Oops! All Horror - Day 4 - The Witches (2020)

  Content warning:  mice/rats

A young boy (Jahzir Bruno) is taken in by his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) after his parents are killed in a car accident.  In the grocery store, a strange woman (Josette Simon) offers him candy but he is frightened and runs back to his Grandma.  Grandma tells him that there are evil creatures called witches that want to destroy children and once you are targeted, they will keep trying.  Realizing this means they are in danger, she takes the boy to a fancy hotel to hide out, not realizing that the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) is holding a convention there to disseminate a new potion that will turn children into mice so they will be exterminated.  The boy and Grandma must find a way to stop this evil plot before it's too late.

There was a lot of backlash about this when it came out and it flopped pretty hard, but it's not that bad.  Spencer is always solid and Hathaway seems like she's having a ball as the villain.  The costumes are fantastic and the soundtrack is good, if not revelatory.  The CGI is a little dodgy but good enough for a kids' movie.  Really, my only complaint is that they filed every conceivable edge off this story.  It's so sanitized, not only is there no sense that the children are ever actually in danger, the boy (who is never named in this adaptation) makes a comment about how as a mouse, he'll live just as long as his grandmother so they can die together and he'll never have to experience loss again.  The 1990 version by contrast seems shockingly harsh and much, much darker.  

This is probably another of Warner Bros. trying to cut their losses, but it is nowhere to be found on streaming channels.  If you have small children and you want something more silly than scary, you're going to have to find an alternate source, yar, matey.  

Oops! All Horror -Day 3- Primal Darkness (2026)

  Content warning:  blood, dead animal (elk), dismemberment

An online outdoorsman (Dillon Brown) is looking for content to finish out the second season of his show by hunting a possible maneater mountain lion in the Nevada back-country.  He finds a cell phone belonging to one of a missing pair of anthropologists and switches focus from hunting to search-and-rescue, but finds more than he expected.

This is going to be spoiler-y by nature so stop now if you have any interest in seeing this movie, which you shouldn't because it sucks, stop now.  It's filled with shaky cam, boring pointless rambling, stilted dialogue, and flashing lights.  Also, I am actually begging writer/director/"star" Dillon Brown to learn the difference between a red light filter, which is used to preserve night vision in low-light, and infrared, which can't be seen by the naked eye.  

I was actually searching for a movie called The Burning Moon and couldn't find it so I just picked the first movie from the horror category on LookMovie.to.  I was going to veto based on the poster (a different one than the one here) because it looked vaguely racist, but then I read the synopsis and thought "oh, it's a Bigfoot movie."  I haven't done one of those and I love a good cryptid story, but it's not a Bigfoot movie.  It's way dumber.  **SPOILERS FOLLOW**  It's a Neanderthal movie.  As in, somehow in 2026 an actual prehistoric man is killing and eating people in an abandoned mineshaft in Nevada.  Zero explanation given for how this came to be.  Is this like an Encino Man kind of situation where he was frozen or petrified and came back to life?  Or more old-school Land of the Lost?  Either way, extremely stupid.  And worse yet, I have reviewed Neanderthal horror so it's not even novel.  **END SPOILERS** 

Oops! All Horror 2026 - Day 2 - Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

  Content warning:  blood, dismemberment

Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is an up-and-coming filmmaker hired to reboot an 80s slasher franchise called Camp Miasma.  She is granted an interview by the film's original Final Girl, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), now a recluse living in the same abandoned summer camp where the movie was filmed.  Ostensibly, Kris is there to discuss Billy returning for a cameo, but the longer she spends with Billy, the more infatuated she becomes.

This is a very sweet romance but ironically, it's too in its head to really succeed as a horror movie.  It wants to be meta and manages to be arch, instead.  There are some great themes to unpack and I think it's director Jane Schoenbrun's most accessible movie, but it didn't work as well for me as I Saw the TV Glow.  Still, this will be a lot of people's favorite movie this year and I'm thrilled by that.

Gillian Anderson is absolutely incredible.  I'm also watching the final season of Hannibal (which I'm hoping to finish in time to review for the month.  TV shows are hard.) and it's great to see the amount of range she has in these side-by-side projects.  I'm not familiar with Einbinder but her line delivery is excellent on the few spoken jokes.  (A lot of the humor is visual, playing with the slasher tropes.)  There are also cameos from Dylan Baker, Patrick Fischler, and Kevin McDonald.  Jack Haven plays the Camp Miasma killer, Little Death, although they are mostly hidden behind a boxy ceiling vent headpiece.

It wasn't for me, but if you get a chance track this one down.  It's finishing up a theater run and should be available VOD for rent or on your favorite VPN-friendly site, but I would encourage you to actually put money towards this as a rental when it's not $20.

Oops! All Horror 2026 - Day 1 - The Conjuring 4: Last Rites (2025)

  We're starting this month with an ending!  Content warning:  blood, suicide (hanging), vomit

In 1964, Ed (Orion Smith) and Lorraine Warren (Madison Lawlor) consult on a case where an antique store dealer is being haunted.  Lorraine traces the energy to a mirror but goes into labor before they can exorcise it.  The mirror changes hands, eventually ending up in West Pittson, Pennsylvania, where it is gifted to Heather Smurl (Kila Lord Cassidy) for her confirmation in 1986.  The Smurls begin experiencing paranormal events, which eventually come to the attention of Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson).  Her parents (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) are retired from ghost hunting due to Ed's heart condition, but Judy convinces them to help the Smurls.

Honestly, I'm not here for the story, which is basically a retread of the original movie.  I'm here to close out the book on The Conjuring, a series I have followed through highs and lows.  If The Devil Made Me Do It was a love story, Last Rites is a passing of the torch.  

Production-wise, it maintains the quality level for effects that I've come to expect.  Farmiga and Wilson are great, if a little let down by the material.  There's a really sweet collection of cameos from the other installments at the end and the soundtrack is good.  It's streaming on HBO Max.

Coyote vs Acme (2026)

I don't know if you followed the battle behind the scenes on this one but basically, Warner Bros. intentionally shelved it for a tax write-off and only allowed distribution after a massive public outcry.  It's always worth it to stand up to giant corporations if only to remind them that they are outnumbered but also because this was a very good movie that deserved to be seen.

Wile E. Coyote is sick of being injured by faulty ACME products.  He hires a local lawyer, Kevin Avery (Will Forte) to sue.  Avery does a lot of low-level suits against ACME, usually settling for a couple hundred bucks each time.  It's routine paperwork that isn't glamorous but pays the bills.  Coyote isn't satisfied with that and includes every single product in the catalog.  This triggers a massive lawsuit that gets the attention of ACME's top lawyer, Buddy Crane (John Cena).  The more Avery digs into ACME, the shadier things get.

This film felt like a spiritual successor to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  The mix of live-action and cartoon was really well integrated.  I also loved the use of archival Looney Tunes clips standing in for historical footage.  The human cast is very good.  I've not seen Will Forte in a lot of things because I don't particularly like SNL or it's various spin-off characters but I do like Lana Condor and John Cena.  Eric Bauza is also a new name to me and he does the lion's share of work in the film as the voice of nearly all the Looney Tunes characters.  Truly, a herculean effort to stand in Mel Blanc's shoes.

I know going to the theater is hard because of all the options streaming right to your couch, but if you can, stick it to Warner Bros. by seeing this as it was intended to be seen.

Eighth Grade (2018)

  Look, I'm sure this is relatable to somebody.  Just not me.

Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) is desperate to end her eighth grade year successfully.  She vlogs about positivity and "fake it til you make it" self-esteem, while fighting her own anxiety and shyness.  An opportunity to shadow a high schooler (Emily Robinson) seems like a perfect chance to re-invent herself but there are traps to navigate that she could never anticipate.

If you like awkward comedy, this movie is a goldmine.  Personally, I do not.  I found myself sighing in aggravation more than once and actively fast-forwarding through the most annoying bits.  As always, your mileage may vary.  This was a huge hit with the critics, an indie darling, praised for its realism and Fisher's performance.  Sure.  I don't hang out near middle schoolers because that's gross, but it seems like an accurate portrayal.  It's streaming on Tubi.

Destroyer (2018)

  It is shocking how dull this film is, given how stacked a cast it has.

Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman) is a bad cop.  She has drifted into alcoholism and substance abuse after a disastrous undercover operation with a gang of bank robbers led to the death of her partner (Sebastian Stan).  But when it appears that the gang leader, Silas (Toby Kebbell) has resurfaced, Erin goes on a mission of revenge.

This should have been better.  It has a high-profile cast, which includes Tatiana Maslany, Bradley Whitford, and Scoot McNairy, and is directed by Karyn Kusama.  Kidman even donned horrible fake teeth and put on makeup to make her skin look bad.  And I think that's ultimately my problem.  It felt like a math problem, a calculated effort to win an award, instead of trying to tell a story well.  And that sucks.  Because it's a good story with an unlikable protagonist that unfolds like origami over the runtime, building an empathetic response.  It just doesn't work.

It is only streaming on Amazon Prime until the end of the month, after which it presumably returns to the dust heap of history.  It's a shame because Kidman is very good.  She just looks like she's trying too hard to be Charlize Theron.