Quid Games (2023)

A bunch of college students who went to high school together receive texts about a party at the abandoned factory. None of them can figure out who the text is from, but sure let’s go. 

When they arrive, three silent weirdos in masks give them complimentary shots.  Logan chugs his down but the others are a bit wary before taking theirs.  

The masked people usher them into the building to the basement. There are no decorations, no food, no bar and no other people. There are only lights, some music and some construction debris on the ground.  No one is as suspicious as they should be. 

Eventually they are gassed and wake up to a voice on a loud speaker forcing them to play musical chairs.  The loser is shot with a dart filled with a toxin and dies. 

Thus begins the saga of being force to play kids games, with losers being permanently eliminated.  Everyone tries to think of people they hurt in high school who may want revenge. Some of the guys also bullied people in college.  There are flashbacks to the bullying, which make you understand the desire for  revenge. 

No reason to name this quid games other than to try to poach viewers who are confused or mistype the name of what they want actually want to watch. 

Ridiculous dialogue

Student: What do we do?

Tyler: I don’t fucking know.  We go to community college. I don’t know shit about shit. 

These kids and their eating cereal on their Zoom calls

Nothing suspicious about three masked strangers
dressed in black offering you shots

This is the party but they aren’t concerned yet

A room filled with lumber is the perfect place for hopscotch

Simon Says (2025)

Clara travels to a castle for the weekend to meet the man she’s been dating.  When she arrives, she goes inside and wanders around where she stumbles upon Dina, who is also there to meet a man she’s been dating. It’s the same man.

Shortly afterwards, Sam and Tony show up and they conclude they have all been catfished.  Dina wants to take revenge, but Clara just wants to leave.  When they find a dining table with place cards set for each, Dina sits down to eat.  Im sure it’s fine to eat the unappealing room temperature spaghetti and marinara that has been sitting out for hours. 

After dinner, they discover the man who invited them is in the castle. He informs them he loves them all and is not sure which one to choose.  That’s should be an automatic pass but he offers them his home.

They need to play a game to determine the winner and that person will get the castle with no strings attached. Clara is skeptical, but Dina wants the castle.  They are informed the game only works if all four stay. Dina says she is her own person and does what she wants, while simultaneously not letting Clara be her own person and do what she wants. 

The game is Simon Says, but it’s a board game where they draw cards that end up being specific questions about their secrets. Those who don’t answer truthfully within the time limit are sucked into a red realm within the castle and stalked by Simon. There are others in the realm who previously played the game and are still trying to hide.

This is a rough one to get through.  Dina is obnoxious, nasty and throws something at Clara when she says something she doesn’t like. Tony seems like he’s the worst lawyer ever since he says the contract to win the castle checks out after only briefly skimming the document. 

Ridiculous dialogue

Clara: The front door is locked.

Sam: Back door, too

Dina: What do you mean locked?

Dina: Tony, check that document. Make sure everything’s correct.

Tony: Give me a few minutes. Legal stuff is my forte.

Clara: I think we should leave.

Tony: Why?

Clara: Because none of this is right.

Dina: I’m interested to see where this is going.

Rumplestiltskin (2025)

Tim and Emma move into a new house and find a sewing machine with a huge basket of yarn.  Did they not do a walk through? Usually that stuff needs to be cleaned up before you move in.

Emma wants the clutter out of the house so Tim gets rid of it. The next day, Emma angrily tells Tim he was supposed to get rid of everything. Tim is confused since he already did.  

As he’s getting rid of it a second time, he notices a mask in the yarn basket. When he puts it on, he’s possessed and morphs into Rumpelstiltskin. Well his head does but his body is basically the same.

Strange things start happening. There is an attack nearby attributed to a bear, even though the rangers says it’s rare for bears to be nearby.  Emma sees a man down by the road and then he disappears.  Plus Tim is acting like a jerk. 

If you’re looking for excitement, you won’t find it here. It’s a low budget movie with awkward acting that will make you audibly exhale. None of the characters are particularly likable and Emma is annoying as hell.

Ridiculous dialogue

You’re not even showing. [Emma is only eight weeks pregnant]

Well that’s awkward

the creature enjoying his sewing machine

And scene. No notes.

Ghost Dance (1982)

After archaeologists dig up his remains, the spirt of a warrior seeks revenge by possessing a local medicine man and killing people. 

The dig is sponsored by the local university and the body is being studied by two professors.   One night Kay is followed by a man whose face looks like the face of the corpse. She’s upset and looks to her boyfriend for comfort.   Tom thinks her mind is playing tricks on her due to stress. Silly woman. 

When people at the museum are murdered, Kay becomes convinced it is the spirit of the man whose body is in the lab. She is worried she’ll be next, which she should be since the killer is roaming the museum and campus looking for her.

This is a slow moving but kind of neat slasher where warnings are ignored and women are not taken seriously.

Ridiculous dialogue

Kay: I’m telling you, he was here.

Tom: Sure, he was there. And it doesn’t matter if he was actually there or not. Because either way he was real enough to almost get you killed

It looks like the photo was pasted onto the page

Terror in the Woods (2018)

Rachel’s parents are getting divorced so she ends up in a new school. She meets Kaitlyn, a strange girl with an imaginary friend and a belief in dragons.  Kaitlyn’s best friend is Emily, but soon Rachel and Kaitlyn distance themselves from her. She believes in fairies and wears fairy costumes. Kaitlyn thinks that’s baby stuff, even though she believes in dragons and has an imaginary friend.

Soon Rachel and Emily get into darker things, like a viral web site with a story about a monster called Suzerain.  They believe this creature lives in a palace in the forest and they need to sacrifice someone to it. Emily is the perfect target since she’s so embarrassing with her fairy wings.

Rachel’s mother is a loose cannon. She cheated on her husband and abandoned her family, yet she is angry that he doesn’t want to get back together. She’s also upset that she’ll have to pay child support even thought Rachel doesn’t live with her. 

This is a Lifetime movie based on the Slenderman killings.  It’s pretty light weight, but still disturbing to see two little kids target their poor innocent friend dressed as a fairy.  Good grief.

Freddy’s Friday (2023)

An escort is brought down an alley and into a basement. The guy and the room are pretty creepy. But not as creepy as the book she picks up that appeared to be made out of skin and has a blinking eye on the cover. Somehow she overlooks both.

She ends up being the sixth girl to go missing in six weeks, but the police don’t take it seriously. The chief even blames the missing woman for either shooting up or dating the wrong guy.  When police woman Lila mentions the previous five women were found dead, the chief look sheepish but still dismisses her concern. 

Lila decides to investigate the case and enlists the help of her best friend who is not in law enforcement, but is better at online research.  This culminates with Lila going to a private club pretending to be a member and reading out loud from the skin covered book. Oh hell no!

While her heart is in the right place, she’s a terrible cop. She takes evidence from the crime scene. She partners with her friend and they work independently of the police. When someone is murdered,  she’s too tired to call it in and decides to wait until the next day to tell the chief.  Good grief.  

This is a rough one to get through. The most interesting thing is one of the four creatures called forth when reading from the book uses the costume from the Humpty Dumpty horror movies.

Ridiculous dialogue 

Shouldn’t we call your boss or something, especially since there’s been a murder?

The Humpty Dumpty costume

Oz (2024)

Dorothy hates herself, has an eating disorder and can’t roller blade.  She meets a creepy clown who invites her to a theater to see a magician.  When she is called up on stage, the magician drugs her and stuffs her into a box which takes her to Oz. There she is told to follow Bones Road.  

I could not get through this.  It was made in Brazil and sometimes the accents are hard to understand.  I put on the subtitles to help understand but sometimes it says musician instead of magician. 

Ridiculous dialogue

A scarecrow? Are you a weirdo who also thinks you’re not? 

There’s a lot computer generated scenery

Dinosaur Hotel 2 (2022)

Apparently this underground show of people trying to survive against dinosaurs has now been going on for years. Ratings are slipping so they decide to bring back all the previous winners to compete for a multi million dollar prize.  When one of the winners chooses not to participate, her children disappear and she is told competing is mandatory or the kids will pay.

As usual in this type of competition, there are those who want to work together and those who sabotage others by bringing about their demise. Most of the contestants are unlikeable.

This is a hard watch and the child actors are wooden as hell.

Nazi Zombie (2025)

A group of teenagers decide to do the power of the dead ritual. They need to go to a haunted house and if they do the ritual correctly, it will manifest any wish they have. When one of the girls wishes she’d get her ex boyfriend back and then disappears with him, the other girls get sick of waiting around. She was their ride home, but they  realize classmate Connie lives nearby. So they start walking there, even though all but one girl think she’s a weirdo.

It turns out Connie is a foster child who has only lived there a few months and feels like she’s the families maid.  Most of the girls don’t care.  Then zombies show up and they have to figure out how to survive.

With Connie, the group has enough people to do the ritual to stop them and each goes off to look for the required items they need. the girl who needs to get onion skin puts them all in danger when it turns out she doesn’t even know what an onion looks like. She’s picking up random stuff in the fridge and trying to figure out if any of it is an onion.

Another person is searching for the tears of a fur. What is that you ask? Well they figure out that fur means theif in Latin so they force Connie to cry and catch her tears in a chalice.  Thankfully these are the slowest moving zombies ever since they can’t even get across a room in several minutes.

Ugh, avoid this one. 

Ridiculous dialogue

We’re going to be tapping into ancient witchcraft tonight to bend peoples wills to our desires.

Just a typical 30 year old high school student

Low budget boxes

They do not like Connie

Sad looking zombies taking an hour to cross a room

Tears of a fur i.e. theif

The Cigarette (2024)

If you’re looking for a movie about an unlikeable character with no redeeming qualities who learns nothing on their journey, then this is the movie for you. Jasmin is a self absorbed, manipulative, liar who is always the victim:

1. She’s mad at the bank because she has a negative balance
2. She’s mad at her boyfriend for breaking up with her because she spends his money but doesn’t work or pay any bills
3. She’s mad at her dad because he rented her old room and won’t kick out the paying tenant
4. She’s mad at her friend who she hasn’t seen in ages because she won’t give her a job or free drinks

While her Sarah refuses to give her a job or expensive drinks for free, she does agree to let Jasmin stay at her apartment. Jasmin repays her by stealing drinks when she’s not looking.  

As she drunkenly sits at a table and rudely screams for another drink, she’s approached by a man who offers her a job marketing cigarettes.  All she has to do is pretend to smoke on the street, at bars, and outside schools.  She’ll get between $500 and $10,000 for every person she can get to smoke.  But she must never smoke them herself and has to immediately get away from the person once she hands them a cigarette. They’ll pay her through an app called Cash for Cigarettes. Every single thing he’s said is questionable, but Jasmin is all in.

Jasmin is approached regularly for cigarettes and starts making money.  When anyone smokes one of her cigarettes, they go crazy and start murdering people.  After the police pinpoint Jasmin as the distributor of the lethal cigarettes, she denies she’s done anything wrong.  Sigh.

To make Jasmin even less likeable, she lets her roommates cat out, but instead of trying to get it back in, she says she doesn’t have time for this and leaves. She literally does nothing but give away cigarettes and has no scheduled time for work. When her friend asks where her cat is, Jasmin says she doesn’t know and to check under the couch. Every step of the way she just gets worse.

After I watched this, I was surprised to find out it was supposed to be a horror comedy. Usually humor is obvious even if it’s not done well. Was it supposed to be funny when she stole drinks from her bartender friend? Maybe if Jasmin had some charm or redeeming characteristics, but the character is so unlikeable you can’t root for her.

This is a super low budget movie with some painful acting.  At the end of the movie there is a screen that mentions there is no blasphemy in the movie, but they misspell it.

Ridiculous dialogue

I have a new sugar daddy and he’s your daddy.

911 operator: We need your cell phone to make sure this isn’t a false emergency.

The first attack

Plates of food just sitting in the fridge without any cling wrap?
Jazmin is an animal.

The app can disappear on it’s own, but can’t put text horizontal

The bank 

Jasmin is always irritated with everyone

The kid who doesn’t notice his classmates being killed
or a knife being stuck in his skull

Why is there a phone in the bathroom next to the toilet

Blasphemy is misspelled