The 13th Day of Horror: Monster Island (2024)

 

Monster Island (2024)

This awesome hidden gem from Singapore is playing on Shudder right now, so I definitely advise checking it out if you are a fan of classic monster movies. Also called Orang Ixan, Monster Islands starts in 1942 during World War II, on a Japanese Prison ship transporting American POWs and Japanese prisoners, specifically a former Japanese soldier named Saito who is being returned to Japan for execution. He is chained to an Australian (or British?) POW named Bronson, and not long after the ship is attacked and sunk by American fighter planes. The two washed up on a remote island, seemingly the sole survivors, and are forced to learn to trust one another as they realize that they are not alone on the island....some sort of monster is hunting them....

This movie is a nice, component production with good FX, a good budget, a smart action/horror story focused entirely on Bronson and Saito, with a few other survivors figuring in to the mix about midway in.  It owes a bit of it's lineage to a few films: the obvious one references as point of inspiration is the Creature from the black Lagoon, but I was reminded slightly of a couple other films as well, specifically ENemy Mine, and of course Predator. It's hard to throw soldiers into a jungle island and have a monster stalk them and not be reminded a bit of Predator. 

One thing the movie is not doing is riffing off of the mythos, as while the creature is a bit like an aquatic Deep One-like monster, the aquatic beast is most definitely just a cunning creature and not at all related to the spooky lineage of cosmic horror. The movie takes its queues from the more conventional monster movie genre, and does a great job of it. 

I actually was really happy to stumble on this movie while browsing Shudder, as I needed a break from the incredibly bad The Old Ones and the goofy, fun but ultimately far too silly Mark of the Werewolf. A movie that was earnest in its effort to make a serious movie of survival horror with actual characters and situations you care about was a refreshing change of pace. Solid B! Similar to Primitive War, it appears that there is a foreign film market out there which is just knocking hits out of the park.

The 12th Day of Horror: Primitive War (2025)

 

Primitive War (2025)

One of the coolest things I learned from Primitive War is that there is apparently an Australian box office blockbuster film industry, ands that it has cool directors like Luke Sparke making amazing movies on a fraction of the budget that American blockbusters consume. Primitive War got a very limited theatrical release about a month ago and I managed to catch it twice with different family members. Yes, Primitive War was so good I watched it twice in the same weekend. I also enjoyed it about twenty times more than the last three Jurassic World movies combined.

Primitive War opens up in the middle of the Vietnam War during an offensive push into territory where the American troops suspect Russian activity to aid the Viet Kong. A previous recon team went in to the valley where strange things are being reported and no one came back, so a second recon/rescue team is ordered in top find the first team and evidence of what the Russians are up to. The team does not discover Russians (though there are Russians), but instead they find dinosaurs....lots and lots of dinosaurs.

Indeed, it appears the Russians have a secret research base nestled in the region, and they've been experimenting with some sort of particle collider that created a wormhole into the ancient past, dragging what is clearly a near infinite number of dinosaurs....like, more dinosaurs than is ever seen in all of the Jurassic movies, into the 1960s. The collider experiment is out of control, and a myriad of dinosaur laden epochs are literally bleeding in to the modern world!

What ensues from all of this is a tale of survival horror, mad scientist generals, an aggrieved Russian paleontologist, an escalating series of increasingly amazing set pieces and action sequences, a team of American soldiers that all have better and more distinct personalities than any of the characters in the latest Jurassic World movie could evoke, and an end sequence that is so ridiculously over the top that it has to be seen to be believed.

Honestly, if you are a fan of dinosaur movies, pulp adventure films, or heck, enjoy a good old "soldiers vs. extremely bad odds" type setups, Primitive War is very much worth a watch. Although it doesn't have the perfect polish of a film with a bigger budget and a bunch of star recognition actors, it manages to accomplish everything your typical blockbuster manages to, with more fun and flair than is ever normally seen in movies with much bigger budgets. Primitive War was a solid A and well worth a watch. Indeed, I enjoyed it so much I plan to find more of Sparke's other films to see how they are.

The 11th Day of Horror: Through The Fire (1988 or 1997)

 

Through The Fire (1988 or 1997)    

So this movie was a little known gem I would have loved to catch when it originally came out, but it didn't get a proper release on VHS until 1997, when it was apparently marketed as a sequel to the Italian flick The Gates of Hell. Despite what is clearly a typically low budget for the era, this movie proved to be a lot of fun (and despite all the people on IMDB claiming it put them to sleep, I did not find it in the least bit boring to watch). 

Nick is a cop approached by a woman named Sandra to help find her missing sister, who went missing under "mysterious circumstances." They quickly discover a medallion and a satanic cult to the demon Moloch are involved, and the movie ends on a lovely low budget sequence in an abandoned office high rise which is laden with low quality effects but some surprisingly decent action sequences. 

I'm not going to pretend this movie is great, but I can absolutely say I regret not being able to see this movie in 1988 because it would have stood out along with the various other films of similar quality I enjoyed watching back in the day. Worth seeing if you enjoy 80's B movies. I don't know if it's on streaming, but I got a copy of it on Vinegar Syndrome. 

If you are a GM looking for some inspiration for an action/horror mashup, I might actually suggest this is worth viewing to outline a decent basic plot with a series of set pieces. It's got just enough of that magic to make you think "I could rip off this plot for game night and make it a whole lot better." I have actually done exactly that with a Savage Worlds plot I built out based on this movie a while back. I might use the premise again in a future Starfinder game.

Given what this movie is, and how much I enjoyed it, I place it squarely as a solid B! For me this rests next to other classic B quality films of the era such as Rutger Hauer's Split Second and the inestimable Hardware (will review that one soon). 

The 10th Day of Horror: Mark of the Werewolf (2025)

 

Mark of the Werewolf (2025)

At a recent horror convention in my area (the Morgue & Krypt Horror Fest) I managed to find lots of good stuff. One of these was a blue-ray of a film called Mark of the Werewolf, being promoted by some of the team and actors that made it. I pretty much bought this sight unseen, because my thought is: the best case scenario is this will be genuinely entertaining to watch, and worst case I figure I could be the proud owner of an amateur film, the likes of which often makes its way on to the Red Letter Media show. 

Well, first off: this was kind of a fun movie to watch! Maybe my recent ordeal with The Old Ones has tempered my expectation, but honestly? Mark of the Werewolf, while very rough in many ways, is a markedly better film than The Old Ones. It helps that I feel like the writer, director and producer, Dennis Vincent, who also plays himself in the movie, is aware of the fact that he is making a sort of goofy, campy film that aspires to be more of an homage to the 80's era of low budget filmmaking more than anything else. Like Yellow Brick Road, it is also carried on the weight of its actors' shoulders; no one here is "good" as such, but they all manage to outdo themselves in roles befitting a schlocky, campy 80's style horror film. The "Vinny" character (basically a guy doing a Joe Pesci impersonation) is especially amusing and on the mark for the "character vs. caricature" nature of the roles, but its very on the mark and lends to the film's self-awareness.

The premise of the movie is pretty simple. Brooke, an aspiring model and wannabe actress, convinces Dennis Vincent (who appears at the beginning as a film maker with a penchant for gory FX) to let her go to remote cabin in the woods with her friends and the "Vinny" photographer. Unbeknownst to her, the house in the woods is haunted by a woman who is part of a werewolf cult that is keen on the property but mad its been turned into an airbnb, and she is instructed by the cult leader to summon the Wolfgeist, a prominently features giant werewolf suit that is clearly a labor of love. Murder and mayhem ensues!  

The movie has some strong points and weak points. Strong points include the rather impressive use of a vibrant color palette, which you might not ordinarily think was a good idea in a horror movie, but I can tell there's some inspiration from the Evil Dead franchise, and the use of stark reds, yellows, blues and oranges actually creates a really interesting look that remind me a bit of Creepshow, giving it an almost comic book-like aesthetic. 

Another strong point is that the gore FX are rather proficient, and generally look good. The werewolf is pretty decent, albeit in a very "classic movie monster" kind of way, and maybe is a bit too on-camera too much for its own good; if it were use more sparingly I think it would have worked better.

I wouldn't count the story as a weak point because this film knows what it is and efficiently gets to the point. It's aiming for campy, goofy spooky movie feel and it pulls it off well.

The movie fails a bit in the direction of the scenes. It vacillates between great establishing shots and then we get surprisingly unexciting "killed by the werewolf" moments.* This shift in quality is quite odd. 

Overall, this is a pretty fun movie. It is the kind of thing you might put on the big screen TV during a Halloween party for the crowd to enjoy, and I could see having fun with this movie as a thing to pull out each year to watch with like-minded purveyors of campy, low-budget amateur horror. A solid B+! Unfortunately I have no idea how or where you can watch this movie. Hopefully it will get a streaming release soon, maybe on Shudder or Tubi or something. That, or keep an eye out at your local convention where this sort of movie might get represented!

* You can make a drinking game out of the number of "Oh no the werewolf slashed his throat again..." moments. Towards the very end there is a decent werewolf jump attack sequence, though.

The 9th Day of Horror: Hyde Street Volume One TPB

 

Hyde Street Volume One (TPB)

The first volume in this series, part of the Ghost Machine imprint/universe spawned by Geoff Johns (and Ivan Reis) is the latest in a series of real bangers coming out of Image Comics. This first volume collects issues one through seven, and is an excellent introduction to this horror-themed corner of the Ghost Machine universe, which covers a myriad of genres through its various titles (Geiger with post-apocalyptic super beings, Red Coat with immortal soldiers, Junkyard Joe with robot/unknown soldier, Exodus with a collapsing terraformed planet in the far future, etc.) I don't think they all take place on the same Earth (though some definitely do), but each series stands alone on its own merits quite well.

That said, this is 31 Days of Horror, so Hyde Street is the subject! The series focuses on the eponymous Hyde Street itself, a strange urban zone which exists outside of the normal laws, and to which people with secrets to hide find themselves trapped in. Some of these people are particularly noteworthy for their callousness, such as Mr. X-Ray, their maliciousness (as with the eternally young boy scout Pranky), their tragic backstory (The Monster), or Miss Goodbody, who is a pimp for something suspiciously like the Substance.

Each of these individuals have become supernatural predators, approached by a mysterious being called the Scorekeeper, who wants them to find others drawn to Hyde Street, and to see if they are worthy of judgement and damnation, or if they can somehow repent and be given escape. The hunters all have a motive to try and add to the total of the damned, for they can escape Hyde Street if they get ten thousand souls to the Scorekeeper. The conflict arises with some of the chosen predators, such as Pranky, who really like it here, and don't ever want to leave, while others such as The Monster find it a damnable place and despise sending the damned to wherever the Scorekeeper keeps them. The story weaves between the conflict between these trapped hunters and the arrival of other villainous individuals who are deserving of their judgement (or forgiveness), from an arsonist granny to a murderous Santa....there are a lot of unpleasant characters within these pages.

If you want a fantastic read, a novel concept that blends a mix of supernatural serial killers with Twilight Zone style aesthetics taking place in the Chaotic Evil version of Danny the Street,* then you should definitely pick this up! Excellent art as well by a great team, a real treat. Solid A+ and I am eager to continue on with Volume Two (who am I kidding, I pick this series up monthly as well!)

*Bonus Points if you know who/what that is and where its from! Answer : Doom Patrol's sentient traveling street, made more popular by the TV series

The 8th Day of Horror: The Old Ones (2023)

 

The Old Ones (2023)

The glorious world of low budget horror films inspired by or directly paying homage to H.P. Lovecraft is seemingly endless, and at no point have I found more than one or two of them to be worthwhile. The better Lovecraft films tend to be those which riff off of a Lovecraft story and then proceed to do their own thing (think the films of Stuart Gordon, for the best example). So the question is,, is "The Old Ones," a 2023 production by Chad Ferrin, actually going to break this trend and fall into the "few but good" side of the camp?

Hmmmm....let's put it this way, I am typing this as I watch the movie, because my desire to get this event over with is that strong. So strong I want to get this written because I don't know if I can make it to the end of this movie or not, so if I commit to writing this now I will, in turn, be forced to finish this movie....

I'll provide some positive notes for The Old Ones first: it's got some nice rubber Deep One suits and the overall creature FX are well conceived. The production spends a lot of time trying to at least be as faithful to the conventional style and appearance of its creatures as possible, with a lean toward the way they have been portrayed in the RPG art. There is also an effort to periodically riff off of the many famous quotes and phrases of Lovecraft, albeit often out of context or maybe spoken awkwardly by very, very amateur actors. A better script might allow these quotes to play out better, and better actors might make the readings sound authentic.

Also, it has some decent scoring for the soundtrack. No out of place music, and the music sets the mood better than the film itself could. The audio is pretty decent overall.

Oh, there's some gratuitous nudity, too....I feel like maybe the gal should have gotten a full body tan for this scene? 

A couple days back as I watched Yellow Brick Road I thought to myself that this was a well intentioned amateur film, but it clearly had some good elements carrying the weight of the film, without which it would have been much more of a slog. Good acting was a key component, there. Although none of the actors on that movie were seasoned, they nonetheless brought something earnest to the table and did a good job of convincing me that they were exactly the characters they were, trapped in the situation they were in....and only occasionally was the illusion broken. The Old Ones....well...it's got some people playing roles in it, but I suspect that none of them are real or even necessarily trained actors...let me go take a look on IMDB....okay, so most of the actors in this movie have decent portfolios, though not necessarily award winning. So maybe the director is the issue here? Chad Ferrin has done quite a few very low budget movies, and a mess of Lovecraft pastiches, too. In fact I notice he did another one of my least favorite films ever: The Deep Ones from 2020; in defense of the movie I am watching right now it is technically better than its predecessor. 

As I'm watching a great FX-laden scene is happening in which our old protagonist, who is being hunted by the deep ones, is trapped while going to the bathroom in a restroom stall and guy is transforming into a particularly tentacled deep one to get him. You know, I have to say....the FX are sort of worth it! But the stuff in between are just so...bad....oh so very, very bad. 

Oh the younger protagonist came to the old man's rscue by dumping some salt shakers onto the tentacle monster. Oh, another guy just said "shoggoth." I guess that was a shoggoth. I do indeed remember when the Dyer expedition survived their encounter in Antarctica by defeating the shoggoth with a....salt and buttering...

Sigh. This movie really makes me wish a really good director with a real budget would do an adaptation of Shadows over Innsmouth. Ah well. 

I am struggling but will make it to the end. The role of Nyarlathotep is played as an annoyed, somewhat exasperatedly irritated fellow by the actor, who is perhaps trying to channel some of that old Jeremy Irons energy? Well, that was certainly a choice!

Tillinghast is mentioned as a plot point. First time I think he was mentioned.

They entered the least interesting cellar in horror movie history.

Wait....why do Nyarlathotep and his ghasts have a comedically large fire hydrant next to their shipping container?

As the one gang of old ones possessing some security guards show up to talk with the comedicallly ironic Nyarly, I suddenly feel like someone made this movie with the cast of a tv series like...hmmm...30 Rock? Northern Exposure?

Oh wait the security guard is Randolph Carter? Possessed by him? What????

Oh no, he's just "Randoph Carter, security guard."

Okay the multiheaded Nyarly effect is kinda cool.

This movie would be better of Bruce Campbell were in it. I bet they couldn't afford him.

 Tillinghast and his machine are drawing very unfortunate comparisons to the considerably better movie, From Beyond. 

The elder protagonist wants to use the Tillinghast machine to go back in time. Ugh.

Om my god, the adorable creatures visible with the resonator are puppets on strings!

 The great soundtrack is doing 100% of the heavy lifting for the Tillinghast scenes. Without this music it would be painfully unwatchable.

So our elder protagonist, who is 155  years old, wants to go back to 1950...to change the future by not getting on a boat? So the boat ride was when he got possessed? 

It ended, with a predictable and nonsensical twist, as was inevitable. Bu the important thing is...itis over.

I am free.

If you can find this movie for free, and are wiling to skip through to see the rubber monster suit moments, it might be worth a minute or three of your time. I...I don't know if I can watch anymore of this. This movie is truly bad, and not even in that "so bad its good" kind of way. Solid F!

The 7th Day of Horror: Teleforum

 

Teleforum (PC)

Teleforum is a point-and-click analog horror game from Monumental Collab, who look like they have a fine knack for this sort of game. The good news for those still suffering from PTSD over the 90's era of pixel-bitching point-and-clicks is that this one is full of modern conveniences, so it plays well and I advise when playing that you mouse over everything, some stuff will trigger that you might not expect. I did a playthough and then handed it over to my son to do his own run; I have found that the boundless energy and optimism of youth will lead to unexpected results every time over the old jaded Gen X gamer. A single playthrough can be done in less than an hour (my first run was only about 35 minutes), but subsequent playthroughs yielded some interesting additional results I had overlooked, and my son unlocked several new achievements. Indeed, if achievements are a goal of yours, this thing is loaded with plenty of low-hanging achievement fruits.

The premise of Teleforum is simple: a reporter named Juliana and her cameraman (your character) are visiting the apartment of a fellow reporter Walter who recently killed himself following a grisly event at the broadcasting station. He brought a tape to be played, but a technical error prevented it from playing. Juliana wants to interview his widow, and see if she can figure out why Walter did what he did...and see if there's a working copy of the tape somewhere. Things get increasingly weird until at last the tape is available for viewing, and then things begin to loop, as your cameraman begins to sense that he's done this before... 

Teleforum is also adjacent to the hidden object subgenre which has recently evolved into horror with walking simulator elements, where you move through a familiar environment and then look for things that are different each time. Teleforum is more of a hybrid.....but subsequent playthroughs with different choices have yielded some interesting results that were not evident or accessible the first time around. 

While playing, I did start to think a bit about the book and film Ringu, which of course has a haunted VHS tape at the center of its mystery. Unlike Ringu, Teleforum provides a compelling mystery with plenty of hints, but offers few real answers. 

Ultimately Teleforum works well for having a 80's era analog setting, excellent creepy audio and a compelling short story with lots of variables within its restricted environment. It is also free on Steam, so there is that! I enjoyed it enough I purchased the supporter's pack. I give it a solid A, especially considering the price of admission.

Bonus Spoiler/Hint:

There are codes you need to find for hidden endings....

The 6th Day of Horror: The Nun (2018)

 

The Nun (2018)

This has been on my shelf for a long time, as a collection of Conjuring Universe movies I bought for my son to watch. I watched the first Conjuring film and while it was fine, it was also a bit too mainstream and "jump scare-laden" for me to be terribly invested in it. I also probably know too much about the real Ed and Lorraine Warrens, conceding only that their fictional selves are probably how they imagined they really were. 

That said, my son advised that to truly dive into the Conjuring Universe you should start with the film that depicts the earliest events, and that is apparently The Nun. Set in Romania in 1954, it focuses on a remote castle turned into a nunnery where a local man witnesses a nun hanging from a noose, a nun who jumped to her death to deprive an evil entity (demon?) from possessing her. Trapped in the old castle, this force prowls in wait, and the Vatican obliges by sending Demian Bichir as Father Burke, the Catholic equivalent of a Special Investigator along with the young not-yet-a-nun Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene. They meet their guide, the man who found the dead nun, named Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) and then proceed to spend the night in the haunted locale, which was all that the movie needed to kick off what is basically an hour and a half long jump-scare thrill ride through a FX laden haunted house. 

So first, in defense of this movie, I actually rather enjoyed it even if I was sort of hoping it might take more time to actually slow down and put a bit more effort into its storytelling. This sort of horror film has its market, though, and in terms of loading the screen with scary moments, jump scare, quick reveals and sudden plot twists it does its job admirably. It is not art, but it is damned proficient at what it does. 

Second, while watching I realized that this movie, from a horror RPG perspective, is a solid "one night stand" sort of adventure. You could easily take the core conceit of this film (haunted castle full of dead nuns and a demon) and make a fun evening session out of it with a game like Call of Cthulhu or Liminal Horror. It is, in this regard, an excellent template for such things.

That said, I had a moment midway in to the film where I realized that this movie reminded me in a few ways of the much older movie about an ancient evil locked away in a haunted castle called The Keep, The Keep was focused on a much more methodical pacing, and of course suffers for the special effects of its day, plus it was an imperfect adaptation of a much better novel. I happen to have the Vinegar Syndrome release of The Keep, so may review that next for a proper contrast. 

One final thought: this movie leans heavily into Catholic horror. Everything I know about Catholicism comes from movies, I realized, and I have no idea if this is a genuinely good depiction of those bits which make it in the movie or not, but that does mean that The Nun is definitely firmly planted in the Catholic Supernatural Horror subgenre.

All told: it was a fun movie, and a good "scary jump scare woo what's gonna get them next???" Sort of romp. Solid C+ and worth watching for GMs interested in some set locale and "packaged plot" inspiration.

The 5th Day of Horror: Censor (2021)

 

Censor (2021)

I have mentioned this movie before in my "best of" end of year lists, but I don't think I've actually reviewed it. Censor is a fascinating slow-burn psychological horror film set during the early eighties in England, focusing on the Video Nasties scare at the time, in which the British government was determined to censor or outright ban the wave of local and international films focused on gore, violence and other disturbing content. 

Niamh Algar plays Enid Banes, a woman who works as one of the censors, reviewing films, noting unacceptable content, and then reporting what must be cut from a film for acceptable release, or outright banning content. Enid has a problem, though: it is quickly evident by her obsessive compulsive behaviors and unusually flat affect that something is not quite right with her. She meets with her parents, who have secured a death certificate for her younger sister, who it turns out disappeared years ago in 1965 under mysterious circumstances, though Enid herself was present when her sister vanished, though she has no memory of what really happened. Instead, Enid watches the movies she is supposed to critique and advise on, and occasionally a film presents something that seems to jog her memories....including one film depicting two sisters in the woods when one is gruesomely murdered....by the other sister! Something about the scene is just a bit too familiar to Enid, and she becomes obsessed with finding the producer of the film, a lecherous sort she had briefly met.

Amidst all this, a story blows up about an amnesiac killer, a man who slew his family, and a journalist who links the names of two specific censors (of which Enid is one) to the release of a film with content that seems to mirror the actual killing. As the press begins to hound her, Enid grows more obsessed with the films that seem to be leading her down a trail to the discovery of where her sister really went, as she is convinced she was abducted and is alive somewhere, being forced to make horror movies.

I dare not say any more about this film without a proper spoiler warning, so instead I suggest that you should go watch it (and not watch any media about it, if you haven't already been spoiled on its content) instead. It is a slow burn horror for at least the first half of the film, then ramps up rapidly. I love this style of film with its slow, methodical pacing and clever use of cinematography for effect. Niamh Algar is excellent as the protagonist of the film as well, and she is the sole focus of the camera for the run of the film. Solid A for me!

SPOILER SECTION

Okay, you have been warned! Enid is, to begin with, the focus of the camera for the entirety of the film. We are effectively watching what she does from her own context and understanding of things. Every now and then something happens and maybe a contradictory flash of something else not quite right appears, suggesting that not all is as it seems. Enid is a classic unreliable narrator, and while her "narration" is via the camera itself, what we are seeing is entirely affected by her own unusual state of mind. Over the course of the film the dimensions of the screen shift from the usual widescreen format to a more conventional 4:3 format, typical of the grainy old televisions these VHS tapes would once have been watched on. The more frayed Enid's sense of reality, the quicker the screen locks down to a 4:3 format. This is one of a handful of films I have seen which manage to cleverly use this format to good effect (The Lighthouse is another). 

Enid's clearly not well. She has obsessive compulsive behaviors, her flat affect suggests strange emotional detachment, and midway through the film she abruptly (sort of by accident) murders a film producer in a truly grisly manner and instead of being horrified at what she did, she quickly behaves as if nothing unusual happened. In short order she makes her way to a film shoot where she believes an actress is about to be killed, an actress she is convinced is her long lost sister. When she gets there, her ability to tell reality from fiction is effectively gone; the earlier background story of the man who murdered his family after being influenced by a video nasty is no longer the problem; Enid herself is the one who has become influenced by the video nasties, and she is unable to tell her hallucinations from reality. The film ends on a grim note as she returns to her parents, with what she thinks is her sister found at last, though jagged moments of reality interrupt to see horrified parents and a terrified actress.

The film does not address a couple items I sort of wish it had, though I can understand why it might not have: Enid's long lost sister possibly was killed by Enid, if you conclude from her viewing of "Don't go in the Church" that the depiction of two sisters, one being murdered by an axe, is triggering her memory of that day because that is actually what happened. That raises questions, though: such as where did her sister's body go? Did her parents help cover it up? Or was her sister really done away with or abducted, as Enid seems to believe, despite the fact that later events suggest her powerful ability to disassociate from reality and see what she wants means literally anything could have happened to her sister. Perhaps that is the point. Sometimes it is just fine for a movie to leave deliberate loose ends. 

Anyway, if you like slow, methodical horror that builds tension and dread with slow precision rather than jump scare, I definitely advise you check Censor out! It remains one of my favorites. I got my copy from Vinegar Syndrome, indeed it was my first purchase from them.

The 4th Day of Horror: Yellow Brick Road (2010)

 

Yellow Brick Road (2010)

In the realm of low budget indie horror films the ability to manage a story, get some decent cinematography and directing in, and maybe even some good acting and special effects is a smoking gun for future success stories. Sometimes no one succeeds...but also, maybe, they don't totally fail, either? Yellow Brick Road feels like a film that didn't quite succeed, but also managed to pull together just enough decent cinematography, and not bad acting, then wrapped it in an enigmatic and largely inexplicable, threadbare storyline to motivate the plot, and made something watchable (at least once) for those who enjoy watching amateur efforts at serious film making. For people just looking for a solid film I might point to a few hundred other options, though.

Yellow Brick Road is about a man who pulls together a team of like-minded friends to investigate a mysterious event in a town where a bunch of people back in 1940 set off on a wilderness trail and disappeared, never to be seen alive again (dead, sure, just not alive). A modest effort is made at introducing our disparate array of investigators as the film slowly moves into the realm of insanely low budget horror, in which (to reference a common refrain of the Red Letter Media gang), most of the film is shot in the best free place you can find: the woods. 

The story of the film is very basic: they go into the woods to follow this trail from decades before. Eventually they wander into a Liminal Horror event as they realize they are losing track of their sense of direction and maybe even time, as strange vintage music plays everywhere and nowhere at once, haunting and driving them on to find its source. Gradually, one by one they go mad, and eventually the last man standing, our protagonist, finds he has come full circle and the story ends because the runtime necessitates and ending. 

Thankfully, this process is made bearable by some decent young actors making a good effort, some fun but cheap special effects (my son was sufficiently grossed out at one dismemberment scene he lost his appetite) and the strange and vague references to The Wizard of Oz keep you wanting to know why this old movie hangs over the film like some sort of allegory. The answers at the end, which are no answers at all, do nothing to clarify, leaving you either annoyed at the fact that the film seemed to barely do anything with its theme, or perhaps satisfied, if you are a bit masochistic, at its lack of desire to provide any sort of closure beyond the barest suggestion of some sort of loop.

The film makes clever use of New Hampshire's woodlands mixed with eerie forties music to provide a creepy liminal horror/backrooms vibe. This is, in fact, the main menace in the film, the endless woods and the ever present diegetic music causing people to slowly go insane. 

The most exciting moment in this movie for me was watching the extras on the making of the movie and discovering that a younger Robert Eggers was the costume designer for this film. It has me wondering now if anyone else in this movie has went on to better things....scanning IMDB I am going to say "sort of...?" There do appear to be a few other horror movies under the writer/directors' belts, with slightly better ratings, so I may have to check them out. That Eggers was a costume designer who subsequently went on to a serious film career (Nosferatu, The Witch, The Lighthouse, Northman) proves that real talent must start somewhere!

The old notion that B movies can get a lot out of filming in the wilderness is thoroughly played out here. The scenery is in general put to good use, but the film thankfully ends right around the time you are kind of hoping it will; it just barely overstays its welcome.

The box art of the copy I got (with a Scarecrow on it) references a single scene in the movie that left me wondering for some time (right to the very end) just how the scarecrow got there; I won't spoil the details, but someone had to have done it....and we don't learn who that is until the very end; and even then, nothing is explained at all. 

A lot of horror is easily explained if you simply assume that everything happening is the survivor's purgatory, behind which some cenobite-like monster is pulling the strings. But hey, a film's plot shouldn't rely on another media resource to explain its own absence of a plot, and honestly? I think the movie's ending is trying for some sort of surreal way to tie it to the beginning, though it does so in the least satisfying way I could imagine, if only because our nemesis (if that is what he is) is otherwise absent from the film except as capstones to the tale.

At the very end, I think even if nothing else were explained, I wouldn't have minded a more substantive explanation for why the Oz themes are even a thing, beyond the hint (I think?) that maybe Wizard of Oz was the movie people watched before disappearing. 

Anyway, I would rank this a solid D+, chiefly because it had some nice scenery, not bad acting, some good but exceedingly low budget gore, clever use of liminal horror's obsession with muzak and interstitial spaces, and even if I was unsatisfied with the ending it did show promise. Worth a watch if its streaming free somewhere and you have a high tolerance for amateur low budget film-making.