Outtakes

Villain Diaries: Wicked Witch of the West

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Girl.

You killed my sister. She hated me, yes. And I hated her. But I also loved her in my way. 

And you steal her shoes?! What kind of monster takes a pair of shoes from a dead woman’s body? Well, they’re all I have left of her. You’ve left me with nothing. No family. Give me the shoes. They aren’t yours. You stole them. Stole them from my sister’s dead body. Yet somehow I’m the ghoul?

You cannot have them. You’ve no right to them. Just because this mob tells you that you do, you must know in your soul that it’s wrong to steal from a corpse, to deny a grieving sister. Have you no soul? 

Give them to me! Don’t test me, girl, I am beyond my limits! It’s an easy choice, an obvious conclusion. Why do you vex me? Give me what belongs to me so I can grieve my sister! What are the shoes to you?!

Your pointless greed is cruelty! Why would you treat someone so, even as they look at what little you have left of their only family, the only person they ever cared for, who ever cared for them? I don’t know what I’ve done to merit your hate and torment, but you will live to regret it. 

Those you do not know have taken all else from me, ostracized and taunted me, shown me nothing but hate all my days. And you, a stranger, have destroyed and stolen what little remained. There is nothing left in me but seething, bottomless rage and I will destroy with malicious glee you and all you hold dear. 

And your little dog too.

W

*by Hope Madden. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

Nightmares Film Festival

Playing (Murder) House

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American Dollhouse

Screens Friday, October 16 at 6:30pm at Nightmares Film Festival.

by Daniel Baldwin

Most slasher movies these days tend to harken back to either the “unstoppable killer” fare of the late ’80s popularized by Freddy and Jason or they set their sights on attempting to be the next Scream-style meta-slasher. While there’s nothing wrong with either pathway, it is nice when we are occasionally still handed one that falls more in line with the subgenre’s earlier efforts from the late ’70s and early ’80s.

John Valley’s American Dollhouse is such a film. There may be some DNA from the other two aforementioned classes of slasher present here, but this is way more a maniac psychodrama than it is a masked killer riff.

There is no mystery as to who is bringing the violence to suburbia here. Kelsey Pribilski’s Sandy is creepy terror on two legs and she makes an absolute meal out of her viciously weird villain.

Sandy inhabits a world that resides between the psycho slashers of old – think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and When a Stranger Calls – and the modern horror masters of today. There are also shades of Hereditary and Weapons here, as well as some visual stylings akin to the work of Oz Perkins. The cinematography is just as standout an element as Pribilski’s performance, making American Dollhouse even more of a must-see for horror fans.

This is one to watch out for, folks.

Nightmares Film Festival

Ride or Die

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Liv’s Last Ride

Screens Friday, October 16 at 10:30 pm at Nightmares Film Festival.

by Brandon Thomas

A secluded cabin in the woods is a benchmark in the horror genre. From The Evil Dead to Cabin Fever and The Cabin in the Woods, few settings offer such a surprisingly rich canvas for horror filmmakers. Liv’s Last Ride might not find itself in the upper echelon of cabin-based fright flicks, but it makes a strong case to be in the conversation.

After renting a cabin to celebrate the upcoming marriage of the titular Liv (Sutter Nolan), a group of friends finds themselves wrestling with old resentments, bargain-basement strippers, and some very unwelcome masked party crashers. As the bodies stack up, so do the questions behind the killers’ motivations. 

Liv’s Last Ride is the kind of film I’d call a “kitchen sink” movie. Namely, there’s something in it for everyone. The acting is top-notch. The cinematography looks like it belongs in a movie from a studio. The characters are interesting and well cast. And maybe most importantly: the movie doesn’t skimp on the kills. Director Thaddeus Armstrong (who also acts in the film!) has crafted a crowd-pleaser that manages to check a lot of boxes while not feeling like it’s trying to check boxes. 

The cast deserves special notice as so much of the film involves them bouncing off one another in a single setting. It’s an especially talky film, but enjoyably so given how much of the humor is character based and comes from their interactions. The black humor in Liv’s Last Ride isn’t necessarily from the violence, but more so from how easily—and without much thought—these characters drag each other down or end up turning on one another. 

Liv’s Last Ride is the kind of fun horror comedy that could easily become a sleepover classic. Even with the darkness at the film’s periphery, that ornery sense of fun stays front and center for the entire running time. 

Nightmares Film Festival

Cutting Up

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Friday the 69th

Screening Thursday, October 15 at 10pm at Nightmares Film Festival.

by Brandon Thomas

With a novel approach to a movie-within-a-movie, Friday the 69th scares up plenty of laughs with this comedic slasher.

A couple of down-on-their-luck adult filmmakers attempt to jump on the profitable slasher bandwagon by using their already established cast and crew. As they work their way through the first table read of the script, the filmmakers slowly realize that they might be in over their heads. 

Mimicry of the 70s & 80s film aesthetic reached a fever pitch after the release of Grindhouse in 2007. Although the film wasn’t a massive success, horror fans and filmmakers alike latched onto the deliberately beat-up look that defined so many exploitation horror flicks. While those original films had this look because of age, poor projection, and limited budgets, many homage films deliberately aimed for it, but they didn’t always hit the mark. Friday the 69th is one of those films that successfully manages to match that vintage aesthetic while also having a personality of its own. As someone who’s watched a lot of those early grindhouse-era films, Friday the 69th has all of the hallmarks: scratches and dirt, missing reels, overlit scenes, and very questionable acting.

Many of the jokes within Friday the 69th require a certain understanding of the horror genre, but the film doesn’t feel the need to constantly go “Get it?! Get it?!” You either get the joke, or you don’t. The jokes come so furiously that you’re liable to miss at least a handful each scene. And they’re good jokes too! Writer/Director Alex Montilla’s knack for infusing humor with his love and knowledge of horror cinema is on full display.

Despite covering a lot of the same well-trodden cinematic ground, Friday the 69th still offers up 91 minutes of solid gags and laughs.

Nightmares Film Festival

Uh Oh, You Saw It!

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When You See It

Screens Saturday, October 17 at 8pm at Nightmares Film Festival.

by Daniel Baldwin

Found footage is a tricky subgenre. Its very appeal – the gimmick of being shown first-hand footage of some sort of horrifying incident – can also be its prison. One is bound tightly by the format. Deviating from it too much can break an audience’s suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, if one doesn’t deviate enough, their film won’t stand out from an ever-increasing pool of titles.

When You See It manages to deftly walk that line, delivering an increasingly tense experience akin to the subgenres titans, The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. While it does opt for the stock “paranormal investigators actually may have finally encountered the paranormal” narrative that most films of this type have these days, it does do it better than most.  

Without giving anything away, director John Abbott’s When You See It manages to play around in that sandbox in some interesting ways. This is aided in a major way by the performances, which are a lot more natural than in most similar films. The editing is also on point, ratcheting up the tension at a steady pace from start to finish.

Found footage fans will find a lot to love here. If this is your subgenre of choice, you’re going to want to seek it out, be it on the festival circuit or when it arrives in wider release on down the road. Those with an aversion to the subgenre are unlikely to be converted, but if you’re open to this kind of tale, When You See It will deliver the goods.

Nightmares Film Festival

Going Down?

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Dead Drop

Screening at 6pm on Saturday, Oct. 17 at Nightmares Film Festival.

by George Wolf

You like your thrillers with a good dose of blood splatter? Maybe even some deadly puzzle-solving and jabs of dark humor? Well, stand next to me for Dead Drop, a wickedly fun ride on a lethal freight elevator.

One hectic morning inside a large office building, the main elevator seems to be on the fritz. So eight strangers decide the large freight elevator down the hall will speed their busy day along, and they get in.

They push the buttons, the doors close, but the ride is a short one. The elevator stalls, and they are all trapped.

Writer/director Ned Crowley quickly sets an effective sense of people and place, getting us comfortable with the different personalities that will have to work together for a path to safety. The snappy dialog begins to reveal important connections between the “Teacher,” “Bike Messenger,” “Troll,” “Lawyer,” “Actress,” “Suit,” “Priest” and “Bro,” and that maybe this fateful meeting is not as happenstance as it seems.

There are engineering clues to decipher as well, and Crowley (Killing Faith) adopts a wonderfully mischievous tone for his frisky mashup of Cube, Saw, and even a dash of Da Vinci Code. The bloodshed can be sudden, and shocking, with Crowley making sure it all pops in the frame for maximum WTF? appeal.

The ensemble cast is locked in to the vibe that’s driven home by a couple well-played needle drops. And by the time the other narrative shoe drops as well, you’ll most likely be smiling at how skillfully Dead Drop pushes your buttons.

Nightmares Film Festival

Serious Baggage

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The Curse of Tahu’a

Screens at 4pm Friday, October 16 at Nightmares Film Festival.

by Hope Madden

Thanks to a script full of surprises and one very committed performance, Benjamin Busnel’s The Curse of Tahu’a provides gripping, unpredictable thrills.

Moea (Marie Kauffmann) works in an air traffic control tower on a small Pacific island. The little airport is closing due to a massive incoming tropical storm, but before Moea can lock up, she gets a distress signal. A tiny plane that should not have been allowed to take off from a neighboring island is now in danger and the pilot needs Moea to help her land.

Kauffman gets two opportunities—two scenes—to act alongside other flesh-and-blood performers. The rest of the film’s 90 minutes, she spends alone in that glassed-in tower talking on the radio or a phone. That’s a tall order for an actor, but Kauffman impresses.

Moea is not your standard heroine, and neither Kauffmann nor Busnel go out of their way to warm you to her. She’s unpleasant, disliked, a bit harried, and deeply damaged, all of which Kauffmann—thanks in large part to a clever script light on exposition—conveys authentically.

Scripting with Myriam Dupuis, Busnel leads you to believe that you know where things are going early with the distressed airplane, but then he zigs when you expect a zag and suddenly things get supernatural.

It’s again mainly due to Kauffmann that the turn works without feeling silly. She navigates a script that upends one common trope or genre cliché after another to deliver a tense nightmare.

This is efficiency in filmmaking: barely more than a single set, barely more than one face on the screen, streamlined storytelling, effective sound and set design, and anxiety that increases with the storm. Busnel’s feature debut announces him as a filmmaker worth seeking out.

Nightmares Film Festival

Don’t Answer

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Death Came Knocking

Screens at 3pm on Sunday, October 18 at Nightmares Film Festival.

by Hope Madden

A slow build, a single location, and 16mm camerawork combine to craft an intense, uncomfortable throwback horror in writer/director Eric Yoder’s Death Came Knocking.

The film opens with hard drinking, tough talking Aunt Carolyn (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’s Caroline Williams) stopping by her sister’s old house to pick up the car. The LA house is being demolished in favor of a new mall, and while cousins Julie (Jacqueline Barone) and Aaron (Mario Silva) pack up, Aunt Carolyn will drive the car cross country to her sister’s new home.

It’s an organic way to deliver backstory, and then we’re alone with the two young adults who do a little packing and a bit of dancing while they snap Polaroids and smoke indoors (because it’s the 1970s, and that happened then).

Then the doorbell rings. Aaron wisely sends the man at the door away, but Julie lets him in because women in 1970s movies always do the dumbest things. But Yoder makes the most of his aesthetic, drawing clear comparisons to the Savage Cinema of American 1970s independent horror, most explicitly, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left.

Slowly, Yoder tightens tensions as the film moves from a horror of manners toward a home invasion flick. First, it’s Daniel (Rey Marz), then his pregnant wife Marlene (Bix Krieger), and soon enough, Daniel opens his case, and we meet Jasper, the ventriloquist dummy.

And nobody wants that.

Marz delivers an expert performance, aw-shucks good guy one minute, amused sadist the next. The period aesthetic and practical effects help the film overcome some plotting and pacing issues, and the unapologetic violence certainly shocks, but also feels fitting in a film so entirely influenced by Seventies horror.

Shudder Premiere

More Trick than Treat

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Hallowarrior

by Hope Madden

It’s hard not to root for Milly Shapiro to survive a horror movie. In writer/director Ben Sottak’s Hallowarrior, we see Shapiro as desperately lonely teen Pumpkin. Pumpkin’s been alone—truly alone—for four Halloweens now, since some kind of plague swept through and claimed everybody else, as far as she can tell.

So, this Halloween was going to be her last. She put out decorations, lit candles, watched the old home movie where she carved pumpkins with her family, and prepared. But then, a noise on the front porch. And suddenly, Pumpkin’s wish for a family comes true.

It’s a Halloween miracle!

Pumpkin may not have seen as many post-apocalyptic movies as some of us, which would explain a lot. Royce (AJ Bowen) only contains his hostility when he notices the piece Milly’s packing. Thalia (Shannyn Sossamon) seems more nurturing and understanding but angry young Wendy (Ajani Russell) wants to shake some sense into Pumpkin.

And these three are the nice ones.

Sossamon is particularly effective, languidly menacing and just convincing enough as a maternal figure to convince a lonely kid.

Shapiro succeeds as that lonesome, naïve Pumpkin. Her innocence is frustrating but never forced. Pumpkin’s awkward, needy chemistry with Wendy likewise carries an authenticity that helps the film overcome some of its shortcomings in pacing.

Once “Wax and the boys” come calling, Hallowarrior should be hitting its groove, but we get so little in the way of character or story development, the film doesn’t develop the kind of dread it could. Though the stakes are as high as they could be, you don’t feel it.

Still, each of the new guests is creepy in their own way and there are a couple of impressive (and one incomprehensible) kills.

We’ve seen the end of the world from a lot of perspectives. Pumpkin’s is different, and thanks in large part to Shapiro’s performance, Hallowarrior is a fine addition to the end of times canon.

Outtakes

Villain Diaries: Marsten House

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New Listing!

Welcome to the Marsten House. This historic home atop Pabsquitty Hill overlooks the charming New England hamlet of Jerusalem’s Lot. A notable presence that watches over the town like a benevolent king, this auspicious property has fascinated residents for generations! Its colorful history is as vivid and storied as that of Jerusalem’s Lot itself.

Plus, ample cellar space to store antiques, sideboards…whatever you like!

And what a lovely town for sketching, antiquing, and getting to know your neighbors! A picturesque lake near the property is cozy, and the surrounding woods are ideal for late night nature walks. You never know who you’ll meet on those twilight hikes! 

A monument to history, the Marsten House has loomed over the town for decades, holding the essence of Jerusalem’s Lot in its very bones. And in its stone foundations, in its wooden beams, in the glass of its windows, the plaster of its ceiling, the Marsten House cries out for new ownership.

There’s a kind of character the Marsden property attracts. Colorful. Memorable. You?

Contact Crockett Realty (under new management!) with inquiries.

*By Hope Madden. Voiceover by Riley Wolfington. Audio production by George Wolf. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?