12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 59: Area 407/Tape 407 (2012)

In our quest to maybe eventually one day review all the dinosaur films ever made, i had to wonder if we missed something.

We features dinosaur comedies, dinosaur battle royales, virtual dinosaurs of the future, some really decrepit pieces of dinosaur media, and an over excess of soldiers fighting raptors.

Heck, we even did see attempts at mixing the dinosaurs with a found footage film in the very decent and mostly realized The Lost Dinosaurs, and today we found him a play-date of sorts with something i never heard once about, and i had to stumble upon by combing upon lists of dinosaur films.

and i mean “stumble” because you wouldn’t guess a movie called Area 407/Tape 407 would be abotu dinosaurs, which i guess should count as a spoiler. I suppose?

Let’s be real, it’s not that much of a spoiler when you have the poster art for the film sport the recognizable “triple clawed scratchmark” that might as well spell “Velociraptors”, or a Garfield creepypasta abomination, i suppose.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] The Thing With Feathers (2025) | Corvus Surplus

At first i thought this was the marketing trying to trojan horse this Benedict Cumberbatch movie as a horror film when in reality it was a thriller or something… and i almost wish it was the case.

Based on the short novella “Grief Is The Thing With Feathers” by Max Porter, this movie adaptation sees a recently widowed husband, left to raise his two kids after his wife suddendly passes away, and he has a breakdown, leading to him allucinating the giant crow-man from his drawings (he works as an illustrator for children books), which starts mocking his anguish but eventually become visible to his children too, and an oddly supportive force there to help the family move past their loss.

It’s like a benign take on Babadook, yet again, but the problem is that the film, despite good intentions and Cumberbatch trying his best, the characters and grief drama are so overdone, one note, and it being a horror does not help the concept, since it just goes for some cliched, cheap visuals and ill-fitting jumpscares, just a mesh of horror elements as token as the grief drama ones.

On one hand, i do like the scenes with the giant crowman, i do, even if just for visual entertaiment, since they do undermine any attempt at making the drama itself work, but on the other hand, the drama is undercooked anyway and it’s just too nice to work as a horror film either, so it feels stuck in between, not helped by the fact it’s also a bit of slog that goes exactly where you’d think it would, and just repeats itself over and over.

I don’t think this is a bad film, it means well, it tries but sadly it just doesn’t work either way you slice it.

[EXPRESSO] Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 (2025) | Hind N Seek

Predictably so, we’re back for more FNAF movie escapades, and i’m back to still not knowing (or caring) much about the series, but curious enough to check these films out.

The events of the first film that went down that night at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria became a local legend, leading to a “Fazfest” being held in town.

The protagonist’ little sister, Abby, misses her animatronic friends (more correctly, the children’ souls bound inside them), but things go south as she’s approached by a new menace, the Marionette, and we explore the original Freddy Fazbear establishment, and learn of its sordid secrets.

I didn’t expect much, the first one i thought it was okay, middling but about what you would expect… but in retrospect, that might have been a fluke of sorts.

This sequel is just drivel, lazy slop, just a random mish mash of stuff cobbled together, with no structure, no cinematic structure, more interested in mimicking verbatim stuff that i suppose happens in the games, as this time series’ creator, Scott Cawthon, is the only one credited for the screenplay, and clearly doesn’t care that this is a film and not a videogame, more interested with dated, inane preoccupations of “not being enough like the games” and confusing “lore” for “plot”.

It’s just so lazy, cliched and downright stupid it’s actually insulting, even for a children’s horror film, one clearly aware that it can squeeze any clump of shit and it won’t matter to the box office (or its establishe fanbase)…. so does exactly that.

Even worse than the actors trying but unable to save the movie from itself, it’s how it ultimately amounts to little more than a big set-up and lore dumpage for the third one, more than its own thing.

Can’t wait to be swindled again!

[EXPRESSO] Shelby Oaks (2025) | Paranormal Tapes

In the early 2000s, the early days of internet, a group of teens making content for a paranormal Youtube channel all go missing after investigating the abandoned small town of Shelby Oaks.

Fear that it might a ploy to boost viewership turns to tragedy as most of the crew is finally found, dead and brutally mutilated, aside from one of the channel’s creators, Mia, still missing.

For the following 12 years, her sister Riley has kept searching for Mia, and is now collaborating in a documentary about the case, with Riley’s husband hoping this will – at least – give them closure so they can start a family as they planned before the incident.

Things soon go even more south as a man shows up to Riley’s house and immediatly shoots himself in the head, while holding onto a bloodied cassette tape with the label reading “Shelby Oaks”…

Interestingly, this is not a found footage movie either, it starts off as one, has sequences shot in that fashion, but it has a traditionally styled narrative at the heart of it, one that veers into the supernatural possession subgenre, with a bit of folk horror too.

Yet this is not the jumpscare laden fest some might think, at all, being proper spooky and atmospheric but also NOT one of those to conflate that into an excuse to show bugger all.

It’s quite competently put together too, with some decent acting, solid production values, and it clearly made with respect for the genre as a whole, even though it’s hold back by its various inspirations and reverent references that do come off as pastiche (and a kinda shaky third act).

It has that roughness of debut films (because it is), but still, it’s a decent first feature lenght by critic-turned-director Chris Stuckmann.

The Spooktacular Eight #32: Saint Maud (2019)

I guess it’s a new tradition for the rubric to end on something “nun themed”, but we’re doing something a bit more recent this time too, with 2019’s Saint Maud.

Again, like i said in the Possessor review, it might feel like a lifetime ago due to the pandemic, but yes, 2019 is recent in my book, and i wanted to check this out in cinemas (even more as it got really good critical reception) but it never came out here, so i imported a UK Bluray and we’re finally getting to it now.

The premise sees a nurse named Katie fail to save the life of a patient in her care, which prompts her to quit, only to return sometime later, calling herself Maud, as a devout Catholic working again as anurse, for a private paliative care in an English seaside town.

One day she gets tasked to care for Amanda, a hedonistic dancer who’s got a terminal stage four case of lymphoma (as in: cancer), who starts fearing for the black nothing awaiting her after death, making Maud believe that God has tasked her to comfort and convert an atheist’s soul, becoming obsessed with saving her from damnation, at all costs..

Continua a leggere

The Spooktacular Eight #29: The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)

Something else we never covered here in Spooktacular Eight (or the blog, if i remember correctly), the “killer hand subgenre” of horror.

Ok, “subgenre” is being very generous, “microgenre” is more correct, as there’s notmuch to cover, “Hand” from the Addams Family doesn’t count, so it’s mostly this (kinda, not really, for reasons i will explain), 1963’s The Crawling Hand, 1981’s The Hand and 1999’s Idle Hands.

No, ironically Manos doesn’t count either, so doesn’t the classic scene with Ash’s hand in Evil Dead 2, nor does more recent stuff like Talk To Me, despite a hand being relevant to the plot and not just a thing that happens in a random scene of the movie, or just a segment of an anthology like in Dr’s Terror House Of Horrors (1965).

But by that logic i shouldn’t count 1924’s Hands Of Orlac (of which this could be considered a sorta of remake, not the first anyway) or this movie either….but before that, plot.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] The Black Phone 2 (2025) | Nightmare Lake Camp Winter Massacre

The Black Phone 2 it’s a direct sequel, yes, but one to a movie with a definitive, unambigous ending, as Blumhouse figured it could order a sequel regardless since the first one was a critical and financial success, with most of the same cast and director too.

I guess why not since the Nightmare In Elm Street series has been MIA since 2010, so might as well turn a sequel that really didn’t need to exist into a replacement of sorts for that, with a dash of Friday The 13^th.

Yeah, it’s the MEGAN 2.0 kind of sequel, minus the fact that this is still a horror film, just a different one than the first.

At the end of the first movie, Finn did manage to kill the serial killer known as The Grabber and escape from his murder basement, becoming famous as the killer only survivor.

4 years after, Finn’s sister, Gwen, is suddendly getting dreams of getting phone calls from a black phone and seeing visions of 3 boys getting chased in a winter mountain camp called “Alpine Lake”, alongside ones of the deceased serial killer…

It’s actually good, they did manage to actually pull off this kind of sequel by working around what was done in the script for the first film (in this case by leveraging the supernatural aspect), managing to spun a follow up that might actually have been intended to exist all along, bring back the villain and have a solid atmosphere, good characters and some creepy shit.

It’s a bit longer than it needed to, the 80s filter it’s a bit excessive, but it also does enough to add its own flavor to the formula, and despite the concept it works, giving even more closure and being even more “sequel proof”. Hopefully.

the Midtober Post Of Pokemon, Halloween Movies releases and Stuff

So yeah, let’s do a “checkpoint” post.

Movies wise, most of the big or relevant releases here have been pushed for a Halloween or Halloween adjacent release, meaning it will all be crammed in 2 weeks and so far it has mostly been drought (aside from Ari Aster’s Eddington and the new Guadagnino film, After The Hunt), so it’s gonna be a mess to play catch up.

At least the Chainsaw Man film comes out a week before Halloween, where not only they decided to release the Toxic Avenger reboot (guess i’m gonna watch this one, after all), but the very same days also premiere here the new Luc Besson Dracula film (a weird proposal i must say), Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein and the new Lanthimos sci-fi comedy Bugonia.

Also, i have to get around to see Alice In Borderland Season 3, i meant to but still haven’t at the time of writing.

in terms of Switch 2 releases, i will be doing EXPRESSO reviews of Pokemon Legends ZA (which i got today because Nintendo itself broke D1) and later Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment, at my own pace but since the full reviews will be late (especially late in the case of the new Hyrule Warriors game), these will come out as soon as possible.

Maybe i’ll whip up a hands on of that Bubsy 4D, since they released a sizeable demo on Steam and apparently it’s good, actually good, not just comparatively better than shit.

[EXPRESSO] Together (2025) | Unitology Romance

A couple in their 30s, Tim and Millie has decided to move to into the usual house in the middle of the woods, making a radical change in their lives, basically being very distant from their former friends, acquaintaces and workplaces, while also going through a rough patch.

As they try to adapt to their new home, they stumble upon a hole in the ground where they meet with a supernatural force that brings them together, literally, as their bodies become magnetized to each other, and their flesh starts fusing as one…

Together is directed and written by Michael Shanks, and if nothing else the main performances by Franco and Brie are more than good enough to help carry this movie through its flaws.

For example, it just feels it was haphazardly built upon the setpieces, with everything else around it feeling like crutches that exist only to provide some token structure, uneven pacing while the main basic theme of “codependency body horror” remains surface level from start to tend, the character’s motivations seems murky and contrived, confused as its messaging, to the point some might read the final twist as a trans allegory… though was probably never meant as such.

Plus, the main concept itself is very basic for the subgenre, the idea is decent enough (though it allegedly rips off the short “A Folded Ocean” by Ben Brewer) but the execution confusingly making wonder if the film itself it’s afraid to result uncomfortable….a body horror movie, mind you.

Yet, Together has a decent atmosphere, it’s decently directed, it’s technically quite sound too, and it’s not boring, it’s – again- decent, definitely not a bad debut film but just feels like it’s “close but no cigar”, with issues that a couple of rewrites (or more experience) could have fixed.

The Spooktacular Eight #27: Possessor (2020)

While unearthing gems or trash champions of yore is fun, i also want to cover more modern films in this rubric, and today we remedy that by reviewing a film that i feel somehow was ignored or put to the sides, more due to its unfortunate release timing than anything else.

I mean, if 2020 didn’t hit the world with a pandemic, maybe this and the Invisible Man remake/reboot would be better known, not that they’re “obscure” or were treated as pariahs by the press.

“This” being Possessor, a sci-fi horrot thriller by Brandon Cronenberg, yes, the son of body horror maestro David Cronenberg, who’s still making movies of varying quality, like the more recent The Shrouds (and the 2022 Crimes Of The Future movie that isn’t actually a remake of his older film of the same name).

The premise is immediatly gripping, set in a cyberpunk-ish future where an assassin, Tasya Vos, carries over her murderous assignment by possessing other people bodies, but finds herself fighting for control of her lastest host body, belonging to a man named Colin, the boyfriend of a wealthy CEO’s daughter, whom is also being forced at his data mining company in a menial role.

Continua a leggere