‘V/H/S/Halloween’
In recent years, the “V/H/S” found-footage anthologies have offered diminishing returns, mostly because of bloated run times and seen-it-before scripts — a far cry from the knockout first “V/H/S” film in 2012. So consider me as tickled as a kid on Halloween night when I say that the latest collection is (mostly) a big fat treat.
Things kick off spectacularly with “Diet Phantasma,” an unsparingly gruesome comedy from the writer-director Bryan M. Ferguson. Set in 1982, it’s about a group of unassuming test subjects who enlist in taste tests for a new canned soft drink masterminded by an evil corporation. I’ll leave it there, other than to say that a few sips of Tab never made my face melt off.
Another standout is the disturbing but nutty “Coochie Coochie Coo.” Written and directed by Anna Zlokovic like a bat out of hell, it’s about two young friends who enter a suburban house looking for Halloween candy, only to discover that they’ve been lured there to be part of a demonic baby shower for a sicko man-baby and his “family.”
I also got a kick out of the guy who pukes up eyeballs in the bombastic “Ut Supra Sic Infra” (Latin for “As Above, So Below”), from Paco Plaza, one of the creators of the “REC” franchise. It’s about a police investigation into a deadly Halloween party that itself turns lethal, brutally.
‘Bring Her Back’
I was mostly a fan of “Talk to Me,” the 2023 hit supernatural thriller from Danny and Michael Philippou, the Australian twin brother YouTubers turned horror directors. It moved in overdrive and generously dished out stomach-disrupting gross-outs, but its nonsensical twists left me baffled.
I like the brothers’ latest better. Sally Hawkins gives a commanding performance as Laura, a foster mother who takes in Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger stepsister, Piper (Sora Wong) at her modest but creepy-around-the-edges home where Laura lives with Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips, exceptional), Laura’s nonverbal, near-feral child. The Philippous direct at a thrilling, breakneck pace that narratively and emotionally almost never flags as Andy realizes his temporary mom is permanently nuts. The violence sears; there are at least two jump scares with gore so shocking, I may never be able to erase it from my memory. (Kids: Knives aren’t toothpicks and tables aren’t for snacking.)
Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman’s script has holes, but all is forgiven by the film’s heart-shattering finale.
‘Above the Knee’
Amir (Freddy Singh) dreams of cutting his leg off, right near where this twisted film’s title describes. In a locked room at the home he shares with his kindly girlfriend, Kim (Julie Abrahamsen), Amir paints self-portraits that show him seated in a wheelchair sans part of his leg. His plight isn’t only the stuff of fiction: It’s rooted in a real-life condition in which people have an overwhelming desire to cut off a body part.
Amir’s work and relationship start to suffer as he becomes obsessed with his rotting leg. (It’s not.) But then he strikes up a friendship with Rikke (Louise Waage Anda), a young woman who confesses in a television interview that she wants to be blind, and who agrees to help Amir with his desire to become disabled. It’s here that the director Viljar Boe starts to really twist his knife, layering juicy “Fatal Attraction” luridness over the sick and unsentimental body horror.
Boe mined similar psycho-terror territory in “Good Boy” (2022), his bizarre dark comedy about a man who wants to be treated like a dog. “Above the Knee” is more focused and demented, with will-he-or-won’t-he do it moments to hard pluck your nerves.
‘The Woman in the Yard’
There’s nothing subtle about Jaume Collet-Serra’s supernatural fairy tale. Grief is literally a woman, ominously dressed in black mourning clothes and veil, sitting in a chair outside the rural home where Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) is mourning the accidental death of her husband. Not only won’t this damn ghost leave when asked to, but she’s slowly inching toward the front door, freaking out Ramona, who’s hobbling around on a brace, and her kids (Peyton Jackson and Estella Kahiha).
The film starts to lose steam when the woman in black stands up and spills the beans about why she’s there and what Ramona knows. But set the movie’s oblique elements aside, and what remains is a taut and affecting meditation on grief and the afterlife. Collet-Serra and the writer Sam Stefanak keep things grounded enough to feel real but unmoored enough to give you the willies. Deadwyler is equal parts tender and ferocious, protective and vulnerable.
‘Scared Shitless’
Rent or buy it on major platforms.
If you need a break from real-world terror, Vivieno Caldinelli’s horror comedy is your ticket to paradise. It’s got sickening, literal potty humor (the dangling testicles scene is just evil) and a flesh-hungry creature that looks like it was made from a thrift store opera glove and dentures — the kind of stuff that will tickle fans of puerile horror comedies like “Street Trash” and “Butt Boy.”
Mark McKinney (one of the Kids in the Hall) stars as a mad scientist who fumbles his nefarious plan to unleash a hungry little monster into the world. When his giant Franken-worm inches its way inside the plumbing system of an apartment complex somewhere in suburban Canada, it’s up to Don (Steven Ogg), a plumber partial to lame dad jokes, and his germophobe son, Sonny (Daniel Doheny), to clear the pipes and save the world.
I love how much Canadian pride courses through the film, down to the delightfully knuckle-headed use of Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose.”
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