Review: American Gothic (1988)

"Want to make a horror movie based off of a painting?"

"Sure, what painting did you have in mind?"

"I was thinking American Gothic."

"What, will it be a Texas Chainsaw thing?"

"Kinda, only we're going to set it in Washington."

"The state?  Why not have it be Bigfoot then?"

"No, that's cheesy.  Instead it's going to be a nutty family that lives alone on an island and kills anyone that ends up going there."

"Cannibalism?"

"No, just crazy.  We're going to have a bunch of 50-year-olds acting like children and murdering people with kids stuff, like swings and jump ropes."

"If they act like kids, how would they survive?"

"There will be a Ma and Pa based off the painting to keep them in line."

"Okay, how's the final girl going to get out of this situation?"

"She doesn't."

"What?  She dies?  People hate the sort of downer ending."

"I didn't say she died."

"Well, then how does she survive."

"Trust me, you won't see it coming."

"Okay, but this sounds a little strange - can we get a big name for it?"

"We already got Rod Steiger and Yvonne De Carlo to play Pa and Ma."

"Wow, they are slumming it."

"Are they, though?"

"Fair."

"We need to keep this somewhat serious so they aren't laughing throughout it though."

"Maybe have the crazy family be scary?"

"No, we can't do that.  Instead, our main girl is going to have a dead baby."

"Isn't that a little dark."

"No, it's character depth.  Besides, it is only important in the beginning and end of the movie."

"Well, okay then."

"Okay, let's make this movie."

"Are we going to refine the idea at all?"

"No."

5 out of 10

Review: Coyotes (2025)

I remember when I first saw the trailer for this and how excited I was to watch it.  Then it seemed to never come out.  Turns out it did a very limited release before going to streaming where, when I attempted to watch it last year, they wanted to charge a frankly obscene amount for a rental.  Thankfully, it was at a more reasonable price this year and I can finally cross it off the list of movies that grabbed my interest that I needed to watch.

Coyotes follows comic book artist Scott (Justin Long), his wife Liv (Kate Bosworth, giving us real-life married couple playing this fictional one), and their daughter Chloe (Mila Harris, not related to her fictional parents) as a natural disaster near their Hollywood Hills home leaves them trapped, without power and menaced by a large pack of coyotes.

Now, this premise is absolutely ridiculous, and the movie thankfully knows this, so it takes the horror-comedy approach with a heavy lean in the comedy direction.  It mostly succeeds in this goal, though the seams show a little bit in both the humor and the special effects departments.

This movie screams of multiple rewrites with vastly different approaches to the humor.  There's a weird misogynistic streak to some of the humor, forcibly softened by making Liv and Chloe among the more competent characters, and some topical humor that falls flat (a character blames the coyotes attacking on chemtrails).  If those had been more fully excised, the movie would have been much better overall, because much of the remaining humor works well and is gamely delivered by the cast.

The movie does improve once it moves to the more action-y part of the film, even if it does have several moments that stretch the suspension of disbelief.  Nothing too unforgiveable, thankfully, but will make a perceptive viewer role their eyes a bit.

The special effects for the coyotes range from acceptable to bad, with some of the coyotes not even glancing at realistic, and others making the audience think more of a wolf.  The other effects - primarily the gore and makeup of various attacks - is much stronger, and while I understand why CGI had to be use for the coyotes, I wish they could have gone in a more practical direction.

The acting is generally good across the board, with Bosworth giving the best performance.  It was nice to see Long play a well-meaning if slightly incompetent character after playing a series of more sleazy ones.  Also, is Long considered a scream king at this point?  If not, I think he should be.  Brittany Allen, as Julie, also has some great bits.

Overall, this wasn't a bad time.  It certainly isn't the best movie I've watched this month, but it is also far from the worst.  I think I would recommend it to a few people, if only for its blessedly-short 92 minute runtime.

6.5 out of 10

Review: The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920)

Sometimes I watch a movie and quickly conclude that I am vastly unqualified to write a review for it.  It happened with Sinners (a film I absolutely love) to use a recent example, and I feel like the same applies for this 1920 film (the full title is The Golem: How He Came into the World).  I can note the German Expressionism in the production design, I can talk about the history (it is the third in a trilogy of films and the only one that has not been lost), I could even go into the importance of watching what is a very Jewish  film in a time of rising antisemitism.  But I am not an expert in any of those subjects, and anything I say would be nothing more than the rewording of what I had just read, so I will avoid that.

Instead, I will just talk about watching a silent movie - one cobbled together from various releases and negatives - from over a hundred years ago and how a modern audience would react to it, assuming they could sit through such a thing.

To wit, I think modern audience would appreciate the production design of the film.  My exposure to German Expressionism is fairly limited, but I appreciate the otherworldliness it brings to the setting while still feeling true to life.  Buildings and rooms are just 'off' enough to throw you off-balance while still feeling like something an actual person would live in.

There's also something of an ethereal mood to the movie, with the various spells cast showcasing some fairly impressive effects for the time period while heightening that unearthly feeling that the sets had already given the viewer.  It's really a masterwork of tone that is impressive for search an early film of this type.

It's hard to judge the acting, given the vast gulf between what works well for a silent film vs one where you can hear the characters.  If pressed, I'd say that Lothar Müthel as Squire Florian is best in show, though director Paul Wegener as the titular Golem is also fairly strong.  On the other end, I can't say I was impressed by Lyda Salmonova as Miriam, though that could very well be because the movie doesn't ask much of her.

Would I recommend this to others?  Yes, I think everyone should experience at least a few silent films just for the novelty, and this one is influential enough to throw it to the top of the list.  But if you absolutely cannot stand this type of film, I wouldn't judge.

8 out of 10

Review: Mimic (1997)

In this, the 9th year of me trying to watch a horror movie every day of October (I have been successful in 7 of the last 8 years), I finally got around to watching this late 90s tale of Genetic Engineering Gone Wrong - a popular theme after the massive success of 1994's Jurassic Park, I am sure.  There is much to appreciate about this - directed by Guillermo del Toro, starring Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam, with Josh Brolin, F. Murray Abraham, and Charles S Dutton also appearing, the movie has pedigree.  The creature design is also fairly good, even if the graphics are quite dated almost 30 years later.  But it left me cold.

I remembering reading once in a review of Pacific Rim - another del Toro production - that the difference between del Toro and most other directors was that even when doing an obvious paycheck movie, del Toro was never going to do anything other than his best to make the film good.  And you can see the effort put into making Mimic into the best possible version of itself.  I'm just not sure it was worth the effort.

I feel the need to mention a caveat at this point: I watched the original theatrical release of Mimic, rather than the later-released director's cut that, while not precisely what del Toro wanted, was closer to what he was going for than this one.  The added footage - and possibly different edits? - amounts to 6 extra minutes of film length, which is fairly significant.  This compromised version is still effective, but I might have been better served to seek out that other cut.  Such is life...

The edits forced onto the movie by the Weinsteins might contribute to some at-times draggy sequences and stifled action.  That said, at 106 minutes, I'm not sure much more of this particular story needed to be told.

That's really the crux of the problem:  The movie is mostly good, but I'm not really sure I could pinpoint what or how exactly to improve it.  Nothing I would suggest - aside from removing the child character from the movie - would have more than a minimal impact.  That one big change is also one that likely would have never been made.  Remember, this is post Jurassic Park, so putting a child in danger in anything mimicking that film -ah, I see what they did there, those sons of bi-- was all but guaranteed.

I suppose I can understand why this movie pops up occasionally amongst the horror community as one worth checking out.  I'm not sure I would recommend it, but I wouldn't actively tell anyone to avoid it either.

7 out of 10

Review: Beware Boiúna (2026)

No giant snake movie will ever be as good as 1997's Anaconda.  Not because of the quality, but because it is a perfect storm late 90s cheese, creature effects (both practical and CGI), and misguided filmmaking, topped off with an absolutely legendary performance from Jon Voight.  In a way, the 1997 Anaconda is the inverse of Jaws.  No shark movie could ever live up to that 1975 classic because Spielberg made one of the most perfect films of all time that also happened to be a shark movie.  Anaconda, while not even in the same neighborhood as Jaws (not even in the same city, and possibly state, depending on which you decide to use for reference), is such a pure-blooded example of everything wrong and amazing about genre films that any other giant snake movie can only hope to catch half as much as the lightning in a bottle as Anaconda caught.

Which brings us to Beware Boiúna, 2026's giant snake movie that is a more in line with that 1997 film than the 2025 one starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black.  And guys, it is so close to topping it.  It is a very good movie that is two poor decisions (one small, one impossibly large) from being a genuinely great one.  It is a much more serious movie, though sincere in its seriousness in such a way that it works for the film.  It studiously avoids cheese and every character is given substantially more depth than this genre usually calls for.

Set in Colombia in the present day, the film primarily follows a humanitarian group, - Alli, Callum, and Proctor (played by Jessica Rothe, Will Close, and Christophe de Geest) -  the boat crew taking them down the Amazon river to provide said aid, - Lena and Raul (Kiana Madeira and Jamie Newball), with Lena also on this trip to try and find her brother Jorge (Sergio Herrera) - and the suspicious group sent to study the land for future road builds that becomes antagonistic towards the first group - Brennan and Shawn (Logan Marshall-Green and Jackson Bews).  Now, there are a couple of extra characters associated with the last group, but let's just say they don't matter too much in the long run.

Soon, all of these characters find themselves at a destroyed camp where they encounter the legendary Boiúna - a gigantic snake of legend comparable to the Titanoboa - who proceeds to attack everyone who has wandered into their domain.  It quickly becomes a battle to survive the Amazon and the snake, with high stakes as it becomes clear that no one is safe.  And I do mean no one.  This movie is not afraid to kill any character, something desperately missing from the majority of horror movies.

The time we spend getting to know all of these characters (rest assured, this movie does not rush to get to the titular snake) works wonders to get you invested once the death and destruction begins.  You genuinely root for the characters to survive, and the majority of the deaths actually affect the viewer.  Every moment feels earned.  Even better, they don't try to explain the presence of Boiúna.  There's legends of a giant snake, they discover the legend is true, and then they try to survive.  No muss, no fuss as far as that plot point goes.

Now, I did allude to a pair of mistakes that keep the movie from being truly great.  One of these is fairly minor: the set up for a payoff that never comes (an unfired Chekov's Gun, if you will).  It doesn't really affect the movie, but you wonder why they spent the time on it they did if no follow up was going to happen.

The other involves a character death.  I won't say who, except to say that it is the only death that doesn't feel earned.  It almost feels wrong for the character to have died.  Story-wise, I mean.  Characters meet all sort of undeserved fates in these movies, but from a story structure view, this death didn't work.  It's a really gaping flaw in an otherwise great movie.

The performances are good across the board, with Marshall-Green giving the best performance by a mile and one I did not expect from an actor who usually does solid if unspectacular work.  The effects for the snake are well done, with a real sense of weight to the beast.  The Amazon is scary enough on its own, and works well as the setting for a creature feature.

Would I recommend this one?  In a heartbeat.  While I would tweak it a little bit myself, this is a great creature feature that never stops going once it starts.

8 out of 10.

Review: The Food of the Gods (1976)

Sometimes, watching a movie is like going on a date.  You look at the profile (poster) and maybe read a little bit of their likes and dislikes (i.e. check out various reviews) and then take the plunge.  The Food of the Gods might not be The One as far as these sort of relationships go, but it will definitely be one that I talk about for years.

The film follows a random group of people on an island - and I do mean random: we get a married couple where the wife is 9 months pregnant, a (pro?) football player hunting with his friends, a dog food company owner and his bacteriologist assistant (for if there is one thing you need as the maker of dog food, it is a bacteriologist) and an older couple who live on the island - as various wildlife eats the titular food of the gods and grow to enormous size.  They also develop a mean disposition.

You look at that profile and you have to swipe right, you know?  There are so many red flags interesting tidbits in this that you have to go out with it at least once, to see if the crazy level is really that high.  And, my dear audience, it is.

Like The Empire of the Ants, this uses a mix of terrible special effects to display the large beasts.  Bad puppets - and maybe people in costumes, though I can't say that happens definitively - forced perspective with obviously composite shots, and I'm not exactly sure what they do during the wasp attacks, but I do know that one of them doesn't fly around so much as spin in wild circles in the same section of screen until a gunshot makes it explode.

It was during one of these early moments that I began to fall in love with this movie.  A man walks into a chicken coop and gets attacked by a giant rooster.  He fights off the fakest looking rooster head I have ever seen, yells at the owner of said rooster (completely ignoring the also-enormous chickens also in the coop) and after she scolds him for going into the coop, he drops his complaint and asks to use her phone.  No discussion of what just happened - in fact, he doesn't discuss the giant rooster at all after this point - just moving on as the plot dictates.

There's something to be said for directness, and I was already planning a second date as my passion for this movie grew.  We get to the wasp attack, the owner of the dog food company wants to market and sell the food of the gods - which, since I failed to mention, looks like a flavorless porridge that is leaking from a rock - everyone finds themselves trapped at the older couple's cabin as giant rats swarm around them - how could I not want to watch this again?

But then, cold water was thrown on me just as I expected things to heat up.  For the people fight back against the rats (which, fair) and the movie slows to a crawl as the same argument is had - with slight variations - for far too long of this film's otherwise fleet 88 minutes.  The movie eventually picks up again - the solution is to blow up a dam that in no way, shape or form able to hold the amount of water that pours from it - as if trying to win me back after a bad argument.  And it almost does.  But that draggy section forever means that this passion can only occasionally be indulged.

Would I play cupid with this film and other horror fans?  Probably, as there is so much to enjoy about it.  But far too many others would look at my relationship with this film and judge us both harshly, so I would be selective about who I would recommend it to.

4 out of 10, but what a 4 it was.

Review: The Gingerdead Man (2005)

Tonight's movie was not supposed to be The Gingerdead Man.  I had planned on going to the actual theater to see one, but was instead persuaded to throw this one on.  This had been on my radar as a potential watch - though never near the top of the list - and it seemed an acceptable trade-off since it looked like campy fun.

I was gravely mistaken.

This movie is bad bad.  70 minutes long and you feel every second of it.  Charles Band (producing and directing) is famous for his quick productions, but maybe a little more time on the script and a lot more time on everything else and maybe this could be salvaged, but honestly, I'm not sure anything could save this.

The premise, fairly ridiculous, is this:  killer Millard Findlemeyer (Gary Busey, giving a surprisingly low-key performance) is put to death based off the testimony of Sarah Leigh (one of the most dry yet successful jokes the film makes), played by Robin Sydney.  He vows revenge and somehow ends up possessing a gingerbread man in Sarah's family bakery.  How that happens is never really explained - Wikipedia tells me that Millard's mother mixes his ashes with gingerbread spice mix, but nothing in the film alludes to this - but possess it he does to enact his vengeance.

Tiny killer movies can work - Child's Play has famously lasted for decades, and I am a big fan of the Puppet Master series also produced by Band - but this movie puts precious little effort into doing anything to make our murderous cookie threatening.  You can tell when they actively give up on it by just giving him a gun with endless bullets.

The movie does have a couple of good moments - mostly from Ryan Locke as love interest Amos (the character names are a running joke) - but when the third best moment of the film is the end credits, you are in a dire situation.  Really, thank God for Ryan Locke, who is easily best in show, and to a lesser degree Jonathan Chase as Brick.  I'm not quite sure Chase's performance is good, but it is interestingly weird in a way this movie desperately needs.

How this movie spawned as many sequels as it did - along with being a recurring character in the much longer Evil Bong series - I will never know.  But hey, apparently quite a few people like this franchise, so I guess make that money.

Would I recommend this?  Not even a little bit.  Watch at your own risk.

2 out of 10