Day of Reckoning, on Tubi

Kyle Rusk is a stone-cold outlaw. Marshal Butch Hayden and his men also have serious outlaw tendencies. Getting caught between them is a lonely place for an honest cop like Sheriff John Dorsey to find himself, but he always does his duty. The ensuing standoff might just kill him, but Dorsey is running out of things to lose in Shaun Silva’s Day of Reckoning, which premieres this Friday on Tubi.

Rusk just knocked over another bank, but Hayden is waiting for him at his budget motel, for yet another reckless shootout. Somehow, the bank-robber escapes, but the Marshal figures he must be headed to his girlfriend Emily’s farm. That would be smack in the middle of Dorsey’s jurisdiction—at least for the next few weeks. His deputy, Danny Raise, looks poised to unseat him. To compound the insult, Dorsey also suspects Raise is sleeping with his wife.

Dorsey felt under-equipped for a Rio Bravo-style standoff at Rusk’s farmhouse. Much to the Sheriff’s disgust, he walks into a veritable hostage situation, in which Hayden’s deputy marshals, who are more like mercenary bounty hunters, are holding Emily Rusk as bait. They are all mean and untrustworthy, but Dorsey still must most likely fight alongside them when Rusk arrives with his biker-gang reinforcements.

Reckoning, (technically, Scott Adkins’ second such reckoning day, following Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning) is a gritty, low-frills B-movie, but Silva has full command of its neo-Western aesthetics. Although Adkins has much less screentime than the antagonistic marshal and sheriff, he has ample opportunity to show off his villainous chops. Indeed, he is entertainingly ferocious as Rusk. (He has moved away from bad guys, into leading action figure roles, but he still has the skill set.)

Bloodline Killer, on Tubi

It is Halloween night. If horror fans think they know what that means, they are probably right. A masked serial killer will murder Moira Cole’s husband Dillon and leave her grown sons scarred for life (in one case, literally). Perhaps the worst part is the axe-killing comes from inside the family in Ante Novakovic’s Bloodline Killer (a.k.a. The Skulleton), which starts streaming today on Tubi.

Frankly, it would have been worse if Cole had not come out of the house with her firearm loaded and ready. She put several shots in the so-called “Skulleton” killer. It was enough to blast him off her son Conor, but he still manages to get away. Yet, it is not exactly a clean getaway. It turns out the nurse attending the Coles recognizes their description of the masked killer as her brother. Instinctively knowing where he might flee, she finds him, drugs him, and securely chains him up in her basement. He would probably be happier in that mental hospital Michael Meyers kept escaping from.

Years later, the lack of closure torments the Coles. They are also disgusted by the exploitative Skulleton movie franchise, much like the Stab movies in Scream. The Cole Brothers barely contain their mutual hostility, which is awkward, since they both still live with mom. Understandably, she remains reluctant to confess she probably knows the Skulleton and might have witnessed his first murder at an early age. She has suppressed the details, but eventually her ancient-hippy-looking shrink, played by Bruce Dern (a two-time Oscar nominee), will drag it out of her—probably around the time Skulleton escapes for another Halloween killing spree.

Clearly, Novakovic and screenwriters Anthony & James Gaudioso, who play Det. Trusten James and Conor Cole, were inspired by the old school Halloween franchise, including the maligned sequels that made Michael Meyers and Laurie Stode long lost siblings. The early Haddon-esque vibe is quite nice, but the contrivances are annoying and the entire mid-section moves slower than molasses.

Dead Hot, on Tubi

A little professional ambition would be good for these Gen-Z’ers. It would help break their repeating cycles of self-defeating hedonistic indulgence and angsty regret. Their lifestyle is clearly unhealthy, even before a mysterious party starts trying to Elliot Byrd and his boyfriends in creator Charlotte Coben’s six-episode Dead Hot, which premieres tomorrow on Tubi.

A year ago, Byrd’s boyfriend, Peter Ono, disappeared, leaving behind a severed finger and a pool of blood. It took a long time, but Byrd finally found a potential replacement in Will, who mysteriously suffers the same fate. Once was bad luck, but twice is a real problem. Together with his bestie, Ono’s sister Jess, Byrd investigates Will’s disappearance, only to discover his name really isn’t Will and he might not even be dead. In fact, it seems the mysterious Will was deliberately stalking him.

Meanwhile, Ono finally gets a hit from her DNA database service, alerting her to the existence of a close biological relative. Since her brother’s body was never recovered, she still holds hope that he might be out there somewhere. As her DNA match toys with her, Ono and Byrd start to suspect their respective dramas are somehow linked.

Coben (daughter of Harlan) develops some pleasantly nasty twists and turns for hapless Byrd, but her characters and their over-sexed slacker milieu quickly become abrasively annoying. Nobody has a serious job and they all act like they are in a state of perpetual adolescence. As early as the second episode, most viewers will start rooting for the murderous villains.

Bed Rest, on Tubi

Julie Rivers is supposed to stay in bed and avoid stress, but she has a cat. Have you ever lived with one of those? They’re always stepping on you, in uncomfortable places. She also lives with some kind of angry ghost, but nobody believes her, because of her mental history. As a result, she must face it without the help of her condescending husband in director-screenwriter Lori Evans Taylor’s Bed Rest, which premieres tomorrow on Tubi.

Julie and Daniel Rivers lost their first baby a few years ago. Since then, he has been compulsively moving on, whereas she still feels the loss keenly. Since she is mega-preggers, they logically just moved into huge fixer-upper in the middle of nowhere. One fateful night, they get a scare on the staircase, but her doctor assures them all will be fine if Rivers confines herself to bed for the duration of her pregnancy.

If only it were that easy. First, she hears intruders in the lower floors. Before long, she is visited by a very strange little boy, whom she takes to be the spirit of her late, stillborn son. Of course, her husband and their visiting nurse Delmy (who is prone to oversharing) just assume she is having manic episodes, like before. However, we can tell there must be something to it, or the film would really be wasting our time (it happens, but mercifully not in this case).

Nonetheless, Bed Rest feels very familiar. A lot of the film is devoted to Rivers’ husband and Delmy basically trying to gaslight her back to normal. Obviously, it doesn’t work, but the film spends a heck of a lot of time spinning its wheels with these scenes.

On the plus side, Taylor creates some nicely moody atmosphere. The shadowy figures are skillfully framed, to build tension without revealing too much. Technically, it is well executed, but Taylor’s narrative will totally unremarkable to any horror fan.

Terror Train (2022), on Tubi

More people were killed in Roger Spottiswoode’s 1980 train-bound slasher movie than during Runaway Train, Silver Streak, or Murder on the Orient Express (but probably not Train to Busan). It was supposed to be a party train, but a mystery man in a Halloween mask crashed it hard. There will be another killer party in Philippe Gagnon’s remake of Terror Train, which premieres tomorrow on Tubi (following its screening at this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival).

Alana reluctantly agreed to participate in a really mean hazing prank, but she had no idea “Doc,” the fraternity president, would use a real cadaver. The shock sent the poor-pledge victim to the mental ward. She was appalled, but he blackmailed her to keep silent. Awkwardly, her boyfriend Mo remained in the frat, so there she is, rubbing shoulders with Doc at the first party hosted by more sensitive successor.

You can kind of understand why she accepted the invitation, since it will be a costume party, with a hip, “edgy” magician performing. Unfortunately, there will be an uninvited guest, wielding a sharp knife. This time, our killer passes unnoticed wearing an evil clown disguise, instead of the original’s Groucho Marx mask (which a lot of Millennials presumably wouldn’t recognize). Soon, the psychopath is carving up partiers, but everyone is too busy drinking or watching the entertainment to notice.

Screenwriters Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin ditched the original’s shocking twist, which comes as no surprise, if you remember what happened. Arguably, the remake might also be somewhat gorier. However, in many other respects, it remains surprisingly faithful to the 1980 film. Most importantly, the enigmatic magician still plays an important role keeping viewers off balance. To this day, it remains David Copperfield’s only true dramatic role, but he was amazingly weird and he had real deal magic chops.

Tim Rozon is shockingly great assuming his role and his cape. Once again, his unnamed magician character really elevates the remake above standard slasher fare. Of course, he is flamboyantly over-the-top when chewing the scenery and performing his illusions. That is the whole point.

Corrective Measures, on Tubi

In comic books, when super-villains break out of prison, superheroes just catch them and stick them back in again. They finally built a better mousetrap, San Tiburon, a facility in an undisclosed location, fully loaded with super-power nullifiers. However, the big dangerous supervillains still have their natural strength and in the case of “The Lobe,” his advanced intelligence. A new inmate finds himself caught in the crossfire of an ongoing power-struggle in Sean Patrick O’Reilly’s Corrective Measures, based on Grant Chastain’s graphic novel, which starts streaming this Friday on Tubi.

According to the derivative backstory, San Tiburon is operated by a company very much like Vogt in The Boys. They may or may not have been responsible for the string of natural disasters that also somehow caused the development of diverse superpowers in select individuals. By law, anyone convicted of a crime who is known to have powers must be incarcerated in San Tiburon. Unfortunately, that includes Diego Diaz, a mere empath. Basically, he is a super-Bill Clinton, who feels your pain, acutely.

San Tiburon should be a potentially fatal experience for him, but he catches a break when he stops the super-vigilante Payback from murdering the Lobe in the infirmary. Basically, the Lobe is a Professor X-like supervillain, who amassed a fortune through telepathic mind-control. The inmates revere him, so they cut Diaz some slack. However, Warden Devlin, make that Overseer Devlin, intends to extort the Lobe’s fortune from him, before his impending retirement, using threats of lobotomies and the like. Somehow, Diaz might figure in the Lobe’s counter-plans.

It is kind of awkward to review Bruce Willis film after the recent announcement of his diagnosis. Although many of his VOD films have been tarred with a broad brush, Willis has actually been pretty good in some of them, like American Siege and Acts of Violence. In this case, let’s just say he is miscast as the Lobe, a role that really requires the sort of sneering scenery-chewing John Malkovich could have brought to the table.

Titanic 666, on Tubi

If a cruise line built a perfect facsimile Titanic, it would have to be a Chinese company. Replicas are a big thing there and the necessary hubris requires a company like Evergrande. Regardless of ownership, a brand-new Titanic sets sail for a special maiden voyage to the waters where its namesake sunk. If that sounds like bad karma to you, the angry spirits that are raised from the dead totally agree in Nick Lyon’s Titanic 666, which premieres this Friday on Tubi.

Titanic 666 was produced by the Asylum, so you should know the sort of exploitative cashing-in to expect. Still, just seeing them completely trash the ending of the 1997 Oscar winner in its nutty prologue is worth something. The action then flashes forward to modern times, as the Titanic III is about to set sail. The layout and décor completely match its historical namesake, but the structure and engineering are all completely modern. Supposedly, this one won’t sink, but haven’t we heard that before?

To be fair, the engineers never anticipated a nameless stowaway sneaking on-board, to invoke the ghost of her great-grandfather, Captain Edward Smith, through a satanic ritual (honestly, nobody would blame the Smith family if they were to file suit against the film). Suddenly, he and other ghosts of the original Titanic’s victims are wreaking havoc on the ship’s systems and preying on its most obnoxious passengers. Married social media influencers Mia and Jackson Stone easily take that cake, but Prof. Hal Cochran, a purveyor of dodgy Titanic artifacts is not far behind them.

The only reason to see Titanic 666 is to verify whether it really is what it purports to be. It is indeed, so there you go. Frankly, it is a relief when the Titanic ghosts kill the Stones. Cochran’s involvement with the company’s hotshot security specialist doesn’t really make any sense (why does he need cover from him, when he already has permission to hawk his wares), but whatever.

Lazarus, on Tubi

You can't keep a good cop down, not even in death. Ray Lazarus is about to find out how aptly he was named when he is brought back for a little life-after-death law enforcement. He is sort of like Treat Williams in Dead Heat, but less zombie-ish and more super-heroic (and with less humor and no support from the legendary Vincent Price). The tone is distinctly dark and post-industrial urban throughout R.L. Scott’s Lazarus, which premieres tomorrow on Tubi.

Lazarus was an honest cop, who was just crazy enough to think he could clean up crime-ravaged “Paradise City” (there, Guns N’ Roses should now be stuck in your head). He got killed for his efforts, but fortunately that wasn’t the end of the world. Much to Lazarus’s surprise, he is brought back to life and granted Wolverine-like healing powers by an untrustworthy demigod. He says he resurrected Lazarus to restore “balance,” but he clearly has a secret nefarious scheme in the works.

Regardless, Lazarus is perfectly willing to take advantage of his second chance to take down Paradise City’s evil drug cartel. He is also determined to protect Nina Jacobs, a former low-level gun dealer on the outs with the syndicate. Lazarus might be dead, but he is still attracted to her.

The film’s supernatural element is sort of like that seen in Timothy Woodward Jr’s schlocky Checkmate, but the execution is vastly more competent (admittedly, that is a super-low bar to clear). It is still the weakest part of Lazarus. However, there are a number of impressively tough and gritty fight scenes, which is really what you want from a film like this.