VR Escape Room (2021) - Short Horror Film Review

For the third short film I reviewed this week, I chose VR Escape Room, which unknowingly was the second Alex Magaña written and directed horror I have seen this weekend (Grimace Shake being the other). 

A young woman (Brittnee Hollenbach) is playing a VR escape room horror game on her VR headset. Tasked with finding a key to escape from a locked toilet, she takes off the headset in fright after encountering a crying woman (Malia Arrayah) who attacks her. She is then started to find that instead of being in her home, she is in the same toilet from the game, and soon hears the sobs of a crying woman...

Very predictable, though it was cool that the surprise of being in the same place as the video game occured early on. After that there was nothing much of note, with it ending exactly as I figured it would be. Maybe some sort of effect could have been used on the VR segment as it looks identical to real life rather than a video game, making parts of this seem like they are repeating themselves.

VR Escape Room is the type of short horror created for easy thrills, without it intending to have a deeper meaning to what happens. Certainly had some good moments, but isn't one that will leave much of an impression. VR Escape Room can currently be viewed for free on YouTube.

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The Rotting Zombie's Round-up of Horror News for September 2023

I really can't believe how quickly this year has passed. It is said that the older you get the shorter the years feel, so maybe it is due to now being 41 years of age. In me news, there are a few new releases on Netflix I want to check out, including Evil Dead Rises. I'm currently playing Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3, trying to anyway as I have barely any time in the week to do so.

Geno McGahee has released a trailer for his horror anthology Scary Tales: Dead Zone. The film is due for release by Cinema Epoch and Cineridge Entertainment this Halloween. The four short films included here includes two which are supposedly based on actual events, with one of the shorts being about UFO cover-ups.

The October releases for the Arrow streaming service have been announced, including some classics in time for the scariest month of the year. Hellraiser: Quartet of Torment brings together the first four Hellraiser films in 4K (Hellraiser, Hellraiser II, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, and Hellraiser: Bloodlines). Also coming is South Korean horror The Mimic, about a woman who brings an apparently lost mute girl back home with her after finding her alone near a remote cave. Then there is Lucio Fulci's The House by the Cemetery, also coming in 4K. That one was the first DVD the Arrow video label released, back in 2011. Of course, being Halloween, there is a specially curated season of films titled Shocktober 31.

On October 24th, Synapse Films release Armando de Ossorio's classic zombie film Tombs of the Blind Dead in a two-disc Blu-ray. A group of campers encounter zombie Knights Templar who have risen from their graves to eat. As the title suggests, these undead cannot see and so hunt by sound alone. Special features include an audio commentary, interviews, a feature length documentary and more.

Independent horror/action movie Macabre Mountain has announced its red carpet movie premiere dates. Friday 13th October it will be showing at the Cranford Theater, Cranford, NJ, while Saturday 14th October it will be showing at The Village at SOPAC Theater, South Orange, NJ. There will be free autographs and pictures with the stars in attendance, prizes and more. The film is about a troubled law enforcement agent whose gets into serious trouble after travelling to West Virginia, and stars Xander Goldman, Felissa Rose, Dave Sheridan, Robert Mukes, Hannah Fierman, and Dan Kearney. VIP passes and ticket information can be found by emailing jeremy@stagmountainfilms.com.

Final Summer is now available for streaming in both the US and UK. It can be rented or bought from Apple TV, Vudu, YouTube and Amazon Prime. The slasher takes place in 1991 on the last day of a summer camp at Camp Silverlake, in which a masked killer decides to target the counsellors. It features Bishop Stevens (Revealer), Thom Mathews (The Return of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives), and the theme music is by Slavvy (Terrifier 2).

Crystal Lake is a Halloween themed music festival that is due to take place at the Silver Lakes in Norco, California on October 1st. It will include three stages of Southern California's best EDM DJs, gogo dancers, a trick-or-treat area and a special live MurderCo performance. Going in fancy dress is welcomed, with the press release stating that it "...promises to be the event to start off the season, offering an unparalleled fusion of music, art, and the eerie spirit of Halloween". Very late notice from me, but you can head here to see if tickets for the event are still available.

Finally for this month's round-up, Siesta Key Slasher is a slasher coming from Showtown American Pictures and Babes Against Bullying, it is due to start filming this winter in Tampa, Florida. The film is to star Avaryana Rose and is about a group of social media personalities who discover a hook wielding killer is after them on a private beach they have gone to.

Skibidi Toilet (2023) - Short Comedy Horror Film Review

Skibidi Toilet is a bizarre crudely animated CG web-series about the titular monster that appears to be a combination between a toilet and a creature. There have been many short horror films created around the subject, with Murat Kiziroglu's Skibidi Toilet being one such example, a film that he wrote, directed and acted in.

A man is startled to hear strange music coming out of his toilet, investigating he is disturbed at what he finds. That is it for the synopsis for this three minute horror. From the comments, it appears this character is a recurring one of Kiziroglu's. As for the short itself, it is devoid of original ideas, being based on an existing internet horror meme. The creature looks CG, but with the original being purposely crude looking, I felt that maybe that was on purpose. It was fun enough, but not too interesting to watch, I thought the Evil Dead style first person perspective ending was a neat touch.

With a three minute run time, Skibidi Toilet didn't hang around long enough to be dull, even if half the short is the protagonist hearing the disturbance but not actually investigating it, instead deciding to phone his friend (apparently a common thing this character does). If it is indeed a continuation of a luckless horror character then people familiar with him may well get more enjoyment out of this. Skibidi Toilet can be seen for free on the MKofficial YouTube channel.

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The Rotting Zombie's Double Bill of Horror News for Tuesday 26th September

A quick double bill of news stories today, as this is the last blog post I am writing of the weekend and want to get on to playing some video games!

The Night Slayer is a new film coming from Michael McQuown (The Dark Tapes) that has a few unique parts to it. It is stated to be the first fictional narrative film ever shot over thirty years using the same actors. It is also apparently the first feature film that uses both Style Replacement Artificial Intelligence and Generative Artificial Intelligence. It also reckons it is the first movie to have wall-to-wall music and a multi-media format since the legendary Natural Born Killers. The Night Slayer is a murder-mystery, about a guy who meets a woman in a meeting that mutual friends arranged, with the woman then vanishing into thin air, with the police suspecting the man had something to do with it (elements of this slightly based on McQuown's own personal experience).

The second story today is about II0I0I0II (pronounced IO), a North Carolina electronic synthpop duo who have released a single named 'Legacy', taken from their upcoming album 'Dreaming', that is due out later this Autumn by Distortion Productions. The single includes a remix by Adoration Destroyed and a cover of 'Zero' originally recorded by The Smashing Pumpkins.

Grimace Shake (2023) - Short Comedy Horror Film Review

I'm having an easy blog weekend due to getting quite drunk with my best friend last Friday. Age certainly makes it harder to recover from things like that! Due to that, I've decided to check out some random short horror films for review. Alex Magaña's Grimace Shake is the first one I chose at random (him being the director of many short horrors, including Serbian Dancing Lady).

Apparently this is based on a real limited time milkshake you can/could get from McDonalds. Anyway, a young woman (Hannah Lauren Scott) has brought her and her boyfriend (Yoni Keynan) one of these milkshakes as a treat. Returning home, with her boyfriend at the gym, she puts his in the fridge, and then takes a sip from hers. It isn't long before she is foaming at the mouth, with a purple fluid flowing out of her as she falls to the ground dead. Later, he boyfriend returns home, doesn't see her corpse, but does find the milkshake in the fridge...

I'm glad this didn't go down the more predictable route that short horror films often seem destined to take. There was no jumpscare ending thankfully, and it became far more far-reaching than I had anticipated. The death scene was amusing, as were the moments when the boyfriend keeps getting interrupted just as he is about to take a sip of the deadly drink. Picking apart the story you could say it is odd how the character returned home before trying her drink, you would assume she would have tried some before that point, but that's just nitpicking.

In terms of the quality this looked great, and the actors were perfectly fine. I felt the actual horror was a bit unexciting, but I did like how this three and a half minute short decided to end things. For some reason this McDonalds drink is appearing in a lot of short horrors lately so is a bit of a random overcrowded sub-genre of horror. Grimace Shake can currently be viewed for free on YouTube.

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Woman in the Maze (2023) - Horror Film Review

The Mitesh Kumar Patel (The Man in the Maze, no relation to this film) directed Woman in the Maze started off in a predictable fashion, I was lulled into a safe sense of security. Around the halfway mark this haunted house horror turns into something slightly different, unexpectedly slightly more nasty than I had assumed this would be. That isn't a criticism, despite the various twists not really lighting up the sky, that change was a welcome one.

Gabbi Reynolds (Meredith VanCuyk - Nope, uncredited) works for a property developer, she has been assigned to check out some property in the area around a ghost town (Jerome, Arizona), whose title is convenient for the whole place has a history of spooky goings-on. She soon hits it off with land agent Owen Bannister (Joey Heyworth), with things seeming to be heading in a good direction. While staying at the mansion she had rented while in the area, Gabbi had been experiencing troubling nightmares and odd occurrences, and that comes to a head on her last night there when she comes to realise the mansion is haunted, and whatever evil resides there is determined to not let her leave.

From the pacing of the first half of the film I thought this would much more traditional than it turned out to be. Gabbi was having little moments of horror while alone in her rented property, but not too much was really going on, at least not much is going on for a horror film. I expected the middle act would include at least one research montage, likely of Gabbi in the local library, discovering the bad things that must have happened at her house. Instead this takes a little turn, with the nightmare Gabbi begins to have on her final night really ramping things up, to the extent she is trapped in the place with no way to contact the outside world. Here she finds the house itself is against her, as well as the angry spirits of those it has claimed before. Some neatly placed flashbacks reveal how the place came to be this way, while some nasty injuries Gabbi sustains made me realise this wasn't going to be a typical low threat supernatural horror.
I was never really sure exactly what was going on, a possible red herring of her car being towed away from the drive had me thinking maybe she was now a ghost and that more time had passed than it seemed. Regardless, the house is good at keeping her locked inside, while it is able to distort her screams and knocks for help, with people outside not able to see her even when she is just the other side of the window.

I liked how the subplot of her and Owen getting closer to each other was upended by a more threat filled second half. Makeup effects were decent, but a reliance on crisp and clean CG effects did get in the way of immersion, especially with the ghosts and objects that had a very fake looking effect of them fading away into nothing. Sometimes the effects were passable, but mainly it was very obvious they were computer generated.
The amount of characters were quite low, but the subplot of Owen and an officer attempting to find out what had happened to Gabbi meant the film wasn't justy VanCuyk's character wandering around carrying the film on her own. It culminates in some confusing moments that did suggest a darkness that brought to mind haunted house horror films of the early 2000s. 

I'm glad the film went in the direction it did, even if parts of the third act had me a little too confused. There were a few surprises, though nothing groundbreaking, overall, this wasn't a bad indie horror. Woman in the Maze opens in theatres worldwide on October 6th, and comes to premium TVOD services on October 12th.

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The Mummy Demastered (2017) - Horror Video Game Review (Nintendo Switch)

2017's The Mummy was the attempt to kickstart a new movie multiverse, one that was to feature all the classic Universal movie monsters. It's fair to say it wasn't a success, with me stating in my 5/10 review "...all too often it came across as generic and a little bit dull". One good thing that the film spawned however was a video game, The Mummy Demastered. This was so called as rather than go for a high budget modern look, this instead styles itself on sprite based 2D metroidvanias of the nineties. 

The game has a similar plot to the movie, but here, rather than playing as Tom Cruise's character, you are instead in the boots of a nameless soldier. This takes place mainly underground around London, where the resurrected ancient Egyptian, Ahmanet is planning to cause untold misery by summoning Set, the Egyptian God of Death. That really is it for the simple story, with your progression linked to wherever Ahmanet has travelled to next. Each encounter with the mummified woman sees her summoning a typically room filling boss, before she teleports away.

This felt like an old school Metroidvania, something that would have been fine normally. Having just came off of the grand Blasphemous II, this felt a little archaic and generic to delight too much. One neat idea is that should your character die, you will respawn as a completely new soldier, with your first task to hunt down the zombified remains of the previous soldier, in order to takes his weapons and upgrades. This gave things a slight Soulsborne type feel.

This is more old school in that you don't earn any kind of XP as you play, enemies respawn should you leave the room they are in. There are various power-ups to help you access new areas, most useful is a rope that allows you to travel between areas, you also get the ability to run, jump super high, climb across ceilings, and my favourite, a dash move that lets you zoom off in any direction. There are health and ammo power-ups that give you more of each, but the game favours increased ammo over any other form of assistance. As expected this is one huge level, perhaps around a quarter smaller than Blasphemous II's map, and with areas that blur into one at many parts. There are caves, sewers, forests, and a sand covered city, with one late area, a giant Gothic clock tower that would not felt out of place in a Castlevania. There are fast travel points and save rooms, but even with those the game is cumbersome to get around thanks to the enemies.

Some of the smaller enemy types are fine, but in general the default enemies are bullet sponges, with even a bone throwing skeleton requiring lots of ammo to kill. The monster selection isn't that inspired, with spiders, rats and insects being the ones you will encounter most. By default you have a machine gun, with many more powerful weapons to find. Aside from the machine gun these other guns all require limited ammo to use, and so I saved them for boss fights. The bosses themselves are a highlight in terms of design, a huge scarab, a fight against a giant crocodile beast who is constantly chasing you through a level, and an undead magician were all fun. The problem is how much of a bullet sponge they all are. Bosses went on for far longer than it felt they should have done, with it being a battle of attrition to eventually kill them. Partly this was due to my path through the game. Up until three quarters of the way through I only had access to three different guns. After some exploration of old areas to find secrets I suddenly had lots more far more powerful weapons. Favourite of these was the plasma rifle and the quad rocket launcher, these made the final boss a cakewalk.

I think if I had played this first, The Mummy Demastered would have appealed a lot more. Coming off a more modern version of a Metroidvania I couldn't help but feel this felt a little too old fashioned, while the barebones unexciting story left a lot to be desired. This does capture the feel of a Metroid game in places, with this feeling more like that due to the gun combat, than a Castlevania, even if enemy design-wise, this has more in common with that. At just over four hours (with me having achieved 96% map clearance, this was perfectly adequate, if also uninspired.

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From the Shadows (2022) - Horror Film Review

Coming from director Mike Sargent (who co-wrote this alongside Ian Holt and Michael Kuciak), From the Shadows tries to achieve a lot with quite a little. In a similar vein to Host, this almost found footage style horror mostly takes place from the perspective of a laptop screen. Where this falls down is how reliant on in-film fictional knowledge the characters are, making for many bizarre and unfathomable actions.

When nearly every member of a strange cult dies in a mysterious fire, suspicion falls on the five survivors, who for various reasons where not in the building when the tragic event occured. Paranormal expert, Dr. Amara Rowan (Selena Anduze - WandaVision TV series, The Haunting of Hill House TV series) has decided to make a documentary about the survivors, and has managed to convince them all to take part in a Zoom call with her. The call takes a turn for the weird however when it begins to appear that the strange supernatural beliefs the group have might actually have some basis in reality. A weird situation becomes even more distressing when a shadowy figure begins to kill off the surviving cult members one by one.

Things get off to a bad start with a series of segments that include well known people playing the roles. These, which include among them Dr. Dre playing himself only served to muddy the waters a bit, with their parts offering zero importance to anything that occurs. With the legendary Keith David getting top billing, I imagined his role too would be small. At least there things are gotten right, with him initially seeming like his character (Dr. Leonard Bertram) was only going to feature in old recordings, but he becomes much more integral to the story being told.

With around 90% of the movie taking place over laptop screens, this had an unfortunate side effect of making each of the actors feeling like they were isolated from each other, and as a result it gives a lack of chemistry over the group. With a far reaching story, many odd terms and assumed knowledge is presented to the viewer. Something called 'Alphas' is a type of magical ability that give members of the cult the ability to affect things in the world. Something like that, it was never properly explained, and after Dr. Rowan starts to believe in it herself there is no further attempt to explain things. This led to me really not understanding what on earth was going on. I got the basic gist that something is targeting the survivors of the cult massacre, but the protagonists attempts to combat this went straight over my head.
There are lots of special effects here, with them being very hit and miss. The majority of these are CG effects, and more often than not they look too clean and artificial to really gel with the real world. Special mention goes to the almost cartoon-like shadow people. On occasion, truth be told, some of these effects did work, and the practical effects, such as the lovely violent death scenes were fun to watch, with blood effects that were satisfying.

I wanted to enjoy From the Shadows more than I did, but I just couldn't get a good grasp of what was going on. With a sedate pace at odds with the apparently world endangering situation, actors who all felt like they were performing to themselves rather than as part of a group, and a feeling that I had missed out on an important bit of context. It is not entirely bad, especially the fun death scenes, and Keith David was effortlessly entertaining. This atmospheric story had great potential, but that potential felt squandered somewhat.

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Halloween Girl - Book Two: Dead Reckoning (2023) - Horror Graphic Novel Review

Halloween Girl - Book One: Promises to Keep was an interesting graphic novel that reminded me a lot of the style of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Protagonist Charlotte's battles to rescue her kidnapped son made for an entertaining story, something that the simple, yet effective art styles clearly set out. Halloween Girl - Book Two: Dead Reckoning, rather than escalate the conflict of what has gone before, actually serves as a prequel of sorts, with an insular look into Charlotte and her relationship with her family.

The seventy five page graphic novel is split over two parts, and in a back and forth way they explore Charlotte's past. I thought it was unusual that rather than chart the events leading up to her death, instead the book begins with Charlotte already a ghost, and her possibly initial return to the real world to try and fix old business. Much like the first book, it doesn't explicitly explain how things came to be. There was a comment about Charlotte not going towards the light when she died, but that's the only explanation for why she is now an Earth bound spirit. I liked the back and forth, where via flashbacks to her last night alive, haunting her mother's dreams, and meeting her son Luke without revealing who she actually is, you come to know her pain. It was fun seeing where the 'Halloween Girl' moniker originates from.

Where book one was high stakes and fantastical, this takes a more relatively grounded approach, with a Gothic feeling story that had the protagonist on fine form. Having died as a teenager, and bearing a grudge against her mother, especially now that the woman has raised Luke to believe she is his mum, she shows some immaturity in her dealings with the woman. This is mainly personified in nightmares and visions where she appears before her mother. I loved these sequences as unlike the normal look of Charlotte, here she is in a frightening form, covered with the injuries from the drunk driving incident that killed her, now fresh once again. There was never a sense she wished genuine harm, but it is the darkest that this character has been portrayed as.

I expected the black and white shading to reappear here and this didn't disappoint, with Elenora Garofolo's illustrations being spot on, panels being full of environmental detail, and expressive characters. They matched the bittersweet feel of Richard T. Wilson's tragic story very effectively. He had originally planned to continue on from the events of Book One, but due to the reception of the character of Charlotte decided to make book two an expansion of his 2014 screenplay. Learning that he wrote the original story the year his mum passed, as a way to cope, that pain can be seen. The year my mum passed away I certainly wasn't as productive or creative!

I would have been happy for more of the same, but to have this introspective look into the backstory of Charlotte was a nice surprise, the dark artstyle and the tragic story complimenting each other perfectly. Halloween Girl - Book Two: Dead Reckoning is due for release October 1st, an autographed copy can be pre-ordered on the Mad Shelley Comics website, here.

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Bigfoot Unleashed, Part VII (2023) - Short Comedy Horror Film Review

Seven minute short comedy horror film Bigfoot Unleashed, Part VII is taken from feature length horror The Haunting of Prince Dom Pedro, a film that is currently expected to be completed by 2025. In that film, this short will be referenced and parts of it shown, but to my knowledge it won't appear there in its full form. Directed by Don Swanson (Occurrence at Mills Creek, A Wish for Giants, What Was Lost), and written and produced by Joe Fishel (Occurrence at Mills Creek). The low budget may have been an actual constraint, but a low quality look and feel was purposely chosen, so in that respect it is a perfect match.

An opening text prologue states this is about a construction company whose development deep in the woods of Appalachia has angered a Bigfoot creature who has up to this point assaulted the construction site six previous times. This short chronicles the creature's seventh attack, shown from the viewpoint of a long suffering secretary (Valena Zitello - Massacre Academy), who appears to have been the sole survivor in each of the creature's previous assaults. Will she manage to survive this time however?

The intention was low quality and that is what you get here, with the short mainly concerned with the secretary attempting to flee the creature. Bigfoot itself plays the part of a slasher type antagonist, with it shown to be in pursuit, but always just parts of the creature glimpsed, such as a paw dragging its way along the wall of a tunnel in a Freddy Krueger type way. I thought the best part of this was the montage summary of the previous attacks, basically the same character screaming in the same location, with the same wounds, but wearing different outfits, was amusing. The makeup effects are basically red lines on the face and arm to simulate a claw attack, with no special effects really to speak of. The Bigfoot is a man in a suit (played by Fishel), that looks perfectly fine.

Designed to be basic, Bigfoot Unleashed, Part VII was a decent enough short, if lacking in too much really happening, certainly nothing original. Again, I expect this was all purposefully done, and I did think its low budget indie vibe had its charm.

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The Vance Institute (2023) - Horror Film Review

The Vance Institute was director Lawrie Brewster's director's cut of his film Trauma Therapy: Psychosis. Under that title, the director was unhappy with additional scenes shot and inserted into his movie, featuring the late Tom Sizemore, so much so that he requested a pseudonym be used for that film rather than his own name. I have long enjoyed Brewster's method of directing, with films such as Lord of Tears and The Devil's Machine using his method of creeping Gothic horror. I didn't realise until after I had watched this that it was actually a sequel to the poorly received 2019 thriller, Trauma Therapy, with several actors there returning in the same roles.

Tobin Vance (Tom Malloy - Trauma Therapy) is a self help guru who believes he can help the weak reclaim their lives. He offers five of his followers a special chance to go on a five day retreat in which he promises them he will fix their problems. These include Nicole (Megan Tremethick - Werewolf Castle), a woman who was abused by her father as a child, Lily (Courtney Warner), a woman with an eating disorder, alcoholic Daniel (Craig J. Seath - The Devil's Machine, The Unkindness of Ravens), the cowardly Frank (Gordon Holliday), and Jesse (Jamie Scott Gordon - The Unkindness of Ravens, Lord of Tears). It soon becomes apparent once the group have gone to Vance's remote retreat that his methods are disturbing to say the least. Each day he puts the patients through intense psychological torture and sadistic tests that soon have the group fearing for their safety.

Aside from one sequence around the middle of the movie, the entirety of The Vance Institute is in black and white. This works well with the cold indifference with which Vance bullies and cajoles his easily manipulated patients, it also fits with the sparse location much of the film is set at. This felt almost a bit like Squid Game, albeit, a very stripped down and indie version of that movie, with an almost unsettling feel of Saw to it, though without the torture porn aspect of that one. The meat of the film is the five days of ordeals the group face, from venomous leeches, to poison and more, the group are put through a lot, helped along by some nasty drugs that cause them to hallucinate. It becomes clear that Vance is prepared to go to any lengths, with it showing him to have little respect for human life, apparently able to operate outside the law. One weird part never really explained was why he has armed guards under his employment. Unless I missed it, I don't recall any of the group every questioning why Squid Game style armed guards are everywhere.

I thought Malloy was great as the antagonist character, especially the scenes where his true vicious nature breaks out. Out of the protagonists, I was most impressed by Holliday, his character's path through the movie was interesting, with the actor getting to portray a whole range of emotions in a believable way. Jamie Scott Gordon's character secretly being an undercover policeman was kind of cool, but it did provide yet another familiar feeling of a stripped down Squid Game. I thought late arrival John (David Josh Lawrence - Trauma Therapy) was a decent enough character, but it might have been better had it not been immediately revealed he was a plant, secretly working for Vance. Maybe with this being a sequel it was felt this may have been obvious anyway due to him being a returning character. I found myself wanting to see how this would all pan out, and it went to some dark places (highlight being the colourful surreal group therapy scene), but occasionally it felt like the sparse sets and relatively few characters were due to budget constraints rather than having always been intentional.

It may draw some heavy parallels with that successful Netflix show, but The Vance Institute did enough to stand on its own. A departure from the often Gothic feel of Brewster's other films, this cold look at a villainous cult kept me engaged throughout. The Vance Institute is distributed by Hex Media Ltd and is available on Amazon Prime UK, and at Hex Media's online store, here.

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The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station (2022) - Horror Audio Podcast Review

Everyone knows that The Callisto Protocol video game was designed to be a spiritual successor to the legendary Dead Space. Personally, I thought it was a pretty decent attempt, but others disliked its reliance on close quarters combat, while the announcement of a remake of that original game stole its thunder somewhat, leaving this new series in the dark. One of the things I liked about the original game was its multimedia approach, featuring books, films (Dead Space: Downfall), spin-off games, and even a full motion comic book prequel. It was only after going to add my review of this video game homage on imdb that I saw that this too had attempted a similar multimedia approach. Around the time of the game a high production value audio drama was released. I spent much of my time with The Callisto Protocol wondering just where the story was. Well, it turns out the story was over here in the six part audio drama The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station. 

This serves as a prequel to the games, but one that is only tangentially related. A mild spoiler, but this basically explains how the terrorist group The Outer Way, came to know about the horrific experiments that were taken place in Black Iron Prison on the moon of Callisto. Here, a jaded bounty hunter named Percy (voiced by Gwendoline Christie - Wednesday TV series, The Sandman TV series), and her partner Kane (Michael Ironside - Total Recall, Scanners) are hired to take a Black Iron Prison guard, Metzger (Kevin Durand - X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and a mercenary named Prendergast (Sam Littlefield) to the abandoned Helix Station space station, in order to capture a man who had fled there after escaping Black Iron. The place holds a special and terrible significance to Percy, whose life-long battle with intense PTSD stems from an incident that took place there many years in the past. She finds not only her own personal demons there, but literal ones as well, as it turns out the escaped prisoner was actually a medical doctor from the prison, who has taken along with him a gruesome and deadly monster that he seemingly had a hand in creating.

This might not have had too much impact on the events of the game, but I still found this to be a decent little podcast series. I love Haunted: The Audio Drama, but it was only after listening to this one that I realised how much more you could do with a higher budget. First and foremost is having such a recognisable actor such as Christie here. You might expect someone in that much demand to phone in their voice work, but she seemed to put a lot of effort in here, making for a great performance as the very troubled protagonist. Split over six episodes, each one is roughly a half hour long and follows a traditional path. This is audio drama in the dramatic sense, with no end of high quality sound effects creating the feel of a movie playing out, albeit in audio only. This makes for a thrilling listen, even if, much like the game, there is nothing new here. Much of the story takes place in the present moment, but being from Percy's perspective, you get to hear the audial hallucinations as her memories blur with the present moment. This culminates predictably in episode five, 'Old Ghosts' which part takes place as a flashback story, detailing exactly what happened in Percy's past to make her so messed up in the present.

With a small cast of characters things never have the scope to get too crazy, but there are plenty of The Thing style shenanigans with members of the group getting infected and transforming into monsters. The story is well paced over the six episodes, with twists and turns, even if they were not that inspired. I had wished there was more a link with the game, as I had thought there would be closer links than what was eventually revealed. As always with a dependence on sound effects, sometimes what was happening could get a little hard to follow, and at the beginning at least I did get confused over which character was which. Still, for a free podcast (still available to listen to now), I had a good time with The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station. If you enjoyed the game, then certainly check this out.

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Brightwood (2022) - Horror Film Review

Brightwood is a movie that I'm glad I knew nothing about when going in to it. I was able to discover things at a similar pace as the doomed protagonist duo, rather than have knowledge of what might be to come. Written and directed by Dane Elcar, this is a feature length version of his short horror film, The Pond, released in 2018. The thing is, watching this, I kept thinking how much better this would have worked as a short film, as it struggles to come up with enough ideas to fill its eighty five minute run time.

Dan (Max Woertendyke) and his wife Jen (Dana Berger - Orange Is the New Black TV series) are a married couple who are finding themselves increasingly at odds with each other. Furious at Dan's drunken behaviour at a workplace gettogether the night before, Jen has gone for a long run to let off some steam, with Dan joining her on the run, in the hope he can cool her down. Things begin to take a turn for the bizarre when they arrive at a local lake they have been to many times before. For some reason they are both unable to locate the woodland trail by which they got to their location, their confusion leads to panic when they realise they appear to be trapped on the path that goes around the lake. No matter what direction they go in they appear to always arrive back at the exact same part of the path, even trying to cut back through the woodland they just end up back right by the lake. Things take an even stranger turn when they start to glimpse a hooded figure in the distance who seems deaf to their pleas for assistance.

This had a real vibe of The Twilight Zone to it, and the opening act was by far the most interesting part of the movie. I thought it was a neat idea that the couple were so wrapped up in their melodrama that it took them a good while to realise something very odd was occuring. The film played out like a cross between Vivarium and Triangle, with this seeming like a woodland based version of that first one, but with the time travel loopiness of the later. Where this began to fall down was when the protagonists began to realise the horror they were trapped in. It led to large parts of the second and third act when they were just running around aimlessly. The introduction of the idea that there are versions of themselves from both past and future also trapped in the same location did provide some interesting moment, but the protagonists refusal to interact with these alternate versions of themselves (outside of a few scenes), meant it was still mainly just the two characters trying to carry the movie. The woodland setting led to a feeling of increasing boredom, with the characters not really thinking up any new ideas as to how to escape. 

Hoping for any kind of explanation, there never was a true reveal of how they came to be trapped, though amusingly a random wild idea that Jen comes up with might actually have some merit. At its heart this felt like an analogy for being trapped in a doomed relationship. Years of resentment and irritation has led to a couple who know they really should not be together, but who are powerless to take the move to seperate. This can be seen in the characters attempts to escape the loop, but forever encountering themselves again when they try. No matter what they try, they end up back together, miserable and looking for a way to truly be free. With all their talk of one of the versions of themselves being the 'best' version of themself, the film does take a darkly comical turn, leading to an ending of a kind.

With just the two credited actors in the movie, Brightwood needed to have the momentum to keep its lean story going over a feature-length time frame. I'm not convinced it did, as I found myself yawning more than once, hoping for something new to occur, rather than, like the loop itself, things just going round in circles. Brightwood is out on DVD, and streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Blasphemous II (2023) - Horror Video Game Review (Nintendo Switch)

Blasphemous was a fantastic metroidvania that breathed new life into the crowded genre for me, styling itself as it did on religious horror. After recently playing through it again in order to see the newly added canonical ending as part of the final DLC (Wounds of Eventide) I moved onto its sequel, Blasphemous II. With early indications this was also a great game I was excited to get into it. Could it possibly live up to the excellence of that first game though? Spoilers for the canonical ending of Blasphemous to unavoidably follow.

As a quick recap, Blasphemous saw you as a resurrected penitent who was tasked with defeating a Pope like figure who was using the 'miracle' for his own perverted means. The miracle is an unexplained phenomenon that has the power to twist the wishes of the devout, often turning them into monsters based on the guilt they hold within their heart. After the penitent one defeated the mystical beings who were secretly controlling the miracle, that power left the land, and the penitent one fell down dead, due to the miracle's power no longer sustaining him.
A long time later (according to many people online it is about a thousand years later, though I don't recall anything in game stating it to be that long), the miracle returns to the land in the form of a gigantic beating heart containing an unborn gigantic mystical being floating in the sky above a giant city. The miracle's return brings the penitent one back to life, where he is tasked to make his way to this giant being and stop it from being born, as it has been judged to be a false God.

Initially I was very impressed with Blasphemous II, and don't take that to mean I didn't enjoy this, it was a great game, it just didn't live up the lofty heights of the first for several reasons. Upon starting the game you are given a choice of three different weapons. There is a giant metal ball on a chain, slow but powerful, and has the ability to ring bells that create floating platforms to appear. There are twin rapiers that are quick but weak, these also grant you the ability to teleport between mirrors dotted around the various rooms. Finally is a barbaric looking sword, this one has a powerful downward slash move that can be used to break through vines blocking doorways. My issue with these weapons is that the ball on a chain was by far the best weapon, it may be slow but it has a big reach and can often hit enemies multiple times as it swings by them. Outside of one boss fight designed for its use, I only used the rapiers for the teleport sections, and as for the sword, I never once used it in a combat situation. With the metal ball being so powerful it outclassed the other weapons far too much, making their inclusion feel a bit pointless. Each of these weapons has its own skill trees, granting various bonuses.

The item screen is better designed for the sequel, no longer do you have to switch in and out the special abilities you gain over the course of the twenty five hour or so game (roughly the same length as the first), but they aren't as interesting. You get four abilities that allow you to explore and open up more of the game world, but included among these are a very unoriginal double jump and air dash; useful, but not very exciting. There are no end of side quests to complete, with various grotesque friendless dotted around the map. Many of these are located in the central hub area, where there are a variety of shops. The fervour gained from killing enemies are now used solely for buying new items, with the upgrade trees dependent on a seperate currency earned or found around the levels. You have new wooden statues you can equip that give various buffs, and the rosary beads are back. As always, everything has lore attached to it, but where before you always seemed to get several paragraphs of lore, now, many objects give you just one or two sentences.
There are two endings, to get the good ending one of the steps is to collect the thirty three floating cherubs hidden around the game. On paper that didn't sound too bad, but I spent two or three hours right at the games end searching every inch of the maps for the remaining two, meaning that was one of the dullest parts of the game.

The design of the world isn't as memorable for the sequel. The first game had locations that seemed to naturally and logically lead off into each other, here the design felt more gamelike, with seemingly random locations all dumped on top of each other, making this feel much more like a video game than an authentic atmospheric world. Some areas do shine, I thought the wood area made for a decent change, a return to a key area from the first game now in ruins was neat, while there was a fantastic level set in an upside down cathedral covered in wax, that place really invigorated me late into the game due to its combination of fascinating design and fantastic music. In general the soundtrack is great, I wouldn't say it had as many memorable tunes as before, but there are still some great ones here.

Along with plenty of new enemies types, a large chunk of enemies return in the exact same form as before. The game also liked to reskin these a lot, so later game saw you battling different coloured and tougher versions of earlier enemies. My favourite of the new enemies was this weird combination between a bishop and a slug, and old crones who were eaten by crows upon dying. Sadly, many of the special kills that were unique to each enemy type have been devolved. Most special kills now all use the exact same animation. Bosses are also nowhere near as memorable. The first game had a heavy reliance of horrific screen filling monsters, the few human adversaries you faced made for a nice change. Here it is the complete opposite, nearly every boss encounter is against a human enemy, with only a couple of giant bosses. While the boss encounters were all a lot of fun, they really were nowhere near as memorable, I'm not sure why it was felt these needed to be changed.

Blasphemous II is a great video game, but it loses some of the cohesiveness of the first, with a world that felt far more artificial, and bosses that were a bit underwhelming in terms of design. There were some lovely changes made here (thank God spike pits no longer cause instant death!), some not so good changes (automatic markers on the map showing you where to go to next) and a smoother feel, but I wish it had made its world as hauntingly intimidating to explore. Where Blasphemous was a nine out of ten, very close to a ten, this one is a solid eight. Hopefully, like that one, there will be a lot of DLC added over time, which I will be sure to get,

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Zombie Rage (2023) - Horror Anthology Film Review

It feels like quite a while since I last reviewed an anthology film, and with Zombie Rage you have not only that, but one featuring the undead as well. It is immediately apparent the short films here were very low budget, one of the things I really adore about the zombie genre is that budget really doesn't matter. The more terrible the make-up, the less direction the actors playing the zombies appeared to have received, and the more wooden the acting is, usually results in something with the potential to be far more entertaining to watch.

Every anthology needs a good connecting thread, and I am perfectly fine with the undead being that connective tissue here. The general synopsis is that zombie apocalypse has broken out around the world. Over four short films (one split into two separate parts), and a wraparound story, we get to witness various people's battle for survival. 'CKX News' is the comedic wraparound story, with the anthology opening with a news reporter (Nelson Mayer) interviewing people about the downtown crime rate in a Canadian city. The joke being that the crime rate is so bad that even a zombie outbreak hasn't affected things much. This was written, directed, and produced by Johnny Lektrik and Mark Kiazyk and was a fun introduction for me. Often trying to avoid any type of spoilers I will skip over a film's synopsis, so it was a delight to discover the film I was watching was an anthology. I didn't find this too funny, but it had its moments. One complaint, which was a recurring one over a few of these short films was that a limited amount of undead led to the same zombies turning up again and again in various places, rather than a lot of unique ones. That, and the final kill in this wraparound segment was slightly ruined by the victim not really looking that damaged by the undead mob.

'Two Stoners & A Zombie' was the first short proper, with a title that sums up the majority of this one. Jerry (Keith Johnson) and his house mate, Tom (Tyler Ulrich) discover their town is becoming full of zombies. After letting a random guy into their apartment after discovering he has been injured,things soon escalate. Written and directed by Ken Brewer, this got better as it went along. I thought the location used in particular was cool, though its apparently strong defences made the later decision for the stoners to attempt to leave with their friends seem a little odd. This was rough around the edges, and personally I didn't really like the abrupt end to this.
Next up was 'Flesh Attack', the short that was split into two separate parts and was one of the stronger entries. Written, directed, and produced by John Ward, this follows a thief (Andriana Garbiso), who has broken into the home of a rich family to steal a large amount of money hidden there. This was the only short in which the zombie apocalypse appeared to already in the process of happening. The thief was aware of the undead, and so was in a much better position to battle them. The skeletal remains of the house owners looked laughably bad, but on the flip-side, some of the zombie make-up, and the zombies themselves looked amazing. They would not have looked out of place in a Romero film, with a dead eye look to the actors, and moving in a familiar way. Bizarrely though, the undead were a little too inconsistent, with two male zombies kind of wind-milling their arms, and also having a few awkward moments when they have gotten too close to the thief character before they should have, so appeared a little lost as to what they should do. With a great soundtrack, half-decent looking ghouls, and an interesting story, this left me wanting more. A good thing, as part two appeared later on in Zombie Rage.

On paper, 'Veronica's Bachelorette Party' sounded like a neat idea. Again directed by Brewer (and written by Meri Gyetvay, with both co-producing this), this had a stripper turning up at the titular Veronica's apartment (the woman played by Traci Burr) to put on a show for her and her friends. Unfortunately, a scratch he received from a messed up woman earlier in the day, soon begins to affect his performance. There was an extended sequence in the middle of this short in which the stripper dances and strips to his underwear. This scene went on far too long, even skipping through it, this seemed to go on forever and served no real purpose. The dialogue was awful, with Veronica and her friend's acting and dialogue feeling like something out of a porn movie, and not in a good way. This was another one that missed the landing, with a finish that again seemed quite abrupt. I believe this one featured the only nudity of the anthology, if that is your thing.
'Flesh Attack' returned for its second part, which was slightly more entertaining than the first. I liked the random cutaways to the thief character's mobile, with a rant from a unfriendly priest with some humorous reasons for why he thinks zombies have appeared. Kudos to this one for finally ending a film in a different way to the others.
The final film (aside from the wraparound), was 'A Walk in the Park' which was the worst film to be found here. Another one directed by Brewer, this fell down straight away by a lengthy (titular) walk from three female friends. The dialogue was inane and dull, but more distracting were the three friends who to all intents and purposes seemed to have no idea how to actually walk and talk. It led to this weird stop and start, with the actors putting their limbs in various strange and unnatural poses which really was something to see. Despite being the worst one, this was still entertaining to watch, featuring a large body count, and plenty of moments of the undead somehow managing to sneak up on a large group of survivors. This resembled live action roleplay more than an actual film, and the limited number of ghouls who kept repeatedly showing up again and again in different places, as well as terrible acting from the human survivors made this one entertaining but lacking.

I wouldn't say any of the short films included within Zombie Rage were particularly good but that isn't a bad thing. It did make for an entertaining anthology, and at least the shorts all felt consistent in their low quality. This may be literal brain dead entertainment, but sometimes that is all you really need to scratch that trashy zombie film itch.

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