[EXPRESSO] Ghost Lab (2021) | Thai Ghost Of Ruin

Let’s take a dip from Netflix new original content, specifically this thai horror thriller, Ghost Lab.

The premise is novel enough, as we see 2 medical doctors try to scientifically explain ghosts, after their hospital is infested by something they both have witnessed with their very own eyes together, so they venture on this quest of undisputable scientific proof for the literally unfathomable, setting up the titular “ghost laboratory” in a hall of an abandoned building in their hospital.

And as it turns out, it’s quite hard to prove ghosts, as even the odd night events like wheelchairs moving by themselves in fairly open spaces or things flying off the shelves by themselves don’t look more believable than the stuff available online, but while it doesn’t unfold exactly as you would expect (it doesn’t do the “Layton twist”) and it has some good drama, most of the final act seems kinda at odds with what came before, in a last second course correction to make it a more standard horror thriller, maybe afraid it would have less impact if didn’t.

Sure, at least there’s some entertaiment to it, but it’s hard to shake the feeling the script was tooled with to deliver a more palatable, safe conclusion, as if the writer wasn’t confident enough, so it threw all the genre cliches in a final act that – again, for the most part – might as well belong to a completely different movie.

It’s a shame, because it has a decent atmosphere, good characters, convincing performances, but it just doesn’t develop the interesting premise in a potentially interesting way, falling back into the generic, and in a fairly jarring way to boot.

It’s an uneven film, for sure, but i’d say it’s still worth a watch if you dig the premise.

Arachnid (2001) [REVIEW] | David Bowie Joke Here

Here, have more spiders, why not?

For this specific creature feature, we’re going back to very early 2000s, and also picking this randomly from recent additions to my personal DVD collection.

Sure as shit it’s not to celebrate a 20^th anniversary release of the movie, when even the director, Jack Sholder, kinda doesn’t wanna hear anything about it and would rather forget Arachnid, even when people bring it up to say it wasn’t actually that bad.

A sentiment i do echo because this isn’t as crap as you might expect, and if nothing else, it’s not exactly done by a bunch of complete nobodies, as it was produced by none other than Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator, The Guyver, Crying Freeman, Dagon, Honey I Shrunk The Kids) and the special effects were done by Steve Johnson, behind fxs for movies like Species I and II, Nightmare In Elm Street 4, An American Werewolf In London, Big Trouble In Little China, pretty good resumè.

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[EXPRESSO] The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) | Pacino Panic

I’ll be honest, once i heard the third Conjuring main installment was gonna be handled by the director of Curse Of La Llrona (the 2019 one), Michael Chaves…. my expectations dropped like a lead baloon. Sorry, but they did, even with Wan involved… not in writing the screenplay. MH.

Now that the movie it’s finally in theathers….let’s go over the plot, first, instead.

In the 80s the Warrens (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) are investigating a new case of demon possessions and the like, which involves a man accused of killing his landlord by slashing him 22 times with a knife, and during the trail the Warrens – for the first time in American law’s history – try to negotiate a reduction by posing (and trying to prove as far as they can) the man was under demonic possession, uncovering another occult force along the way.

Let’s be brutally honest: this IS the underwhelming follow-up, it’s exactly that, not strictly bad, but just uninspired, going through the motions big time, with the best parts being hold-overs from the previous movies, in particular the Warrens’ characters, nothing that this movie can claim to have created. What is new is clearly an inferior redo of the Conjuring as a whole, not just with Chaves’ direction being ridden of limp, almost ineffectual jumpscares, but also the script (which really makes you miss Wan), made worse by the obvious “tricks” to make this one reach the 2 hours mark.

It’s disappointing, and a shame because you almost could see a better movie coming out of it if handled by more experienced people, but that movie didn’t happen in reality. Still better than The Nun or La Llorona, but come on, you reasonably expect more than just that from a mainline installment of this franchise.

E3 No Jikan (Again)

It’s really that time of year again, and while this year the expo is happening (for those who forgot, in 2020 the pandemic maybe it impossible to host for obvious reasons), it’s gonna be a digital only event.

And for the better, i think, since most people couldn’t afford to go there anyway and it wouldn’t be wise anyway to do a big gathering of events while the pandemic is still going (people are bored of it, but it ain’t over yet), so oddly everyone will share the same viewing experience. If you still care.

And frankly, i don’t care much for the E3 anymore. I still do to some extent, but it’s just for the communal, ritualistic aspects of it being the “big event” for the gaming scene.

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Attack Of The Crab Monsters (1957) [REVIEW] | ….For Massive Damage

We review a lot of B-movies here, so i figured its time to tackle some of the most famous ones, and one can hardly go more typical and emblematic than stuff like Attack Of The Crab Monsters, of course directed and produced by Roger Corman, the king of 50s b-movies himself, for a double feature release alongside Not Of This Earth, both movies written by Corman’s trusted screenwriter, Charles B. Griffith, also behind later films like A Bucket Of Blood or Little Shop Of Horrors.

And you can already tell these movies were engineered for the drive-ins and the double-feature show, because they are both very short, Attack Of The Crab Monsters being the shorter one, barely clocking in over 60 minutes.

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Disgaea 6: Defiance Of Destiny (Switch) [DEMO] [HANDS ON]

So, the new Disgaea has a demo out, you betcha i was gonna take the opportunity to talk about it, even more since i will not be able to a have a review for it in a timely manner (or at all), i’m pretty sure, i know my schedule it’s gonna be hell when the game releases.

the demo is fairly beefy, and let’s you play the first 2 chapters (of 15, as i understand) of the story, making for 2/3 hours of content (maybe a bit more if you want to clear all the quests you can actually finish without the Item World available) more than enough to get a grip with it. I will not talk about the story because i’d rather let you enjoy it for yourself, just know this is primo Disgaea style of absurd and zany.

Yeah, it’s not like the demo for Disgaea 5 Complete where you could immediatly access uber-peta-leveled characters just to try them out, this demo is just a slice of main serving, so it makes sense you’ll be able to carry the save data to the full game when it releases this 29th of June.

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[EXPRESSO] Spanky’s Quest SNES | Darling please

As Nintendo’s own Nintendo Switch Online retrogaming offering continues to baffle and disappoint everyone, i decided to pick from this pathetically tiny new serving of small, back catalogues titles most people don’t really care about… well, Spanky’s Quest, from Natsume.

Don’t be fooled by the cheeky title, because a very Kirby-esque (albeit shitty, as it doesn’t actually explain even the basic premise) cutscene will introduce the titular simian, Spanky, trapped in a tower by a witch and now in a quest has to escape while watching out for enemy fruit homunculi.

It’s the kind of game that if i played back when i was a kid, i would have most likely dropped after the first few levels, not in frustration more as not being that interested. Doesn’t help that there’s no tutorial of sorts, since the way you attack isn’t obvious, nor the game tells you can bounce the bubble you launch to power it up multiple times, and then use the bubble button again to pop it for a bigger, more powerful projectile attack.

Once you figure this out, you realize this is a fairly straighforward puzzle platformer, where in each level you need all the keys (hold by the enemies) to open the door leading to the next stage, albeit made a bit more challenging by the fairly unique method of indirect attack by throwing – and juggling – bubbles like actual spherical objects, and NOT the way Bubble Bobble does it.

To my surprise, it’s actually a decent little title, and while it’s not too long (just 50 short stages, even without the save states and rewind features it’s not that hard or time consuming), it has some charm and depth to it. Just a decent, but cute little puzzle platformer from the era. Nice music, too.

Camel Spiders (2011) [REVIEW] | Not camels, nor spiders

Spiders: when you can’t afford sharks or giant reptiles for your creature feature.

And because many people do find arachnids in general to be quite disgusting, so it’s no wonder they’re a constant for b-movies since forever, especially if they’re of giant size.

This time we have Camel Spiders, one of the many late 2000s/early 2010s Roger Corman productions (sporting the “Roger Corman Presents” label on DVD releases), this one directed by Jym Wynorski… credited as Jay Andrews as usual.

For consistency’s sake, i guess.

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[EXPRESSO] Freaky (2020) | Stop ‘n’ Swop

It’s my pleasure to say that with Freaky we’re back to Christopher Langdon’s brand of energetic and delightful modern slashers movie “with a twist”.

This time it’s NOT a Groundhound Day time-loop applied to a slasher movie, but another popular twist, as in “body swapping” between the heroine/final girl and the killer (via a mystical sacrifical dagger), an indirect “reversal”, as our troubled teen girl has to go back in her body and do it fast as the spell will be irreversable after 24 hours, with the killer using the advantages of his new body to continue the murder spree at the school prom.

While the main twist is indeed fresh for the slasher subgenre, and Langdon’s script fully utilizes for dramatic and comedic effect (while also obviously giving a spin to the chasing killer trope), Freaky is both style AND substance, able to hit many of the satisfying slasher elements, like the satisfaction of the killer tearing up detestable characters, the fairly graphic and unapologetic gore of the more elaborate kills, keeping most of the traditional elements.

It’s not just a cynically conceived gimmicky twist hurriedly scribbled to akwardly “spice up” an otherwise uncaring crap slasher, it’s clearly crafted and written with a clear understanding of the genre/subgenre, and while it’s very funny, with the same whimsical tone seen in previous Langdon’s film, it’s not a satire or parody, but a proper slasher movie in itself, one with great actors like Vincent Vaughn and Kathryin Newton, giving off great performances.

Even if you weren’t crazy for the director previous films (wasn’t too fond of the second Happy Death Day, myself), it can’t be denied it’s a very confidently written, acted and directed blend of horror and comedy that successfully lays an old fan favourite twist on the slasher formula.

Queen Crab (2015) [REVIEW] | Crab Budget Z

It has been a while since we dabbled into the territory of modern Z-grade movies about killer animals, so it’s time to descend into the muk of the ultra cheap features, so cheap that they are barely discernable from freshman cinema assignments shot during the summer break of the past.

An advice for fellow collectors living in Europe: you don’t need to get the german version, there’s a cheaper UK DVD release under the title “Claws”, it’s the same movie, don’t be fooled by the wrong synopsis on the back of the box (and most likely on the Amazon item page as well), clearly written by people that didn’t actually see the damn movie, there are no “space meteor crabs” in Queen Crab.

It’s obvious from the first minute this is indeed a monster movie shot on a microbudget using cheap digital video equipment, but i was interested in it because it promised the giant crab done in stop-motion animation, indeed a tasty promise and a rare sight regardless of budget to any cinephile.

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