[EXPRESSO] Other Mommy (2026) | Doppel Mutter

Know what, i can’t claim that the trailers for Other Mommy were misleading, this indeed the kind of slapdash, jump scare ridden thing you’d expect, boiling down to someone trying to make an entire horror movie about a screenshot of Other Mother from Coraline someone forwaded them.

Bela is a regular kid… well, aside the fact she is friends with an entity that lives in her house and she has come to call “Other Mommy”, because she looks like her actual mother.

The entity has had enough of just being “second banana”, so it manifests in increasingly dangerous fashion trying to sway the girl to her side…

In a way i was surprised because the movie doesn’t play any cheap trick of the “Unsorry Mommy” being just in the child’s imagination or not, this thing is real, tangible and will explode your brain into confetti, and there’s no half the movie predicated on the parents slowly realizing the entity is actually real.

… But that isn’t nearly enough to make this even mediocre, let’s not accept “things do happen” as an actual standard when there’s little to no plot, the characters are paper thin stereotypes, the jumpscares limp, most of the “weird morphing” fees like rejected Backrooms-esque material.

It’s never proper scary, though it’s hard to even feel any tension because not a single character reacts appropriately to anything that happens, they all just shrugh it all off, regardless.

There’s little to no logic (or depth) to almost anything, and frankly this feel like an untentional “supernatural entity” variation of the Pickle Rick episode.

It’s not boring per sé, nor is it “the worse thing ever”, it’s not, yet at just 93 minutes feels stretched, and it’s also not quite unintentionally hilarious, just a “slightly different than expected” kind of garbage.

The Spooktacular Eight #36: Snoop Dogg House Of Horrors (2006)

I gotta admit, despite everything (and he sure has bought into some questionable shit) i love me seeing some Snoop Dogg bullshitting around, so yes, have him do a ghetto Cryptkeeper presenting and commenting an anthology of short horror stories themed around an American inner-city ‘hood.

So yes, this is basically a Snoop Dogg licensed “Tales From The Hood”, which i discovered only after locking this into the schedule (and i’ve heard it’s pretty dang good), sorry but we’ll make do.

Yeah, there’s not much to say about the presentation, but i was curious when this showed up on Amazon Prime Video and for some reason has an anime-esque style animated prologue… and yes, it’s because it customary for horror anthologies (as this way they also tribute the old horror comics these films often base their material on), but i was also right, because the animated intro and outro are animated by renowned anime studio MADHOUSE.

Kinda funny because this also predates their work on The Boondocks, though these sequences are stylish but they’re not well animated, let’s be honest, most likely as they were done on the extra cheap, which wouldn’t surprise me, since it’s indicative of the production as a whole.

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The Spooktacular Eight #35: The Monster Of Piedras Blancas (1959)

The 50s were the new golden age of classic monsters… and a lot of stinkers, cheesy drive-in stuffers, often made to profit off each other.

This is case for the when Universal created a new monster icon, the aquatic Gill Man, in 1954’s Creature From The Black Lagoon, and while it’s not the more revisited of the classic “50 monster pantheon”, it created an enduring depiction of the “fish man” monster.

Riding the success of the 1954 debut film for the Gill Man, Universal pumped out two sequels the following years, to mixed reception, but when you have a successful trilogy, you attract imitators.

This is the tale of its most infamous drive-in knock off, The Monster Of Piedras Blancas.

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[EXPRESSO] Onslaught (2026) | Die Dudermensch

On paper, this should be an easy win, even if it’s a bit weird A24 is distributing what is really a genre offering reminescent of 80s exploitation grindhouse action flicks like The Exterminator.

Onslaught is about Celeste, an US army sniper, whom has defacto retired into a parking lot in the New Mexico desert to deal with her PTSD, complicating her troubled family life.

That is, until a trio of genetically engineered super soldiers, created by a former Nazi scientist, escape from the secret experiment bases they were held in, killing everyone in their path, and eventually moving their systematic massacre to Celeste’s parking lot..

Apparently this is a continuation from Adam Wingard’s 2014 movie Guest, which i didnt’ see, and on its own, Onslaught, despit some stylistical apt choices and some good old school practical gore effects, doesn’t really live up to its own title, in every aspect it lacks the substance, it never displays or conveys the raw fury it promises, nor manages to properly develop some of its ideas.

Maybe it would be easier to accept the movie for what it is instead of what could have been…. if it didn’t deliberately AND aggressively built up the final “onslaught” to be some this thing you need to brace for, and frankly you really don’t, it’s not even that excessive.

Even the literal super soldaten are kinda of a letdown, i liked the idea of these being de facto militarized slasher villains… but that is really as far as it goes.

It’s entertaining, the action is fun, the characters mostly stock but okay, and it’s barely above 90 minutes, so it’s not boring and knows to keep things as long as they need to, but you’d wish the movie didn’t set itself up for disappointment as it did.

The Spooktacular Eight #34: Violent Shit (1989)

Ah yes, the other German horror director from the age of video nasties, of when video recording technology becoming affordable alongside a cheap and affordable format for home usage led to some people just shooting the shit on the digital camcorder in their hometown on very low budgets.

I will come forward and admit i haven’t seen any of Andrea Schnass films, i’m quite familiar with Jorg Buttgeireit works on the flipside, but i felt it made sense to start tackling his fellow German DIY horror director, starting from his most well known film, the original Violent Shit, which spawned few sequels, and make clear once more than censorship of this kind will be at best circumnvented, at worst will just force fans of the genre to do what many German horror fans did back in the “video nasty” age, just straight started making these themselves in their backyards.

Figures we eventually feature Schnaas, and i don’t think i did fill the “80s German ultra splatter low budget slasher” slot in my bingo card before on this rubric.

So what is the plot of Violent Shit?

A boy, Karl, comes home a bit late, he gets beat up by his mother, then in revenge murders her with a cleaver.

20 years later, Karl is being moved from his prison to somewhere else by the police, but kills the officers, manages to escape, and with a cleaver (which i guess is a thing growing wild in the Gothic II forests) he goes on a killing spree on the West German countryside, indulging himself in some cannibalism while he’s at it.

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The Spooktacular Eight #33: Spawn (1997)

2004’s live action Devilman, consider yourself spared, as this year (due to recent events contributing to schedule changes) we’re doing instead 1997’s Spawn.

I did got the Blu Ray release by Arrow Video, and it was still in its factory wrap, so time to…. actually visit for the first time, i never saw this in theathers or TV, i was too young back then, my first time seeing Spawn at all was when Soul Calibur II console ports released and the X-Box version got him as the console exclusive guest character.

But it was hard not to hear about in the 2000s as one of the worst comic book films ever, an infamous reputation so widespread and radicated, a stink to it that even The Venture Bros couldn’t resist throwing a jab at it in late 2009-2010, a foul reputation that never really went away.

And just putting this out, i wasn’t aware until i decided to swap this into the 2004 Devilman‘s slot that they’ve been trying to reboot the brand with a new film for decades, and apparently this time around it most likely will happen, we got recent news of the reboot coming along… or maybe it won’t, as the superhero genre is well past his peak in terms of popularity.

I will not claim any responsability over that either way.

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PO’ED: Definitive Edition PS4 [REVIEW] | Mein Soufflè!

I have played a few FPS in my days, not too many, but sure as hell i never played PO’ED, never even heard of the frigging thing until the AVGN episode about the 3DO, to be honest, as i never knew anyone growing up that had that thing (which i assume is the case for almost everyone else), and i never even stumbled upon the PS1 port.

So i was curious, realized that Nightdive did actually do a remaster in their KEX engine for this oscure mid 90s FPS, and i got during a PSN sale.

It just called to me, as the forgotten weird ass FPS where you play as a chef and use frying pan to kill alien ass monsters, i knew i had to play it.

The story is all explained in a letter text dump where the protagonist, a chef named Ox, writes to his mum how that sweet paying gig on a spaceship …didn’t go as planned, as aliens infiltrated the ship, killed all the mercs, so he’ll have to take on some fresh meat.

And he’s indeed – title drop – Pissed Off, as he writes in the few text scrolls/letters.

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Slotherhouse (2023) [REVIEW] | Slay Queen

While i’m sure i can find more old 80s school themed/adjacent slasher, this September we’re doing something a bit more recent for a change, from a chronological standpoint, by unearthing from my Blu-Ray collection 2023’s Slotherhouse.

And yes, indeed, this is a 10/10 title for you killer animal slasher film.

It really is indeed about a killer sloth, and the house is not any common house, it’s a sorority house, where Emily Young, a college student brings a three-toed sloth from the jungle, thinking it can work as a “house mascot” and hence help her be elected as the sorority’s president.

But of course things go awry as a series of sorority girls is being killed, and all the evidence strongly implicates it’s actually the cute sloth the one doing all the murders…

I’ll be honest, the promo material made it look like it was chomping off the modern “retro 80s trend”, specifically aping Happy Death Day…. but i was mistaken, this isn’t the case, as Slotherhouse – aside taking place in modern times – is oddly not even that much interested in aping other slasher films. Not too specifically, anyway.

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Platformation Time Again update plans

I have more updates about the blog to share in the future, but let’s start with something i can confirm right now.

Platformation Time Again not only will keep going as usual (if I could i would make it even more recurring of a rubric), but alongside the EXTEND addendums, a will be dedicating a sub-rubric to collections, compilations, and so on, especially due these are becoming more and more widespread as the industry is really scraping about everything in their back catalogue, and platformers (alongside beat em ups) are a big part of this surge of “new money for old rope”.

Specific rules are being written as of now, but it’s 100 % a thing that will happen regardless.

A couple new EXPRESSO reviews will arrive very soon, in the meantime, and you can read my review of the recently released Heart Of The Beast of you so desire.

See ya.

Nintendo Direct, TGS 2026: the Level 5, the Pink Chainsaw and The Wardrobe

I’m mostly content with what the latest Nintendo Direct announced, and i found some announcements i cared about still even in terms of this year’s TGS, which ended 1 day earlier because of a typhoon alert.

Honestly surprised and pleased to see Nintendo is focusing on Metroid more than expected, with Metroid Ravenous, i really should actually get around to play Dread (yeah, eggs on his face, etc.).

I was watching the Nintendo Direct (a bit less how the Age Of Calamity remaster port offers a measly discount and no real upgrade path, not feeling like shelling 60 bucks again for a game i actually 100% completed, especially as of now), then saw the Level 5 announcements, and damn, Level 5, why couldn’t you have croaked a few years ago?

Sometimes dead is better, indeed.

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