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

Mega Lightning (2023)

There’s a storm a-coming, and it’s going to be a big one, which makes it the perfect time for…a home invasion?  Three robbers go to a rich couples home where there are no alarms on the doors or any surveillance outside. The house is supposed to be empty, but the couple are home.  They hear noises downstairs but don’t call the police because they’re on vacation. It makes zero sense.

The robbers hear noises upstairs. Do they run? Hide? Nope, they take their masks off and decide assault will be added to their list of charges. 

Meanwhile two couples take a long weekend together.  The women are sisters and one’s boyfriend is an abuser. He’s completely comfortable being abusive in front of the others and doesn’t want to hear any nonsense about it.

More new characters are introduced.  An older woman and a young man who might be her Uber driver are in a car crash. She looks in the passenger window at the injured driver and walks off.  Oddly enough it doesn’t seem like she is supposed to be unlikeable.

Forty seven minutes in and other than the car crash, there isn’t much mega lightning.  The sisters went to their vacation house without enough fuel to get home.  Who does that? They remember their mother said the tech millionaire she works for is on holiday so they’re going to head to his house. Not sure that makes sense since if he’s not home, how would that help? All the characters end up in the same house, there are murders, everyone is an idiot, and people keep screaming when they should be hiding from the robbers.

In the end, the death total is lightning 3, murder 2 and car crash 1.

Ridiculous dialogue

Debra: Why don’t we just call the police?

Richard: Because we’re on vacation. I don’t want to make a thing of it.

the computer on the beach

The face aerobics of conveying terror

Toxic Zombies (1980)

Two agents disappear while investigating pot grown on federal property.  The Feds think they’ve probably been murdered. So they decide to crop dust the fields using Dromax, a new untested, unapproved herbicide.

The pot farmers in the fields end up covered in chemicals and run back to their campsite. Those at the camp are concerned and try to help. But the chemicals they’re coated in turn them into zombies. Once they’ve killed their friends, they wander off to attack random campers in the woods.

The local Sheriff is told not to go into the woods due to flooding. He hasn’t heard of any flooding and suspects they’ve discovered he’s going on a fishing trip.  He heads into the woods and ends up tangling with the zombies.

This is a low budget film with acting like something you’d see in community theater. It’s kind of boring and sometimes fun. I do love how calling someone a turkey was an insult. 

Ridiculous dialogue

Those turkeys want to keep me from fishing every three months, they should come right out and say so.

I still can’t figure out how those turkeys in Washington got word of my fishing routine.

The police cheif and the 8x10 glossy on his office wall

Dusting the pot farmers with an experimental chemical

Ooooo that’s good Dromax

Alligator 2: The Mutation (1991)

Rich business man Vinny Brown dumps toxic chemicals into the sewer. Soon a little alligator has grown to gargantuan proportions and developed a taste for human blood. Good cop David Hodges - not the same David who is the main character in Alligator - is called in to investigate after two fisherman go missing.  When a leg is found, the damage seems to be from a gator attack.  

Hodges becomes convinced this is no ordinary alligator.  He urges the mayor to cancel the carnival that Brown is sponsoring on the lake, but the mayor refuses.   After Hodges and a rookie see the giant gator in the sewer, the police ask Brown to cancel the carnival. He refuses, but instead brings in a noted hunter to dispatch the gator. It does not go well.

Even though the mayor keeps the gator sightings under wraps, hardly anyone goes to them carnival. Brown urges the DJ who’s broadcasting live to announce food, rides and booths are now free.  I’m not sure how that will help him, but at least the happy gator smacks his mouth in glee. 

This is not as good as the first movie.  It’s odd that the main characters in both movies are named David. At first I thought it was the same character but they couldn’t get the first actor.

Ridiculous dialogue

I understand that you’re professionals, but this is not a professional alligator.

So rich people have wrestling matches at their parties

The professional hunters

How did he miss the huge pile of dirt in the road?

Why is no one at the carnival?

The alligator heads towards the fun

Snap attack!

Alligator (1980)

A family on vacation buys their little girl a baby alligator, which is odd since they just watched a man get mauled at a gator exhibition.  Later at home, the father angrily flushes the baby gator down the toilet for no discernible reason. 

Twelve years later, we see a local pet store owner supplying dogs to a laboratory doing genetic experiments. When the dogs die, the lab gives the bodies back to the owner who is responsible for disposing of them.  He does this by going into the sewer and dropping them over a railing into the runoff.  This is unfortunate since the chemical laden corpses have been feeding the now giant gator flushed so many years ago.

The police are called when human body parts are found in the sewer. David and his partner investigate, but their exploration goes badly when only David makes it out.  His boss is skeptical about the giant alligator living in the sewers, but they agree to do a sweep. Nothing is found and David is eventually fired.

He continues to work on solving this issue because he knows it’s only a matter of time before more people die.  He doesn’t need to wait long to be vindicated when the gator breaks up through the sidewalk while kids play ball in the street.  And when the evil guy who owns the lab throws a huge party, well you just know that gator is going to make an appearance.

It’s entertaining enough and features a number of recognizable actors.

Amusing dialogue

David: How did I get here?

Nurse: Well you just popped out of a manhole on Campbell Street and started yelling “Alligator!”

Nothing better than night baseball

Gator breaking through the sidewalk 

Evil in the Woods (1986)

Billy checks out a library book called Evil in the Woods.  When he gets home, he goes to his bedroom and starts to read. A narrator starts telling us the tale of Mildew, GA which has been possessed by evil for 3000 years.  There’s a flashback to 1956 which is totally unnecessary and then we’re back to the present where a low budget film crew is making a movie called Bigfoot vs the Space Killers.

The film crew goes camping but keeps running into problems. Equipment doesn’t work or goes missing. People get in arguments and everything seems to go wrong. There is a Bigfoot and aliens in the movie, and hijinks ensue.

Also in the woods are a witch and her family of cannibals. What does a witch have to do with cannibalism? It’s never explained.  A young family comes to town and townsfolk come streaming out of nearby shops.  Someone says the family should be warned. But everyone is afraid and head back inside, leaving the poor family to the evil.  The family goes camping, the boy disappears, but the sheriff doesn’t seem that concerned about it. 

You’ll forget about Billy, the boy reading the book, until suddenly there’ll be a scene of him in his bedroom where something in the closet is trying to get out.  The narrator will pop up randomly and you’ll think, oh right there was a narrator in this film.  It’s really disjointed. Billy reads the whole book and it ends saying it’s a fractured fairytale.  

Who is Mr. P?

Danny’s not here, Mrs. Torrance

The library has an odd children’s section

Bigfoot alert

Why does Bigfoot have the face of a poodle?

Aliens

Brian is misspelled as Brain

Death Car on the Freeway (1979)

After two women are run off the freeway, new reporter Jan discovers similarities in the accidents and thinks it is the same man. In each incident, the women were planning to exit the freeway and pulled in front of a van. But the van prevented them from taking the off ramp and forced them off the road.  Both women said the van had tinted windows and they felt like the driver was trying to kill them.

Jan’s been separated from her news anchor boyfriend Ray for four months.  He misses her and wants her to move back in, but she’s not sure.  He thinks her little promotion from behind the camera to in front of it is cute.

Meanwhile the accidents are getting worse, nine women have died, and the killer has a nickname. He’s been dubbed the Freeway Fiddler because he plays bluegrass music at an insane volume when he drives women off the road.

Jan is fixated on this story and brings a profiler on the news who says the killer targets “reasonably attractive” women who have done a maneuver that causes him to target them, She believes the killer is emotionally stunted and unsure of his masculinity. Hoo boy, the maniac is not going to be happy to hear that conjecture.

Women are urged not to travel on the freeway unless absolutely necessary and not to be alone.  Yet here comes a women, driving by herself and inexplicably honking her horn repeatedly at the van in front of her. I have no idea why she’s honking. They’re in the middle of traffic. 

After more accidents and deaths, Jan does a report in which she partially blames the automobile industry for the deaths by making cars that can unnecessarily go over one hundred miles per hour.  The sponsors don’t like it and she’s fired. Stupid woman.  Ray tells her she’s destroyed her own career after being on her own for four months, so she should move back in with him.  He tells her she’s unemployable so she needs him. Ray sure knows how to sweet talk the ladies.

Jan tells him to get lost and when she gets a phone call about the identity of the killer, she heads out to investigate leaving me thinking it’s curtains for poor sweet Jan. 

This movie seems a bit long but it’s okay. My biggest question is why it’s called death car when the killer vehicle is a van. The movie stars Shelly Hack, George Hamilton, Peter Graves, and features scenes with Dinah Shore, Harriet Nelson, Frank Gorshin, and a bit part by Abe Vigoda.  It was directed by Hal Needham, a legendary stunt performer who was stunt coordinator on tons of movies and tv shows in the 70s.  

Ridiculous dialogue

Remember the Lynn Bernheimer happened almost six months ago. Her memory has to be hazy now.

The van trying to catch up to his prey

We don’t need no stinkin’ on ramp

Jan is on the case

The 8 track player gets some air time 

Why is she honking at the van? He’s not doing anything.