The Woman in the Yard, Opening in Brazil

Garden gnomes will not look like such eye-sores after a day of staring at her. Unfortunately, there is nothing kitschy about the veiled woman regally sitting in her chair, who appeared in front of Ramona’s house one morning. Ominously, she seems to get closer and closer without visibly moving. Understandably, she quite alarms Ramona’s two children, especially since the grieving widow might have a pretty good notion as to why she is there—and it isn’t good. Regardless, the figure in black won’t be leaving anytime soon in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Blumhouse produced The Woman in the Yard, which opens in its final major international market, Brazil (or rather Brasil), this Thursday.

Ramona has not been coping well with  her husband David’s death, for especially painful reasons that will be revealed later, but astute viewers will have already guessed. Arguably, her teen son Tay (for Taylor) has largely been taking care of her and his little sister Annie, but inconveniently, that did not include paying the electric bill. With the power out, neither he nor his mother can recharge their phones, so the family finds themselves stuck in their isolated fixer-upper farmhouse, to face the woman alone.

For a while, she just gives cryptic, but spooky and vaguely threatening answers to Ramona’s questions. However, around late afternoon, she “reaching into” the house through the sunlight, to torment the family in a more “hands on” manner.

In fact, the first two acts are quite effective at establishing the atmosphere of mystery and dread. Collet-Serra and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski literally just filmed shadowy woman sitting on a chair, but they make her truly scary. Even though she remains chairbound nearly the entire film, Okwui Okpokwasili also hits the perfect note of eerie but hard-to-pin-down supernatural menace.

Yet, to the film’s great detriment, the ending has been widely considered both a considerable disappointment and highly divisive—with justifiable reason. Frankly, it is easy to imagine Sam Stefanak’s screenplay originally had a darker, edgier conclusion that was toned down with meat cleaver edits. As it currently stands (or rather sits), the film ends quite abruptly, leaving the audience with [perhaps unintended] unresolved ambiguities.

Drop, from Blumhouse

Here is a tip for the clueless Gen Z guys out there. Turn your phones off when you are out on a date. It shows you are present and interested. Also, if your date turns out to be boring, turning it back on again really makes a statement. Unfortunately, Violet does not have that option. This date will be her first evening away from her young son Toby since they both survived a violent trauma, so she must be reachable at all times. Unfortunately, a mysterious villain reaches out to touch her with text “drops,” threatening Toby, unless she kills her date. To make matters worse, the service is questionable in Christopher Landon’s Blumhouse-produced Drop, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

Violet’s late husband was scary abusive, so she now specializes in counseling fellow survivors. Henry sounded remarkably understanding of her baggage-laden past and her reluctance to return to the dating world, especially for a guy she met on an app, so she finally agreed to a face-to-face dinner. He really pulled out all the stops, booking a window table at Palette, an elegant high-rise restaurant.

Unfortunately, she is soon harassed by untraceable “drops” (much like iPhone “Air Drops”) from an unknown weirdo. When she finally engages, the mystery texter gives her an ultimatum: kill Henry or the hooded intruder in her home will murder Toby. Unfortunately, her remote security cam feed backs up the threat.

First, she sneakily destroys Henry’s sim card loaded with incriminating evidence. However, the prospect of murdering Henry understandably horrifies her, especially since he clearly appears to be a good guy, trying to do the right thing. She tries to stall for time, but the texter obviously hacked Palette’s security cameras, because he always stays one step ahead of her.

Drop is vaguely like a lot of other movies (like maybe Phone Booth or A Fall from Grace) updated for our current era of digital text addiction. However, it still works because of the chemistry shared by Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar, as Violet and Henry. Drop would crater if we cannot accept Henry’s decision to stick with the date, despite her seemingly erratic and potentially wacky behavior. Yet, we can just barely buy into his patience, because they do seem so sympatico—but only just barely.

Still, that is definitely something. In fact, it is just enough. As a bonus, Violett Beane adds some refreshing humor as Violet’s sister and babysitter, Jen. The shadowy villain is also entertainingly sinister, once he finally reveals himself—but, no spoilers.

The Bondsman, on Prime Video

You cannot get much more Country than a singing bail bondsman. Like Charlie Daniels, Hub Halloran will have some seriously demonic encounters down in Georgia. Unfortunately, instead of beating the Devil, Halloran is stuck working for him in creator Grainger David’s eight-episode Blumhouse-produced The Bondsman, which premieres tomorrow on Prime Video.

Halloran took over his mother Kitty’s bail bond business, but at one time, he harbored musical ambitions, like his ex-wife Maryanne Dice. Her career is poised for a resurgence, but something went very wrong for him. Actually, a lot went wrong for him. Long story short, her “reformed” Boston mobster boyfriend Lucky Callahan had his thugs murder Halloran. He was Hell-bound, but the infernal organization sent him back to Earth to recapture demons that escaped from downstairs.

The bondsman’s equally damned Earthly supervisor Midge Kusatsu makes it clear this is only a temporary reprieve. Eternal torment awaits, but at least he can secure some closure with his son Cade, whose own musical talent Halloran never properly encouraged. Of course, he would also like a little payback from Callahan. Plus, there is the matter of the mysterious unforgivable sin that condemned him in the first place. Halloran is cagey whenever his mother asks, having discovered the demonic nature of his new business. Unfortunately, Callahan strongly suspects the truth.

Of course, Halloran keeps hoping he can find a loop-hole to wriggle out of his infernal dilemma, Instead, he uncovers evidence the jailbreaks from Hell are part of something even bigger that could potentially trigger the End of Days.

Kevin Bacon is perfectly cast as flinty old Halloran and Beth Grant is frequently hilarious as Grandma Kitty. They develop totally believable chemistry as mother and son. Australian thesp Damon Herrimon is also spectacularly sleazy and slimy as Callahan. Frankly, he is so entertainingly villainous, he inadvertently makes Jennifer Nettles and Maxwell Jenkins look like idiots playing Maryanne and Cade. They must be denser than diamonds not to see what a creep Herrimon’s Callahan so obviously is.

Regardless, it is jolly good fun to watch Bacon scowl, grimace wearily, and then blast demons back to the inferno they came from. However, instead of building to a big crescendo, the concluding episode sort of deflates. It also lacks any sense of closure whatsoever, which is frustrating (especially if there is no season two). Arguably, this is another series that should have been one or two episodes tighter.

Still, the mordant black humor is quite amusing, particularly the management structure for Hell’s operations, which is indeed quite Hellish. The tone of the writing produced by David, showrunner Erik Oleson, and Satinder Kaur perfectly suits Bacon and Grant.

Wolf Man, from Blumhouse

Traditionally, lycanthropy victims must sharpen their time-management skills. If they can secure themselves during full moons (if so inclined), they can continue functioning normally during the rest of the month. Not so for these werewolves. They turn once—permanently. Frankly, it seems fair to ask whether werewolves are still werewolves without the lunar aspect, or just contagion-based hairy monsters. Regardless, that is what we get in Leigh Whannel’s Wolf Man, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

According to the opening titles (which cry out for John Larroquette’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre narrator voice), the indigenous people of these Oregon woods long told stories of shaggy man-beasts terrorizing the region. Young Blake Lovell’s veteran father Grady took those stories seriously. After a tense sighting, he went out hunting it and never came back.

Years later, adult (sort of) Lovell is now a stay-at-home father, largely because he is unemployed. Consequently, he is much closer to his daughter Ginger than his increasingly distant journalist wife, Charlotte. When the state finally declares the missing Grady dead, Blake convinces his wife a family trip to Oregon will do them good, but we know better.

Sure enough, the Lovell family inevitably finds itself running for dear life from a hirsute figure, barely reaching crazy old Grady’s farmhouse in time to barricade themselves inside. Unfortunately, the creature drew some of Blake’s blood, which still means what it usually means. The transformation will not be immediate, but despite his efforts to fight it, the change is inevitable and irreversible.

Blumhouse’s first re-conception of a classic Universal monster, The Invisible Man (also directed by Whannel) was a clever, high-concept genre thriller that felt very fresh and contemporary. In comparison, Wolf Man is a disappointingly small film that resembles any number of low-budget VOD horror movies. Basically, the Lovells are yet another family that allow themselves to be trapped in a strange house by monsters.

Whannel builds a fair degree of tension, but the werewolf makeup underwhelms. It is also annoying to see the Grady Lovell character initially presented as yet another emotionally distant (perhaps even abusive) disciplinarian veteran, but admittedly, the film invites some sympathy for him as it reveals more of his backstory and fate. Regardless, most viewers will ask two glaringly obvious questions as the Lovells batten down grandpa’s long-empty farmhouse: why is it so clean inside and where are all his guns?

Speak No Evil, Remade by Blumhouse

Remember, your new vacations friends probably are not that funny. Most likely, it is really just the wine. Most people realize it would be a bad idea to reunite later, especially at their isolated country home, but the Daltons do it anyway in James Watkins’ Speak No Evil, a Blumhouse-produced remake of Christian Tafdrup’s Danish film of the same name, which releases tomorrow nationwide.

Ben Dalton brought his wife Louise and daughter Agnes to London for a job opportunity that evaporated at the last minute. They are still there, but it is awkward, for additional reasons that will be revealed during their stressful upcoming country getaway. To lift their spirits, they have a miserable time vacationing in Tuscany, until they start hanging with the super-fun Paddy and Ciara, who rescue them from the other boring tourists. However, their mute son Ant is not such a good time. Maybe they should pay more attention to him.

When things get bad again back home, they decide to take up Paddy’s offer to visit their farmhouse. However, as soon as they arrive, they regret it, because their hosts are much weirder than they remember. The Daltons also realize poor Ant endures constant emotional (and perhaps physical) abuse. Yet, they stay, to avoid offending Paddy and Ciara. Ant tries to warn them, but only Agnes picks up on his desperate attempts to communicate.

Watkins’ adaptation of Tafdrup’s original film is taking flak for not being as hopelessly give-you-nothing-nihilistic as its predecessor, but that’s not such a bad thing. Frankly, we already have plenty of horror films in which cruelty is rewarded. Arguably, it starts out as a remake of Speak No Evil but turns into a much better remake of Straw Dogs than Rod Lurie managed to cobble together. It even takes place back in rural England again.

There is a good deal of sexual politics reflected in the Daltons’ cratering relationship. As a further source of shame, she turns out to be a better, fiercer protector, but mostly due to reasons of coordination rather than Force Majeure-esque cowardice on his part. Instead, Ben Dalton endures tremendous pain for family, in a climax that would make a Spanish Inquisitor wince. Yet, boy, does that tension build.

Mackenzie Davis is terrific as Louise Dalton, both on a physical and viscerally emotional level. Scoot McNairy is more restrained, but he elevates Ben Dalton above and beyond his “wounded masculinity.” However, young Dan Hough so devastatingly expresses such extreme inner turmoil as poor Ant, it should make some viewers questions the ethics of children appearing in a film like this.

Night Swim, from Blumhouse

There is something sinister going on in the Wallers’ new pool that is even worse than those creeps who secretly pee under the water, in their trunks. Apparently, no amount of cholerine will wash out the supernatural natural evil that infects it. The family’s fresh start leads to dark waters in Bryce McGuire’s Blumhouse-produced Night Swim, which opens today in theaters.

Ray Waller is the first cinematic Milwaukee Brewer since Bernie Mac in Mr. 3000, but it currently appears his baseball career will be cut short by a sudden MS diagnosis. His wife Eve wants him to focus on maintenance for his post-pro life, but he still harbors ambitions for a comeback. They buy their new house for a suspiciously low price, but admittedly the pool is in quite a state. In fact, it almost kills him when he accidentally falls in.

Nevertheless, the buy the house for the sake of his aquatic therapy, which does indeed work wonders—to an unprecedented degree. Yet, his teen daughter Izzy and “awkward” preteen son Elliot start experiencing weird and even life-threatening phenomenon when they go into the water alone (which they aren’t supposed to do, of course). Eventually, even Waller’s wife Eve notices it too.

The Thai film The Pool remains the scariest horror film set in a swimming pool—but in that case, it was empty, except for the crocodile. Frankly, the execution is surprisingly polished and effective throughout Night Swim, especially Charlie Saroff’s cinematography, which cleverly capitalizes on the diffraction of a light through water, which makes straight items suddenly appear crooked.

However, McGuire’s screenplay is a feature-length fix-up based on a previous like-titled short film he co-wrote with Rod Blackhurst and it shows. This evil swimming pool premise just cannot sustain itself at a feature-length.

Still, there are some creepy scenes, especially when Eve Waller searches out the former owner, Kay Summers, the mother of the unfortunate little girl in the prologue. Jodi Long is spectacularly off as Mother Summers and Ben Sinclair delivers a Will Ferrell impersonation as their pool tech guy that is funnier than the real Ferrell in his brief appearance.

Five Nights at Freddy’s, from Blumhouse and the Henson Creature Shop

Gen X fondly remembers video arcade pizzerias like Chuck E. Cheese (still in business) and Showbix Pizza (sadly not), so of course we now enjoy packaging our nostalgia in horror movies. Logically, it is not the pizza or the video games that will kill you. It is the animatronic rock & roll stage show animals. Based on Scott Cawthon’s popular horror survival video game (that predates the similarly themed Nic Cage movie), Emma Tammi’s Blumhouse-produced Five Nights at Freddy’s opens this Friday in theaters.

Poor Mike has trouble holding a job, because he has emotional and sleep-related issues. Currently, he is the sole support of his kid sister Abby, but their nasty Aunt Jane is filing motions to assume custody (presumably for the welfare support checks that would follow her). He needs a job, but unfortunately the only one his employment counselor, the very odd Steve Raglan, can hook him up with is the night watchman gig at the long-shuttered Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza family arcade. The position has high turnover, as viewers can tell from the prologue.

Rather negligently, Mike does not bother to google the property’s notorious history. It was popular in the 1980s, but a rash of child disappearances led to its closure. This information would have meant something to Mike, because he remains traumatized by the childhood kidnapping of their middle brother, Garrett, who was never recovered.

For years, Mike has revisited his abduction through directed-dreaming, hoping to finally notice a clue identifying the kidnapper. Weirdly, those dreams have become much more vivid when he sleeps in front of the monitors at Freddy Fazbear’s. There are also new children in the dream, who seem to know something. He has yet to notice the animatronic animals moving around on their own, but it is only a matter of time.

In case you were worried, the story of Five Nights is considerably different from Willy’s Wonderland. Mike’s tragic backstory and obsession with Garrett’s abductor add very different and compelling dimensions. Cawthon (who was canceled and doxxed on Twitter for having the “wrong” politics) and co-screenwriters Tammi and Seth Cuddeback marry that underlying storyline with the animatronic madness surprisingly well.

John Hutcherson carries the directed-dreaming scenes quite well. In fact, the exhausted grief and everyman decency he brings as Mike gives the film a solid anchor. However, there is no doubt the real stars are the four life-sized lethal animatronics, designed by the Henson Shop: Freddie Fazbear; Bonnie, a deranged rabbit; Chica, a frighteningly gluttonous chicken; and Foxy, an eye-patch-sporting pirate fox. They are often accompanied by Mr. Cupcake, a killer birthday-special pastry, who shares a kinship with the sentinel-orb from Phantasm.

Totally Killer, on Prime

All the best slashers take you back to an Eighties state of mind. This one literally takes Jamie Hughes back to the 1980s. Late in the awesome 80’s, the mysterious Sweet Sixteen Killer murdered three high school girls, stabbing them sixteen times. Then, suddenly, he reappears in 2023, killing her mom. Through an odd chain of events, she travels back in time to stop the killer in Nahnatchka Khan’s Blumhouse-produced Totally Killer, which premieres today on Prime.

For years, Pam Hughes was preparing for the killer’s return, like Laurie Strode in Halloween (2018), but she wasn’t quite prepared enough. The killer targets her daughter next, but Hughes (as in John?) escapes in her best friend Amelia Creston’s science fair project, a time machine. Somehow, it works when the killer’s knife gets jammed in the control panel.

Obviously, returning will be a problem, especially since it needs wifi. Fortunately, Creston based her designs on plans in her mother Lauren’s old notebooks. The 1980s Creston will work on the technical problems, while Hughes tries to catch the killer, but it will be even more difficult than she expected. For one thing, the teen Pam and her mean girl friends are too busy partying to take her warnings seriously, until they start getting killed.

Screenwriters David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, and Jen D’Angelo score some laughs at the expense of 80’s attitudes that now look dated, as seen through the eyes of the woke-entitled Hughes. Yet, despite their intentions, the Reagan decade still looks like way more fun than our current scoldy watch-what-you-say times.

Surprisingly, their take on time travel is more consistently fun and entertaining. Hughes will indeed change things, but not always in the way she hoped. Murders still happen, but the victims and locations change. It turns out fusing slashers and time travel resulted in a fresh take on both.

The Exorcist: Believer

Everyone should know by now Satan never sleeps. That means you can always have one more demonic horror sequel. In this case, we are talking about a franchise built by one of the greatest horror films of all-time and a criminally under-appreciated third installment. The rest are not so fondly remembered (especially #2), so Halloween 2018 rebooter David Gordon Green largely disregards them in the Blumhouse-produced The Exorcist: Believer, which opens tomorrow nationwide.

Thirteen years ago, Victor Fielding and his mega-pregnant wife Sorenne were vacationing in Haiti when the 2010 Sean Penn earthquake hit. She was killed, but doctors managed to save their unborn daughter, Angela. Of course, Fielding still has lingering pain and trauma you-know-who is sure to exploit when he gets a chance.

As a young teen, Angela is increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of the mother she never knew. So much so, she and her friend Katherine try to raise her spirit through a ritual in the forest, which is an exceptionally bad idea. Three days later, Fielding and Katherine’s Evangelical parents finally find them, but they are different. At first, everyone assumes they are just in shock, but their behavior grows nasty, violent, and just plain evil.

Fielding is not a believer, but his neighbor, a former nun, certainly is. When she gives him Chris MacNeill’s book about her daughter Reagan’s demonic possession, Fielding is so struck by the similarities, he seeks out her advice.

You have to wonder what William Peter Blatty (who wrote the original Exorcist novel and screenplay) would think of the way Believer depicts the Catholic Church. Rather insultingly for fans, Blatty’s name never appears in the opening credits, but this film would not exist without him. However, he might begrudgingly admit there is some veracity to its feckless depiction of the Catholic Church, in the Francis era. How can a Church that makes deals with the CCP find the faith to fight demons from Hell? At least, Ann the former nun will try, along with several other clergy, including Katherine’s Evangelical pastor. Ironically, he is portrayed in largely sympathetic terms, as Victor’s neighbor, Stuart, a Pentecostal lay leader, is as well.

Green and co-screenwriters Peter Sattler, Scott Teems, and Danny McBride make a point to emphasize faith, rather than the faith, but evil is still rotten and corrupting to the core. Frankly the “village” trying to conduct the exorcism needs a Father Karras and a Father Merrin—and they would be the first ones to admit it.

The heralding return of Ellen Burstyn as MacNeil is real a coup for Green. Even though she only has fifteen or twenty minutes of screen time, her presence has authority and the apostolic connection to the 1973 film lends Believer massive additional credibility. Despite the limited time, Burstyn is quite poignant and her post-Pazuzu life is well-written and believable.

Insidious: The Red Door

Thanks to the power of hypnosis, Josh Lambert and his son Dalton intentionally forgot what happened in the second Insidious film, but Blumhouse hopes you remember, considering the last two films were prequels, featuring paranormal investigator Elise Rainier. She had become the fan-favorite character, which would be fine with the Lamberts, who were hoping to be done with “The Further.” Nevertheless, the evil entities start reaching out for them once again in Patrick Wilson’s Blumhouse-produced Insidious: The Red Door, which opens today nationwide.

So, nine years ago, everyone got back safe and sound from The Further, but father and son were so traumatized, they had a hypnotist friend of Josh’s mother Lorraine block out their memories. That worked okay for a while, but it caused a lot of brain fog for the older Lambert, which affected his relationships with his family.

Unfortunately, Pops Lambert starts having strange, demonic visions possibly brought on by his mother’s death. So does dreary Dalton, when he taps into subconscious memories of The Further for an art class exercise. Soon, he too is having freaky encounters with the angry entities of The Further, much to the alarm of his only friend at college, Chris Winslow (platonic from what viewers can tell, because who could ever be attracted to such a moody whiner).

Although the audience might be happy to leave Dalton in The Further, we can guess his father will eventually go back in to save him, but this time, they will not have Rainier’s help. Thematically, Red Door is a lot like Wilson’s other major horror franchise, The Conjuring, in which the strength that comes from family is always essential for defeating supernatural evil.

In his directorial debut, Wilson displays a surprisingly refined visual sensibility. He has the patience to let key scenes play out deliberately, to steadily crank up the atmosphere of dread. He also uses the full frame, with some clever soft-focus tricks, to keep viewers guessing. It looks good and the slow-build suspense compounds quite profitably.

The Horror of Dolores Roach, on Prime

During the sixteen years Dolores Roach was in prison, Washington Heights considerably gentrified. The streets are now safer and the property values have greatly increased. Apparently, these are bad things. At least Roach can rectify the safer streets in creator Aaron Mark’s eight-part, Blumhouse-produced The Horror of Dolores Roach, based on his original podcast, which premieres tomorrow on Prime.

Empanadas are the meat pies of New York City, so it makes sense to make them the vessel for Mark’s modern-day Sweeney Todd riff. Getting us to sympathize with the notorious mass murderer will be a trickier proposition. The actress playing her in a one-woman show likes to think she humanizes the killer, but Roach begs to differ, when she introduces herself to the thesp after the opening night performance. She insists on telling her the full, supposedly unvarnished truth (if ever there were a narrator with the potential for “unreliability,” Roach would seem to be it, but Mark and the battery of writers do not play that game).

Roach was happy with Dominic, her drug-dealer lover, back in the era of Giuliani New York, except for the fact criminals like them were getting busted. Eventually, it happened to her, but not Dominic. Since she refused to turn on her lover, they threw the book at her. When she finally gets out, the Washington Heights she knew is completely changed (she even missed the Broadway musical—so unfair). Fatefully, the only thing that stayed the same is the empanada shop, now operated by Luis Batista, the late original owner’s son. Conveniently (or maybe not), he always carried a torch for Roach, so he is delighted to let her stay in his spare room.

For a while, Roach actually thinks she might get her life back together as an unlicensed masseuse, but then she starts killing people. It always happens in a one-darned-thing-after-another kind of way. Usually, they are asking for it too, like Batista’s sleazy landlord, Gedeon Pearlman (of course, the socially conscious series makes the implied Jewish character a greedy landlord). However, Roach and Batista are subsequently stuck with Pearlman’s son Jonah hanging around looking for his father and chatting up Nellie Morris, their cashier. Fortunately, he won’t look for his father where Batista has him hidden: in the meat locker and in the empanadas. In fact, Batista will need more “meat” when the new flavor becomes a hit. Reluctantly, Roach keeps obliging.

The writing is intermittently clever, but it is frequently undermined by the urge to offer social commentary. Frankly, HoDR is at its most interesting when Roach puts her pity party on hold, to start contemplating her own culpability—it does happen, eventually. The slightly meta twist towards the end is also genuinely amusing. If you can slog through the first episode, which is the longest and the slowest, you might as well go all the way.

Unseen, from Blumhouse

Those thin, fragile little smart phone power-plugs are not just annoying. They could cost lives—Emily’s life to be specific. The vision-impaired woman received a miss-dial from Sam, a total stranger with a beat-up and unreliable-looking phone, whom she must rely on to guide her away from her kidnapper in Yoko Okumura’s Blumhouse-produced Unseen, which releases Tuesday on VOD (and launches on MGM+ in May).

Sam’s life is in a bad place. She is deeply depressed and works for a complete jerk at a gator-themed gas station, in a region of Florida where that sort of thing looks normal. Emily is in a worse place. She has just been kidnapped by her abusive ex-boyfriend, Charlie, who intends to gaslight her back into a dysfunctional relationship—or suffer the violent consequences.

Somehow, she manages to escape, but her glasses are damaged in the brutal scuffle, leaving her natural vision too blurry to navigate the Upper Michigan wilderness outside Charlie’s cabin. She cannot see her phone’s screen, but she manages to return her last call: Sam’s hang-up. The completely freaked-out cashier reluctantly agrees to guide Emily via video-phone, very much like the visual assistance operator in See for Me, but she must also deal with her crummy job and Carol, a customer from Hell, who could only be played by Missi Pyle.

The concept and execution of Unseen are indeed very similar to See for Me, but it works even better because of the more colorful characters and the superior chemistry between Emily and Sam. Midori Francis and Jolene Purdy develop some terrific digital-foxhole rapport and both are appropriately earnest and vulnerable, conveying the urgency of their situation.

Pyle is basically a caricature as the unhinged Carol, but she is funny and definitely ups the stakes for Sam dramatically. Most of her sequences defy credibility, but the lunacy is impressive. Unfortunately, Michael Patrick Lane’s Charlie is a bland, completely disposable villain.

Sick, on Peacock

You know when they lose Blumhouse, the Fauci school of pandemic management has lost the nation. Maybe they haven’t fully lost the studio chief, but screenwriter Kevin Williamson has a lot of ironic commentary to offer on the quarantine lock-down era, while staying true to his slasher roots. Unfortunately, two millennials can’t quarantine themselves from a home-invading slasher in John Hyam’s Blumhouse-produced Sick, which is now streaming on Peacock.

With the economic and educational shutdown of 2020 looming, entitled party girl Parker Mason and her judgy, strait-laced pal Miri Woodlow decide to quarantine in the luxury cabin owned by Mason’s dad. Basically, it looks Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone character might live there, but there do not seem to be any guns in the house, which stretches credibility.

Of course, they both announce their every move on social media, so a tech-savvy stalker can easily follow them to Pop Mason’s cowboy McMansion. We can tell this psycho is effective, based on the murder he committed during the prologue. In this case, even Mason’s jealous hook-up, DJ Cole can crash their party. That means there are three potential victims, waiting to get hacked and slashed.

It is hard to explain the context without spoiling elements, but Williamson’s screenplay definitely skewers the compulsive masking experience. It also brings back embarrassing memories of Clorox wiping your groceries. Perhaps most incisively, it portrays the weird Covid-Puritanism (sometimes expressed by the likes of Howard Stern) that blamed victims and carriers. Arguably, the mystery slasher represents its fullest logical manifestation. However, all of Williamson’s inspiration is reflected in his razor-sharp dialogue, whereas the characterization largely falls back on flat stereotypes.

Regardless, experienced genre director John Hyams skillfully builds the tension and stages some hair-raising confrontations (even more so than he did in Alone). As is Scream, the slasher (if there is only one) is definitely a mortal, who takes bumps and bashes just like the prospective victims. Indeed, each grisly encounter could go either way, so there is genuine suspense. Among the cast, the clear standout is Jane Adams as Pamela, whose sinister role would be spoilery to reveal.

Nanny, Produced by Blumhouse

Aisha is not like Alice in The Brady Bunch. She doesn’t feel like one of the family. However, Rose, her little charge, took to her immediately and her often-absent hipster father isn’t so bad either. Aisha can even handle Rose’s neurotic mom Amy. Instead, the real danger might be coming from her homeland in Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny, produced by Blumhouse, which opens Wednesday in New York.

Aisha is an illegal immigrant, because of course she is. Modern filmmakers are conditioning audiences to automatically assume immigrants like Aisha must be here illegally. Supposedly, Rose is a fussy eater with behavioral issues, but she rarely gives Aisha trouble. Instead, Amy is a real pain, who often “forgets” to pay Aisha. Presumably, Adam “fetishizes” the Third World subjects he shoots as a photo-journalist, but he generally tries to be an “ally.”

Regardless, Aisha has bigger problems, like the son in Senegal she only sees over whatsapp. Initially, her guilt seems to be metastasizing into nightmares and brief hallucinations, but the dreams and visions are growing steadily more severe and macabre. Yet, Aisha just keeps shaking them off.

That gets to the real problem of Nanny, which is billed as an elevated horror film. You can only watch so many nightmares that end when the dreamer wakes before an ostensive horror film becomes a drama about sleep disorder. There are some intriguing references to the traditional spirits of Senegal, but Jusu devotes far more time to the dysfunctional dynamics of Rose’s family—and we’ve seen that all before.

Unhuman: A Blumhouse Afterschool Special

Nothing was scarier than the “Afterschool” specials of the 1970’s and 1980’s. They were trying to terrify kids with the consequences of sniffing glue (and other assorted vices), but they really just creeped us out with their manipulation and corniness. This film is described, with tongue in cheek, as a “Blumhouse Afterschool” special, but happily it is not as lectury as some of their recent films (hello Black Christmas). Lessons will still be learned when Marcus Dunstan’s Unhuman will be available on Prime as a regular SVOD title on Halloween.

Poor Ever knows her newly-popular lifelong-bestie Tamra is slowly withdrawing from her and she will probably just let it happen. At least Tamra still sits with her on the bus for the PTA’s latest feel-good, tree-hugging field trip. This would be a heck of a time for a zombie apocalypse, wouldn’t it? It might be more like a viral break-out, but something like that sure seems to happen.

Suddenly, Ever and her surviving classmates are hiding in an abandoned institutional building that looks like it has become a frequent site for raves. To get through this crisis, she and Tamra will have to work with two role-playing geeks and some of the jocks that bullied them. Alas, that might be difficult, because their prejudices and resentments have become so ingrained and internalized.

Halfway through, Dunstan and co-screenwriter Patrick Melton pull a carpet-under-our-feet revelation that could have been an eye-roller, but they execute it quite cleverly. They also largely avoid woke virtue signaling. In fact, some of the snark coming from the field trip chaperone, phys ed teacher Mr. Lorenzo satirizes that kind of kneejerk rhetoric quite cuttingly.

Halloween Ends

It is a trilogy, so that means it is supposed to end, conclusively. Of course, in horror, they have a habit of turning into quartets and quintets, as in the case of Scream. In this case, the Halloween rights will revert from Blumhouse to Malek Akkad, the son of the original producer, Moustapha Al Akkad, following the completion of David Gordon Green’s retconned trilogy. Laurie Strode thought she finally trapped Michael Myers in Halloween (2018), but the bogeyman escaped to take his revenge on the entire town of Haddonfield in Halloween Kills. Four years later, Strode and her granddaughter Allyson Nelson are still wondering if and when Myers will return to kill again, which of course he does in Green’s Halloween Ends, releasing today in theaters and on Peacock.

Myers’ last Halloween rampage was a brutal one. Amongst his victims was Strode’s daughter Karen Nelson. Since then, Strode has relaxed a little, finding therapeutic value in writing her memoirs. She is still a bit of an outcast, so she has sympathy for Corey Cunningham, who accidentally killed the bratty kid he was babysitting on a non-Michael Myers Halloween a few years earlier, during the unsatisfying prologue.

Nelson is also interested in the moody Cunningham, but their dating attempts constantly lead to confrontations with Haddonfield’s bullies. After one particularly nasty beating, the town’s most notorious outsider takes Cunningham under his wing. Soon, he and Myers are hunting together, but he still pursues a relationship with Nelson, even though Strode can sense he is under Myers’ influence.

Compared to the previous films in Green’s Halloween trilogy, Ends is a major disappointment. Whereas the first two films were big, grandly chaotic, and intensely exhausting, the new film just feels small. Kills graphically depicted the way Myers’ evil precipitates the entire social breakdown of Haddonfield. End half-heartedly tosses around themes of trauma and recovery, but it is more of an afterthought than a driving concern. For franchise fans, Cunningham also takes far too much screen-time away from Myers.

Blumhouse’s Compendium of Horror, on Epix

In the future, the Blumhouse production company might have their own episode in talking head horror documentaries like this. They do not toot their horn so much in their own survey, but a lot of their comentators’ talking-points sound very much like the same old stuff we’ve heard before. However, Robert Englund’s narration definitely gets you in the mood to rewatch a lot of the films discussed in showrunner James Buddy Day’s five-part Blumhouse’s Compendium of Horror, which premieres tomorrow on Epix.

Blumhouse and Day break down horror by general chronological periods, starting in the 1930s, with the classic Universal monsters. This is generally the best episode, as long as you won’t wonder where the silent German expressionists are. Next, “Atomic Nightmares” episode does a pretty good job chronicling the rise of Japanese kaijus and their low-budget American mutant cousins. However, the pejorative use of the term “red scare” to describe the themes of films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not entirely appropriate, given what we now know about Soviet covert activity at the time. At this point, nobody seriously denies the US Communist Party was wholly controlled by Moscow and actively abetted Soviet agents engaged in espionage.

Bizarrely, Hammer, Universal’s British successor, is almost completely ignored in “Unholy Dreams,” which largely focuses on 1960s and 1970s horror as an expression of the counter-culture’s interest in exoticism and the occult. Even more troubling, it completely misrepresents Friedkin’s classic The Exorcist as a subversive attack on conventional Christian values. The truth is William Peter Blatty, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel, was a devout Roman Catholic, who believed the Church was our last, best, and possible only defense against evil. If you were to compile a list of the great Catholic films of the 20^th Century, The Exorcist would rank towards the top—very possibly #1. To so badly misunderstand and distort its significance reveals the problematic biases of the critics who appear in Compendium.

The next episode is somewhat better, discussing 1980s slasher films in the context of the sensationalistic media coverage of real-life serial killers. The final fifth episode was not yet provided for review, but there is a good chance it misses an important point. As a genre, horror is at a turning point. It has never had greater prestige. Yet, as Compendium often points out, in the past, horror has often reflected society’s anxieties, sometimes without consciously intending to do so. Recently, many horror films have stopped reflecting widely held fears, opting to tell viewers exactly what they should fear instead. There have been dozens of climate change horror movies, but really none of them amounted to much.

Tribeca ’22: The Black Phone

You can still find out-of-service pay phones left installed in the walls of old school diners, decrepit bus stations, and past-their-prime school buildings that seem to offer the promise of ghostly communication they cannot possibly fulfill. This serial killer assumes the disconnected phone in his basement dungeon is just like that, but his latest abductee will receive supernatural calls on it from previous victims in Scott Derrickson’s Blumhouse-produced The Black Phone, which opens tomorrow nationwide, after screening at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

He is called the Grabber for obvious reasons. He uses balloons and magic tricks to lure kids off the street, but even after grabbing them, he never lets them see his face unmasked. Unfortunately, Finney Shaw will be his next victim, following his friend Robin Arellano and his friendly softball rival, Bruce Yamada. Arellano was more formidable taking on bullies at school, but Shaw is the first to draw the Grabber’s blood during the abduction.

Thanks to the ghostly calls he receives on the supposedly kaput phone in the Grabber’s sound-proofed basement, Shaw also avoids all the mistakes his past victims made. They also offer advice regarding potential avenues for escape, but he will have to work quickly. So far, Shaw’s kidnapping has been so unsatisfying for the Grabber, he is starting to lose patience with his latest victim. Of course, the clueless cops are looking for him, but so is his younger sister Gwen. She has a bit of the shine, but she can’t necessarily summon it whenever she wants. Instead, it comes irregularly in dreams.

Based on the Joe Hill short story, Black Phone features an abusive father, similar to the many examples found in the works of his own dad, Stephen King. Critics of the psychoanalytic school can make of that what they will, if they dare. At least Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s adapted screenplay explains the Shaw siblings’ father acts they way he does, because their late mother was driven crazy by her clairvoyant gift/curse.

Regardless, Black Phone is insidiously effective (if you will) because the young cast is so compelling. Yes, the always reliable Ethan Hawke is all kinds of creepy as the Grabber, but the sinister masks are also a big part of his screen presence. However, Mason Thames really holds the audience’s attention and sympathy as the somewhat nebbish Shaw. When he is not on-screen, Madeleine McGraw steals numerous scenes and scores the film’s only laughs as his sister Gwen. You do not often see such an endearing and cooperative young brother-sister relationship in films—but it is done really well in Black Phone.

Firestarter, Remade by Blumhouse

Arguably, it is more of a thriller with sf elements than a horror story, but the premise is pretty horrifying for parents. Charlie McGee did not just inherit a resemblance to her parents. She also has their “shine.” That was the whole idea for the shadowy government contractor DSI (aren’t they always shadowy), when they experimented on Andy McGee and his wife Vicky Tomlinson-McGee. Little Charlie’s resulting powers are getting harder for her to keep in check at the start of Keith Thomas’s Blumhouse-produced remake of Firestarter, which opens today (and starts streaming on Peacock).

The McGees know their daughter could be so dangerously powerful, she could never have a normal life if DSI and the “deep state” ever got their hands on her. They live under assumed names and completely off the net, but bullied Charlie is starting to attract unwanted attention, especially when her temper ignites real fires.

Captain Hollister knows she is still out there and suspects the potential of her developing X-Men-like abilities. Hollister also has just the man to track down the McGees. John Rainbird understands them all too well. He too has the power to get inside people’s heads, perhaps even better than Tomlinson-McGee and can withstand McGee’s power to “push” mental images and suggestions, at least to an extent. Unfortunately, that “pushing” is starting to take a toll on McGee’s health.

Scott Teems’ screenplay adaptation of Stephen King’s novel very much follows the structure of the 1984 film, which was pretty faithful to the book. It definitely leans into the father-daughter relationship, because that is the whole point of the story (in all its incarnations). However, the family-versus-agents conflict is familiar, to the point of staleness. Horror fans might know John Carpenter was originally in-line to direct the ’84 film, but he lost the gig when The Thing bombed (hard to believe, since it’s now regarded as a classic). Sadly, Blumhouse did not hire him to direct this time around, but he did contribute to the score. You can probably best hear his influence during the tense, confrontational third act.

Halloween Kills: The Michael Myers Film for Our Time

This is truly a Michael Myers film for the Biden years. The chaos we watched unfold in the Kabul airport and the anarchy we try to ignore every day at the border has come to Haddonfield. It is Halloween, 2018. Myers has survived Laurie Strode’s death trap and is killing people with impunity. Sheriff Barker is powerless to stop him and incapable of restoring law and order as the town slips into panic and paranoid violence. Only those who previously survived Myers’ prior attacks can hope to stop him now in David Gordon Green’s Blumhouse-produced Halloween Kills, which opens Friday in theaters nationwide.

The action picks up immediately where Halloween 2018 left off. Strode is on her way to the hospital, believing she finally put an end to Myers once and for all. Unfortunately, at this time, he is actually hacking his way through the firemen that were dispatched to the blaze consuming Strode compound.

This being Halloween, a group of survivors from the original 1978 horror night have congregated to commemorate those who died and toast those who saved them, including Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace, the kids Strode was babysitting, now all grown-up. When word reaches them of Myers’ fresh killing spree, they decide to find him and kill themselves. Obviously, it is easier said than done, but Doyle turns out to be a good recruiter for vigilante patrols. Of course, Strode is convinced he is coming for her, but her granddaughter isn’t so sure.

In some ways, Halloween 2018 would have made a really satisfying conclusion to the franchise, having retconned the other inferior sequels and reboots into the stuff of fake news and urban legend. However, it probably was unrealistic to think it would be so easy to kill off a bogeyman like Myers. Unfortunately, Halloween Kills is conspicuously a middle film that obviously sets up the already-announced third movie in the sequel trilogy, so there is not a heck a lot of closure when the credits roll.

On the other hand, Kill continues to echo the 1978 film in ways that deepen the tragic resonance of the Michael Myers mythos. The return of his survivors is more than just fan service (but it is that too, especially Kyle Richards reprising her old role as Lindsey and Charles Cyphers making his first film appearance since 2007 as Sheriff Leigh Brackett, now a security guard at the hospital—and they are both quite good). Rather, their reappearance personifies the degree to which the community remains traumatized by Myers’s crimes, even forty years later.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Will Patton are both dependable as ever playing Strode and Officer Hawkins, but since both are largely sidelined from the film due to serious injuries suffered they in the previous film, a good deal of the load falls on Anthony Michael Hall, who is really terrific as Doyle. It is a gritty tormented performance that gives the film depth and a real edge.