Party Hard 2 (2018) - Horror Video Game Impressions: 'Rotted Meat No.4'

By no means perfect, pixel killing-sim Party Hard still had me making my way all the way through it. The sheer amount of bugs and glitches prevented it from ever being great, but I did find a lot of it enjoyable. I picked up Party Hard 2 expecting more of the same, and it is certainly that, but some core changes prevented me from getting too far into this before I gave up.

The Synopsis:

After going on a party based murder rampage, the serial killer the police labelled 'The Party Killer' vanished. Some months or years later, the killer reappears, again heading to various parties to kill the revellers there. There are cutscenes before and after each level, but due to only being able to make it to the third level, I never got much of an idea of the direction the story was going to go in this time around.

How the Game Felt:

Like its predecessor, Party Hard 2 is an isometric pixel art based game that has you as a killer trying to secretly murder people at various parties, using stealth based gameplay. Rather than be single screen like last time around, this time, levels seemed a lot larger. Also unlike last time, rather than having to kill everyone to finish the level, you instead have the option of a laundry list of specified goals you need to achieve, such as killing drug dealers and motorcycle club members. You are armed with a knife, and there are also many environmental items you can use, such as dropping a piano on a victim, or pushing people into barrels of fire.

Reason for Abandoning the Game:

The first game was tough, but it was manageable, with the lure of seeing what location would be used for each new level keeping me hooked. With Party Hard 2, the game is just too hard, not helped by the much larger locations that make it hard to keep track of where all the different variables are. I managed to get to the third level; a party out at a desert motel, but it was so sprawling that each attempt would take anywhere up to around twenty minutes of carefully taking people out. It got to the point I had had so many unsuccessful attempts that I just gave up, it felt like a waste of my time. I would have liked to see later levels, but the frustration and amount of time it was taking to get further killed that desire. This does build on the first game, but felt to me the increase in size equalled less fun.

Slender Man (2018) - Horror Film Review

I don't often get to a stage in my blog where I have space to review films of my own choosing. Why oh why then did I decide to check out the critically panned Slender Man, especially considering I knew it to be a bad film. Directed by Sylvain White, and based on a cool Creepy Pasta (basically the modern day version of urban legends) created a tiny way back in 2009, this film apparently was a bit of a mess to make, with drastic re-writes to try and distance the movie from the negative press the idea of Slender Man was getting (stemming mainly from two girls who conspired to murder their friend and blame it on the figure making them do it). These changes in the film's story were late enough that even trailers showed character death scenes, when the final version boringly features zero deaths even remotely near showing on-screen. 

Four teenage friends - Wren (Joey King - Independence Day: Resurgence), Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles), Chloe (Jaz Sinclair - Gen V TV show), and Katie (Annalise Basso - Ouija: Origin of Evil, Oculus) are bored and decide to look up a way to try and contact urban digital legend the Slender Man. After around a minute of searching online they discover the summoning video, which they all watch but then dismiss it as an internet hoax. As the days pass, the four begin to experience inexplicable hallucinations and nightmares, with things getting more serious when Katie vanishes into thin air during a school field trip. The remaining friends now knowing the Slender Man is real at first seek a way to rescue Katie, but then later on it becomes far more about self preservation from the figure's grasp. 

Surprisingly, it isn't the lack of any type of body count that really pulls Slender Man down, it is more how it tries to be a jack of all trades and inevitably becomes a master of none. The horror is so inconsistent here, with barely any rules as to what the characters will go through. One friend vanishes, another goes insane (I assume anyway, the character just kind of exits the film never to really return), the remaining two getting increasingly paranoid and plunging into waking nightmares. The horror mainly takes the form of limp jump scares that never worked, semi-effective nightmares (one character being stalked by a multitude of Slender Men within a compact library was maybe the film's highlight scene), and poor CG. The CG in particular was very off putting as it looked like the type of CG you might find in an early 2000s film. It is hard to be scared when characters are impaled or grabbed by obviously computer generated tentacles.
The design of the titular antagonist isn't a bad one, the relative newness of this fabricated urban legend meant it was hard to take it seriously. It appeared in some decent enough scenes, usually anything out in woodland made for at least a couple of decent shots of the tall faceless being blending in with the trees.

The story was all over the place. You have to have a bit of suspension of disbelief that the real ritual for summoning the creature is readily available online with the smallest of searches, and that it is guaranteed to work. Much is made of modern technology, and it is sometimes put to decent enough use. I liked when characters receive video calls from the being that then show a first person perspective of it walking through the victim's home. Not so good was a mid-film investigation montage that again speed runs through the investigation, as if it was just checking off a box on a to-do list, the character swiftly finding what she wants to know with the minimum of searches on her laptop. Originally, there was planned to be a kill count, it sounds like this was going to be a more traditional horror. With that kill count abandoned however, there are just a whole bunch of scenes that end up unresolved. Characters vanish from the story with little fanfare, and rather than feeling mysterious, it just feels like the endings to the characters fates ended up on the cutting room floor.

Slender Man was a bloodless, generic, lazy and dull horror movie that really was as bad as it had been made out to be. Perhaps with not so much of a knee-jerk reaction to claims it was glorifying real world crime, this could have been somewhat entertaining. Instead, this is a muddled and meandering mess of a movie that doesn't seem to know what it is trying to achieve.

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Dachra (2018) - Horror Film Review

The press release for horror film Dachra states this is Tunisia's first ever horror film. Whether it is the case or not, this witch based horror (alleged to be based on true events), written and directed by Abdelhamid Bouchnak is certainly the first Tunisian horror to be reviewed on this blog. The film won the Scariest Film Award at The Overlook Film Festival.
Having now watched this I would say there are some uninspired moments, but this can't be accused of not having atmosphere in spades.

Yassmine (Yassmine Dimassi), Walid (Aziz Jebali), and Bilel (Bilet Slatnia) are three journalism students whose college professor has tasked their class with creating a documentary about a local topic of interest. Laid back Walid tells his friends about the story of a strange woman who was discovered in the middle of nowhere with her throat slashed some twenty five years ago. She was subsequently taken to a local mental institute where she has since gotten a reputation for being a witch. The trio decide this would be the perfect story to cover for their project, and with Walid being friends with one of the nurses at the institute, heads there to see the patient. This eventually leads to them discovering the location where the woman had been originally discovered, and decide to head there to do some filming. They stumble across a strange village deep in woodland that wasn't marked on any maps. Mostly populated by cowled silent woman, the jovial sole male village leader convinces the three to stay, due to time getting late in the day. The longer they are there, the more the three begin to suspect something very wrong is going on, Yassmine in particular is shocked to discover that life long nightmares she has had of a woman in black appear to be somehow linked to this bizarre cultish place.

The story for this film felt very found footage like, I am glad it didn't go in that direction, instead being traditionally filmed, as this allows all sorts of camera shots to be used. The story was interesting, I liked how it seemed Yassmine was caught up in events before the film had even really started. Later reveals I had expected, but I was still pleased to see them occur, it gave the whole movie a bit more of a The Wicker Man vibe, with me not shaking the feeling that the three had been lured to the village for some nefarious reason. I thought the protagonists were a decent group of characters. They are forever bickering with each other, but this came across as natural. There were some moments that became amusing due to the friendly insults the characters share. This is in Arabic, but the subtitles were forever easy to read and translated well. Other characters all served purposes well, but I did feel The Shining style subplot of Yassmine's uncle spending much of the film making his own way to the village was a bit dull.

The horror here mainly comes from the atmosphere, the village felt like an unsettling place, with the creepy non-speaking villagers like something out of Resident Evil 4. There were some tries at creating horror that were very generic, a few lame early jump scares. The atmosphere of the village was very well done, a grimy poor looking place where strange lumps of meat are hung up everywhere. From the prologue in which a young boy is sacrificed, it is clear that something obviously evil is going on at the place. I liked the drip feed of information the protagonists get, the best part being when Yassmine comes into possession of a journal. It did the gradual unpeeling of the story satisfying. With all that this does get right, it is a bit of a slow burn, it doesn't get dull over the course of the one hour fifty five minute runtime but I would say that not too much really happens over the course of the movie. I was also unsure of the very abrupt ending, not completely convinced that worked for me.

Dachra was bleak and cruel, both things that are most welcome in a horror. There were occasional moments where nothing too interesting was going on, though I did think the village setting was very effective. With normal feeling protagonists, the horror sparsely explained, and a great setting, this was a good film, only let down by a few cliche horror moments. Dachra came to the streaming subscription platform ARROW on May 16th.

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They Are Strangers (2018) - Drama Film Review

I rarely read the synopsis for any film I am going to watch for review as I prefer to go in with my expectations completely neutral. Sometimes that does bite me however if I realise the film I have requested a screener for might not actually fit anywhere near the horror genre. For much of its eighty minute run time I was certain that They Are Strangers (written and directed by Zane L'Erario) may be one such film. Having agreed to review it I had to carry on, hoping there would be some way I could tie it to the horror genre. Thankfully this does finally deliver even if that does come virtually at the dead end of the movie.

Emilie Krause stars as Rebecca Thayer, a successful romance novelist who has hit writers block trying to write the follow up novel to her critically acclaimed last novel. Part of the reason for this is that she strongly suspects that her boyfriend William (Tom Schmitt - The Listing) is cheating on her, but not wanting confirmation of this, she hasn't confronted him about her suspicions. With a looming deadline for an initial draft of her new novel, Rebecca struggles to focus, becoming obsessed with finding out who the woman is that she believes has stolen her man's heart.

So, until around ten to fifteen minutes before the film ends is when elements of thriller move into what was otherwise a straight up drama. While not a perfect fit for this site, I still found myself enjoying They Are Strangers (the title referring to what happens to a once madly in love couple after they have broken up and gone their separate ways). I thought the protagonist was a great character, someone who is manic, confrontational, and a little bit eccentric. Meeting the character with her relationship already seeming doomed means that her wild persona makes sense, due to dealing with a broken heart. With a vivid imagination there are parts of this that have an unreliable aspect to them. This even includes a whole scene that plays out before it is revealed that it was just a daydream of Rebecca's. There was a good supporting cast for her, in particular I thought her publicist Kendra (Julie Stackhouse - The Listing) was great. The actions of the main character make a kind of sense, coming from a place of hurt as she is. It leads up to a twist ending that while not the most original was still something that I really did not expect, made for an interesting way to finish the film.

I thought the editing and directing worked well for this type of film. I liked the way the words she is typing when she is in the zone then show up floating around her. I also thought the close-up flashbacks of Rebecca and William in love were done well. For the most part there isn't much call for special effects, but when they are used I thought they looked great, can't really say what the effects actually were for fear of spoiling later elements of the plot.
They Are Strangers might not have exactly been what I was expecting, but it still told a good story with a twist that I appreciated, making this not a waste of time to watch. They Are Strangers has won numerous festival wins. It was released on EST/VOD/SVOD Digital platforms on 28th November 2023 and came to AVOD on 1st January.

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Distraint 2 (2018) - Horror Video Game Review (PC)

Last year I played through the narrative horror game Distraint, and was impressed enough with the unique experience that I was eager to give the sequel, Distraint 2, a go. While hardly a power house of a game (quite the opposite really), it still took the purchase of a brand new PC for me to give the sequel a whirl. I expected more of the same, perhaps with a different protagonist, due to the final nature of the end of the first game. Instead, this intelligently continues Price's story, in a way that at first felt like DLC rather than a fully fledged sequel, until I came to appreciate what this was going for. This really is a sequel, with unavoidable spoilers to follow for those who haven't played Distraint.

After having apparently committed suicide via shotgun at the conclusion of the first game, Price is surprised to find himself not dead, but transported to a strange dream realm that appears to be made out of his own memories. He is instructed by the personification of Reason to search through his psyche, on a quest to discover the personification of Hope. By confronting his past actions and decisions, it is hoped Price will grow enough as a person to find Hope and be able to escape this unnatural dream.

Much like the first game, this is a 2D adventure game that has a macabre and grotesque artstyle to it. Price can waddle to the left and right of areas, entering doors, talking to various characters, and solving simple puzzles to help him progress. A knowledge of Distraint is essential to be able to enjoy this, it simply wouldn't make much sense otherwise. The first game was the downward spiral of Price, this sequel is the 'bounce-back', with the various locations and characters met being dreamlike alternate versions of people and places Price has already encountered. Controls are simple, with Price able to walk and run, and able to examine key background items. The three tenants that Price had previously caused to lose their homes reappear here, albeit as personifications of Price's various aspects. The old woman from before, is re-imagined here as the personification of Forgiveness for instance. Not everyone you meet have the best intentions for you, as these are aspects both positive and negative, Greed and Wrath for instance are both kind of antagonists here.

The dreamworld meant that the flow is more acceptably swirly, with Price able to jump around from memory to memory. The usual flow is that Price will be transported to some kind of nightmare realm where the meat of the puzzles will be, before he is transported to somewhere happier, before the process begins again. Locations such as the retirement home re-occur, but are twisted. The retirement home here is a place where the residents are trapped, having to win a game of cards each day for the opportunity to leave for example. Your childhood is explored a lot more, with your childhood home featuring as one of the game's larger areas, requiring you to switch out light bulbs to explore various rooms. There is slight danger with the reappearance of wandering nightmares, but these all just require Price to hide in a conveniently placed wardrobe to wait out the passing terror. Being a path of redemption for the protagonist, this did get a bit wholesome towards the end, some nice revelations as to the nature of characters, and the end of Price's goal. Maybe it ended on too sweet and optimistic a note, but it was good to see Price's adventure come full circle.

At around three or four hours long, Distraint 2 felt like the perfect length for the story it was telling. Hardly needs saying, but I would play the first one if you are planning to play this sequel, as it doesn't really give much backstory for how Price came to be in the dreamworld. Slightly easier than the original, this may not break the mold, but it was a clever way to take the game in.

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Resident Evil 2: The Board Game (2018) - First Impressions

Way back in 2017 I contributed towards the Kickstarter for a board game adaptation of Resident Evil 2, with it shipping to me in late 2018. In the five years that have followed I've been painting the miniatures for it painfully slowly, but earlier this year, I finally painted enough to be able to have enough pieces for the tutorial and first mission. I always hoped I would get to play it with friends at some point, and last night (at the time of typing), I finally got a chance to do just that. I was a little unsure if it would be any good, as I have heard people saying over the years about issues they have had with it. I think my experience was a very positive one, had intended just to do the shortish tutorial mission, but six hours later and we had also completed the first mission also.

The tutorial, while in the instruction manual rather than the scenario booklet, is a valid mission as it is still part of the Resident Evil 2 storyline. This introduces the core mechanics of the game with a smaller gameboard, less enemies and less tension deck cards. I was concerned that none of the four of us playing would know what we were doing and end up frustrated. One of our group, Ron Waffle, served as the rulebook master, happily taken on the role of flicking through the rules whenever one of us had a question, sometimes to the frustration of others. Without him doing that however, things would have gone a lot less smoothly. Each of the four players gets four actions per turn. Moving a square on the board, using a weapon, picking up an item, opening or closing a door, and swapping or using items all take up one action. After a player has used their actions it is then the turn of the enemies, for the tutorial these were all zombies. This reaction phase has any viable enemies either attacking or moving towards the player characters. Finally, the player has to take a card from the tension deck, the majority of these cards in the tutorial were 'all clear' which basically means nothing extra occurs. To spice things up we also came up with a house rule of 'friendly fire', meaning if someone shot at an enemy on the same tile or past a tile a character was standing on, then there was a chance they would get hit instead of the enemy should the person using the weapon miss. This occurred just once, with Ron Waffle putting a round into the back of my sister towards the end of the first mission proper.
What I found interesting for both this and the first mission (and it appears all missions), is that rather than all be together, the players start in one of two different areas, with much of the mission having the players separated, until near the end when their paths eventually meet up. This almost gave a feel of two different games taking place on the same board, with me (Claire Redfield) and Andrew (Leon Kennedy) secretly hoping that my sister (Robert Kendo) and Ron Waffle (Ada Wong) would have the misfortune to pick the nastier tension deck cards.

We had originally intended to do just the tutorial, but we had so much fun that we all agreed that we would also do the first proper mission. This one took place in the Raccoon City Police Department, with the aim to get to the S.T.A.R.S office, having to first find the key to unlock it. Things began disastrous with both duos immediately getting set upon by zombies, zombie dogs, and in mine and Andrew's case, also a licker. It was quite funny, especially with poor Ron Waffle who throughout the mission repeatedly kept picking out the 'Prehensile Grasp' card, which makes him unable to move due to a zombie hand clasping around his ankle, and which he could only escape by rolling an evade at the start of his turn less it be forfeit. We all found it hilarious that around forty minutes into the game he had only managed to advance one square on the board due to repeatedly pulling this card and constantly rolling bad dice.
We realised that the game is all about teamwork, but that didn't stop my sister shutting Ron in a corridor full of undead as a punishment for him constantly missing his shots. Later, after I made a beeline for the exit to the level, I found myself beset upon by two zombie dogs with help far behind on a different floor of the police station, that was my realisation that it isn't good to try and lone wolf things.

I had hoped Resident Evil 2: The Board Game would be fun, but I wasn't prepared for how much fun it was. I had beyond a good time, and it was heartening to see that all four of us stated how much more fun it was than originally had been thought. Ron liked how much like the video game it felt, while my sister said it reminded her of one of her favourite board games, HeroQuest.
The game isn't perfect, the board in particular is awful, bad printing has made most the board pieces look pitch black, thankfully this was partially remedied by the inclusion of much brighter tiles released as part of Resident Evil 3: The Board Game. At times it was difficult for some of us to tell where one tile ended and another began, well difficult for Ron Waffle at least. That was partly due to the dim lighting in the room we played it in. One essential dice had a misprint of extra dots being present on it, something that briefly confused us all. A common complaint also is how long it takes to set up the game, I had pre-made the tutorial, but setting up the board for the first mission took over half an hour to do. Apparently later board games have streamlined this a bit.
When I have played through this in its entirety, I will put up an actual review, as for now, it sure looks like there is going to be a lot of fun evenings playing this to come!

Other Side of the Box (2018) - Short Horror Film Review

You can tell I was trying to phone in my blog posts this week, as Other Side of the Box is the second short horror film I have chosen to watch for review. I have often seen this Caleb J. Phillips directed (and co-written) horror when on YouTube as a recommendation, but it was only after my friend recommended I review it that I decided to check it out.

One evening near Christmas a couple, Ben (Nick Tag who co-wrote this) and Rachel (Teagan Rose) are cooking when they are disturbed by the arrival of an ex-friend, Shawn (Josh Schell) who brings with him a gift. He tells Ben to open the box, but upon opening it appears to be empty. Shawn makes a hasty exit, apologising for what he has done. The darkness within the box is perplexing, and after a few experiments it seems the box somehow has no bottom. Then something bad occurs, having looked away, the couple look back to see the top of a human head impossibly peeking out of the small box (Tyler Pochop), a quick read of the card that came with the 'present' and it is revealed that they must never take their eyes off of the box as the being is only able to move should no one be looking at it.

First off, a decent idea for a horror, in terms of rule making it didn't seem too different to something like It Follows, which is no bad thing. This is the second short I've watched this week that actually felt like a small horror film, as opposed to a poor effort basic plot stretched around a central idea. The cast of four were well chosen, especially with Schell, I liked how easily you could infer the friendship ended due to something that occured with Rachel. The man in the box is of course creepy, with much of the middle act revolving around his slow initial emergence.
This all leads into a third act where the stakes got ramped up in a way that was more exciting than I had anticipated, even if you have to ignore some of the film's own self-imposed rules and logic that get broken along the way. Culminates in a perfect way to end the short.

Other Side of the Box was a great little horror film which I could see working equally as well as a feature length. A good idea, and well executed, this was an entertaining fifteen minutes of horror.

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The Elder Scrolls Online (2014-23) - Fantasy Video Game Review

I first intended to review The Elder Scrolls Online many years ago. This was the first MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) that I played and so far remains my favourite. My problem with reviewing this is that it isn't really possible to complete. There has to be thousands of quests and new content is always being released. Annoyingly the game never tells you exactly how many hours you have sunk into it, I estimate mine must be somewhere between a hundred to two hundred hours.

It has been literal years since I completed the main storyline in the game and so I can't really say what the story would have been. Something concerning demons and cults most likely. The way I play the game is like a roving adventurer. I go to wherever my next quest is, rather than head to an area and experience everything it has to offer. It's an irritating limitation that you can only have twenty five active quests at a time, meaning there are so many new quest givers I have to ignore and walk on by, with the hope to remember where they were so I can revisit when more convenient. My travels take me all around the game world but the haphazard way I play the game means no quest really means that much to me. One moment I can be helping a lizardman out in the swamps, swearing to retrieve a cursed object for him, the next moment I teleport myself off to Skyrim to uncover a plot concerning killing the Skald-King. My journey keeps everything always feeling fresh.

I have tried the Final Fantasy MMORPG, but despite liking that world more, the quests are far more bland, and I absolutely detest that you are forced to go into dungeons with other real people. Elder Scrolls for the most part, allows you to experience much of the game on your lonesome. There have been plenty of updates over the years, my favourite was the ability to get an A.I companion to always be by your side. There was an update some years back that made all the weapons much stronger, making playing the game so much more fun. It can be frustrating that you start some quests, only to discover three or four steps down the line it was intended as a group quest. The group dungeons are far too hard for someone to do on their own, but I have zero desire to play with real people.

The amount of quests is ridiculous, some are better than others, all feature fully voiced characters. From stopping an army of the undead, to investigating cults, travelling to the demon world and saving villages, there is always something to be doing. Best of all, and something which stopped me playing Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls has no monthly subscription requirements. Sure you have to pay for expansions, but there is no monthly cost. For many years I did pay the subscription, this gives you all minor expansions for free, as well as an unlimited inventory size and in-game currency each month. Worth doing if this is your main game, but I tend to play this in fits and bursts, whenever I have the space on my Playstation 5 hard drive to have it installed.

Graphically this isn't stunning nowadays, but at least on the newer consoles and PCs this loads really quick, and it certainly isn't an ugly game. This is one of the most popular games of its type, and if you like your straight faced fantasy then there is plenty here to appeal. It is a huge time sink however, and if you are the type of person who likes 'beating' games then this will frustrate. Overall though, I always come back to The Elder Scrolls Online, no matter how long I've been away, I love getting lost in the world.

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Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear (2018) - Drama Film Review

Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear is a passion project from Douglas Burke. He not only wrote, directed produced, made the music and acted in this, but his real life son plays the protagonist. What is a drama doing on this horror focussed blog? Well, this movie is so darn weird that it felt like a good fit, this almost felt like a companion piece to Tommy Wiseau's legendary The Room with how earnest and straight faced this is played, despite being off the wall crazy.

Sage (Sage Burke) is a teenage boy who used to enjoy surfing, that is until one dark day when he nearly drowned. Since then, the boy has been fearful of the sea, instead choosing to fish from it instead. One day, while fishing on the beach, he catches something, but is surprised to see it is a man (Douglas Burke) who has been pulled out of the ocean. This man soon reveals himself to be the spirit of his father, a person that Sage never knew. The spirit imparts his wisdom onto his son, providing him with the cryptic knowledge of how to conquer his fear, he also heads him in the direction of an old friend, Captain 'Banks' Bancroft (Gerald James), who Sage is told will be able to give him lots of money.

The film is an extreme slow burn, there are only a few scene changes, with most the movie being long spoken essays from Douglas. The first half takes place on a beach, with the monotoned Sage readily believing that this strange man who has washed up on the beach is not only his missing father, but that the man had only been given a body for a few hours as a favour from God! The washed up man displays some wildly emotive acting when he reacts to the pain of being able to 'feel'. Douglas later appears as a disabled man, again some really out there acting is displayed!
The second half of the film has Sage arriving at the offices at a naval base, where Banks tells him about the bonkers backstory for what happened to his father. This brings a paranormal element into the film, but again is filmed statically with just the two characters conversing with each other. The directing and quality throughout gave a feel of a straight to TV movie, but it fitted the vibe really well.

Cube Escape: Paradox (2018) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

Cube Escape: Paradox is the thirteenth game in the interconnected series of games that take place in the Rusty Lake universe. This game more than any other, really requires you to be invested in the ongoing story as it is fit to bursting with references to all of the other twelve games in the series. By this point the developers really know how to make a good escape room game, this is a quality experience that offers something a little new. Unavoidable spoilers for previous entries to follow, and the synopsis is based on what I assume is occurring (the story thus far been purposely obtuse).

Detective Dale Vandermeer to my knowledge was last seen descending into the supernatural centre of Rusty Lake. He awakens to find himself in a small room, the only exit being a locked door. With no recollection of how he came to be there, he searches for a way out, piecing together his history as he does so.

Paradox is split into two different chapters as well as including a short eighteen minute film. The aim of both chapters is to obviously escape the room, which is done by solving a series of puzzles hidden throughout the room. Chapter one is free to play and has the typical escape room shenanigans I've came to love. Things are spiced up in that there are not only puzzles to solve, but also little mini games which were fun to do. One has you charting your route across a map, using clues to figure out where you need to be. Another had you in a literal puzzle game. A series of rooms which could be swapped around to create a path through, Dale appeared as a character on screen you could move around by clicking. Once the room is eventually escaped you get a first person maze to traverse leading up to a finale that then loops back on itself for chapter two.

Rusty Lake Paradise (2018) - Horror Video Game Review (iOS)

Rusty Lake Paradise is the twelfth game in the interconnected series of mainly escape room games, which all take place within the Rusty Lake universe. Following on from Rusty Lake Hotel and Rusty Lake Roots, this is the third stand alone game. Unlike most of the games (such as those contained within Cube Escape Collection), this almost felt like a point and click adventure, taking place over ten levels set in the same location.

Set in 1796, and upon hearing of your mother's death you return to the island commune of Paradise that resides out on Rusty Lake and which you left as a child. There you find things are not going well, the island has become cursed to suffer the ten plagues of Egypt. For each new plague that afflicts the islanders you set out to find a way to solve it, each time you are rewarded with a magical cube that you feed into an alter. For anyone who knows their plagues of Egypt however, it might become clear just where your crusade may take you...

First off, having each level being themed around those particular plagues meant that I had a good idea how long the game would be. With ten plagues that meant there would be ten levels. Each is set on the commune, starting off each time on the shore front, as the levels progress you gain access to new parts, such as a large tower. For around two thirds of the game I was slightly worried with the ease with which I was zooming through it, it seemed slightly too easy. With only so many different places you could go to, it was never too taxing discovering where the puzzles were and how to solve them. The difficulty certainly does increase however, and while I never got completely stuck, there were chunks of time when I did feel a bit lost.

The Nail That Sticks Out (2018) - Short Horror Film Review

The Nail That Sticks Out is an award winning short British horror film that was directed by Jordan Dean (The Inner Demon) and written by Rebekah Whelan in her writing debut. The perils of a struggling artist are often used for horror, everything from Legend of the Muse to The Spirit Gallery and Rust Belt Driller, the tortured artist trope works well in this context. This fifteen minute short adds to this idea with a tortured artist all of its own.

Japanese Aiko (Natsumi Kuroda) is a UK based artist who is feeling the pressure to produce work that betters what she has already put out. Meanwhile, her girlfriend and muse, Elisabeth (Laura Peterson - Coven of Evil) has aspirations of becoming a successful actress. One fateful day sets Aiko on the path to her artistic salvation, though at a great cost.

I always enjoy these types of ideas, I enviously look upon all manner of creators and only on occasion feel even the slightest aspect of what drives them. With Aiko you have a protagonist whose erratic behaviour seemed to come somewhat out of nowhere. An initial spark of creativity, one troubled almost arthouse style nightmare and there is a descent into nightmare. The core of the film, outside of her art, is the relationship between the two characters and the opposite paths their lives are trying to head.
In terms of set decoration and effects, the art is decent enough to seem authentic for the character, and the special effects while sparsely used sell what they are trying to sell.

The Nail That Sticks Out was a decent short horror, one that might have benefited from more time to chart the downward spiral of Aiko, or at least present more of her internal thoughts to the viewer. Despite that, another Dark Matters short horror that was well worth sticking around to the twisted end of. This can currently be seen on the Dark Matters' YouTube channel.

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You Might Be the Killer (2018) - Comedy Horror Film Review

Directed and co-written by Brett Simmons (Animal, Husk), You Might Be the Killer is a comedy slasher in the vein of The Final Girls. A similar idea is used in that at least some of the characters are aware of the typical rules for a slasher film, such as the killer being defeated by the final girl. What sets this apart is that the protagonist realises he is actually the killer himself.

Sam (Fran Kranz - The Village, The Cabin in the Woods) is a camp counselor who phones his best friend Chuck (Alyson Hannigan - Buffy the Vampire Slayer) late one night in a panic. He tells her that there is a masked killer on the loose in his campsite, and that nearly all the other counselors have been murdered. It isn't long until Chuck has realised that it is Sam himself who is the killer, and that it appears to be the work of a cursed wooden mask that he found and which subsequently possessed him. What follows is a back and forth in time as Sam thinks back to what has occured, in order to figure out which of his former friends are still alive, and for a way to end the night without being killed at the hands of whoever the final girl turns out to be.

It isn't much of a spoiler to say Sam is the one responsible as it is very early on this is revealed. The film mainly takes place in the past, and it doesn't even follow a linear path. Instead the film reverts back to various points in the night, sometimes heading back to particular kills, sometimes heading back further. For the film's third act events finally follow a cohesive path in the present, but I thought the idea of constant flashbacks worked well. A lot of the counselors didn't have much personality at all to them, but this made some of them more fun. In particular there was one named Steve, and nearly every single time the character is mentioned his moniker of 'Steve the Kayak King' is said in full, even when his body is discovered. That was one of the more fun running gags. The problem I had with Chuck is that she is so far removed from the events of the main story that it didn't really feel like she was even in the same film. While Sam is in a dark and dingy woodland camp, Chuck is in a brightly lit comic book store separated entirely from the other characters. I wondered if this was due to Hannigan being a bigger name and so her character was utilised in such a way as this in order for her pay to not be too high (apparently she filmed all her scenes within two days). Keith David (The Thing, They Live) is also featured in a similar way, his appearance just a voice on the end of a phone, but that role felt more smoothly implemented.

Caducea (2018) - Short Horror Film Review

Caducea (also known as Caducea - The Man with the Bark Face) is an award winning French language short Gothic horror that was written and directed by Christophe Mavroudis, and which has recently headed to the Dark Matters YouTube channel. It was something different, certainly Gothic, and with a fairytale feel, this may not have been scary, but it was interesting.

The twenty five minute short is about Alain (Guillaume Alexandre), the son of rich countess Catherine (Marie-Jeanne Malague) who as a child had an adopted older brother in the form of the heavily disfigured Tom (Vincent Delré). While in constant pain, this brother amused himself by making intricate masks out of wood and bark. The short takes place both in the past and in the present, with it frequently switching back and forth, the past sections featuring different actors playing the main trio. One day, when Alain was a young man, his brother Tom decided to leave the safety of Catherine's mansion, heading out into the wider world. Now, some years later Tom has returned in order to reveal the dark secrets Catherine had been hiding from them both all their lives.

I liked how much the two stories went in and out of each other, sometimes even in the same scene. You have Alain in the woods at night in present day trying to find Tom, this then switches to daylight in the past and back again. This created a nice contrast between the far more monstrous present day Tom and his slightly less creepy, and more flamboyant past self. The short relies a lot on these flashbacks with probably around two thirds of the run time set in the past. I liked where the story went, if not so much the characters, I found the older version of Catherine in particular to be a bit weird as a character, just standing around not really doing much of anything, while the older version of Alain had some strange behaviour that wasn't explained that well.
The costume design for Tom were fantastic, the masks in particular where a highlight, and some of the lighting used really gave him the feel of a fairytale monster. The location of the mansion helped with the Gothic atmosphere.

I liked Caducea, it did something different and so was quite memorable. Me being me, as always I wished for deeper horror, but what was here was at least interesting, not bad at all. Caducea premiered February 25th on the Dark Matters YouTube channel, still my favourite channel there for quality short horror films.

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Winterskin (2018) - Horror Film Review

Winterskin is the third horror film I have seen from writer/director Charlie Steeds (Death Ranch, An English Haunting). It may also be the one with the lowest budget as nearly the entire movie takes place in one small cabin with just the two characters. What starts off with an interesting premise turns into something quite different by the end of the film, and despite some dodgy attempts at American accents this English made horror tells an effective enough story.

While out hunting with his father in the woods, Billy (David Lenik - An English Haunting) discovers a secluded cabin and is promptly shot by the owner, an old woman named Agnes (Rowena Bentley - The House of Violent Desire). He wakes up in her house, the lady apologises for his injury and explains that she has been haunted by a strange skinless monster for the past few weeks. Billy plans to stay at the cabin until he is well enough to travel back to town and puts down the lady's tall tales as her being a little crazy. As time passes it seems that Agnes really is being stalked by something, yet despite this apparent truth Billy begins to suspect he may be better off elsewhere due to Agnes' increasingly unbalanced behaviour.

This all begins with a blood soaked prologue in which a family of four are killed by an intruder to their home, setting up the idea of some sort of monster whether human or otherwise loose in the area. Throughout the first two acts there are peppered clues that what Agnes says is actually true. It led to a good contrast between the evil without and the evil within, I couldn't help but get a Misery type vibe off the old woman, afterall she is constantly referring to herself in the third person which is just one alarm bell that she isn't quite all there. With most the film dealing with the two characters of Billy and Agnes we do get the occasional scene change, following Billy's dad and other townsfolk who are in the area searching for Billy. That at least some of these scenes intercut with the main story don't actually take place chronologically as at first appears led to some fun payoff later.

Silencio (2018) - Thriller Film Review

Silencio was certainly a different film to what I had in my head it would be. Maybe somewhat foolishly for someone who blogs about films I really don't like watching trailers or even read any synopsis for films I am going to review. So, I figured from title alone that the Lorena Villarreal (Las Lloronas) written and directed Silencio was going to be about a serial killer. I was utterly wrong, instead this low budget thriller/drama deals with time travel of all things.

James (John Noble - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) and his research partner, Peter are two scientists who happen to discover a fragment of a meteorite while investigating a crash in the 'zone of silence' (a real life urban myth is that this zone, located in the Mexican desert is a place where radio waves are unable to penetrate). They inadvertently activate the stone's latent power and James is shocked to see they have travelled back in time and space to the exact location where his entire family were killed in a freak accident some years previously. With knowledge of what is to come, James is able to alert his family, but it is only his granddaughter Ana he is able to save. Some years later and Ana (Melina Matthews - Mama) is now grown up, with a child of her own, while James suffering dementia lives with her. A young thug (Hoze Meléndez) one day forces his way into their home, desperate to retrieve the stone for his client, this sets into motion a tragic chain of events, as well as Ana's realisation that she will be able to prevent all the trauma that has happened should she find and use the stone for herself.

I am a huge sucker for time travel in films, especially when it is done correctly. With Silencio there are parts that work and parts that make no sense whatsoever, with the viewer having to trust in what characters believe in order to accept these ideas. Obviously, a time travelling stone is a bizarre thing in itself, but then you have all the weird rules the characters make up for it. Like you can only activate the stone at exactly 03:33 in the morning, or that if you use it to save a life then someone else you know will die in order to correct the balance. These rules didn't appear to have much evidence to back them up regardless of if they are true or not, and that last one the film really stretches the credibility of. As if this wasn't enough there is also a supernatural element stuck into a subplot, about a man who is able to commune with the dead and whose ability to do so is the event that really kicks the film into gear.

Mr Sucky (2018) by Duncan P. Bradshaw - Comedy Horror Book Review

I went onto horror author Duncan P. Bradshaw's website in search of his latest book, a choose your own adventure comedy horror that sounded quite neat. I didn't find it there, I did however re-discover an earlier book of his, Mr Sucky and so I happily purchased that. I have an annoying habit of buying books but taking decades to get around to ever reading them, but as soon as this arrived in my letterbox I knew it needed to be read straight away. It isn't often I will mention a design of a book in a review, but I must here as it was so striking and such a cool idea. I was initially confused opening my package as I appeared to have been randomly sent an instruction manual for a hoover, it took me slightly longer than I would care to admit to realise that it was the novel (possibly novella) of Mr Sucky. That was such a cool idea for a book which turned out to be the most enjoyable story I have yet read of Bradshaws.

Serial killer Clive Beauchamp isn't having the best of days, finding himself killed by his potential new victim even before breakfast is over at the hotel he was staying at and dumped in a broom closet. Things start to look up when a disciple of a demonic entity known as 'Keith' resurrects him, but due to an incident with an air conditioning unit the disciple mistakenly thought the plan was for Clive to come back as a vacuum cleaner rather than into the body of a powerful killer, and not just any cleaner, but one of those ones with the smiley face. Luckily it turns out he has a whole host of supernatural powers with which he will be able to carry out his plan of not only killing his murderer, but also dispatching the staff and other guests who passively looked on as it happened. The biggest danger for this agent of the devil it turns out is not any external threat, but the deranged other personality of Clive's who has gotten sick and tired of being relegated to the shadows of his mind...

Bradshaw is an expert of blending horror with utter nonsense and here he is on top form. The world of the book is a ridiculous place full of idiots and morons, one in which a killer hoover doesn't feel as outlandish as it otherwise would. The format of the storytelling was an early highlight for me. Much of the nineteen chapters is told from the perspective of Clive, but not even with him recounting events in a past tense, instead it is him in the moment experiencing things at the same rate as the reader. It is here that the split personality idea really comes to fruition as Clive and his other side hate each other. While Clive is the one in control, his other personality is always interjecting, typically with a whole host of insults and put-downs. It's quite possible this could have gotten a bit exhausting but then the format changes up and down. You have chapters set before Mr Sucky's start, you have chapters set in the future that recount the events as they happened. My favourite chapter was one that told the story of what happened to a group of golfers staying at the hotel, due to them checking in with comedic fake names their story is told with the characters being referred to by those names. So, you get a harrowing story about the fate that befell Captain Wangstain, Bonzo Bangana, Petey Beef-Curtains and Zargon Thirstbladder. This kind of infantile humour doesn't usually appeal, but it is so thick throughout Mr Sucky that I couldn't help but get on board.

Another part that typically I wouldn't enjoy as much is the intense description of all the bloodshed that is inflicted on characters. Here, with all the old ultra violence being carried out by a hoover it was made a lot more fun, and it always impressed with how inventive and deadly the methods were. From the hoover supernaturally powered to suck in all manner of body parts, to a lethal plug wire that is able to easily sever through limbs, this was all both super gross and amusing.

Mr Sucky was a very simple idea that worked extremely well due to Bradshaw's off kilter sense of humour and the way the story is laid out to the reader. From the wonderful book design to the attention to detail this was an enjoyable story from cover to cover.

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Kill Teaser (2018) - Comedy Horror Film Review

While IMDB doesn't describe Mb X. McClain's feature length debut, Kill Teaser as a comedy horror, it just has to be. Its story is so bad that it has to be a joke. Even as a comedy film though this wasn't very pleasant, especially with the horrific treatment of one of its characters.

Supposedly based on true events, this follows a layabout teenage boy who calls himself 'The Studier' (Tobee Paik - You're Not Alone). This boy is obsessed with a mysterious killer, 'KillTeaser' (Charlie Liao) who murders his victims live online. In awe of this edgelord, the boy reaches out in order to become his student. Meanwhile, the waitress (Laurie Riihimaki) at a local diner that the boy is obsessed with starts up a toxic relationship with trucker 'Hot Freakin'' (Dylan Porteus).

Things went south almost straight away once the boy meets KillTeaser. It looks like the entire budget went on the Anime style mask that the killer wears. It has red lights around it, and a long white wig attached to it. When the killer gets angry the jagged mouth on the mask lights up and lens flares start popping off the lights. This mask was hands down the best thing about this movie. KillTeaser is the ultimate edgelord, forever going on about how love is a lie. His voice is heavily distorted, a cool effect, though occasionally I found it hard to make out what he was saying. The look is somewhat ruined because the killer appears to be very small, even the boy is a lot taller than him. This killer is made to look painfully cool in a way that makes him seem ridiculous, walking around with his black trench coat, even in broad daylight no one bats an eyelid at his cosplay costume. 

Nightshooters (2018) - Action Thriller Film Review

This past week or so my inbox has had an influx of films sent to me for review. An annoying habit of mine is to request screeners even when I am already swamped. I was on the fence briefly about Nightshooters, it sounded very much like an action film. It is also however a thriller, albeit a comedic thriller, and that gave me the 'in' to accept it could fit on my blog. Interestingly enough this was written and directed by Marc Price, his very first feature length film, Colin was one of the first films I reviewed on this site.

An indie film crew are in a derelict office block filming Dawn of the Deadly, a low budget zombie film. The crew include the angry director (Adam McNab - The Summoner), stunt guy Donnie (Jean-Paul Ly), special effects guru Ellie (Rosanna Hoult - Captain America: The First Avenger), sound technician Oddbod (Nicky Evans - Shameless TV show) as well as a few others, including the movie's leading man, the diva like Harper Partridge (Doug Allen - Band of Brothers TV show). In a case of wrong place at the wrong time, just across from the group in another derelict building are a group of gangsters, led by the bear like Tarker (Richard Sandling - School of the Damned), who are there to carry out a brutal gangland killing. The gangsters realise too late that not only where their actions accidentally witnessed by the film crew, but that they also happened to have caught it all on tape. In desperation, Tarker orders his men to storm the office block with the aim of wiping out all the witnesses. With the building scheduled to be demolished the next morning, the film crew must find a way to escape both their attackers and building by dawn.

Watching this it reminded me of a few things. The biggest feeling was that this was like a cockney version of Die Hard. Instead of an off duty cop you instead have a panicked film crew. It turns out this was actually one of the influences for Nightshooters, a scene set in an air duct specifically was designed to look like a scene from that action flick. There is a very British style of humour with both sides of the conflict constantly insulting themselves throughout. While this can be quite dark (such as a violent scene of a captured female character getting repeatedly punched in the face) this also borders on a comedy, and that is mainly due to the antagonists. These antagonists are like a more deadly version of the 'Wet Bandits' from Home Alone. Most of this group of shown to be wildly stupid, and it is this stupidity that leads to a lot of the moments of them underestimating their enemy, as well as accidentally causing at least of couple of their own deaths.