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.