Evil Dead Rise (2023) - Review

 Evil Dead Rise (2023).  Starring Alyssa Sutherland, Lily Sutherland and Morgan Davies.

Two and a half stars out of four.

Currently found on HBO Max and various pay-VOD streams.


So I like this movie.  I thought it was decent.  I definitely felt it was a huge improvement over the 2013 remake.  And yes, the 2013 movie is a remake, despite what numerous fans claim. 

Back in 2013, I went to see that version of EVIL DEAD to review it for this blog. At that time, I gave it a two-star rating, mainly because of the semi-competent acting and the cinematography/effects.  However, in the decade-plus years since then,  I no longer account for this if the movie is any type of a studio release.  Because of the advances in technology and the availability of talented unknown actors, most movies possess these qualities mentioned.  Unless you're making an ultra-low budget show on a Walmart brand digital camcorder and uploading the movie to YouTube, acting and production value are going to be higher than they've been in the past, even with most indie flicks.  So at some point, I need to revisit EVIL DEAD (2013) to see how my perspective has changed.

I started writing this review back in April of 2023. It took me a while to return and finish it.  This was largely due to the fact that it seemed to be division among the fans over this movie.  It was draining enough that after researching, I had a hard time trying to write anything for the review.  But I now I feel the time is right.  I mean, a year later is a great time to talk about a movie, right?

RISE does a couple of things that piss me off, I want to get that out of the way here.  When the trailer was released, the trailer made it look like it was set in a weird, fairy tale-esque house.  It looked again to be another rural location, which has been germane to this series.  However, the exteriors shown in the trailer are only in the first 5-10 minutes.  As fate would have it, the beginning takes place a day after the main events of the movie.  There's plenty of gore and payoff during this, but you have to sit through to the last four or five minutes to understand how the main plot ties into the beginning.  And it's absolutely fucking unnecessary. It's a total bait and switch movie.  That may be why I knocked half a star off the rating.

Then there are the characters.  The protagonist is Beth, a guitar technician for an unnamed band who is also pregnant.  She decides to visit her sister and her family in their Los Angeles shithole apartment:  Ellie, a so-called tattoo artist who is raising her family alone after her husband left (after watching this movie, inferences can be made as to why he left); Bridget, an androgynous teen activist who's concerned with finding her Eat The Rich shirt;  Danny, the younger brother who is aspiring to be a DJ (and who kick starts the mayhem in this movie); and Kassie, the token precocious child of the picture who mutilates dolls.  Then there's the two ancillary characters in this setting. Mr. Fonda, the gun toting dickhead slumlord and Gabriel, who I think is a tenant? Not clear on that.  In any event, you find yourself immediately rooting for the deaths of everyone involved. And fortunately for the viewer, that's mostly what happens!

While Beth and Ellie are moping around, they send the kids out for pizza.  On the way back, the children find themselves caught during a small earthquake in the parking garage of their building.  A crack in the floor reveals a passageway to a bank vault that somehow was built-over by the apartments?  In his infinite wisdom, Danny climbs down into the chamber.  He discovers this movie's version of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and three records made by preachers toying with the book.  Danny decides these albums would be great to sample for his DJing efforts and plays the incantations back in the apartment.  I'm not sure how.  These records, from the 1920s, would likely be 78 RPM and most modern record players only do 45 and 33.  But that's nitpicking and I choose to let that go.

From there on, we go full deadite, starting with Ellie.  Her possession is the best in the movie and is genuinely frightening.  From this point on, it's what Joe Bob Briggs used to refer to as spam in a cabin. The atmosphere has a great vibe of claustrophobia due to the characters being stuck on the second floor of this complex.   Gore and body-count
are abound.

Like I've said about many other movies, this should've been a stand alone flick.  It didn't need to be a part of the Evil Dead series and would've benefited from not having the constraints of that series.  That said, this movie is well worth a couple of watches.

 Cat Sick Blues (2015).  Starring Matthew C. Vaughan, Shia Denovan, and Mahalia Brown

Three Stars.

TRIGGER WARNING:   This movie contains disturbing imagery and depictions of sexual assault and animal abuse.  Discretion is advised before further viewing of this movie and reading of this article.

A couple of women are seen getting stoned and watching cat videos on a laptop.  Eventually, after venturing outside to investigate, they're both murdered by a weirdo donning a cat mask.  That's opposed to a normal person wearing a cat mask that murders people of course.  After decapitating the blonde stoner,  the killer walks into their British flat, places the head on a side-table and proceeds to watch cat videos himself.

This sets the stage for Cat Sick Blues, a demented and somewhat original take on the time-honored slasher subgenre.  We're introduced to Ted, a man grieving the death of his black cat.  Ted breaks from reality so severely that he becomes convinced he can bring his beloved pet back from the netherworld.  How so, you might ask?  He believes the trick to this is murdering nine women, one for each life of his cat, and draining their blood into a giant vat to re-animate the deceased animal.

In addition to his feline mask and his matching red sweater, Ted utilizes two sets of unique tools to accomplishes his goals.  One is a pair of kitten-mittens, complete with Kruger claws for slicing and dicing.  The other is, I shit you not, a twenty-four inch dildo with barbs. It's patterned after (if you guessed it) a tomcat.  These items are just the cherry on the batshit crazy sundae the audience is about to endure as the carnage piles up.

The side plot of this movie involves a woman named Claire Ellis, a YouTuber famous for videos of her white cat.  This portion of her life comes to an end when a mentally challenged neighbor forces his way into her apartment.  After snapping her cat's neck (ala Of Mice And Men) and throwing it out the window, the intruder violently rapes Claire.  While fleeing the scene, he happens to steal her camcorder.  As the camcorder had accidentally captured the attack, it falls into nefarious hands and is uploaded to the internet.  The death of her cat, the assault and the unwanted attention from the video all take their toll on Claire.

Ted and Claire's paths cross when they meet at a support group for people.  This leads them having some awkward dates and encounters to say the least.  Unbeknownst to Claire, Ted is feverishly working towards his goal of cat-resurrection.  Needless to say, the bodies pile up in his wake and Claire eventually finds herself on a crash collision of fate in the surrealistic conclusion of the film.

Not recommended for casual horror film fans.  Proceed to watch at your own risk.

Valentine (2001) - Review

Valentine (2001). Starring Marley Shelton, Denise Richards, and David Boreanaz.

One star.

Coming out of the glut of teen slasher films in the years following the Scream movies and I Know What You Did Last Summer, we have this holiday-themed ripper flick from the early 2000s.  Until I saw it pop up on Tubi around Valentine's Day, I had completely forgotten it existed.

And there's a reason for this.  It's a forgettable movie.  So much so that I had to watch it multiple times. It was so fucking boring that I kept falling asleep.  

The one thing I did like about this film is it had the classic slasher intro. It dates back to a 1988 junior high dance, where a gap-toothed bespectacled nerd named Jeremy Melton is getting spurned by several girls at a VD dance.  He eventually connects with Dorothy.  Dorothy is seemingly also an outcast with, shall we say, body image issues?  As we later discover, she belongs to the same circle of friends casting ire upon Jeremy (a plot point I didn't really understand).  

The romance is short-lived, as Dorothy accuses Jeremy of attacking her when the pair are heckled by a group of unnamed bullies.  After getting the holy shit beat out of him,  Jeremy is sent to reform school and never heard from again.  So we have the foundation for a revenge plot by a psychopath holding a long time grudge. 

Cut to 2001.  We're briefly introduced to Shelley (an early appearance by ego-maniacal Grey's Anatomy actress Katherine Heigl), one of the girls from the dance who's currently in medical school.  She's hunted down and slaughtered by a lunatic in a cherub mask.  This leads to a reunion of the other girls at her funeral!  We meet the film's heroine, Kate (Shelton); super-model level sarcastic-sexpot Paige (Richards);  Lily, an attractive woman who lives like a complete slob and dates a perv-creep gallery owner; lastly, adult Dorothy, who gets into spats with her same-age stepmother. As the story progresses, each woman receives sinister pop-up VD cards addressed "JM."  Gee, I wonder who the mystery man may be?

The funny thing about Kate is the fact that she's so spacey, she acts just like Cindy from Scary Movie.  I actually thought this actress was Anna Farris with blond hair and I had to check IMDb to find out otherwise.  She goes around with this lost, blank expression through most of the movie.  She has a on and off again boyfriend named Adam (played by former teen heartthrob David Boreanaz).  The couple go back and forth about Adams drinking problem, which adds to the monotony of the movie.

And the dull does not stop there.  For a good chunk of this film, we get to watch the characters as they go on speed dates, bitch about the deceptions of online dating, perusing video personal services, and so on.  We're treated to a gala for Lily's boyfriend, where they begin making out.  This is abruptly ended when Lily storms off after her boyfriend's assistant attempts to join in.  I kinda wondered why this surprised her, as this guy's art exhibit is literally nothing but T and A plastered all over the walls.  I'm sure this pony-tail wearing goat molester went on to a lucrative career decades later on Pornhub.  

The point is driven home that all of these men they encounter are creeps.  Which the men portrayed here are some real winners.  The character aptly named Scary Gary comes to mind.  Overall, it's tiring and distracts from any real impact for the violence that ensues later.

We get some exposition in the form of an old-school balding detective named Vaughan.  He reveals that Jeremy Melton pulled the old "escape from the asylum" routine and is possibly the man behind the . . . mask.   Vaughan shows the girls a laughable series of computer aged composites of Melton, as no pictures were taken of him after 1988.  After Vaughan postulates that Melton could be posing as someone any of the girls could be dating, a very flat bout of paranoia breaks out as to who the killer may be.

The killings finally pickup at a house party held by Dorothy, very much later in the film.  Aside from a decent attack involving a hot tub, the film just turns into the standard slasher, with somewhat of a non-twist as to who the killer really is.  I would call it a letdown, but I had no buzz to kill upon watching the ending.

Valentine has the same slick sheen many of the late 90s/early 00s horror flicks seemed to have.  The characters parade with the same hip, too cool for school attitudes of the era.  Literally none of these characters generate any sympathy.  So it's not hard to believe this is not mentioned on YouTube top ten lists and has fallen down the rabbit hole of time.