American Horror House (2017)

After their sorority house burns down, the girls move into an old mansion near the campus.  During Halloween Hell Night, the sorority pledges must perform tasks which they say are character building, but it’s really hazing. They’ve never had a Hell Night without at least one pledge dropping out. They sound delightful.

The pledges are asked to steal the spirit from the fraternity. It turns out to be an old, mangy, bear mascot costume.  They are also required to do this in their underwear, which is super creepy.  While three girls distract the frat, a lone girl sneaks into the house to get the suit.

Meanwhile there’s a private eye who is investigating the disappearance of a sorority sister.  When no one answers the front door, he lets himself in and wanders up to the bedrooms on the second floor. This is not a good plan because no one is open up and  to trust a strange man who’s wandered into their home.

The house mother, Ms. Margo, talks to dolls and has the gift of sight. Yet she can’t tell the P.I. where the missing girl has gone. The viewer knows she was dismembered in the violin closet and there’s something odd about this house.

Questions: Why does the sorority have a supply closet full of violins and other instruments? Who is the dead kid walking in the hallway? Why does the background music at one point sound like it was taken  from iMovie?

Ridiculous dialogue

You are on double secret probation.

What does that mean?

Get with the program or get out.

The grim reaper comes calling

Why does the sorority house have a closet of violins?

No one questions why a strange looking
little girl is wandering around the sorority house

Don’t Look Away (2023)

When two men hijack a trailer and open the lone box inside, they unleash an evil mannequin who quickly dispatches them. Their violent deaths scare the truck driver who runs in front of a car driven by Frankie.

The traumatized Frankie goes home to her boyfriend Steve, who is incredibly blasé and not very supportive. He’s too self absorbed with his PhD work to be concerned about her mental well being after her accident. 

After she hitting the driver, Frankie thought she saw a mannequin standing by the side of the road. But then it was gone so she figures it was her imagination. But she keeps catching glimpses of it and  starts to think it’s stalking her.  Her friends don’t believe her, other than one guy who also saw it. 

They discover it’s cursed and if you see it, it will follow you until it kills you. You have to keep staring at it because if you take your eyes off it, it can disappear and reappear somewhere else closer to you.

While the mannequin is creepy, it never moves but just seems to teleport around. The acting is questionable.  Drake is rudimentary at best and Steve has the most awkward pauses in his line reads.  

Wood Witch (2020)

When Ari and Chris gets engaged, they visit her parents, bringing with them newly engaged friends Cari and Jon.  They mention they’re gong hiking, and her mother tells them to stay away from a certain area.  Legend has it there is a witch or demon living there that destroyed a village and all the people there.

Ari is a blogger who thinks she’s a journalist and decides she’s going to investigate this legend. Her research consists of listening to her parents stories and visiting a museum where she asks Mr. Kensington about the legend.  He has an old book about it that’s been passed down through his family. While the others distract him, Ari looks through the book. 

As they walk in the woods, Ari continually says they’re almost at the right spot while they wander aimlessly for hours. The guys are getting tired of this crap, but Ari finally finds the tree she’s looking for and pressures Cari into saying the words to wake the witch.  Surprisingly it works, which sends them running for their lives. The only thing more ridiculous than Ari thinking she’s a journalist is she didn’t bother consider what would happen when the witch woke up.

Ari is so incredibly self absorbed you want to grab Chris by the lapels and scream “Don’t marry her!’  She films everything. She calls herself a journalist, but does no research prior to clomping into the woods. When Chris says constant filming is invasive, she dismisses his feelings.  She inexplicably thinks she can reason with the wood witch, although there is no reason to think she could. Even after the witch kills a jogger, Ari decides she is going back because she has to get the story.  Everything that happens is her fault and I have no sympathy for her.

When she has dinner with her parents, she films it from four camera angles. It’s dinner.  Do they really need to film themselves eating and talking about where they’re going hiking? Dad’s got his phone in front of him filming the entire dinner, even as he’s eating. It’s madness. And who is going to watch this crap? Who is going to cull through hours of the same video of dinner shot from four angles to try to find something interesting?  No one wants to watch mundane interactions, not even the people in them.  

The wood witch resembles Groot when it first appears. I couldn’t understand anything it said so  I had to put on the closed captions. Needless to say, Ari could not reason with it.  

The beginning of the movie says it’s made up of found footage shot by the participants, footage from a TV show called I Survived, and some reenactments. So this explains why there are some shots that do not conform to FF format. The movie begins with the two couples in the car.  Everyone is talking and Ari says “Can you guys be quiet? I’m trying to Vlog.”  There’s multiple cameras shooting while they drive. We’re four minutes in and I already hate them. They are going to have hours and hours of poorly shot, uninteresting garbage footage.

Ridiculous dialogue

Chris: Why? What’s up with all this camera stuff?

Ari: One day you’re going to want to look back on this so I’m thinking how cool.

Chris: I can just remember it.

Ari: Yeah but I mean this is great.

Chris: I don’t need a camera shoved in my face every five seconds.

Chris: It’s invasive.

Ari: It’s not invasive at all…. Seriously? You guys opinions of invasive is ridiculous. This is not invasive.

Ari: I’m a journalist

Chris: Well technically you’re a blogger.

Can you fan out and help us look for a tree? A tree that’s strange looking.

This is amazing. She’s hungry. She’s frustrated. I think she can be reasoned with.

Hey it’s two boring shots at once

How many cameras do you need to film dinner? One

Two

Three

Four.  Their dinner was not that interesting.

Everything must be filmed by multiple people

If no one is supposed to go there, why is there a worn path?

Our four brainiacs

Be prepared to see two shaky cams at once

Forest of Demons (2005)

Shortly after a family arrives at their rental cabin, they hear someone trying to open the front door and discover a group of friends who say they also rented the cabin.  There’s no cell reception so they can’t call the owner. The family generously - and foolishly -  offers to let the five strangers stay the night and sort it out the next day.

Their teenage son goes off exploring and finds a plaque in the woods about demons. He decides this would be the perfect spot to set off  firecrackers. Before the smoker has every cleared demons rise out of the earth, where they appear to be buried just under the top soil.

The teen manages to escape back to the cabin and tells his parents demons are trying to kill him. They don’t believe him. Unless he normally comes home sobbing in fear and talking about demons, they may want to be concerned about what happened to him.

The next morning at breakfast, the kid brings up demons and his parents dismiss him again. The other group doesn’t bat an eye at the demon talk, even though yesterday they asked for directions, and a creepy stranger warned them the woods were full of demons and they’d die if they went there. 

When some of them attempt to head into town to contact the cabin owner, they discover their cars won’t start.  Shortly after arriving back at the cabin, a demon gets in the front door.  They manage to tie him up. Hurrah!  Stupidly they keep the demon inside, leaving the viewer to wonder how quickly the demon will get loose and do more damage with his demon friends.

This movie has a lot of padding, as well as awkwardly shot, unflattering close ups of peoples faces. The characters are incredibly inefficient at keeping the demons out of the house, and everyone openly laughs in the face of the crazy lady who warns them there are demons in the woods.  

Is this too close?

An even more awkward close up

The door to the cabin is cool, but you have to duck to go in

Do not laugh at crazy people

Nothing could possible go wrong if we laugh at her

Zombie chasing you? Climb a sapling

Another car full of lost tourists laughing at the crazy lady

Dead Earth (2020)

Aka Paradise Z; aka Two of Us

Two survivors of a zombie apocalypse go about their days hanging out at the pool, doing yoga, painting and listening to music.  They are holed up in an empty resort and often bored.  They patrol the grounds, go on supply runs, and listen to occasional radio broadcasts about a safe space from the zombies.

Rose wants to find the safe space, but Sylvia is kind of controlling and says they need to stay put since they’ve got a good place. The broadcasts don’t reveal the exact location so I’m not sure how they would find it.

The characters aren’t that interesting and there’s fifty minutes of barely any dialogue before the zombies show up.  

Byte (2024)

Jett discovers an app which claims to give you werewolf powers.  Just download the app, pay $35 for some werewolves blood, and perform a ritual in a graveyard during a full moon.  Jett doesn’t question how someone would get werewolves blood or what it would actually do to the person who ingests it.

When Jett, April, Nora and her boyfriend Damon go to the cemetery, Jett makes everyone cut their finger to mix their blood with the werewolf blood. It’s not clear why everyone needs to do this when the only person who drinks the blood is Jett. Soon people in town are dying, the police are blaming coyotes, and Jett is acting weird.

When a professor is killed, April fears she’ll be a person of interest.  Damon thinks maybe the person who sent the blood to Jett is behind the deaths, and Jett is getting more annoying by the day.

The explanation is not satisfying and most of the incidental characters don’t appear to be actors. There are several odd scenes.  The students are trying to get to Professor Gray’s class but security says part of the campus is closed due to an incident. When April asks if it’s Gray, security wants to question her and chases after her as she leaves. Why is that suspicious to ask about the professor whose class is blocked off? Also the police are stating it’s an animal attack, so what would questioning her accomplish?

The other odd thing is a woman in a bar gives her number an old high school classmate. She’s wondering if he’s going to call, but he was killed.  How does she not know he’s dead? Two brothers killed outside a bar in a town recently plagued with deaths due to animal attacks would be all over the news. Yet she and her friend haven’t a clue. 

Ridiculous dialogue

Student (in a lecture on the Salem Witch trials): What are your thoughts on Satanism in this country?

Professor Gray: Great question.

Nora: Did you kill Gray?

April: No, I didn’t kill Gray. You’re such an ass.

Nora: Well you ran from a security guard.

The app that can detect blood on someone’s phone

The judgemental diner patron

As time passes, it has more downloads and a worse rating

Why is a small class in an auditorium?The 
pink hat in the back row is really distracting