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

Review: The Mangler (1995)

The first movie for this year's October marathon has some pedigree:  Directed by Tobe Hooper (who directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) from a short story written by Stephen King, with main characters played by Robert Englund (of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame) and Ted Levine (a few short years after his The Silence of the Lambs performance).  This had all the makings of becoming a horror classic.  However, audience response was muted and critics were savage: it was only in recent years that it has emerged as a cult favorite.  All of this seems surprising, until you read the plot summary and discover that this movie is about a demonically possessed laundry press.

You read that correctly. I have read the short story (which varies slightly from the movie, but only a little bit) and mostly wanted to check out this movie to see just how much they would adhere to the premise.  Would they be true to the story like the adaptation of Carrie?  Would it be similar but notably different like The Shining?  Or would just the name be used and the story not be related at all, a la The Lawnmower Man?  I got my answer, and now I grapple with how I feel about the movie.

The movie isn't bad by any stretch.  England hams it up (complimentary) as our villain, Bill Gartley.  Levine also hams it up (derogatory) as our protagonist, Officer John Hunton.  The movie gives the gore fans what they want with multiple people pulled through the laundry press - with the film happily showing us the results.  The plot, while ridiculous, is played straight and explained well enough, even if the ending of the film feels a bit unearned.  It's very much a mixed bag in the truest sense.

I'm not quite sure it deserves cult status, but worse movies have attained the same so I can't be too worked over it.  It's just weird that this one made it to that level when it isn't really that campy.  I suppose some of that cult comes from devotees of Stephen King or fans of director Hooper, but the former has better adaptations and latter has better films that this.

It's acceptable, I think.  For every good decision there is a terrible one - sometimes at the same time involving the same thing! - but it doesn't do anything truly terrible throughout.  It's just... a random horror movie.  No movie is so bad that everyone hates it - there is always at least one devoted fan - but I have seen many enthusiastic recommendations for this one.  And I can normally figure out where the cult sprang from, even if I don't feel the need to join.  This one has flummoxed me though.

Would I recommend this to others?  I don't know.  It's not the worst way to spend an hour and a half, but I doubt it would ever be the first movie I would grab.  But who knows?  Stranger films than this one have moved into the rotation.

6 out of 10.

Review: Resident Evil (2026)

I want to like this movie more than I do.

I believe in the adage of 'the characters don't know what genre of movie they are in' and try not to go too hard against 'dumb decisions' made by the characters (I doubt I would be clear headed under pressure) but this movie stretched me to the limit of what I will allow a horror movie character to get away with.  Because Bryan (Austin Abrams), our protagonist for this entry, very quickly knows what sort of genre he is in and still makes many, many, many bad choices.

Despite this, the movie is a fun time, it's just one that consistently frustrates me because director Zach Cregger, co-writing with Shay Hatten, could very easily have made small changes to fix the issues with the film.  Stop having Bryan stare, dumbfounded, at the various monsters and maybe have him react?  Or even better, have him oblivious to some of it until the moment the action starts.  It's like watching someone who can hit a home run instead settle for a double.

And rest assured, the bad decisions are not limited to Bryan - every character in this makes poor decisions counter to their knowledge of what is going on, save one.  That one remaining still makes bad decisions, but at least they have no idea what is going on when they make said decisions.

Which is a bummer, because there is quite a bit to enjoy with this entry.  The humor, for the most part, is spot on.  It goes on slightly too long and makes for some awkward moments later in the movie, but I'd definitely say it is a strength.  The acting is also pretty strong across the board, though a good 80% of it falls on Abrams.

Several of the action set pieces are also well done, with Creggar staging some interesting sequences.  He also manages tension very well, with a tunnel scene keeping the audience on the edge of their seats without doing anything other than showing a dimly lit section.  The goods are there, just frequently missing better characters.

Would I recommend it?  Certainly.  Even with my complaints, I'd say this is easily amongst the best this series has to offer, but it might leave some frustrated at the potential greatness it toyed with.

6 out of 10

Review: Heart of the Beast (2026)

In Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, there is a scene between Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth has a sparring match with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh).  The point of this scene, beside adding a bit of action by way of flashback, is to show how strong/good a fighter Cliff is in a not-so-subtle way so that when he fights off multiple other characters later on in the movie, we believe it.  Heart of the Beast, directed by David Ayer, does something similar with James Belmont (Brad Pitt, again) - albeit in a much more subtle way (I shudder to think what a less-subtle version would be) - having a scene where James mentions his military career to help lend credibility to his toughness in the later lost-in-the-wilderness scenes.

It helps initially, but this script by Cameron Alexander stretches the bounds of plausibility well beyond the point of that early conversation.  The script also defeats the film in other ways, both big (you feel every second of this 101 minute movie) and small (someone involved doesn't quite know how many days are in a week).  By being such a slow moving picture, I had time to not only notice that small issue with the days in the week, but various other missteps that a punchier or more action-packed script would've helped to cover.

There's nothing wrong with a more meditative approach to this sort of story, but (to compare it to yet another movie) much like The Revenant in 2015, there is meditative and then there is draggy this film is much more the latter than the former.  It's not as long as The Revenant (thank God), which is a small favor to the audience.  However, there were far too many moments where it lingered in moments where the extra time added nothing to the story.

Even the one thing that gives this movie novelty over the many, many similar films - the dog suffers from PTSD - barely has any bearing on the story.  It doesn't come up in any meaningful way, and for something that the trailers make a point of showing, the lack of any meaningful arc coming of it feels weird - almost like something was cut from the script.

I've made it four (now five) paragraphs into this review without mentioning anything other than the screenplay issues, and I haven't even mentioned them all.  I almost want to make a quick bullet-point list of all the other problems, but it would edge into spoiler territory.  Plus, a review should also cover other aspects of the film in question without harping on one particular part of it, no matter how bad it is.

The film has three characters outside of the dog: in addition to Pitt, J.K. Simmons makes a cameo appearance as someone for Pitt to exposition-dump onto and Anna Lambe shows up for a part so small the character doesn't even have a name.  Because of this, the bulk of the film rests on Pitt (who is adequate to bad, depending on the scene) and the dog Odin (Uber for most of the movie, various other dogs for flashbacks).

The dog is fine, for the most part, but director Ayer has absolutely no idea how to shoot the non-action scenes that focus on the dog in a cinematic way.  So many of those scenes can be summarized as 'the dog stares pensively at James' that I have to wonder if the screenplay gave Ayer to little to work with that he just gave up.

Dang, I am back to the script issues again...

Since we already circled back to it, I think Pitt also struggles with a screenplay that either has no understanding of how an injured body behaves, or.... really, that is the only explanation.  James goes  through quite a bit of abuse in this movie and whether or not that affects his trek through the wilderness seems to depend on what actions the script demands of the character in each particular scene.  It's almost as if scenes are out of order.

This review is coming across as exceptionally negative, but this movie's mediocrity gives me so little to praise about it.  If pressed, I'd say the cinematography is well done, and Simmons is always a solid performer.  That is about all I can commend though.

Would I recommend this movie?  A resolute 'No' - though I get the feeling that most would not be quite as harsh on it as I am.  A forgettable movie.

4 out of 10

Review: The End of Oak Street (2026)

It's kind of funny that The End of Oak Street delivered on the broken promise of the latter Jurassic World movies.  While those movies teased but ultimately only gave us glimpses of dinosaurs in the suburbs, this film gives it to us in spades.  For a PG-13 movie, it has a surprising amount of violence (though it does refrain from being gory) and does not hesitate when killing off the various denizens of the neighborhood.  It gives us everything we wanted from Jurassic World that we were denied, and I respect it for that.

To give a summary, in July of 1982, the Platt family finds not only themselves, but their entire neighborhood transported to the distant past.  Dinosaurs quickly invade the neighborhood and the family finds itself struggling to survive.  As is often the case with films produced by JJ Abrams, there is also a healthy amount of family drama akin in the vein of the great Spielberg movies of the 80s.

For obvious reasons, this story feels familiar in many ways - hell, the movie almost forces a Spielberg-esque bicycle scene with son Brian (Christian Convery) - and director David Robert Mitchell leans into it mostly successfully.  The film isn't completely devoid of subversions, but a seasoned moviegoer is going to predict most of the major beats should they wish to.

Mitchell mostly avoids this by keeping things moving at such a pace that you don't have time to think, but there is something to be said for using familiar tropes to focus on the character work being done.  Anne Hathaway, as the family matriarch Denise, is particularly good in her role in a way that the movie didn't need but is much better for having.  Ewan McGregor, who plays Greg, the father, doesn't have quite as much to work with but nevertheless also gives his character details that enrich the movie in small ways.

The dinosaurs are probably on the more accurate end of movie creations, though not without creative liberties.  Some of these work well - the body proportions are off in a way that adds to the surrealism of the situation - but some of them feel odd.  Having the long-necked dinosaurs (I dare not try to guess which they are supposed to be given the mix of dinosaurs shown) covered in what looks like hair just feels weird as opposed to surreal.

There are two main criticisms I would have for the film, both on the 'personal pet peeve' end of the spectrum.  The first?  There is an obvious hole in the story where a sapphic storyline involving the daughter Audrey, played by Maisy Stella, was meant to be.  In a time period with the type of president we have, running away from any LGBT storyline feels like a deliberate choice, and not one that makes me comfortable.

The other main critique involves a mild spoiler - so mild that I hesitate to even call it a spoiler.  Anyone who has watched a movie can see a certain plot point coming, but consider this the spoiler-warning paragraph before I delve into it.

So, there is a family dog that disappears early in the film and of course it shows up in a pivotal moment to save the day.  I'm not against this.  This is a certain type of movie, and in this type of movie, the dog is going to live.  That is fine.  What is not fine is this movie going out of its way to kill multiple cats.  One, I would not be happy about, but I could live with - especially since it is one of the first hints that something is wrong.  But multiple?  Including a scene where it is several dinosaurs picking at the corpse of one?  It just feels so unnecessary that it rubbed me the wrong way very late in the movie.

Would I recommend this?  Probably.  It's a fun time, and it gives us something we haven't seen in awhile onscreen.  But I'd more likely recommend Primitive War before this one.

6 out of 10.

Review: Buddy (2026)

I seldom come across a movie that I want to recommend to everyone I know where I recognize that - at best - the number of people who will love it as much as I do might hover around 3 in 10.  And that's if I am lucky.  But dammit, Buddy is such a darkly fun time that I will continuously send people into it with as little warning as possible.

My only knowledge going into this movie was that it was a horror movie that escalated quickly and that parents had taken their children to see it, somehow missing that it had an R rating.  And honestly, that was sufficient.  This is a movie that pays dividends by going into it blind - not because of surprises (though there are some), but because the movie is such an experience that the less you know, the better.

Which makes writing a review difficult, I must say.  The most I can say about the plot is that Buddy is a children's show character and it is a horror movie.  The performances are pretty great across the board - though I will point out that it felt like Topher Grace put in minimum effort in a very stock role - the set design and score are pitch perfect, and humor is just the right amount of dark.

Director Casper Kelly (who co-wrote this with Jamie King) had not directed a feature-length movie before this, and was mostly known for the Adult Swim short film "Too Many Cooks", does not hesitate in the slightest with the material.  There is a confidence to this direction that serves the movie well - I think someone who approached this film with irony or skepticism would have doomed it, so Kelly taking the reins worked in its favor.

The main critique I would have - aside from Grace's performance mentioned above - is that there is a section of the movie that feels completely unnecessary.  It's the only segment that feels like it could be cut, though it is likely in to keep the movie at a respectable length of 96 minutes.  It's also the only section that feels shocking for shock's sake.

But overall, this is a fun movie.  Definitely not for everyone, but I would still encourage everyone to see it.

8 out of 10

Review: The Fog (1980)

Four reviews in, I feel like I should have a checklist for my Carpenter reviews.

Excellent performances, including some all-time great ones?  Check (in this case, Hal Holbrook as Father Malone and Adrienne Barbeau as Stevie Wayne)

Outstanding musical score?  Check

Atmosphere for days?  Check

A simple story, well-told and directed?  Check, check check.

Inspired by a visit to Stonehenge, Carpenter and Debra Hill co-wrote this story of Antonio Bay, a small coastal town celebrating its 100th anniversary when a mysterious and deadly fog starts appearing.  We follow various characters as they try to uncover the mystery of the fog before they fall victim to it.

If Halloween is an elemental fable of Good and Evil, then The Fog is a ghost story told around the campfire.  In fact, the movie opens with such a scene, a perfect tone and mood setter to prepare the audience for the story about to unfold.  All plot can be explained by this premise: why does the fog suddenly start rolling in? Because 100 years is a significant anniversary.  Why do the ghosts and their fog only appear at a specific time?  Because that is the same time their murderer's conspired against them.  The movie never outright explains this, but trusts the viewers to pick up on the hints dropped throughout.

I mentioned the performances, but it really cannot be stated just how good Adrienne Barbeau is in this movie.   It's almost criminal that this role didn't propel her to mega-stardom - though, perhaps, she never wanted that - it easily stands with Jamie Lee Curtis's performance in Halloween, or Kurt Russell's in The Thing as among the best to appear in Carpenter's filmography.

Perhaps it was the mixed reception to the film during its initial release.  Like many of Carpenter's films, it was only later reassessments that properly credited the filmmaker for his effective storytelling.  Either way, this performance - secluded from the rest of the cast by virtue of the character running a radio station from a lighthouse - ties the movie together.

Carpenter quite effectively uses the fog in setting the scenes.  Much has been written about the various iconic scenes in Halloween, but much less the ones in this film.  The fog - with an otherworldly glow -  slowly cresting over the hillside and descending on the lighthouse, or the various victims pulled into it with only glimpses of what it harbors are startling effective.

Cinematographer Dean Cundey again works with Carpenter on this film, to its extreme benefit.  At times, Antonio Bay feels like it might be the last town on Earth, and much of that can be credited to Cundey's cinematography.  The night scenes have a stillness to them that is plain, but somehow wrong - there's a tension in the shots even before we first encounter the titular fog.

If the movie is letdown from Carpenter's previous theatrical feature, it's only because his previous film was Halloween, which would be a tough act for anyone to follow.  But 'not quite as good as Halloween' is a compliment, even if it doesn't quite sound like it.  If  you want to watch a horror film, this is a solid selection.

8 out of 10

Fun fact:  This is the third straight film to feature Charles Cyphers and Nancy Loomis and somewhat sets the stage for Carpenter to frequently collaborate with the same actors.