One Star Classics

I quite enjoyed the first All Hallows’ Eve, if only because it brought the world Terrifier. As a standalone anthology, it held its own pretty well, too. The wraparound halloween story of a couple of kids finding an old V.H.S. tape consisting of three short films was appropriately creepy, and it also gave us Art the Clown…

Seriously!

Conceptually, All Hallows’ Eve 2 follows its predecessor closely, just not particularly well. This time, a pumpkin masked killer leaves a single lady a tape with more than half a dozen short films. Unlike the first movie, Art’s replacement is not featured in these segments. In other words, one of the main conceits of the predecessor is nowhere to be seen. Each segment has different writers/directors, and all in all, All Hallows’ Eve 2 is not a cohesive anthology collection.

That’s not to say that some of the individual films don’t hold up in their own right. The Last Halloween works as a post-apocalyptic horror, and The Offering has a decent Tales from the Crypt vibe. In general, this anthology is more Creepshow-y than the current run of Creepshow, so it has that going for it.

That aside, a handful of middling shorts don’t do anything to save a disconnected wraparound story. With the original All Hallows’ Eve, Damien Leone wrote and directed the entire package, giving it a full-fledged continuity. I doubt the segment teams from the sequel ever talked. Trickster, as Art’s nemesis-substitute is called, is little more than a set dressing.

Fair is fair, though. The reason the wraparound’s protagonist owns a V.H.S. player is delivered with a great line, and it makes the first five minutes of the movie worth watching. After that, you’re on your own.

Happy Death Day 2U is not as much of a sequel to the surprisingly excellent Happy Death Day, as it is a second chapter in what has all but been confirmed to soon be a trilogy. The formula from the first movie has mainly been kept intact, with only a small dash of sci-fi/comedy added and a sliver of slasher formula removed. Name-checking Back to the Future 2 within the first fifteen minutes of the movie is appropriate in more ways than one.

It’s no surprise, then, that the time-traveling element is still the core of the story, though with a twist. After the cause of the previous film’s time loop is revealed, protagonist Tree inadvertently gets sent to an alternate dimension. While similar to that of the first movie, it sees some unexpected changes in the characters and their relationships, and a killer is once again on the loose.

In that sense, the biggest standout isn’t found in the actual movie, but rather in the credits. Scott Lobdell, the original’s sole screenwriter, is here only named the creator of the characters. 2U has instead been written by the duology’s director, Christopher Landon. I can’t help but speculate if he also was an uncredited writer on the first movie, which stayed in pre-production for almost a decade. It seems plausible he would have had a hand in changing things up during that time. But I digress.

There frankly isn’t a whole lot more to say about 2U that I haven’t already talked about in my write-up on the first movie. Both are largely similar, yet 2U does not feel like a retread of the original, but rather a peer.

Mind you, 2U does score a bonus point for being the funnier entry: Jessica Rothe once again hams it up as Tree, and Carter’s dorky roommate Ryan (Phi Vu) gets a lot more screentime. The addition of newcomers Suraj Sharma and Sarah Yarkin as Ryan’s lab partners too work out in the movie’s favor.

Happy Death Day 2U follows in Back to the Future 2’s footsteps more than conceptually. That eighties classic also worked as a peer to its predecessor, while featuring advantageous additions. They both can claim to be among the best time traveling sequels of all time. (I mean, that’s one huge list!)

Now, have Happy Death Day 3 follow in the footsteps of Primer, and we’ll have something really interesting on our hands.

The Trailer

Often while doing any sort of menial task, I like to put on a forgettable movie in the background, one I can ignore. Prime Video is an excellent source for that kind of film, and its choice in obscure movies of dubious repute runs deep in the best of ways.

#Screamers hit all the checkmarks for what I was looking for during a recent round of laundry folding. Found footage? Check. A spooky video at its center? Check. Hashtag in title? Check, and if that’s not a deterrent, I don’t know what is.

And you know what? I’m a fan of this film, and not in any kind of detached, ironic, so bad it’s good kind of way. #Screamers is just a solid piece of film making.

What drives the movie is a carefully constructed setup. The entire first act is set aside for character introductions and an insight into their video startup, Gigaler. The service is portrayed as a YouTube competitor, with its differentiator being an intelligent recommendation algorithm. As far as a web site goes, it feels like something that could (and probably should) exist, giving #Screamers a surprising touch of realism. The first thirty minutes comes across as an actual documentary.

Things start taking a slow and ominous turn after a couple of jump-scare films are submitted to the site. The videos become instant hits, and when a Gigaler tech tracks down the creator’s phone number to get exclusive distribution rights, weirdness sets in. The woman at the other end of the line sounds strange, almost otherworldly, and the negotiation goes nowhere. Who is she and what is her involvement with the man, Francis, she nervously keeps referring to? Tom, Gigaler’s co-founder, finds the situation intriguing enough to take his core team on a road trip to track her down.

Through its last two thirds, #Screamers is eerily tense. It’s easy to identify with the Gigaler crew having fun with the strange phone calls, and how tracking down the video creators sounds like a smart idea. The difference is that we know where it will all go. Not a single found footage film has ended well, and there is no reason to expect #Screamers to be any different, though fair is fair: it does provide a good twist on the formula.

I can’t really think of anything I disliked about this film. I understand I’m in the minority with #Screamers clocking in at a middling 4.4 at IMDb. That is what it is, and I am not going to deny my true feelings for #Screamers. It mixes inspirational and creepy in a way I can’t recall having seen before, and the balance makes for a really good watch. (I mean, the apartment in American Psycho was designed in a way we all should aspire to, I suppose, but I digress.)

Your mileage will likely vary, but give #Screamers a chance, if only to get out of folding your laundry. It’s currently streaming on Prime.

Bonus oddity!

The stylized name of the movie has changed a number of times during its tenure on Prime. It was first #screamers, then #SCREAMERS, followed by #Screamers. It just recently became Screamers, but I refuse to acknowledge the removal of the charming hashtag. (Also, the tagline has little to do with the actual screaming-title.)

Bonus bonus oddity!

gigaler.com exists, but its WordPress install is riddled with errors. Too bad. It was a nice looking site.

The Trailer

Groundhog Day meets Scream in Happy Death Day, a movie that is a whole lot better than it has any business being.

We follow college student Tree, who, after a drunken night, wakes up in a dorm room with Carter. She doesn’t remember much from the previous evening, and after dismissing Carter, storms off to spend the rest of her day – birthday, natch – like she normally would. Come evening, things take an abrupt turn, and she finds herself staring down a baby masked killer. No points for guessing what comes next: she is stabbed to death, the day starts looping, and will by the rules of movie logic keep doing so until she can stop the murderer.

Happy Death Day does not try to hide its influences. The characters make direct references to Groundhog Day, and the same person who designed the iconic Scream mask created this movie’s babyface. This is a movie that gleefully indulges in pilfering from other movies without taking itself seriously. Happy Death Day is, to describe it succinctly, a comedy dressed up as a horror film.

The script, written by one Scott Lobdell, is sharp and is well utilized by director Christopher Landon. Happy Death Day could easily have faded into oblivion had the cast been directed as typical teen tropes, but Landon handles the on-screen chaos well. Particularly Jessica Rothe shows off some great comedic timing as the protagonist, Tree.

The mileage you get from a movie like Happy Death Day is subjective, and you’re bound to appreciate some of the loop cycles more than others. That’s the nature of the genre, but I cannot say I was ever bored during the ninety-minute run time.

Happy Death Day is just a downright entertaining film. It doesn’t matter if you’re a horror fan or not. If anything, Happy Death Day is a more colorful Groundhog Day, and I feel myself being surprisingly enamored by it.

The sequel, Happy Death Day 2 U was released earlier this year, and my musings shall be posted soon.

Fun fact!

Happy Death Day could easily have ended up as one of those anonymous teen horror movies you find in the dark depths of Netflix. The original attempt at making the movie ten years ago, likely would have put it right there, with the studio wanting a darker teen horror. By the sounds of it, it could have become the House of Wax remake’s peer.

The Trailer