SoraRabbit Short Hop 039: Horror Movie Marathon Part 3
It’s finally time for another of the holiday traditions here at the SoraRabbit Hole— the Horror Movie Marathon! This is the post where Cocoashade and I watch some horror movies and I review them. This serves the dual role of letting me talk about horror movies, and also practice my critiquing skills. This time we have a treat. We couldn’t decide between two of the movies, so I’ve expanded this post to cover to five movies instead of four. That’s right, you get a bonus! Here are the previous installments in case you missed them:
Is bunny. (Credits: Ruthless Studios)
Some quick setup before we start. Usually I rate on a 7 bunny scale. For these posts I do a standard 1-10 with some silly related thing as the rating system. All the statements in this post are my opinions, and your own impressions of the movies may differ.
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, mental illness, supernatural beings, and clowns. I try to choose relatively tame screenshots but some of them are somewhat bloody, so use caution if you’re not into that.
Anyway, we have five movies to get through, so let’s get going!
Title. (Credit: A24, Kane Parsons)
Backrooms was released in 2026 by A24. It was directed by Kane Parsons and written by Will Soodik. It was based on (and shares continuity with) a popular series of YouTube videos inspired by a creepypasta. Cocoa and I wanted to watch this movie as soon as we heard about it. We tried to get through all of the YouTube videos beforehand, but kept getting distracted by other things. We’ll circle back to them eventually.
Content Warnings: Blood, body horror, bird death, sort of cannibalism, decapitation, surrealism, mental illness, pirates.
Plot Summary: A troubled man named Clark finds a portal to a strange and mostly-empty dimension in the basement of his furniture store. His store manager, her boyfriend, and his therapist Mary are all drawn into his obsessive exploration of this liminal space.
This isn’t creepy at all. (Credit: A24, Kane Parsons)
Thoughts: This was a really good movie. Cocoa and I both really enjoyed it. The creepiness, the artful direction, and the unexplained aspect of everything all worked together to make a compelling movie. The use of found footage, low def cameras, and the surrealism make this a unique experience. The characters were complex, the setting was unsettling, and everything was just on the edge of fitting together while leaving key puzzle pieces out. The only thing that docks it a point is the slow pacing, which actually isn’t really a negative. The pacing means when something different happens, it’s jarring.
Wonder who he’s looking at? Watch the movie. (Credit: A24, Kane Parsons)
Review: This movie was masterfully done. The pacing, the cinematography, the mysteriousness, and the characterization earn this movie nearly top marks. I give Backrooms 9 out of 10 twisted approximations. To justify that score, I feel like any future work— be it more YouTube videos, a TV series, or a direct sequel film— could build on this foundation in an interesting way. I look forward to seeing where it goes in the future.
Title (Credits: Ruthless Studios)
All Hallows Eve: Trickster was released in 2023 by Ruthless Studios. If you’ve read the previous two installments, this film’s inclusion should not be a surprise at all. We’re working our way through this anthology series of horror shorts, one a year. As of now, there’s only one left so we may need to find a new anthology to cover for Part 5. Like the previous two installments, the offerings in this one are all indy shorts, some with fan funding.
Content Warnings: Blood, gore, uneven pacing, wooden acting, murder, profanity, bad accents, sexual violence, mild boredom, lots of regret.
Plot Summary: Like all the movies in this series, there are several smaller stories with a loose framing story connecting them. The connecting story this time involves a woman stuck in a box at a gas station while stupid-looking monsters watch TV near her. I think she dies? I dunno. The first story was about some kids in a haunted house on Halloween telling a ghost story about murders that took place there. Story 2: A serial killer in a makeup covered mask is killing people in a town and pursues the detective trying to catch him. Story 3: A traumatized older lady cares for her son who has become an eldritch horror or something? Story 4: Two cowboys fleeing from a bank robbery encounter a deadly entity that’s taken the form of a nun. Story 5: A creepy incel internet bully gives shelter to someone who seems like an old-timey witch and gets a taste of his own medicine. Story 6: A pervy guy with a bad accent goes after a woman in a karaoke bar and it ends poorly for him and the viewers.
What a dorky monster. (Credits: Ruthless Studios)
Thoughts: Like with all the entries in the series, these stories were up and down. Mostly down. Story 1 was boring and confusing. We had to pause and discuss it halfway through because it was unclear what was happening exactly. At some point the kids are are able to witness past events but their acting was so bad that it barely seemed to phase them that they were seeing actual ghosts and were in danger.
The second story was awful. It was called PrettyFace and was an attempted homage of 80s and 90s slasher movies. Wooden acting, bad effects, very cliché and lazy, in my opinion. The ending was nonexistent and abrupt. The identity of the killer was obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie, but this plot thread was left dangling. I strongly feel like this one was a lame attempt at getting its own franchise, like Terrifier did in Part 1. While I appreciated the retro feel and setting, I do think this one was executed poorly and tried too hard. The lack of an ending seemed to be a tease . . . “Wanna see what happens? Ask for a full-length movie, folks!“ Ugh, so blatant. Also it was basically a reskin of the Halloween franchise. The line between homage and rip-off can be pretty thin.
Story 3 was the best of the batch. The writing and acting were pretty good and the premise was cool. It was a decent metaphor for parenthood— the kind of symbiotic and harmful relationship that can develop when a kid refuses to leave the nest and grow into an adult and the parent makes excuses for them. While the premise was a little perplexing at first and the ending was clearly telegraphed, it was still enjoyable. I also like that the old lady kept calling her son’s Atari a “radio game”. That gave me a chuckle every time.
Story 4 was alright. The acting and writing were good, but it felt like they stretched it out further than it needed to be. It was one of those too-glossy period pieces but it didn’t overstay its welcome.
Story 5 was pretty dumb. The acting was alright but the writing was clumsy and the premise was half-baked. It felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to be. At least it was short.
Story 6 was terrible. Visually it was fine but the monster was stupid looking, the acting was horrible, and the violence was over the top and exploitive. The whole thing was a bit too edge lord for my taste. This idea should have stayed in the drafts.
The framing story was the weakest part of the entire thing, equating to really nothing, when all was told. It wasn’t actually a story, just a bunch of thrown-together monsters wandering around a room and a woman whimpering and screaming. They didn’t even show her getting into the situation! Why even bother with a framing story if that’s what you’re going to come up with?
Eh. (Credits: Ruthless Studios)
Review: This was the worst of the series so far and a real disappointment. I expect anthology series to be hit or miss within the same movie, but this was a bunch of misses strung together with one hit and a near-hit. Like I said above, not all of it was bad, and it really wasn’t a struggle to get through, but it wasn’t something I would ever watch again or recommend. There were some decent ideas and imagery, and I will never complain about amateur filmmakers getting a vehicle for their work— we need more of that— but this was a sad showing. It needed way more polish, some serious rewrites, and several minutes left on the cutting room floor. And I know I keep ragging on this, but the fact that PrettyFace felt like an extended trailer for a movie that hopefully will never materialize was the lamest part of it all. You can’t beg for a spinoff, you can’t make yourself a breakout like that. It comes across as desperate.
I give All Hallow’s Eve 3 a score of 4 out of 10 lame-ass monsters. Story 3 was honestly the only thing that earned it that 4.
Title. (Credit: Cineverse, Damien Leone)
Terrifier 3 was released in 2024 by Cineverse. It was co-produced, written, edited, and directed by Damien Leone. This one shouldn’t be a surprise either, since we covered the other two previously. The trailer for this film was what made me want to check out the franchise initially. Did this movie live up to the hype? Read on and find out!
Content Warnings: Blood and gore, gleeful murder, clowns, demonic zombie, demonic possession, confusion, dismemberment, language, suicide, body horror, sexual situations, nudity, potty humor, child endangerment, torture porn, shallow writing, crushing disappointment.
Plot Summary: Art the Clown, seemingly tired of Halloween, begins killing his way through Christmas like some demented Jack Skellington. Back from an extended break in a mental institution, his nemesis Sienna moves in with family to rebuild her life. Also she seems to have a healing factor like Wolverine now. This is not explained. Lots of this is not explained.
Art’s a Santa now. (Credit: Cineverse, Damien Leone)
Thoughts: I’m going to cut to the bottom line here . . . this movie was a huge let-down. I really enjoyed the first two installments, but this one felt like it was going through the motions. While the first two built on the mystery and deepened it, this one really felt like it was in no hurry to get anywhere or explain anything. It was an in-between chapter. Killing time before the finale in Part 4 while simultaneously killing the momentum.
Just like with the first two, this one fetishizes violence and gore to an unhealthy degree, lingering on the shots way too long and lovingly. There were unnecessarily graphic scenes— and this comes from a life-long horror fan who has seen every one of the Saw movies more than once. It was brutality for the sake of nothing, just trying to fill the run-time. Some key things happened off-screen, including several of the deaths and fetching the sword MacGuffin. The writing was bare, the time jump was odd, the touching scenes felt tacked on, and the movie really should have ended with the words “to be concluded”. Seriously, at the end Sienna is planning her moves for Part 4 and Art had just wandered away anti-climactically.
It wasn’t ALL bad. Just like the previous outings, this one had some real polish and style. There was a surprise Clint Howard, which is always nice. The movie did fill in some of the holes left by the previous two movies, but not enough to be satisfying. Art, as always, is a great and memorable character, but he took a backseat to his current sidekick/boss, the zombie demon that is a merging of the survivor from Part 1 and the creepy little clown girl from Part 2. This is, by the way, not really explained. The fact that the entity in Victoria is the Little Pale Girl was not explicitly stated in the film. It was apparently said in the director’s commentary and I found the info circulating online. I get trying to be vague with story elements, but Cocoa and I were both really confused. A work should be able to stand on its own without explanation coming after the fact.
Art is always so jolly. (Credit: Cineverse, Damien Leone)
Review: I was looking forward to this movie so much and I was sorely disappointed. Yes, it had style and compelling moments, but it wasted any potential it had and burned any good will the franchise had built up. I know I don’t agree with the critics and fans, but this is how I see it. After much thought, I give this one a 5 out of 10 blood-soaked Clown Santas. Three points lower then the previous two movies and a painfully mid entry into the series.
Title. (Credit: Blumhouse Productions, Curry Barker)
Obsession was released in 2025 by Blumhouse Productions. It was written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker. This is our bonus movie. We wanted to watch both this one and Backrooms, so I decided to just include both. Why is the bonus not the last movie? We suspected we would need a palette cleanser in case this one was too much.
Content Warnings: Animal death, nonconsensual acts, mind control, emotional manipulation, self-harm, drugs, alcohol use, murder, blood, gore, profanity, nudity, sexual situations, suicidal imagery.
Plot Summary: A socially-awkward young man nick-named Bear, unable to confess his feelings for his friend Nikki, makes a wish on a novelty item which results in her being magically forced to love him more than anything else in the world. As you would expect, it all spirals out of control pretty quickly and goes from bad to worse to even worse.
Seems like a nice girl. (Credit: Blumhouse Productions, Curry Barker)
Thoughts: So we’ll start with the elephant in the room— Bear is NOT a good guy and he is NOT the hero of the movie. This has been endlessly debated elsewhere, so I’m not getting deep into that. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. I just want to make it clear that at no time did either me or Cocoa empathize or root for Bear. His motivations were poor and self-serving from the start, he’s spineless and disrespectful, and a terrible person.
That said, he was an interesting character. All of them were. This was a well-written and artfully crafted film. It was a fresh look at the old monkey’s paw or genie scenarios and went to some unexpected places. Some of the story was a little hokey— specifically the new age store stocking a wish-making talisman that works— but the movie poked fun at itself for that. Two of the three funniest parts of the movie involved Bear calling a bored-sounding customer service rep who told him that he was essentially screwed, and the clerk saying the same thing when he went back to the store. (“I already used my wish.”) What seemed like a glaring plot hole— why don’t you just get another one and undo your wish— was dealt with in an amusing and blunt way as the movie went on. I won’t spoil the other funny part, but you’d know it when you saw it. It cracked us both up.
The writing was great and the acting in this movie was amazing. Nikki’s performance especially was unnerving and very convincing. The dialog and relationships between the characters were all well-done. The cinematography and direction were also great. All around solid and entertaining movie that sticks with you after it ends.
Guess he’s not going to work. (Credit: Blumhouse Productions, Curry Barker)
Review: This was an engaging, thought-provoking, and intense movie. It was very well-done and also gets high marks. I give Obsession 9 out of 10 cursed monkey paws.
Title. (Credit: Paramount Pictures, Fred Walton)
April Fool’s Day was released in 1986 by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Fred Walton and produced by Frank Mancuso Jr. (Well known for many popular horror franchises, including several Friday the 13th movies.) This is a classic 80’s slasher movie with a twist.
Note: Originally I was planning on keeping the themes going with the previous two posts and covering Cheerleader Massacre. But then I noticed that was released in 2003 and I would really rather do an 80s movie for this slot. Cocoashade suggested this one, since she’s always wanted to see it. I had never gotten around to watching it either, so it won its spot in the post.
Content Warnings: Profanity, blood, one terrible accent, murder, gore, feathered hair, guns, smoking, drinking, pranks, sexual situations, fart jokes, weird pretzel sex, castration.
Plot Summary: A group of college students visit their classmate Muffy’s island mansion over April Fool’s Day weekend and end up stalked by a maniac with no way to escape.
What a nice dinner party. (Credit: Paramount Pictures, Fred Walton)
Thoughts: This was an amusing and engaging movie. It was very reminiscent of Friday the 13th and other 70s and 80s slasher fare. The killer seemed to be clearly telegraphed from the opening minutes, but the movie takes several twists and turns that I won’t spoil here. For a slasher movie, it’s surprisingly restrained! There is no nudity, the only sex scene is ridiculous and silly, and most of the deaths happen off-camera.
Some of the dialog goes by really fast and easily-missed small details become important later. This is a movie that really benefits from a rewatch. Cocoa and I got some of the characters and relationships confused— most specifically we thought that Hal was Muffy’s cousin, not Skip. (Which would have made it extra creepy since Hal wanted to bang her.) Hal also had a terrible country accent that he kept slipping in and out of. The sameness of the characters was a downside, but the premise and execution made up for that. There were a few laugh-out-loud moments and the ending was unexpected but reasonable.
This took a turn. (Credit: Paramount Pictures, Fred Walton)
Review: This was a creative and surprising movie with an ending neither Cocoa or I saw coming. Stacking it up against the previous 80s slasher movies we’ve covered, I give April Fool’s Day a solid 8 out of 10 creepy jack-in-the-boxes. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.
Surprise! (Credit: Paramount Pictures, Fred Walton)
And that does it for the Rabbit Family’s annual Halloween horror movie marathon! The choices were up and down this year. Some very high highs and some very low lows. But that’s the crapshoot that comes inherent with being a horror fan. I already have the movies picked out for next time, but unless I get some requests, we probably won’t cover Terrifier 4. That comes out around Halloween so it will still be in the theaters and Cocoa doesn’t want to watch any more movies in that particular franchise. Which I fully understand. I’ll eventually watch it, just probably won’t cover it. After the disappointment with Part 3, I don’t feel like shelling out the cash to watch it in the theater so I’ll wait until it’s streaming.
Anyway, thank you for joining me for these mini reviews. These are always fun. Remember to check my main blog for our annual visit to Silent Hill. See you all next year for more Short Hops!
