Trash Menagerie

  Dir. Toshiharu Ikeda You’d think a movie called Evil Dead Trap would be some sort of rip off of Sam Raimi’s seminal splatter opus, and perhaps that’s the association American distributors were trying to create, as the exact translation of the title is closer to “Death Spirit Trap”, but even that doesn’t accurately describe what unfolds; at least not in a literal sense. There are no deadites or demons or ghosts in this movie. But there’s plenty of evil doing. And a bunch of people do end up dead. Nami Tsuchiya hosts a late night TV program in which viewers send in home videos hoping to get them played on the air. After receiving a tape that shows a woman appearing to be tortured and killed, she jumps at the chance to produce an investigative piece, hoping to confront the tape’s creator. Using the footage on the tape as a map, Nami and her team are lead to an abandoned industrial site, where all manor or horrors unfold by the hands of a raincoat adorned murderer. As her coworkers ...

Dir. Barry J. Gillis The world is a pretty terrible place and many people do many terrible things. Violence constantly plagues us and oppression is omnipresent. This is not a thesis statement, but merely an observation, and a reductively pessimistic one at that, the appropriate response to which is probably, ‘Yeah, ok. So what?’ Barry J. Gillis doesn’t seem to be interested in the ‘how’ or the ‘why’ of it all. Or maybe he is, but with all the time in the world, he could not develop the filmmaking skills to properly communicate his ideas. To try to explain the plot of Wicked World would be a futile endeavor. Even if I could, the plot is irrelevant to the experience. And Wicked World is very much an experience. The film starts out as a slasher movie, albeit one that has been filtered through the mind of some extra-dimensional alien being. Groups of young people are killed by a middle aged man in a gas mask. He is able to walk right up to these people undetected until he actually t...

Dir. Herman Yau Being a fan of splatter movies, more than any other genre, seems to invite people to demand an explanation as to one’s enjoyment of them. No one will roll their eyes at you for watching a period drama, no one will think your sick or depraved for seeing the latest comic book movie, and romantic comedies seem to always squeak by as a guilty pleasure. Even more mainstream horror movies will get a pass if they’re “artsy” enough. But many people still seem to have this puritanical aversion to gore films and the people who enjoy them. I can’t really explain why I like gore movies. Maybe it helps me process my anxieties regarding death. Maybe I find it cathartic to see such extreme displays of bodily carnage. In any case, I don’t need to explain it to you. I like em’ and that’s reason enough. With that out of the way, Ebola Syndrome is a completely indefensible film. Within the first five minutes there is dick stabbing, head crushing, tongue cutting, and an attempt...

Dir. Matthew Bright The older I get, the more I appreciate going into a film as cold a possible. It’s a fallacy that trailers are more spoilery than they the used to be, especially for low budget/horror/exploitation movies needing to ensure maximum ticket sales. But trailers are more ubiquitous today, available anywhere with a screen and internet access at any given moment. It takes a lot of discipline to steer clear of any trailers, reviews, discussions, etc. that might skew your expectations, not just for contemporary films, but really any film that may have been even just a little popular at any point in film history. Of course this isn’t a good thing or a bad thing (or maybe it’s both a good thing and a bad thing), as an overwhelmingly saturated media landscape constantly battles with our brains for attention and money, time seems to become exponentially more limited, and sometimes you just don’t want to risk wasting it on a movie that you’re not at least likely to maybe...

Dir. Glenn Danzig Modern “so-bad-it’s-good” movies are hard to come by in 2019. The market is almost hilariously oversaturated with Direct-to-Streaming crap that’s either expectedly boring and inept, or so winking and ironically self-aware that it becomes painfully cringe inducing. Shielding one's eyes from the screen should be induced by horror or tension, not embarrassment by proxy. The point is that when filmmakers set out with the intention of making a movie that’s “so-bad-it’s good”, they are doomed to failure from the start because they are missing the fundamental point; sincerity and delusion. The joke is not that the filmmakers are playing dumb and trying to make the audience laugh, it’s that they’re not even in on the joke. People don’t like The Room , Birdemic , Troll 2 , Manos , Neil Breen, Ed Wood etc. because they give they represent misunderstood, independent, outsider art; it’s because they find it amusing that the visionaries behind these films set out with b...

Dir. Damien Leone Terrifier feels like if Party City and Monster Energy teamed up to produce a horror movie as quickly as they possibly could. Like they had a checklist consisting of; 1. Creepy Clown and 2. Gore. And nothing else. What little plot there is seems to revolve around the idea of, now wouldn’t it be fucked up if the clown... I get that it’s a slasher movie but it’s so barebones that there’s nothing to enjoy. Ok I’m getting ahead myself. So...plot. Girl 1 and Girl 2 (I can’t remember their names) get out of a Halloween party and run into Creepy Clown. Girl 2’s car tires are slashed so Girl 1 calls her sister (to be referred to from here on as Girl 3) to pick them up. Girl 1 goes into dilapidated building to pee. Creepy Clown begins killing and continues to kill until the end of the movie. Now a movie this devoid of substance can work. But there has to be something to latch onto. Likable characters, interesting visuals, inventive kill scenes. Terrifier...

Dir. J. Christian Ingvordsen, Danny Kuchuck Mark Trex has no chill. But you can’t really blame him. You’d have no chill either if you were a convicted serial killer, recently escaped after spending 10 years in prison and on a quest to open a gateway to Hell by murdering the members of the death metal band you loved when you were a kid. Or something like that. He also has frequent hallucinations in which he’s attired in a loin cloth and battling a sword-and-sandal demon knight to the death. So Mark Trex really doesn’t have anything to be chill about. He’s the villain of Blue Vengeance , and he’s a shining star.   Essentially a police procedural with slasher elements, the story is pretty standard fare; maniac escapes from prison to continue his reign of terror and the cop who put him away the first time has to track him down again and take him out for good. But it’s the weird details that makes Blue Vengeance stand apart and in particular, Trex’s over the top char...