[EXPRESSO] The House (2022) | Trifecta Triumphant

New stopmotion animation film on Netflix with (also) animal people, you know i’m already in.

Even more since it’s a small anthology of 3 stories, one about a poor family meeting a miraculous proposal, one about an anxious ratman constructor trying to score estate success, and the last about an exhausted landlord, all tied together by revolving about the same house, while taking place in different epochs and with different kind of characters, going from humans to ratman and catmen.

The character models aren’t clay or the odd-papermaciè style seen in Mary Shelley’s Frankhole, but go for a very textured felt-wool look, with a very fuzzy feel juxtaposed to the horror atmosphere and visuals, even though just the first story has actual supernatural horror elements, there’s always a sinister or weird tone to most of the events, with some very stilish visuals to match.

Animation it’s top notch, the character models have very good designs and craft, and it’s a quite good trifecta of stories, with a balanced mix of horror, satire, drama and comedy, quite grabbing as you always wanna see where they’re going in exactly. I think the second one it’s arguably the best, as you never quite sure what direction it’s gonna go, gets weirder and has an even weirder ending.

And stuff like a trip-out insects & maggots musical sequence.

And free-roaming hippie catmen.

Honestly, i don’t really have much to complain about or add in general, if your ears peaked up like a fox at “animated stopmotion anthology film with lots of style and fun substance”, the chances are good you’re gonna like this one, easily. And it comes in a pretty good 90 minutes package, with everything in it feeling as long as it needs to be.

What a really great surprise, too. Excellent.

[EXPRESSO] El Paramo (2022) | Thy Patience Consumed

Some really fresh (as in “new”) Netflix content for me and you, El Paramo is set in 19^th centhury Spain, where a family living in a remote house is haunted by an entity that feeds on their terror, and it falls upon the young boy Diego to save his mother from the entity… and herself.

…. or so this is premise as Netflix puts in the description. A correct synopsis that doesn’t spoil the experience, i’m not harping on that, i just prefer to describe this movie as “mother simulator”, since the mother not only has to suffer her husband basically disappearing and never coming back most likely due to the wars happening outside their isolated refuge, having to defend herself from a supernatural beast that she thought was just a legend, but also having to put up with her son, one of the most annoying and dumbass child character i’ve seen in a recent horror film.

Stupid, grating and spineless too, just in case the kid wasn’t annoying enough to deal with, even though it eventually leads to his character arc going where you would expect…but until the last act he doesn’t come off as the more sane and kind character he actually is, but as cowardly dumbass that almost makes this movie an accidental “anti-Babadook”, as for most of it i was rooting for the mother to get rid of both “annoyances”, not only the monster, and have some peace.

That said, let me stress that the movie it’s not bad, the setting it’s pretty good, the cinematography it’s also quite nice, the creature’s lore and design are spooky enough and played fairly decently for tension instead of jumpscares, and there are some atmospheric moments, but there’s just not much to it and overall it’s mostly average.

What is Christmas without an Ice Cream Bunny?

Think watching The Star Wars Holiday Special each year it’s not the hipster “christmas tradition” it was before? If so, i will propose something that’s also not new, as it has a cult following, but very very smaller in comparison, since it doesn’t have the Star Wars branding.

Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny.

If this didn’t trigger a PTSD-like reaction, i’m here to share my cursed knowledge upon you, because in a way this fits the Christmas period, and its deranged insanity.

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The Iced Hunter (2018) [REVIEW] | Mozgus Chaser

Welcome to another installment of “no, you never heard of this one before, and i haven’t either”, with The Iced Hunter, an italian horror fantasy action film directed by Davide Cancila and about the titular “iced hunter” (you can tell his namesake was never intended to be translated in english, because it sounds like a fancy non-IBA approved cocktail or a Blooborne collaboration cafè item), a mysterious non-human warrior with fittingly mysterious origins and with memories not of his own, being trailed by the “Domini Lupi” sect, hellbent of getting rid of him at any cost.

Does this feel like a werewolf spiced live action “redo/reinterpretation” of the “Holy Iron Chain Order” arc in Berserk?

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[EXPRESSO] In The Trap (2019) | Spineless Haunting

Given the horror heritage Italy has, it may sound strange how nowadays the genre it’s basically extincty here, and the few attempts made by italian productions are often better forgotten.

Still, i wanted to try my luck with this one in theathers… before the first wave of COVID-19 here killed it’s planned 2020 theathrical release. I recently found out it was eventually licensed for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, so let’s go.

Directed by Alessio Liquori, In The Trap it’s a movie sold on lies, because both the synopsis for the expected cinema release and the one on Amazon Prime Video are quite deceptive, this is about a guy being haunted by a demon that killed his sister years ago, and later possessed his fianceè.

What the summary says it’s that the guy, Philip, it’s trapped in his own house for 2 years by a sinister force that doesn’t let him escape. One day he meets the girl living in the apartment above his, Sonia, and she tries to convince him that’s all in his head.

Problem is that synopsis actually refers only to the second act, and that’s there no doubt about the nature of the entity. The plot it’s senseless anyway, because the second act doesn’t even connect with the first one until the very end, and the last act “twist” are the very definition of not committing to anything, just throwing shit into the pot to have a positive ending.

I could forgive this deception, but the movie it’s another crappy & cliched exorcism-haunting film, with shitty dialogue and it’s just unsufferably boring and tiresome. It has a decent international cast and production values, but it’s part of “trojan horsing” audiences into watching this waste of time.

Quite glad i didn’t get to see it in theathers.

[EXPRESSO] The Whole Truth (2021) | Meet The Granps

Dipping into the Netflix waters these weeks more than planned since i’m not really interested in many theathrical releases until House Of Gucci (i can survive without seeing or reviewing Clifford The Big Red Dog live-action film, i feel you can as well).

So let’s talk about the Netflix esclusive Thai horror thriller The Whole Truth, about siblings that find a mysterious hole in their grandparents’ house (where they temporarily reside as their mother is in a coma after nearly dying in a car crash), leading to terrifying events and them discovering creepy secrets about their family.

The circumstances around the events might led you to believe this is going into The Visit territory, but it’s not like that at all, this isn’t one of those that play the supernatural angle only to have a twist undo-negate it either. It’s just a fairly typical supernatural asian horror movie, quite average, i’d say.

It’s not bad but it’s also not that involving, the movie tries to have some flair to it but the plot and the horror elements never move past being cliches, the subplots ain’t bad (arguably the granpa’s revenge subplot is kinda more interesting than most of the “ghost shit”) but it takes a lot for most of them to factor in to the main one, and to be honest the movie kinda feels stretched to 2 hours.

The decent acting and the execution make it so that you wanna stick around to the end, so there’s that, and a decently satisfying payoff, even it’s kinda oddly paced and “delayed”, but it plays well enough with the idea of truth, ending on a somewhat fittingly “positive” note.

Overall, The Whole Truth (gimmicky international-localized name aside) is alright, nothing special, really, but it’s worth seeing once at the very least.

Mother Krampus AKA 12 Deaths Of Christmas (2017) [REVIEW] | Christmas Hexe

Since we’re still having a “dinosaur christmas” this year too (though on a smaller and more canonical scale, as previously stated) and now it’s technically december, let’s look at a couple of Christmas horror flicks, just for kicks.

After the Krampus quick “discovery” and exploitation as another spin for chrismas horror movies (often by extremely low budget productions), something else had to be done, ransacking christmas folklore around the world as a way to some kind of legitimacy, which also leads to terribly confusing – even if somehow apt- titles like “Mother Krampus”.

While that itself isn’t confusing, keep in mind we’re talking about the 2017 movie by James Klass, there also Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride, that came out in 2018, but released on DVD in the UK as just “Mother Krampus”. Not that the movies are connected in any way, but come on, this is some supreme titulatory bullshit, vintage bullshit that should have died out in the 80s.

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[EXPRESSO] Ghostbusters Afterlife (2021) | Inherit The Ghost

Ghostbusters is something i don’t mind but also don’t feverishly worship, i can do without new installments milking the golden nostalgia udders this franchise possesses

This one comes also to ride the nostalgia train for movies like The Goonies AND the popularity of Strangers Things, which itself feeds into that nostalgia for the 80s that Strangers Things was borne from, making for a kinda sad self-sustaining loop, as its par for the course on modern revivals of old material, doesn’t matter if there’s a reason for it or anything aside it nostalgia lucrative.

But at least this isn’t going the full remake-reboot thing, it’s actually a sequel, set 30 years after the events of Ghostbuster II, and follows the nieces of Egon, Trevor and Phoebe Spengler, moving out into the rural town of Summerville, where their grandpa left them an old farm. And more, as the two kids find out, when the odd quakes Summerville keeps experiencing break out in a supernatural pandemonium.

Here the movie has the localized subtitle of “Legacy”, which it’s way more fitting and indicative of what it wants to be, as it’s directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, famous comedy director that back in the day also helmed Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, while Jason is more known for Thank You For Smoking and Juno.

It would be better if ultimately Jason didn’t want to recreate so much his father work with the first Ghostbusters, treated as a holy scripture that MUST followed upon and passed down through the generations. BUT this one is made by someone that definitely knows his stuff and that clearly cares about the material, arguably a bit too much emotionally involved, but at least it makes for a decent movie, better than the mediocre 2016’s reboot.

It’s alright.

Antlers missed and the 500th+ posts celebratory post & extra ramble

So, yeah, due to the movie Antlers having a surprising – ok, not that surprising – shortlived run in theathers here and being released in a very busy week, i missed it completely, so who knows when it will arrive on VOD here, i’ll just wait for when it releases on home video, most likely wil import it from the UK.

Meaning that the EXPRESSO review of Antlers i planned just won’t happen at all. Pity.

But we did reach the 500th posts total more than a week ago, so bathe in the celebratory anime dance gif, busting out and oldie but goldie.

Not looking forward to that Netflix’s live action Cowboy Bebop adaptation, just putting that out, but i feel like i have to say something about, so i’ll give it a watch and a full review. At least it not an outlandish proposal as the darn live-action One Piece, i saw that post and the partial cast reveal, the cast looks fine, honestly, just can’t imagine that series working in any satisfying or acceptable way with real actors, doesn’t matter how much money they put into the CG.

I guess we didn’t learn the most important lesson of Jump Force (which btw Namco Bandai it’s gonna stop selling – DLCs included – the coming February 2022, so if you want to own it for collection purposes, get it now): realistic redraws of anime characters from One Piece can be quite the terryfing looking human simulacra.

Watch Kill Me Baby, that’s the lesson today kids.

Happy Day of The Dead

No review today, the Spooktacular Eight ended just yesterday with Spookies (give them a whirl if you missed the other 7 reviews), and i’m feeling the “dead” part more than expected, so i’m just gonna chill, eat some candy and play more of the recently released DLC for Hyrule Warriors Age Of Calamity, soon i’ll write a mini-review of the second part of that game Expansion Pass offering, as i did with the first part.

And sooner than expected i will manage to get back to cinemas.