VOD Review: Better Watch Out (2017)

"It's never too early to get in the Christmas spirit."

(aka Safe Neighborhood.)
Release Date: October 6th.
Country: Australia.
Rating: R.
Written by: Zack Kahn.
Directed by: Chris Peckover.
Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Virginia Madsen, Patrick Warburton, Levi Miller, and Ed Oxenbold.

Do yourself a favor: if you haven't already checked out the trailer for Better Watch Out, skip it, and just watch the movie.

I know that no one really watches movie these days without seeing a trailer first, but in this case, the trailer gives away too much of the movie's Holiday cheer, which is a real shame.

It's the Holiday Season, and Ashley has a babysitting gig. Luke, the kid she's babysitting, is in love with her, and he's planning on confessing his love while his parents attend a Christmas party. After his awkward attempt to seduce her with the winning combo of Horror movies and wine, a brick flies through the window with the message "You leave, you die" written on it, and any plans of romance go out the window as Ashely and Luke have to face a masked home invader with bad intentions.

I know that's pretty vague, but the less you know going into this one the better.

Home Alone-style savagery ensues.

WELL, THEY'RE NOT EXACTLY HOME ALONE...

Better Watch Out looks great, boasts a smart script and equally smart direction, offers plenty of darkly humorous moments to balance the demented parts, and overall, it's a lot of fun. This is a Black Comedy that feels a lot like Funny Games, and yes, I suppose there's a bit of Home Alone-ish action to draw a comparison, although that really paints the wrong picture.

Sure, this movie has a Christmasy feel about it, but it's a twisted commentary on the ils of suburban life. And how boys are evil and treat girls wrong. And how babysitting is for suckers.

Levi Miller showed some chops as Luke, which truly took some range, and Ed Oxenbould made for a competent enough best friend type, but this is Olivia DeJonge's movie, make no mistake. She was good in The Visit, and we loved her supporting role in Scare Campaign (review HERE), but she ascended to the next level in this one, carrying the movie with her performance. She plays terrified and tough equally well, and she's got great screen presence.

THAT'S GOTTA BE COLD.

Luke was a bit over-the-top with some of his mannerisms. I know they were trying to illustrate how unhinged he was, but it came off like he was some kind of goofy edgelord. That was by design, but it irked us at times.

WILL THEY SAVE THE GIRL?

I really loved the ending to this one... which is why I didn't really dig the mid-credits scene. It ended perfectly, so why ruin it with some obligatory "See you in the sequel!" crap like that?

THIS GIRL DON'T PLAY.

A paint bucket, some rope, a shard of glass, and bullets give this one just the right amount of bloody goodness.

IT'S JUST A LITTLE HEAD WOUND.

Plenty of sexual themes and discussions throughout, but nothing gets visceral. 

NICE TRY KID, BUT SHE'S NOT SHARING HER PIZZA WITH YOU.

Better Watch Out was a really good movie that balances dark humor with twisted violence. It's also one that's going to put a lot of people off with its subject matter, and the dynamic shift that happens about halfway in might throw some people off, but overall it's a great movie to watch this October... and probably again in December.

B+

Better Watch Out is available on VOD now.

Olivia DeJonge is quick becoming a Scream Queen to reckon with.

Shudder Review: Among the Living (2014)

"So the directors of Inside decided to make themselves their own version of Stand By Me, huh?"

Released in France way back in 2014, and in many other parts of the world since then, Among the Living is finally available to U.S. audiences, thanks to the superb streaming service, Shudder.

The filmmaking duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury burst onto the Horror scene in 2007 with the superb Home Invasion Thriller, Inside (review HERE). It took them four years to deliver a follow-up film, Livide (review HERE), and yet another three years to arrive at Among the Living.

They're also the duo responsible for this year's Leatherface, which we reviewed a few days back, right HERE.

While nothing they've made since Inside comes close the the twisted perfection of that film, they sure do know how to make movies that offer gorgeous visuals and graphically disturbing bloodshed.

On Halloween night, a deranged pregnant woman tries to kill her asshole husband and mongoloid son Klarence, only to turn the knife on herself to escape her shitty existence as a French housewife. Father and son then take off to "start a new family" somewhere else.

YOU DROVE HER TO THIS!

Some years later, on the last day of school, three teenage friends decide to skip class and have some fun. After trying their best to burn an old man's barn down, the trio of Dan, Tom and Victor head for the ruins of an abandoned film studio where they find a bound and gagged woman in the trunk of a car. A man in a clown mask spots them and gives chase, but they elude him, and escape. They tell the Police their wild story only to be laughed at, because the kids are assholes who are always causing trouble and lying.

THEY KIND OF HAVE IT COMING.

Later that night, the hairless freak known as Klarence seeks each of the boys out, with the intent to kill them so that they can't tell the Police about what he and his father's new home, and the fact that they kidnap girls and force them to join their new family. Of course the no one believes the kids anyway, so really, killing them could have been avoided altogether.

Creepiness and blooshed ensue.

NOTHING CREEPY ABOUT THAT.

Among the Living had the feel of a Spielberg movie from the 80's, and I'm pretty sure that was by design. Some people have called it Stand By Me meets Slasher flick, and while I get that, I have to say that the kids in this movie aren't likable enough to draw that sort of comparison. I mean, they plot to burn down a guy's barn, and one of them almost kills his sleeping dad with an axe, so they're hardly on the same tier of lovable that the kids who starred in movies like The Goonies, Super 8, or even Stranger Things, which Among the Living definitely tries its best to vibe off of.

Seeing that the film spends a lot of time developing the kid characters, and showcasing their school-skipping adventures, you'd think that you'd want them to come off as less asshole-ish than they do.

The film gets better marks for its intensity when the kids are evading the masked creeper at the film studio, and even higher ones for ratcheting up that intensity in the 3rd act of the movie, where said creeper comes after the boys, intent on killing them all. Kudos to Maury & Bustillo for taking the film where they did; I figured it would be about the kids being trapped at the movie studio, trying to survive while being chased around, but it was kind of ingenious to turn it into a hunt-and-kill type of thing where the killer comes after them later on, in their own homes.

There are definitely parts of the movie that are unnerving, and downright scary. Klarence makes for a terrifying movie monster, and the part in the bedroom gave us chills. Uneven it might be, but it delivers on the scares. It was cool to see Maury & Bustillo regulars Beatrice Dalle and Chloe Coulloud show up in this one too.

DAT ASS.

There's gore frigging galore in this one, including, but not limited to: pregnant belly stabs, foot-in-mouth violence; a nasty cast break; a face being shorn off; and all sorts of other bloody and brutal bits throughout. The long, drawn out kill scene in the house towards the end was all kinds of disturbing.

It's odd though, that with such a bloody beginning and finale, that they don't show the kills in the middle of the movie...

GORE GALORE.

We get to see Klarence in all of his fully nude glory, and the gorgeous Chloe Coulloud sheds her top in death.

AU REVOIR, MON AMI.

While we wish that the movie had been stronger and more cohesive overall, we have to give credit to Maury & Bustillo for crafting a gorgeous, scary, and overtly-bloody film in general. It's not quite Inside, but it's still an above average effort.

Give it a watch if you're a fan of the films of the French new extremity.

C+

Among the Living is streaming now on Shudder.

Chloe Coulloud is tres magnifique.

Blu-ray Review: Black Christmas (1974)

"One of the best Slasher flicks of all-time."

*This is one of the very first reviews that we ever psoted way back in 2008, but we've brought it back to the top to coincide with the new Collector's Edition Blu-ray release from Scream factory, because it's a classic slasher that deserves the love.  

Poor Billy is only tying to find someone who will listen to him; too bad he wasted his time on those snotty sorority girls... because they don't seem to care at all! Every time he calls and tries to pour his heart out to them, they laugh and hang up on him and just won't listen. That obviously means that they have to die.
 

Billy 'bout to kill some bitches.

You see, Billy lives in the attic, so it's easy for him to kill a girl, meow like a cat, hide her body, then wait for another one to kill. He really does like meowing like a cat. He also likes to ski, but nobody ever asks him about that. Not even Agnes, because she's a bitch. Sure, everyone eventually gets whats coming to them... just not Billy. He didn't even get as much as a card for the Holidays.

Far be it from me to spoil the what happens for you here, but suffice it to say that there's a dead bitch in the attic, and her cat is a total asshole.

See, this is why I hate cats... She's dead, asshole. Go feed yourself!

What a creepy classic this one is. Tense, dark, and unsettling, Bob Clark made a Horror movie that was years ahead of it's time with Black Christmas. His use of shadow, odd angles, and tension in place of buckets of blood were genius for its time, and it still holds up well, nearly 40 years later. Not bad for a little movie with a budget of under a million dollars.

This film is not only a Horror Classic, but it was also groundbreaking when it was released; it was one of the first slasher movies ever made; it used the "the calls are coming from inside the house" gag years before When a Strangers Calls did; and it was one of the first movies to show us the action from the killer's POV. This movie deserves to stand alongside Halloween as one of the best slasher films ever, although it tends to be a footnote when the two are discussed. Shame, that.

Merry last Christmas ever!

I may have had certain misconceptions about this movie before I saw it...

Turns out it's not that kind of Black Christmas, after all...

WTF was up with the Cops at the end? I mean do we seriously leave a girl all alone in a house where multiple murders were just committed and where the killer is still at large and we haven't even really searched the house all that well in an effort to find him? That sentence was a HUGE run-on, but it had to be said in exactly that manner.

Everyone is on the phone in this movie.

There were a few on-screen deaths, but they were very light on the blood. Creepy though. Very creepy. 

She must have died mid-Christmas Carol.

 Nope... This one was tame in that department.

Hussey.

"Darling, you can't rape a townie" or "I'm going to kill you."

"But... but I'm a townie!"

When someone tells you to get out of the house, you don't run upstairs with a fire poker.... you GTFO of the house!

"You want us to leave now? Alright, we're on our way upstairs!"

Black Christmas is an all-time classic that every Horror fan should have in their collection, especially those of us who love slashers. It's really interesting that between this movie and A Christmas Carol, that Bob Clark gave the world two seminal (although for completely different reasons) Christmas movies. Maybe he just really loved the Holiday Season?

A

Black Christmas is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.

Olivia "the" Hussey and Margot "crazy as fuck" Kidder are in this, and both are looking rather 70's hot.