[EXPRESSO] HIM (2025) | They Forgot That I Am

If Opus cemented my belief the “eat the rich”-”social horror” strain of horror has been overdone to death … HIM is just further, further proof.

To be fair, it’s not that the idea of a horror movie set in the “american football/rugby” biz about its status of unofficial national religion is bad in itself.

The concept has potential, but the movie doesn’t explore anything, and i mentioned Opus, because it’s basically the same plot, just substitute the music biz and the “Not-Jamestown” commune led by old popstar with a brutalist football dungeon governated by an aging, nearly retired legendary NFL quarterback, Isaiah White giving a second chance to Cameron “Cam” Cade, an aspiring quarterback suffering from head trauma that could jeopardize its entire career, so Cam accepts do to a special training in the isolated facility led by Isaiah….

Like Opus, the entire thing is thinly held together by its lead actor performance, in this case Marlon Wayans playing Isaiah… or would, despite Wayans’ great performance this time i feel it’s not enough to suffice, especially with his character mostly devoid of a personality, and the entire thing being too obvious, downright spelt out as the movie it’s too afraid you won’t get some of the more obvious symbolism ever displayed, all the themes sanded down to be as broad and generic as possible, meaning nothing as the movie confuses parroting an arthouse modern “social horror” aesthetic for actual substance, since it has none, it’s all “pigskin deep”, talking about “no pain no gain” on and on yet unable to actually commit to its ideas.

While aware of its inherent silliness, it doesn’t know how to use that to enhance the horror, so it just amounts to a big ball of stupid, of well produced imagery that ultimately means nothing.

Neon Maniacs (1986) [REVIEW] | Thirsty Little Undead Flowers

Consider this an appetizer for some of horror trash serving this month, something to set the mood, an hors d’ouvre if you will.

One pure in 80s trash, given the title its was either gonna be that or a modern throwback to 80s horror filth of the lower alphabet ranks.

Immediatly this feels like a tie-in film made to promote some 80s style horror themed trading cards series that would now cost fortunes in the second hand collector market, giving off a very cheap knock-off Garbage Pail Kids vibe, i mean, the titular “Neon Maniacs” are presented with a random fisherman finding some staged photo of someone in very cheap costumes in a book with the symbol/crest of a…. gecko eatings its tail, not like the uroborus symbol is trademarked, but whatever.

The plot sees these demonic maniacs (which including a biker, a crocodile man, a Hills Have Eyes looking motherfucker and even an undead samurai, move over Yoroi) terrorize and slaughter random horny teens at night, more specifically crashing the birthday party of a girl, Natalie, whom ends up surviving (as she is a virgin, since its the rule, as it was harassing people for that back in the era) but with no one believing her accounts, aside from a guy with a crush for her and someone that witnessed the “neon maniacs” in action before.

Despite this, she has to find a way to prepare for when they strike again… after they leave their home base below the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

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[EXPRESSO] Mantopus! (2025) | Octaman’s Father

Had to see a newly released on Amazon Prime Video film called “Mantopus!” that is retro styled meta comedy about a now washed horror director finding the titular “man-octopus” hybrid in a mysterious antique shop and deciding to use it as the star of his final horror film, Mantopus, a Creature From The Black Lagoon knock-off.

It’s one of these modern retro styled comedies akin to stuff like The Lost Skeleton Of Kadavra, but set in the late 50s-early 60s, arking back to the drive-in era of monster movies, with a Michael Gough-looking director (as the whole movie it’s basically a tribute to him), a slimeball making stuff like the fictional “Frankenstein In Texas” to the dismay of his producer, running “not-American International Pictures”, but the director becomes mad and starts using the monster to eliminate his “enemies”.

I will say it’s an interesting proposition, because while it’s not too hard by now to emulate the visual style of these shlocky films, you ironically gotta have decent actors able to deliberately act bad the purposefully stock dialogue that seems somehow dubbed in post even when it’s obviously not, but Mantopus manages to get that and most importantly gets right the feel of these old movies, and the tone, that both makes fun but also celebrates with sincerity these films, that actually likes the drive-in trashfests about monsters with little to no budgets but high on violence and “nudity”.

It’s all done with affection instead of spite or mockery, the overacting is lovely as its the deliberate awkward delivery of basically every line and stock discussion, it’s a quite fun film, though it’s a very niche movie made for a very specific audience, one that loves cheesy horror of yore and will notice the posters aren’t for made up old movies.

[EXPRESSO] La Valle Dei Sorrisi (2025) | Libera Nos

I’ve lamented before how Italy in terms of horror output nowadays is a phantom of what it used to be, and how most new horror films are either subpar shite, barely sufficient, and they mostly seem to be made by people ashamed of making horror films, so they don’t commit.

Thankfully this is not always the case, and movies like the recently released here La Valle Dei Sorrisi (The Valley Of Smiles) by Paolo Strippoli (A Classic Horror Story) are a good sign that we can make actually good horror films able to compete on an international level.

The premise see the city of Remis, a small, isolated mountain village where everyone is strangely happy and smiling and welcoming, receiving the new ph teacher, Sergio, a man haunted by a mysterious past, that is then led by Michela, the local tavern manager, to learn of the secret behind the townfolks’ happiness.

That is, a strange ritual where everyone lines up one night per week to embrace Matteo, a teenager with the power to absorb people’s pain. Sergio then tries to help Matteo back, to save him from the role of absolver forced upon him by his father and the townspeople, but accidentally helps him uncover a dark side to its powers…

It has some familiar elements seen in other A24-styled pictures, but it manages to do an interesting spin on the “village of the damned” and “chosen saint” storylines, starting off unassuming but gradually building a notable atmosphere, delivering some surprises and managing to develop well Sergio’s as well as Matteo’s character arc of teenage self-discovery.

The final could have been better but otherwise i was really, really stunned by how good it was, amazing performances, engrossing characters, unsettingly creepy and barely reliant on any graphical violence.

Highly recommended.

[EXPRESSO] The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) | The Warrens

As i guess many did, i approached Conjuring Last Rites with tired obbligation, and i’m sad to say the movie just gave off that very same vibe in return.

Yes, i basically gave up expecting much from the series after the spinoffs and James Wan not directing anymore, but this is the final installment of the Conjuring series (and its cinematic universe, for spoiler heavy reasons), i do expect a better baseline of quality for these.

So this feels like an extra disappointing and limp finale, but first plot.

Final Rites goes back to chronicle the Warren’s last case, about an entity haunting the Smurl family in Pennsylvania, 5 years after they basically retired to do university work and live a normal middle aged life with their young adult daughter, whom also seems to share her mother’s ability to sense spirits…

While the series is mostly focused on the characters more than gore or blood, Final Rites takes it way too far as the Warren’s plotline is an overly long soap opera-ish slice of life mostly detached from the Smurl haunting, with the movie taking forever to become what you wanted to begin with, and when it finally does its incredibly underwhelming.

To say nothing of the final reveal that tethers between making some sense and being a cheap, stupid, frustrating arsepull because they couldn’t think of anything else, maybe.

I honestly personally enjoyed it even less than The Nun 2 (still more than La Llorona), the only reasons this one doesn’t score lower is because of the great performances by the cast, (especially by Farmiga and Wilson as the Warrens), the residual characterization work and the fact there’s a sense of finality to it.

Even though i do hope this is the actually the end for mainline Conjuring films.

[EXPRESSO] Dangerous Animals (2025) | Three On A Sharkhook

New shark movie with a big budget, a widespread cinematic release and it’s not a Jason Staham trashfest romp, another gonzo shark movie about an Esper Shark (TM) or something done with lunch money-allowance budget?

What has the gone world to?

Apparantly something good and conceptually simple, i guess that’s why it took so long for someone to make a good shark movie that also plays the “Uno reverse” card on the concept without overcomplicating it or being outlandish.

Meaning that Dangerous Animals is about a serial killer that hides his murderous calling by posing as a shark cage experience activity for tourist in Australia (which fittingly all good modern shark movies seem to hail from), killing people and filming as he feeds them to the sharks.

His next victim is a surfer girl, Zephyr, living a nomadic sort of lifestyle, whom finds herself kidnapped by the killer in preparation for his macabre rituals…

it’s so simple that a shark movie like this hasn’t been made before, but on the flipside it’s actually pretty good, thanks to a good budget, very solid acting and good characters, with a resilient leading lady/final girl and a good psychotic villain that does have a humourous side that actually makes him more believable as he use it alongside some charm to better camouflage his true self, without going overboard and making him feel cartoony or excessive.

It’s also pretty gory without going into full splatter territory, going for a more realistic tone to the chases and attempts of his victims to escape his grasp, making for a very tense film that is less predictable than one would expect, yet very satisfying even when it hits the expected notes, one also basically devoid of filler, exactly as long as it needs.

Pretty good.

[EXPRESSO] Locked (2025) | Small Theft Auto

Locked has a simple, yet fairly intriguing hook: a small time thief desperate for cash one day finds a strangely unlocked high-tech smartcar (like a Tesla that doesn’t randomly burst into fire) to loot it, but once in he then realizes he’s locked into the vehicle, and gets contacted by the owner, whom remotely controls everything in the car, making it act as a trap for whoever tried to steal it.

The guy then has to survive locked inside, while the unseen owner keeps torturing him, playing mind games and keeping the complex trap scenario of his own design going…

Sadly for Locked, this is the kind of script with a decent-good idea/concept…. but ultimately doesn’t really know what to do with it outside of slightly escalating the tortures, and boiling the explanation for this cruel trap to basically the same “eat the rich” surface level class warfare bit A24 movies have done to death recently, just done in a more utilitarian and even more shallow fashion, with the car owner (Anthony Hopkins) also written as being completely callous, a straight up empathy-free psycho, for better or worse.

It’s also not tense enough to make you question for real if escape is even possible to begin with, which is an issue (as is the unsatisfying ending) but i will say it’s not boring, even though it’s a film carried entirely by Bill Skarksgard’s performance as the low tier criminal that is forced by circumstance to thieve and such in order to care for his family, and if Hopkins kinda phones it in (literally for most of the film), he seems to be having fun with such a stock Jigsaw wannabe, which does help.

Overall, Locked feels middling, not bad but makes one wonder for the movie that could have been.

P.S.: This also is another foreign remake of a 2019 Argentinian movie called 4X4 (which has now has been remade thrice), itself having a similar premise to a 1998 direct-to-video film named Captured.

[EXPRESSO] Weapons (2025) | It Won’t Attract The Worm

From Zach Cregger, the director of Barbarian….. which i didn’t saw (yeah, i know), so keep that in mind cause i was able to see this as it actually got a theatherical release here.

Regardless, i was captivated by the marketing for Weapons, as it was just first teased with a trailer of children running from their houses at night and a message asking if you saw where they went, and even the proper trailer later out did the now rare thing of actually intriguing prospective audiences instead of giving away the entire thing.

The movie chronicles the mysterious disappearing of an entire class of middle schoolers in a quaint american town, with the children all seemingly simply darting out of their houses at a precise hour of the night, running away somewhere in the dark and never been seen after that, with the police unable to find them despite questioning the only child in that class that didn’t disappear, and their teacher, whom the townfolks start blaming for the whole ordeal.

We see the mystery slowly unfold as we see their point of view and personal experiences of the events that follow, eventually coming together to give a complete picture of what was actually going… which i will not spoil, but it’s pretty creepy stuff.

Even before that, the mystery is quite compelling, you do wanna see where this is gonna go, and it’s most likely not what you imagine, it’s far from obvious, i’ll say that much, maybe a bit old fashioned, but still quite captivating, i for one also didn’t expect to basically turn into sort of an arthouse Beware Children At Play for a bit (even if it not really that either), pretty wild and with some nasty gore.

Definitely an interesting one, quite good stuff,

Pinata Survival Island AKA Demon Island (2002) [REVIEW] | Cinco De Pantyo

This is the “something” i eventually went with as an excuse for having to cut down One Piece August reviews (which are coming up soon after this), some rando film i had in my Amazon Prime Video watchlist, Demon Island…. under its Italian title, Pinata: Terror Island (still showing the title of Pinata: Survival Island in the film itself, as you do), which immediatly has primo “please rent me from Blockbuster, please!” direct-to-video trash film energy.

And now is a 20 years old aged serving of trash filet, hopefully so, let’s roll the dice with something from the directors of King Cobra (the cobra killer movie with Pat Morita i did review back then), National Lampoon’s Dorm Daze and the tv mini-series Deadtime Stories.

One might wonder why retitle a movie called “Demon Island” as “Pinata” or “Pinata Survival Island”…. unless you actually read a synopsis and realize it’s a bit more direct, since that’s the source of the daemons.

You see, an isolated tribe, cursed by spirits for their sins, decides to craft a pinata to house all their evil, and then sends the thing into the fuckin ocean to get rid of it and advert famines and such.

Not their problem anymore, i guess, so its up to a couple of teens to find the pinata on a island, while they are there to do a weird fraternity-sorority thing during Cinco De Mayo, which is getting fraternity guys and sorority girls put into teams of two and…..basically do a Senran Kagura questline that somehow never happened but easily could have, as in they compete for who can find the most underwear strewn around the island, with a prize of 20000 bucks for the winners.

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[EXPRESSO] Bring Her Back (2025) | Erlic’s Foster House

After the surprise high quality debut of Talk To Me, Michael and Danny Philippou are back with a new supernatural horror film, Bring Her Back.

The plot sees two orphaned step-siblings, Andy and Piper (whom has partial sight) being sent to live with Laura, a former counselor and psychologist that also foster a mute young boy, Oliver, after finding their father dead in the shower.

They are welcomed warmly by Laura (whom also has lost her daughter Cathy years ago) but Andy realizes that’s there something strange going on, as they are part of an occult ritual held by Laura, with the intent of “bringing back” Cathy from the dead, at all costs…

the brothers Philippou again play with what on paper sound like not that great or original, but it’s actually quite gripping, given the rules of the ritual itself (which gets even more disgusting and evil as we learn more of it), some really nasty and disgusting gore, and an incredible villain in Laura, whom is able to undermine the siblings relationship, manipulate them and do any ruthless shit in order to fulfill her desperate bout to see her daughter again, putting up a perfect facade while also being somewhat sympathetic in her plight.

The siblings also are relatable and believable characters, haunted by an ambivalent father figure, unresolved traumas and various issues (both physical and psychological) from their past , feeding the emotional core of the film themes but also being a source of some needed comedic relief here and there, and while some reveals are expected, some element are more original in their execution than what they lead on, plus the relentless pacing also feeds the increasingly disgusting nature of the ritual.

Good stuff, can’t wait to see what the Philippous will be cooking up next.