VOD Review: Happy Death Day (2017)

"There's something fun about this movie, even if it is a bit tame."

When it comes to the movies that Blumhouse Pictures churns out on the regular, it's safe to say that many of them are a mixed bag.

For every Hush, Sleight, or Viral that we get, we also have to endure the underwhelming mediocrity of titles like The Gallows, Exeter, or The Veil.

Then there's the next level down, where movies like Mockingbird, The Darkness, or Unfriended exist... and that is truly shit-filled level.

As Teen Terror flicks go, Happy Death Day is a step up for Blumhouse, although it feels fairly sanitized and tame, which holds it back from being great.

Tree (yes, that's actually what people call her) wakes up on her birthday, on Monday, September 18th, in some guys dorm room, where she ended up after a night of hard partying. She does her walk of shame and sets about her day, which involves her being a catty mean girl, and making us fine with the fact that she's about to be murdered over and over again.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEAN GIRL!

You see, as her birthday draws to a close, she's murdered by a masked killer. Then she wakes up and it's the same day again, only she's still alive. So she sets out on her day again, experiencing a huge case of deja-vu at every turn, until she realizes that for some reason, she's reliving the same day over and over again, which includes dying in a new, painful way each time at the hands of her killer.

ARE WE SUPPOSED TO ROOT FOR HIM OR HER?

Pissed off at dying repeatedly, Tree, with the help of her nice guy love interest, tries to figure out who's killing her, and why.

Lots of things ensue over and over again.

AH, ROMANCE.

Everyone who has seen Happy Death Day has already said that it's basically Groundhog Day gone the Slasher route, and it bears repeating, because that's exactly what it is. It's pretty sad that there's no Bill Murray in this one though, because he's the goods.

HDD is a fun movie. It's an inventive movie too. It would have played much better though had they not restrained the material so much. Director Christopher Landon's last feature, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (review HERE), laid on the gore and crude humor, which made us love it. HDD feels neutered by comparison, and that hurts its enjoyment factor.

Maybe that's because as clever as the script was, we found it to be just as weak: what is causing the time loop?; why so many fake endings?; why was the reveal of the killer so random, and why did it feel like it made no sense? When a script is weak, visceral thrills tend to gloss over such weaknesses, and this movie needed those extra touches.

"PEEK-A-BOO!"

Plenty of inventive, and even fun, kill scenes throughout this one, although most of them are not very heavy on the blood.

THE MASCARA FLOWS FREELY THOUGH.

No such luck.

SUCH POTENTIAL.

This movie knows what it is, and that's cool, but it's short on likable characters, and some of its plot points feel stretched in order for them to make sense, but hey, this movie is about its gimmick, and it's at least a good one.

Just wish it had contained more R-rated elements. And answers.

C+

Happy Death Day is available now on VOD, and hits Blu-ray & DVD now.

Happy Hottie Day.

Picturebook Review: Crazy Lake (2017)

"A B-grade Slasher flick, through and through."

Slasher flicks are a mixed bag. We tend to watch them when we need a quick fix of mindless, exploitative fun, because many of them offer people in various stages of undress behaving badly, and those very same people getting killed off in gruesome ways. 

Most Slasher flicks these days tend to be low-budget; the characters that populate them tend to be unlikable and disposable (save for maybe a cool Final Girl and one decent guy); and they don't often break into original territory... which is pretty much the case here.

As a cheap, fun, 90-minute distraction though, Crazy Lake did the job.

Aside from "A group of twenty-somethings head into the woods to part, and are picked off one by one by a mongoloid maniac", the plot matters little here. What really matters is pictured below.

Crazy Lake breaks absolutely no new ground as far as Slasher flicks go, but it does give us a steady parade of naked and scantily clad women and some messy kills, and it does so pretty well. It was fun enough to be worth a look if you dig cheapo Slashers with plenty of boobs and blood.  

If this is your type of flick, you already know it.

Crazy Lake is available on VOD now.

Sexy Lake.

DirecTV Review: Leatherface (2017)

"Leatherface is more of a road revenge flick than it is an origin story."

(aka The Road to Mexico.)
Release Date: September 21st.
Country: USA.
Rating: R.
Written by: Seth M. Sherwood.
Directed by: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Lili Taylor, Finn Jones, Sam Strike, and Jessica Madsen.

I'm going to come right out and say it: I love the 2003 TCM remake, and its follow-up, TCM: The Beginning, nearly as much as I love the original. In a vastly different way, of course, but I thought they were good flicks.

About this prequel/re-imagining, I'll say that while it's plagued with issues, that it's still better than every other film in the franchise, save for maybe TCM 2, which is debatable.

Did I mention that this movie has issues though? Because it does.

It's 1955, and Verna Sawyer and her brood of inbred whelps live a happy life, killing people for fun. When the Sawyer kids lure a dumb-ass girl (who should have stayed in the car) to her death, they invoke the rage of her father, the sociopathic Texas Ranger, Hal Hartman, who has them committed to a boys home for the criminally insane.

WHY WOULD YOU FOLLOW THAT INTO THE WOODS?!?

Ten years later, little Jed (I thought his name was Bubba) Sawyer is all grown up and living in the asylum where he was left to rot, just waiting around to become Leatherface. Missing her son, Verna visits the asylum, where she sparks a riot in which he and some other teen nutbags escape, taking a sweet and innocent nurse hostage in the process.

CAN YOU EVEN TELL WHICH ONE OF THEM IS NOT INSANE?

As they make a run for Mexico, Hartman and his lawdogs give pursuit. What follows next is a bloody cacophony of twisted death, very little of which involves a chainsaw.

Ultra-violent road revenge antics ensue.

YEAH, THAT'S PRETTY MUCH HOW EVERY SOUTHERN LAWMAN LOOKED BACK IN THE 60'S.

Leatherface serves as more of a great series of gory set pieces than it does a prequel to one of the most beloved Horror franchises of all time. It's bloody and nasty, which should delight the gorehounds out there, but a lot of those bits feel like they were included just to make the movie seem over-the-top, rather than serving the central narrative.

Most of the story is told from the perspective of the bloodthirsty teenagers who escape from the asylum with Leatherface, instead of, you know, making the story about him, which makes it feel almost pointless to call this a Texas Chainsaw flick. Maybe they got caught up in the "twist" that the movie lays on us towards the end, and they thought that building everything around that would somehow make it better?

We already know the Sawyer clan is a bunch of deranged, backwoods cannibals, and that Leatherface is the half-wit muscle of the brood, so why try and change it up and make him something altogether different? By the time it started to feel like a TCM flick at the end, I thought to myself "This is where they should have started things, not ended them.

That said, the movie works on some levels. It delivers on gore, it's got plenty of twisted action throughout, and the cast did a solid job in their roles; Stephen Dorff rocked it as the Texas Ranger who is as deranged as the inmates he's pursuing.

THERE'S NO JOY IN THIS MAN'S LIFE. NONE.

The twist... I won't give it away (you'll figure it out towards the end), but I will say that I didn't dig it. Aside from it being there to seem clever, it just didn't play well for me.

SHE APPARENTLY DIDN'T LIKE IT EITHER.

How sick do you have to be to have a threesome with a corpse?!?

"DRINK UP AND PRETEND THIS SHIT ISN'T HAPPENING."

If nothing else, Leatherface delivers on the blood and gore, which is pretty much a staple of any Maury & Bustillo film. The headshot in the diner, the threesome, the Texas Tauntaun scene... this one gets plenty nasty.

WELL, IT WAS A GOOD RUN WHILE IT LASTED...

Jessica Madsen bares all, and even french kisses a rotting corpse...

...AND THAT'S WHY SHE HAS TO GO TO DIRTY WHORE JAIL!

The bottom line is this: Leatherface is an uneven addition to the TCM universe. It's a gorfest that loosely gives us some background on the titular character's childhood, but plays it too casual with the plot to be considered a definitive Leatherface origin story. I mean, it is an origin story, but only at the beginning and end really.

If you're looking for a bloody entry in the story of the Sawyer clan, and can overlook the film's shortcomings, then Leatherface is definitely one to rent when it hits VOD outlets later in the month.

C+

Leatherface is streaming on DirecTV now, and will hit VOD outlets and limited theaters on October 20th.

The girls in Texas sure are purty!