SoraRabbit Short Hop 034: Horror Movie Marathon Part 2
Spooky season is upon us, and as always, Cocoashade and I have been indulging in horror movies. Among those we watched this Halloween season are four more to cover in the next installment of Horror Movie Marathon. Here is the first installment, in case you somehow missed it:
Static. (Credit: RLJ Entertainment, Hollywood Shorts, Ruthless Pictures)
I won’t go through a lot of setup this time, since that was all covered in Part 1. I’ll be reviewing and rating these movies the same way I did in that post. (For my other review posts, I use my patented 1-7 rating system, but I’ll stick with the 1-10 for this so it matches Part 1.) Here are some preliminaries to get out of the way first:
Spoiler Warning: I am not doing full plot breakdowns of these movies, but some minor spoilers follow.
Trigger Warnings: I’m not going to go into much detail, but there is mention of murder, torture, death, ghosts, and clowns. Although I chose my screenshots with care, some of them are certainly bloody, so use caution if that’s not your thing. (I admit, I went a bit overboard with it this year.) Anyway, here’s this year’s crop of movies!
Title (Credit: Stephen Cognetti, Terror Films)
Hellhouse LLC was released in 2015 and was written and directed by Stephen Cognetti. It has gone on to launch a franchise with five films so far. Last year I started these reviews with Late Night With the Devil, a movie suggested by my wife, Cocoashade. She suggested this one. Did she regret it? Keep reading…
Content Warnings: Blood, murder, adult language, sexual harassment, boredom, vagueness, found footage, long stretches of nothing, clowns, dummies, clown dummies, jump scares, ghosts?, cultists, creepy dudes with cameras (see: sexual harassment), and a lingering sense of confusion.
Plot Summary: Told in a sort-of documentary style, filmmakers explore the events that led to the closure of “Hell House”, a haunted house attraction taking place in the supposedly haunted Abaddon Hotel. Told through interviews and footage handed over by the only crewmember who survived (?) the event, we see the five staff members getting the hotel set up and the events leading up to the tragedy.
Just some buds, hanging out. (Credit: Stephen Cognetti, Terror Films)
Thoughts: If you’ve seen movies like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, this movie will be familiar to you. Only enough is shown on camera to raise the tension and make you wonder what happened. The movie starts with bad cell phone footage of the tragedy, meant to be a tantalizing hook to keep people wondering throughout the 93 minute run-time. We see one of the staff, dressed as a clown, running, all the audience members panicking in the basement, and everyone runs for their lives. From there, the film concerns itself with getting us back up to that point in the story using the staff’s home movies, which they never fully explain why they’re filming in the first place.
But the problem was that very little actually happened. There were some spooky sounds in the dark, clown dummies moving seemingly on their own but only when no one is looking, a staff member going catatonic and unable to explain what happened, and some mysterious drama with the boss Alex.
And that’s the biggest flaw in this movie. There are hints that something is going on with Alex, but the camera conveniently cuts off right as Mack explains it, cutting back on with Tony suddenly understanding why he can’t quit, for Alex’s sake. It’s ridiculous and unnecessary to add that element of mystery in there. Was it money problems? Health problems? Is he batshit insane? We’ll never know because it was written for us to not have enough clues to piece it together. Which, I’m certain, is the reason it was done that way, to fuel online speculation for years to come or some bullshit.
A mystery to me too, and I just watched it. (Credit: Stephen Cognetti, Terror Films)
Review: I wanted to like this movie… I really did. I found the execution poor, the pacing slow and plodding, and the writing lacking. There was no reason for key plot points to be kept a secret. Hell, there was no reason for the staff to be filming all this at all! The characters were not fleshed out and hard to tell apart due to having little personality. (I mean, one was a girl and one was a pervert, so those were easy to tell.) The twist at the end was unexpected, so it gets points for that. Regardless, so little happened in this movie that I struggled to find interesting screenshots for this post.
Due to all that, I give this movie 4 out of 10 panicked clown guys. I wanted it to be way better than it was, but it ended up as a rote found-footage offering with some needlessly vague plot points and long stretches between action. Usually I like to check out sequels, but honestly, I don’t think I’m going to continue with this franchise. The only reason it even gets a 4 is because it spurred an interesting conversation after we watched it about why it wasn’t good. Oh, and to answer the question I started this review with, yes. Cocoashade regretted her choice. Very much. (She redeemed herself a couple weeks later by choosing Conjuring 4: Last Rites. Conjuring movies rock.)
Title (Credit: RLJ Entertainment, Hollywood Shorts, Ruthless Pictures)
All Hallow’s Eve 2 was released in 2015. Yes, last year we covered the first in this series of anthology horror films, so I decided to come back with the sequel this year. (The next one is a familiar sequel too… hint, hint.)
Content Warnings: Blood, language, murder, pumpkins, bloody pumpkins, kidnapping, insanity, creepy trick-or-treaters, child abuse, monster under the bed, ghost, lameness.
Plot Summary: This is an anthology film with a framing story like the original. Part 1 only had four stories, and this one has nine, including the framing story. In the framing story, a girl is given a filthy VHS tape by a creepy dude in a pumpkin mask. So of course she watches it. On the tape are the other eight stories. The first one is about a babysitter and a boy who are killed after eating pumpkin seeds when little pumpkins grow in their stomachs. Story 2: Kids go trick-or-treating after the apocalypse. Story 3: A guy forgets the meat for the annual sacrifice and instead offers up his son. Story 4: A woman witnesses her friend’s murder and months later is recognized by the killer in an elevator due to her ringtone. But the twist is that she had a mental break and was seeing everyone as the killer so she killed a random dude in the elevator. Story 5: Some kids torture one of their abusive dads in a twisted carnival game. Story 6: A kid sets traps to try and catch the monster under his bed to prove to his mom that it exists. Story 7: A guy kidnaps, drugs and kills people to use as Halloween yard decorations. Story 8: A guy is haunted by his dead girlfriend who (I think) direct messages him on Facebook? And then takes his current girlfriend’s place or something? This one was in Spanish and had no subtitles, so I had to guess at what was going on. In the framing sequence, the tape goes to static and the pumpkin-masked guy tries to get through the TV to the woman, who ejects the tape in time. BUT HE’S RIGHT BEHIND HER! GASP!!!
Eww. Gut pumpkins. (Credit: RLJ Entertainment, Hollywood Shorts, Ruthless Pictures)
Thoughts: These stories were of varying quality, which is the standard for anthologies. Story 1 was painfully slow and weird. But the pumpkin effects were pretty cool. Story 2 I actually had already seen on an indy horror anthology series called Bloody Bites. It didn’t make sense to me then and still didn’t. I think the kids were demons, but then why was it the apocalypse? Story 3 was alright. Just enough was explained to make it good and it didn’t need more detail. I also like that the guy’s sacrificed son was named Isaac. Subtle. I liked the fourth story. It seemed to be following a predicable path but took an unexpected twist. The fifth story lacked substance but it was short. I liked the sixth story… the angle of a frazzled widowed mom trying to assuage her child’s fear was good foundation, and there was a somewhat unexpected twist ending. It was well written and performed. The seventh story was amusing and also nicely brief. The final story was just strange and I don’t know why there weren’t subtitles. You’d think there would have been, since the rest of the movie was in English, but hey, it was a filmmaking choice, I guess.
Some of the shorts were okay, others were staggeringly meh. The one with the little boy, the lady in the elevator, and the guy decorating his yard were solid entries. I appreciate that they were all independent films, because it’s great to have a forum for people to see these lesser-known, creator-driven works. But, sadly, that doesn’t automatically make them great. Just being honest.
This guy’s face is a punkin. (Credit: RLJ Entertainment, Hollywood Shorts, Ruthless Pictures)
Review: The quality of the shorts and the pacing of them were all over the place. The framing story was completely unneeded and pointless. (Not to mention a lazy rip-off of the first film’s framing story. A VCR tape summons a killer who tries to get out of the TV and somehow does.) While some of the shorts were decent, the rest dragged down the whole. The shorts didn’t fit cohesively together and the framing method did not help at all. Having some of them set at Halloween and the others not just helped the disparate stories to not gel. It was a jumbled and only slightly entertaining mess.
I give this one 5 out of 10 Belly Punkins. Yes, a lower score than the first All Hallow’s Eve, which I also wasn’t super impressed with. That’s because, although there were a couple of stories that were solid, the other stories pulled the average down. This one was painfully average, so it hits the middle of the rating scale. It was a disconnected jumble that felt thrown together and didn’t make for a cohesive film, anthology or no.
Title (Credit: Damien Leone, Dark Age Cinema)
Terrifier 2 was released in 2022 by writer/director Damien Leone. We did Part 1 last time as well. Seeing the theme? (Gee, I wonder what two of the movies I’ll do next year will be?)
Content Warnings: Blood, guts, gore, bodily fluids, adult language, clowns, dead animals, lengthy dream sequences, serial killer fascination, poor parenting, torture porn, dissection, some mimery, drug use, underage drinking, above-age drinking, genital mutilation, general mutilation, skimpy cosplay, cannibalism, references to mental disorders and suicide.
Plot Summary: Picking up where the first film left off, mysteriously supernatural killer clown Art the Clown has come back to life, replaced his missing eye, laundered his bloody clown costume, and heads back out for a fresh killing spree. Art also picks up a little minion in the form of the Little Pale Girl, an undead clown-garbed girl who died in an amusement park. A girl named Sienna— whose deceased father has strange ties to Art— is his latest fixation. As Sienna’s friends and family fall to Art, she has to use the powers of cosplay and a magical sword left to her by her father to stop him. (No, I’m being serious here. That actually happens.)
Hey Art’s back! (Credit: Damien Leone, Dark Age Cinema)
Thoughts: This movie was leagues ahead of the first one. Like any good horror sequel, it improved on the foundation put down by the original film. Just like the first one, this one delights in gore and violence. There’s an explicit dissection of one of Sienna’s friends, her other friend’s boyfriend gets his manhood removed in front of his girlfriend, and the hero is slashed and gored repeatedly through the climax of the movie.
The mystery of Art deepens, but by no means is solved with this film. We see that Sienna’s dad drew him in a sketchbook before the events of the first film happened and also predicted that his daughter could stop him. (Also, it did occur to me that the clown’s name is Art and he seems to have originated as a drawing. Clever.) But speaking of Art, what exactly are his powers? He seems to possess the common slasher villain habit of coming back to life over and over. But somehow I get the sense he’s able to keep his victims alive beyond the point they should be. (This was seen in the first film after he skinned a woman and she was still running around.) Also, he seemed to have picked up the tendency to eat parts of his victims, which I don’t recall seeing in the first movie. And does Art have Freddy Kruger powers now? He showed up in Sienna’s dream and the fire from the dream ignited the angel wings on her costume in the real world.
Speaking on Freddy, there were a couple of clear homages to the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, which I appreciated. The whole dream invasion angle, of course. But also the montage where Sienna gets into her cosplay is clearly a nod to Alice preparing to battle Freddy in Nightmare IV.
Art has a new friend? (Credit: Damien Leone, Dark Age Cinema)
Review: While this movie had its flaws, it was an improvement in every way to the first film in the series. The pacing was alright and the characterization was far better. I liked the slowly unfolding mystery of Art’s powers and his connection to Sienna’s father, but I can see how the vagueness of it can be frustrating. The slow pacing of the lingering dream sequence, the impossibility of the girl still being alive after being mostly dissected, and the weird fantasy angle that came in near the end muddled the film a little. (But hey, we have a mystical undead clown, so why not a mystical angel sword?) While I like the characters of Sienna and Art— those actors are both fantastic— and the growing cast of ghoulish minions are great, I do think the long lingering shots of gore and mutilation are a bit much. (And this is from a guy who absolutely loves the Saw franchise.) Also the movie was a bit overlong, clocking in at a hefty 2 hours and 18 minutes. (Could have trimmed the dream sequence to bring it close to the 2 hour mark. It was ridiculous and pointless.)
After much thought, I decided that this one earns the coveted 8 out of 10 needlessly gory clowns. Yes, it’s the same score as the original film, even though I stated this one was better. The over-reliance on torture porn, the drawn out scenes, and the inexplicable shift to the fantasy genre lost it a point. While I really enjoyed this movie and am looking forward to the continuation, I don’t feel it quite earned a 9. Still, 8 is pretty high.
Title. (Credit: Carol Frank, Concorde Pictures)
Sorority House Massacre was released in 1986 by Concorde Pictures. It was written and directed by Carol Frank. Yet another callback… last time we covered the excellent Slumber Party Massacre. While this one is not a sequel, it is considered thematically as part of the loose Massacre franchise. Fun fact, the writer and director of this was the personal assistant to the woman who directed Slumber Party Massacre.
Content Warnings: Blood, murder, slow tension, nudity, boobies, more boobs, crazy 80s fashion, profanity, alcohol use, dated Native American imagery, some more boobies, and a silly fashion montage.
Plot Summary: A psychotic serial killer has escaped from a mental institution! A group of bubbly college girls are alone in a dorm with boys! One of those girls has a strange connection to the serial killer and mayhem ensues!
FASHION! (Credit: Carol Frank, Concorde Pictures)
Thoughts: As with Slumber Party Massacre, this movie was a blast. It didn’t grab me in quite the same way, but it was still a lot of fun in that junk-food 80’s slasher movie kind of way. The characters weren’t really fleshed out. The plot was simple, and the twist telegraphed clearly from early on. (It also didn’t make a lot of sense, but I won’t spoil it.) While there wasn’t really a lot to it, and it was super short, the movie had its own charm and a feminist slant to it. The killer’s motivations were, I guess, unfinished business? Loose ends? But the reasons for his initial snap and killing spree was not elaborated on in the slightest. Also, they made the odd choice of framing the entire movie as a flashback, showing in the opening minutes that the hero survives to the end. I’m not sure why they decided to go that route, as framing it that way had no real bearing on the film in any way. Maybe they thought it would be artsy?
Oh, and I think the most unrealistic part of this movie is that at one point the girls actually go to class. Not something you often see in movies set at college.
STAB! (Credit: Carol Frank, Concorde Pictures)
Review: Sadly, this one didn’t quite reach the heights of Slumber Party Massacre, but it was pretty fun in its own right. While there was some gratuitous nudity and sexual situations, it was used sparingly. This movie was shockingly short (especially compared with Terrifier 2), clocking in at a mere hour fourteen. The twist was predictable and there were no surprises there. (We figured it out almost immediately.) Some of the movie was artfully done, and it never bored me. The odd presentation of the movie as a flashback of the surviving protagonist was confusing and I will never figure out why it was done that way.
I give this one the unsurprising rating of 8 out of 10 boobies. I do recommend it and it’s worth a watch, but I still like Slumber Party Massacre better.
Art has candy! (Credit: Damien Leone, Dark Age Cinema)
And that’s the next four mini-reviews of some of the latest horror fare the Rabbit family have enjoyed. I’ve decided to make this an annual tradition, like my yearly trips to Silent Hill. Next time I’m sure I’ll cover All Hallow’s Eve 3, Terrifier 3, one chosen by Cocoa, and maybe the next Massacre movie? (Or Sleepaway Camp? Hmm… ) Well, maybe not All Hallow’s Eve 3. We’ll see.
Thank you so much for joining me for these reviews. I appreciate you all and will see you again this time next year for four more bloody horror movies!
Fun party game: Find the hidden murder knife. (Credit: Carol Frank, Concorde Pictures)
