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