Amityville Clownhouse (2017)

 

Oh no, not again. Another second hand store with the Amityville monkey for sale. When a couple buys the monkey, they  immediately start hearing noises and crashing sounds in their house. The husband says it must be rats but never goes to check out what made the sounds or if something has fallen over in another room. Yes, rats it is. Weirdo.

The husband becomes possessed, like they do in Amityville movies, while the wife insists the noises in the house isn’t rats. This doesn’t sit well with her husband since he’s the man with the monkey and she needs to buy this rat story.

This movie is dreadful. While the acting is subpar, it’s genius compared to the sound.  Often the background music drowns out the dialogue, which could be considered a blessing based on the dialogue we can hear.  But you will find yourself watching a scene waiting for someone to talk and then realize they’re already talking.

There is also a lot of padding in the film. We have six minutes of the wife walking to the park, finding a place to sit and drawing. What is the point? There isn’t any, other than to add time to the film.  Plus near the end we have ten minutes of footage from Amityville Toybox to provide backstory on why the monkey is evil.

The characters aren’t likable and there is a priest with an anger issue. He starts shouting during a news cast because no one is taking his possession story seriously and storms out of the studio.  The most professional part of their movie is the short breaking news segment which could actually pass for a newscast - other than when they cut to reporters in the field and then it’s back to the same amateur style as the rest of the video.

Also there are stories from the newspaper. I’m not sure if they are real headlines, but it looks like real news stories in which they’ve photoshopped in bite sized references to the monkey, such as “was toy monkey to blame”, or “evil monkey.”

Lastly if you are expecting a clown, you will be sorely disappointed.  The only reference to a clown is at the beginning and has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.  A man kills his entire family while dressed as a clown.  Some idiots break into his house to steal the clown painting on the wall because they can get big bucks for it on the dark web since it was at the scene of the murder.  Something supernatural kills them. Their character and the clown painting are never mentioned again. Clownhouse indeed!

Ridiculous dialogue:

It’s not the rats. Rats don’t slam doors.

Amityville Toybox (2016)

 Aka the Amityville Legacy

Oh good god no. An unpleasant family gathers for their fathers fiftieth birthday party. One of the daughters gives him a toy monkey, which is unfortunately from the Amityville house. After he cuts his foot on the doll.... you heard me... the evil in the monkey possesses him and makes him kill his family.  The end.  Well the end is about an hour after that but you don’t really need to watch because it’s not all that interesting.

This a rough one to get through. It’s got a 2.2 on IMDB. The acting is at a local theater level and the sound must have been recorded on location based on the ambient noise that’s underlying the dialogue. One of the characters keeps trying to give the Dad alcohol even though he’s been sober for twenty years. Also there’s a weird scene where one of the daughters walks into dads room and he’s standing there naked with his back to the door. Instead of walking out, or closing the door, she stands there and looks down. Seriously woman, get out of the room if your dad is naked. Also it appears to be night outside but when she goes downstairs it’s daytime.

The beginning of the movie is a flashback to 1974 in the DeFeo house with a DeFeo walking in the hallway with a shotgun.  The problem with this is if you know the Amityville story, it’s pointless. And if you don’t know the story, this doesn’t explain anything because it’s too vague. 

This is a movie that slapped the name Amityville in the title to get people to watch it. Well they succeeded.  I knew it would be bad, just didn’t realize how bad.  The only reason to watch is if you have a goal of seeing every movie that uses Amityville in the title. Other than that, make a hard pass on this one.

Ridiculous dialogue:

It’s radioactive... with evil. 

Ghost Ship (1980)

 

Slow moving movie about slow moving George Kennedy who is the captain of a cruise ship.  It’s Kennedys last trip as the captain and he’s none too happy about it.  When the cruise ship is hit by a mystery freighter, only a small handful of people end up in the life raft.

Lost at sea with no provisions, they are thankful when a rusty old ship suddenly appears.  Although no one comes to answer their calls of help, the stairs are down along the side of the ship and the survivors climb up to the deck. Well most of them climb up before the stairs break and throw three of them into the ocean.  A rope ladder is found and thrown down, and they manage to get doused with oil or mud on their climb up.  Yes, they’ve entered the death ship and it has evil in store for them.

This is going for a scary atmosphere rather than straight up horror. It would have scared me as a teenager but hasn’t aged well.  The horror is fairly low key, such as the water in the shower turning red, people getting tangled in ropes that send them to their death, or machinery that operates on its own. Kennedy is probably the creepiest thing about this movie in that he’s an angry, hulking man possessed by the ship and glares at everyone he comes in contact with.

Break (2019)

Aka Otryv

Five friends decide to go to the top of a mountain on New Year’s Eve. They walk up to the gondola carrying a lighted Christmas tree and a box full of beer, along with their snowboards.  

Kirill paid the lift operator to stay late so they can be on the mountain at midnight.  However they arrive later than expected and the operator threatens to leave if they don’t immediately get on the lift.  Kirill can’t find his bag and refuses to go, demanding that his girlfriend get out of the car.  The others think he’s being stupid and they stay on the gondola leaving Kirill behind.

Half way up the gondola stops due to an accident at the station.  The group assumes the issue will shortly be fixed and spend the night in the car.  In the morning, when there is still no sign of help or an operating gondola, they try to figure out a way to get help.  Of course this is when we start seeing what people are truly made of and there’s always one coward in every group, well at least in movies anyway.

I don’t know how I got this idea in my head, but when I watched the preview I thought it was a horror movie and someone was shooting at them while they were trapped in a gondola. So I was expecting a whole different film.  This is a Russian film and it’s dubbed.  I prefer to watch foreign films in their original language because the inflections in the dubbing are usually horrendous.  But this one didn’t seem that bad.

This is similar to the movie Frozen, where three college students pay a chair lift operator to let them go on a late night run after the mountain has closed and get stuck on the chair lift in a blizzard.  The lesson in both being don’t go to places after they close because if something goes wrong, no one will ever come looking for you.

The Eve (2015)

 

Three friends from college, Jen, Scott, and Harry head to Martha’s Vineyard for New Year’s Eve.  Along for the trip is Harry’s new girlfriend Lacey.  Jen is a bit put off by Lacey being there since the trip was partly to work through some issues in the friendships. Most pressing is that Harry invested in a venture with Scott and appears to have lost his money. This is money he couldn’t afford to lose and Scott is cavalier about it. 

The group gets into a fight after Harry sees Scott and Lacey kiss.  Harry and Jen are mad at Scott.  Oddly enough Scott never mentions that it was Lacey who kissed him. Everyone heads in different directions to cool down and later one of them is found dead on the beach.

This leads to the lamest attempt to resuscitate a human ever committed to film.  They spend maybe ten seconds attempting revival and then declare the person deceased.  In the panic there is talk of calling the police and getting help.  But instead of someone continuing CPR and others going for the phone or the caretaker, they leave the body on the sand with the waves washing up on it.  Holy cow people, you can’t save someone if you leave their body to the mercy of the elements

Also they believe this is a murder and lock themselves in the house. But why would they say that? There is no blood on the body and no one mentioned any juries. They barely even looked at this person. 

What follows is numerous stupid decisions, culminating in a scene where someone seems intent on making as much noise as humanly possible while trying to slip away from the killer. Seriously, if you think someone is trying to kill you and you’ve locked them out of the room, don’t go clomping around on the deck because they’ll figure out you’re outside.

None of the characters are particularly likable, and Harry is such a weenie. He’s alternatively helpless and overly aggressive.  You don’t care about the characters so when they die, you just sort of meh about it.

Unholy Night (2019)

 

A nurse volunteers to work on Christmas and listens to an old man’s stories as she wheels him around the hospital.  He’s got a scrapbook with photos and articles, which is kind of weird since I don’t think he knows these people. Actually it might be worse if he knows them since who would want a scrapbook of deaths of people they knew.  This part of the film ties together the stories in the anthology.

The first story is about a woman who takes her boyfriend home to meet her family at Christmas. She wants to do mushrooms before they go.  He’s not interested since last time it caused him to hallucinate and he wants to make a good impression.  However she ignores his wishes, eats one and then manipulates him into doing them as well.

Things seem okay at first, but then weird things happen and he thinks he must be tripping. Right after realizing he’s not, they send him into the basement to get a pie out of the freezer and the family secret is revealed.

A number of problems with this. First, if you’re already eating, why is the pie still in the freezer? Second, who sends the guy you just met to get something from the basement?  Lastly, they thought he knew their secret, but how would he? His girlfriend never mentioned it and even she is surprised he doesn’t know.  Ridiculous.

The second story is about drunk dead Debbie. Debbie was a shy woman who didn’t have many friends. One night at an office party, she has too much to drink and a group of nasty co-workers goad her drunk ass into hammering drinks to the point of impairment.  They laugh as Debbie staggers off to the bathroom, where she then dies choking on her own vomit.

Legend has it that if three women take a shot and say her name they can summon her.  What? This makes no sense. So Debbie is such a pathetic spirit that she’ll travel anywhere in the world? She doesn’t just haunt the building she died in, or the mean girls who messed with her? I guess so because there she is in someones apartment and bam pow, that’s all they wrote.

The last story involves our nurse, who is treated poorly by her supervisor at the hospital.  After her shift, she heads to her mothers for dinner.  Her Mom also treats her poorly and it’s not clear why she would go see her Mom on Christmas if this is how he’s treated.  It becomes more confusing when Mom locks her in the closet, which apparently she does every year.  Oddly enough there is a manikin in the closest dressed for Christmas who talks to her.  Good god, this can’t bode well.

While this wasn’t very good, it looked like a masterpiece after watching Elves.  It’s got better production value than something shot on a camcorder, but it’s not anything new or all that interesting.

Ridiculous Dialogue:

Nurse - Did that really happen?
Old Man- Definitely
Nurse - Teenagers.  (Said after one of the stories that a made no mention of teenagers in any way).

Christmas Blood (2018)

 

Aka Juleblod

A serial killer, who does his murders on Christmas Eve, escapes from prison a few days before Christmas.  Detectives believe he intends to finish killing people on his list.  As the list was over 300 names and he killed over 100 people, he’s got a lot of choices and they’re hoping to figure it out before he strikes again.

Our main characters are a group of friends who get together due to the suicide of ones mother.  There’s a lot of partying that pads the film and of course our Santa Claus serial killer is right outside their window. Whatever will they do? Yeah, they’re going to die.

This is a Norwegian slasher and much better than the crappy low budget Christmas horror movies I’ve seen this week. That being said, it’s fairly average.  It’s also darkly lit to the point that sometimes it is hard to see what is happening.  

Elves (2018)

 

A group of unlikeable friends meet in a creepy location and play a game called naughty list.  The rules of the game are write your deepest, darkest secrets on a piece of paper and also write your name on a list.  The woman who provided the game tells them to be honest because the elf is watching and he’ll know if they lie.  

Out of nowhere, an elf shows up on someone’s lap.  Now if it was one of those elves on the dvd cover, that would be really creepy.  But instead its like something your middle aged aunt would have bought at a discount store. So it’s just sort of lame looking, rather than scary. Also it’s so odd looking, I’m not sure if I would have known it was

The next day they find out one of the friends from the party died, and realize that the elf is real and coming for them.  You’d think the first thing they’d do is track down the person who made them play the game and ask what the hell is going on. But no, it takes them awhile to figure that out. When they visit her, she says she had no choice, but doesn’t offer any good explanation as to why she provides the elves with a list of names every year.

This is a really low budget film with minimal effects and amateur actors. We aren’t provided with any information about any of the characters. We don’t know what sort of secrets they wrote down, or if any of them has actually done anything horrible to make the elves want to kill them.  And the elves aren’t animated. They appear in a seated position and maintain their non-moving terror throughout the film. So if you want to see a creature that could questionably be called an elf sit motionless, then this is the movie for you.

The opening scene appears to have nothing to do with the rest of the film.  Two brothers are alone in the house when an elf shows up off screen.  The older brother tells the younger one that his present is in the oven.  The kids climbs in and the older boy sets a cooking time.  Are there actually ovens that lock when you set the time to cook? I’m not sure why this kid can’t get out.  Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have a functioning brain stem. He can see into the oven and it is obviously completely empty.  Geez kid, how did he trick you?  This is a rough one to get through.

This is what the elves actually look like. 

Shelved (2016)

 

A man stops at an antique store and finds a toy elf.  He wants to buy it but the shop owner says it’s not for sale.  The man puts a $100 bill on the counter and takes the elf. What a tool.

Over dinner he regales his wife with the story of how he got it.  His wife laughs and says, “you’re such a card.  Nobody tells my husband no.”  What an unpleasant couple.

Their daughter is sent to a psychiatrist because they don’t like her behavior,  which is pretty mild, typical kid stuff. Although to be fair, they do make her brush her teeth before breakfast, and her snacks are gluten free crackers with soy cheese. So if she was to revolt, I wouldn’t blame her.

The real trouble in the house is actually the elf, Sgt. Gumdrop.  The backstory is that Gumdrop was one of Santa’s best.  The other elves were jealous and pushed him over the edge so now he kills people.  Well that escalated quickly.  Now the family has to figure out how to get this menace out of their home.

This is a really low budget video.  A lot of the acting is stilted and in community theater territory.  The effects are very basic.  There’s a weird scene where a neighbor lets herself in, opens a gift, and raids the fridge. It has no purpose other than padding to set up a kill.  I wouldn’t have watched this other than I was trying to watch lots of Christmas horror movies.

Good Tidings (2017)

 

A group of homeless people have found refuge in a municipal court  building that is currently for sale.  It hasn’t been empty long since the interior still looks good.  The group is having a Christmas party when three psychos dressed as Santa break in, lock the front doors,  set up boobytraps and start killing people at the party.

Sam, who was formerly in the military, is the only hope to try to save those who’ve panicked and run like lambs to the slaughter.  He manages to get to the cells, along with two others, and lock themselves in so they’re safe.  

Sam heads out to find other survivors and asks the couple not to leave safety of the cells. But in typical horror movie fashion, they don’t stay put, are too damn noisy and end up getting caught.  Good god.

This is one of those horror movies that just makes you feel depressed.  They establish the kindness of the homeless people and then throw evil in their midst. The Santa’s are creepy in a yucky way rather than a fun way. 

Mrs. Claus (2018)

After being hazed and bullied at a sorority, Angela murders her tormentor and then kills herself.  Ten years later the bullies younger sister Danielle joins the sorority and stays in the same house where her sister was murdered.  

Danielle is unable to admit that her sister was a bully and justifies her behavior by saying it was only a prank and she wasn’t the only person who hazed people. Angela’s mother isn’t buying it and shows up at the sorority house.

Other than one girl who disappears when she heads home for the holiday, people start to disappear at the sorority Christmas party.  This is pretty amazing since there are only around eight people attending, and it’s not readily apparent that something is wrong.

This is a fairly bland slasher without any real scares. The Mrs Claus mask the killer wears is partly creepy and partly silly due to its mouth being open in a big O shape.  If you imagine it going, “duh” when you see it’s slack jaw, it’s pretty hard to be scared.

There is a line in the film about how serial killers only kill attractive people.  This is a very risky line when you have actors of varying levels of attractiveness in a scene. I wasn’t sure if it was foreshadowing but it was only the writer trying to be clever.

Holiday Hell (2019)

 

An anthology which utilizes a wrap around involving a curio shop where a woman arrives at closing time on Christmas eve to find a gift for her sister.  The proprietor shows her items and tells her the gruesome stories behind them.

Doll face- college students go to a deserted house to party. There is nothing creepy about this house.  It’s a modern split level in a residential neighborhood and looks like it’s still occupied. So it’s no surprise when there is someone in the house and people start dying. 

Rabbi doll - Happy Hanukkah! Here’s a creepy, vintage, handmade rabbi doll.  Surprisingly the kid loves it. His parents leave him with a babysitter for the weekend, who turns out to be planning to rob them with the help of her boyfriend.  The weirdest bit is that the kid is supposed to live in a mansion but his bedroom is tiny.

Bloody Santa suit - a guy celebrating a year of sobriety finds himself passed over for a promotion at work for a man with less seniority.  To add insult to injury, his wife doesn’t want to be anywhere near him and everyone keeps telling him there’d better not be another drunken incident like at last years office party. 

The ring - this tale is told by the customer about the distinctive ring she’s wearing.  A young woman moves to an isolated farm where she rents a room and says she’s alone in the world.  Damn it girl! Don’t ever tell a stranger that you have no family or friends.  You may as well say you’re the perfect murder victim because no one will miss you. Things go as well as expected.

While not a great movie, it’s better than many of the Christmas horror flicks out there.  In fact it may have seemed better than it actually was since I watched several horribly bad Christmas horror movies right before it.  Joel Murray and Jeffrey Combs are always enjoyable to watch so it’s got that going for it.

Frenzy (2018)

aka Surrounded

What do you do when you're an influencer who's a travel blogger and you've got a crazy group of friends?  Well naturally you do something stupid like travel to a cove that people are prohibited from visiting. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Paige and her friends post about their crazy adventures around the world. Paige is a risk taker, baby! Her sister Lindsey is more conservative, but is convinced to join the crew on a trip to the cove. Paige and the group are convinced this will bring them tons of hits, thus increasing the money they make from their vlog.

They hire a pilot to fly them to the isolated area. But a few miles away from their destination, the wing comes apart, the door falls off, and several people are sucked out of the plane.

Lindsey surfaces from the crash and finds a couple of the others.  No one tries to grab hold of anything floating the water to conserve energy. One guy decides to swim to an island about a mile away because it should have supplies. He doesn't take anything with him to keep him afloat. Things go from bad to worse when they discover there are sharks in the water.

The movie goes from present day to flashbacks explaining the relationships between the sisters and giving info on the group dynamics.  But you don't care about the characters so if a shark eats them it doesn't matter.  Watch for the scene where the girl with a broken leg uses a lasso to pull a huge boulder off the island onto a shark. There are so many things wrong with that.

Death Nurse (1987)

Edith Mortley is a nurse at a clinic that the city refers indigents for treatment.  Edith's brother provides surgical care, even though he is not actually a surgeon. He just likes to experiment with things, such as heart surgery.

Edith and her brother have a good thing going. They have a steady stream of clients who are quickly killed leaving minimal cost for the clinic. Then they bill medicare or the city for months of treatment. If anyone comes looking for the patient, they claim the person was released after their health improved.

This was shot on video and is only 57 minutes long.  What's even crazier than the short running time is that the film has so much padding. We're treated to scenes of someone digging a hole, as well as real time footage of getting a bowl of ice cream.  There are even scenes from one of the directors others movies, Criminally Insane, which was shot in 1975 and stars the same lead actress.

I was interested in this one because it was shot on video.  Having VHS cameras opened up movie making for amateur filmmakers.  Shot on video movies can have a certain charm due to the filmmakers sincerity, unintentional humor, or can be amusing to watch due to the questionable plot and bad acting. However the majority of these movies are just plain hard to watch, which is where this one falls.

The set for the clinic is the directors home, which makes it hard to believe this is a clinic of any kind.  There is no ADR in this film. The background sound changes from shot to shot during peoples  conversations.  The only music in the film is a single tension inducing chord when footage of two rats is shown. The footage appears to be taken from another horror movie and the chord abruptly cuts off when the scene changes.

The funniest thing about the film is that a character will say something menacing or meant to cause tension and the camera will zoom in on the persons face.  Typically you would hear a music to produce the intended effect, but there is silence as you stare at a face filling the entire screen.

As The Gods Will (2014)

Shun Takahata is a high school student who plays video games and bemoans his boring life.One day at school during a lesson, his teachers head explodes, and a daruma doll forces the class to participate in a life or death game.

Shun manages to survive the game and when one of his friends show up, they try to escape. But the school is locked down and they can't get out. They find other survivors in the gym and the next game begins.

There are times where they run into other survivors and band up to work together to attempt to beat the new game that is thrust upon them. Oh Japan, where do you come up with these things?

This movie is crazy. From little red marble like orbs falling out of the students who die when their heads explode, to the giant cat statue with huge claws, and a deadly game of kick the can.

All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018)

A couple on a first date on Christmas Eve end up at a community theater because it is the only place open.  The workers are rude, the play is odd, and there's a creepy old guy who keeps looking at them.  Surprisingly, they don't leave during intermission.

This is an anthology, which I'm always wary of since they often aren't very good. However on the plus side, each story doesn't  last long so there is always hope that the next story will be better.  The most interesting thing about this anthology is that Contance Wu - who starred in Crazy Rich Asians the same year -  appears in one of the segments.

Along with the wrap around about the couple at the community theater, there are five stories:

The Stockings Were Hung 
A boring office Christmas party turns deadly when everyone gets locked the break room and they are forced to open gifts, some of which were not brought by the party goers.

Dash Away All
After doing some late Christmas Eve shopping, a man locks his keys and phone in the car and decides to ask for help from the last vehicle in the parking lot, which is a creepy van.

All Through The House
A modern re-telling of A Christmas Carol with a neighbor who has lots of Christmas decorations.

Arose Such a Clatter
A man hits one of Santa's reindeers with his car and later pays the price.

In a Twinkling
A man turns down an invitation to a get together, so his friend brings the party to him, which is unfortunate because something strange occurs on this night every year.

The DVD cover makes you think there is going to be a story about a little creature breaking out of an ornament.  Sadly there is nothing even remotely like this in the movie.  I would have much rather seen the story of this creature than any of the stories in the movie.  You would only want to watch this if you were trying to watch every horror film about Christmas.  Otherwise there are better holiday horror movies out there.

Deadly Games (1989)

aka Dial Code Santa Claus
aka 3615 Pere Noel

Thomas lives in a mansion and spends his days pretending he's  Rambo. The house has trap doors in the floor, secret passageways and secret rooms. There is also a command post in the attic.

After Thomas gets in an argument with a friend about whether Santa Claus is real or not, he sets up cameras throughout the mansion to catch footage of Santa who has told him he'll visit.

On Christmas Eve, Thomas is home with his partially blind grandfather while his mother works later.   The family owns a department store and while parents do last minute shopping, the store provides entertainment for the kids.

Unfortunately this years Santa is a strange, creepy homeless guy who looks like an evil Zack Galifianakis.  This is a man who connected with Thomas through a computer and pretended to be Santa.  When Thomas wouldn't give him his address - since Santa should already know it - the psycho applied for the Santa job because Thomas mentioned his mom owned the store.

They must have been desperate for a Santa because this guy is really odd and not someone you'd want to bring around children. But this was the 80s, so I guess they weren't that careful about whose lap the kids sat on.

When Santa bitch slaps a little girl who is on his lap, Thomas's mother fires him.  She stays late to do the books, and creepy Santa ends up at her house which is a real problem since he wants to kill Thomas and anyone who gets in his way. It's essentially Home Alone if the robbers were killers instead.

Listen for the Eye of the Tiger rip off which is so similar I'm surprised there wasn't a lawsuit over it.

Demon Resurrection (2008)

Grace's friends are worried about her and show up unannounced at her home to confront her about what is going on.  They are invited in by her boyfriend, but Grace is out of it. They're wondering if her boyfriend is the cause of her ill health.

It turns out Grace was in a cult and her boyfriend managed to get her out.  But not before she'd become the carrier of a demon baby. I hate when that happens.

The cult leader is upset that his demon carrier has absconded with satanic baby inside her, and raises the dead to get her back... or get the baby. Not really sure as the movie was slow moving and I lost track of what was happening.

The best thing about this movie is the undead. They remind me of the dead in the templar knight movies about the Blind Dead.  Other than that, the movie is fairly slow moving. We actually ended up fast forwarding through the last twenty minutes because we couldn't bear to watch any more of it.

The thing that drove me nuts about this movie is that they are locked in a house, yet they keep opening the windows!  There is an army of corpses outside and people keep opening the damn windows, which results in death or dismemberment. If they'd just kept them closed, this never would have happened.

The Silence (2019)

A family with a deaf teenage girl try to stay alive while the world is taken over by creatures who will kill you if you make any noise... so basically it's a different version of the movie, A Quiet Place

13 year old Ally lives a normal teenager life, except that a few years ago she was in a bad car crash and became deaf.  On the nightly news, her family sees that scientists discovered a new species in a cave. Unfortunately that species is now on the loose killing everyone and everything in it's path, and it's headed right towards their town.  The news advises everyone to stay inside to remain safe.

The family decides the best thing would be to get out of the city since the creatures, which are being called vesps, are going to populated areas.  But they don't consider that other people might want to get out of the city as well -  until they end up in a traffic jam. So they decide to off road it which proves to be a second  bad decision when their friend rolls his SUV down a hill and gets trapped inside.  Then the vesps show up and they have even bigger problems.

While hiding in their SUV trying to figure out how to get away, they discover that the vesps are blind and drawn to sound.  So they leave their car and tiptoe off, ending up at a house in the country surrounded by a security fence. A series of bad decisions leads to the home owners death and the family sitting safely inside the house.

When one of the family gets an injury that needs antibiotics, Ally and her father head into town and stumble upon a creepy preacher with no tongue.  Turns out he's got some kind of cult and he'd like them to join. They take a hard pass, but you just know this creeper is going to show up again and be all sorts of trouble.

So we've got killer creatures, a creepy preacher with a cult, and a family that doesn't make good decisions.  This is not going to go well.

This is a lot like A Quiet Place, except that movie was effectively done while this one isn't that interesting.  This has lots of scenes where you watch people sign, whereas in A Quiet Place they are able to convey what is going on with a look or convey an emotion without words. It's much more effective.

There's no real feeling for how much time has passed in this movie. Is it one day? One week? One month?  And if it's any of those, how has a preacher had time to start a doomsday cult?  And why  would anyone join a newly formed cult that it was a good idea to cut out their own tongues and look for teenage girls to repopulate the Earth? It seems like you'd have to build up to that after at least a year of hardship and desperation.

This is like a combination of A Quiet Place and Birdbox. At one point, we see a child in an SUV with a piece of duct tape over his mouth so he won't make a sound. As my friend said, "Bird box your dumb mouth."

When they were talking about how they had to be quiet, Ally says she can help them because, "I know how to live in silence."  No, no you don't.  You live in silence, but that is not the same as knowing how to be silent. You can't hear. You have no idea if you're noisy. You can drop a frying pan and you'll still be living in silence, where everyone else will be saying, what the hell was that loud clanging sound?  She also can't gauge the level of her own voice.

And why does no one seem to know how to shut off a cell phone?  People, please. Get a grip.

If you're going to watch one movie about being silent, definitely choose A Quiet Place.

Soul to Keep (2018)

A group of college aged kids head out to an old farmhouse which was left to Erin and Josh after their grandfather died.  The kids plan to hang out and have a fun weekend.  However the mention that their grandfather drowned in the pond nearby and no one ever found his body makes their stay a little creepy.

The first night there, the lights go out. When Josh goes into the basement and turns on the circuit breaker, he finds a large passageway in one corner of the room.  It leads to another room with a triangle on the floor which appears to be made out of fresh blood. There is some sort of sacrifice in the center of it.

When he calls everyone down to the basement to check it out, they find a book of spells written in Latin. So what would anyone do other than try to conjure a demon?  It's odd that no one seems the least bit disturbed about this find, especially the blood. Who did it? And how did they get into the basement? No one asks.

One of the guys is pressured into being a conduit for the entity they are conjuring. Yeah that sounds like a great idea.  But something goes a little screwy during the incantation and the circle in broken. The conduit says he doesn't want to do this anymore so they go upstairs. But one of the girls stays behind to jump into the circle and read a little more of the spell. hey, great idea.

Josh's girlfriend is deaf so everyone has taken it on themselves to learn sign language, which is pretty considerate.  You know that's going to come into play at some point but it takes awhile for it to pan out.

This is a film to pass the time, nothing new here.