A Woman Scorned (2025) - Thriller Film Review

Watching the Rebecca J. Matthews and Michael Hoad co-directed thriller A Woman Scorned it occurred to me that if it had featured a male protagonist then I likely wouldn't have reviewed it on this blog. I'm not sure if that points to a subconscious sexism on my part, but there is something about a woman being the one in peril that makes it fit more into horror. The female revenge genre of thrillers is one that can sometimes be hard to watch, but seeing a person perceived to be weak getting justice on her abusers is always satisfying. There have been plenty of good examples over the years, from the lows of such films as Even Lambs Have Teeth to the giddy heights of Revenge and Julia. This particular one might not be perfect, but it was very entertaining and satisfying to watch.

American siblings Jas (Megan Purvis - Don't Knock Twice) and Laura (Hannah Pauley - Monsternado) have gone away to the English countryside for the weekend to catch up, with it insinuated that Jas had been through a difficult time with an abusive ex. While exploring the countryside they chance upon a group of men, led by Randy (Aaron-Jon North - The Nun II). These men try to strike up a conversation with the sisters, but being suspicious of them, and with the safety of having a river separating them, Laura dismisses them and they leave. Later that day, while Jas has gone to the shop to buy some alcohol, Randy and his men turn up at the remote house they are staying at and forces his way in, with his men in tow. It isn't clear exactly what his intentions had been, but due to Laura fighting back, Randy shoots her dead in anger. Jas arrives home to the tragic scene and is distraught, but upon recognising the man left behind to dispose of the body as being part of the group her and Laura encountered earlier, Jas sets out for a night of most bloody revenge.

It all begins with a flash-forward that shows a bloody Jas standing over an injured Randy, pointing a gun at him. As the scene fades to black a gunshot rings out. I thought it was interesting to have the primary antagonist being shown to be killed. It certainly made me intrigued to know how events spiralled to that, but it also did take away some of the mystique and threat of the main bad guy. There is a lot to be found here that seemed a bit unbelievable, mainly with the character of Jas herself. She was played wonderfully by Purvis, and I would be lying my socks off if I said I wasn't rooting for her success every step of the way, but the way she was able to both dish out and take punishment was never that well explained. There was a throwaway comment near the start that she had taken up marital arts after a situation in her past, so I guess that explains how she is able to defeat a small armies worth of beefy men. Doesn't so much explain her bizarrely high tolerance for pain, she has a lot of bad stuff happen to her throughout the movie, everything from getting shot, electrocuted, beaten, knocked out, and battered. Each time though she just seems to channel her anger more and more, coming back from things that the antagonists never seem able to come back from. In my head canon, with her past not explained, I began to assume she was some type of highly skilled American agent!

Her battles with the various henchmen were the filling of the movie sandwich. I loved how incompetent the villains were, constantly underestimating Jas and reacting in horror to the scenes of carnage she leaves in her wake. With Jas attacking a room full of men while armed with a chainsaw before the film had even reached the half hour mark I knew that there would be a lot of exciting action to come. The pacing has Randy summoning up seemingly endless small groups of men to try and deal with the psychotic unstoppable woman, but them constantly being defeated due to over confidence. Some of these actors looked the part more than acted the part (a few dodgy line deliveries can be found throughout), but each has their own turn to have a fun, well choreographed fight scene with the frenzied woman who uses everything at her disposal to fight, from books and vases, to axes, knifes, and of course that chainsaw! I began to get a real John Wick feel with how battle damaged she got, while still maintaining the edge. It wasn't all perfect, with some plot holes that were never really explained. The biggest of these had Jas showing up at the bad guys HQ (some dusty barn somewhere) early on with no explanation as to how she knew that was where they were based. That fades away with the manic scenes of violence, plenty of excellent shots of blood pumping out of wounds, and dramatic death scenes. It only really let itself down during a kill that involved fire, the fire looking very CG, taking me out the story for a moment or two.

I didn't expect to enjoy A Woman Scorned half as much as I did. Jas might be a bit unrealistic, but her cathartic journey was a joy to behold, while the humorously ill prepared bad guys gave some black humour (such as when two men are listening at a door happily thinking their buddy is sexually assaulting Jas when in actuality the noises are from her stabbing the guy repeatedly!). Then you have North who was a fantastic antagonist to hate. This indie thriller might not be perfect, but it was a heck of a lot of fun to watch play out.

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Necromancer (2009) by Scott Harper

The shame, the absolute shame. Back in the beginning years of my blog I was all too eager to accept book after book for review despite having a terrible track record for the length of time it takes me to read such things. Back in 2012, author Scott Harper sent me some of his novels for review. It took me until 2019 to read Predators or Prey? Now, some six years later I have gotten around to reading the sequel to that book; Necromancer. 

Two years ago, former con-artist Wendy Markland discovered to her horror that vampires were actually real. That knowledge dramatically changed her, and now she scours the web looking for similar reports, having decided to dedicate her life to hunting the undead. Having recently found strange reports of the dead coming back to life in the small remote town of Pinewick, New Jersey, Wendy heads there, expecting to possibly once again encounter vampires. She is shocked to discover that this time around it is zombies causing chaos, another mythical monster she had not believed to be real. Despite not being what she expected, she is determined to find the source of the outbreak and stop it, but that source turns out to be something even more horrific than the walking dead.

I gave Predators or Prey? a respectable seven rotted zombie heads out of ten back when I reviewed it. This was despite my misgivings with aspects of the story. I had no idea that Necromancer would instead deal with zombies rather than vampires, I think if I had realised that I may have gotten to this one sooner. I disliked the protagonists of that prior book, but it was at least good to see Wendy wasn't quite so insufferable this time around, and I also appreciated that her former partner and love interest Jacob was out the picture. The book did a good job of bringing readers up to speed on what had previously happened, while it would be useful to have read that first novel, I don't think it is essential reading. Her determination and desire that no one else should suffer like she did made her more likeable and less selfish feeling, though she wasn't without her issues. I don't know if she is intended to be a narcissist, or if it is the author's desire to make her seem like the most beautiful woman who ever lived, but she is back once again shamelessly admiring her naked body in mirrors whenever she gets a chance, an off putting aspect of her character. This comes to a head with a few awkward sex scenes that went into a little too much detail for my liking, I even skimmed past the second one as it was not what I wanted from a horror novel.

Thankfully, the horror part of the book was solid. Having expected a book about vampires, I unintentionally ended up reading two books at the same time that were about the walking dead, but they were so different in tone that this didn't cause me any confusion. The undead were wonderfully described here, and the zombie virus even spread to animals, giving some exciting moments. My very favourite part of the novel had Wendy and a few others battling a zombie bear out in the pouring rain. Was such a thrilling chapter! There is a definite antagonist creature for this novel, and he was written to appear fearful. My two complaints with him were firstly that he was supposed to have a mystery helper, but this characters identity was never really made much of a secret, meaning their eventual reveal wasn't shocking or that interesting. Secondly, with the book fast approaching the end and the story unresolved I thought maybe things would end on a cliff-hanger. Instead, the story is neatly tied up, but in a way that felt a little bit rushed with the climatic battle occurring within a brief chapter.

I don't particularly have fond memories of the first novel, so this knocked my socks off a bit with how enjoyable I found Necromancer. Sure, I could do without the sex scenes and Wendy's bizarre obsession with her perfect body, but the horror here was cool, the small town characters that Wendy befriends enjoyable, and the writing did a fantastic job of making the events come to life in my minds eye.

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The Plastic Men (2025) - Horror Film Review

Directed and written by Samuel Gonzalez Jr. (The Retaliators), The Plastic Men is a movie that is about coming to terms with your past, using horror as a device to explore that. Starting off light-hearted, I wasn't even sure I had been been provided with the correct screener, but things soon escalated into a post-Vietnam hellscape, the horror very much psychological.

Based on a true story (details of which are provided via some screens of text at film's end), this tells the story of Vietnam veteran Jonathan Teller (James Preston) as he struggles to adjust to normal life after his traumatic experiences during his time in the war. Haunted by severe hallucinations and flashbacks, the man is ready to end his life, but a chance encounter with a stranger changes his fate.

This takes a sympathetic view of veterans, with the director himself being one this was obviously going to be the case. I had expected a film in the vein of all time classic Vietnam veteran horror, Jacob's Ladder, something which it would be hard to beat. Without deep spoilers, that could be said to have a certain paranormal influence to what is actually going on, while with The Plastic Men it is shown to all be in the protagonists damaged mind. The story moves around in time, covering key points of Jonathan's life, though interestingly, the whole Vietnam section isn't shown, except as disjointed hellish flashbacks. It isn't clear what troubles the man so much, but the frequent hallucination of a little Vietnamese girl suggests darkness. I liked how this backstory was teased over the course of the film, little moments, such as Jonathan dropping a soup can in a store he was working at have a greater relevance later on. The hallucinations are where the horror is at, with various items frequently leaking blood, and certain scenes devolve into madness due to the perspective of the unreliable protagonist. One example is him shooting up a bus load of people, only for it to be revealed this only took place in his head.

The jumps in time are smoothed over by the narrator (William Fichtner - Independence Day: Resurgence, Elysium); an older version of Jonathan whose narration feeds into the true life aspect of the tale (the film being based on an unanswered mysterious Craigslist ad in which an unnamed veteran thanked a woman for saving his life many decades previously). Of the side characters, many were not really given any details to flesh them out, my favourite of these was Abbott (Aaron Dalla Villa - Immortal), a crazed antagonistic veteran who later comes to represent the more demented side of Jonathan's internal thoughts. He appeared in all my favourite scenes, his manic energy brought to life excellently by the actor.

The Plastic Men wasn't the film I thought it was going to be, the psychological horror all taking place in the main character's mind rather than an actual physical horror. It was a deep dive into living with your past, and how to move on from traumatic events, making for a story with a purpose, though one that even at eighty minutes felt quite slow paced. The constant shifting of time periods helped keep things feeling fresh, and while not entirely my type of film, I thought the story being told was decent enough. The Plastic Men releases on Amazon on March 11th.

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Diskomfort EP (2025) by Vlimmer - Music EP Review

Vlimmer (Berlin based musician Alexander Donat) is back with a new EP, Diskomfort EP, following on from last year's Bodenhex album. This new one brings together five tracks of goodness, with a lean and lovely runtime of twenty minutes. 

The five tracks making up the EP all share a similar style of a repetitive drum beat from start to end. The press release states this is more dreamlike than the darkness that could be found in his last album. Kicking off with 'Firmament', it follows into 'Ungleichgewicht', carrying on the drum beat sound. While the constant drums of a threading factor, each track has its distinct sound of often reflective sound, such as the eighties goth disco beat of 'Friedhofen', and the more introspective sounding title track 'Diskomfort'. It ends on the off-kilter sound of 'Nachleben' that was my favourite track on EP, one that certainly had a dreamlike feel to it, weirdly reminding me of the music of Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds!

I liked this as much as I expected to, I especially liked how it seemed to improve with each listen, each track having a similar hypnotic repetitive beat to it but coming out with its own fresh sound. Diskomfort EP is another release from Vlimmer that is well worth a listen.

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It's Name Was Mormo (2024) - Horror Film Review

Another week and another found footage horror film for review, this time with the Mark Andrew Bowers directed Cyprus horror Its Name Was Mormo. A quick search of the word 'Mormo' states it was a female spirit in Greek folklore whose name was invoked by mothers to keep their children from misbehaving. This horror contains actual moments of horror, this made for a nice change, but the ninety minute runtime saw my interest waning before the finish.

The found footage is presented as if it is part of recovered evidence by the 'Truths: Criminal Psychology' group who are investigating the strange case of a family that resulted in the parents (Mark played by the director, Marcela played by Marcela Cardenas) found dead in the ruins of an old village, and their young child Mia (Mia Bowers) missing. The found footage takes the form of three recovered videos found at the scene and at the family's home, as well as audio recordings, dossiers, and photos. The three videos chart Mark discovering a strange box at the site of the village and deciding to take it home with him, with the subsequent videos showing the terror this unleashed, with the family home seeming to be haunted by an angry spirit.

First off, I did like the wraparound segment showing how this footage had been discovered. It felt more fresh than the typical screen of text explaining things. The three films almost created the feeling of an anthology, neatly splitting the film up into three distinct mood pieces. The first seventeen minutes show the day time discovery of the box. My initial annoyances were just why Mark decided to take the box in the first place! Covered in chains, and buried under a mound of rocks should have been warning enough, but failing that, the discovery that it contained a load of bones and old coins should have been a klaxon call to leave the damn thing where it was! I guess that wouldn't have made for an interesting film, but the decision to take the box irked me for the remainder of the movie. 

The second act falls more into Paranormal Activity type, with Mark opening this segment (that lasted around forty seven minutes) stating that due to weird stuff happening in the home over the past few months, he has decided to make video diaries, as well as set up cameras all around the property. You get all the usual things, such as doors opening and closing on their own, and unexplained sounds, but much like the rest of the film, this goes on far too long with little really being shown. I admit there was a decent almost Skinamarink feeling of constant terror here, mainly thanks to Mia, the best actor in the film, mainly due to her probably not even realising she was in a film. Second best actor was the dog, which just left Mark and Marcela. Marcela was great at sounding terrified, Mark wasn't so much, with his delivery of his lines feeling stilted and awkward. It led to me inadvertently laughing whenever he shouted out in fear or urgently called the names of his loved ones, which I am sure wasn't the intended response. There was some attempt to explain why the family hadn't looked for help (they didn't speak the local language), but no explanation again as to why they decided to keep that damn box, or why they made no attempt to not stay at their obviously now haunted home!
This leads to the final twenty five minutes which had plenty of pretty effective moments. Again though, this section was just too long, not helped by two different viewpoints of murky, near pitch black rambling through an effective looking location. I was impressed with the camera glitches that actually look authentic rather than the usual artificial looking effects, but for this final section to have worked it really needed to be cut down in size. The whole film would have worked in a much more lean format, each of the three segments had their moments, but all outstayed their welcome.

Its Name Was Mormo had great sound design, and some unsettling prolonged moments of horror. Where it let itself down however was with the long length for relatively little being shown, and the two adult characters who I frequently was unable to take seriously. This wasn't terrible by any means, but it was a bit frustrating to see a great found footage movie trapped under too much bloat.

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House of the Dead II: Dead Aim (2005) - Horror Film Review

I've owned zombie horror film House of the Dead II: Dead Aim for many years, but I had such bad memories of the Uwe Boll directed original that I had long put off watching this sequel. That original made the cardinal sin of being as dull as dishwater, even if it had a couple of inspired moments, such as editing in gameplay from the Sega video games it was based on during some of its more action packed scenes. In terms of quality, this Michael Hurst (New Blood) directed sequel is not better, but is more entertaining in that special way that only low budget zombie films can be.

A university science professor trying to perfect a serum to resurrect the dead (a short but sweet role by cult actor Sid Haig - The Devil's Rejects) results in the accidental unleashing of a virus that turns the students and teachers of the university into flesh hungry ghouls. Catching the attention of a zombie hunting organisation known as A.M.S, they send two agents; Nightingale (Emmanuelle Vaugier - Saw II) and Ellis (Ed Quinn - Werewolf: The Beast Among Us) as well as a small group of soldiers to the place of learning. Their mission is to retrieve a blood sample from patient zero, with the hope a vaccine can be created from the blood. They are working against the clock however, the army planning to destroy the place by missiles in order to contain the contagion.

This was cheesy, predictable, and silly in a way that if not purposely done, was still a good reflection on the cheesy video games that the property spawned from. Over the hour and a half runtime there are many easily avoidable deaths, groan worthy one liners, and stupid ideas. One of the things I most love about zombie films is that it doesn't matter if the plot is particularly good, as long as there are enough undead I am going to be happy, content to switch off my brain and let the goofiness and mayhem wash over me. Unlike the first movie, this one remembers to be entertaining, from the start to the finish there isn't really a let-up, with the action forever increasing, and the odds of survival getting more and more ridiculous. Side characters mainly existed to be swiftly killed, it was funny how fast the soldiers were defeated, even one of them who stated he had fought the undead before, kept mistaking zombies for survivors until his luck ran out. Most memorable of these soldiers was Bart (James Parks - Kill Bill: Vol 1, Vol 2), a self serving and cocky man who was as entertaining as he was sleazy. I liked Nightingale and Ellis, they didn't have much to them other than tonnes of bravado and a willingness to be cold as ice when it came to dealing with the recently infected, but they did remind me of the protagonist duos you would see in the games.

Initially in small numbers, the amount of walking corpses increases as the film goes on. There did seem to be a bit of main character energy with the protagonists, as they are able to survive intense close quarters fighting of large groups without getting bitten or scratched, while the more expendable characters instantly get bitten. To be fair to them, by the end of the movie the zombie actors direction seems to be 'pretend you are in a mosh pit at a hardcore music festival' as they seemed to do little more than rush the heroes with their arms windmilling in large circles! There is plenty of blood, plenty of action, and a couple of references to the games. The games are not known for their deep stories, and this is the same, the plot is incredibly basic and fitted the vibe of a short and sweet arcade machine light gun game. Some later story beats were more silly than serious, but it gave a reason to increase the tension and threat level. Zombies were plentiful and looked the part, often appearing in huge groups. Nothing like the games, there were just zombies here and no other creatures, and those zombies look like former people rather than lab grown monstrosities. I was fine with this though, I was more than happy that the film was enjoyably dumb rather than a lesson in tedium. I also appreciated how this was linked to the first movie, rather than being a completely self contained story. Lastly, I enjoyed the bleak ending to this, always good to see in these types of movies!

With zombie films it is never so much 'is this good?' but more 'is this fun?' House of the Dead II: Dead Aim is not a good movie, but it was an enjoyable one. The university setting might not be the most original, in fact, there is little here that is original, but there are spirited performances from people who are likely all too aware of the level of film they are acting in. The story might be incredibly basic, but I kind of get the feeling that was the intention, and being from the early 2000s (that I have huge nostalgia for), this was a zombie film that did exactly what it set out to do, mindless entertainment.

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The Rotting Zombie's Round-Up of Horror News for February 2025

2025 has been continuing unexpectedly interesting in my personal life this year, while I'm trying to keep my rotted beak out of Reddit too much as there is some terrible things happening around the world at the moment it seems. Also, I have to say, I really dislike the apparent Nazi in charge of Twitter, but due to having the most followers on that platform I am stuck having to use it. I am however on Threads and Bluesky now. With that out the way, onwards to the news...

New werewolf film Byte is now on Tubi. The weird synopsis states a group of friends discover a phone app that claims to be able to transform people into werewolves, which coincides in a series of gruesome attacks around town. Written/directed by Eddie Lengyel (St Patrick's Day: The Sluagh Awakens), this stars Kayden Bryce (An Intrusion), Marshall Vargas (Specter) and Carlie Allen (Shredded).

Final Days: Tales from the End Times is a new anthology that as the title suggests is based around the apocalypse. Five different directors bring five different tales of the end of everything, with the film starring Robert LaSardo (Bloodthirst), Kayla Kelly, Seth Boyer, and Rodney B. Snyder. It is currently available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video to rent or buy, and beginning March 28th 2025, Terror Films Releasing will be releasing it across a variety of digital platforms.

The American Ripper is the latest horror film from ITN Movies. Said to be inspired by The Shining and Joker, this comes from filmmaking couple Chuck and Karolina Morrongiello who were responsible for all aspects of production, from acting to directing, the soundtrack, and editing. The synopsis has a newly married couple moving into a new house. It is here that the husband swiftly turns into a homicidal maniac, torturing his new wife, and killing anyone who gets in his way. The American Ripper is currently available on Tubi and Amazon.

Don't Get Eaten is a family horror-comedy set for digital debut for North American VOD platforms and DVD on March 4th 2025. The story is about a zombie apocalypse prepper whose wife is fed up with her husbands obsession with making zombie survival videos. On the advice of a couples therapist, the family head away for a technology free weekend, but it is here where an actual zombie apocalypse begins. Written and directed by George Simon and Joseph Simon, the cast include among them Justin Kilduff, Melinda Rose, Dale Dobson, and Reese Ravencraft.

Finally for today, March 11th 2025 sees the release of Troma Entertainment's Eating Miss Campbell on Blu-ray. This is a high school horror comedy about a vegan-goth introvert (Lyndsey Craine - Book of Monsters) whose affair with teacher Miss Campbell (Lala Barlow) results in the girl getting a taste for flesh and deciding to try and win the schools 'All You Can Eat Massacre' contest. Though not a sequel, Vito Trigo (Return to Nuke 'Em High), Lloyd Kaufman (President of Troma Entertainment), Dani Thompson (Video Shop Tales of Terror), and Laurence R. Harvey (The Human Centipede sequels) all reprise their roles from My Bloody Banjo.

Heretics (2024) - Horror Film Review

It had been a hot minute since I had last watched a found footage horror for review so I was ready to give the Jose Prendes (Monster Mash) directed and Ryan Ebert written Heretics a fair chance. This was very old school in how it was created and unfortunately that meant there was a lot to dislike here.

A bunch of teenage friends are having a drunken garden party one evening. With the alcohol flowing and the friends running out of ideas for what to do, one of them suggests that they head to the abandoned Simmons estate (no relation, my surname is 'Simmonds'!). It is a local place rumoured to be inhabited by crazy homeless people, which teens in the area visit as a test of their courage, to see if they can last the night there. Things briefly go well, but it isn't too long before the group find themselves under assault from a group of murderous demon worshipping cultists.

Firstly, I thought how the found footage aspect was presented was different to the normal way. There is some text at film's start but instead of stating the following was to be recovered footage found it is instead praising a demon named Lilith. I thought that screen and the one at the end of Heretics was probably the best idea here. This falls into all the usual generic tropes of the genre. It begins with a far too long introduction, twenty seven minutes of dumb teenagers playing drinking games and flirting might have intended to give the characters some fleshing out, but it just made me dislike them more than I would have without that part. By the half hour mark the teens have finally got to the abandoned house, I noted that it was thirty three minutes when the first moment that could be considered horror happened, and from here it is somehow all downhill.
Things progress predictably, lots of people filming for absolutely no reason, the scared teens constantly running into the basement rather than making any attempt to break the multitude of weak looking windows in the house proper, constant excuses as to why they shouldn't just try and escape, and then the third act. Third act goes full shaky cam, lots of really blurry and hard to see scenes put against static camera recordings that were so dark it was hard to make much out. This wasn't exciting, instead the most action packed section of the film felt plain dull.

There were too many characters to care about, none of which had much personality to them. Stand-out was Eva (Neeley Dayan), only because her being the only religious character made her easier to remember than the rest of the idiotic teens. I also enjoyed seeing prolific actor Eric Roberts (Devil's Knight, Down Below) in a small role here. I assume a lot of the dialogue was improvised as it was mainly made up of characters saying the same things in different ways over and over again. A bit where Jessica (Shelby Wright) films a video message for her parents while sniffling was a blatant homage to The Blair Witch Project, making me roll my eyes. The cultists unfortunately came across as comically cartoonish. When they first appeared, climbing through windows they briefly looked like a threat as it appeared they were wearing balaclavas so seemed intimidating. It soon became clear they were idiots too, black robed and wearing goofy black masks, it was hard to take them seriously, not helped by their bumbling around and Scooby-Doo type reveals of who they actually were. One thing Heretics does get right is the amount of on-screen deaths, with a large cast comes a large body count thankfully, and the sticky looking red blood looked good on screen.

Heretics had little bursts of good ideas but all too often it was content to be a derivative copy of found footages from before. This wasn't all terrible, and if for some reason you are in the mood for a brain dead found footage then Heretics will be right up your street.

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Schicksalsweg (2024) by Schatten Muse - Music Album Review

Schatten Muse are a band from Berlin/Athens whose sound the press release states is mainly influenced by electronic underground music of the 1980s and 1990s, especially with regards to NDT (New German Death Art). Schicksalsweg (Fateful Path in English)was released last year and brings together nine tracks of darkness.

The album has a simple, repetitive, and often addictive quality to its music. Sometimes sounding like a soundscape such as with 'Vergangen' and closing trio 'Es Stirbt Ein Teil Von Mir', 'Verlorene Seelen', and 'Zerrissenheit'. Music is by Shelmerdine, with all vocals/lyrics coming from Sylvia Fürst, and the lyrics are different to what you might expect. A lot of the time the vocals are more of a narration or incantation. I don't know German so the words mean nothing to me, but with the atmospheric music it sounded like a spell being spoken. Looking back to the press release it states the lyrical concept is about '...darkness, melancholy, isolation, philosophy of life and death, solitude, madness, depression, desperation, surrealism, expressionism, (and) existential philosophy...'.

The music remained simple throughout, such as the pulsating drumbeats on opener track 'Angst', and the piano led 'Fluss Des Lebens'. Second track 'Illusion' with its atmospheric Silent Hill mist-world type sound began a trip-hop sound that followed on to my favourite track 'Transzendenz' with a Depeche Mode vibe to it and that title constantly being spoken. The only other track to mention on the forty one minute album is the mournful 'Charlotte Manchmal', a track that I quite enjoyed.

I wouldn't say this genre of music is one I would say I'm a giant fan of, but I still did enjoy what I heard here. I felt this was better with tracks which felt more like isolated songs, rather than some of the later ones that became a bit abstract and soundscape like to my ears. There was plenty to like here, so I am glad I gave Schatten Muse's Schickalsweg a listen.

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#Manhole (2023) - Thriller Film Review

Last year I saw Fall, a dizzying thriller about a thrill seeker trapped at the top of a giant tower. Today's review is the complete inverse of that one; #Manhole, a Japanese one person disaster movie about a man who has fallen down a manhole. Directed by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri and written by Michitaka Okada, this seemed to be low on ideas, but turned out it was saving them all for the bonkers end.

Shensuke Kawamura (Yuto Nakajima) is a successful young salesman who is thrown a surprise party on the eve of his wedding to the daughter of the CEO of the company he works for. Him and his colleagues drink late into the night until eventually, a drunk Shensuke sets off for home. In the dark however he doesn't see an open manhole and promptly falls through the opening. Coming to, he realises that he sustained a nasty leg injury during the fall, and that even worse, the ladder leading out of the hole is broken. When he discovers that his phone's GPS appears to have been altered, so that he is unable to tell where he is, the man starts to suspect that this was all planned by someone out to cause him harm.

This avoids the usual plot device of the mobile phone being damaged or without signal and instead makes the phone a central part of the storytelling device. Being the middle of the night, Shensuke is unable to get through to any contacts on his phone, apart from awkwardly, a girl he had dated before he met his bride to be. He also gets through to the police, but due to his GPS not working they don't know how to locate the man. Much of the story for him comes through an in universe version of Twitter (Twitler?) called 'Pecker', on this social media platform he swiftly creates a profile named 'Manhole Girl', figuring people are more likely to assist him if they think he is a damsel in distress. It is via this platform that backstory for the type of person the protagonist is, is revealed to the viewer. The phone was an integral item, also being used to take photos that Shensuke hopes will identify where he is trapped, as well as for him to watch videos taken earlier in the evening, to look for clues on who may have spiked his drink (if he was indeed lured to the hole by someone sinister).

Make-up effects were effective, the protagonist getting more dirty and bloody as the one hour forty film goes on. The blood effects were good, and the manhole location was suitably gross. There always feels a need to have various unbelievable things happen to keep the movie interesting, and here is no different. Aside from his leg wound hindering his movement, other urgent matters randomly pop up, such as a gas pipe in the hole leaking gas, rain threatening to flood the hole, and waste from a slaughterhouse causing some type of foam to start filling up the space. These moments all felt a bit generic, this feeling not helped by the fact that Shensuke seems a bit of a self absorbed protagonist, thinking himself the most important person in the world.

By the end of the second act I felt like #Manhole may have ran out of energy, it became a bit meandering, and the dull location didn't do much to keep events exciting. Thankfully then, there is a third act that turns everything on its head. Flashbacks and revelations combine to make for story twists that I didn't remotely see coming. The film may end on a bit of a fun note, but it sure gets bleak along the way!

#Manhole started off fun enough but soon felt like it was running out of ideas. I  was glad that there was a fresh injection of thrills added in that third act as it really turned things around for me, leading to a thrilling finale that was full of dark humour as well as misery! #Manhole streams exclusively on SCREAMBOX from February 25th.

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The North Witch (2024) - Horror Film Review

The North Witch (directed by Bruce Wemple - The Hangman, Lake Artifact) had an intriguing premise to it, one that drew me in. It was a shame then that a lot of the one hour twenty minute run time saw me feeling a bit let down, mainly due to how rushed the set-up for this was. I was actually ready to write this off as a terrible film, but there were elements that did appeal, and I'm happy to say it does manage to pull things back together somewhat for the final act.

Having recently been kicked out of the home she had been renting with two others due to them not liking her, Madison (Anna Shields - Lake Artifact, and who also wrote this one) phones an old friend to see if she can stay at her home. The friend, Gemma (Jessy Holtermann - The Hangman) tells Maddie that she is actually just about to go on a camping trip with friends to a remote area in Canada named 'The Barren Lands'. There is a legend of a mysterious vanishing cabin known as 'The Barren Cabin', and Gemma and her friends, who include among them Laura (Brianna Cala), Alice (Ameerah Briggs - The Hangman, Split), and Talia (Kaitlyn Lunardi - The Hangman) are hoping to find evidence of this house while on their trip. On the very first night there, the group find themselves caught up in a terrible storm, in the chaos they are all separated, with Maddie discovering an old cabin that she decides to take shelter in, unable to go too far away from it due to a bad leg injury she sustained during the storm. A few days later she is joined by Talia, but the woman's increasingly disturbing behaviour leads Maddie to suspect something isn't right with her, and she begins to fear for her safety.

This started great, an opening found footage style blurb that speaks about the legend of the vanishing cabin. A not so great ending blurb that attempts to sell the idea that during the making of the movie the film crew experienced weird goings on. This didn't seem to have anything to do with anything as up to that point The North Witch was set up like a traditional film. There are a cast of five friends initially but I wondered just what the point of all these people were. The story moves forward at a lightning pace, with Maddie finding herself alone in the cabin before even fifteen minutes of the film has passed. The set-up felt rushed to me, and due to most the characters having had barely any lines, or character development, I couldn't care less that they all seem to have vanished, likely dead. Much of the film has Maddie as the sole character, even when she is joined by Talia this still remains the same, as that character always seemed to be off doing her own thing. I did think Talia was the highlight of the movie, the actress getting to be really crazy without seeming over the top, a great range of insane looking facial expressions.
That own thing Talia was doing was mainly performing increasingly sinister self mutilation, from smashing her mouth in with a hammer, to getting into a bath of boiling hot water, to slamming a compartment drawer onto her arm until bone shows! It did all look good though, decent special effects selling the damage being done.

There is a strange method of some of the potentially more interesting ideas taking place in scenes that aren't shown on screen. Most of the film takes place in the cabin, a place that looked far too new for a building that is apparently from the sixties or seventies. I guess you could defend it by saying a building that disappears and reappears might not age in a normal way. The cabin interior never felt like it was in the middle of a forest, with the windows always not really showing anything. The few scenes set outside seemed in a different location entirely, with an altogether older looking building. Maddie wasn't the most likeable of protagonists, but she was fine enough. I did feel peril for her, trapped in a building with an increasingly erratic friend. I felt that the moments where she watches videos on her friends phone in a found footage manner were very good, some of those clips felt like they would have benefitted by being shown on screen, but it was a good way to show some of the more messed up things.
I wasn't that taken with the story, the idea that the cabin had been home to a witch in the past wasn't explained that well. More details on the backstory of the place would have been good, as well as more reaction from the characters that they were staying in a place that was only said to have existed in legend, as they seemed mostly unfazed to be staying there. Thankfully, the last twenty minutes are were things become to come together a lot better. There are a whole variety of twists, introduction of new characters, and a feeling that what the viewer is being shown can't really be trusted. I thought this third act was good enough to claw back an additional rotting zombie head to my score.

A rushed first act, a long meandering second act, and an exciting third act make for a witch based horror that may have been poor on occasion, but also had plenty of strong moments to it. The North Witch comes from High Fliers Films.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for February 20th 2025

Today sees my sister getting married, so I will be off busy with that this day, but should still have time to stick up this small news post, bringing three stories plucked from the bottom of my bloody news sack. Onwards to the news.

Starting with some music news and industrial rockers Gillsaw have released a new single with their track 'Siren Comes'. This is the second single from the group, following on from 'Rizen' and this brings a '...relentless blend of metal, electronic, and industrial elements'. The track is about a man who is tormented by night by the titular siren creature.

The Dead Rose is an upcoming feature film that is about a man (played by Jimmy Drain) who gets caught up in the world of organised crime, coming across a secretive cult planning on world domination in the process. This is written and to be directed by Drain, and other cast members include Eric Roberts (Babylon), Vernon Wells (The Road Warrior), and Richard Tyson (Black Hawk Down). Production for The Dead Rose continues in Denver, Colorado and Los Angeles this summer.

Finally for today, FOUND  TV have announced the exclusive streaming release of What Happened to Suzy, which will be coming to the platform on February 21st. Directed by James Ersted. This found footage horror is described as a social mystery horror, and is also going to be shown on the big screen at the Toronto Indie Horrorfest on April 3rd.

Delicate Arch (2024) - Horror Film Review

Delicate Arch (written and directed by Matthew Warren in his feature length directorial debut) is just the sort of messed up confusing horror that appeals to me. This desert based horror constantly hints at fourth wall breaking elements using similar ideas to The Cabin in the Woods, but executed better, and on par with the excellent Resolution and The Endless, even feeling like a companion piece to those messed up movies. It doesn't quite stick the landing however, running out of steam for its confusing and hard to follow third act.

With high pollution in the city causing health issues, four friends - film nerd Grant (William Leon), his ex-girlfriend Wilda (Kelley Mack - The Walking Dead TV series), stoner Ferg (Rene Leech), and alpha male Cody (Kevin Bohleber - V/H/S/Beyond segment 'Fur Babies') head out on a camping trip to the Utah desert. Their plan is to hike to a rock formation known as 'delicate arch', doing plenty of drugs on the way. The journey becomes increasingly surreal, and Grant starts to suspect that they might unknowingly be characters in a horror movie.

The story is really out there, from the start it is shown how this being a film means that part is able to interfere with the actual story going on. A prologue has a narrator (Katie Self - Silent Hill: Ascension web series) being able to influence a man to take his own life, serving as an early hint as to the strangeness of the film world. This then appears throughout, with Grant in particular seeming to sense he is inside a film, such as blacking out in-between scenes and losing time, commenting when the film is at its exact midpoint, literally measuring out the boundaries of the camera shot he finds himself in, as well as staring directly at the viewer. That part of the film takes a slight backseat to the drama of the four friends travelling across the desert. There is tension with Grant seeming to still have feelings for Wilda, while it seems she is secretly hooking up with Cody. As Grant indicates, Ferg serves as the stoner comic relief, and also can be seen as a catalyst for some of the strange events due to the amount of random drugs they have on them.

It sometimes felt that this was a little too much style over substance. I'm all for that in horror films, and for much of the run time it didn't disappoint. I particularly liked the mid-film point where after taking a lot of magic mushrooms the film starts to at first slip into an animated feature, before becoming all CG (via the use of AR). This made for a suitably trippy segment that was entertaining to watch. I liked also how there are three distinct types of film work here. Most of the movie plays out in a constricting wide-screen format, but at times we get horizontal phone footage instead, and with Grant having brought an old school film camera, there are also sections where it is grainy found footage type sequences. That third act lost it for me though, I didn't understand where the story was going, with many fake out segments that show various unhappy things happing to the protagonists before rewinding to suggest they didn't take place? Or that everything shown is taking place somewhere? I'm not too sure at all what was going on, there was a vague reference to the delicate arch rock formation maybe being a gateway to other worlds, but I just felt lost in the final ten to fifteen minutes. It wasn't badly made, there was impressive film work here, but I just could not follow what was going on and what I as a viewer was meant to make of it all.

Delicate Arch was a film that felt unique, similar ideas to Resolution, but that was no bad thing. The desert location helped the paranoia and isolation that the characters begin to feel, and I thought the direction was good. For me, I got a bit too lost with where the story went to, leaving me feeling a little dissatisfied when the end credits rolled. Described as a 'psychonautic horror', Delicate Arch came to the streaming platform SCREAMBOX on February 11th.

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Dead on Arrival - Escape Room Review

Shame on me! My sister and her boyfriend are always going to escape rooms and stating how fun they are, but I admit that when I was told that as part of my birthday present I would be going to a local escape room with them and my father I wasn't that excited. I should have been more excited though, as this turned out to be a great time that made me feel like I was inside a survival horror video game (minus any enemies).

The escape room we went for was titled Dead on Arrival, rated five out of five stars for difficulty, and three out of five scare factor, and apparently just a 13% escape rate. As we arrived I overheard the previous group saying they had failed the room, and with me and my father having no real idea what to expect with an escape room, I expected we wouldn't survive. After being led blindfolded to the escape room, the introduction story plays out over a speaker. The set-up states that we had gone to hospital after an accident and family members had been told the injuries were not major. For some reason able to hear the room around us but unable to move or respond, we are alarmed when the heart rate monitor goes wild and our family are told we have sadly passed away. Awakening some time later, we find ourselves in a morgue, with it soon dawning on us that our death was faked in order to sell us to some type of dark web buyer. We are given an hour to escape the room before our captor returns to deal with us.

As films such as Escape Room and...well, Escape Room had already taught me, this is made up of a series of rooms, rather than literally one room. I found that rather than abstract solutions to puzzles, it all revolved around unlocking various types of locks that are sealing doors, drawers, and cupboards shut. Different to what I had expected, we were able to ask for hints at any time, seemingly infinitely should need be. I think that we asked around four times for hints, including the very first room that to my knowledge contained the most obscure puzzle of the whole lot, that didn't instil much hope of us escaping. Obviously, I'm not going to go into too much detail on the puzzles for fear of spoiling, but there were some fun ones here, though also some that appeared a bit broken. A great one that took me straight back to the Resident Evil games saw us lining up a series of x-ray photos to spell out a number, but some of the photos seemed a bit faded, so we had to get a lot of assistance to get the numbers correct. My personal favourite had us in a security room having to enter a series of questions on a PC, with the added difficulty of the mouse and keyboard being portioned off, away from the screen. Initially a two person job, I realised that thanks to my long arms I was just about able to move the mouse and see the screen at the same time, making for a much quicker time with that part! Puzzles in general were not too difficult, the difficulty came more from not being sure how props worked, such as the process to turn off a fan in one room, and working out what the relevance of a locked away severed hand was. It was all a learning process though, going forward I will know more what to expect. 

Finally with less than five minutes left, we escaped the cold morgue and its secret rooms via a narrow passageway. Truthfully, I found this a lot of fun. I had feared that constantly being watched by the games master over the cameras would make me feel a bit awkward and hesitant to give any suggestions, but the feel of being inside a survival horror video game removed that fear of embarrassment. As my first escape room experience, I enjoyed Dead on Arrival, especially as we were able to work together to solve the clues and escape!

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Bokshi (2025) - Horror Film Review

I know not why, but I had in my head that the Bhargav Saikia directed and Harsh Vaibhav written Indian folk-horror Bokshi (that word being a Nepalese one meaning witch, sorceress, or someone believing in witchcraft) was a short film. Imagine my surprise then when I sat down to watch it and saw it had a daunting two hour forty five minute run time! So much so that I did a real life double take. A long run time of course doesn't mean a bad film, but I have seen more than my fair share of overly long arthouse horrors where the time is filled with style over substance, and with this one starting in that manner I feared I may overdose on tedium. Thankfully, while this certainly felt as long as its runtime, it was an effective horror, with a setting relatively unique for me in terms of horror. I have seen horror films set in India, but aside from comedy horror Goa Goa Gone, the ones I have seen all featured white protagonists.

Anahita (Prasanna Bisht) is a seventeen year old girl who has frequent terrifying nightmares relating to an incident she was caught up in involving her shaman mother as a young child, which led to her mother disappearing. After a violent encounter with a bully at her school, her grandma decides to send Anahita away to a boarding school, thinking the change in scenery could help her get over her past trauma. It is at this new school that she encounters captivating history club teacher Shalini (Mansi Multani), and takes an instant shine to the woman due to her lessons talking about folklore related to the type of beliefs her mother's side of the family practised. Learning that Shalini is going to take a select group of students on a fieldtrip to a mysterious prehistoric site deep in a remote forest, Anahita convinces the teacher to let her come along as well, as again, it relates to the type of thing her mother had believed in. Things begin well, but after Shalini decides to ignore the advice of the guides and head into a part of the forest that the locals believe to be cursed by an ancient witch known as the Bokshi, the carefully planned field trip begins to fall apart.

I always make notes when watching a film for review, and this time around those notes are many! After an arthouse style prologue that sees the screen bathed in a red tint as discordant images are edited together, things settle down. Being so long, the film is split into seven distinct chapters with intelligently placed beginnings and ends. For instance, chapter one ends with Anahita heading off to boarding school, while later on, chapter five sees the hapless group entering the forbidden part of the forest. This does feel like a long and lengthy movie, but thinking of it all, I was hard placed to be able to identify anything added just to extend the run time. There was always something going on, whether the trippy sequence that saw two shamans separated by distance battling each other via magic (really gave me vibes of the wizard battle between Gandalf and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings!), or the frequent nightmare flashback sequences Anahita suffers with. The pure length of the film helped to really make the group's trek deep, deep into the forest feel like a real journey, adding the impression of it feeling like they really are far away from any type of help. While traditionally shot rather than found footage, I did get a real The Blair Witch Project vibe to this, though the supernatural elements here are shown to be genuine with many characters experiencing the effects of that part of the film. A lot of this was atmosphere and build-up, again with the references to other films, I got more than an echo of The Ritual in the way the characters keep stumbling across unsettling offerings. This ramping up of tension leads to a decent payoff with a quite insane final act that with forty five minutes to go, saw the bubbling madness finally boil over, before simmering down to another red tinted arthouse sequence for the film's ending. One that added elements that felt similar to Midsommar, and used elements of the Bokshi as an analogy for female empowerment.

Characters were a varied bunch, and settled down to a key set once the story really gets going. There are seven students, five girls and two boys, some of which have been on previous field trips with their history club teacher. Then there are three local guides, Shalini and another teacher, Avinash (Sandeep Shridhar Dhabale). Of course, being the protagonist, Anahita had a lot of development to her character, the main draw being exactly what happened to her when she was a child that could have possibly opened her up to being possessed by a Bokshi. Shalini was a much more mysterious character, her behaviour became more of a type of cult leader, constantly convincing the group to press forward, and acting very strangely the deeper the group got. I personally thought Avinash was the best character here, a man with an impressive moustache and a voice of reason who is forced to accept his world view isn't correct when the myths and legends he sees as being silly begin to come to life around him. Right up until the end this stern teacher was trying to do the best by his pupils, Avinash - I salute you! Outside of a core four or five, the other key characters didn't have as much to them, the two male students mainly kept outside the story, while two of the girls only defining characteristics were that they were identical twins.

Special mention has to go to Advait Nemlekar who created both the songs and background score, an unnerving rustic tribal sound that was a perfect fit.

Bokshi is a horror that feels long, but it also was something that really drew me in. The unique Indian setting set itself apart in terms of looks, while the story was something that I found a little confusing, but there was enough provided to give you at least a vague idea of what was going on. The film looked quality, just a couple of effects that looked a little CG, and it was a bit distracting having the myths and legends play out as a series of animated hand drawings, but that saved on cost, and fitted that these would have been stories passed down before the advent of technology. I was impressed with the atmospheric folk-horror that was on display here, and regardless of the big ask in terms of time, this was something I was very happy I got to see. Bokshi had its world premiere on 31st January at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

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