Trick: Happy Halloween

People are sick. Not just serial killers, like Patrick “Trick,” Weaver. Almost by definition, their wiring is seriously messed up. It is the supposedly normal people who adopt serial killers as cult heroes who are much scarier from a sociological perspective. That definitely happens in Weaver’s case, in part because of his apparent supernatural resilience. Every Halloween, he returns to commit a spectacular act of mass murder. An FBI agent and a Hudson Valley sheriff will do their best to stop him in Patrick Lussier’s no-frills-but-insidiously-grabby Trick, which opens this Friday in New York.

It started when Trick, the quiet kid suddenly started hacking and slashing classmates at a Halloween party. At least the dumb jock was useful enough to impale him in the guts, but Trick finds a way to slip out of his hospital shackles and continue his violent havoc. Special Agent Mike Denver will pump several rounds into him before he falls out a twenty-story window. Yet, he still manages drag himself to the icy river, where he presumably disappears to his death.

Except, evidently not. Every subsequent Halloween, Trick returns, leaving his signatures at the bloody crime scenes. Denver is convinced it is the same killer and eventually Sheriff Lisa Jayne comes around to his point of view. Unfortunately, Denver’s obsession will cost him his Bureau career and Jayne’s skepticism probably costs her a few deputies. Soon, it becomes bitterly personal for both lawmen, as well as their shadowy nemesis.

Trick is violent and unfussily grubby, but it is also lean, mean, and lethally tense.  You might think you can guess the big twist and you might sort of be right, but Lussier and co-screenwriter Todd Farmer call viewers’ bets and raise them substantially. In the process, they open the door for a sequel, but in a way that doesn’t feel like a cheat. In fact, we’d rather like to see that film.

Margaret Mead ’19: Mong Kok First Aid (short)

Tragically, history has repeated itself this year in Hong Kong. Five years ago, Hong Kongers were stunned when HK police used brutal riot tactics against peaceful protestors. They even targeted emergency medical volunteers. Five years later, the Mainland-dominated (and most likely augmented) police are following the same playbook, but with greater severity. Mavis Siu collects the testimony of eight such medical workers who experienced the crackdown on the 2014 protests first-hand in the short (20 minute) documentary, Mong Kok First Aid, which screens during the 2019 Margaret Mead Film Festival, at the American Museum of Natural History.

The interview subjects all share two conflicting concerns: outrage that the events of 2014 might very well be censored out of Hong Kong’s collective memory and fear that their participation will result in reprisals. Both are well warranted. Although the eight care-givers mostly (but not entirely) supported the democratic goals of the 2014 Umbrella protests, their primary purpose in Mong Kok (and the Admiralty before that) was to provide medical attention. To that end, they even provided aid to injured police officers.

In return, several suffered physical injuries and some were also threatened online by police trolls. Even though the first aid station personnel maintained strict neutrality during the protests, they now face an uncertain future in Hong Kong, simply because their presence could be held against them by the Mainland-controlled authorities.

Cyrano, My Love: Where the Nose Came from

Don’t call Edmond Rostand a one-hit wonder. He also wrote Les Romanesques. It was a big hit at the time and it became the basis of The Fantasticks Off-Broadway, so you have to give it to him. However, at the time our story starts, Rostand was very definitely a one-hit wonder, flirting with obscurity. Of course, his biggest hit is ahead of him. We will see the fictionalized, Shakespeare In Love-style inspiration for his enduring masterpiece in Alexis Michalik’s Cyrano, My Love (a.k.a. Edmond), which opens this Friday in New York.

Sarah Bernhardt thinks the world of Rostand’s talent, even though the play he wrote for her flopped hard. His wife also still believes in his potential, but he is making it increasingly difficult for her. He hasn’t written a word in months, but when Bernhardt arranges a meeting with the great French thespian, Constant Coquelin, Rostand does his best to bluff his way through.

Fortunately, around this time, Rostand starts writing love letters on behalf of his handsome but meatheaded actor friend, Leonidas Leo Volny. In the process, he discovers the object of Volny’s affection, a costume assistant named Jeanne d’Alcie is quite a wonderfully sensitive and well-read young lady. Yes, you can see where this is going, but the way it gets there is genuinely clever.

Cyrano, My Love is a droll romantic comedy that features a good deal of backstage door-slamming farce, but it still has depth and soul. In fact, it is rather refreshing how Rostand upholds both his love and fidelity for his wife, despite finding himself attracted to d’Alcie as a muse. It is also impressive that Mickalik can maintain the real-world-inspiring-art premise throughout nearly the entire film, without it getting stale or feeling forced.

The Captain: Averting Even More Tragedy in Tibet

Captain Liu Changjian has been likened to a Chinese Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, but his heroic piloting occurred on a flight to an occupied sovereign nation: Tibet. Tibetans have suffered plenty thanks to Chinese imperialism, so at least he managed to save those onboard his flight. Nevertheless, the “optics” are awkward for the Chinese propaganda baked into Andrew Lau’s The Captain, which opens this Friday in New York.

Of course, state censors do not want the public to lose confidence in Sichuan Airlines, so the first twenty-five minutes of The Captain are dedicated to documenting the seemingly endless pre-flight safety checks conducted by the crew. Unfortunately, they are about as dramatic to watch as they sound. We meet several of the passengers, but never in any depth. They range from the predictable, like the panicky Westerner, to the deeply problematic, like the veteran PLA officer, who is returning to pay tribute to his fallen occupying comrades, who died in an avalanche, in what could very well be a case of divine retribution.

The trickiest part of the flight from Chengdu to Llhasa is the stretch over the Tibetan Plateau, where it is impossible to decrease attitude to a safer level should the cabin become depressurized. Alas, that is exactly what happens when the cockpit windshield freakishly shatters. To make matters worse, their course will take them through the center of a massive storm. To save his crew and the passengers in their charge, Captain Liu will have to do some fancy flying.

The twenty minutes or so that depict the crisis itself are nicely done, but everything else that come before it and after it looks and sounds conspicuously like padding. Plus, the patriotic rah-rah ending clangs like a massively discordant note.

Flyway ’19: Lake Michigan Monster

They drink a lot of beer in Milwaukee. That might explain this movie. Somehow it manages to be utterly absurd and mysteriously otherworldly, in an extremely weird DIY sort of way. The hunt is on for a Great Lakes kaiju, but each plan produces evermore disastrous results in Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ Lake Michigan Monster, which screens this weekend at the 2019 Flyway Film Festival.

As the blustery Captain Seacoast explains in his opening monologue/debriefing, he has assembled a crack team of oddballs to hunt the monster that killed his father. The details of his watery death to tend evolve with each successive telling, but whatever. Seacoast will have his vengeance and he is willing to pay handsomely for it. To that end, he has recruited “weapons expert” Sean Shaughnessy, sonar technician Nedge Pepsi, and dishonorably discharged Navy seaman Dick Flynn.

Visually, Michigan Monster is wildly stylish and gleefully inventive. Clearly, Tews never met a sight-gag he didn’t like. He definitely applies the Mel Brooks scattergun approach to comedy, but he is even more manic. When it misses, the film is an awkward viewing experience, like watching a fish flop around on dry land—but when it is funny, it is off-the-wall hysterical.

Tews similarly goes all in playing Seacoast, in a performance that might be something like Kelsey Grammer portraying Popeye the Sailor after pounding half a case of whiskey. It’s his show and he runs with it. Probably Beulah Peters makes the most headway undercutting him as the sardonic Pepsi. She also has an extended colloquy with Daniel Long’s Flynn on Seacoast’s mangled syntax that would make Howard Hawks beam with approval.

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

It is a derogatory term you might expect a class warrior apply to the idle rich or entrepreneurs might use to describe those who are out to sponge off the fruits of their talent and achievements. It cuts both ways, so it is the perfect title of Bong Joon-ho’s boldly ambiguous, Palme d’Or-winning Parasite, South Korea’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens today in New York.

Kim Ki-taek’s family only occasionally works odd jobs, but they have knack for freeloading (stealing) wifi. They live in a squalid basement apartment, but have no real interest in raising themselves out of it. However, they immediately recognize a golden opportunity when their son Ki-woo is invited to take over the college-prep tutoring of the Park family’s high school student daughter, from his former classmate.

Thanks to Ki-woo’s inside information, the Kim family conspires to replace the other household servants, while keeping their own familial relationships secret. Technically, they will have to work, but they enjoy plenty of luxuries on the sly, courtesy of the Parks. It all goes exactly according to plan, until a third party threatens to upset the new equilibrium.

Frankly, it seems like Bong lost control of his film to his characters, as if they came alive and commandeered their own movie, but that is a good thing—a very good thing. Bong’s last two films have been so bluntly and crudely didactic, they have been embarrassing to watch. Parasite is something else entirely. There are more than enough elements to support radically different readings of the film and it constantly challenges us to reconsider where our sympathies really ought to lie. In some ways, it could be compared to Joker, for the way it confounds expectations and undercuts lazy snap moral judgements. After all, just because characters have been bullied or have been economically and socially marginalized does not automatically make them morally superior.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of poor and distressed characters who are victimized in Parasite—by the Kims. Conversely, the rich Parks are not all bad. In fact, they just might have greater merits than the Kims (admittedly a low bar to clear). Mrs. Park is guileless and easily manipulated, but she is generally sweet-tempered. Mr. Park is a devoted family man, but he definitely expects the social hierarchy to be strictly respected (given what we learn about his new driver, Kim Ki-taek, it is hard to blame him). In contrast, Mr. and Mrs. Kim practically declare themselves to socialists occupying the Park home, as well as stone-cold sociopaths

Brad Anderson’s Fractured

In this case, better electronic medical record-keeping might have prevented an awful lot of trouble. Yes, that is the takeaway we’re going with. Ray Monroe gets a little concerned when a hospital that is more concerned with paperwork than bedside manner loses his wife and injured daughter in Brad Anderson’s Fractured, which premieres today on Netflix.

While driving across country, Ray and Joanne Monroe bicker like cats and dog, while their daughter Perri listens to CDs. When the disc-player’s batteries die, they pull for a pit stop (in fact, the hygiene-challenged service station is literally called “The Pit Stop”), where Perri takes a nasty fall after getting spooked by a snarling dog. The Monroes rush her to the nearest hospital, but the admitting department is more interested in her organ donation status than her injuries. Eventually, she is examined by a doctor, who recommends a CAT scan.

When Monroe awakens from a brief doze in the waiting room, his wife and daughter are nowhere to be found. To make matters worse, the hospital staff insists they were never there in the first place. When Monroe begs to differ, they first react dismissively and then become increasingly hostile, eventually reaching for the sedatives, but the desperate father won’t be having any of that.

Anderson has made a number of interesting genre films, like Vanishing on 7^th Street, Stonehearst Asylum, and Beirut, which is why Fractured is such a disappointment. The premise is somewhat old-hat to start with, but the film also seems to take forever to build up any steam. Still, Anderson and his intense star, Sam Worthington, manage to keep viewers invested enough to be annoyed by the predictable but still deeply unsatisfying conclusion. “All that for this,” viewers might ask.

Creepshow: All Hallows Eve & The Man in the Suitcase

In the 1930s, the classic Universal monster movies suggested monsters were really a lot like people, except maybe more so. The pendulum shifted in the 1970s, when horror movies argued people were a lot like monsters, but maybe worse. The second contention is clearly reflected in both of the latest tales of terror featured on the third episode of Creepshow, the series, which just debuted on Shudder.

Trick-or-treating is a classic staple of horror movies, but there is something different about the group of kids-in-costume we will be following in All Hallows Eve. It soon become clear the town is terrified of what they might do as a trick, so they nervously indulge them with treats. Hallows seems like a disappointingly conventional horror story, maybe somewhat akin to the It’s a Good Life segment of the Twilight Zone Movie, but director John Harrison and screenwriter Bruce Jones successfully manage to turn our assumptions about the characters inside-out during the third act. In fact, Hallows turns out to be surprisingly poignant at the eleventh hour. It is definitely the best of the episode, but far from the series’ best.

Things get rather Faustian in The Man in the Suitcase, directed by David Bruckner (known for The Ritual and a segment of the original V/H/S), arguably the best-known director to helm an episode of Creepshow, the series, thus far. It all start when Justin, an underachieving stoner (is there any other kind?), picks up the wrong bag at the airport. Instead of his Bermuda shorts and dirty underwear, he finds a distressed Middle Eastern man crammed inside, in a painful looking contorted state.

As the sluggish Justin ineffectually struggles to help the man escape his luggage prison, he discovers his guest spontaneously produces gold coins whenever he feels pain. That doesn’t really give Justin any ideas, but his roommate Alex and his ex-girlfriend Carla are far greedier and considerably more devious. When they learn his secret, they quickly devise torturous methods to mine gold from the stranger’s misfortune. Of course, there is more to it than that, or it wouldn’t have a place in the sinister world of Creepshow.

The Long-Delayed Polaroid

Old things are always bad in horror movies. By now, photochemical instant photography isn’t just old, it could be considered ghostly technology. It has long been obsolete, yet people keep trying to revive it. A young shutterbug and her classmates would prefer to stick with digital when they find themselves stalked by an evil entity somehow connected to an instant camera in Lars Klevberg’s long-delayed Polaroid, which opens tomorrow in Brooklyn (counter-intuitively following its VOD release).

“Bird” Fitcher is sad and moody, because she still blames herself for her father’s accidental death (and that name she has can’t help much either). One fateful day, Tyler, her torch-carrying co-worker gives her the vintage Polaroid camera he just bought at a yard sale. She takes his picture that afternoon and he is dead by early evening. Of course, the blurry shadow-like figure she thought she saw in the background is to blame.

After his death, the shadow-something moves from Tyler’s picture to an instant snap she took of Avery, the host of post-Halloween party she attended. Avery doesn’t last long either. Inconveniently, the next picture it materializes in happens to be a group shot of Bird and her not-very-close-friends. Initially, it is hard to convince them of their danger, but a few deaths (and the photo’s supernatural properties) will be rather persuasive.

Polaroid bumped from its previously announced release into a long purgatory, because it was caught up in the legal and financial problems swirling around the predatory Weinsteins. They are creeps, but the Norwegian Klevberg had nothing to do with their “alleged” abuses. Admittedly, Polaroid is not a masterpiece, but it deserved better.

Opening in Brazil: The Nightshifter

Remember how the characters on CSI: Miami used to talk about listening to the stories each corpse had to tell? Stênio does it directly. He can communicate with the recently deceased, like a corpse-talker. Regrettably, when he abuses his power, it leads to a whole lot of supernatural trouble in Dennison Ramalho’s The Nightshifter, which opens tomorrow in Brazil (and just released on VOD in the U.S.).

Stênio works all night scrubbing bodies in the morgue, returning home to his unappreciative and unfaithful wife Odete. His surly ten-year-old son is not so welcoming either. Only his eight-year-old-ish daughter Ciça is ever happy to see him. Fortunately, he has plenty of dead people to talk to.

Obviously, Stênio has an advantage when it comes to identifying bodies and determining cause of death. He is always respectful of the way he uses his uncanny communication skills, until the fateful day he discovers Odete’s affair with his neighborhood nemesis. Using inside information confided by a dead favela gang-member, Stênio convinces the boy’s brother it was really Odete’s lover who was responsible for the murder. However, his plans immediately go awry when the gang kills Odete as well. She is quite put out by her murder, as she explains to Stênio in no uncertain term. In fact, she will haunt the mild-mannered coroner’s assistant, possibly extracting vengeance through their children.

Ramalho & co-screenwriter Claudia Jouvin’s adaptation of Marco de Castro’s novel is dark and moody, with a vibe not unlike other recent Brazilian horror films, such as The Father’s Shadow and Hard Labor, but Nightshifter goes about its genre business more overtly and energetically. There are elements of The Grudge and The Sixth Sense here, but the gritty setting amid the outer edges of Sao Paulo distinguishes it from thematically similar films. Ironically, some of the film’s grossest bits come not from the proper horror but during Stênio’s day-to-day post-mortem business.

Battle of Jangsari: Young Courage & Sacrifice

In the Korean War, Jangsari was to Inchon roughly what Calais was to Normandy during WWII. It was a massive decoy away from the Allies’ make-or-break landing point, but in this case, flesh-and-blood Korean soldiers were dispatched to sell the illusion. Even for seasoned troops, it would have largely been a suicide mission, but these were primarily students in their teens with mere weeks of training under their belts. Yet, they fought tenaciously, as viewers can tell from the bloody campaign dramatized in Kwak Kyung-taek’s Battle of Jangsari, which opens this Friday in New York.

American forces are barely holding the line, so Colonel Stevens can ill afford to send reinforcements to assist the Jangsari landing. At least he feels terrible about it, but war is war. On the other hand, his Korean counterpart appears completely unfazed. Col. Stevens will do what he can, in part because of the badgering of an American war correspondent transparently modeled after Marguerite Higgins, but they will mostly be on their own.

There were over 760-some student-soldiers at Jangsari, but we only really get to known four or five, in addition to their deeply conflicted captain. Even though he knows the commander will be set-up to be the scapegoat, Captain Lee Myung-joon volunteers to lead the mission, for the sake of the green troops. Choi Sung-pil, a refugee from the North, and Ki Ha-ryun, an emotionally abused and neglected teen from the South, initially clash violently, but mutual respect will be forged on the beaches and in the trenches. Jovial-looking Guk Man-deuk is definitely not a fighter, but he will do everything he can to protect Moon Jong-nyeo, a young woman passing for her brother, her family’s sole male heir.

You could say war is Hell in Jangsari, but it ends too quickly for so many soldiers. This is one of the grittiest, least romanticized war movies in years, but it still (rightfully and accurately) suggests the Communist North were the aggressors, while the South and their Allies were the good guys. Although it is not as entertaining as the rip-roaring Operation Chromite, it is considerably superior to even more downbeat and morally equivalent The Front Line.

Harpoon: Genre Mayhem on a Boat

It is time for some sea stories for fans of hip, violent midnight movies, in the Tarantino tradition. There will be a sly narrator and plenty of booze. There will also be all kinds of sexual jealousy, class envy, and good old-fashioned bad attitudes. The pleasure craft “Naughty Buoy” will be like a homicidal version of the S.S. Minnow in Rob Grant’s Harpoon, which launches today on VOD.

Poor, unloved Jonah really does not like his best bud Richie very much, but he still hangs out with the wealthy lout, just to partake in his privileged life-style. He is also probably carrying a torch for Richie’s girlfriend Sasha, who mostly stays with him for the same reason. Richie has anger management issues, as we can plainly see in the opening scenes. To make up for his violent rage, Richie offers to whisk them off on a day trip in the Naughty Buoy. Obviously, he sounds like the kind of guy you would want to share a tight, confined space with.

Inevitably, the same suspicions and resentments will rear their head again, on the open ocean. Just when violence and murder appear inevitable, the three pseudo-friends will call a truce when they discover the engine has died and their store of food and fresh water is minimal. To survive, they will need to work together. Right, the outlook for that is not so hot.

On the other hand, their increasingly mounting troubles are quite funny—in a pitch-black kind of way. There is plenty of edgy (and often blood-splattered) humor here, but the funniest material comes from Brett Gelman’s ultra-droll narration—arguably the funniest omniscient voice-overs since Ron Howard’s vintage pre-Netflix Arrested Development narration.

Fortunately, Munro Chambers, Emily Tyra, and Christopher Gray are fearlessly and aggressively unlikable and profoundly unfit for society as Jonah, Sasha, and Richie. They are compulsively watchable, but nobody will care what happens to them, so just enjoy the mayhem.

Beyond Fest ’19: In Search of Darkness

The 1980s were a golden age for low budget horror, because of a perfect confluence of conditions. VHS provided the distribution medium, video stores provided the market, and the Reagan Revolution provided an economic climate that rewarded entrepreneurship. Horror always had its indie maestros, but their ranks exploded in the Eighties, while established filmmakers still dabbled in the genre with studio backing. It all resulted in a bountiful harvest that continues to inspire filmmakers today. The stars, filmmakers, and special effects artists associated with the era’s great (and not so great) horror films take stock of their collective body of work in David A. Weiner’s In Search of Darkness: The Definitive 80’s Horror Documentary, which premiered during this year’s Beyond Fest.

With a 240-minute running time, it is reasonably fair of Weiner & company to use the word “definitive.” Although they introduce thematic topics along the way, the survey is mostly organized year-by-year and film-by-film. As you would expect (and hope), a great deal of time is devoted to series like Friday the 13^th, Hellraiser, and Nightmare on Elm Street—not just once for the original film, but repeatedly returning to the franchises to give successive sequels their due.

There are an awful lot of films under discussion here. Fair consideration is given to the Halloween sequels that disappointed or confused and the Psycho sequels that far surpassed fans’ expectations. A great deal of time is given to films like John Carpenter’s The Thing and They Live, which are now widely acknowledged as significant cinema, but equal time is given to fan favorites, such as Fred Dekker’s’ Night of the Creeps and Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator. The on-screen experts make their case for underappreciated films like Ghost Story as well as monster hits like the Lost Boys. Frankly, the only really conspicuously overlooked film has to be Twilight Zone: The Movie, which is notable for the crazy “Midnight Special” prologue and the tragic real life events that occurred during its production.

The list if interview participants is also quite impressive. We get to hear from directors John Carpenter, Joe Dante, Stuart Gordon, Tom Holland, Mick Garris, Sean Cunningham, and the late, great Larry Cohen, as well as genre thesps Tom Atkins (The Fog, Night of the Creeps), Heather Langenkamp (Nightmare on Elm Street), Cassandra Peterson (a.k.a. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark), Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs, Keith David (The Thing), Doug Bradley (Hellraiser), and everyone’s favorite Jason Voorhees, Kane Hodder.

Into the Dark: Uncanny Annie

Blumhouse definitely enjoys playing games, whether it be a friendly round of Truth or Dare, or a laidback session with the Ouija Board. This game will not be so easy for viewers to play at home, but why in the world would they want to? The rules are rigged and the stakes are life-and-death in Paul Davis’s Uncanny Annie, the first instalment of the second season of the Blumhouse-produced Into the Dark, which is now streaming on Hulu.

In honor of their late gamer friend, a group of college students will stay in this Halloween, playing one of his beloved board games and drinking heavily (naturally). Unfortunately, they chose the strange looking one nobody recognizes, named “Uncanny Annie.” Of course, once they start playing, they quickly discover they are in over their heads, but have no choice but to play the game through.

Technically, they are playing against Uncanny Annie, sort of like one of the Shining twins, aged-up two or three years, but she will have help from a few other supernatural entities. Each player must successfully complete the challenges they draw from the magical, ever shifting deck of cards, or they die and become emblazoned on the game’s vintage box. Needless to say, they are rarely given a sporting chance.

Davis exploits the claustrophobic, minimalist setting and the terrifically creepy art and design work to crank up the tension. There is no question this is the scariest feature-length episode of Into the Dark we’ve reviewed. It could also be the darkest, in purely visual terms, but cinematographer James Kniest never lets the encroaching blackness obscure the on-screen action.

Creepshow—The Series: Bad Wolf Down & The Finger

Long before Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, horror had plenty of unreliable narrators. They were usually crazy people. That could well be the case for the narrator of the best story of the second episode of Shudder’s Creepshow anthology series, which premiered last night on Shudder.

However, this week the Creep first introduces screenwriter-director Rob Schrab’s largely conventional Bad Wolf Down. The Allies might be winning the war, but they are definitely losing the battle. Retreating from a particularly vicious National Socialist ambush, a rag tag squad of American soldiers takes cover in a French police station. Inside, they find weird scratches on the wall and a highly agitated women locked in a cell.

Basically, Bad Wolf Down is sort of like the start of the film adaptation of DC Comics’ Weird War Tales that nobody ever cared to produce. We immediately get where it is going, but genre fans will appreciate the splatterific practical effects and the scenery chewing of legendary Re-Animator actor Jeffrey Combs as a vengeful German officer.

The second story, The Finger written by David J. Schow and directed by showrunner Greg Nicotero is far more intriguing. Clark, a divorced and under-employed web-designer, narrates his brush with the uncanny with a resigned air of regret in retrospect. The nebbish loser was in the habit of salvaging cast-off junk. Somehow, that eccentric habit compelled him to pick-up and take home a sinister, Giger-esque looking finger.

Naturally, Clark’s dark shabby home provides the perfect environment for the finger to regenerate the rest of its small but lethal monster body. Clark rather takes a shine to the creature he decides to name “Bob” and the feeling is mutual. Despite his predator tendencies, Bob is not a threat to his host. In fact, he is eager to please Clark—too eager.

In the Tall Grass: More Stephen King on Netflix

Say what you will about the cult kids in Children of the Corn, but at least they reaped bountiful harvests. In contrast, nothing productive will come from this evil stretch of grassland. Once wayward motorists enter, they can never find their way out in Vicenzo Natali’s In the Tall Grass, an adaptation of Stephen King & Joe Hill’s novella, which premieres today on Netflix.

Stephen King fanatics should note this takes place in Kansas, instead of his mini-Midwest world, encompassing Gatlin and Hemingford Home, Nebraska, but the scenery and sinister goings-on are not all that different. Kansas is a long, flat state to drive through, but grown siblings Becky (the pregnant one) and Cal DeMuth will still regret pulling over near a strange church. Hearing young Tobin Humboldt’s cries for help, they venture into the field, where they quickly find themselves lost and separated.

Apparently, young Humboldt has been in that grassy labyrinth for quite a while. One of those dusty cars parked in front of the church belongs to his parents, who are also trapped inside (evidently all those abandoned vehicles arouse no interest in the Highway Patrol). Tobin is a little weird, but he has some useful information for Cal when they stumble across each other, like the field never moves dead things. However, his father Ross just radiates bad vibes when Becky encounters him. Meanwhile, Travis McKean follows his long missing girlfriend Becky down that lonesome stretch of highway and into the tall grass.

Netflix’s previous King films were quite good, especially the terrific Gerald’s Game, so it is disappointing Tall Grass does not measure up to their standard. The set-up is reasonably intriguing, but as time and reality start to warp, the film loses any semblance of internal logic. The degree to which the film unequivocally equates Evangelical Christianity with primeval sacrificial death cults is also slightly churlish, even by King’s standards. Regardless, the frequency at which things start appearing just to dislodge the road-blocked narrative, like the bowling alley in the middle of nowhere, is conspicuously problematic.

Low Tide: Jersey Shore Buried Treasure

Despite what Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allen Poe told us, William Kidd is the only documented example of a pirate burying his treasure. Nevertheless, the pirate treasure map motif took hold in our collective imagination. Over three hundred years later, there are scores of History Channel shows dedicated to the recovery of sunken or buried pirate plunder. Two scuffling brothers will resort to Captain Kidd’s tactics when they chance across a cache of gold coins during an ill-fated burglary in Kevin McMullin’s Low Tide, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Peter and Alan are what the entitled Jersey Shore summer cottagers might call townies. Their mother has passed away and their father is mostly absent on long commercial fishing hauls. Alan, the elder brother, has fallen in with a bad crowd: namely the mercurial red and the weasel-like Smitty. The three often break into summer homes, but unfortunately Smitty broke his ankle during their last misadventure. That is why Alan brings along his straight-arrow brother to serve as lookout on their latest job.

In a rare burst of intuition, Alan finds a bag of rare gold coins under the floor boards. Soon thereafter, he gets pinched and the sociopathic Red abandons Peter to his own resources. Of course, Smitty squealed when Sergeant Kent started sweating him (the cast was a dead giveaway). However, Peter was able to secretly bury the loot before safely slipping back to the mainland. Yes, there is a map. They also have two suspicious criminal associates on their hands.

The idea of a contemporary version of a pirate treasure caper sounds fun and larky, but Low Tide isn’t much of the first and decidedly not the latter. Instead, McMullin opts for a social realism approach, emphasizing the brothers’ marginalized social and economic status. All the major characters are entirely charmless and quite resentful of their lots in life. With the exception of Peter, they are mostly rather slow-witted, which really makes it a chore to spend time with them.

Semper Fi: Upstate Homecoming

Throughout their history, U.S. Marines have held the line during some of America’s harshest battles, such as Iwo Jima and Chosin Reservoir. It is therefore fitting they have had the best copywriters. “A Few Good Men” and “The Few, the Proud” are instantly recognizable slogans, but their enduring official motto remains “Semper Fidelis.” Not unsurprisingly, plenty of films have adopted the motto as their title, sometimes with a sense of irony. That is not the case here, but the Latin phrase for “ever faithful” is definitely heavy with significance throughout Henry Alex Rubin’s Semper Fi, which opens this Friday in New York.

“Cal” Callahan is exactly the sort of person you can have confidence in when he is on active duty. The Marine Corps reservist is a cop in a small but rough-and-tumble upstate New York town and formerly the guardian of his troubled brother, “Oyster.” The Callahan Brothers were both supposed to ship out with their friends, “Jaeger,” “Milk,” and “Snowball,” but Oyster will not make the journey when he is arrested and subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

Frankly, he was probably over-zealously prosecuted for the fatal barroom brawl, but Cal still isn’t very supportive initially. However, he changes his tune after his return stateside. Although his petulant younger sibling hardly speaks a word to him, Cal soon discovers he is regularly beaten and abused by the prison guards. When the law refuses to help, Cal and his mates decide to take more direct action.

Frankly, despite Oyster’s self-sabotaging behavior, it is hard to believe any correctional officers would knowingly target an over-prosecuted Marine reservist, who is the brother of a cop and returning Iraq veteran. Regardless, Rubin and co-screenwriter Sean Mullin treat the experiences of homecoming veterans with the sensitivity they demand. Most of the film is a straight drama in the tradition of Best Years of Our Lives (but not up to William Wyler’s standard of quality), until it segues into a blue collar caper. Yet, even the third act action scenes are conducted with a great deal of (messy) realism.

Devil’s Revenge: “Presented by” William Shatner

Perhaps you always suspected, but it turns out Hell really is in Kentucky. To be precise, it is nestled deep within the Louisville Grotto, which has never looked so small before. An archaeologist keeps venturing down there in search of an artifact that he believes has cursed his family, but the tricks the demons play with his mind just might kill him in Jared Cohn’s Devil’s Revenge, which releases today on VOD.

Let’s be honest right up front, this story makes next to no sense. For some reason, John’s blowhard father is convinced there is a “relic” hidden somewhere in the Grotto (renamed “Black Hollow Cave”) that must be destroyed if their family is to survive. Even the formerly responsible academic thinks the old man is off his rocker, but he keeps going down. The last trip was especially disastrous, resulting in the death of one of his hill country Sherpas. He also brought the demons back with him.

After a near-death experience, John sees evil things everywhere. His only recourse will be recovering and destroying the relic once and for all. For reasons that baffle the mind, his ex-military father convinces him to bring along his wife Susan, daughter Dana, and son Eric, to ensure they will be in maximum harm’s way.

Right, that sounds like a logical course of action. Regardless, it is not like we are invested in any of these characters. All this film really has to offer are two over-the-top tirades from William Shatner, eclipsing all his Star Trek freak-outs and even outdoing his meltdown from The Intruder. Granted, the prospect of seeing the Shat blow away demons with a gas-powered projectile launcher is some kind of enticement, but everything else in this movie is a huge disappointment.

Killer High: The Mascot Massacre

Usually, yearbooks do not suggest a “most likely to be the final girl” superlative, because that implies everybody else is going to die. Generally, that is a real bummer. In this case, it has been ten years since graduation, but the rules of slasher movie survival still apply in Jem Garrard’s Killer High, a Syfy original film, which releases today on DVD.

Sabrina Swanson was definitely most likely to succeed material, so it is a bit of a surprise that she didn’t. It was bad luck that kept her in their dying town, nursing her ailing mother, while the rest of her Wallingham High classmates left to get on with their lives. She has poured her heart and soul into the upcoming reunion, so she will have a chance to relive past glory and once again take center stage. Of course, she can’t do it alone, so she ropes her bestie Margo and Ronnie, the high school-geek-for-life into helping her.

Since all the other venues in town went out of business, she will hold the reunion back in dear-old shuttered Wallingham. Naturally, cell service is spotty out there. Plus, three brainless teens recently disappeared thereabouts. Yes, but we know from the prologue they were actually dispatched by the monster, a giant supernatural incarnation of the school’s mascot, the Wallingham Warthog. That’s right sweathogs, it’s time to warthog and die.

If you were tempted to check-out at “Syfy original film,” we understand where you are coming from. For what it’s worth, this if the third Syfy B-movie special we have covered on DVD and it is by far the most amusing—not exactly good, but amusing. Garrard and screenwriter Suzanne Keilly (who has real writing credits, like Light as a Feather and Ash vs. the Evil Dead) diligently mine the high school reunion under extreme stress for as many laughs as they can scratch out. Thanks to the attitude they instill in the film, we do not feel like complete idiots watching a film about monster warthog prowling the halls of the high school, preying on drunken victims.