[EXPRESSO] Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma (2026) | QueerAngela

Freshly released in theathers here, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma is a classic slasher for the ages… as in, this age, the modern age.

Kris is a queer horror director known for a Psycho remake from the prospective of the shower curtains, that has been tasked with directing the reboot of 80s cult slasher series Camp Miasma (a sort of Friday The 13^th crossed with Sleepaway Camp entity), as she is a notorious superfan, but she struggles under the pressure of her own ambition to do something fresh with it, and especially because of the studio push-back to have actress that played thef inal girl in the original film, Billy Presley, come back.

Kris is adamant about it, and decides to meet up nonetheless with Billy, whom has been pretty much living as a recluse in the same place where the first Camp Miasma film was shot….

Yes, it’s indeed a meta-horror that works both as tribute and satire of the 80s slasher, it’s significance today, how the sexual themes reflected anxieties of the era and how this applies in an age where sexuality is very different, especially from a queer prospective, but while it delivers a lot of kills, gore and hilariously excessive geysers of bloods, and it’s more heavy on comedy that you’d expect.

And while it does have an unique “meta twist” that isn’t quite what you’d expect, it’s also fairly straighforward – and deliberately unsubtle- in tackling the genre as a way of sexual self-discovery and emancipation, sold thanks to the amazing performances of Gillian Anderson and Hannah Heinbinder.

Though at times the pacing could be better, and frankly i would have preferred if it ended a scene earlier than it does, but still, Teenage, Sex And Death At Camp Miasma is quite good.

Bad CGI Sharks (2019) [REVIEW] | #thesharklist

With a title like that, you know you’re either in for something that will serve as a perfect snapshot of the era, or you’re gonna eat some rotten bait, punished for willingly walking into an ACME trap.

I do like how to the point it is, like, you already know how crap these modern shark movies are, we’re gonna come clean and maybe lower your expectations even further to the point you may actually like our film, if it can actually somehow rise above being another self-deprecating joke stretched to feature lenght runtime?

This one was also surprisingly elusive since it never streamed on something available here, and out of pure stubborness i ended up importing the US DVD release, i guess Wild Eye Releasing has an exclusive deal of sorts just with Mark Polonia.

That said, this is in a way the “bad shark movie to end all shark movies”, despite some issues we’ll go over, after we go over the plot, because Bad CGI Sharks actually has one.

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[EXPRESSO] Thanksgiving (2023) | Grum Not Included

It’s taken a lot of time, but even more of those “fake trailers for exploitation movies that don’t exist” shown on the Grindhouse are now a reality. 16 years later (12 after Hobo With A Shotgun actual feature film) Eli Roth has come back to make the “slasher Thanksgiving” film reality.

Makes sense, since there are no real notable “Thanksgiving” horror films that are slashers AND actually about Thanksgiving. again, Blood Rage doesn’t count, and i’d rather forget about Thankskilling, the movie unbothered to imply killer turkey cunnilingus. So let’s.

In a way, Thanksgiving it’s nothing special in itself, as in it’s a holiday slasher that starts on a fateful Thanksgiving day in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where a bunch of crazed holiday shoppers go mental while waiting for a Black Friday nighttime opening sale, ultimately smashing into the place, causing damages, many wounded and even some dead.

1 year later the protagonist teens that were on the scene (among others) get tagged on social media by a mysterious individual setting up a dinner table with their names on it, and eventually people are being killed by a mysterious murderer donning a pilgrim get-up and one of the many John Carver masks the city hands out by the bucketloads for the holiday.

There’s plenty of that…. “peculiar” Eli Roth style of dialogues and characterizations, but it fits the grindhouse tone, it definitely lives up to the gore you expect from an exploitation horror flick (no nudity though, oddly enough), the retro yet modern style it goes for it’s actually well crafted, embracing the absurd and stupid overall concept (death by black friday stampede is what sets the massacre off, after all), i honestly think it pretty much does everything it could with it.

Some primo dumb but hugely entertaining holiday slasher romp.

Piranhaconda (2012) [REVIEW] | Madsen-baiting #snakesofjune

Ah yes, the classic “go-to” choice when you and fellow shlock film makers have done every possible killer animal b-movie… doing another one by straight up mixing animals like Frankenstein if he was that desperate (and bored out of his skull) to bring something from the dead, regardless if it existed or not.

So pretty much like his incarnation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole.

Sadly there’s no Moral Orel cameo to be found here, just good old Jym Wynorski doing what he knows best: making cult creature features for SyFy and/or home video releases.

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[EXPRESSO] The Bubble (2022) | Comedy Out Of Time

Decided to dip my toes once again into the Netflix new releases, still not much luck.

The Bubble it’s honestly kinda sad as it has a nice idea, being a comedy happening on the set of the new movie in the fictional “Cliff Beasts” B-movie series, completely taking place in the hotel where the cast it’s quarantined in until the movie it’s finished.

The first problem is that The Bubble it’s a satirical comedy that not only loses all its edge as it dwells on the expected themes and almost comes off as hypocritical, poking fun at the movie industry when it was written in a rush in early 2021 in order to make itself relatable to the viewer, goes for a lot of comedy low-hanging fruits, and hopes the excellent cast of comedy actors would suffice.

The other problem is that it feels incredibly dated already and worse, it’s not really that funny, to be blunt.

It has its moments where it works, undeniably, so it’s not a completely laugh-free Netflix affair, and it’s not grating, but the straightforward approach and scattershot nature of the movie as a glorified series of improv sketches doesn’t help, and makes one wonder why the fuck it’s 2 hours long.

The self-awareness about content for content’s sake might have worked if it didn’t feel so depressingly leaning into the audience having compassion for it more than being entertained by, which gets extra depressing and ironic due to how incredibly ancient it feels out of the box.

It’s a shame because there could have been something to it, there’s an effort in making the premise work, but instead it comes off a depressing and kinda desperate comedy that even at peak freshness feel like it was imprisoned in a space capsule alongside Rita Repulsa.

Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws (2015) [REVIEW] | The Auckland Haunting

As said as the end of the Ghost Shark review, 2 years after that movie we would get… another movie. Called Ghost Shark 2, for sure, but being unrelated to the 2013 Ghost Shark movie produced by SyFy, because numbers are for idiots with their logic and assumptions of sequels.

We encountered many cases of titles implying the movie are sequels when they’re not, many times, but Ghost Shark 2 is a peculiar case, as it started as a fake trailer (well before the first Ghost Shark was even a thing, odd as it sounds) and eventually became a real movie, like Hobo With A Shotgun, after production of a feature version did start in Auckland back in 2010.

Yeah, this is a New Zealand production, and the movie wants you to know it takes place there, in Auckland, specifically, because why not.

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Shark Month BEGINS!

As promised, a monthful of shark movies starts now, but you’ll find it’s not quite totally about sharks, and some other ferocious fishes might be spotlighted for one reason or another, because here at Wise Cafe International we don’t discriminate about people getting eaten by anything or anyone… in movies.

But of course sharks are the main protagonist, it’s Shark Month after all!

Enjoy!

(btw, just managed to finally see A Promising Young Woman, holy shit!)

Mississippi River Sharks (2017) [REVIEW] | Senior Rodeo Daredevils

Mississippi River Sharks 2017.png

I’ve finally found a version with the original english voices (and in hindi, again), so time to review this one as well!

And it’s quite the shark dropping we have, because 1 minute in you’ve already seen the best part, it’s not even from the actual movie, it’s a clip from a fake in-movie shark series called Shark Bite, and this ties into the actual plot of the movie, with sharks attacking river boats in Mississippi and then disrupting a fish rodeo (possibly held by ol’ Jim Slater ) presented by the main lead of the fake Shark Bite movie series.

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