Oops! All Horror - Day 31 - Lake Mungo (2008)

 Happy Halloween, everyone!  We're finishing strong with a stunner of a film.   Content:  drowned corpse

An Australian family is devastated when 16-year-old Alice (Talia Zucker) drowns during a family vacation.  Soon after, the family begin experiencing disturbances around the house, leading them to seek out a local psychic and radio personality (Steve Jodrell).  

Okay, I am late to the party on this one, which is very well-regarded in horror circles.  I was initially hesitant because of the words "found footage" but this is not shaky-cam.  This is a spectacularly done documentary-style film that's a little like Presence mixed with Ghostwatch.  It is so well-executed I can see someone believing that it's a real episode of a haunting show.  The performances felt really natural, all the "twists" were exactly like the ones you'd see in a documentary, and it has just enough verité to make you wonder.  I am going to get a little spoiler-y so as always, highlight the text to read it.  **SPOILERS FOLLOW**  One of my complaints about Presence was the "time is a flat circle" nature of the haunting which reads as predestination and inability to escape fate.  I don't love that.  Lake Mungo neatly sidesteps all that by making Alice see her fetch, a death omen from Celtic folklore.  Maybe that's the same effect for you, but for me, adding a slightly supernatural element made it seem less philosophical and therefore less depressingly nihilistic.  **END SPOILERS**  

Lake Mungo is streaming on AMC+, Shudder, and Amazon Prime.

Oops! All Horror - Day 27 - Harpoon (2019)

 Content warning: dead animal (fish, seagull), blood, mild gore

Jonah (Munro Chambers) and Sasha (Emily Tyra) join their abusive friend, Richie (Christopher Gray) on his boat for a day trip, unaware that all their secrets and resentments are about to be revealed.

This is billed as a dark comedy horror and I guess.  It's very light on the horror for my tastes.  Minus one scene, I would classify it as just a black comedy.  That being said, it's also not very funny.  For me, black comedies only work if they are based in irony or schadenfreude and at least one of the characters hasn't done anything to deserve what happens to them.  It is like the fourth movie I've seen this month to flirt with cannibalism so I guess it's on theme?

It's streaming on Prime but there are better options out there.

Oops! All Horror - Day 24 - Channel Zero - Candle Cove (2016)

  I've managed to get through a surprising amount of TV this year.  Content warning:  child death, teeth (?), puppets/dolls

Mike Painter (Paul Schneider) lost his twin brother, Eddie (Luca Villacis), when they were 12-years-old in part of a series of unsolved murders.  Afterwards, his mother (Fiona Shaw) sent Mike away to live with his dad.  But thirty years later, after a disturbing series of visions, Mike returns to Iron Hill at the same time a strange show only visible to children called Candle Cove returns to TV.  

I was very excited about the monster design on this one, but I have to admit, the first half is better than the second.  It's only six-episodes long and it is still really good; I just felt like it couldn't sustain the energy of the first couple of episodes.  Still, Shaw is a great actress and anchors this cast.  It's an anthology show so it is a complete story and I'll watch the other seasons, but probably not this year.

Oops! All Horror - Day 19 - Buffet Infinity (2026)

  Content Warning:  mild gore

Buffet Infinity has opened in the town of Westbridge, Alberta, Canada.  It's got everything.  Just ignore the sinkhole out back.  And the weird, pervasive noise.  And the lack of staff.  And the constant expansion.  

The entire movie is a series of local commercials and news alerts that somehow tells a coherent narrative.  It's possibly the most original film I've ever seen and certainly the most original this year.  And I feel like it'll come and go and no one will have ever heard of this outside film festivals and gorehounds like me.  It is 100% not for everyone.  If someone channel-surfing sets your teeth on edge, for example.  If you've never been up late and flipped through all the infomercials in a kind of mindless haze, best to skip this.  But if you have a weird nostalgia for the shitty used cars ads that were kind of like mini-serials, or the box collections of CDs for people you've never heard on a radio, please watch this.  Please reward this kind of ingenuity.  I promise you it's worth it.

It's streaming on Shudder/AMC+.  It's got the sauce.

Oops! All Horror -Day 8 - Blind Sun (2018)

  Content warning:  dead animal (cat)

Ashraf (Ziad Bakri) has been hired to guard a rich family's empty vacation home in Greece.  There's a drought and widespread unrest among the locals, while the house is owned by a private water bottling company executive.  Ashraf is just trying to make enough money to survive but soon suspects that he's not alone.

Remember how I was talking about how fun Dolly Dearest was for not having Meaningful Subtext?  This movie is all Meaningful Subtext.  The horror comes from the creeping dread of isolation, the feeling that Ashraf is in danger but can't call out for help.  He is harassed by the local cops for not belonging, because he is foreign and poor.  The wealthy family is out of the country, completely indifferent to his well-being as long as the property is okay, and he has no friends or family.

The heat is its own character here, merciless and seething, leaching the goodwill from people and leaving only desperation and rage.  You could consider it environmental horror in addition to home invasion.  If you're not quite ready to let summer go yet and/or need the coals of class war stoked, Blind Sun is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Oops! All Horror - Day 5 - Bloody Tennis (2026)

 I'm not having particularly good luck trying to find stuff on my TBW list.  I'm trying to knock out older entries but twice now I have started a movie and realized it wasn't the right one, just named the same.  Tried to watch Thy Kingdom Come from 2008 but found Thy Kingdom Come from 2018 instead.  Which is only a horror movie if you're afraid of poverty.  It was at least short, clocking in at 42 minutes of Javier Bardem dressed as a priest and interviewing trailer park residents in Missouri.  Unfocused, documentary-style misery porn that feels very sleazy because of the fake priest angle.  Almost like they shot a bunch of interviews that were meant to be part of a larger narrative around the priest as a character, then ran out of money and just presented what they had.

So then I was looking for Stage Fright (2018) and clicked on Stage Fright (2017) because sometimes release dates vary.  Nope.  The 2017 version is a Lifetime Movie Network Original and it's basically a retread of The Phantom of the Opera.  I made it about 20 minutes and quit, thinking that it had to be the worst movie I'd ever seen.

People, I was wrong.  The worst movie I've ever seen was the one I picked after that, when I was just desperate to watch anything I could finish.  It's called Tropical Parasite (2026) and it is The Room levels of bad.  We're talking pasty-skinned writer/director/"star" clearly using filmmaking as an excuse to write off his vacation in the Philippines while coercing young, local women to take their tops off "for the movie."  There's almost no actual dialogue, just a voiceover that wants to be noir but lands firmly in the fedora-tipping "m'lady" cesspit.  The plot is nonsense and hinges on an AI-generated naked "sea nymph" that can only be freed from a (topless) sea witch's curse by a "true gentleman" and that sound you just heard was every woman in the world's vagina making the Windows shutdown noise.  You're probably thinking, "wow, Lucy, I'm so glad you watched this whole thing so I wouldn't have to," and no.  I made it TWENTY MINUTES and I will never recover from this.

Anyway, here's a review for Bloody Tennis.    Content warning: blood, animal death (cat), leeches

Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) wins a spot at an exclusive tennis camp but soon discovers that competition has deadly consequences.

This is Suspiria meets Raw with sports.  The performances from a host of ingenues are solid, especially Lily Taieb and Tracy Gotoas.  Hope those ladies get a career boost.  The script is pretty sparse and there's no great surprises but it's still a decent enough gorefest for those who like a little competition to work up an appetite.  

It's currently streaming on Shudder.  

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.

Cop Car (2015)

  Content warning:  blood, child endangerment

Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) are running away from home when they find a cop car in a field.  It's unlocked and the keys are inside.  Obviously, there's only one thing the boys can do.  Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon) returns from dumping a body in a convenient abandoned well to find his patrol car full of incriminating evidence gone.  Now it's a game of wits between a corrupt cop and two ten-year-olds.

First of all, THIS IS WHY GIRLS LIVE LONGER THAN BOYS.  The most harrowing moments in this film don't come from a desperate man threatening children, they come from the children themselves, blithely handling firearms, a portable defibrillator, and speeding down the center of a highway.  If you are a parent, this probably qualifies as a horror movie.  

However, I am just a cat lady so I thought this was hilarious.  It feels like a darker version of classic Disney children's adventure movies.  It makes great use of a very small cast, keeping the two boys centered in the action.  They seem absolutely real, from the dialogue to the general goofing around.  I don't know how director Jon Watts coached them, but he got the most natural performances I have seen in ages out of them.  

This was a Sundance darling but bombed at the box office.  It needs a second chance.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime, if you are in the mood for a tightly paced, black comedy that feels almost like nostalgia but isn't.

Hadestown: The Musical (2026)

Happy Labor Day!  Here's a surprisingly related movie.  I like this trend of staged productions getting filmed.  It feels much more egalitarian.

Orpheus (Reeve Carney) is a starry-eyed cafe worker on the surface, working on a song to bring the world back into harmony.  He meets Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), who is homeless and hounded by the Fates (Bella Brown, Madeline Charlemagne, and Allie Daniel), and falls for her immediately.  Eurydice is skeptical and wonders why the climate has become so extreme.  Orpheus explains that Hades (Patrick Page) and Persephone (Amber Gray) have fallen out of love and Persephone resents having to spend six months in Hadestown, which is continually fortified by Hades' indentured workers.  During a snowstorm, Hades comes to Eurydice and promises her warmth and a cessation of suffering, so she signs one of his permanent contracts.  Distraught, Orpheus pleads with Hermes (André de Shields) for another way into Hadestown to retrieve her.

This is the exact same story you've always heard but it is nice to see new musicals.  The performances are top-notch, especially de Shields and Carney.  Apparently it was based on a concept album from a musician called Anaīs Mitchell, whom I've never heard of but good for her.  It's available to rent or buy from Amazon right now but I'm sure it'll be on a streaming service soon.

Madron (1970)

  Content warning:  animal death (rattlesnake)

Sister Mary Joseph (Leslie Caron) is the only survivor of a wagon train massacred by Apache on the way to a mission in Santa Fe.  She wanders haplessly through the desert until she meets Madron (Richard Boone), a gunslinger on the run after a bad business deal.  Madron has managed to piss off an Apache named Sam Red (Chaim Banai) and now Sam and Madron's former business partners are all after him.  Still, he's not the kind of man who would let a nun travel by herself, even if he can't really understand what a nun is.

It's the Volcano vs Dante's Peak of Westerns-featuring-men-exasperated-by-hot-nuns, coming out the same year as Two Mules for Sister Sara.  It's not nearly as memorable, however.  It looks like a made-for-TV movie but was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song, a thoroughly sappy piece of work called "Til Love Touches Your Life."  

It's always nice to see Caron, although she is acting circles around Boone.  Strictly for die-hard Spaghetti Western fans, I think, but it's streaming on Amazon Prime.

War Dogs (2016)

  Content warning:  drug use, ableist slurs

David (Miles Teller), a massage therapist in Miami, quits to work for his childhood friend, Efraim (Jonah Hill) on a tiny defense contracting company.  Thanks to a new regulation, government contracts must be offered to small businesses, and AEY certainly qualifies as small.  But the boys are resourceful (and lucky), managing to parlay several small successes into larger wins until they finally hit the big time:  a contract so big it's known only as the Afghan Deal.  

If you surgically removed the wit and charm from Lord of War and just replaced them with tanning spray and the word "bro," you'd have War Dogs.  It says nothing new about gunrunning, morality, or even the serious laxity in the U.S. military procurement process.  (And I get to say that because I am one of those filthy defense contractors.)  Hill is at least trying to act while Teller bumbles gormlessly through his scenes.  The supporting cast of Ana de Armas, Kevin Pollack, and Bradley Cooper are wasted talents.  It's not clever, it's not funny, and it's not worth your time.  It is, however, streaming on Amazon Prime.

Breakin' (1984)

 Happy 4th of July!  Here's a movie about an American art form.    

Kelly (Lucinda Dickey) is a jazz dancer trying to break into a very competitive world.  For fun, she hangs out with breakdancers Ozone (Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quiñones) and Turbo (Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers).  When Kelly's dance teacher, Franco (Ben Lokey), sexually harasses her, she quits and forms a new dance group with Ozone and Turbo.  Kelly's agent, James (Christopher McDonald), is initially skeptical about breakdancing's mainstream appeal but gets the group booked for a very high-profile audition, where they must face off against Franco and his elite dancers.

This is the debut of Ice-T, in case you only know him as the Law & Order guy and might be the youngest performance I've ever seen of McDonald, most famous (probably) for being the antagonist in Happy Gilmore.  Also, yes, that is Jean-Claude Van Damme hanging out in the background of the Venice Beach dance sequence.

The plot is really simple and the performances are not great because almost no one in this was a professional actor.  However, the dance scenes are great and that is what matters here.  This movie paved the way for "white girl uses her privilege to highlight Black art" films like Save the Last Dance and Bring It On.  It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Perils of Pauline (1947)

  Content warning:  small instance of blackface, yellowface, and brownface, general old-timey racism

Pearl White (Betty Hutton) wants to quit her job as a sweatshop seamstress and become an actress.  She impresses Julia Gibbs (Constance Collier) who is an actress with a small, traveling troupe and gets an audition with the troupe leader, Michael Farrington (John Lund).  Farrington thinks Pearl is too much for the stage, that she doesn't have the chops or the temperament to be a truly great dramatic actress.  In a huff, Pearl quits, followed by Julia, who gets a small part in the nascent silent film industry.  But a dick-ish director's prank pisses Pearl off and she storms through several sets, impressing the director with her fearlessness.  Her career takes off as the lead in an action adventure serial, "The Perils of Pauline."

This is a fictionalized account of the real Pearl White, who starred in a 1914 serial of the same name.  And fun fact!  They used several of the original serial's actors in either walk-on or one-line cameos.  Love that. 

Considering that the original serial was remade in 1933 (with a different plot), then had this film made about the making of it in 1947, and then had another remake in 1967, it feels weirdly obscure.  I had never heard of Pearl White or her serials, but now I feel like I should hunt them down if only to know what the fuss was about.

It reminded me a lot of Funny Girl, in that both feature a woman succeeding and a man being a sensitive little bitch about his fragile masculinity but Pauline actually has the leg up since Mike gets over himself by the end.  And despite some very dated choices, this doesn't feel as out-of-touch as it could have.  I think it's because it is also looking back, trying to document a very specific moment in time.  It's a little more melodramatic than I personally like but Hutton is so charismatic, I didn't even mind.  I'm really glad I found this.  It's in the public domain so you can find it a bunch of places, including Wikipedia, but I watched it on Amazon Prime.

Beautiful Boy (2018)

  Content warning:  drug use, overdose

David Sheff (Steve Carell) struggles with his son Nic's (Timothée Chalamet) drug addiction, sending him to rehab after rehab only to watch him relapse time and again.

This came to me highly recommended as a tearjerker and maybe, for other people, sure.  I was sympathetic but not empathetic.  If you're a parent, maybe you have a stronger emotional response.  

I don't think I like Timothée Chalamet.  I've now seen him in several things and he seems very one-note.  And I don't find him attractive, so I can't forgive that.  Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan aren't given a lot of work here.  They most just hover anxiously in the background.  This is very much The Carell Show and to his credit, he does a solid job playing a fairly unlikeable protagonist.  

It was not for me, but it is streaming on Amazon Prime if you think it may be for you.

You Were Never Really Here (2018)

  Content warning:  child abuse, child trafficking, blood, suicide

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) finds lost and stolen children while not dealing with years of trauma and abuse.  A senator (Alex Manette) hires him to rescue his daughter, Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), kidnapped by a child trafficking ring.  Joe does, only for the rescue to turn south because --shockingly-- the politician may not have told him the complete truth.  

This was a highly stylized film and I completely understand if people don't vibe with it.  There are a lot of really heavy themes that the movie just asks you to sit with and if you don't want to, that's okay.

Personally, I liked it.  It was hyper-violent and also really short, clocking in at exactly 90 minutes.  I'm not a huge fan of Phoenix as an actor but he did some great work here.  Samsonov doesn't have a lot to do but it's always nice to see a not annoying child actor.  The ever-great character actor John Doman (a "that guy", you'll know him when you see him) also shows up and scream queen Judith Roberts plays Joe's mom and the emotional center of the film.  

It's an Amazon original so that's where you can find it.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

  Content warning:  racial slurs, violence, men being gross about women

Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is facing a difficult choice:  do time for running liquor and cigarettes for the Mob, or snitch to the cops on his underworld associates.

This would make a good double-feature with The Departed, if you wanted to stick with Boston, or Goodfellas if you just wanted crime.  For Mitchum-centric, you should do this and the original Cape Fear.  

For all that, this wasn't my favorite gangster movie.  It felt very predictable and by-the-numbers to me, but that could have just been the mood I was in.  I can't really find fault with it.  It's appropriately grimy for the time period, it's well-shot and well-acted.  I just didn't like it all that much.  It's a little hard to find, but it is available to rent on Amazon or Apple, and you can own the Criterion Collection blu-ray for a cool $31.  

Room 237 (2012)

  This movie is proof that being intelligent doesn't actually mean you're useful.

Five "experts" discuss their interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining as voiceover interviews play over footage from various archival and other film footage.

These are not dumb people.  They are historians, professors, researchers, and archivists who fall into the trap of very smart people saying very dumb things.  The entire movie feels like an English Literature class in college where you're asked to close read a work for the first time.  The point of the exercise is not to discover the "true intent"; it's to show how varied the interpretations can be.  And yes, if you spend your entire career studying a particular facet of history, like the genocide of the Native Americans in the American West, or the Holocaust, you will then start seeing connections everywhere.  That is how human pattern-seeking works.  It is also how conspiracy theories work, that you've "figured it out" because you're so much smarter than other people, so of course you're going to be persecuted by the Government, as one gentleman dolefully expects to be audited by the IRS as punishment for speaking out about his theory that Kubrick faked the Apollo 11 footage of the moon landing.  

I suppose you could find this documentary entertaining in a "Boy, what won't they think of" kind of way but I did not.  It felt a little mean-spirited considering that some of these people seem genuinely mentally ill, while others were infuriatingly condescending.  I don't find that funny.  And the film itself doesn't question or present a point of view of its own, so it just comes off as a bunch of people ranting.  Again, that is not my thing.  If it's yours or you just really, really like The Shining and/or Kubrick and/or insane conspiracy theories, Room 237 is streaming on Shudder and AMC+.

Little Amelie or the Character of Rain (2025)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature   Content warning: child endangerment (drowning)

Amélie (Loïse Charpentier) is a Belgian toddler living in Japan with her diplomat family.  She spends the first two years of her life in a vegetative state, believing that she is a god.  An earthquake "awakens" her and allows her to finally begin interacting, but being limited to a squishy human form is very frustrating, so her family hires a nanny, Nishio (Victoria Grosbois), based on the recommendation of their austere landlady (Yumi Fujimori).  Amélie and Nishio bond, which angers the landlady, who still blames all foreigners for the war that killed her husband and son.  Geopolitical resentments are tough to navigate when you are only three-years-old.  

This was a little jarring at first because the animation is like MS Paint-style pixelation.  It wasn't what I was expecting but it was certainly eye-catching.  I don't think it will win but it's still absolutely worth supporting independent animation.  

Arco (2025)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    

Arco (Juliano Krue Valdi) lives in the far future where time travel is possible thanks to rainbow-colored capes and diamonds that break down light.  His parents and sister travel to the past to retrieve rare or extinct plants but all Arco wants is to see real dinosaurs.  One night, he steals his sister's flying suit and goes to the past, but shorts it and ends up in the near future of 2075 instead.  After a crash landing, he meets Iris (Romy Fay), a ten-year-old girl desperate for connection since her parents work all week and leave her and her baby brother in the care of Mikki, a robot.  Arco lost his traveling diamond in the woods where he landed and Iris agrees to help him look for it despite the pending threat of wildfires.

This is a very pretty movie.  That's about all I can say about it.  It's fine.  It feels like an anime but is French.  I tried to get the French language track on Amazon but it wouldn't take, for some reason, so I watched the English dub.  I found the three brothers super annoying but otherwise, it's not bad.  It's at least an original.  Currently only available for rent.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025)

Nominated for Best International Feature   Content warning: war violence, child death

Six-year-old Hind Rajab Hamada is trapped in a car in the West Bank, pinned down by Israeli soldiers.  Over an hour away, a team of Red Crescent emergency call workers try desperately to navigate the bureaucratic red tape to send an ambulance to rescue her.

This docu-drama uses actor portrayals for the emergency team but the real, actual emergency calls as audio.  You will hear real people die.  DO NOT feel like you have to watch this movie.  You are not "bearing witness"; you are traumatizing yourself.  Trust me.  You don't need to hear a six-year-old crying while she is being shot at.  The only people who need to hear that are ones on a jury at the ICJ.  

That being said, the film itself isn't that great.  It probably should have just been a straight documentary.  Competition is really stiff in this category, as well, so I'm not giving it good odds.  I watched this on Amazon so you don't have to.