[EXPRESSO] Don’t Look At The Demon (2022) | The Haunting Of Mika Melatika

Odd as it sounds, there are many flavors of mediocre, and Don’t Look At Demon is one i’m fairly familiar with, especially if we’re talking about possession/haunting movies, which i will dub the “decency skimming step”, since it has its moments that might make it a decent film, but inevitably everytime the movie does something a bit more interesting than usual, it immediatly undoes any “advantage” by retreating back to trite shit or to a jumpscare by a ghost/entity.

The baseline isn’t bad per se, not original as we follow the Skeleton Crew, a troupe that shoots one of those “paranormal investigation shows” and has come to Malesia searching for new content.

Thanks to the actual medium woman in their group, Jules, they select the case of a couple, Ian and Martha, living in a remote house that seems to be actually haunted. Upon arriving, Jules does not feel anything strange, but turns out it was true.

Otherwise it would be a movie about a dysfunctional tv troupe coming to Malesia to see monks hammer protection tattoos into women with a picket and not much else.

Characters are fairly typical, acting is decent though, and the movie using Malesian folklore about spirits (spirits of unborn children, in this case) does help to make it more interesting than the usual christian themed haunting movies… or it would if the main demon didn’t mostly act or was confronted upon pretty much how it would in any other possession movie with christianity as the main (or only) religious background, so it doesn’t even manage to capitalize on that properly.

On the upside the narrative is fairly fast moving, you get to see the expected possession gymnastics and telekinesis throws, and it’s just 90 minutes, so it’s not awful, just average and fairly forgettable.

[EXPRESSO] Zombie 100: Bucket List Of The Dead (2023) | Cross-Z Shark! Are you ready?

Given the success of the live action adaptation of Haro Aso’s Alice In Borderland manga, it’s no wonder Netflix also ordered a live action movie based on one of his other works, the zombie comedy Zombie 100: Bucket List Of The Dead, also adapted into an anime TV series that started airing this July.

The premise sees Akira, a young man working for a japanese “black company” , bullied by his boss, working non stop like a robot, sleeping in the office… until a good ol’ fashioned zombi apocalypse happens. So finally free, he jots down a list of 100 things he wants to do before death (or “undeath”) catches up with him, eventually finds his best friend and encounters other survivors….

Yeah, this is a fun and – almost – novel twist to the over-explored (both for drama and comedy) zombie apocalypse mold, the spin here is quite fun and light-hearted, making for a slice of life episodic narrative that…would have simply worked better as a series instead of a 2 hour movie feeling like episodes of a TV series stapled together, making me wonder if this was the compromise to avoid having both adaptations cannibalizing each other.

Thought this live action film is far more “sanitized” compared to the manga, i guess to make it feel akin to the Netflix Alice In Borderland adaptation that mostly eskwed fanservice or sexual content (though gore is abundant and far from hidden), but honestly it feel longer that it needs and characters are likeable enough but fairly stock.

Though it also features a mutant zombie shark that’s already better than the entire film “Zombie Shark”, fought in sentai style because the lead actor played Ryuga Banjo in Kamen Rider Build.

So, overall, it’s decent enough, very cute, for what it is.

[EXPRESSO] Meg 2: The Trench (2023) | Cranking It Up

As one of that quite enjoyed the first The Meg (believe it or not at the time it had some very split reception from genre fans), i was waiting for its sequel arrive in theathers, pretty giddy about it too, though honestly shark movie fans nowadays pretty much HAVE to make do with anything in terms of theathrical releases.

After all, we are in such an ironic drought that even The Asylum has to commission their mockbusters to the Polonia Bros, so yeah, i’m quite glad we get more “megalomachia” as Jason Statham once again dons the eco-warrior kick ass action hero character whose name i honestly forgot, not that you’re gonna call him that (leave to a side-villain to scream his name when confronting him), and this time he ventures with a new submarine alongside his old and new sealab companions, with the idea to go even further below to where the “megs” prosper, but accidents happen as they also stumble upon an illegal underwater mining operations, and explosions let many of the deep sea creatures reach the surface and start causing the mess, including a giant octopus and what are basically abyss deep “varan-raptors”, frigging dinosaurs.

While the first one was fun, this one is arguably better, with more variety of locations, creatures and set pieces, since we don’t spend half (or all) the movie in the usual high tech underwater lab where the megalodons are kept, but we quickly move to the abyss trench and its peculiar fauna, the mining company installation, even some tropical resort island, and we even get monster vs monster action.

Honestly Meg 2: The Trench has pretty much everything you’d want from one of these dumb ass big budget shark/dinosaur films, very entertaining, with enjoyable characters and abundant over the top action.

[EXPRESSO] The Haunting Of The Queen Mary (2023) |

From the director of Dracula Untold, a maritime horror movie that’s also technically a Halloween movie too, since it shifts between 2 (well, two and a half, to be correct) main storylines taking place on the titular ship, now sitting as a tourist historical attraction rife with horrific past events, like the massacre that happened on the Queen Mary during Halloween of 1938, where the father of a family of entertainers went on an unmitigated killing spree.

In modern times, the Calder family visit the ship for a business trip, but the young child comes across some of the ghosts that haunt the luxury translantic, and in an attempt to save the lost soul of their boy, the Calders enter the ship again to try and learn of his terrible secrets and centhury old mysteries that are more than “spook tour material”…

I was honestly pleasantly surprised by this one, though this lead to some frustration as the set-up it’s good, it’s great, it’s rife with potential but the execution kinda stumbles, with the direction being uneven and falling back on jumpscares or cliches even though it doesn’t really needs it, having already established a solid atmosphere and having some fairly tense sequences.

The 1938 sections are by far the more interesting, visually intriguing, and while the narration does a solid job in slowly revealing how the massacre went down back then and what it implies for the modern day events… these often aren’t as strong in terms of either story, action or characters, feeling overall kinda uneven, and some questionable choices (like how the “dream scenes” are shown and the direction lacking confidence at times) stop this one to being straight up good.

Still, as it is, The Haunting Of The Queen Mary it’s a decent-and-above supernatural horror thriller.

Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse (2021) [REVIEW] | Sequelgeddon #sharksncrocspartdeux

I eventually had to find out this existed, because words like “sequels” don’t mean anything anymore, even more when we dwelve in the “homegrown/DIY” territory of the shark movies, where one name echoes through the vast oceans, Mark Polonia, and he stands atop of his carboard throne, commanding beasts of papermaciè and plastic (and whatever the budget can afford) to fend off the rare adventurers setting off in the desperate quest for the homegrown crown.

So powerful he is that only he can received the task of doing a sequel of a low budget shark movie he didn’t originally make, as Jurassic Shark was directed and produced by Brett Kelly, but that isn’t even the stranger thing about Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse.

That would be this one standing as the “official” sequel, as Brett Kelly also directed Raiders Of The Lost Shark, which was a surprise kind of sequel to Jurassic Shark, as i discussed when reviewing it.

But this one gets to have the Jurassic Shark name and slap a 2 on the end, for whatever reason, and so it kinda surprising the plot has anything to do with the first, as the oil company from the first movie (whom accidentally released the megalodon) is back and wanting to drill for oil of the coast of Cat Island (not that one), and its up to the workers of the oil rig – that accidentally discover the beast – to try and save what they can from its unfeeling jaws… And its amazing inflatable fin.

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L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (The Island Of The Fishmen) (1979) [REVIEW] | Dr. Moreau From The Deep

I guess fate does exist, because i randomly picked up at a local flea market a DVD copy of “L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce” (translating to “The Island Of The Fishmen”, literally) for less than 3 bucks, figured i’d review that for a lark, only to find out this movie is actually known among fans of B-movies as “Screamers”, in its edited and reworked version handled by Roger Corman that cuts some footage, inserts a new opening and adds extra gore.

While also using false advertising in marketing with text claimining it’s about “people turned inside out”. This is an utter lie, because it also implies this is a horror film…. yes but it’s also a fantasy adventure flick that also pinches ideas from Island Of Dr. Moreau (and also reminding one of the Corman’s Humanoids From The Deep, for example) and uses horror cliches like a mad scientist creating a humanoid hybrid race of people, but it also has heavy adventure movie elements like the natives and the sunken civilizations and stuff.

So if you have memories on seeing this as “Screamers” on TV or VHS, sorry, we’re talking about the original, untouched italian version of “The Island Of The Fishmen”.

Also, i promise there are no One Piece jokes here, tempting as they were to make.

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[EXPRESSO] Run Rabbit Run (2023) | Babad’oh

A new Netflix psychological horror thriller involving a mother and her child, looking vaguely Goodnight Mommy-ish from the trailer, let’s give it a punt.

The plot follows a single mother and her daughter, whom happen to take in a rabbit that one show up waiting for them at their door, take him in as the daughter really wants to, but after that she starts remembering events of a “previous life”, freaking out the mother and eventually digging up the family’s past, especially the mother’s late sister….

The latter part was shown in the trailer…..but it shouldn’t, as it basically gives away too much of the “twist”, as you can assume and by large assume it right, because there’s really not much to it.

It’s clearly trying to follow in the wake of Babadook and Hereditary, with family traumas festering into nightmares and dysfunctions as beholden secrets try to claw their way out of the darkness, but the movie just potters about the same thing over and over, looking good with an amazing cinematography and some great acting by the lead, but it’s all mood, atmosphere that belies nothing more than stale cliches that feel dull and pedestrian more than anything else.

A thin and predictable plot with mostly unlikeable, underdeveloped characters crown the usual mother vs daughter screaming scenes, bog standard “hallucination scenes” and equally generic bursts of violence, with the slow, slow burn to “reveal” nothing that hasn’t been already reiterated on ad nauseam by the movie itself since the very beginning, making the experience more tiresome than thrilling.

Plus it’s also very frustrating because there could have been something to this, it could, but the script it’s too afraid to dig deeper than the bare surface on any of its themes, so epidermis unbroken, the truth goes unspoken. ♫

Crocodile (1979) [REVIEW] | Thai Croc Jaws #sharksncrocspartdeux

Can’t get more basic than “Crocodile”, not “killer”, not “mutant”, nor “apocalypse”, just your plain old reptilian creature to not be confused with an alligator.

Which is arguably kind of a lie, since this is an obscure Thai monster movie that was made – in unison – “to ride Jaws’ coat-tail”. I don’t even do this on purpose, there’s that big a chance even killer croc movies somehow can be linked back to it, either due to the decade of their release or the basic plot structure and popularized cliches.

Often it’s both, as “Crocodile” was released just years after Jaws rocked the box office, AND the plot it’s virtually identical… or is it?

Not to be confused with a 1978’s Korean movie also with the international title of “Crocodile”, from which this 1979 Thai film is edited from… and by that i’d say it borrows some stock footage from the 1978 one, i don’t know to what extend, since i couldn’t find a copy of the 1978’s film, because i do believe these are two different – yet almost identical sounding – movies, not one and the same.

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Robocroc (2013) [REVIEW] | Domo Wanigato #sharksncrocspartdeux

Police officer Murphy is shot down while confronting a criminal gang, but his body is found by a brood of crocodiles living in Detroit’s sewer system. They nurse him back to health, let him partake of their radioactive flesh, which helps him grow back the lost limbs, and eventually he reemerges into the public eye as the hybrid man-croc vigilante Robocroc.

This is NOT the plot of Robocroc, not that the actual one has anything to do with the movie spoofed in the title. It would took to much time and effort, and this is just not the way these post-Sharkenado low budget killer animal flicks do it. It must be stupid, but within the itsby bitsy budgets, which overtime seem to have gotten smaller and smaller, closer and closer to the “Polonia-sphere”.

So it also means this has more in common with Metal Gear Rising Revengeance than Robocop, as the plot involves a missile launch that goes awry, with the ejected part landing in a zoo, nanomachines coming out of it and into a female crocodile named Stella that happened to be nearby the capsule’s crash site, and these slowly turn her into a cyborg bent on eating his way through the special forces called into the enclosure, then escaping the facility to feed on random people fishing in a lagoon, stopping on dry land to feast on people guilty of driving quad bikes, and finally going for the big feast of a nearby aqua park full of teens partying.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #6: √964 Pinocchio (1991)

Have i gone completely insane, spotlighting this one for a Pinocchio-inspired retrospective?

But then again we never talk about some good ol’ japanese cyberpunk body horror… and i guess today is no different because we’re talking about 964 Pinocchio.

Also called “Screams Of Blasphemy” for its UK release. Whatever.

And no, i still have no clue if the numbers in the title mean anything aside indicating that there were other 963 “pinocchio/sex slaves” manifactured before him, since he’s got that tattooed on his back, branded like an utility.

Honestly i wasn’t sure about including this one, but for variety’s sake, fuck it, i’m not reviewing Pinocchio In Space. Despite the obvious allure.

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