch their children through nothing more than word of mouth…And that is the core of the terror that this film brings bubbling to the surface…Here we have a couple out for a well deserved night on the town…Their regular babysitter is out of commission and they enlist the assistance of a complete stranger…One whom they’ve never even seen before…She could be…Anyone…And that is exactly who Emelie is…Played with all the warmth of a cobra about to strike, by Sarah Bolger…Emelie torments the children she has been tasked to care for…In ways that will make you cringe…Scream…And never let anyone watch you children…Ever again.

 

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) – I loved this prequel to 2014’s less than stunning Ouija…This film not only stands on its own as a truly spooky horror film…But it was also directed by my new favorite horror director, Mike Flanagan whose next project, Gerald’s Game drops on Netflix at the end of September…Set in late 60’s Los Angeles…This film tells the tale of a single mother providing for her two girls by working out of their home as a medium…Initially all of the séances performed there are actually intricate ruses played out by Alice, and her two daughters Lina and Doris…That is…Until Lina suggests the addition of a Ouija board…The introduction of this evil board game summons a malicious spirit which enters young Doris, played by Lulu Wilson (Annabelle: Creation)…And that’s when the proverbial shit goes flying right into the proverbial fan…This is a surprisingly good film that spawned from an expectedly mediocre one…Do check it out.

 

Lights Out (2016) – Speaking of Annabelle: Creation…A film directed by David F. Sandberg…It was a follow-up to this, his directorial debut…Starring Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies), as Rebecca, the elder half-sister to young Martin…Who lives at home with their mentally unstable mother…One night Martin hears his mother talking to her imaginary friend…But she doesn’t look, sound, or act particularly imaginary…So he calls on Rebecca to save him from this supernatural insanity…His ass-kicking sister does just that…And they fight to survive against an entity that is truly unique to the horror genre…An interesting piece of trivia right here for you…If you happen to listen to me and watch the previous film on this list, Ouija: Origin of Evil…You just might pick up on the fact that the two films were shot in the exact same house…Sorry…But that is the kind of film geek stuff that I can’t get enough of…Had to share.

Killing Ground (2016) – Here’s one thing that I have learned from the many brutal Australian horror films that I have watched…Whether it be films like Wolf Creek, Black Water, 100 Bloody Acres, The Loved Ones…Or this film…The moral to the story is still the same…Stay the fuck out of Australia…Seriously…I grew up thinking Australia was filled with cool and funny rednecks like Crocodile Dundee…But I have gradually learned that it is filled with cannibals, murderous knife-wielding psychopaths, and practically prehistoric man-eating monsters…So yeah…No…I’m all set…Anyway…Adding another crushing blow to the Australian Tourism Board is this film from first time writer-director Damien Power…It tells the story of a couple who while camping on a remote beach…Discover that the abandoned campsite not too far from theirs…Isn’t all that abandoned after all…This film plays with time in a really cool way…Interweaving the flashbacks into the current storyline in a way that is both seamless and yet, surprisingly not confusing to the audience…Be sure to check this one out, folks.

 

Dig Two Graves (2017) – Now this was a strange, dark, and ethereal film…It was produced by one of the horror gods himself, Larry Fessenden…And stars Buffalo Bill himself, Ted Levine…Who plays the protagonist in both of the time periods that this film takes place in…In the 40’s…He’s Deputy Waterhouse…And he is dealing with a corrupt sheriff and his morally bankrupt dealings with a rural family of gypsies…In the 70’s…He’s Sheriff Waterhouse…And he is trying to protect his granddaughter from becoming the unwitting tool of revenge in this rural supernatural thriller…The uncredited hero of the cast is the setting…It was filmed in the historically rich…Temporally frozen…And utterly breathtaking section of Southern Illinois known as Little Egypt…This backdrop suits both timelines with ease…And fills each frame with an eerie and ominous tone that will force me to keep my eye on filmmaker Hunter Adams…The man who captured it.

 

Devil’s Candy (2017) – I mentioned the film The Loved Ones earlier…And it is hands down one of my all-time favorite horror movies…As soon as I saw the film…It was an instant classic for me…And it got my eye on the first time director behind it…Sean Byrne made me wait a long time…Six years to be exact…And then the studio made me wait two more…This film was completed and hit the festival circuit in late 2015…But wasn’t released for mass consumption here in the states until March of this year…But as hard as it was to wait for his sophomore effort…This twisted little nugget was well worth the wait…This film stars Ethan Embry, as a husband/father/painter/metalhead who moves his family into a rural Texas farmhouse…Plagued by not only the voices and imagery that begins to infect his artwork…But also by a clearly deranged former resident of the house he moved his wife and daughter into…That deranged former resident is played by the always freaky Pruitt Taylor Vince…A disturbed man who is also plagued by voices…And only a heavily distorted power chord from a flying V can silence them…This film goes down a road that at first glance appears well-trodden…But after further consideration…The ground it sets you down upon…Feels like nothing you’ve ever felt.

 

For a few more like these…

Check out another one of my lists…

Under The Radar Monster Movies: Hey…Creature! Leave Those Kids Alone Edition

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Sexually Transmitted Horror Movies.

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

Sexually Transmitted Horror Movies.

The year was 1981…

Friday the 13^th Part 2 had just taught me a valuable lesson…

Having sex can get you killed…

But as the years passed…

And slasher movie after slasher movie punished their casts of horny teenage characters for being…

Well…

Horny teenagers…

I realized that this was a disproportionate display of puritanical punishment…

But soon after the 80’s had passed…

And we had collectively experienced a time…

When there were deadly consequences of epidemic proportions for simply getting it on…

In terms of what scares us…

We have collectively moved on from…

Having sex can get you killed…

To…

Having sex can kill you.

So, let’s take a chronological look at the scariest, naughtiest, and possibly even unknown to you, Sexually Transmitted Horror Movies…In the years following Friday the 13th Part 2.

Ginger Snaps (2000) – This Canadian horror film tells the tale of two twisted sisters who have a uniqely shared obsession with death…When Ginger, played by horror icon, Katharine Isabelle (American Mary), gets a visit from Aunt Flo…She attracts the unwanted attention of a hungry lycanthrope…After being bitten by the creature…She begins to metamorphosize into something that is almost scarier than a teenage girl going through puberty…And once she changes, she has a wee bit of unprotected sex with classmate, Jason, played by Jesse Moss (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil)…And we discover that doing the hibbidy-dibbidy can turn you into a werewolf just as easily as a bite can…This film breaks new ground in the werewolf genre…Filling it with all the angst of an independent teen drama…Adding strong, and unique female leads to a male dominated genre…This quickly rose to the top for me…And became…One of my all-time favorite werewolf movies.

Teeth (2007) – This film tells the story of Dawn, a girl who grew up next to a nuclear power plant, and who received a pretty messed up genetic mutation because of it…Vagina Dentata is the name of her specific mutation…In layman’s terms…She has…Well…How should I put it…She has…Um…Poon-Fang…After witnessing her first bite, as a child…We flash forward to her teen years…Where Dawn is a member of a hypocritical hyper-religious group that attempts to coerce abstinence in a group of people with a natural propensity for getting it on…And when you have a toothy vagina…Abstinence is a probably a pretty good idea…The gruesome gore comes from practical effects…And a lot of dismembered members…And those scenes are equally cringe-worthy and hilarious…And let me tell you…The laughs here, are never forced…Imagine the antics of the hormonally charged boys from American Pie…If one of them had humped a shark instead of a pie…Funny stuff, right?…And the vaginal vengeance that occurs, is less in response to some horrific experience like I Spit on Your Grave, and more in response to the everyday experience of being a young girl in America…This film feels like a twisted little 80’s movie…All gore, laughs and sex.

Deadgirl (2008) –  Ahhh…Teenage boys…The things they won’t do for a bit of the ol’ in and out…No seriously…The hormonal horsepower that drives teenage boys is the driving force in this wee bit nutty addition to the zombie genre…You’ve heard of found footage horror…Well, this is found zombie horror…Rickie and J.T, are two high school friends who operate on the fringe, play hooky and find a zombie girl chained to a table in an abandoned mental hospital…J.T., played by Noah Segan (Starry Eyes), does what any red-blooded American teenage boy would do when they find a zombie…He invites one of their friends to join him in raping it…Rickie, played by Shiloh Fernandez (Evil Dead), is not that into the idea and tries to put a stop to the cascading events caused by their discovery…The ultimate moment in his attempts to stop the madness comes when he convinces the bully that recently beat him up, to let the zombie perform fellatio on him…In layman’s terms…He convinced him to get a little…Well…How should I put it…A little…Um…Dead Head…Anyway…As you can imagine that didn’t work out very well…As Shaun’s mum taught us…Zombies are “a bit bitey” after all.

The Woman (2011) – I love Lucky McKee…I miss Lucky McKee…His debut film, May is still one of my favorites…And I hope his upcoming film, Blood Money eases my pain…But this film…Has a similar set up as the previous film on this list…Instead of it being a teenage boy, and a zombie woman…It’s a well-to-do country lawyer, and a feral woman…This is a pseudo sequel to the 2009 film, Offspring…Based on the Jack Ketchum novel of the same name…Pollyanna McIntosh who lit up the small screen as Jadis on The Walking Dead…Reprises her role from Offspring…In both films she plays to perfection, a feral cannibal woman…But in this film…Rather than abducting locals so she and the rest of her flesh-hungry clan can dine on them…She is the one abducted…For the sick entertainment of the patriarch of the Cleek clan, played by Sean Bridgers…Now some of you may have seen his abducting skills in the film, Room…But he sharpened those skills in this one…This is a hard watch at times, because unlike the unwitting victim of sexual advances in Deadgirl…This woman is very much alive…But not to worry…You do remember the part where I told you she was a feral cannibal? Yep…That’s right…I find that torture porn is a whole lot easier to stomach…When it becomes a revenge flick in the third act.

Afflicted (2013) – This is one of my favorites from two separate genres of horror films…Found Footage…And…Vampire Films…Derek Lee, and Clif Prowse wrote, directed, and starred in this non-shakey, clear, and very well shot documentary style found footage film, which unveils a clever and original version of vampire lore and mythology…Derek, who plays a version of himself, is a man who has set out to document his bucket-list journey through Europe because of a life-threatening brain injury…When he meets and picks up Audrey in Paris…At first…Clif and the rest of his friends couldn’t be happier for him…Until they find him scratched up and bleeding in the bed by himself…Clif discounts the incident…Thinking that she had attempted to rob him…Until it is obvious that Derek’s one night stand has changed him forever…There are some kick ass effects in this flick…And those effects are also a part of what makes it stand out amongst other found footage films…This film also teaches the valuable lesson that not all sexual encounters in Paris are as romantic and sexy as the letters to the Penthouse Forum may have led you to believe.

Contracted (2013) – In this very original and unusual zombie film, we meet Sam…A woman who although she openly admits that she is a lesbian…Becomes the subject of quite a bit of thirsty male pursuit at a party one night…One of the male pursuers…Takes her to his car and rapes her…Once there…We see his surprisingly large collection of air fresheners…And…We discover that we first met him in the film’s rather disturbing opening scene…Sam wakes up from her sexual assault and rather quickly believes that she may be suffering from a strange STD rather than a hangover…And as her body begins to rapidly deteriorate before our eyes…We couldn’t agree with Sam more…There is one of my all time favorite final girls is in this film…She plays Sam’s mom…And it’s none other than Stretch from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2…Caroline Williams…This film spawned a sequel…But it didn’t touch the high bar that this film raised…But you know what? They rarely do.

It Follows (2014) – This is one of those slow burn, original, independent horror films that ends up being either loved or hated…I sit comfortably in the love column…I felt that David Robert Mitchell’s breakout sophomore film was unique and refreshingly evil…The pacing wasn’t too slow for me…It was perfect…This film builds with layer upon layer of palpable dread…Maika Monroe was perfect as Jay, the girl who receives a very unlikely sexual side effect…This curse…This creature…This whatever-the-fuck-it-was…Will haunt her until she can pass it on to someone else…One element to this film that I always dig when it shows up…Is the close network of friends that work together to deal with the problem…It truly adds to the 80’s movie vibe…Where no matter how messed up or far-fetched things were…Your friends are always there to help you through it…The lack of skepticism and abundance of loyalty work so well in a horror movie…Not only does the audience have more people on the screen to identify with…But they are also more invested in the characters that are destined for a bitter end.

Goddess of Love (2015) – The man behind Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Jon Knautz directed this film…From a script that he co-wrote with the film’s star, Alexis Kendra…Together, they tell the story of Venus…A true dichotomy…By day…She is a classically trained ballerina who studies French…But by night…She drives men wild as she works the stage as a stripper…This is where she meets Brian, an Aussie photographer who rather quickly regrets letting his one night stand with a stripper turn into a relationship…She is on the cusp of unhinged for the first half of the film…Which creates some pretty upsetting tension along the way…But when she discovers that Brian has cheated on her…Those hinges come flying right the fuck off…And Venus shows Brian and the audience…Just how much fury a woman scorned can produce…I am very excited that these two creative talents have joined forces again on a co-written script, under the direction of Knautz, with Kendra in the starring role once more…The upcoming horror film is called The Cleaning Lady…And it is currently in production.

Night of Something Strange (2016) – This delightfully twisted film was part of my Gross-Out Horror Films list of recommendations…Why you ask?…Sure…I could regale you with stomach churning tales of all of the strange somethings that went on…But that would just spoil all the fun…Instead let me tell you the story…Cornelius…Played to perfection by Wayne W. Johnson…Does something you should never do while cleaning up the morgue…Because of his NSFW behavior…He contracts a very strange STD…One that turns its victims into sexually charged members of the walking dead…This is a film that somehow manages to combine the horror and the hilarity in a way that would have made Tobe Hooper proud…It sends greasy gobs of gooey gore all over the screen…And makes you uncomfortable in your naughty regions…It never holds back…And it never apologizes…If you offend easily…Not only should you not be reading my posts…But you should also never watch this film…But for those of you made of sterner stuff…This is the flick for you!

SiREN (2016) – Based on the short film, Amateur Night…One of my favorite segments from 2012’s V/H/S…This spin-off allows Hannah Fierman to reprise her role from the short film…A role she pulled off perfectly in both films…She plays Lily, a girl who works at a bizarre little club in the middle of nowhere…Which, by the way, sort of reminded me of the club in the movie Vamp……When a group of friends take their buddy, Jonah, played by Chase Williamson (John Dies at the End, Beyond the Gates), there for his bachelor party…The entire group gets more than they bargained for…Especially Jonah…Who meets Lily, and feels sympathy for her and her sex-slavey situation…He rescues her…And attempts to flee this mysterious club run by charismatic carnival barker, Mr. Nyx, played by Justin Welborn (The Signal, Dance of the Dead)…Only to discover that there is a whole lot more to Lily than meets the eye…This film does a great job fleshing out the character of Lily…And does a great job making anyone who wasn’t already afraid of catching Irradiated Chernobyl Crabs from the toilet seat in a seedy strip club…Afraid of seedy strip clubs…For a whole new, fresh and exciting reason.