Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 31: The Pack (2015)

  Happy Halloween!  We are ending this mostly-low month with another creature feature, this time from Australia.  Content warning: dead animals (sheep, dogs), blood

A remote sheep station (is there any other kind?) is menaced by a pack of feral dogs with a taste for human flesh.

I added this to the list without reading anything about it --which is pretty much how I add everything-- so I thought this was going to be a werewolf movie.  Nope.  Just some Good Boys gone bad.  That being said, it's not bad, even if you have to check your basic animal knowledge at the door.  It maintains the tension throughout, doesn't show too much too early, and uses all the appropriate tropes.

It still would have been better as a werewolf movie.  

Or if the family at the center would have been camping or something.  It's hard to take a pack of dogs seriously when you have a whole ass house with locks and doorknobs.  They're dogs.  They don't have thumbs.  The fear is the pack nature, but all the dogs that break in do so singly.  It's not like they're overrunning the place.  Plus, the mom (Anna Lise Phillips) is supposed to be a vet.  You'd think she would have some kind of insight, but no.  

If you're not into the supernatural and you're looking for an easy movie to throw on that you don't have to worry about missing stuff while you're handing out candy tonight, The Pack is streaming on Tubi.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 30: The Invisible Man (2020)

  Well, this made me scream but not in an aah-so-scary way, more like a burn-down-the-patriarchy way.  Content warning: abuse, blood, attempted suicide

Cecelia (Elizebeth Moss) planned for weeks to escape her abusive boyfriend, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen).  She should feel free when she learns that he is dead.  But she still feels hunted, watched.  And soon, things begin happening:  misplaced portfolio that costs her a job interview, harsh email sent to her sister (Harriet Dyer) pushing her away, even physical violence against the teenaged daughter (Storm Reid) of the cop friend (Aldis Hodge) that she's living with.  A pattern Cecilia recognizes.  But who would believe her claims that she's being stalked by an invisible psychopath?

This made me so angry.  Just immediate soul-scorching rage from opening to closing credits.  Nothing I have watched this year has made me wish so much that I could spray acid from my mouth like a Jurassic Park dinosaur as this movie.

But fine.  Horror movie.

This was Universal's last gasp at trying to make their "Dark Universe" a thing and it's pretty successful because it does not do that at all.  It is an updated take on the 1933 Invisible Man and correctly remembers that the eponymous character is the villain.  No longer content to just be a mad scientist (cost of living, probably), the 2020 version also makes him a rich, abusive narcissist.  But the real horror comes from how readily the system allows him to use his money as a leash and then a cudgel, warping concepts of fairness to force Cecilia into smaller and smaller boxes.  It is very well done, tightly paced, and well-plotted by writer-director Leigh Wannell.  I'm just really angry that (minus the invisibility) this happens to women all the time.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.

In fact, if you want to watch basically the exact same plot but without the sci-fi, there's Jennifer Lopez's Enough and the entirety of Lifetime's programming.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 29: Hagazussa (2019)

  We have a winner!  Finally!  Content warning: blood, CSA, boils, vomit, sexual assault (off-screen), dead animals (goat, rat), infanticide, cannibalism

As a child, Albrun (Celeste Peter) knew she and her mother (Claudia Martini) were shunned by the villagers, so when her mother becomes ill, Albrun is left to care for her alone.  As an adult, Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen) just wants to live a peaceful life, tending her goats, and raising her infant daughter.  A local woman (Tanja Petrovsky) offers friendship, but the superstitions of the age cling tightly.

This is so much better than The Witch it's not even fair.  Just miles better in terms of atmosphere, cinematography, supernatural elements... even the goats are better.  If you only have time for one medieval witchcraft folklore movie, make it this one.  

That being said, this is not for the faint of heart, especially the last 40 minutes.  Things go off the rails very quickly and the ending is completely left-field.  Like, makes no logical sense but that contributes to the unsettling nature of it.  Be ye fore-warned.  

I have had a lackluster month with horror picks this year but this makes up for everything.  Ugh.  So good.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 28: The Leftovers season 1 (2014)

  Is this horror?  Is it just sci-fi?  I don't know, but I do know it sucked.  Content warning:  blood, dead animals (deer, dogs), burned bodies, some gore

Three years after a global event that saw the disappearance of 2% of the population, a small New York town struggles to find meaning.

I gave this three episodes but I just couldn't finish it.  I didn't care about any of the characters, their motivations were unfathomable to me, and I was bored when I wasn't outright disgusted.  Maybe slow-burn mystery-box shows are your thing.  If so, all three seasons are streaming on (sigh) Max.  I couldn't get into it.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 27: One Cut of the Dead (2017)

  This was really cute but I wouldn't necessarily call it a horror film.  It's a movie about making a zombie film, not really a zombie film.  Content warning: blood, severed limbs, vomit

A mediocre director (Takayuki Higurashi) is approached about directing a zombie show for a brand-new TV channel.  The constraints are 1) it is shot live and 2) it is filmed in one take.  His male lead (Kazuaki Nagaya) constantly second-guesses the script because he is a "serious" actor, his female lead (Yuzuki Akiyama) is a pop idol with massive constraints on her image, his fake Director of Photography (Manobu Hosoi) is a drunk, his real DP (Yoshiko Takahara?) has a back injury, and his fake sound engineer (Shuntaro Yamazaki) has IBS.  It is a literal and metaphorical shitshow.

All the zombie action is in the first 1/3 of the movie, which does look like every shitty zombie movie you've ever seen.  The rest of it is a behind-the-scenes movie-within-a-movie type film that centers on the director trying to connect with his daughter (Mao) before she leaves for college.  It's very cute, very heart-warming, plucky underdog stuff.  With buckets of fake blood.  If that is your jam, it's currently streaming on Shudder.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 26: Summer of 84 (2018)

  Another day, another disappointment.  Content warning: gore

Teenaged conspiracy theorist Davey (Graham Verchere) becomes convinced that his neighbor, Mr. Mackey (Rich Sommer), is the Cape May Slasher, a serial killer targeting young boys.  He talks his three best friends into helping him investigate (AKA spy) on Mackey, and the more they uncover, the worse it looks.

The last 15 minutes of this are pretty good but the hour and a half preceding are a total snooze.  It's like bad B-roll of Stranger Things without the D&D.  I guess if you are or were a teenaged white boy who grew up in the suburbs it might be more meaningful.  I don't know.  I didn't find it funny or endearing and I thought all four boys were annoying.  Sommer gives a great performance, however, and Riverdale fans will recognize Hot Inappropriately Aged Neighbor Girl as Polly Cooper.  

It's streaming on Shudder if you're more into suspense over blood.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 25: Let the Right One In (2008)

  This was the pick for Movie Club but I wasn't going to re-watch it because I thought I had already posted about it.  Turns out, I had only written about the American remake.  An oversight I have corrected.  Content warning:  blood, some gore, bullying, burned bodies

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is trying to work up the nerve to stand up to the bullies at his school, when he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), a strange new tenant who looks about his age.  Eli needs fresh blood to survive and her adult (Per Ragnar) is supposed to provide that by harvesting from healthy specimens.  Unfortunately, he is terrible at it and gets caught, leaving Eli in a pickle.  Can her and Oskar's new friendship survive the demands of her diet?

This is one of the best vampire movies made in the last thirty years.  It is honestly riveting and a fresh take on behavior and abilities.  Eli is much more of a cryptid than vampires derived from Western Europe (the Stoker kind).  She is an apex predator in that she is deadly but also very sensitive to her surroundings.  She uses terrain and ambush instead of enthralling her victims, and seems very aware of how removed she is from humanity.

I cannot overstate how gorgeous this is.  It is cold in a way that is hard to describe, but you will feel it down to the bone.  It is currently streaming on Kanopy, Amazon Prime, Tubi, Peacock, and PlutoTV.  Don't miss out.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 24: The Terror season 1 (2018)

  I tried to watch this last year but I ran out of time.  Content warning:  gore, body horror, dead animals, cannibalism

In 1843, two ships of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, Erebus and Terror, disembarked on a journey to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic and promptly disappeared.  Aboard the ships, a combination of bad luck and hubristic decision-making sees them encased in pack ice and hunted relentlessly by an Inuk monster of legend, the Tuunbaq.  Captain Crozier (Jared Harris) of the Terror urges that they should flee south as soon as possible, having survived an Antarctic expedition previously, but Captain Franklin (Ciaran Hinds) will not have it, until of course, it's far too late.

If you're feeling a little too warm and cozy, throw this on for a weekend.  It doesn't emphasize the horror the way a movie would; at ten episodes, it has time to focus on the characters, to really make you feel for these men and how they suffered.  And oh boy, do they.  By episode 10, you'll know more about scurvy than you ever wanted.  It used to be on Hulu but they took it off.  You might have to search for a free copy, but it's worth a rental if you're going to binge it. 

For added context, I also suggest the book The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Max Brodsky.  It features an Inuk protagonist and goes much more into depth about their culture.  It filled a lot of gaps for me while watching this.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 23: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

  This was a Movie Club pick and coincidentally, I didn't have any family-friendly choices so far this month.  Content warning: headless horseman?

The Adventures of Mr. Toad (narrated by Basil Rathbone) sees the rich but irresponsible Mr. Toad (Eric Blore) lose his ancestral home after trading it away for a stolen car, which lands him in jail.  Over Christmas, he escapes and runs to the riverbank where his friends Mole (Colin Campbell), Ratty (Claud Allister), and MacBadger (Campbell Grant) help him steal back the deed from the weasels currently in residence.

Disney nerds will immediately recognize the weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (narrated by Bing Crosby) tells the story of a schoolteacher in a rural New York community who challenges the town hotshot for the hand of the town flirt.  At a Halloween party, after losing to the schoolteacher on every front, the hotshot decides to scare him out of town by recounting the local legend of the Headless Horseman, a ghost that roams the road on Halloween looking for a head to replace his pumpkin one.

This story is kind of the definition of Everybody Sucks Here.  Ichabod is a fortune-hunting lothario, Brom Bones is kind of a dick, and Katrina von Tassel is a vain bitch looking to stir trouble to feed her ego.  The Headless Horseman song still slaps, though.  

Animation fans will note Ub Iwerks' name in the credits, a mark of quality.  Katrina was obviously an early model for 1950 Cinderella, having the same face and hair, complete with the blue bows on the ends of her braids.  Fortunately, someone calmed down a little with regards to the rest of her proportions by the next year.

It's annoying that the Mr. Toad story is first, both because in the title Ichabod is listed first and chronologically Halloween is before Christmas.  I meant to pay attention to the minute mark where the second story starts so you could just skip right to it, but then I didn't.  The combination is currently streaming on Disney+.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 22: The Wailing (2016)

  I knew we were missing some K-horror!  Content warning: gore, dead animals (crows, dog, chickens, deer, cow's head, pig's head), body horror, vomiting, blood

Policeman Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) is called to investigate a string of brutal murder-suicides in a sleepy Korean village.  Suspicion falls on a Japanese man (Jun Kunimura) recently arrived.  When Jong-goo investigates, he finds a creepy shrine and photos of the afflicted townspeople, along with some of their personal belongings but he really goes spare when he discovers his daughter's (Hwan-hee Kim) shoe among them.  Sure enough, the little girl comes down with a fever and a rash.  Jong-goo calls a shaman (Hwang Jung-min) to perform a ritual exorcism.

I found the ending to be really abrupt and a little confusing so I had to go to Wikipedia and apparently there's a deleted ending that would have made it more clear but the point of the film is ambiguity and fear, so they cut it.

A+ for atmosphere and effects, though.  You can feel the hysterical desperation peeling off Jong-goo as the movie progresses and he understands less and less of what's going on.  There's zombies, ghosts, and demons (oh my!), an old shaman and a young shaman, hell, even Catholic priests.  You would think a kitchen-sink approach like this would be muddled but at every step it feels like the completely right choice.

It is streaming on Shudder.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 21: The Gift (2000)

  Content warning:  domestic violence, racial slur, anti-semitism, blood, child molestation (discussed, not shown)

Local psychic Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) has enough to deal with raising three boys by herself without redneck wife-beater Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves, yes, really) harassing her for telling his wife, Valerie (Hilary Swank), to leave him.  So when she sees a vision of missing socialite Jessica King (Katie Holmes) floating and wrapped in chains in Donnie's pond, it's a relief to put him behind bars.  Except Annie's gift is telling her he didn't do it.  So now she has to find the real murderer before she becomes the next victim.

For a low-budget ghost movie, this has an incredible pedigree:  Blanchett, Swank, Holmes, J.K. Simmons, Giovanni Ribisi, Greg Kinnear, and the Internet's sweetheart, Reeves, playing way against type.  It was written by Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Sam Raimi.

And it's not bad!  The middle courtroom scenes drag but contain the underrated Michael Jeter so I tolerated them, but the rest of it is perfectly decent Southern-fried dread.  I wouldn't call it kid-friendly by any means but it's definitely suitable for people who don't like gore.  It's streaming on Paramount+, Amazon Prime, or on Kanopy with a library card.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 20: Totally Killer (2023)

  Content warning:  blood, bullying, discussion of drunk driving fatality

In 1987, a trio of murders rocked a small town.  Thirty-five years later, the killer returns to finish the job, attacking Pam Hughes (Julie Bowen).  Pam's teenaged daughter, Jamie (Kiernan Shipka), uses her friend Amelia's (Kelsey Mawema) science fair time machine to go back to 1987 to hopefully stop the killer and prevent her mom's murder.  Jamie is stunned to find that the Pam that would become her mom, Pam Miller (Olivia Holt), is a bitchy mean girl who runs a clique called The Mollys, and all three original victims were her best friends.  Jamie must figure out how to save them while also not disrupting the future.

This is the newest Amazon Original under their recently acquired MGM heading.  It wears its influences very proudly on its sleeve, and your enjoyment is entirely dependent on how much you like those influences.  I mostly did, so I thought this was cute and fun.  I don't find Shipka to be a particularly compelling actress and I think she's a little lackluster here, but Holt more than made up for it, as did Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, who plays the teenaged version of Amelia's mom.  

So if you like Back to the Future, but wish it could have had a murder mystery sub-plot featuring the Heathers, this is for you.  It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 19: The Ruins (2008)

  Content warning:  body horror, amputation, self-mutilation, death of a child, blood

Four American tourists meet up with a German guy (Joe Anderson) who offers to show them a newly discovered Mayan pyramid in the jungle.  Things don't go well and the Spring Breakers realize they are being quarantined by the locals, who are willing to kill to keep what's in the pyramid contained.

Once again, don't go to another country and disrespect cultural locations.  Also, having a local guide who speaks regional dialects is very helpful.

I kind of enjoy movies about dumb people Fucking Around and Finding Out, especially if it's karmically funny, but these characters weren't stupid, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The med student, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), especially kept his head on straight the entire time, trying to stay calm and reasoned and make the best decisions available.  I appreciate that.  We love to see competence and heroics.

Also, what is this, like the fourth or fifth vacation horror I've seen this month?  Maybe I need a vacation.

Anyway, The Ruins is streaming on Paramount+.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 18: Revenge (2018)

  Well, we made it over half the month before we hit a film featuring sexual violence against women as a plot device.  *deep sigh*  Content warning:  rape, blood, gore, self-surgery, dead animal

Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) thought she was getting away on a luxury vacation with her rich, married boyfriend, Richard (Kevin Janssens), until his asshole hunting buddies show up.  Raped, pushed off a cliff, and left to die, Jen must re-evaluate her life choices and oh yeah, kill some motherfuckers.

Can we please just not with the entire Rape-Revenge genre?  I don't care that this was written and directed by a woman.  It is still incredibly male-gazey and gross.  Nearly naked heavily-armed hot girls are a surprisingly wide-spread fetish, although I will give this movie credit for showing more dick than T&A.  

My biggest complaint, however (besides just all of it), is that it makes zero sense.  The 40-gallon tank Range Rover runs out of fuel but Richard can cruise around on a dirt bike for two days and be fine on gas?  Jen is barefoot in the desert with no food or water, covering miles like a Maasai warrior?  Cauterizing a wound with a beer can gives you a cool ass tattoo and also stops internal bleeding after being impaled? Peyote is an anesthetic?

It is insultingly stupid and the fact that it was lauded by critics is infuriating.  It is exclusively streaming on Shudder and they can fucking keep it.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 17: The Devil's Doorway (2018)

  We have our found footage entry for the year. Also, kind of a weird prequel to Philomena, but there you are.  Content warning:  blood, childbirth

An old priest (Lalor Roddy) and a young priest (Ciaran Flynn) are sent to investigate a potential miracle at a Magdalene Laundry, one of the houses for "fallen women" in Ireland.  The statue of the Virgin Mary has been seen crying blood.  Tests reveal that the blood is from someone female, O-negative, and pregnant.  Coincidentally, the nuns have been keeping a young lady (Lauren Coe) chained in the basement who fits those exact parameters.  Meanwhile, young Father John is plagued by visitations of children running around outside his room in the middle of the night, leaving bloody handprints, and singing creepy songs as children are wont to do.

You really can't go wrong with creepy kid ghosts but this trips overs the hem of The Exorcist and face-plants.  It would have been fine if it had stuck with the corruption of the Magdalene Laundries angle, which were real and real fucked up, instead of tacking on a possession sub-plot.  

The shaky-cam makes me want to burn down a building and the light leaks, burn-ins, and other film tricks were overused.  If that doesn't bother you, it's available on Tubi or Plex for free, and Shudder if you really hate commercials.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 16: Return of the Living Dead (1985)

  Content warning:  gore, blood, suicide

A pair of medical supply company employees accidentally release a toxic gas that causes the deceased to become zombies.

This was a bitter disappointment.  I had heard really good things, that it was hilarious, a punk classic, and it's just... not.  There's not a single joke in the whole film unless you count "ha ha, those kids are into punk sub-culture!" as a joke.  And even if that were the joke, it's not funny.  Nothing in this is played for laughs, not even the zombies.

They are a massive improvement evolutionarily from the Night of the Living Dead zombies as they can a) speak, b) use tools, c) solve problems, and d) run.  All of which could have been mined for comedy and wasn't.  It takes 45 minutes to even get to the zombies and that's over half the runtime.  

It's streaming for free on Tubi but you couldn't even pay me to watch this again.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 15: Rebecca (1940)

  Our first (and probably only) Oscar winner for the list.  Content warning:  bullying

Everyone knows Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) is distraught over the death of his wife, Rebecca.  They were the most beautiful, wealthy, accomplished couple, after all.  But he remarries only a year after her accidental death to a paid companion (Joan Fontaine), no less.  The new Mrs. de Winter finds it intolerable living in the shadow of her predecessor, especially with the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), constantly comparing and criticizing.  Was Rebecca's death a tragic accident or is something more sinister afoot?

I remember trying to read this book in high school and giving up after the first page.  I barely made it through the movie.  Maxim is a total dick and the story doesn't come together until the last ten minutes, leaving the two hours before that full of nothing happening except Fontaine being relentlessly bullied.

And I know thematically why she doesn't get a name but it is super irritating in practice.  Even the fucking dog got a name (Jasper, a Very Good Boy).  Despite her character being a total drip, Fontaine is luminous here, matched only by Anderson being a creepy bitch.  Olivier is good, as is George Sanders, but this is Fontaine's movie.  

This won Best Picture in 1941 and was the only Alfred Hitchcock film to ever win.  It's part of the Criterion Collection but isn't currently streaming right now.  If you're into moody, atmospheric dread instead of gore, this might be for you.  

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 14: Below (2002)

  Content warning:  blood, burned bodies, suicide

A submarine crew in 1943 responds to a distress call about survivors in the water and pull three injured on board.  Word quickly spreads that one of the rescued is a woman (Olivia Williams), a nurse from a torpedoed hospital boat, and the superstitious among the sailors are convinced it is an ill omen on a rotation already plagued with bad luck.  Claire begins to suspect there is more going on when she finds the naval log in the captain's quarters written in two different hands.  As accidents and weird happenings begin to pile up, Claire and the sub's junior-most officer, O'Dell (Matthew Davis) must figure out if they are cursed, haunted, or facing sabotage before the sub runs out of oxygen.

Nothing good ever happens on submarines or in space.  Ever.  The whole concept of submarine horror is redundant.  

That being said, there is a lot of horror here.  It was directed by David Twohy of Pitch Black fame, and written by Twohy, Darren Aronofsky, and Lucas Sussman.  You should know at least one of those names.  It is a lean film which jumps straight into the action and doesn't let up until the final credits.  Being a little predictable in this instance just means that viewers can shorthand the exposition and cut right to the meat: the gruesome, violent deaths, of which there are plenty.  Also, a ton of misogyny and I don't think a single Black person had a line so racism too.

Bruce Greenwood plays Captain Brice, Jason Flemyng, Holt McCallany, Nick Chinlund, Dexter Fletcher, and Andrew Howard are all That Guy actors that you'll recognize on sight, and Zack Galifinakis (in an extremely bushy beard) has a small role as well.

This is also our second entry of the month to feature Scott Foley in a prominent role.  He was a major guest star on season five of True Blood as Terry Bellefleur's Iraq War buddy.  If you're keeping track at home, that's 2 Lucy Hales and 2 Scott Foleys.  I have no idea what you want with that information but you have it.

It's currently streaming on Showtime through Paramount+ and I would call it underrated.  Give it a shot.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 13: Fantasy Island (2020)

It's Friday the 13th!  You know what that means!  Unrelated movie!    This is our second Blumhouse production starring Lucy Hale.  I don't know that that means anything, but it's an interesting coincidence.  Content warning:  blood, burned bodies

Five strangers win a luxury vacation on an island resort purported to bring the guests' deepest fantasy to life but as the body count starts to rise, they begin to wonder:  whose fantasy are they actually in?

When this came out it was immediately panned by critics.  All I heard was how bad it was.  I never saw the TV show it's based on so I don't have a nostalgic image to disappoint.  I thought it was okay.  Kind of fun.  Not a classic, but fine for an afternoon watch.  Maggie Q is the standout here but nobody is really swinging for the fences.  Maybe Kim Coates.  I could have watched more of him.  Regardless, this isn't terrible for Vacation Horror.  It's currently streaming on Starz, which I get through Amazon Prime.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 12: Heavenly Creatures (1994)

  Content warning:  blood, disease

Teenaged Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) has always done well in school but was shy with no close friends, until British transplant Juliet (Kate Winslet) arrived.  The girls become inseparable, to the point where Juliet's father (Clive Merrison) is concerned that Pauline might be a lesbian (but not his daughter, of course).  The girls retreat further into the fantasy world they've created, referring to each other almost exclusively by their characters' names.  Then tragedy strikes.  Professor Hulme decides to move Juliet to South Africa --given her history with tuberculosis-- when he takes another job in England.  Faced with permanent separation, Pauline comes up with a plan to make sure they're never apart again.

This is based on a true story and uses extracts from the real diary Pauline Parker kept.  The movie portrays the gay panic as the true horror but I was stuck on the statutory rape that just gets glossed over.  Pauline's family takes in college-aged boarders for extra money and one takes an unhealthy interest in the 14-year-old girl.  Of course that's somehow her fault and drives the wedge between her and her parents even further.

This launched the careers of Winslet and Lynskey as well as director Peter Jackson.  It's not hard to understand why.  Both actresses are magnetic and engaging, the fantasy sequences are seamlessly incorporated, and it already shows touches of the director's signature.  It is unfortunately only available for rent or purchase.  I enjoyed it but I'd probably wouldn't watch it again, so I'd recommend rental.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 11: The Thing from Another World (1951)

  I'm cheating a little bit here because this is more properly sci-fi, but it was a Movie Club pick and the progenitor of John Carpenter's The Thing so I'm saying it counts.  Content warning:  severed limb, dead animal (dog)

An Air Force rescue group is dispatched after scientists at the North Pole report a downed aircraft.  They discover that it's actually a spaceship with an occupant.  They dig free an ice block and tow it in to the research station but the Captain (Kenneth Tobey) is adamant it remains frozen, over the protests of the scientists led by Professor Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite).  An accident sees the block thawed and the creature turns out to be very much alive and hungry for blood.

A lot of older horror movies don't stand up very well by today's standards (we're so spoiled) but this was a very fun sci-fi romp.  Tobey has excellent chemistry with lead actress Margaret Sheridan, who is written like an actual person, a rarity of the time.  Even better, a fun person who drinks and smokes and wears pants and talks about her previous would-be one-night-stand with the Captain.  Practically shocking for 1951.  

I wish they hadn't shown the "monster" because that is the weakest part of the movie, but overall, definitely a keeper.  It's currently streaming on Tubi and the Roku Channel.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 10: Truth or Dare (2018)

  This was recommended to me by a co-worker before the pandemic.  We're down to only 5 years behind!  Content warning: suicide, blood, discussion of sexual assault

Olivia (Lucy Hale) wanted to spend her Spring Break with Habitat for Humanity but she gets talked into going to Mexico with her friends instead.  At the bar, she meets a dude named Carter (Landon Liboiron) who tells them he knows an after-hours spot.  Lonely and looking for an in, Olivia convinces her friends to go along.  Once there, Carter suggests they play Truth or Dare.  He confesses that he lured them there to make them play, the game is rigged by a supernatural force, and if they refuse to play, lie, or chicken out of a dare, they will die.  Of course no one believes him, until one by one they are confronted with strange hallucinations and deadly consequences.

Ah, finally, a horror story with a moral:  don't be a dick on vacation in a foreign country.

This wasn't bad.  It's like Final Destination for Gen Z.  It's a little predictable and the effects aren't stellar but definitely watchable.  If you can find it.  It's currently only available for rent but it will probably circle back around in popularity and start streaming again at some point.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 9: One Hour Photo (2002)

  This month has been pretty light on screams so far.  Content Warning: one scene of body horror (eyes)

A family is terrorized by a delusional photo developer (Robin Williams).

Okay, kids, long ago we had to take actual physical photographs on film and these were developed and printed by strangers in malls and drug stores.  

Even beyond the depiction of outdated technology, this movie feels like a throwback to an earlier time where you could call your movie "The Stranger on Main Street!!!" and just do Theremin music for 85 minutes and finally reveal it's about the Red Scare.  

At the risk of spoilers, a couple of people are briefly inconvenienced* but no one is murdered.  Hell, there's not even property damage.  I'm really disappointed because this was supposed to be an incredible performance by Robin Williams and it's just... a dramatic one?  Like, the man had range.  It's not a shock that he would be good here.  

Community fans, do keep an eye out for Jim Rash as the creepy porn guy.  ER fans, Eriq La Salle is in this (and still looked great, btw), and you can also catch Clark Gregg before he spent almost two decades as Agent Coulson for Marvel.  And the TPS Report guy from Office Space is playing another asshole corporate guy.

If you are more into psychological tension, unstable weirdos, or really gore-averse, this is probably for you.  It is only available for rent right now.

 
*terrorized and in fear for their lives

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 8: Whisper (2007)

  Content warning:  animal death

Four kidnappers grab an eight-year-old rich kid named David (Blake Woodruff) from his birthday party, hoping for a quick payday.  Unfortunately, he may not actually be human.

The elevator pitch for this was probably pretty good:  what if you grabbed a kid but it turns out it was Damian from The Omen?  But the final product is pretty boring.  There's not enough sense of the characters, David is smug but not very menacing, and the stakes feel very low overall.  The kills are mostly bloodless, too, so you can't even get joy from the splatter.  Weak sauce.  Also a Christmas movie.  If I had known that, I wouldn't have watched it back to back with Jaws 4.  Now I want peppermint hot chocolate.

It's not currently streaming anywhere for free so at least you're unlikely to stumble across it and waste your time by accident.  Small mercies.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 7: Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

  This is considered one of, if not the, worst horror movies ever made and it's still better than Who Can Kill a Child?.  Content warning:  blood

Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) becomes convinced a Great White shark is deliberately targeting her family after her son, Sean (Mitchell Anderson), is killed in Amity harbor.  Her other son, Michael (Lance Guest), thinks she's losing her mind and convinces her to visit him in the Bahamas while he works on his grad school project of tagging conch snails, and most importantly, the waters are much too warm for Great Whites.  Ellen eventually starts to relax, helped along by garrulous pilot Hoagie (Michael Caine), but Michael begins to believe her crazy theory when a Great White shows up and starts attacking his boat.

Everything about this movie is bad.  The script is terrible, it cribs way too much from the original Jaws without improving in any way, the timeline makes no sense, they stuck Mario Van Peebles with a bad Bahamian accent, and the foam rubber shark is laughable.  You can literally see the string used to move the fin in one scene.  There's no actual footage of a real shark, not even stock footage, in the entire movie.  It would have made just as much sense to have Hoagie actually be the shark in disguise and probably more entertaining.

 And yet.  At no point during watching did I actively hate anyone involved.  I didn't wish doom upon their houses, yea, unto the seventh generation.  I wasn't frantically Googling to make sure I hadn't missed some reason why this was considered a classic.  If I had a thought at all, it was "damn, I wish I could spend Christmas in the Bahamas."  Oh, yeah, it's a Christmas movie. 

Unrelated, but this is also the debut film of Judith Barsi, one of the saddest stories in child acting.  For my fellow 80s kids, she was the voice of Ducky in The Land Before Time.  At the age of ten, she and her mother were murdered by her father, an abusive alcoholic.  There's a little real-world horror for you.

All the Jaws films are currently streaming on Netflix.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 6: Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)

  The first eight minutes of this movie are archival footage of Auschwitz concentration camp, the India-Pakistan partition, the Korean War, the civil war in Biafra, and the Vietnam war with a focus on the damage done to children.  I am so serious when I say please be aware before you begin.  

Content Warning:  concentration camp footage, medical experimentation, malnourished/starving children, amputees, war footage, self-immolation, napalm-burned children, child death

Weirdly, nothing else in the movie lives up to the real-life horror shown over the opening credits.  Everything else is just red paint.  The "dead bodies" even breathe.  We are not talking a commitment to realism here.

British tourists Tom (Lewis Fiander) and Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) are vacationing on the coast of Spain.  They decide to visit a locals-only island only to discover the island's children have collectively murdered all the adults.

I absolutely hate to give Stephen King any credit but Children of the Corn is a much better execution of this concept.  I have no idea what point the filmmakers here were trying to achieve.  The opening credits are about how children are unintentional (or purposeful) casualties in adult conflicts with grim footage and stats, but the movie is children killing maliciously which would seem to undercut the opening.  Are they innocent victims or cold-blooded perpetrators?  It seems like it's trying to be anti-war but it forces Tesco-brand-Donald-Sutherland to use violence to survive.

Also, this movie weirdly fetishizes children as 'not people' which I will chalk up to its time period.  Kids are also human beings.  They're just smaller with less general life experience.  A toddler with a gun can still kill you just as dead as an adult, so this idea that they're somehow paragons of innocence conflates ignorance with moral purity.  I'm just saying, nobody who ever baby-sat wrote this script.  I don't know that they've ever even seen a child except in books. 

Somehow this is a cult classic that is praised by critics.  Fortunately, it's really easy to avoid by not being available on any streaming services.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 5: True Blood season 5

   Is this the season that's finally shitty enough to make me stop my absurd need for completion?  Nope!  Content warning:  gore

Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) continues to deal with the fallout that is her life and learns more about her Fae heritage.  Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) are arrested by the Authority, a vampire ruling council, and tasked with finding Russell Edgington (Denis O'Hare) or be killed themselves, only to discover they are actually pawns within a religious schism.  Meanwhile, back in Bon Temps, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), Hoyt (Jim Parrack), and Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) try to navigate their broken relationships with each other, a new hate group is targeting shifters, and Terry's (Todd Lowe) past from Iraq catches up with him.

This show remains the junk food of vampire TV.  It is so bad, but when you are in the mood, just satisfying enough to make you hate yourself later.  This is probably the most disconnected season and felt the furthest removed from its beginning.  Almost nothing revolved around Sookie's magical faerie vagina and which buff super-dude gets to have it.  That's kind of an improvement, if it wasn't immediately replaced by Hot Vampire Ladies in Your Area.  It was like someone at HBO was going to die if there wasn't a naked woman on screen every 10 minutes per episode.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-nudity but this show has always had a problem with how Male Gaze-focused it is.  At least they finally let Rutina Wesley be hot instead of constantly dialing her down.

The entire series is streaming on (sigh) Max.  This was a massively popular show a decade ago.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 4: The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

  Hey, look!  It's an actual horror film of Phantom of the Opera instead of the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical!  I haven't seen one of those since 1925!  Content warning:  blood, gore, self-surgery

Christine Day (Jill Schoelen) is looking for the perfect piece of music for her audition and finds an obscure, unfinished opera deep in the archives of a library.  It is the lost work of Erik Destler (Robert Englund), a composer and serial killer from Victorian England who had grown obsessed with the career of a young soprano (also Jill Schoelen) and would stop at nothing to see her star rise.  Horribly disfigured from a deal with the devil, Destler hunts fresh victims for their skin, the only way he can appear semi-normal to Christine in order to woo her.

This was weirdly soothing to watch, especially after the crapfest that was yesterday's movie.  It does kind of feel like a Nightmare on Elm Street prequel but that's probably just because it's Robert Englund in a whole bunch of facial prosthetics.  Bill Nighy also appears as one of the theater owners, so that's fun.  I very much enjoyed this.  It is a little hard to track down but it's worth it if you're into classic horror.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 3: Children of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest (1995)

  Day three and we're knocking out an unnecessary sequel!  Content warning:  gore, bad VFX

Joshua (Ron Melendez) and his little brother Eli (Daniel Cerny) are fostered by the Porters in Chicago after their father (Duke Stroud) is murdered by corn.  Joshua attempts to assimilate, making friends with the neighbors, trying to get along at school, but Eli resists.  Mrs. Porter (Nancy Lee Grahn) discovers that Eli has been sneaking off to the abandoned factory next door to tend his corn.

I cannot overstate how absolutely shitty this movie is.  Everything about it is awful.  The dialogue is bad, the acting is wooden, the plot makes zero sense, it's weirdly racist and misogynist despite having a predominantly Black cast (eau de White Savior sprayed all over), and the special effects are laughable.  The only reason to watch it is if you are a die-hard completionist.  There is a small cameo from a baby-faced Charlize Theron near the end (one of the crowd scenes) but that is absolutely not an endorsement to watch.  Everyone has to start somewhere.

It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max with all the other Children of the Corn movies.  Maybe 4 is better?  I have no idea.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 2: Lake Placid (1999)

  Do creature features count as horror?  Let's say they do.  

When a Fish & Wildlife officer is disemboweled in Black Lake, paleontologist Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda) is dispatched to rural Maine to look at a tooth found in the victim's remains.  For reasons of her own, Kelly is disinclined to return to New York immediately and joins Sherriff Keough (Brendan Gleeson) and replacement Fish & Wildlife guy, Jack Wells (Bill Pullman), in their search for the murderous animal.  They are joined by rich eccentric mythology professor Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt), who is convinced a crocodile has found its way to the freshwater lake.

The dialogue in this movie remains as crisp as McDonald's Sprite.  Quip after quip, jokes building up to skyscrapers of humor.  I am appalled this isn't universally beloved.  There's some gore, some body parts and gross-out decomp, plus a couple of jump scares.  It's great and you should see it.  Unfortunately, it's only available for rent or buy but it's absolutely worth the money.  If you're looking for a horror comedy that's tween-appropriate, Lake Placid is it.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 1: Rapture (Arrebato) (1979)

  Welcome to Spooky Season!  We're starting off with the weirdest vampire movie I have ever seen.  Now, I love vampires.  I love movies about movies.  So a movie about the vampiric nature of art creation should be something I enjoy.  Wrong!

José (Eusebio Poncela), a struggling filmmaker, receives a reel of film and a cassette from a weirdo he met with an inexplicable connection, much more avant-garde and experimental, but a shared love for the transcendence of art and also heroin.  The film and soundtrack detail Pedro's (Will More) documentation of himself sleeping.  An accident at first, but when he notices a section that's blanked out in the middle, a mystery to be solved.  But the missing sections keep growing the longer the camera is on him, and he fears that he is losing more than just film.

If the only Spanish movies you ever saw were this and Pain and Glory, you'd think that every single Spanish person was a bisexual heroin addict.  

It is an interesting movie but not one I enjoyed.  It's a lot of commentary on unhealthy obsessions in relationships, work, and recreation, the consuming power of art, and of course, drugs.  There are no real scares, everything is basically Vibes, there's no gore, very very little blood, and the main actor looks way too much like Riffraff from Rocky Horror.  It is currently streaming on Criterion.