Hellhounds (2024) - Horror Film Review

I've said it many times in the past but I really don't rate the werewolf much as a movie monster. Something about people transforming into goofy looking wolves never feels exciting to me. The Robert Conway written and directed Hellhounds didn't do much to change my mind when it came to that particular monster, while it also seemed to have some editing issues that made scenes more confusing than they needed to be.

Mia (Dana Kippel - Reflect) is a bounty hunter trying to track down a sadistic killer (Daniel Link). Her search for him has led her to the home of biker Alias (Nathaniel Burns), realising they share the same goals they decide to team up. They learn that the man is hiding out at a remote criminal hideout known as 'The Scrapyard' and so form a plan to infiltrate it. Unknown to them however is that a centuries old werewolf with links to Alias' past called Lucella (Eva Hamilton - Blood Harvest) is there, and that she has recently turned a young man named Kevin (Cameron Kotecki) into a werewolf also.

The film begins in such a dizzying manner that I initially assumed it to instead be a trailer. A scene of a woman running while being chased by a man was broken down into so many tiny shots that it became really hard to work out what was going on. Thankfully when Hellhounds gets past this prologue things calm down a bit. The editing and directing often became an issue especially in the more action heavy scenes. This unfortunately reared its head in the finale that had so much happening off screen that it became hard to keep up. The werewolf transformation scenes rarely looked great, with CG often used to instantly transform people into werewolves in a way that looked a bit silly. Even this is removed for that finale, with people turning into werewolves and werewolves turning back into people off screen at a baffling rate, so it was never clear what was going on. This even led to the antagonist leaving that scene entirely without me having noticed until a good minute or two later.

Mia and Alias were fine, but there was nothing that special to either of them. Alias' secret was so obvious that when it was revealed I was confused as to why such a big deal was being made of it, I had figured that it must have been shown earlier such was the lack of surprise. Their journey is only part of the plot, with Lucella and her new recruit having a lengthy subplot that only met up with the main story right towards the end. An even slighter subplot was some kidnapped people of the killer Mia was after, trying their best to survive. When it comes to character names there were some bad ones here, at least it is referenced in film that 'Kevin' isn't a fitting name for a werewolf, then there is the killer himself who has the imposing name of 'Dave'.
The setting is at least one part of this done right, this had a real American desert vibe to it, with a film full of drinking, bikers, scantily clad women and a stereotypical soundtrack 'hard-rock' Americana feel to it.

I'm never that keen on werewolf movies, so Hellhounds was never going to be something particularly exciting to me. While shot traditionally there was a grindhouse vibe to this at times, with plenty of blood and unneeded titillation. It is certainly watchable, but it was never designed to be anything deeper than some mindless entertainment to kill an hour or so.

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The Rotting Zombie's Round-up of Horror News for July 2024

Yet another month has flown by, with a summer that has been both humid and wet in near equal measure. Still haven't won the lottery so I am still unable to do this blog full time. A ghoul can dream! Onwards to the news.

Freestyle Media have acquired dark thriller The Midnight Gag for an August release for North American VOD platforms and DVD. The film is about a private detective - Travis Jackson, who is caught up with a brutal serial killer after a client of his is attacked by the psycho. This begins a series of strange events where Jackson has to figure out what was really the cause of his clients attack. Written, directed and produced by Luc Ziann (The Redneg), this features Ziann in the lead role, alongside Brodin Ference, Morgan Oijen, and Anna Garoucheva Gonzalez. 

Isaac Rodriquez's Visher is described as a virtual horror with it sounding like the events of the movie are shown via a webcam of a woman that an obsessed online scammer has hacked into. Through the webcam the scammer witnesses a series of haunting events within the woman's home. This is out now on Amazon Prime Video.

Round the Decay is a folk horror monster movie whose inspirations include Pumpkinhead and The Cube. Written and directed by Adam Newman (Everwinter Night) this is about a woman who returns to Newport Valley several years after a tragedy occured there. This stars Victoria Mirrer, Damian Maffei (Strangers: Prey at Night), Sienna Hubert-Ross (Terrifier 3), Melody Kay (The NeverEnding Story III), Phil Duran (Breaking Bad), Sarah Nicklin (The Black Mass), Rachel Pizzolato (Mythbusters Jr.) and Roger Clark (Red Dead Redemption II) and is due out this Halloween season.

LGBTQ Southern Gothic thriller Ganymede debuts on Cable and Digital VOD on August 6th 2024. This award winning film (winner of Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature Film at the 41st Reeling International Film Festival and the Pride Award at the Chattanooga Film Festival) is about a small town wrestler who begins to be stalked by a monstrous creature after he develops a crush on his gay classmate. It stars Jordan Doww (Reach), Pablo Castelblanco, David Koechner (Anchorman), Robyn Lively (Teen Witch), Joe Chrest (Stranger Things) and Marissa Reyes.

Cleopatra Entertainment are due to release comedy horror Cocaine Werewolf on Blu-ray and DVD on 13th August 2024. This takes place in Pennsylvania where a low-budget film crew must survive against a hungry werewolf. The release includes a bunch of special features including trailers and a slide-show.

Halloween slasher Creeping Death has been acquired by Cineverse for the SCREAMBOX streaming service. This one is about Tim, whose peaceful Halloween night with his mother is interrupted by the arrival of friends, one of which appears to have broken a sacred tradition between humans and otherworldly deities known as Aos Si. This is based on writer-director Matt Sampere's short film of the same name, and marks his feature length debut.
Also coming to SCREAMBOX is the mockumentary Haunted Ulster Live. In the vein of Ghostwatch and Late Night with the Devil, this takes the form of a live broadcast from 1998 at an apparently haunted house in Belfast. The found footage was the feature length directorial debut of writer-director Dominic O'Neill.

Spanish rural thriller The Wait has came to Film Movement for a North American release this fall. Starring Victor Clavijo (Before the Fall), Ruth Diaz, Manuel Moron and Pedro Casablanc (Strange Way of Life), this follows a groundskeeper of a remote hunting estate whose life begins to fall apart after accepting a bribe from a veteran hunter. The press release states this '...offers a terrifying vision of loss'.

Finally for today, the award-winning sci-fi dimension hopping movie Ingress is to be released on 13th August 20234 on Cable and TVOD by Glass House Distribution. About a woman with the unwanted ability to shift between alternate realities, I gave this a respectable seven out of ten in my review stating '...got me enough in the feels that I did find myself getting a bit teary in the epilogue...'

Infinite Summer (2024) - Sci-fi Thriller Film Review

With an influx of film requests for review this summer I have been able to be a bit more choosy with what I decide to check out. Upon beginning Miguel Llansó's Infinite Summer I did wonder what made me go with this Estonian film. It is definitely a strange movie, but as it went on there were certain elements that really did appeal to me.

Shy and awkward Mia (Teele Kaljuvee-O'Brock) is at a decisive point in her life, having finished school she now has to decide what she wants to do with herself. During the summer break she has decided to spend it with her best friend Grete (Johanna-Aurelia Rosin) at a lakeside holiday home. Due to Mia's quiet nature she soon finds herself out-shadowed by a Canadian friend of Grete (played by Hannah Gross - Joker). In her solitude she meets up with a guy calling himself Dr. Mindfulness (Ciaron Davies) who she meets on an online dating app. Living nearby, he brings her a strange respirator device he had created that is tailored to deliver the ultimate mediation exercise. Using it, she is startled to see intense hallucinations in the form of a smoke based being. Her friends, seeing its drug like effects decide to also get their own respirators.
Meanwhile, two detectives - Katrin (Katariina Unt) and the eccentric Jack (Steve Vanoni) are found to have been monitoring all this, with the respirator maybe coming from a powerful world reaching secretive organisation who are near impossible to track down.

Infinite Summer had a whole load of different parts to it that made it seem like it was inspired by various films and TV shows. The world had a bit of a Black Mirror vibe to it, seeming to take place in a near future where not only has A.I become a more essential tool (shown to be used heavily both by the police and general places like the local zoo), but everyone communicates using an augmented reality headset rather than phones, even using the augmented reality to work on digital computers rather than physical ones. This respirator feeds into this near future technology, with it shown that cartridges in it are able to deliver the drug.
There was also a 'coming of age' feel to the film with some Garden State vibes. Mia appears lost as a character, and being so silent you never really get a good feel of what is going on in her head. This is sometimes to the detriment of the story as it did feel that occasionally she was a blank slate used to carry the viewer through the plot. There were not a huge amount of likeable characters, with Mia's father (Ivo Uukkivi) being the most decent one. Characters are often weird rather than nice, but this suited the film's comedic tone that it sometimes displayed, such as when Jack asks Katrin if she made the sandwich she hands him, with her then pointing out that they are in a diner so she obviously brought it from there.

The best parts of the movie for me where the many hallucinations characters have. This usually takes the form of smoky tendrils that form hands at their ends, as well as cosmic almost Lovecraftian style sequences where characters under the effect of the drug appear to travel the cosmos. The special effects used here were on the whole great, only a few times they didn't quite appear to gel well against the normal backgrounds. These digital effects are also used on the drug-users eyes to give them a milky quality reminiscent of zombies. I also thought the design of the respirator was great, as was the distorted vocal effect used for the voices of people wearing them.
The story did feel a bit all over the place with the first half focussing on Mia before later parts tried to move the story into a more spiritual path, somehow including slight elements of apocalyptic and possible alien themes.

Infinite Summer was a weird movie, but it did keep me guessing. I think I enjoyed the more thrilling second half more to the first, mainly due to Mia being such an odd character who it was hard to really get behind. I liked the trippy effects, and I liked were the story went, but I feel it could have been shaken up a bit to help with the pacing. Infinite Summer had its World Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 27th 2024.

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Coming Home in the Dark (2021) - Thriller Film Review

Much like the pure coincidence that occurs within the movie, Coming Home in the Dark is randomly the second film I've watched for review this week that was made in New Zealand, after Loop Track. I hated the story here, and I hated the characters, but this was well made, so despite my misgivings I can't say this bleak thriller was without any merit to it.

Jill (Miriama McDowell) and Hoaggie (Erik Thomson - Xena: Warrior Princess TV show) and their two teenage boys have gone on a day out to enjoy a picnic in the remote New Zealand countryside. Unfortunately, they are spotted by two wandering vagrant psychopaths - tall and silent Tubs (Matthias Luafutu - Ghost in the Shell) and the talkative and sadistic Mandrake (Daniel Gillies - The Vampire Diaries TV show). The family are robbed at gunpoint and then to Jill and Hoaggie's horror their two teenage boys are mercilessly gunned down in front of them and the couple taken hostage. This begins a road trip of terror for the two, with it discovered by complete chance that Hoaggie has a link to the men's past at a troubled boys orphanage.

This was a heck of a bleak movie with nothing nice happening at all past around the ten minute stage. It's a statement of intent that the most innocent characters are killed first, and made for a shocking ending to the first act. Directed by James Ashcroft, this was based on a short story of the same name written by Owen Marshall, and if this was faithful to the source material then it isn't something I would want to read. My problem with the film was how miserable it was from start to finish. I really did think the story was unpleasant and unhappy, I don't know if story beats were designed to create at least some pity for the sadistic antagonists, but I hated them and wished them ill. The same goes for the protagonists, I thought Jill was perfectly fine, but Hoaggie was someone with demons from his past, so he was hard to like. It wasn't so much due to his links to a cruelly run boys home, more that he seemed a bit of a coward. Sure it is easy to be sat at home and declare you would have acted differently in that situation, but I found his meekness (for the most part) to be annoying. Mandrake was certainly the most awful of the characters here, Tubs taking more of a back seat role due to barely having any lines of dialogue and acting as almost a slave of Mandrake, doing everything that is asked of him in a way reminiscent of Of Mice and Men.

Annoyingly the film was well made, I might not have liked it but it was paced well and had some unexpected moments to it. There was a constant feel of threat and peril for the protagonists, and while there were scenes of action the special effects were sparse, with violent actions implied rather than typically shown on screen. At times it being an adaptation of a short story felt apparent, with the ninety minute run time feeling its length. More than once I found myself looking to see how much time was left, not something that happens with a movie I am completely engaged with.
The meat of the story is more of a drama, with the slow revelations of what took place back in the orphanage that Hoaggie used to work at. I just didn't care about that story though, I felt zero pity for the antagonists, and I couldn't care less that the man used to work there. I was more wishing the antagonists harm, hoping that they would get their just desserts.

I didn't enjoy watching this film, nor did I find the story to be something that appealed to me. I didn't like the characters but I did think some of the acting was good. As much as I hated him, I thought Gillies made for a great antagonist character, and the scenes of violence involving him always came across as dramatic and almost cool looking. As I said though, Coming Home in the Dark wasn't really for me, if you do decide to check it out then make sure you're mind is in a good place beforehand!

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Inside No.9: Series 9 (2024) - Comedy Horror TV Show Review

Inside No.9 was a long running British dark comedy anthology series that had been running for the past ten years. Each episode tells a stand-alone story though always features the series creators Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (Psychoville, The League of Gentlemen) playing central roles, always has the feel of a stage play and always takes place in a location that is numbered 'No.9', often a house but has also been anything from a dressing room to a game show to an escape room. It was thanks to my father that I re-discovered the show, having watched the very first season back in 2014 but then not returning until he recommended it to me a few years back. Fittingly, series 9 is the final season of the show. returning for one final block of six episodes. Would it manage to go out on a high is the question I had running through my head.

It begins with 'Boo To A Goose' that takes place in the carriage of a London underground train that has broken down one night. The eclectic group of passengers that have gotten stranded include outlandish drag queen Wilma (Pemberton), a set in their ways elderly couple, a nurse returning home from her shift, a man suffering severe paranoia and a homeless man (was lovely to see Charlie Cooper from the hilarious This Country playing that role). After the nurse's purse is stolen tensions begin to rise between the passengers. The episodes in Inside No.9 often have a twist ending to them, so you sort of come to expect that. I spent the episode trying to guess what was really going on and have to say I didn't expect what happened. It was a look at how people's perceived roles in society shape their ideals and beliefs, resulting in a dark finale.
Next was 'The Trolley Problem' that had more of a thriller vibe to it. Psychiatrist Blake (Pemberton) has brought to his remote rural home a suicidal man (Shearsmith) that he found on top of a bridge ready to jump. Over the course of the episode it is revealed both characters have dark secrets that they are hiding from each over. Personally, I really liked this one, but I have read other people criticising some of the plot holes that admittedly appear once you begin to really think about what happens here. Aside from voices on the phone, the two creators are the only characters to feature here, and demonstrate how easily they are able to carry an entire episode on their own shoulders.

Inside No.9 often likes to experiment with different styles of episodes and the stand-out one in term of feeling different was 'Mulberry Close' that takes place entirely from the viewpoint of a doorbell camera. After the wife of a new couple who have moved into Mulberry Close vanishes, the nosy neighbours suspect the husband (Shearsmith) of foul play and become determined to prove his guilt. I had heard about this one before hand and have to say I was a bit concerned how a whole episode could play out from such a grainy and restrictive camera setting. I needn't have worried as not only was it the funniest episode to come out of season 9, but it also had a series of clever twists that lent this slightly sinister farce some good late stage reveals.

Closing out the middle of the season was 'Ctrl Alt Esc' which my father proclaimed to not only be the best episode of the season, but even perhaps his personal favourite out of all the seasons! Here, Jason (Pemberton) has taken his family to an escape room as a way to bond with them, but it begins to seem that they might be in real danger, with the room maybe an actual real place of horror rather than pretend. The twist here might not have been especially mind blowing but I thought it was a decent one, and maybe even represented the best episode of the season with how well done it was all carried out.

Penultimate episode is 'The Curse of the Ninth'. This was a rare one that didn't take place in present day, instead this was set at a mansion in the Edwardian period. A talented piano tuner (Shearsmith) has been hired to tune a piano for the widow (Natalie Dormer - Game of Thrones TV show) of a recently deceased well known music composer, but it seems the widow might have ulterior motives for bringing the man there. It was great to see the ever reliable Eddie Marsan (Choose or Die, Feedback) in a supporting role here. I would say this was probably the weakest episode of the season for me, feeling a bit Inside No.9 by numbers for me, ending on a predictable note.
That just leaves final episode 'Plodding On' that has the genius setting of a wrap-party for Inside No.9, with Shearsmith and Pemberton playing fictional versions of their real selves. In terms of an ending this was fantastic, it had a giant cast of returning actors from episodes over the past ten years, and there were a boat load of easter eggs and references to past episodes that were joyful to see. In terms of story it wasn't designed to feel thrilling or like a horror, instead it centres on the fragmenting relationship between the two creators as their ideas for what to do in the future are not remotely similar. A good way to finish, and something that I feel will mean more once I have gone back and watched the load of seasons I have yet to see.

I really like Inside No.9 and it has been great to see the two creators mature over the years. In sixth form at school I was obsessed with The League of Gentlemen, and now as an adult it feels like their humour matured at the same rate as mine has. This is a show well worth watching, and being in an anthology format there really is something for everyone.

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Loop Track (2023) - Horror Film Review

From the title alone I came to the very incorrect assumption that this New Zealand based horror was going to be based around someone stuck in some sort of time loop. Instead, Loop Track (directed, written and starring Thomas Sainsbury) was harder to quantify. For much of the ninety five minute run time it has the feeling and atmosphere of a horror, yet there isn't really anything on screen to back up that feeling, something that is reflected with the troubled protagonist who is convinced of a hidden danger lurking in the trees.

Ian (Sainsbury) is an anxious and cowardly man who has headed to Evers National Park in New Zealand in order to get away from people, hoping the solitude will allow him to collect his thoughts. He has chosen a loop track - a large days long hiking route that circles round in a loop through a large wood. His desire to be alone is soon scuppered with the arrival of Nicky (Hayden J. Weal - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey uncredited), an overly confident and social man who refuses to let Ian do the long hike on his own. The two soon encounter two more hikers; newly-wed couple Austin (Tawanda Manyimo - The Meg, Ghost in the Shell) and Monica (Kate Simmonds, no relation as far as I'm aware!), and they all decide (against Ian's better judgement) to travel the loop together. As the hike goes on, Ian becomes more and more convinced that the group are being followed, but his mental state also seems to be increasingly unravelling, with his paranoia and wild imagination leading the others to fear for his sanity.

Outside of Ian believing the group is being stalked there isn't much horror here for much of the run time. You could say this was a bit of a slow burn, with much of the movie just being the hike, interspersed with the group resting in cabins along the route in the evening. There is a definite comedic vibe to parts of this, with it darkly comedic that Ian wants nothing more than to be alone, yet his social awkwardness and paranoia leads to him having to travel with the three strangers. The character of Nicky was almost a comedy character, with his constant wild boasts leading to many funny moments such as him drinking river water and insisting he has an 'iron stomach'. 

The element of a thriller comes from the four hikers not really knowing each other. Ian's erratic behaviour certainly ran alarm bells, and it is never really established just why he is off hiking so obviously unprepared. There are some red herrings along the way that hint other members of the group could have nefarious motives, though these are often swiftly sorted out. Ian wasn't really a likeable character, but then nor where the others. 

It did begin to feel like the protagonist might make for a film that follows an unreliable narrator. The viewer is shown what Ian sees, yet it is never really clear if there is anything actually there in the long lingering shots of long pathways. It also felt strange that despite his insistence of being followed none of the other characters see or hear anything that he does. The slow burn does reach a breaking point, and while I cannot go into details for risk of spoilers, the final twenty minutes break out into thrilling action with a reveal that I hadn't been expecting, this includes some fun special effects and other such things. The whole way the film has a really nice look to it, the hiking trail is beautiful, and the feeling of isolation is well realised. Part of me did wish that there had been more given to Ian's backstory, it is never made entirely clear what is up with the character.

Loop Track was a different type of film to what I had expected, but I enjoyed the hike and especially love how the story all turned out. The characters might not have been the most likeable, but there was something amusing about Ian and his struggles to get some solitude that made for a film that captivated my attention all the way to the end credits. Loop Track came to ARROW and limited edition Blu-ray on 8th July.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Tuesday 23rd July 2024

Lately my blog has been going through a very mild alteration. I have gotten out of my habit of needing to do five blog posts a week, mainly due to often being busy every other weekend. It is summer here in the U.K and thankfully the heat has been manageable so far, with only a few really hot days to speak of. On a dull personal note, I am currently avoiding coffee, instead have turned to my childhood drink of choice - tea. Exciting times indeed.

On July 16th an Indiegogo campaign was launched to get funds for indie horror film Evil Usher. This is inspired by silent movies of the 1920's and is to be a slasher film particularly inspired by such German expressionist horror films like The Man Who Laughs, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. Created by Chicago-based filmmaker Lomai, this is to be about a movie-obsessed man whose new job at a local movie theatre leads to him taking extreme measures against visitors who don't show the appropriate level of respect for the theatre. For more information head to the Indiegogo page here.

Out on VOD and Digital today is Midnight Taxi. Written and directed by Bertie Speirs and Samantha Speirs, this is about a sleep deprived night-time cab driver who one shift is startled to discover the body of a woman in the road near where he had been getting some rest. From this moment on, the cab driver begins to sleepwalk, a condition he has had since a child. With unsettling dreams he comes to believe its possible he may have been involved with the death of the woman while in a sleepwalking state, and so decides to privately investigate the murder himself in order to clear his conscience. 

Finally for today, The Luring is now on Amazon Prime Video, Tubi and other platforms. This indie feature film was winner of the Best Thriller at the Motor City Nightmares International Film Festival, with the film inspired by creepy 1956 short film The Red Balloon. The synopsis has a man returning to his family's Vermont based vacation home where a dark act took place, with the hope it will restore a missing memory that the man has. The film was shot at the former home that director Christopher Wells' family used to own, with the themes of the movie including sexual power dominance, submission and elements of BDSM.

UFO Whistleblowers: Aliens and The UAP Enigma Exposed (2024) - UFO Documentary Review

It has been just a few weeks since the last documentary about UFOs was reviewed on this site (Top 10 Mind Blowing UFO Crash Cases) and now I have a second one for review. Also coming from Bayview Entertainment, I expected the J. Michael Long directed UFO Whistleblowers: Aliens and The UAP Enigma Exposed to follow a similar light on information style. Instead it was good to see this was more in depth on its subject matter even if I don't think it will make believers of anyone not convinced of alien visitations to Earth.

Over seventy five minutes this jumps around from the 1940's to present day looking at various whistle-blowers who claim that the American government secretly has access to alien technology and alien corpses. It covers the usual subjects such as the Roswell crash and the shady powerful group allegedly going by the name Majestic 12. Also some newer topics were mentioned, such as the weird incident from 2023 where various strange objects were spotted in the skies of America (stating that at least one of these was confirmed to be a Chinese spy balloon). The documentary is more than just various case files, as it also seems determined to provide the information of just what constitutes a whistle-blower, the different forms these might take, methods used to try and supress whistle-blowers and why these people are important for a healthy democracy to function. While here they are mentioned with respect to UFO sightings and recovered technology, it also serves as talking about these people in general, as obviously whistle-blowing is not restricted just to alleged alien events.

The previous documentary suffered by not really featuring a lot of variation, happy to just show some pretty bad looking CG and be done with it. Here there are talking head segments from experts in the field, archival footage from court room reveals, cheesy re-enactments and of course some bad looking CG. There was a certain charm to the cheesy stuff shown here, and the quality of the CG while bad, didn't meet the same low quality as that other documentary I recently watched. It was all narrated by the director, and it was for the most part interesting, whether what is stated is actually real or not. One subject it kept going back to was the suggestion that there has been a long running UFO retrieval and reverse engineering program going on in the U.S, with various archival footage of people claiming this is the case. It was interesting how the modern consensus among believers is that these UFOs aren't from different planets but instead from different dimensions.
Throughout this there was a suitably mysterious soundtrack that I thought fitted this well, the documentary culminates in a relatively lengthy epilogue that ends things on a positive and optimistic note.

I thought that UFO Whistleblowers: Aliens and The UAP Enigma Exposed was better than my expectations. I wish I was a firm believer of this stuff, but I remain sceptical. Regardless, I found the formatting of this interesting, and there was enough variation that it never got stale. This documentary is available on Digital platforms worldwide, including Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA. It is also available on AVOD Digital.

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Burn Out (2024) - Short Comedy Horror Film Review

Written and directed by Russell Goldman (additional crew on Halloween and Halloween Kills) and produced by Jamie Lee Curtis and Film Independent, Burn Out is a short nearly thirteen minute comedic horror about the dangers of overexerting yourself for your work, in this case both literally and figuratively.

Virgil (Everett Osborne - Sweetwater) is a former American Football star who was forced into retirement after an injury. Now he has hopes of being a successful member of a sports management company, run by the very confident Gower (Tommie Earl Jenkins - Wednesday TV show, Death Stranding video game voicework). Virgil is working on a proposal that he really hopes will impress Gower, but the pressure of his new role has led to him becoming increasingly stressed and under a lot of pressure, that just might lead to breaking point.

Burn Out was a hard one to explain, throughout there are voice overs and promotional videos from the mesmerising Gower interspersed with Virgil hard at work on his office laptop. There were arthouse style moments to this, again, especially with Gower who keeps appearing either talking or looking at the camera, or dancing alone against a black background. Events move forward in a direction that was not expected, with it becoming increasingly surreal all the way to the end. I liked the moments where Virgil's sportsman past and his actions in the present are edited together, and the format and pacing as a whole had a unique feel to it. Special mention also goes to the silent background office workers, their expressions and actions throughout lent a lot of humour to Virgil's stressful day, as well as suggesting implications for what was really going on.

Goldman states the story was inspired by his own experiences of post-concussive syndrome and stressful work environments, and this is translated well into the short film, with Goldman saying "Nothing is scarier (or more absurd) than what we can do to ourselves." A unique and fun short film with some good special effects, Burn Out had its world premiere at the 2024 Dances With Films at Los Angeles.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Tuesday 16th July 2024

Another week has passed and time is once again flying this year. I've been a bit under the weather this past weekend and so wasn't as able to do as much of my blog as I would have liked.

The top story for this news anthology is that filmmaker Nicholas Michael Jacobs (Two Twisted Tales, Urban Fears) is going to be making one final entry in his prolific Genevieve series of short films. The titular grotesque possessed doll first appeared in the 2019 horror anthology Urban Fears and has gone on to appear in a variety of short stand alone movies. The latest, to be titled Genevieve Burns will have a priest possibly managing to end the doll's murderous rampage for good. Below is a teaser trailer as well as some shots from the upcoming film.

Shane Woodson's sixth feature film - 7 Days to Hell has its West Coast premiere at the Look Theater at 8pm today. This action fantasy is a sequel to 8 Days to Hell. The synopsis has a man, JJ who after making a deal with the devil is tasked with collecting seven souls in seven days.

Finally for today, a first look for Adrian Tofei and Duru Yücel's apocalyptic feature film We Put the World to Sleep has been released. The film is the second in Tofei's trilogy which began with the found footage cult classic Be My Cat: A Film for Anne and is to end with Pure. While each entry appears to be stand alone they collectively form part of a cohesive universe. We Put the World to Sleep has been filmed over five years across thirteen locations in Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine, featuring a diverse international cast and having four of its five principal cast members being female. Adrian and Duru star in the film as characters sharing their same names but no other similarities. The synopsis states the pair have embarked on a secret mission to bring about the end of the world.

Graveyard Shark (2024) - Comedy Horror Film Review

From the title alone I assumed that the Matthew A. Peters (Big Brood, Brackish) directed and written Graveyard Shark was not going to be a film that took itself seriously, that certainly turned out to be the case. I had images of a shark somehow 'swimming' beneath the surface of a graveyard, but this was more of a creature feature, featuring an antagonist who was obviously someone wearing a shark-man costume, but one that still looked good.

Abby (Stephanie Ward - Big Brood) has dedicated her life to hunting down and killing monsters after seeing her father be killed by one when she was a child. Despite her mission, herself and her long suffering assistant Greg (Michael John Gilbert - Big Brood) haven't actually ever been close to finding one. One day she is unexpectedly contacted by Dr. Jan Lovnik (Olga N. Bogdanova - Earworm) who hires her to come and stop a monstrous beast known as the Graveyard Shark who has been terrorising a large graveyard outside the town of Willsboro Point. Learning about the creature from a Graveyard Shark survivors group, and hearing of its origins from the eccentric Captain Issac Seyburn (Berndele March), she sets out to stop its reign of terror once and for all.

It was good to see Ward here as the protagonist as I thought her small role in Big Brood was a lot of fun. Here she doesn't disappoint either with something charming about her determination to stop the monster. The character was driven with there seeming to be no doubt within her about what needs to be done. It was also good to see Gilbert again, here playing as comedic role as previously with the weird character he had. Best of the supporting roles was the character of Captain Seyburn, such as weird person, with the actor delivering his lines in such a dramatic way that made him a joy to see on screen.
There was a lot of humour throughout the film, with a huge chunk of the jokes revolving around sex, something that isn't my favourite type of humour. There were a little too many scenes around this, the most pointless one being a dream sequence where Abby sleeps with a Bigfoot creature for some reason, while elsewhere you had several sex scenes featuring bare breasts that seemed to be there just for titillation, rather than serving any real purpose. Admittedly, the lengthy flashback sequence Captain Seyburn has where he gets caught up in too much detail about a past exploit he has much to Abby's ever increasing disgust was a bit funny, especially with him in the present adding flavour to his retelling by doing things to the food he has around him.

The Graveyard Shark looked different to what I had expected, with him looking like a villain from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A muscley humanoid creature wearing clothes was not the look I figured would be gone for. It did fit into the feel of the movie and there were a steady stream of victims from beginning to end. While it is in the last act when Abby and company head off to do battle, there were plenty of scenes of characters getting killed throughout the film's one hour thirty seven minute run time. The actual attack scenes were often a little light on detail, the shark biting its victims in a way that this was obscured from the camera, but featuring plenty of blood spraying every where and more than a few kills where the intestines are pulled out from the victims. I did like the origin story for the creature. feeling like something that wouldn't have been out of place in an episode of The Mighty Boosh.

The humour wasn't always to my liking, but I still found myself enjoying Graveyard Shark. It was surreal and weird, and featured a good amount of enjoyable characters. It was also well made, looking better than the comedy indie horror films of ten years or so back that it often reminded me of. Graveyard Shark is due to be released on July 19th on Blu-Ray, DVD, VHS, and a special collector's box set, it can be pre-ordered from Mad Angel Films' website here.

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Night of the Devil (2021) - Short Horror Film Review

Night of the Devil is a ten minute long short horror film which was directed by Anthony Calvitti in his directorial debut. This is set in the 1970's and carries with it an authentic feeling vibe of that era with some of the effects it uses to simulate super-8 recordings. The film covers a lot of ground in its short time frame, as a result it does feel a little abrupt in its scene changes.

On the Halloween of 1971 a young teenage boy wearing a devil costume is captured by some crazed cultists and used as part of their ritual to summon a demon. Fast forward to the Halloween of 1978 and the story of what happened that night has passed into legend, with a teenager retelling the story to his friends around a campfire. He states that the demonically possessed boy now roams the area, forced to kill on Halloween in order to stay alive. Unfortunately for him and his friends, this urban legend has some truth to it...

There are a variety of time skips as well as two different credit sequences stuffed into the ten minutes, making for a horror film that was quite ambitious. To me, it did feel like it struggled to be able to fit everything in to the time allotted, with the story flowing ever onwards meaning certain parts were light on detail. I thought the prologue sequence was great, and the initial campfire section also was decent. The later half of the short again jumped ahead in time for an interesting conclusion to the tale.

There are special effects used which are designed to evoke horror, but I didn't think it was that well presented to the viewer. What happens to the protagonists didn't appear on screen as nightmarishly harrowing as I think it was meant to, led to a slightly damp finish. I often think less is more, but this might have benefitted with a slightly longer run time to really add in some details, especially where the end of the campfire scene is concerned. On the huge plus side, this  looked great, nice editing, a good soundtrack and a decent cast of characters (who include among them Lauren LaVera and Rachel Keefe - Terrifier 2, as well as Veronica Carlson, Alexander Jameson and Richard Lyntton). Night of the Devil can currently be viewed on the BritFlicks YouTube channel.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for 11th July 2024

Last week I was away on my annual holiday with my father, this year heading to the beaches of Normandy for a tour of the battlefields from World War II. Not horror related (not fake horror anyway) so I won't be including any of that here. As a result however I am a bit behind, having taken a week off for the trip. I have a load of screeners waiting to be watched for review so will try and get through those as quick as my day job will allow me. Onwards to the news...

VIPCO and Bayview Entertainment are to release a documentary called God vs. UFOs on AVOD digital platforms on 27th August 2024, with it out on digital platforms now. This looks at the possible origins and nature of UFOs. The doc looks into if these sightings could be natural occurrences, scientific creations or even if they are evidence of spiritual apparitions. Directed by Mark Christopher, this includes a host of experts including retired UK Ministry of Defence official Nick Pope (Ancient Aliens), Demonologist Ian Broadmore and the curator of the Great British UFO Learning Centre, John Hanson among others.

A new feature film in the classic The Return of the Living Dead series is going to be created, titled Trash's Revenge. Produced by and starring Linnea Quigley and Beverly Randolph, who star alongside original cast members Thom Matthews, John Philbin and Miguel Nunez, with original soundtrack composer Francis Haines also returning. There is no word on the story yet, but with all of the returning actor's original characters dead (spoiler for the 1985 movie!) it will be interesting to see if this is a re-telling of that story, or be set in an alternate timeline in which they all survived the night of the talking dead. An Indiegogo campaign is due to start on Friday July 19th. I do love that zombie series so really hope this is successful in getting made.
For a time the Indiegogo page was down, it turns out this was because Dragon Studios (the company producing Trash's Revenge) discovered that Living Dead Media had been illegitimately claiming copyright ownership for the past decade over the Return of the Living Dead brand, so legal stuff had to happen behind the scenes. With the page now restored I'm assuming progress is being made on that side of things. You can head to the page (here) to sign up for an email update for when the campaign goes live.

Finally for today, The Omicron Killer has been released by Bayview Entertainment, LLC on digital platforms worldwide, with it coming to AVOD digital platforms on 27th August 2024. This comes from director Jeff Knite and stars Bai Long (Necronomicon), Felissa Rose (Camp Twilight) and Lynn Lowry (There's No Such Thing as Zombies). The brief synopsis states a copycat serial killer is on the loose, determined to be even more deadly than the person they modelled themselves on.

Top 10 Mind Blowing UFO Crash Cases (2024) - UFO Documentary Review

                   

Me and my father always enjoy documentaries about aliens and other supernatural and extra-terrestrial subjects. Top 10 Mind Blowing UFO Crash Cases is one such program of that type, this, as the title suggests, takes in ten different alleged instances. Short on substance, but entertaining in that nice brain-dead type of way, there might be not much new or surprising to be found within the forty five minutes here but it was not a chore to get through.

This takes a swift tour of some of the most well documented crashes of unidentified flying objects. Going by the term itself this is true, as to whether these were actually involving beings from other planets or dimensions remains the bigger question. There is no sort of order to these cases discussed, and neither do they all involve crashes itself. Instead, this covers a range of topics, from actual reported crashes to second hand accounts of having been shown alien technology at top secret army bases.

The old classics are on hand, with Roswell being one of the most well known ones shown here. There is not anything new revealed, instead this takes a light on details approach to quickly going over the topics. This was narrated by a variety of different serious sounding narrators, and there were not any talking head moments, or anyone being interviewed on screen at all. There wasn't a balanced approach, with it never explicitly stating these were alien in origin, but not looking at any possible other explanation either. Much of the fast paced editing puts in crude looking animations of aliens, wild artworks of giant crashed flying saucers, and still images. Some, like the Aztec, New Mexico crash have since commonly believed to have been a hoax, yet this isn't mentioned within the documentary, though it does state that official sources have claimed alleged events such as that one were not believed. I guess you could say that goes into cover-up territory, with this often suggesting that crashes reported as hoaxes or dismissed by the authorities were only done so to deceive the public from the truth. 

The content used for each crash often goes off on slight tangents, such as talking about American comedian Jackie Gleason who alleges he was invited to a top secret army base where he was shown remains of aliens and the saucer they arrived in. There is also talk of future technology that came about as a result of crashed UFOs, such as laser technology and new, never before seen materials.
On the one had, this isn't going to make a believer of anyone, nor will it reveal any unheard of cases. Despite that, this was entertaining with a wide variety of different little animations, photos and looped clips as a backdrop to the super serious and dramatic narrators. Written by O.H Krill, and directed by Charles Thompsen, Top 10 Mind Blowing UFO Crash Cases is out on digital platforms, including to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the U.K and U.S, and is also out worldwide on AVOD digital platforms.

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Fallout: Season 1 (2024) - Post Apocalyptic TV Show Review

The Fallout TV show really enjoyed a moment of being a cultural phenomenon earlier this year when it came out to critical acclaim. I did my usual thing of taking ages to get through the show, with little reason other than I never wanted to commit to an entire hour to watch an episode. I've finally gotten through it, though my stop-start approach means I may be a bit hazy on some of the details. If all that sounds like I disliked the show then you would be mistaken, as this was a darn good adaptation that did the franchise proud.

The show doesn't adapt one of the many games, but it does put itself into a canonical position, taking place roughly fifteen years after Fallout 4. This mainly takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, several hundred years after nuclear war devastated that world. Luckily, Vault-Tec had a plan, they created hundreds of self-sustaining underground vaults that people could live in for countless generations until the surface world was once again inhabitable. Lucy (Ella Purnell - Army of the Dead) is the daughter of the overseer of California based Vault 33 (Hank MacLean played by Kyle MacLachlan - Twin Peaks) who lives a naïve and idyllic life. An arranged marriage has been planned between Lucy and someone from the neighbouring Vault 32, and one day the inhabitants of that vault travel to 33 for the wedding ceremony. It isn't long before it is revealed that the group, led by a woman named Lee Moldaver (Saria Choudhury - Jessica Jones TV show, Homeland TV show) are actually bandits from the surface world, they attack the vault dwellers and kidnap Hank. Going against the wishes of her people, Lucy sets out into the wasteland to try and track down her father.
Meanwhile, Maximus (Aaron Moten), a member of a religious group of old technology worshipping knights called The Brotherhood of Steel is made the squire of one of the powerful armoured knights, and sets out with the man on an important mission.
Elsewhere, a bounty hunter zombie-like ghoul (who in his former life before the bombs dropped had been a well known actor), Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins - Ant-Man and the Wasp, Predators) is also hired for an important mission.
Over the course of the eight episodes, these three characters end up repeatedly crossing paths with each other, with it revealed that they are all essentially going after the same thing.

I have always liked the Fallout series of games, but thinking back on them for this review it was only really Fallout 3 that I would say I loved. People rave about Fallout: New Vegas but personally I disliked the faction system, Fallout 4 was good at the time, but it wasn't the most exciting game, while I own Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout: Tactics, and Fallout 76 but haven't actually ever gotten around to playing them. It was a good decision to make this a canonical and new entry in the timeline rather than trying to make one of the previous games into a show. As good as The Last of Us show was, it was very low on surprises due to me being so familiar with the game. This show builds upon what made the games so cool, and features plenty of easter eggs for those familiar. The set design is mostly fantastic with a variety of locations visited. One of my favourite parts was a sub-plot set back in Vault 33, with Lucy's brother Norm (Moises Arias) discovering the hidden dark side to the vault and the real reason it was set-up the way it was.

The three main storylines meant that there was something new always going on, and I enjoyed the way that the characters would occasionally meet up. The three protagonists also had differing personality types. Lucy is wonderfully innocent when she first travels to the surface, making for some amusing scenes. The show charts her transition into a powerful character in her own right, though never losing her sense of goodness. In the middle is Maximus, a morally grey character who wants more than anything to become a knight of The Brotherhood of Steel and get his own power armour. He is shown to be severely uneducated, giving him an innocence all of his own, though he is far more inclined to make selfish decisions without thinking of the consequences. While he might be low intelligence, he is an endearing and likeable character. Then there is Cooper, the most complex and least noble. His storyline features a lot of flashbacks to his time pre-war, and with around a quarter of Fallout set in that time period, he was integral to showing what transpired. It was interesting how his past-self was almost the polar opposite to his present day self - someone cold and calculating who sees existence as the survival of the fittest.

With the show switching between the three protagonists, the subplot back at the vault, and frequent lengthy flashbacks to pre-war, this did a good balancing act, never making it feel like one storyline was more important than the others. Of course, Lucy herself is the prime protagonist, but her and the others quests always felt like enough time and attention was being paid to them. It captures the kooky darkly humorous vibe of the games wonderfully, and also features a couple of stand-out action sequences. The first time that Cooper, Lucy, and Maximus met was perhaps my favourite of these, though the show also ends in a large action sequence. It didn't help that due to taking so long to watch the show, I had pretty much every story-beat spoiled from the internet. For the next season I will definitely be watching it sharpish!

I loved Fallout, I thought it was very well written, featured fantastic characters, and they got the humour spot-on. We may live in a dark and scary world, but I'm so glad we also live in a time when such great video game adaptations are being made.

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