Remake Rundown - Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) and Black Christmas (2019)

 TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022)

Is anyone else starting to see Netflix as some sort of modern manifestation of a Lovecraftian abomination, slouching through the annals of time, corrupting and tainting everything it touches like a cross between a reverse Midas and Jeffrey Epstein? Welp, witness another celestial molestation straight from the bowels of Rl'yeh. 

In "Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)" we follow a group of social media influencers, which to give this movie some credit, is one of the quickest and most efficient ways I've ever seen a slasher movie make you hate its characters. They make their way to an abandoned Texan town called Harlowe where they plan to sell off the old properties to a bunch of cosmopolitan city types and create a small progressive utopia. Sort of like Galt's Gulch but with a lot more Starbucks and homeless people shit.

The group is led by Dante, the only black guy in the group and probably the most unlikable character in the whole film. Not because he's black of course, but because he's a massive raging dickhead. From the moment we meet him he's scoffing at locals and getting old ladies thrown out of their rightful property because they said something that offended him. I'm not kidding. When they speak to Ginny, an old lady who lives in a run-down orphanage, she claims that she still has the deed to the house and when she comes out and says that she has no problem with Dante because she's 'looked after many boys like himself' over the years, Dante throws a shitfit and gets the local rozzers to force her out of the house. The stress of the whole thing causes her to die in an ambulance and the big hulking dude who lives with her to go apeshit and kill the two police officers and Dante's fiancee who went along with them.

Meanwhile a busload of city-slickers and Twitter-tards show up for an auction of the properties within Harlowe and I'm currently in talks to trade my entire Kingdom for a fucking drone strike. Lila, the tomboy of the group strikes up a mild friendship with the MOST likeable character in the film, Richter, a local mechanic and open second amendment rights advocate. Lila is revealed to be the survivor of a school shooting, giving her a fear of guns most likely driving her gun control advocacy. It's actually an interesting character dynamic which the film never really takes advantage of, but even then it's yet more needless political commentary Netflix seems intent on inserting into their movies. 

Upon hearing of Ginny's death via some text messages sent by Ruth, Dante's now late fiancee, Richter confiscates the keys to the orphanage and tells Dante he wont get them back until he proves he's got the deed to the place. Predictably it turns out he doesn't and they ultimately find the deed inside Ginny's house, prompting us all to play the 'womp womp womp' sound effect in the collective soundtrack of our minds. 

Leatherface, being the embodiment of Southern Karma he is mutilates Dante and leaves him bleeding to death out in the rain. Unfortunately this also leads to the death of the best character Richter because this film hates me with every fibre of its being apparently. Leatherface then proceeds to board the party bus filled with oblivious social media influencers who, in the height of satire, start livestreaming their own gory deaths.

After this Sally Hardesty, the sole survivor of the first film and now grizzled Texas Ranger, shows up, allowing Lila and her sister Melody to get into her car. But instead of driving away Sally gives us a Nam speech, snatches up her shotgun and starts after Leatherface because revenge and shit. But when she catches up with old skin-face and has him dead to rights at the end of her gun barrel, instead of just giving him the Lenny from 'Of Mice and Men' treatment right then and there, she just talks to him and then lets him get up and walk away. 

This prompts an altercation where Sally is eventually gutted with a chainsaw which didn't need to happen. Lila, now with the full opportunity to leave, is convinced to stay and hunt down Leatherface by a dying Sally, claiming that she will be forever haunted by him if she runs. Uh, thanks old dearie, but I'd rather be forever haunted than forever chainsawed.

Lila of course goes 'a huntin' for the sadistic hillbilly. Leatherface gets uppercutted with his own chainsaw by Melody leading both to believe that the nightmare is finally over. 

OR IS IT?

No it's not, as the two roll away in some sort of self-driving car, Leatherface reappears and pulls Melody out of the vehicle. Lila sticks her head up through the sun-roof and watches her sister be decapitated as the car slowly and hilariously rolls away with Lila screaming like a banshee in a mockery of the original's ending.

First the good stuff. It's well shot, quite colourful and the performances and gore aren't bad. It doesn't try to mimic the style of the original except in the opening where a documentary about the original killings airs on a TV in a convenience store in bumfuck nowhere. For that they even get John Larroquette to voice the narrator just like in the original. It's actually a nice little touch and it's appreciated. The film even manages to insert a couple of interesting characters in there with Richter the gun-toting local mechanic and Lila the mousy tomboy school-shooting survivor. Whilst some might cringe at the needless insertion of such modern social issues into a slasher flick - and I did - both characters are treated with a bit of humanity and their interactions don't degenerate into a contrived shouting match despite their diametrically opposed worldviews, with Richter even being sympathetic towards Lila after finding out about her past. You can sort of tell this wasn't written by Americans is what I'm saying.  

Unfortunately just about everyone else is completely insufferable and yeah, I know, slasher movies don't have real characters, they have special Olympics contenders of the type that try to eat the cool shiny candies inside the starting pistol but you can have characters be stupid without being annoying and most of these people are not only annoying, but not particularly good people either.

The film is surprisingly NON-woke at times with its obvious disdain towards social media influencers; but its commentary is, predictably, wielded the same way Leatherface wields his chainsaw. Wildly, unsubtly and with very little direction or goal. As a result when Leatherface boards the party bus and is immediately threatened with being cancelled, I cringe more than I laugh. I'm not even against Chainsaw movies having some comedy in them either. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is filled with ridiculous comedy and even the almost documentary style original had a few dark laughs thrown in. But this one has neither the black mirth of the original nor the absurdity of the second film.

Among the worst aspects is the addition of the Sally Hardesty character from the original film, played by Irish actress Olwen Fouere. It's not really that she does a bad job and more that her character is underwritten and completely irrational. They were obviously going for their own version of the recent Halloween movie's take on Laurie Strode's character, but without nearly the commitment to the character that those movies provided (also, quick review of 'Halloween Kills'; it fucking sucks, don't watch it). Her dialogue is almost entirely 'Back in Nam' thousand yard stare nonsense and when she eventually does get the chance to kill Leatherface, she doesn't do it, leading to her getting chainsawed to death. She's pretty much nothing as a character and could have been completely cut out. Had she had been cut out then this would've have only contributed to this film's one other positive aspect. The fact that it's short.

Seriously, it's only about seventy-three minutes long if you cut out the very stylized end credits. It makes me wonder if stuff was cut out due to a supposedly terrible test-audience feedback. But really, this film being about ten minutes shorter than what it already is honestly wouldn't be to its detriment. It kills off it's only truly likable character very early on and we're left with two waifish women with very little personality. Lila may have an intriguing backstory but she doesn't make for a very convincing hero. Even her arc surrounding her fear of guns doesn't even pan out into anything cool or interesting. 

Overall Quality - 2/5   

It's got some good gore effects, it's well shot and it's mercifully short but I don't think this really makes it worth it. It's not even one of those 'reimaginings' that insults the original so much that it raises my hackles. I was able to predict pretty much everything that happens in the film with relative accuracy as well. If you want to check out just for the Instagram massacre on the bus then go right ahead but outside of that it's not really worth anyone's time.

Idiot Rating - 2/5

Not even much in the clown department unfortunately. The bus massacre probably comes closest and there are a few properly clown-shoes moments sprinkled here and there. But 'Malignant' this most certainly ain't, hell it's not even Chainsaw 2. If you have Netflix and plenty of booze then check it out. If not, you're not missing so much.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019) 

The original 'Black Christmas' from 1974 and directed by Bob Clark (the man who brought us one of my favourite comedies, 'Porky's'), is a classic of the proto-slasher genre and highly under-sung in mainstream horror discourse. It's an atmospheric seasonal horror with a sense of humour, creepy set-pieces, a terrifying killer and it leaves us with more questions than it does answers. 

The remake from 2006 is a massive piece of shit. Devoid of almost anything that made the original great. But at least it was a remake. The latest 'Black Christmas' from 2019 makes you wonder why they even bothered to use the title in the first place. I mean, like I said before, the original film isn't exactly well-known amongst your general film-goer so it's not like they were going to make much out of the brand-recognition. But apart from anything else, it just bares no resemblance to the original whatsoever. The original was a genuinely creepy stalker movie with scenes and imagery that still linger in my mind years after seeing it for the first time. This film is a woke atrocity. Neither funny nor scary nor thrilling or entertaining in any sense of the words. It's an ideological screed written in the style of a twelve year old girl's diary. 

Actually scratch that. That's an insult to twelve year old girls and I apologize. This film could only have been written by a bitter female post-graduate with sixteen cats and no positive father figure in their life. I'm saying the script for this film reeks of cat piss. It's drenched with the stuff. 

This shit sucks so bad Wikipedia wont even detail the plot on its page, which I can only assume is it's way of protecting it. Which is strange since even the critics didn't seem to find any reason to big-up this bullshit. So fuck it, I'm going straight from memory, let's see how we do.

The film opens with some blond girl walking home and getting some creepy texts from some Chad named Calvin with a Greek looking statue in his profile pic. The girl almost assaults a random person because of this. Luckily a good Samaritan in a black hood and cloak intervenes and saves the day by stabbing her to death with an... icicle? I guess he forgot to take a knife with him to the murder he was going to commit. Oh well, no big deal, it happens to everyone on their first time.

We cut to Riley whose roommate asks her for a spare menstrual cup, which she then proceeds to insert in front of her in an entirely needless and awkward scene. Get used to this because it sets the tone for the entire movie. This film is not meant to be enjoyed, it's meant to make you feel like a bad person for feeling uncomfortable.

Riley was allegedly date-raped by a jock in one of the fraternities. We're never given any real evidence of this other than the fact that almost every male character in the film is cartoonishly evil, beginning with the Jordan Peterson-esque Professor Gelson (played by Cary Elwes). This man spends so much time dropping truth bombs on his class that Riley's friend Kris (or as I like to call her, puffy-haired woke black girl #34567) is passing around a petition to get him fired. She also managed to get a bust of the university's founder Calvin Hawthorne removed from campus because he owned slaves or some shit and he was wacist and sexamalist. 

The girls end up performing at a talent show for the fraternity where Riley spots the frat boys engaging in some freemason-esque ritual nonsense involving the bust of Calvin Hawthorne which has black goo leaking out of its eyes. At the talent show the girls sing a song containing a thinly veiled rape accusation and one of the only good male characters, Landon, tells Riley that it was cool. I hope she notices, bro. 

Riley's friend Franny then gets murdered in an *ahem* "homage" to the excellent jump scare in Exorcist 3. Of course this movie doesn't do it anywhere near as well and only makes me wish I was watching Exorcist 3. Which you should watch. Because Exorcist 3 is good. 

RIley's other friend Helena has also disappeared and when she tries to get a security guard to investigate she pretty much gets dismissed with a 'boys will be boys'. A reference to the feminist myth that the phrase is used to justify genuinely shitty behaviour like rape and other 'toxic masculine' behaviour. Unlike the original this film has absolutely no sense of subtlety whatsoever. 

As threats continue Riley realizes that a video of the talent show performance was uploaded to the internet and at the end Kris can be heard flat out accusing Riley's rapist, which is potentially defamatory. The girls end up in an argument over Kris's activism and then Nate, one of the girls' boyfriend - who up until this point has been tolerating all this nonsense like an absolute trooper - wades in and starts bombarding everyone with truth nukes. Naturally Nate gets kicked out of the house which is what happens when you argue with a woman and win.

Blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bollocks - eventually it turns out that Professor Gelson has been using some kind of black ooze that comes out of the bust of Calvin Hawthorne to turn new fraternity pledges into killers who then go around taking out insolent or non-compliant girls. He also claims that these men will fill boardrooms and courts, etc in order to take power back from women. It also turns out that Helena, Riley's friend who disappeared, has been helping them the whole time. Then they kill her... for no apparent reason. 

A bunch of sorority sisters led by Kris armed with a bow and arrow - because we needed that cliché as well - bust in and somehow manage to beat up a group of dudes most likely with sports scholarships because female power. Riley then destroys the bust of Calvin Hawthorne, breaking the spell over the pledges. They then proceed to set fire to the room and lock a bunch of fraternity boys inside, no doubt killing every single one of them, including the ones that had been brainwashed. 

This... was a train wreck.

Whereas the original dealt with abortion as a theme in a fairly subtle and grave fashion, this new Black Christmas (which by the way, doesn't need to be set at Christmas at all) takes on the theme of campus rape culture - an entirely made up and ideologically driven concept - and drives it straight into your face with the subtlety of a sledgehammer covered in period blood. Almost every male character in the film aside from a select one or two is portrayed as evil and irredeemable, with even the brainwashed pledges in the film being given a horrific and fiery death. 

The characters are horrendous caricatures, with Kris taking the top as the most reprehensible. She's a thoughtless, surface level activist who responds to criticisms by trying to get you fired or shouting you down. In other words, she's a social justice warrior, what else is new? Now one could argue that she's there as a criticism of this kind of mindset, but that simply isn't the case since she's completely validated in the end, with Riley even stating outright that she was correct during the final fight scene.

Putting aside the ideological nonsense (which to be fair is around 80% of what the film is if I were to be generous), the film is just not good. The bad guys are obviously evil from the very start. The Professor Gelson character is the sort of guy you'd expect to be used as a red herring, especially given how clearly villainous he is. But there's no twist, the bad guys are exactly who you expect them to be, so realistically there's no mystery here.

Wait, I take that back a little bit; the true mystery is why there was even any black ooze inside the bust of Calvin Hawthorne to begin with. What the hell was it? Is it something Hawthorne made? Is it supernatural? It's one of the dumbest plot devices I've ever seen used in a slasher movie and that's fucking saying something. 

Sophia Takal, the director of this film has gone on record stating that she didn't want to make an 'anti-male' film. If that was truly her intention, she failed. The film is entirely anti-male. I always say; if these people tell you who they are then you should listen. Black Christmas (2019) is these people telling you who they are. Bigots with a worldview based on utter fantasy and who parasitize other more well known intellectual properties to push their shallow agendas. They even go so far as to rip off (oh, sorry.... "homage") other horror films, like the aforementioned jumpscare scene from Exorcist 3 which probably pissed me off more than the woke shit if I'm being honest. 

Overall Quality - 1/5

Irredeemable movie. Even gore fans wont be satisfied as the film contains no gore. Trickles of blood are few and far between. Here's the thing; if you're a feminist and you genuinely believe some of the shit that this movie is espousing, this film isn't going to convert hearts and minds. This film is basically like Kris in the movie. It's obnoxious, terminally stupid without realizing that it is and whose every action is designed to provoke. If you want the feminist film that's going to explore the struggles of women in an effective manner, look elsewhere. For everyone else, there's nothing to recommend. 

Idiot Rating - 2/5

I'll admit, it was hilarious to watch with a friend, but that was entirely down to the insufferable wokeness. I can spot this nonsense from a mile away and I was usually able to predict everything they'd say. Maybe good for drinking games. Outside of that there's little to recommend even in terms of its own idiocy. Avoid at all costs.

I'm DeadEye and I hope you all rot in Hell.  

Fear Street 1666 (2021) - BURN THE GOONS!

 

Hooooleeee shit guys, this was actually the worst one. Whereas the first two were simply irritating at worst and laughable at best, Fear Street 1666 epitomizes my main criticism of this entire Film Trilogy Event. 

This didn't need to be three fucking movies.

'Deathly Hallows' had more right to be two movies than this shit-show had any right to be three. I said before that 1978 was redundant but at least it maintained the slasher chic from the first film instead of diving lady-balls first into the Hammer aesthetic without having a fucking clue what it was doing. 1666 is not only redundant, it removes just about everything that had a semblance of fun from the previous films (at least for its first half). Not only that but it takes the most interesting element of the whole series - that being the mostly unseen witch, Sarah Fier - and turns it into a massive woke red herring.

SPOILER ALERT: It wasn't Sarah Fier at all. In fact, she wasn't even a witch. She was framed by the dreaded straight white male who used his pale-skinned powers to pass his privilege down through generations to fuck over women and minorities... I mean Shadyside. This is why Sunnyside is such a one-percenter's paradise and Shadyside is apparently a run-down nightmarish shithole despite having a mall bigger than my hometown. Again, we're never really shown how bad Shadyside is and we're barely even shown how GOOD Sunnyside is in comparison. Given what we see neither place seems to be all that bad aside from the witch related nonsense. Oh, I'm sorry, I mean WHITE MALE ENTITLEMENT. 

The film opens, naturally, where 1978 left off, just as Deena reunites Sarah's hand with her body. This triggers a vision in which Deena is now seeing Sarah's final days through her eyes back in the year 1666 when everybody spoke in terrible Irish accents. 

Sarah is a lesbian - I know, what a shocker - and frequently engages in some low-level flirting with the pastor's daughter, Hannah (portrayed by the same actress who plays Deena's girlfriend, Sam). After an encounter with a local witch and an almost sexual assault at a party in the woods, Sarah and Hannah decide to put the 'lick' in 'frolic' as they munch the rug under the stars. 

Naturally this angers the Lord since it was dark and the trees were in the way and he couldn't watch. So Union Proper is hit with a strange blight, causing fruit to rot, the well to be poisoned and the local priest to go postal and kill twelve children. So far an obvious consequence of homosexual activity in the area, but being the ignorant savages that they are, they opt to blame witchcraft instead. Typical. 

So after a short witch-hunt the guy who got put down by Sarah at the party in the woods pipes up and says 'Yeah, I totally saw Sarah and Hannah getting balled by the Devil in the woods, honest.' This is followed by Hannah automatically being chased down and Sarah deciding that in order to save her lady love, she must become the witch the townsfolk believe her to be. Wow, that actually sounds kind of cool. I'm getting visions of Sarah becoming a Sam Raimi-esque demon woman and trying to kill everyone in the village. She gets out of control then maybe Hannah has to put her down resulting in Sarah, distraught by the betrayal, putting a curse on the town. That sounds like it would actually be a cool backstory. It could even serve as a somewhat poignant allegory for Sam and Deena's relationship, prompting some level of introspection....

Nope, it turns out local soy-boy Solomon Goode (ancestor to Sheriff Nick Goode) has been trading souls to the Devil in order to attain his own personal wealth and prosperity. He then proceeds to hack off Sarah's hand and turn her in to the townsfolk to be executed. Sarah confesses to being a witch and claims that Hannah had nothing to do with it. She lays a curse on Solomon Goode and his children and his children's children and his children's children's children. 

For Three Months

Deena wakes up back in 1994 just as the Sheriff shows up. She pulls her brother into hiding and she says to him - and I shit you not, with the straightest face imaginable - 'Goode is EVIL!'

I'm not kidding, some chucklehead wrote that in a screenplay and probably even thought it was clever. For a series that's supposed to be somewhat self-aware, it lacks a lot of self-awareness.

So Deena and Josh steal the Sheriff's car and explain everything to Ziggy, ultimately concluding that in order to end the horrors in Shadyside, they have to kill the Sheriff. To do this they enlist the help of some black guy who had a bit part in the first movie to turn the local mall into a giant booby trap. And since the undead spree killers are currently attracted to Deena's blood, they pretty much drain her dry to the point where they're able to spread it along the walls, write useless and inane messages on shop windows that the killers will neither notice nor comprehend and fill buckets and fucking supersoakers with the stuff. Just how Deena is still walking around, let alone able to fight evil, is a mystery for the ages; but hey, anything to bring down the straight white male patriarchy, eh? 

So they trap the killers, lure Sheriff Goode into the mall and Ziggy uses the bucket trick from the last film to cover him in Deena's blood, making him a target of the killers. 

The Sheriff escapes into the catacombs and Deena follows him into the room with the big pulsating tumour testicle from the previous movie and seriously, what the fuck is that thing? Is it the Devil? Why would the Devil take the form of a big cancerous looking nutsack?

So Nick Goode explains that his family has offered souls to the Devil ever since their ancestor Solomon Goode first did so in 1666. This has allowed him to become Sheriff and his brother to become Mayor whilst leaving Shadyside in a state of horribleness, apparently inescapable by public transport. They then show Nick Goode praying to Satan wearing a fucking KKK hood.

He proceeds to call Deena a dyke and tries to kill her. Deena forces the Sheriff to touch the pulsating man-sack causing him to have visions of Sarah Fier calling him an incel or something. Just how Deena knew that would happen is up in the air.

She kills the Sheriff, the undead killers fall down and everyone lives happily ever after because apparently you can kill your local law enforcement official and somehow frame him for being a serial killer - while the brother of said law enforcement official is still the fucking mayor - and nothing will come of it. 

This film was fucking garbage. The first half is BORING and I mean watching paint dry boring. It's an entirely different tone from not only the previous films but from the second half of THIS film, eschewing the slasher aesthetic for a more 'The Witch' style affair and of course, it doesn't work. It's jarring, especially if you've watched this directly after the previous film. 

It also doesn't help that after almost an entire film's break from her, we're back to suffering through Deena's sanctimonious bullshit. Kiana Madeira's countenance frequently resembles a bulldog licking piss off a nettle and combined with the scripting makes her characters deeply unlikeable.

I also have no idea why everyone speaks in this stilted Irish accent. Weren't the colonies mostly English? And I admit my history is rusty but I'm pretty sure there was a little more to witch trials than a bunch of men sitting in a chapel saying they saw someone get fucked by a horse in the woods. I'm not saying it didn't happen but maybe you could have done a little more research? Honestly it just comes off as another excuse to go 'Men bad, women good.' This film is basically the 'We're the granddaughters of the witches you couldn't burn' meme in movie form. 

Speaking of which, I've refrained from calling the series woke so far. The last two movies certainly veered into the victimhood narrative and the subversive doomer nonsense that's indicative of these kinds of politics; but really that could just be teenagers being whiny and self-centred and given that many screenwriters nowadays seem to be on the mental level of teenagers this is par for the course. But this one... this one is woke. From its message regarding historical privilege to the Sheriff praying to Satan wearing a fucking KKK hood....

Had to be done.

... to the fact that the main characters are all from 'diverse' or 'marginalised' groups banding together to take down the evil straight white male law enforcement for historical injustices, this film definitely wears its identity politics on its sleeve. The tokenization is so bad that they have to get Martin, the black mall janitor and minor-minor character from the first film to fill out the minority cast at the end. He has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in this series but he's treated like a staple of the group throughout the climax.

At this point I might as well just review the whole series as one piece, I mean that is probably how they want us to look at it.

The characters range from bland to obnoxious to outright sociopathic. Everything about it is indicative of the teenage rebel middle-finger to society cringe that's infected a lot of mainstream culture these days. As a series of slashers it barely makes the cut, no pun intended. It's got the deaths and some are even memorable; but the borderline unbearable characters and needlessly padded storyline saps any fun pretty quickly.

The sudden shift from the faux-slasher aesthetic to the Hammer one is jarring as hell. For the previous segments you could at least tell that there was a tongue planted in someone's cheek somewhere, but with the 1666 segment it becomes po-faced and overly serious.

As previously stated most of these movies are flat out redundant. Certainly the second and third movies could be pared down to a couple of expository flashback sequences for all the information they give us. I didn't need to see the massacre in 1978. I didn't need to see Sarah Fier eating fish under the night sky. This could have been one movie. That wouldn't have necessarily saved it, this is Netflix after all, but it would've wasted a lot less time and brain cells.

The series also seems adamant that I'm going to root for Deena and Sam's relationship as if it's some kind of love that reaches across time or some shit. Personally I give it about a month after the end of the story. I've seen more convincing relationships in a Stephanie Meyer novel.   

We end up with what is essentially an anti-climactic ideological lecture. Wouldn't it be cool if they end the series with the main characters having to battle some mental looking witch in prosthetic makeup? Too bad, your villain is a rural white dude in a Sheriff's outfit. Look there's nothing wrong with subverting clichés or adding little twists to shake up a formula provided that you have the material to back it up. The Fear Street series doesn't have the material. It has a few decent death scenes and some good songs in its soundtrack. That's about it. 

The characters spend a good portion of their time bitching about how their lives suck and at the end they change not one iota. Absolutely zero character development takes place, especially in regards to Deena. She's just as whiny, sanctimonious and obnoxious as she was at the start of the series. This is not a hero, this isn't even a protagonist. This is a fucking GOON.

You know who the real hero of this series was? Sheriff Nick Goode. Were his methods questionable? Sure. But really, look at some of the people he killed. A teenage drug dealer who drafts little girls into her enterprise, the nurse who was selling said drugs to a teenage girl and a raging degenerate imbecile who - let's face it - probably would have raped someone eventually. Sheriff Nick Goode was cleaning up the streets of Shadyside. You can't convince me otherwise.

And how is he thanked for this fine public service? He gets a knife in the eye by a local goon who ultimately sees no consequences for her actions. Good job America. This is exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery. Goode is EVIL! 

I'm DeadEye and what are the chances that these movies received a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes?  

Fear Street 1978 (2021) - Carry On My Wayward Goon

 

Well, like a dog returning to the kitty litter tray, it appears I did indeed come back for seconds. After all how could I possibly resist the Pavlovian dinner bell of Netflix's very own attempt at a slasher series? Even if it is glaringly inauthentic. 

I don't want to harp on this kind of thing for too long (or maybe I do, harping on things is my bread and butter) but the fact that they're treating this whole thing almost like a TV series with recaps and teasers at the beginnings and ends shows that these people really don't know too much about the genre. I mean trying to string together a coherent narrative arc in a series of slasher movies? It's like trying to insert a Shakespearean sonnet into 'Lemon Stealing Whores', you're about a million miles from the point.

'I do sayeth, my Lord; I pray to the Heavens that
the ladies of the night refrain from stealing our lemons.' 

All slasher sequels as a rule begin by contradicting or outright rendering redundant the continuity established in the previous film. Continuity is for Transformers movies, my friends. If you don't understand that, you don't understand slasher cinema.

I will begin by saying, however, that the second instalment, 'Fear Street 1978', is a mild improvement over its predecessor if only for the slightly less goonish characters on display. But trust me, even with that caveat, the goonery is still strong with this one. 

We begin with a recap of the previous film in which very little of anything significant happened. The world was deprived of a couple of goons, the sheriff wandered around looking confused and Deena became another entry in the Lesbian couple domestic violence stats. Following this, Deena - apparently indifferent to the fucking stab wound to the gut she received not minutes earlier - tracks down C. Berman, one of the only survivors of the Camp Nightwing Massacre of 1978. Initially she reacts as anyone would to a pair of teenagers driving up to their house with another teenager tied up and seemingly suffering a drug induced rage fit in the trunk of their car, and tells them to ram their witch bullshit up their arse.

After what has to be the least convincing declaration of love I've ever heard in a movie since... well 'Lemon Stealing Whores', Berman invites them in and tells them the story of Camp Nightwing as Deena seeps blood and stomach acids on to the carpet. 

Welcome to Camp Nightwing; where 'Carry On My Wayward Son' and 'Cherry Bomb' are played on repeat to remind you that we are indeed in the 70s. No refunds.

Once the actual story starts we are introduced to the main character, Ziggy. She's basically a 70s version of Deena; moody, irrational and generally a doomer about everything; especially living in Shadyside because apparently no one here has ever heard of public transport. Seriously, hop on a bus to Hollywood and suck off Harvey Weinstein. Maybe you can get a bit part in 'The Burning.' 

Cindy, Ziggy's sister, is the total opposite. She's a prim and proper Christian lass who's trying to better herself; much to the chagrin of her former friend and punk girl, Alice, who frequently lambasts her for not getting high off her tits on amphetamines every day. Of course, much like Sam in the previous film, Cindy eventually succumbs to the doomer gooner mindset and laments not spending more time with her friend injecting heroin into her eyes and getting fucked in the back of trailers by caffeine addled truckers. 

You know, contrary to popular belief, slasher films have always been a conservative subgenre. You skinny dip too much, you engage in too much pre-marital sex, you drink and get high too much; you end up butchered by a masked human panzer tank. You exercise a bit of restraint and you might just survive. 'Fear Street' seems to be advocating the opposite. Do what you like, you're fucked anyway. The subversive goon screenwriter strikes again.

And at the end it's revealed that C. Berman - the woman who has been relaying this whole story to Deena and her brother - is in fact (gasp) Ziggy! Uh... wait... I thought that was apparent from the beginning. I assumed from the very start that Berman and Ziggy were the same person. Why is this film treating me like a fucking moron? Again. 

Like I said near the beginning I did actually enjoy this one a fair amount more than the first. Part of that might be because I was drinking, but at the same time this film is an improvement over the first in a few ways. First of all, despite the doomer label I place on her, Ziggy is a bit more likeable than Deena, if only because those around her are genuinely worse. Her and Nick Goode, the future sheriff of Shadyside, actually have some decent chemistry on screen and so there's a bit more to root for here than in the previous film where the relationship between Deena and Sam seemed controlling and rife with issues. 

The film seems to put more effort into trying to make it look like the period it's set in rather than simply blaring a medley of 70s hits at us, although the latter still occurs. The trouble is a lot of the same issues crop up again. Most of the scenes are poorly built up although again improved from the last instalment. And once again the town itself, as a background character, is neglected. We constantly hear about how shit it is to live in Shadyside but we're never really shown why. It's just shit and that's all. To top it off most of this film isn't even SET in Shadyside, it's set in a camp on the outskirts between Shadyside and rival town Sunnyside. Thus, outside of the witch curse stuff, we're never really shown in what way Shadyside differs from other small towns in terms of its oppressive nature. We never see what makes it uniquely terrible and so when the girls spend most of their time towards the final act bitching about how their lives suck it just comes off whiny.

Yes Alice, blame the town for all your problems. It's totally not because you smoke anything with a hazard symbol on it and hop on every pole with a pulse attached. This film is all tell and no show.

As for the over-arcing lore... what over-arcing lore? There's really not much to this. The witch possesses people and goes around indiscriminately butchering innocents. Again this would be perfectly fine if it weren't for the fact that it's trying to convince me that there's some kind of complex mystery surrounding this that warrants a back to back film trilogy. There's a bunch of stuff about how the witch's hand needs to be reunited with her body and that way the curse can be stopped but that's really the only bit of pertinent information we're given in this entire two hour movie. 

This entire film could have been reduced to, at most, a twenty minute flashback sequence. It may be more enjoyable than the first one but it's somehow also more redundant. Slasher movies are generally useless; they're cinematic schadenfreude. You watch them because it's fun to watch idiots get distracted by bullshit as life suddenly catches up with them. And by life, I mean Kane Hodder. And yet somehow this managed to be more redundant than the average slasher flick. 

Congratulations, Netflix. I'm proud of you. 

Overall Quality Rating - 2.5/5

Same rating as before but I add a 0.5 for the overall improvements. It honestly is just a two hour version of what would normally be a ten minute flashback for all the info it actually gives us. Everything else is just showing the kids in the camp being killed (that we don't care about) and we already knew that happened so it really doesn't contribute much to the story arc. 

Idiot Rating - 3/5

There are a fair amount more fun moments in this film that surpass the first one. A lot of the deaths are just axe murders but one or two stand out as particularly brutal and funny. One that stands out for me involves a decapitation in an outhouse. How the killer ends up with his sack mask from the first film is also notable. At least notable in how hilariously banal it is. Basically Ziggy puts the sack over his head during a scuffle and he just decides he looks fly and keeps it on despite clearly not being able to fucking see. Add to this a hysterical bargain bin Danny Elfman style incidental soundtrack and you have a medium level Idiot Movie. 

Also big pulsating cave scrotum.

I'm DeadEye and yes, I'm coming back for thirds.   

Fear Street 1994 (2021) - A Movie by Goons for Goons

Hi everyone. I like slasher movies.

Now you're probably thinking: "Glenn! Why would you say that? Slasher movies are the junk food of horror cinema. They cater to the lowest common denominator with their gore and nudity in lieu of suspense, mystery and Jack Nicholson going mental on a door. Whenever you turn down 'The Exorcist' or 'The Omen' in favour of 'My Bloody Valentine' you might as well be driving a Reliant Robin when you have a perfectly good Lamborghini in the garage."

First of all, how dare you criticise 'My Bloody Valentine' you ignorant philistine. Abscond from my visual range and feed yourself feet first into a hippo's maw, you malodourous cretin. Secondly, yes, I know. But sometimes I want a MacDonalds meal instead of a gazelle rump steak from the Savoy Grille. Sometimes I don't want oppressive atmosphere, thought-provoking subtext or Stanley Kubrick's unblinking death stare. Sometimes I want to watch a bunch of college students fuck, do drugs, fuck whilst doing drugs and then get murdered in unnecessarily brutal ways. Preferably all three at the exact same time.

Character development? I spit on the idea. Slasher movies don't need characters, they need gibbering, hedonistic slabs of walking meat to be sacrificed to the Blood God. Blood for the Blood God and heaving tiddies for Daddy DeadEye; that's all you need. 

Unfortunately this formula, despite its simplicity, is often fucked up. People try to get too smart with it. Worse they try to make fun of it whilst also being the very thing they're making fun of. As a result neither side of the equation is fully committed to and we end up with movies like 'Scream.' It has both its good satire and slasher moments but what you end up with is ultimately unsatisfying.

Combine the postmodern meta-commentary of 'Scream' with the current trend in retro-cinema and TV and we end up with 'Fear Street 1994'; the first in a trilogy on Netflix apparently based on the series of young adult horror novels by R.L Stine (most famous for the 'Goosebumps' series). 

As many of you probably get by now, I'm a big fan of the 80s. So the recent 80s renaissance we've been having isn't unwelcome from my perspective. Having said that, you can do it badly. Some seem to think it's enough to slather neon lighting on the screen to the point where it seems like the director is trying to examine the set for spunk stains. And on top of that the frequent use of synth music or simply bombarding the audience with a medley of 80s hits often feels like they're re-enacting the Ludovigo Experiment from 'Clockwork Orange'.

'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' did something similar except it had to remind me that Nixon was a shit person every five minutes.

These sins and more are committed copiously in 'Fear Street 1994'.

The film is set in the small town of Shadyside, Ohio, which aside from being a prosperous and generally idyllic little community, has the slight issue that every now and then one of them inexplicably snaps and kills a bunch of people for seemingly no reason. So far, so America. 

We follow Deena Johnson who is still pining bitterly over her ex-lover, Sam. Sam, in an extraordinary twist that sent me absolutely reeling from the sudden shift in my preconceptions, turns out to be a girl because screenwriters still seem to think being gay is this shocking and interesting thing. We all know it's a result of government chemical experiments, Netflix; it's not a big deal, get with the current year.

Deena's brother, Josh, on the contrary is a basement dwelling conspiracy theorist who spends all his time on internet forums and obsessing over the witch curse that is supposedly the source of all the town's woes. After two rival football teams have a fight for some retarded reason, Sam's dickhead boyfriend buzzes the school bus with Deena and her friends on it. Deena reacts to this by chucking a cooler out of the back of the bus and on to the dickhead's windshield and then acting shocked when the fucking car veers off the road and almost kills everyone inside including her beloved ex-girlfriend. Once again I get flashbacks to 'Scary Stories' when one of the main characters tried to set a jock on fire in his own car and then did the Pikachu face when he and his mates tried to hunt him down and rightfully beat him to within an inch of his life.

'My actions have consequences? Well I never!'

Naturally this whole exercise in teenage idiocy results in Sam disturbing the grave of the aforementioned witch and so Deena and her friends find themselves being hunted down by the undead spree killers of Shadyside's checkered past.

An interesting idea. Sounds like fun. Too bad the film blows its load early and hard.

First of all; the setting. There's nothing wrong with it. I like movies set in small towns and yes, they do have a certain nostalgia about them. But part of the idea of such stories is that the town itself almost becomes a character in its own right. As such you feel invested in both the characters and the town itself by extension. 'Fear Street 1994' doesn't really do this. In fact everything goes at such an insane pace that the town becomes a blurry backdrop. It doesn't feel like a living, breathing entity with its own culture or unique characters because I'm too busy chasing - not following, chasing - this one set of morons from one poorly built up scene to another. If I'm having to play catch-up with the characters then I'm most likely not enjoying the movie. 

Speaking of the characters, most of them fucking suck. And I don't mean they suck because they're uninteresting or boring or have no arc to speak of. I mean they often suck as people. They're fucking Goons. Deena is an eye-rolling, sanctimonious doomer and at no point does she actually change or engage in any kind of introspection. In fact the movie seems to advocate this attitude to the point where other characters have to change their mindset in order to accommodate her and not the other way around. 

Of course I speak largely of the plot thread involving the relationship between her and Sam. You've probably seen it before; gay couple breaks up, one is kind of stoic about the whole thing and the other is ass-mad because the other one has the nerve to not want to out themselves to their rural conservative Christian parents while they're still living under their fucking roof. As previously detailed Deena just about fucking kills Sam and her dickhead boyfriend by causing a car wreck and then blames it on a nosebleed later. She's a fucking goon and so are her friends, Simon and Kate; the latter deals drugs and drafts her little sisters to help her in her enterprise, and the former barely acts like a human fucking being. Goons to the left of me, goons to the right. This film was written by goons, for goons.

I don't know where screenwriters nowadays have gotten the idea that their characters need to be moving sentient piles of living excrement but cease and desist.

"But Glenn!" you yack into my face and mouth-hole with reckless abandon because you were raised by Welsh savages, "You said slasher movies don't need real characters!"

Sure, but that doesn't mean I have to be in physical pain watching them. And this only comes if they are either A: terminally boring or B: insufferable fucking goons. Putting that aside, this movie is obviously trying to be something a bit more than the rank and file slasher flick and so funnily enough I expect something a little more. If you'd rather I didn't expect such things then just make a fucking slasher movie and stop trying to be the next 'Scream'. 

As for characters I liked, I suppose Deena's brother Josh is okay. He's one of the few people who wasn't a pain in my arse although he's utilised mostly as an exposition dump. Sam is also okay although she's basically a doormat who relents to Deena's demands after a good fingerbang. Beyond those two all the characters are shitty people and the movie literally tries to tell me they aren't. Like I don't have eyes or ears for which to interpret data. I know fucking goons when I see them, Netflix! 

I also don't have a clue how the movie expects me to believe that Deena and Josh are brother and sister. They don't look anything alike. Maybe half brother and sister? I assumed that one of them was maybe adopted but we never see their parents and we never get an idea as to what their family life is like. I'm not exactly asking for 'Hereditary' levels of family drama here but show me... something. If it was ever mentioned then I guess I must have missed it because I was too busy shielding my eyes from the garish lighting and my ears from the constant stream of 90s radio shit.

The film isn't even consistent with its own rules. It turns out later that the witch's undead spree killers are hunting down specifically Sam to the point of ignoring anyone else because it was her blood that awoke the hag but one of them just up and decides to kill a couple of nurses for no apparent reason. They attack the others because they had some of Sam's blood on them but the nurses didn't seem to have any so I have no idea what the hell that was all about. Oh and by the way, the nurses that got killed were black and non-binary. Very progressive of you, Netflix; I'm sure the local LGBT Anti-Fascist group will stop shitting on your lawn now.  

Again, interesting premise, and I found some of the ideas surrounding the town's past intriguing. Trouble is a lot of that stuff's barely in it. I put some of that down to the fact that there's two other movies to follow this that will no doubt go deeper into the lore so maybe I'm being a bit harsh on that front; but whatever information is provided is dropped in a single exposition dump pretty early on and voila, we're back to chasing the characters around to the Benny Hill theme. Film treats me like a fucking moron and expects me to go back for seconds and thirds.

Overall Quality Rating - 2/5

WILL I go back for seconds and thirds? Oh probably. I am a glutton for punishment and I kind of want to see how it all pans out, for better or worse. Who knows, maybe it'll improve. But this opening is weak. It was tiring to get through what with its goonish characters and constant 'REMEMBER, THIS IS THE 90S!' musical bombardment. It reminded me of 'Atomic Blonde' and the aforementioned 'Scary Stories to tell in the Dark', neither of which you want to remind me of. 

Idiot Rating 3/5

There are one or two fairly ridiculous deaths, although most of them are your typical stabbings and slashings. The character's antics are often so over-the-top, ridiculous or outright nonsensical that one can gain a certain level of mirth from it when you aren't fantasising about strangling them with piano wire. I like the fact that the Sheriff spends most of the movie wandering around doing nothing while a group of dumb teenagers are scooting around town in a stolen ambulance and not one person in the whole place seems to give a single haggard shit. I guess that's America for you.

I've already been informed by others that the sequel is an improvement but given how much of a bring down this one was you can see my scepticism from space. All in all it says something that I enjoyed the 'Goosebumps' movie more than what is meant to be a gory, adult throwback to slasher's heyday. Fuck, it was barely a throwback. I would have liked it to have been a throwback, but instead we got some student screenwriter's annoying postmodern attempt at a throwback. Again, we have four 'Scream' movies and two seasons of a goddamn Netflix series that no bastard watched except me because I have a fetish for wasting my life. Don't waste yours.  

I'm DeadEye and Goons get the helicopter.    

    

      

The Curse of La Lorona (2019) Review - I'm Sorry Okay

 All right guys, as of writing this review it's a Sunday evening, Scotland's weather is currently trying to murder motorists for no adequately explained reason and I, for better or worse, have been drinking. So you know what that means. Time to review a shitty modern horror film starring a Mexican ghost, and do you know what that means? That's right, frequent, unnecessary Mexican border jokes. Hey, I'm just saying a border wall is a bit fucking useless when the Mexicans can walk through it. 

Anyways, do you know what I hate? No, not Mexicans, I don't hate them. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't have years of happy Twitter memories to look back on whenever junkies OD in the hallway outside my flat. No, what I hate is 'universe movies'. 

Remember when Harry Potter decided it was going to split the last book into two movies and then every other teen wank-fest decided to play follow the leader and prolong our agony in such an exploitative manner I thought I was in a findom relationship with Kristen Stewart? Well now that Marvel and to a lesser extent DC (because quite frankly who the hell knows what the fuck they're doing) have established their 'cinematic universes', the natural conclusion was for modern horror cinema to follow suit. Gone are the days when 'Friday the 13th Part 3' was followed up by 'Friday the 13th Part 4'; nowadays if I were to watch a Friday movie I could look forward to a spin off movie explaining the origins of Crazy Ralph's bicycle and how it's actually haunted or something. 

As of this writing the third 'Conjuring' movie has hit cinemas and all I can think of is that this would all have been over by now if this were the 80s and movie studios weren't inclined to give every element of their films their own separate backstories. But we all know why this happens; you motherfuckers keep giving them your money. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Who the hell went to see 'The Nun'? Give me your addresses. I'll kill you myself. 

At the very least 'The Curse of La Lorona' shows that they're running thin on ideas. At least 'Annabelle' and 'The Nun' represented original things that actually appeared in the main 'Conjuring' series. La Lorona is a real life Mexican urban legend that some hack wrote a screenplay about, James Wan jizzed his kecks upon reading and slapped a 'Conjuring' sticker on. This is cultural appropriation. Where are the Twitter goons when you need them? 

I decided to write this while smashed off my ass because quite frankly I could tell you what happens in these movies with my eyes closed and my girlfriend bitching at me about the suspiciously dead prostitutey smell coming from the boot of my car. Want me to tell you? Here goes: Everyone is boring, the ghost isn't scary and about 80% of the film is people walking down corridors investigating sounds no one in their right goddamn mind would ever bother to. 

What's that? I heard a small creaking noise of a type associated with living in a building? I'd better go and check it out. Sit back as I take you, the audience, on a tour of my entire fucking house. Don't worry, I'll take approximately a decade to do it so you can get a real good look at my boring fucking life.

I'd better tell you what the movie is about. Hold on to your arses, guys. You're in for a hell of a shock.

The film follows an average suburban family....

Hah! I saw that look! You were totally shocked! 

Okay to be fair the father is dead because that happens when you're a police officer in Los Angeles. Unless you're John Spartan and you got frozen and thawed out in the year 2021. In which case you will pray for death. 

So anyways the mother of the family, Anna is a caseworker who visits a crazy Mexican woman on a child welfare check. She makes the police officer wait outside which always works out well, only to find that she's locked both her sons in a closet with eyes painted all over it. Anna is attacked by the woman, as was predicted by anyone with basic pattern recognition abilities. She is arrested, the children are placed in the care of state child protective services and then La Lorona shows up and drowns them both thereby saving them from years of government bureaucracy and foster care abuse. 

For some reason the local police invite Anna to the crime scene and even more perplexingly she invites her fucking kids; one of whom goes walkabouts and comes into contact with the weeping woman, thereby contracting the curse. What is this horrifying curse, you might ask?

Well she jumps out and yells boo a lot. That's basically it. Utilise those aforementioned pattern recognition skills, people. You saw 'The Conjuring'? Well it's basically that but Mexican. Hey, don't blame me. YOU voted for Biden. 

Okay, I'll say this for the Conjuring movies. They're at least interesting in that they have real life events to back them up. If by real life events you mean that the extent of the Warren's involvement in the Enfield Poltergeist case was that they apparently showed up once and didn't really do anything. 

What I'm trying to tell you here is that there's not much to tell you here. I'm kind of sobering up now and I'm wondering why I'm even bothering to review this. I'm a little embarrassed if I'm honest. I've got way more interesting things to review and I decided to choose this and I think it might be because my girlfriend hid all the sharp objects and this was the only form of self-harm I had access to. I was having a bad night, okay. I live in Scotland, leave me alone. 

Anyways this movie sucks. There's very little reason for it to be set in the 70s other than its tenuous relationship to the Conjuring 'universe'. Very little is made of the fact that the family patriarch is dead. I'm guessing the intention was to make Raymond Cruz' character Rafael into a surrogate father figure for the kids later in the movie but they don't really make a thing out of it. He just kind of exists and so does everyone else. Rafael himself has his moments but pretty much every character in this movie is boring as hell and exudes almost no personality whatsoever. Thus my fuck supply is at somewhat of a deficit; especially when the kids are some of the dumbest you will see in the genre. Stuffed toy lying out on the doorstep? Let's stretch over and risk breaking the line of seeds that are the only thing stopping the Mexican demon woman from busting into your house and stealing your social security and fruit picking jobs before ripping your soul out through your fuck-hole. Sounds like a swell idea. 

Speaking of said Mexican demon woman, she sucks. She actually reminds me of the various Conjuring universe rip-off movies that have been cropping up everywhere lately. She looks that fucking naff. She looks like she's got two tickets to the Dimmu Borgir concert and she's desperate for anyone to come with her other than other Dimmu Borgir fans. She's in fact so crap that she's defeated by Anna stabbing her in the chest with a crucifix made from the wood of a special kind of tree. Hell, anyone can die from that. Just ask the prostitute in the boot of my car. 

If your demon can be killed by me covering my car in holy water and then running her down while she's on her way to the shops for cigarettes then your demon is shit. Shit I tell you!

There's a bit where Anna takes her kids to the doctor and he sees the burn marks on their arms and calls child services on her, but that plot thread gets dropped like a MOAB pretty quickly. Oh yeah, La Lorona burns you when she touches you. I have no idea why that is. Her whole schtick is that she drowns you because that's what she did to her own children. I guess it wasn't as intimidating to have their fingers go all pruny when she grabbed them instead.

Overall Quality Rating - 1/5

I'm sorry, I have no idea why I did this. I don't know why I wasted my time and yours. I was upset and angry at the world and I took it out on all of you and I apologise. Please forgive me.

Idiot Rating - 1/5

There's this one bit where the kids get chased by the demon woman while she's draped in a table cloth like a child's Halloween costume which is pretty special in its own way but really it's me who needs the Idiot Rating here. Seriously, you all deserve better than this. I have failed you and I want to fucking die.

I'm DeadEye and I hope I rot in Hell.  

Sukeban Deka (1991) Review - How You Feminist Properly

There are people - blisteringly stupid people, mostly on Twitter - who have somehow gotten it into their heads that men don't like strong female characters. That men are instinctively averse to women wielding anything deadlier than a wooden spoon and that they should stay in the relative comfort of their homes making sandwiches and shooting out babies while us men get on with being 97% of work place deaths. You know, as God intended. 

But I can assure you that this is not the case. Contrary to popular belief, men like female action heroes. Men like - for example - the 'Alien' movies. They like 'Kill Bill'. 'Tomb Raider', 'Sailor Moo...' *ahem*...  'Xena: Warrior Princess'. Point is that men like women in action oriented roles. What they DON'T like is being undermined. 

The issue with a lot of so called feminist fiction these days, particularly in comics and TV, is that not only do they go out of their way to remind you that their main character is a strong, capable woman held back by an oppressive patriarchy; they also frequently tear down any male characters in order to build up the female ones. They think that if the female characters are to be taken seriously in any way, then that must come at the expense of any male characters

Hell, it doesn't even have to be specifically the male characters. It could just be men in general. Some of the stuff I've seen from recent seasons of Doctor Who for example have been horrendous. 

The issue with this of course is that the female characters don't earn much in the eyes of the audience. They tend to come off obnoxious and entitled. Like I'm supposed to just automatically like and respect them because of their genitals and not because of the things that they've done. And I doubt I'll have to remind you guys of the first 'Batwoman' teaser trailer in which Kate Kane seems to take credit for Bruce Wayne's work before her as if that's supposed to endear her to an audience. 

But enough bitching and womanning about the state of modern TV. Today I'm here to show you feminists how it's done. Or more specifically Japan is here to show you how it's done. Yes, that Japan. The one with the vending machines that dispense used knickers. 

I'm not exactly what you would call the most informed when it comes to anime, but I know what I like and the subject of today's review 'Sukeban Deka' translated literally as 'Delinquent Girl Detective' is probably now one of my favourite OVAs. I wont go too much into the history or backstory surrounding this franchise. For that I highly recommend Kenny Lauderdale's excellent videos on delinquent girl TV shows from Japan, which is where I found out about this OVA, for the record.  

With that let's move into the review.

Sukeban Deka begins with our main character Saki Asamiya in jail for a crime she did not commit. Just what crime this was is left up to the audience and all the info we're really given is that Saki took the fall for someone else. She is then given a proposition by the authorities; become an undercover detective in schools across the country and not only will she be given her freedom, her mother (also in prison) will be taken off of Death Row.

Her first mission happens to be at her old school, Takanoha High, which has been entirely taken over by the three evil Mizuchi Sisters, Emi, Ayumi and Remi, whose powerful father uses his wealth and influence to further his daughter's criminal endeavours. With the help of her police mentor Jin, admirer Sanpei and ultimately the assistant principal of the school, it's up to Saki to end the Mizuchi Sister's reign of terror over the Takanoha high school. 

This OVA is like if you took the writers room of the show '21 Jump Street' and made them watch samurai movies while snorting coke into the dead of night like Tony Montana. Let's break this down: You have a pink haired Japanese school girl who at one point was the terror of her entire school and with good fucking reason. She beats up entire rooms full of people, sometimes using only her fists, other times using her signature weapon, which is - wait for it - a yoyo.

No, I am not kidding. Her weapon of choice is a fucking yoyo. It just appears in her hand like magic and she throws it with such force that she can fracture people's skulls at a distance some paintball guns would be jealous of.

Although personally this doesn't surprise me much. Like everyone and his mother I used to do yoyo tricks, and those things could be deadly. A well placed Loop the Loop could efficiently take out your neighbour's cat and your grandmother who happened to be walking up behind you at the time. Fuck gun control, back in the day we needed fucking yoyo control. Gangs of school boys conducted bank robberies armed with these things and the local authorities could do nothing about it. Don't tell me you didn't try to do a spinner off of your brother's nutsack while he was asleep. I'll know you're lying. 

At any rate, in the hands of a practitioner such as Saki from Sukeban Deka, the yoyo is an instrument of death to rival Zoe Quinn's Twitter feed. From the very moment Saki enters the Takanoha high school grounds she's set upon by Ayumi Mizuchi's band of unusually combat adept students; and despite this school being headed by the scariest motherfucker to ever fail to become a hardboiled detective and became an assistant school principal instead, the school just lets this happen. 

The entire school is under the thrall of these three girls and it's all because their father is a big rich asshole. That's it. In fact this man is so rich, and such an asshole, that he has his daughters plant gas bombs under two school buses which causes them to drive off of a cliff, thereby killing over seventy teenage children. Seriously, that's more than the Columbine and Sandy Hook massacres combined and this happens at the start of the OVA. And he does this so that he can sell positions in the school to his rich friends so that their kids can go to this hell-prison of a school to be pushed around by his daughters and so that he can make more money when he presumably fucking yeets them off a cliff as well.

This is such silly shit and I have to say, I kind of love it. Contrary to what some might think, a movie doesn't need to make realistic sense for it to good. In fact often the opposite is true. Some movies and TV shows spend too much time justifying why certain things are happening instead of just getting on with the things happening. 

With the Sukeban Deka OVA the plot is simple and easy to follow. It's only two 50 minute long episodes, adding up to the duration of a feature length movie when watched back to back. Any questions you might have about the more farfetched elements of the plot are countered by the use of likable characters and fast paced action scenes, which I may have already mentioned, involves a school girl wielding a yoyo as a lethal weapon. Don't ask me why Ayumi Mizuchi has a vault in the woods accessible by an electronic keypad installed in a tree. Why are you even asking these questions? What's wrong with you? Who hurt you?

Saki as a character is what you'd expect. She's a bit of a hardnosed Tsundere, especially when it comes to Sanpei whom, being the OVA's only main male student character, provides the comic relief with his simpish level of devotion to Saki. 

"bUt GlEnN!" you vomit into my ears while buggering a racoon in a skip or whatever else it is you do when you aren't bothering me, "yOu SaId YoU dOn'T lIkE iT wHeN mAlE cHaRaCtErS aRe UnDeRmInEd!"

Exactly. Specifically when they are undermined with the intention of artificially propping up a weak female lead. This isn't what this is though. Not only is Saki an eminently strong lead for this action story, lacking a requirement for being propped up; Sanpei, despite being the comic relief, is not undermined. He is useful in the story and has many positive traits. In fact he even saves Saki's life at one point by shoulder-checking a shotgun wielding thot into the tarmac like a real man. He even has to be stopped from running into a burning building to try and save Saki again. In other words, he may be a simp, but he's a likable, committed and capable one, whom Saki warms up to over the course of the story.

Despite the ridiculous plot and action driven story the OVA is not without its drama. Saki and Sanpei befriend an orphaned teenage girl named Junko, whom Saki saves from being assaulted near the beginning. She's a talented artist and unfortunately this makes her a target for Emi Mizuchi, who steals her artwork to win a prestigious art contest. But it's what she does to Junko herself that ultimately becomes the impetus for Saki's campaign of revenge against the sisters later in the OVA. It adds an emotional element to the story that makes the climax all the more satisfying. 

As for the sisters themselves, like the rest of the anime, there's little nuance here. The Mizuchi sisters are plain old scheming, conniving, evil bitches. Ayumi is a drug addict with an extreme love of money; Emi is an egomaniac whose sense of self worth far outstrips her actual talent as an artist; and Remi... well she uses computers to control people's minds and turn them into zombies to do her bidding. Hey, this is anime from the early 90s. You were expecting down to earth slice of life stuff here?

As for some other side characters you have Jin Kyoichiro, Saki's mentor, who is basically Japanese Dirty Harry and he has one of the best scenes in the entire OVA towards the end. I wont spoil it but it had me cheering in my seat and that's not something that normally happens.  

On a technical level it's animated beautifully, with particular attention to be paid to the action scenes. I of course being the shameless Westerner that I am watched the dubbed version (available on YouTube) and yeah, some of the English voices are questionable to say the least, especially in regards to some of the minor characters. But the people voicing the main characters do a good job and yeah I'm sure it's better in the original Japanese, fuck off weeb. 

Overall Quality Rating - 4/5

Formulaic? Maybe. But there's nothing wrong with that. Whilst the plot itself may not win any awards Sukeban Deka is filled with pulpy nonsense and oh so very Japanese ideas. In other words it's fun as hell. Saki is a genuinely strong female lead who doesn't need to tell you she's a strong woman. She just shows you by shattering your skull with a militarized children's toy. I know I said the idea of a girl going undercover to stop crime in a school reminded me of '21 Jump Street' but quite frankly Johnny Depp and Peter Deluise are a bundle of stick wrapped up in twine compared to Saki Asamiya. Did Deppo ever strangle a bitch with a steel yoyo string and then walk out of a blazing inferno without a scratch on him? No? I rest my case.

Idiot Rating - 4/5

Do I even need to tell you why this gets such a high idiot rating? School girls doing battle with kid's toys? Mind control zombies? Snake whip wielding commando blondes? Part of me is disappointed they didn't do any more of these OVAs but to be honest I'm not even sure what they'd do to follow this up. Saki takes on ISIS? Saki gets hired by Elon Musk to wipe out all life on Mars and make it safe for his self-governing Musk-topia? 

Holy shit. Japan, get on this right now. 

I'm DeadEye, genki ni shite kudasai.

Us - A Totally Original Film With Black People

Okay, I admit it, I have avoided watching a Jordan Peele movie. I've seen a few of his 'Key & Peele' sketches and even laughed at them, but ever since I saw the trailer for 'Get Out' in the cinema and saw it as another cringeworthy Hollywood attempt at race baiting, I've kept a berth wider than Fairuza Balk's smile before she consumes a raw gazelle. 

Topping it off you have a near universal acclaim from mainstream critics which only set my internal alarms off even further; given that getting the seal of approval from a modern film critic is about the equivalent of a day-care centre getting an A+ from the McCanns.

I also admit that I may very well have been missing out on what is a genuinely decent satirical horror film that eschews any of the worries of SJWism I may have had upon my first viewing of the trailer. But YOU also have to admit that Peele's own comments haven't exactly helped when it comes to this perception. 

Back in 2019 Peele remarked that, "I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie. Not that I don’t like white dudes. But I’ve seen that movie."

Now look; on the face of it, there's really nothing wrong with this. I'm a pretty libertarian guy. If Jordan Peele doesn't want to cast white dudes in lead roles then that's his decision and there's nothing wrong with that. It really shouldn't be a big deal. 

But let's be real here; we all know fine that such a statement would not have received such a tepid backlash bordering on outright indifference if it had been made by say Michael Bay, and that is somewhat of an issue. But what really confuses me is the "I've seen that movie" part. What the hell does that even mean? Is he trying to tell me 'The Conjuring' would have been a much more original movie had they cast Snoop Dog instead of Ron Livingston? 

"But Glenn!" I hear you stupid from afar, "You just don't get it! Jordan Peele is an auteur! His films are from the black perspective and are thus highly original!"

Oh yes, breathtakingly original. Whereas other lowly and lamentably white film directors make films about an average white family moving into an idyllic suburban house only to run afoul of a supernatural threat; Jordan Peele on the contrary makes a film about... an average BLACK family moving into an idyllic suburban house only to run afoul of a supernatural threat. Man, you can really taste that originality can't you? 

And don't get me started on the "black perspective". You mean to tell me there aren't any films about the black perspective? Ever heard of Spike Lee? And apart from anything else, what IS the black perspective exactly? Navy blue cords? 

Edgy Joke Quota met

Okay, I'm mostly being facetious here. As things are 'Us' isn't a bad movie, no matter what that 93% critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes may tell you. But whilst I will concede to the shills that this one isn't nearly the abortion that other critically lauded efforts have been in the past... it still isn't as great as they're saying. 

The film follows the Wilson family as they go on vacation to their second home near the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The mother, Adelaide, is reluctant to even go near the beach due to a traumatizing incident she had as a child at the Hall of Mirrors in which she claims to have seen a double of herself. 

After a few ominous happenings Adelaide and her family are suddenly attacked by another family, who all turn out to be fucked up doppelgangers of each of the Wilsons. 

Inspired partly by the 'Twilight Zone' episode 'Mirror Image', Jordan Peele's second directed movie 'Us' starts off pretty compelling. The direction and visuals are more than solid and at times border on Shining-esque in their composition. The cinematography does an excellent job creating memorable imagery that is mimicked later on in the film and it all contributes to what is a thoroughly surreal atmosphere that's consistent throughout. 

Pretty much nobody gives a bad performance, with particular attention to be paid to Lupita Nyong'o who plays the beautiful and doting mother, Adelaide; and contrasts this with her creepy and entertaining performance as Adelaide's psychotic doppelganger, 'Red'. 

Winston Duke gives an amusing performance as the family patriarch, Gabe Wilson, who portrays a mostly stereotypical soft suburban middle class dad character; and even manages to maintain that humour in the portrayal of his own doppelganger, the hulking and mentally inferior 'Abraham'.  

Given this and Peele's background in sketch comedy, the film maintains a sense of humour which is welcome for someone like me who enjoys their horror with a few dark laughs thrown in for good measure. All of this contributes nicely to a creepy, weird and genuinely fun horror experience.... for at least an hour or so. 

Don't get me wrong, the second half of 'Us' isn't bad strictly speaking. Like the rest of the film it's well made and fairly entertaining. Where I think it falls apart though is when the film attempts to explain the phenomena of the doppelgangers away, and at the same time engage in some level of satire that I believe was outside of the movie's scope. Let me explain, and yes, there will be spoilers so, spoiler alert.

After a fairly tense cat and mouse sequence where individual family members duel separately with their own doubles, it's revealed that the Wilsons are far from the only people dealing with the prospect of psychotic versions of themselves appearing out of nowhere to yeet them to Hell with a pair of scissors. Indeed the phenomena is nation wide.

The movie went in a direction I honestly didn't expect. What I expected was an almost Strangers-esque film with doppelgangers replacing the masked Mansons in that film. It starts off that way but then suddenly shifts into something of an apocalyptic movie with satirical overtones. It's later explained that the doppelgangers, or the 'Tethered' as they are referred to, are the result of a failed government experiment involving an attempt to control people on the surface. They now remain abandoned inside the miles and miles of tunnels underneath the continental United States, brainlessly and often horrifically mimicking their surface-world doubles. 

Red, having made contact with her own double in the beginning flashback, then becomes a semi-messianic figure, staging an uprising she refers to as 'The Great Untethering'; which, true to form, involves genocidal levels of fucking violence. 

This is where the film kind of lost me if I'm totally honest. One of the best things about this film is actually the mystery and intrigue surrounding the origins of these 'Tethered' people, and when you find out it's all the result of some nonsensical government mind control plot it weirdly becomes a bit banal. 

I mean, we all know the government's trying to control our minds, this isn't a secret. In a world of online conspiracy theories, gay frogs, fact checkers that don't check facts and obvious mainstream Fake News (TM), the concept of government mind control in a horror film is kind of passé really.  

Don't worry Alex, you'll have a place in our hearts.

   

And then there's the problem of over-explaining things. As Stephen King once said, 'there's little fun to be had in explanations' and this is particularly true with horror. But once you do explain something away like this, all that does is demand further explanation. Like, I know the Tethered are supposed to be eating the rabbits that roam freely down in the tunnels, but what do the rabbits eat? Who tends the rabbits? Is there a government employee who goes down every now and then to fill up their water bottles and clean out their hay? I've owned rabbits, they are messy motherfuckers. They shit everywhere, and those tunnels look pretty damn clean to me. 

Who pays for this? The taxpayer? Is this in one of those 5000 page budget proposals that Rand Paul tries his level best to summarize on Twitter to the detriment of his own sanity? Why do they even bother to keep them down there? If it's a failure why not just kill them all? What, do we care about human rights now? Does Joe Biden have his own doppelganger he feels sentimental about? Maybe he helped him fight Cornpop back in the day.

If there are potentially limitless amounts of people in government who know about this then surely someone's said something. This is the age of the internet and, more importantly, Alex Jones. You mean to tell me not one person has done a Snowden and tried to reveal this to the public? This is the US government; they couldn't run a two door shithouse. They couldn't keep election fraud secret, what makes you think they can do this?

Oh fuck off Susan, it was a joke.

My point is that the film could have left a few more things in the shadows but I think Peele was probably making an attempt at satire. I've seen people try to make this an allegory for the treatment of blacks in America. Eh, maybe if you're a race ideologue who thinks only black people are ever poor or treated poorly, as many critics are. Anyone else would probably see it as a fairly standard 'haves an have-nots' class warfare allegory in the vain of 'Snowpiercer', and the direct reference to and use of the 'Hands Across America' event in the film lends some credence to that idea.

In summary I think it kind of shows off too many of its cards and ends up going a little beyond what I think it should have been. I'm not against satire or social commentary in horror films and if you dig it then more power to you, but it didn't really gel for me. I think the idea probably would have been better served had it had stuck with being a small-scale home-invasion horror flick as the idea of the mysterious doppelganger antagonists provides enough originality to keep things interesting. 

Outside of all that, I know I praised the humour before but as the film goes on Peele does go a little bit overboard. As stated previously the film begins quite surreal, ominous and Shining-esque, but as it goes on it becomes more humorous. Many of the jokes do land but you kind of feel like they probably shouldn't be there. Some of it is outright cringey Millennial humour though, for example when Gabe makes a reference to 'Home Alone' and then Adelaide makes a joke about having referenced 'Home Alone'. 

Desist, Jordan. 

Add to this one or two non-sensical and confusing moments later on and you get a film that's... almost a fine film. Nowhere near bad and also not quite the 93% rating either.

Overall Quality Rating - 3/5

It's well made, atmospheric and funny in mostly the right places. The horror sequences early on are tense and there's a lot of a memorable imagery. It just kind of fell apart for me when it tried to be something more than what it ultimately was. It goes in an unexpected direction but that's not always a good thing, as Kevin Smith's 'Red State' will attest.

Again, maybe I just don't dig Peele's attempts at social commentary, and I will say the twist at the end was a good one, even if I was able to telegraph it shortly before it happened. It's worth a watch if you have Netflix and you're in the mood for a fun little nightmare.

Idiot Rating - 2/5

As I said it has a sense of humour and most of the jokes got at the very least a chuckle out of me, like when Elizabeth Moss tries to get her version of an Alexa type bot to call the police while she lies bleeding to death and the thing starts blaring out 'Fuck the Police' instead. Problem was a fair few of them felt like they shouldn't have been there and along with other problems it helps to undermine what could have been a much better horror film. It certainly doesn't go so overboard that it becomes a full blown idiot movie though.  

Having finally exposed myself to a Peele film I'll say that guy knows what he's doing for the most part. But does this make me want to check out the new 'Candyman' film co-scripted by him? Eh, even if 'Us' had turned out to be a rousing success I'd be cagey about that one, being that 'Candyman' is one of my favourite horror movies. But we'll see, maybe it'll be decent like the last 'Halloween' movie.

I'm Deadeye and fuck da police.