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jeepers creepers reborn 2022

JEEPERS CREEPERS: REBORN

“Death gives it life.”

1.5 Stars  2022/88m

Director: Timo Vuorensola / Writers: Jake Seal & Sean-Michael Argo / Cast: Sydney Craven, Imran Adams, Peter Brooke, Jarreau Benjamin, Ocean Navarro, Matt Barkley, Dee Wallace, Gary Graham.

Body Count: 5

Laughter Lines: “How do you like those peepers, bitch?”


There’s a story to be told with this character – yet nobody seems to want to tell it.

A million miles along an empty road from the theatrical releases of the original and its first sequel in 2001 and 03, arguably Victor Salva’s plot to prevent his idea being turned into a series of diminishing returns by factoring in a 23-year gap between sprees hugely backfired – as the series has become just that.

After the infuriatingly pointless third entry ended with a flicker of hope it would garner enough interest for the next film to bring back Gina Philips as Trish, the rights to the franchise seem to have been pried from Salva’s grip (likely in light of his dodgy past), its budget slashed to ribbons, and consigned to circle the drain without a required shot of investment to be able to give fans of the originals what they want – answers.

jeepers creepers reborn 2022 dee wallace

Reborn begins much like the first film, with an old couple (Wallace and Graham) idling along a backroad who are briefly tormented by a creepy truck (albeit a different one) with the BeatingU plate, and soon after see the occupant tossing what looks to be a body wrapped in a sheet down a pipe. He gives chase, they evade and go back to the pipe… This then zooms out to be a dramatisation online, watched by Creeper-believer Chase, who, with his girlfriend Laine, is driving into Jackson, Louisiana, for a horror festival themed around the local legend. Curiously, the voiceover says the couple were never seen again – so how did the story of what happened to them even get out?

When they stop off at a curiosity outlet, the psychic woman who runs it senses Laine is newly pregnant and conspires to have the pair ‘win’ an escape room experience at an old plantation house where cloaked goths worship the Creeper. He, meanwhile, crawls from hibernation status and begins collecting new body parts from various schmucks who wander into the woods until he’s strong enough to hunt the group who get locked in the house with him.

jeepers creepers reborn 2022 imran adams peter brooke

The real villain here is budget, in that there clearly isn’t one with enough funds to show us the Creeper fly, or do much beyond walk around the set (the film was largely shot on soundstages in the UK) stalking victims like any other slasher maniac. The van is wheeled out for a couple of scenes, but barely registers come the end, by which point the overdose of kids-TV-show quality green screen has all but consumed any goodwill the film might’ve built up early on.

Salva’s past crimes – which notably pre-date even the first film – may have been his undoing, but at least the guy had a vision. In this wasteful state, it’s probably best to abort the series entirely.

Blurbs-of-interest: Peter Brooke was in Wrong Turn 5; Dee Wallace can also be seen in Halloween (2007), Dead End RoadScarPopcorn, and Red Christmas.

The End of an Era. Again.

halloween ends 2022

HALLOWEEN ENDS

2 Stars  2022/18/111m

Director/Writer: David Gordon Green / Writers: Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride / Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton, James Jude Courtney, Kyle Richards, Michael Barbieri, Karaun Harris, Michael O’Leary, Michele Dawson, Joanne Baron, Rick Moose.

Body Count: 18


The Final ChapterThe Final NightmareThe Final Friday – we’ve been here before, even more than once in the same series. It doesn’t feel that long ago (but probably is) that Halloween H20 was supposed to be the closing word on Michael Myers. But it made bank, so he regained his severed head, but the series soon died again.

The second reboot, taking the series off into its fourth possible timeline, in 2018 was also supposed to be the last one. It was fine, flawed here and there, but carried an aroma of crispy fried finality. It made bank, so suddenly two further sequels were announced. 2021’s delayed Halloween Kills delved deep into fan service and then some weird allegory around vigilante mobs. Laurie didn’t share a single scene with Michael – it just… strange, but housed a couple of decent scenes to just about earn a pass.

Ends though… My, my, my where to begin? Big spoilers ahoy. Well, it begins a year later – Myers is AWOL, Haddonfield has become a bit of a depressed state where everything gets blamed on The Boogeyman or his legacy. Into a simple babysitting gig walks Corey, a slightly dorky student, who replaces the unwell first choice to look after rich kid Jeremy, whose pranks ultimately lead to the kid falling to his death.

halloween ends 2022 michele dawson

Three years later, Corey is a social pariah, hated by the locals and wasting his potential. He runs into Laurie when she wades into a confrontation with some entitled douchey teens and introduces him to Allyson, with whom Corey instantly sparks, their mutual sadness connecting them at an unseen level. Laurie soon sees a darkness in Corey that reminds her of you-know-who, threatening her new found Zen outlook on everything.

When Corey meets you-know-who, subsisting in a sewer pipe, instead of becoming another victim, they too have a meeting of the minds and embark on some bizarro twin-killer spree, taking out those who have wronged Corey in some way. Stranger still, the murders seem to go totally unnoticed, and when Corey decides his own scarecrow mask isn’t up to it, he steals Mikey’s and dons himself an official tribute act.

halloween ends 2022 michael myers

This is where Halloween Ends becomes ‘okay’ – in the same way Resurrection worked as a goofy, fun slasher movie if you divorced it from its forebears, Corey-as-Michael puts in a few decent kills, first offing Ally’s manager and the young nurse he’s sleeping with, then the douchey teens, his overbearing mom, and a shit-talking shock jock who sassed him a day or so earlier.

Knowing Laurie is trying to prevent Allyson from leaving Haddonfield with him, Corey’s final call is at their shared house and Michael, clearly just wanting his mask back, isn’t far behind. He and Laurie fight, and she finally gets him where she wants him, resulting in a town-wide procession to rid themselves of the Myers curse once and for all. And the ending is final. It has to be… If we get Halloween Re-Resurrection in four years, fuck knows how they’ll find a workaround to explain this one.

halloween ends 2022 jamie lee curtis

Jarring tonal shifts have plagued this new trilogy, from ballistic body counts, overly sadistic murders, that ‘Evil Dies Tonight!’ nonsense, and now the new Yoga-Laurie, although her early scenes just hanging out with Allyson and Lindsay are probably where the film feels most relaxed and natural. It’s almost like a ‘Haddonfield’ TV series was condensed into two hours, and between the not-awful scenes of Kills and Ends, there could have been a decent last outing, but the whole 2018-22 reboot cycle has been the epitome of needlessness.

Look out for Julian and the reappearance of a character we thought was no longer even alive…

I never thought I’d say this of a JLC-starring Halloween movie, but this is the worst in the entire series. Remakes included.

Blurbs-of-interest: Michael O’Leary was in Fatal Games; Joanne Baron was in iMurders.

Mish/Mash

they/them 2022

THEY/THEM

2.5 Stars  2022/104m

“Fear doesn’t discriminate.”

Director/Writer: John Logan / Cast: Kevin Bacon, Carrie Preston, Anna Chlumsky, Theo Germaine, Quei Tann, Austin Crute, Anna Lore, Monique Kim, Cooper Koch, Darwin del Fabro, Hayley Griffith, Boone Platt.

Body Count: 7

Laughter Lines: “I keep expecting Jason Voorhees to come out of these woods.” / “Who?”


Some spoilers.

A lone female gets a flat on a backroad and is attacked by a masked psycho. Same old, same old. The aerial shot pans onward and shows us Whistler Camp, a conversion center for non-heterosexual teenagers, a busload of which arrives in the morning to be greeted by head counsellor Kevin Bacon, in a nice throwback to his never-actually-got-to-do-the-job role of Jack in Friday the 13th.

An assorted group of campers are initially divvied up by gender, which is an issue for non-binary Jordan, who is sweet-talked by KB into the boys’ cabin, and later joined by transgender Alex, who is turfed out of the girls’ block when one of the creepy staff spies on her in the shower.

they/them 2022

Therapy sessions ensue, both in group and with creepy ‘doctor’ Cora (Carrie Preston, who is perfectly unhinged), the girls bake pies, the boys learn to shoot, hook-ups occur and, after what feels like forever, the masked loon reappears and offs an ancillary staff member. Shortly after, the camp’s thinly-veiled sadistic practices begin to show through. The kids decide they want out, and the killer starts to up their game.

As a slasher movie, They/Them (‘They-slash-them’, geddit?) is a bit of a spectacular failure. The killer is obvious from the moment they’re introduced, and their intent to ‘cleanse’ the camp from continuing to do the damage it does, while admirable, renders them largely unthreatening as the campers are off the hit-list, with only the rather one-dimensional counsellors at risk of being slashed to neatly trimmed ribbons. And they’re hypocritical assholes as it is, so why even care?

they/them 2022

The more relative horror in They/Them comes from the invasive in-roads made by the staff to assault their charges: Cora goes through personal belongings to play psychological games with Jordan, all but telling them to kill themself during a session, and the boys are forced to shoot the camp’s ailing hound dog to make them ‘real’ men. It’s disturbing, nicely realised (especially Preston’s leave-the-rest-in-the-dust performance), and sad when you think that such places exist.

The film was hailed as an LGBTQ+ empowerment tale in some places, which makes for some sweet moments between the characters, as they realise their support network is each other, although at times it feels forced within the span of the film and paves the way for a bizarre sing-a-long to Pink’s Fuckin’ Perfect, and some cringe-inducing Drag Race dialogue (I really do not need to hear “Step your pussy up” uttered anymore). It’s as if Logan becomes entangled in the hanging streamers of his plot strands, swinging dangerously close to celebratory musical mode, over to drama, then remembering he’s got a horror film to deliver, so cramming all of the slashing into what little time remains on the clock.

they/them 2022

It was probably a commercially wise decision to render the camp a religion-free zone, but, like the lack of threat posed to the campers, is something of a cop out. The persecution of gay folks is largely rooted in such beliefs and it would’ve been brave to call that out, but I can also see why Peacock didn’t want to go down that route given how extreme fundamentalists would probably mail them explosives with ‘groomers’ written all over it.

A tendency to fall back on to slightly stereotypical character attributes and repressed self-loathing means that I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this one, but it’s also hardly the train wreck it’s been made out to be. Probably would have worked better as a miniseries. HellBent needn’t worry about losing it’s gay-slasher crown just yet.

they/them 2022

Blurbs-of-interest: Bacon was also the lead in Hollow Man.

X’s & OAP’s

x 2022 ti west posterX

3.5 Stars  2022/18/102m

“Dying to show you a good time.”

Director/Writer: Ti West / Cast: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Martin Henderson, Scott Mescudi, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure.

Body Count: 8

Laughter Lines: “We’re gonna be rich – feel how hard my cock is.”


It’s a bad thing that Ti West floats out of my mind, but it’s also really good that I forget how good a filmmaker he is, making each film of his I see for the first time a surprise of the best kind. Minor spoilers.

X‘s release just kinda… passed me by at the beginning of 2022 as I was going through a sort of slasher movie fatigue and some five or six months went by since my last new (to me) movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre re…whatever it was. Height of summer, a day off, time to leap back in.

Unlike most period-set horror, West actually succeeds in furnishing his films with contemporaneous set pieces and aesthetics that look high-end and genuine. X, set in 1979, carries a lot of TeXas Chainsaw-ian influence as we join a tiny adult film production squad on their way to a farm to shoot their latest movie, The Farmer’s Daughters.

x 2022 ti west cast

Cameraman RJ blabbers continually about being high-brow he can make the film; perky Bobby-Lynne advocates the right to make sex films; Jackson is just enjoying himself after Vietnam; newcomer Lorraine is quiet and seems to be judging it all as smut; and producer Wayne is schmoozing his way along, confident they’re about to make the successor to Debbie Does Dallas. His girlfriend is actress Maxine, who just wants to be a star. (She has an X in her name, eyes peeled).

Home-slash-set for the night is a farm owned by aged couple Howard and Pearl. The crew quickly start making their flick, complete with a book-chick-a-wow-wow soundtrack, as a stranded motorist seeks help from a farm’s nubile daughter and… yeah, sex. Later, after Lorraine says she wants to be in the film, a pissed RJ stalks off to abandon the rest of them and finds Pearl outside the farmhouse. Trying to help her, she gets a bit too tactile and, when he resists, he cops a knife in the neck.

x 2022 mia goth

In true slasher form, the others discover RJ is missing and go looking for him, culminating in a pitchfork-to-the-face, shotgun blast, and death by alligator, with Howard effectively cleaning up after Pearl, who is pretty much horny for hardbodied youngsters. Maxine soon finds herself the last one standing – but are a couple of octogenarians going to fall to easily?

A porno aspect in a slasher film is usually a shortcut for trash, but despite the tits and ass (and actually some dick), this material is largely secondary in X, a plot device to leverage the themes around the horror of ageing flesh and our failing functions as we edge closer to the grave: Pearl’s homicidal streak is borne out of her undesirability, and the ickiest parts of the films come not from the grue, but a scene where Maxine wakes up to find the old lady touching her up in bed. To further compound this fear, Mia Goth played both nubile heroine Maxine and also Pearl. She later finds herself stuck under the same bed while Howard and Pearl make mechanically complicated love on it.

x 2022 mia goth

Better than expected characters also paint a broader picture, as well as a final act that doesn’t drag on forever, although it’s almost an hour before the horror even begins. feels like a proper grindhouse slasher film of olde, the kind of quality Tarantino wanted, but failed to achieve with Death Proof.

I didn’t flat out love it – the murders could have been more imaginative, and I actually liked it more before the horror even began – but it gave it a grubby quality in the end that likely aided its good reviews. West had the prequel, Pearl, ready to go later the same year. Dedication.

x 2022 jenna ortega

Blurbs-of-interest: Ti West had a role in You’re Next; Brittany Snow was in the Prom Night remake; Martin Henderson was in The Strangers: Prey at Night; Jenna Ortega was in Scream (2022) and its 2023 follow up.

All About Evil

kill game 2018

KILL GAME

2.5 Stars  2018/102m

“No one is laughing now.”

Director/Writer: Robert Mearns / Cast: Sari Sanchez, Michael Galante, Joe Adler, Pierson Fode, Tommy Beardmore, Laura Ashley Samuels, Hilary Anderson, Patrick Zielinski.

Body Count: 11


Some spoilers. Five old friends, who plagued their high school with pranks, attend the funeral of another friend and soon after discover that somebody from their past is fucking with them, ordering a stack of pizzas, removing the battery from a car, sending a sex worker over… Which of their old gag victims could it be?

A seventh friend, jittery walking pharmacy Beth, returns to town and is immediately tracked down by hunky Liam, the estranged twin brother of Brendan, who died years before as a result of a prank gone wrong, which had been masterminded by the recently buried friend. Liam wants to know what happened to his brother, but the seven of them never told a soul.

kill game 2018 joe adler

Thanks to horny cop Blake, the group learn their dead friend was most definitely murdered and via the medium of handy flashback we see him hoisted upside down, naked, over a fire pit, which is lit by a cloaked, Marilyn Monroe-masked killer, who looks like they could go to prom with the cherub from Valentine.

The friends start to reach out to old prank victims and apologise, but Marilyn has other ideas and straps one of the gang to a chair, giving her a blood transfusion from a dead stag in payment for a joke where she’d forged a doctor’s note that informed a nerdy girl she was infected with HIV. Another is burned alive, and one has their tummy tuck procedure fatally crashed by the killer, who also offs the surgical staff.

kill game 2018 hilary anderson

The dwindling group find themselves back at the beach where Brendan died for a big showdown, which is crashed by the cops before we can get answers.

So who is the killer? Well, Kill Game can’t quite seem to make up its mind, though we get a good scene where Beth wakes up in a hospital staffed by several of the prank victims who begin descending on her like zombies. But that’s a dream.

Instead, the actual killer is revealed in the final shot and is someone who has barely appeared in the film at all. Eagle-eyed viewers may recall them from a couple of earlier scenes, but so fleeting are these appearances that it literally may as well have been an old granny or someone who sped by in a car.

And what the hell was supposed to be in that box?

kill game 2018

I see what Kill Game was trying to do here, a grand exercise in misdirection, but instead it kinda just trips you up, having lead you down a blind alley to nowhere for the previous 100 minutes. Personally, I didn’t mind, but I can also envision a few bricks being hurled at screens. As far as I Know What You Did Last Summer/At Camp/At High School/At My Cousin’s Barmitzvah/That Day at IHOP opuses go, it’s fine. Shot in 2014.

Blurb-of-interest: Michael Galante was in Frat House Massacre.

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