Dexter

We're a little over halfway in the season of Dexter: New Blood, and they're starting to throw a lot at us. I'm not sure how spoilery this thread will get, but the ending of the latest episode has me antsy to see what happens next.

So...

Harrison is a bit of a dick, Dexter is still leaving out too many details for him to truly connect with anyone, and Kurt is trying to win Harrison over. Dexter's gonna need to step up his game if he wants his son to not hate him!

And a somewhat unrelated question, especially when it comes to Showtime shows... Do you consider Dexter: New Blood as technically a different show since there's a time gap, different setting, and different imdb listing? Much like how Twin Peaks: The Return is credited as a separate entity from its original run? Or is it still the same fucking show to you? I'm not sure myself, because the tone is different, but it still follows the same narrative with the same principle cast. I guess the only real difference is that Cody and Astor no longer exist.

Hell House LLC II (2018)

I've been trying to squeeze in a few more found footage viewings before this month ends, and since I loved the first Hell House, I suppose it was time to check out the second.

What we have here is more or less the same. Another documentary crew goes into the Abaddon Hotel to investigate the disappearances of the last slew of victims and are quick to find themselves trapped in a hopeless situation. There were definitely a few creepy moments, but this entry did seem a bit more overt, and a lot of the effective scares were simply rehashes from the first movie. Does that mean I didn't enjoy it? No, it was entertaining enough. However, it lacks the impact of the first movie, and some of the frightening moments linger too long. You never want to get too good of a look at the ghosts, do you?

Still probably one of the better found footage movies out there, but the first movie still fucked with me more. I'll try to get the final movie watched before the month ends.

#Review

Halloween Kills - Extended Cut

I've seen the theatrical version twice, so I was pretty certain I would notice the extended scenes when they came up, and the verdict? WHY THE FUCK BOTHER? There are a total of TWO extended scenes that total maybe twenty seconds, plus the extended ending which seemed cooler in theory than in actual execution.

What are the extended scenes? In 1978 when Lonnie is bullied by the kids, he starts running home. He sees Michael staring from behind a bush, who then hides. There's half of your extended cut right there. The next scene has Karen in the hospital going into the morgue and asking the worker if she can see her husband. Then the guy gets pissed and tells her she's not supposed to be in there.

And there you have it. The extended cut of Halloween Kills was totally justified in its existence, wasn't it? And if you're curious about the extended ending, here goes:

After Karen dies, Laurie calls her phone from the hospital. You see it ringing on the ground. Then you see Laurie listening in on Michael's breathing and she tells him she's coming for him. She gets up, grabs the knife, and walks through the hospital halls presumably to get him, but we know this ending is NOT to be considered canon because the next movie has already been confirmed to be set 4 years after this one. Besides, she's in no condition to do anything since she just went through surgery and her stomach is fucked up. So it's a big waste of time and a big joke of a promotional gimmick. An extended cut of this movie should not exist.

The blu-ray has a lot of featurettes I have yet to watch, so at least there's that.

Halloween Quiz

Test your fandom with this epic 50-question Halloween quiz. This covers all 12 movies to some extent, as it's hard to balance out so much convoluted shit.

You're probably wondering, "Why is this idiot posting a Halloween quiz now? October was months ago!" Well, the extended Blu-Ray for Halloween Kills is out now, and I'm too jazzed up to keep quiet about it! I bought it today and I'll probably re-ramble on that later, but for now, a quiz ought to suffice.

Give it your best shot and see who the biggest Halloween fan is 'round these parts. My money's on myself.

What was the name of this movie?

This was a found footage movie I saw several years ago. I got it from the local library. It has the word Tapes in the title, like The Poughkeepsie Tapes or The Anderson Tapes. It's a bunch of young people or kids in a large forest at night, one or more of them with video cameras recording everything, and they think they are being watched or tracked. I think they were investigating some urban legend about a pedophile ring and missing children. Some of them disappear and the others keep seeing eyes looking at them through the trees. They start looking for clues and eventually find an abandoned house or ranch or something like that and discover some kind of feral half human creatures living in it, and I think no one survives. That's about all I can remember about it. There's been a ton of found footage movies but someone must know the title of this.

The V/H/S Movies

It's been a while since I saw them, so I kicked off my FF viewings with the first three movies and I liked them more than I remembered. Generally entertaining anthologies, though I have to say that part 2 is my favorite of the bunch. Highlight skits include the bicyclist who encounters zombies who crash the birthday party in the woods. The one that stuck with me was the alien invasion. Normally, I could care less what happens to the people in these things, but... SPOILERS... who cares if the boy gets abducted. What really broke my heart is seeing him drop the dog and watching it fall to its death. This mostly gets to me because I have a crappy little brown dog like that. Yikes.

I think Viral had its moments, but might be the weakest of the bunch. The wraparound starts off interestingly chaotic, but it ends up making little sense, and the magician skit seemed a bit too outrageous, but the skater skit was alright.

So which movie or skit did you like most? And has anybody seen V/H/S/94?

Merry Christmas to All

How's everyone's 2021 Christmas been? How did you celebrate? Was it fun times, or just another day?

My experiences tend to be mediocre at best, but I'm feeling better about things this year. I have a steady job that pays better than my previous part-time minimum-wage fare, so I decided to treat myself to a (free) month of Shudder and Back 4 Blood on PC, which is a lot of fun. I hear it has crossplay, which sounds promising if anyone else is into killing zombies.

The year is almost over, so I can safely say it's been a hell of a lot better than 2020. What say you, trash people?

The Ouija Possession (2016) 2/10

A group of dumb teens play with a ouija board and bring a man back from the dead. And apparently he isn't too happy about it.
Plenty of bad editing, as well as a pretty bad story and worse acting doomed this to failure.
About the only highlight was Jonah's makeup. But even that wasn't anything great, as it looked like a poor man's attempt to copy Frank from Hellraiser 30 years earlier.

Conjuring the Devil (2020) 3/10

A priest opens his congregation to wayward souls, including drug addicts, transgender, a woman who performed a self abortion, and a lipstick lesbian.
But a new priest is assigned, and he doesn't look favorably upon this collection, so he summons the spirit of an evil nun to cleanse the church.
Had the occasional flash of competence, but overall not very good. And clocking in at close to two hours? Should have been 80-90 minutes. But I'm assuming they loved their film, and felt everything was important.

A Generation Doomed: The History Of Nowhere



I watched this movie once... Ok, fine. I watched this movie a bunch of times way back when, and it was great! Seriously, this movie was hardcore! It had drugs and blood and boobs and fucking all over the place. This movie was "anti this" and "anti that", and there was a bunch of pissed off homos and super edgy references to the end of the world. Oh, and people wanted to kill themselves and stuff. Some actually did! Then there was this alien... Yeah. So, I don't know whatever happened to THAT badass flick, but an older version of me watched a movie called Nowhere the other night and it was pretty fucking silly. Sure, I saw this coming because I know I'm not who I was when I was a teen, as most of us aren't, but after this long-awaited rewatch, I just got to send an extra big •cringe• out to this one. This is for Nowhere!

Nowhere is from director, Gregg Araki, who is far from worthless. I was actually pretty excited about this one originally due to how much I liked his previous film, The Doom Generation. A movie that also hasn't aged wonderfully with me, but still far less obnoxious. Nowhere isn't quite as dark but seems to think it is. There is certainly a lot more to it, although nothing comes off quite as meaningful. James Duval returns as "Dark", a tortured/privileged high school kid who can't decide if he is torn up over his lesbian girlfriend being a whore or if he wants to blow this random kid named Montgomery. We'll say both for now. As obsessed as Dark is with his little friend, he seems to really love Mel, who also seems to really love Mel. I take it Dark is settling for an open relationship due to that being all he can get out of her at the moment. Dark is clearly frustrated with the situation as he constantly takes it out on Mel's girlfriend, Lucifer, who is never not present, and seems to take much pleasure in antagonizing Dark. Two people who wouldn't piss on one another if the other one was on fire, but it seems Dark hates Lucifer more as Mel is clearly her's more than Dark's.

Dark thinks he's going to die soon, but doesn't make a big thing out of it. He seems much more preoccupied with his many "problems", although Dark's pussified handling of the Mel situation is a genuine problem. At least he's trying, but simply blinded by love too much to notice how condescending this bitch is to him. Today, we are given a peak inside the lives of these people's circle of friends which includes drug addicts, sex fiends, masochists, bulimic little twits, and all around freaks who really just seem like a bunch of self-absorbed, L.A. twats who think they're hot shit.

Dark's buddy, "Cowboy", is tortured over his unreliable bandmate/boyfriend, Bart's heroin addiction. Meanwhile, some poor girl named Egg gets raped by some dude from Baywatch after being reeled in and convinced he was into her. So, that was definitely a dick move. The gang, including a very gawky Christina Applegate, go out to some park and play what they refer to "kick the can", yet appears to be "hide and seek". Well, regardless of what they're doing, it seems to be, more often than not, what they all like to do whilst on ecstasy. So, there's that. With all the drugged out fun being had, no one notices when Montgomery is abducted by Roscoe the alien. And while Dark realizes something has happened, he is way too distracted by Mel to care about anything else for very long. Although to his credit, Dark cares, and at times, almost seems to be the only one in the movie who even realizes this Montgomery person exists. It's weird.

This unusually chaotic Friday culminates with a party thrown by some weirdo named Jujifruit that we've been hearing about the entire movie as if he's a significant character, yet, we see him for a total of five seconds. I was really hoping we'd get to know him a little. A fairly anti-climactic party up until a drug dealer named handjob gets beat to death with a can of tomato soup by a disgruntled client. Handjob wasn't the only one of these twats to die this evening. Some didn't even make it to the party. A televangelist, played by John Ritter, has been encouraging twats to off themselves all night with his words of wisdom. Our only hope for a happy ending now depends on Dark and his would-be butt buddy being reunited, but don't hold your breath for anything going anywhere except nowhere.

I mean, I get it. It's mostly a commentary on youth growing up way too fast, yet not growing up at all. It's a demented, somewhat psychedelic-inspired take on the idea, which is cool. And I suppose everyone's behavior has something to do with all the talk of the potential end times which is brought up more than once. Honestly, I'm not even positive that anything about these people is even being portrayed as negative. Either way, I just find it all incredibly unlikable and obnoxious at this point in my life. Much like Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, it all just feels like Gregg Araki fooled himself into thinking he had made something far cooler than what actually got made. In my opinion, there's nothing to be found here that is any deeper or more profound than your average mainstream comedy from this era. While still good for a few dark laughs here and there, Nowhere is still every big as shallow and meaningless as the twats it's attempting to satirize.

James Duval isn't so bad in this. Dark lets his so-called girlfriend make a bitch out of him, but he still ends up being less twatty than everyone else. Ultimately, this character comes off like a less spineless, slightly more grown up version of his character from The Doom Generation. Gregg Araki must have a thing about bi-curious beta males getting their hearts played with by their whore girlfriends. Interesting with all the "end times" references how Mel's girlfriend on the side is named Lucifer, who Dark probably blames for his woes. Not Mel and certainly not himself. It would be a lousy situation to be caught up in, but it's hard to give Dark too much sympathy, especially considering his growing obsession with mysterious gay kid.
I suppose the unusual amount of cameos/mainstream cast members should be addressed. Aside from Christina Applegate and John Ritter, Nowhere also flaunts appearances by Jordan Ladd, Guillermo Díaz, Ryan Phillippe, Heather Graham, Beverly D'Angelo, Mena Suvari, Rose McGowan, Shannon Doherty, Traci Lords, David Leisure (LoL, remember him?), Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, and of all people, Charlotte fucking Rae! Why? Why were all those people in this? Why so many references to the end of the world with seemingly no pay off? And what exactly does that alien have to do with any of this? Aw, who cares? They're all twats, anyway. The alien included! 4/10



#Review