Marrow (2026)

This was a screener request from Scott Motisko, who you may remember sent us Brute 1976 with its infamous penis drill. This looked like it would probably be penis drill-free, which, depending on your tastes could be a mark in or against its favor. Either way, let's see how it did.

Marrow is about podcaster Jamie Foster (Jessica Dawn Willis), who does a True Crime podcast under the name "Distal Marrow" called "Embracing the Paradox." After years of success describing grizzly serial murders, she's feeling burnout, and does an episode on Bigfoot, which her fans hate, and the person running the podcast company she works for (Danielle Harris)--who also happens to be a close friend of her late mother--says she needs to come up with something big, otherwise her funding will be cut and she'll just being doing it as a hobby (like the rest of us). All hope seems to be lost, until a creepy caller comes to her with info on four other area True Crime podcasters who have gone missing. The content is compelling enough to get her back on top, but is she willing to give up her success to save these other victims?

This was definitely a great Halloween season watch, exploring themes not only around modern content creation, but also touching on our modern economy and what it means to have a job like being a podcaster--and what it could mean to lose it. All of this is spun in a horror movie context, that takes the "True Crime podcaster is embroiled in her own True Crime story" plot, and takes it to these extreme horror movie places where anything is possible. You could've taken this script and grounded it more and made it into a Lifetime thriller that would've been a ton of fun to watch and may have been more my speed, but I also appreciated the fact that doing it in this more horror context gave us something--I don't know if "elevated" is the right word, but at least something more serious horror fans could get behind. From there, we have a great lead in Jessica Dawn Willis, and supporting names we recognize like Danielle Harris, Michael Ironside, and Matthew Tompkins. With a VOD release date of November 3rd, this is a great way to extend your Halloween season a bit, and support indie film while you do it.

I figured we'd start with our lead in Jessica Dawn Willis, because a lot of this hinges on her. When we think of horror movie performances, we usually think of the big moments and how well the actor is able to sell them, but sometimes we don't consider all the smaller moments leading up those bigger ones that build the foundation, and that's where Willis really excels for me here. Things like the affected speech of the Millennial podcaster, where "no" almost sounds like "nyoh," that subtly comes and goes depending on who she's talking to and how much she wants to be "Distal Marrow" versus "Jamie Foster;" or the scenes where she's reacting to text messages and phone calls, if it's too much of this popular concept of the vacuous True Crime podcaster, we don't care what happens to her, so she gives us more of a down-to-earth relatable character so we get invested too. That's the thing people love about horror movies, the anarchy of it, how anyone can go at any time, and the only thing that turns that anarchic excitement into tension is having people we're invested in, and I think Willis did a great job of that at the moments we needed it, while being less sympathetic in the moments we needed that too, all building to the big moments at the end.

Part of the stereotype of the vacuous True Crime podcaster I think comes from a sense of envy that people have that someone has found a way to make money doing something fun and outside the drudgery of the 9-to-5 world. Yes, misogyny is also a part of it, especially with disdain for Millennial women True Crime podcasters, so I don't want to ignore that entirely; but in the current economy, where everything is more expensive while wages haven't grown at the same rate, and where companies can let people go at the drop of a hat, it's hard not to be jealous of someone who pops on a computer and not only makes a living talking about True Crime mysteries, but even becomes rich doing it. On a recent episode of Behind the Bastards that was talking about rage baiters on social media, host Robert Evans cited a study where the majority of people said they wanted to make a living as a content creator, and that's even among older participants. So if a lot of people want to make money as a podcaster, imagine what it's like for the people who are making a living as a podcaster? This is where Marrow makes its money for me, when Willis's character is threatened with being pulled from her podcast network, you can see the thought of having to go back to work with the rest of us schlubs motivating her, especially when the police come and ask for her help in their investigation and that threatens her new content. I'm not saying if the DTVC Podcast took off and I could quit my job that I would hinder a police investigation to keep myself from having to go back to a day job, but I can understand why someone would.

The specific genre of podcast this film focuses on is True Crime, which is one my wife Jen will listen to, but I tend to stay away from. Because I don't listen to them much, I can't say if they treat their victims the way those ID Channel shows do, but that's one of the big reasons I stay away, I don't want to think about people dying in horrible ways, and I know at least those ID Channel shows don't focus enough on who the victims are and what they went through beyond the fact that friends and family say they "would light up the room," it's more about the investigative techniques used to find the killer--which we're taking their word for it that the cops are always right that they found the right person. Anyway, I think this film does a great job dealing with both of those realities. First, that these are grizzly murders Distal Marrow is discussing, and reading the details and seeing the images can take their toll; and second, that she is making her money off of that pain and suffering, which leaves her with a dilemma when push comes to shove and her show is at stake. She thought she had an offramp by shifting her show's focus to talking about Bigfoot, but when her audience rebelled, she had to sign that deal with the devil. It's one thing I like about horror, it can explore these kinds of conversations--like is True Crime exploitative, or a needed voice for the victims or wrongly accused--in an extreme way that can't be done in other genres, and this film does a great job working in that space.

Finally, in what is becoming a regular segment on the site, here's another cellphone screen. We have to start with "can we audio chat?" "Audio chat?" Isn't that just a phone call? I thought about it a bit, because a lot of times we come up with new terms for things because the connotations associated with the old ones have baggage. For example, the LLM generative AI industry uses "hallucination" instead of "error" when their LLMs output wrong results. "Hallucination" sounds better than "the thing fucks up a lot because it has limitation, so you should take the results with a grain of salt." In that sense, as someone who hates talking on the phone, maybe calling it an "audio chat" will make me more amendable to a phone call. The other thing is the first part of that sentence says "if I may ask..." and then just asks the question. What if you may not ask? It's too late, you've already asked it. It would be like me eating a bag of chips, and someone reaching in and grabbing some while saying "may I have some of these?" Unlike the "audio chat" thing though, this "may/can I ask" construction has been in English for a long time, and has no purpose other than I guess making us sound more polite, or maybe getting someone's attention before you come right out with the actual question.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is coming out on VOD on November 3rd, and I think if you're looking for some new indie horror it's worth a look. And maybe November 3rd is the perfect date, because you can watch all your annual Halloween movies first, then after while you're still in a horror mode, you can catch something new. Also, spoiler alert, this doesn't feature a penis drill.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34686688/

Pretty (2026)

This is another CriticBridge review. In looking at it beforehand, I saw that the director, Metecan Duren, is only 19, which is crazy that he's that young! I was intrigued to see how it would turn out for sure. Then I saw the runtime, two hours and three minutes. That took a little of the steam out of my excitement to see what it was all about. Let's see how it did.

Pretty is about our eponymous lead (Melisa Kihtir), who is lonely and looking for companionship. She and her sister Emma (Saran Duren) live in a nice house in an affluent neighborhood, but beyond that Pretty doesn't have anyone else in her life. That changes when she hears the voice of a ghost at a neighboring house, whom she goes to talk to; and a mysterious person starts messaging her on Instagram. At the same time though, there have been intruders in her house. What could this mean? Are they there to do her harm? Is she imagining it? As she starts to learn more about this mysterious ghost, and this mysterious person messaging her on Instagram, these mysterious attacks become more frequent too. One night, while her two cousins are visiting after their parents were killed, the mysterious Instagram friend asks to meet her. Her decision to go out to meet him may be the thing that puts the rest of her family in danger.

Let's start with the fact that it is amazing that this film was not only directed by a 19-year-old, but he was the writer and DP as well, and this looks pretty decent and was competently made. We've seen people who are a lot older make things that look a lot worse than this. Also Melisa Kihtir was great in her first role, and a lot of what makes this work hinges on her performance. It's not perfect by any means though. The lighting in the night scenes look a lot like those early seasons of Better Call Saul where Jimmy would go to his brother's place, and his brother thought he was allergic to electricity, so everything was lit by lamps. You'd think a big, fancy house like the one the sisters lived in would have some nice overhead lighting. There are elements of the story that don't exactly work, especially at the end, where our heroine doesn't discover the truth on her own, it's given to her in an info dump, so we get this "put on your eye protection as the loose ends start flying together." With a two-hour plus runtime, we shouldn't need an info dump at the end, the lead has plenty of time to figure it out. There are also moments where the dialog doesn't fit, like when Pretty learns from Emma what happened to their parents, and she's upset, but her sister says "don't make this about you." Make what about her? Did we miss a page of script. Doesn't she have a right to be upset? All that said though, while this isn't perfect, there were a lot of tense moments, and the performance of Kihtir and the way Durecan shot her gives this a lot to hang its hat on. It's currently free on YouTube, so if the runtime doesn't scare you, this is a great way to support an up-and-coming indie director.

I think a big part of the reason why Duren's age makes this so amazing is, while it may not be perfect, if this is what it looks like at 19, what could we be seeing at 29? Or 39? If he stays in the horror genre, he could be one of the best ever. If he moves out of horror and tries other things, there's still a real promising career there. What's interesting at 19 though is there isn't as much world experience, and that's where you see a lot of the story holes. It's something I found with my own writing, especially with what was my first novel, Twenty-Nine, which I'm hoping to finally get out this year, but I wrote it when I was in my early 20s, and there were a lot of things in it that now in my late 40s don't sound right; plus, having published six novels in the interim, there's a lot more I know about writing too. On the other hand, the bulk of that book has stayed the same, and I think despite the holes in this, most of it was written well and still holds up too. Again, as Duren gets older, the stories he's able to tell will only get better, and he'll also get more experience behind the camera, so the sky is the limit.

Melisa Kihtir was Duren's muse for this film, as a lot of the scenes focused on her. Her reactions, walking in slow motion, sleeping, getting ready to go out, etc. Duren's cinematography combined with her ability to live in the moment made this the best stuff in the movie for me. Like when she's sitting in front of the door of the house that the ghost is at, while we can hear ghost, the rest of that is on Kihtir to make any of it work, and then Duren making sure he gets the right shots and cuts them together well. Another moment where this all came together was when the killer was stalking Pretty, and she was hiding behind an SUV. There were a lot of wide shots so we could see the killer lurking around, which required Kihtir to sell us on how scared she was with more than just her facial expressions, and she made it all work. For me, this movie could've been a half-hour shorter with no twist ending, and just focused mostly on Kihtir, and it would've worked even better than the end product.

I was looking at it, and this might be the first Turkish film I've ever seen. They haven't had one nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar yet, and that's probably how I would've found one if I'd seen any. We have reviewed a film that was shot in Turkey though, American Samurai, so at least we've been there on the site before. The interesting thing was I got the sense that this was supposed to take place in the US, or maybe the UK, even though it definitely wasn't either of those, so hopefully I read that wrong and it did actually take place in Turkey. The other thing was the decision to have the film entirely in English, as opposed to Turkish with English subtitles. While I would've appreciated it in Turkish, in the States I'd be in the minority, so the fact that Durecan could write well enough in English, and the rest of the cast could speak it, often with very little accent, is an asset they could use to break this film into the US and UK markets, which greatly enhances its earning power. I'm more interested in Turkish cinema now though, so I'll have to add some of their films to my already overloaded watch list!

Finally, I don't mean for this to be a regular feature on the site now, but this is our second CriticBridge movie, and the second time we have cellphone content. In this scene Pretty was messaging with her mysterious stranger on Instagram, and you can see the predictive text is showing the actor's name, Melisa Kihtir, instead, meaning she was using her own phone for any of the scenes that required a phone--except hopefully not when she had to throw it against the wall! I think you have to love it as part of the independent spirit when it comes to these low-budget indie productions, but also I don't use predictive text like that, so I had no idea it will suggest your name when you type "my name is". You'll also notice a tell that the characters are speaking English as a second language, when the stranger says "my phone ran out of battery." The phone doesn't run out of battery, the battery runs out of life, or as we say, "it's dead." Any kind of grammar detector won't catch it though, because while your phone can't run out of battery, people can run out of batteries. As someone who taught English as a foreign language, I know that phrasal verbs and idioms are the hardest thing for people learning the language to get, because they often have no rhyme or reason. "My phone ran out of battery" sounds like it should be right, but it isn't, and there isn't exactly a rule for why that is, other than you just have to remember it; but at the same time native speakers know it without thinking about it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on YouTube, just keep in mind that the link on the IMDb page takes you to the middle of the movie, so make sure you start it over. I think this is well worth supporting, and I'm excited to see what both Metecan Duren and Melisa Kihtir do next.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt43378732

Alien Storm (2026)

This was a screener request from producer Sonny Mahal, and since I'd been meaning to catch a Mahal Empire film anyway, this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Then when I saw the runtime of 75 minutes, it seemed like an even more perfect opportunity--which is that even a thing? Once something's perfect it can't be more perfect, can it?

Alien Storm is about a global alien invasion where the aliens are using a fog to cover large urban areas and knock out electricity and communications, then swarm in and kill as many people as they can. When the fog hits Las Vegas, it does so as airline CEO Frank McConnely and his wife Ophelia (Robert Standley and Laura Mason) are hosting a bougie party at the mansion he probably bought through cutting his employees' wages and his stock buyback bonuses. Luckily, all that money he made off his employees from their labor allowed him to also build a bunker in his mansion, and buy a bunch of firearms to go with it. But will all this be enough when the aliens come marching in looking to kill everyone in their path?

On a recent Bulletproof Action podcast episode discussing the Dolph Lundgren classic Showdown in Little Tokyo, Ryan Campbell said something to the effect of "if your movie's only 75 minutes, it's automatically at least a 7 out of 10," and this film is no exception to that rule, it's definitely in that 7-8 out of 10 range, or a solid 4 out of 5 stars. The runtime isn't the only thing it has to hang its hat on, we also have great practical gore effects, fun performances by Tom Arnold and Kevin Sorbo in their short time on screen, and fantastic-looking aliens that really feel authentic. The one issue I had with it was I didn't find the two main characters, the CEO and his wife, all that likeable, but even with them the actors playing them, Robert Standley and Laura Mason, gave us some great moments--it's just, how much am I relating to a CEO and his wife with a bunch of guns ordering people around in their mansion and accompanying bunker? This brings me back to the runtime though, even if I don't like the main characters, I'm not with them long enough for them to really get under my skin, and in the meantime I can enjoy everything else that's working for me, and the next thing I know the credits are rolling and I can say I had a fun time. If you're looking for a fun watch that doesn't ask a lot of you, this is worth checking out.

Recently I watched Edward L. Cahn's Invasion of the Saucer Men, which plays out similarly to this, the only difference is our heroes were two teens who accidentally ran over an alien on their way back from their make-out spot, and spent the movie trying to get people to believe them. It's easier to relate to teens than bougie CEOs and their spouses I think. Even when the actors tried to infuse some humanity into their characters after their daughter dies, it's like "that's great that we see the CEO and his wife's humanity, but does he see his employees' humanity when he's removing them from a spreadsheet to inflate profits so he can get a better bonus from the board of directors?" Hey, bunkers and guns cost money, right? Thinking about leads that would've worked better, their kids Grace and Bernie (Molly Jean Edwards and William Delesk) are a great place to start, but this movie actually takes that in a different direction on us, which I can appreciate. Another possibility for me was Elley Ringo's reporter character, Jenna Fishel, who had a lot of main character potential, and I think could've carried the film. Imagine a situation where she's there in part to hook up with Tom Arnold, but also to investigate how McConnely's company is ripping off customers with various add-ons and upcharges, while firing workers who try to unionize, and suddenly she's stuck in this alien invasion scenario. Now we're all in and want to see how she manages.

One of the biggest criticisms of my reviews is that I appear to be obsessed with runtime, and that's fair, but I think this film shows how a shorter runtime can really help the overall enjoyment of it. Going back to Edward L. Cahn, most of his films in the 50s and 60s also ran between 65 and 75 minutes (for example, Invasion of the Saucer Men was a cool 69 minutes--hey oh!), and that made sense, because not only did it help the budget, but it was easier for theaters at that time to fit in multiple showings and turn over the screening rooms, thus making them more money; plus the growing TV market could fit those movies more easily into various time slots. Now it's more about the fact that we have so many options for entertainment--a kid in a small town in the 60s may have only had that local indie theater for entertainment, while today they have myriad options at their fingertips (and unfortunately that local movie theater probably went out of business as a result)--so we often need entertainment that doesn't ask a lot of our time. That's why people binge a lot of TV shows, maybe they spend hours in total doing it, but each 45-minute episode doesn't seem like that much on its own. And I think this can lead to a rising tide raises all ships effect, because if I see this at 75 minutes and have a good time, which I did, I'm going to look on IMDb and see what other movies the people involved have done, and may be more likely to pop back on Tubi and fire up another not long after. For aspiring young indie filmmakers out there, remember, less runtime is better.

There is a large, Herculean elephant in the room that we have to address, and I'm probably walking in it by addressing it, but let's do it anyway. Mr. Kevin Sorbo, Hercules himself, has a small role as the president, but does a great job. The movie uses this ingenious plot device to give us an info dump that fills us in on the movie's backstory, which Sorbo plays a great part in making work. Essentially, Sorbo's staff has been doing a horrible job keeping him informed, and now that the excrement is coming into violent contact with the air circulating device, they have to tell him everything they haven't been telling him, and we get to hear it. In the process, he reminds us of what a great straight man he was on Hercules as he's like "what the hell is wrong with you people?", which was a lot of fun for me to see, and made the whole thing work. In the past however many years he's become a right wing meme of himself, to the point that I almost wondered if he was posting things like "secure our boarders" [sic] just to give the left wing grift more content. Like you can see Keith Olbermann's people being like "what should we post about today?" "Let's get Sorbo to make another crazy uncle post." "Great idea!" The thing is, while I couldn't give a shit less about Olbermann, I'm a fan of Sorbo's work, and would love to see him in more stuff like this, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I'm not trying to do the "shut up and dribble" thing, if he feels that strongly about his beliefs and wants to Tweet about them or whatever, more power to him; and I don't even know if posting less of that kind of stuff would get him more roles, but maybe it's just a reminder to him that Hercules had a large, diverse fan base from myriad backgrounds who enjoyed the show because of him, not in spite of him, and I think if he catered less to a small segment of that fandom and more to all of us, I think he'd find that more of us than he thinks would come back and embrace his work again.

Finally, usually this paragraph is designated for a tangential fact about the movie that relates to something else in my life, but I wanted instead to discuss the movie more. I understand that practical effects are not always practical in the modern age, especially with tight budgets and tight shooting schedules, but I feel like this movie gives other filmmakers a great road map on how to make it work. Shooting guns, probably better to keep CGI, when you're working on a tight shooting schedule, it's one less danger to worry about. Probably can say the same thing about explosions. Gore effects though are a lot of fun when done practically, and while they may take a lot of time to put together, I think the payoff is much greater than the payoff you'd get by shooting real blank rounds versus CGI rounds. And then you have the aliens. Real people in real suits is so much more fun than ones created through CGIs. Maybe you use the CGIs to enhance them, but when the overall effect is done with a real suit, you can't compare it, it's like high-fructose corn syrup versus real cane sugar. Again, going back to runtime, if you cut it down from 95 minutes to 75 minutes, the money saved from fewer shooting days can go into creating a few real alien suits, and I think if you asked moviegoers which they prefer, 95 minutes and CGI aliens or 75 minutes and real alien suits, they'd choose the latter. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this as rent VOD on Amazon for $3.99. If you're looking for a fun time, and want to support indie films, this is a great option. Thank you to Sonny Mahal for sending this over to us, I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to checking our more Mahal Empire films!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24070874

Onlyfangs (2025)

This was another screener request from producer/publicist Joe Williamson, and considering how well a lot of the ones he's sent us have been, I was excited to check this one out too... until I saw the almost 2-hour runtime. I finally took the plunge though and made it happen, so let's see how it did.

Onlyfangs is about a group of vampire ladies who finally rise up against the evil vampire master who had kept them enslaved, and cut out on their own. While their leader Scarlett (Nina Lanee Kent), and two other veteran vampires in the group, Selena (Adriana Uchishiba) and Zooey (Meredith Mohler) head out to bars and other guys hangouts to feed, newly minted vampire Reese (Kansas Bowling) goes on dates and feeds that way. After she bites Wes (Drew Marvick), and he doesn't die, he comes up with the idea of Onlyfangs, a site where guys can pay to have hot vampire women bite them. He gets his sister Gwen (Jessa Jupiter Flux) to do the camera work, and they go to work, creating the newest internet sensation. But then trouble starts. First, Scarlett wants more power; and then a MAGA senator (Ellie Church) starts investigating them. Will everyone live happily ever after?

Overall I really enjoyed this, it brought me back to 90s Full Moon movies or Jim Wynorski horror spoofs. The only thing with those, of course, is they all ran under 90 minutes, some even under 80 minutes, while this is clocking in at close to two hours. Watching it I can see why though. The filmmakers, Angelica De Alba and Paul Ragsdale, got a lot of help from people they had worked with before to make this happen, and I imagine when you get that kind of support, especially from people you're friends with, it's hard to tell them after "hey, remember those hours you put in helping us? Well, unfortunately we had to cut your scene from the movie." Look at the biggest movie right now, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Rosario Dawson was all excited to tell her family she was in it, and then her scene was cut. And so if I'm De Alba and Ragsdale, I'd rather keep the scene and make someone like me afraid to watch it for the runtime, than have to have that conversation with a friend. And to be fair, that's probably the only real issue I have with the film. The messaging the filmmakers wanted to get across is clear, everyone seems like they're having a great time, and other than that runtime, it's everything I want in a horror comedy. Joe sent us another winner!

The standout for me was Kansas Bowling's Reese. To some extent she's so good that it undermines the ensemble quality the film was going for, because we'd lose her for periods of the film while other characters were being developed, but she was so strong in her performance that it was hard to not want the thing centered on her. She's able to naturally have every scene she's in iris in on her, seemingly without trying, which is a rare quality, and one that can enhance a film on a lower budget and help it get more for its money. I thought this was our first time seeing her on the site, but that's not true, she was in Steven Seagal's last movie, Beyond the Law, I believe as a sex worker who was addicted to drugs. Looking at her IMDb, the upcoming or recent one that stands out is Dire Duplicity, the new one from Neil Breen. I've only just started on Neil Breen's filmography, so I'm new to his stuff, but the fact that she's in one of his films is intriguing to say the least, and one I have to see. Back to this film, I wouldn't say her performance makes the film, because there are so many great performances here, but her natural ability to standout and steal scenes is a key reason why this film works so well overall.

There were a few core messages in this film, but one that stood out to me is the fact that when we work for a big corporation, they're exploiting our labor, and giving us a fraction of what our labor produces in exchange. Inside that message is a further message that people who look down on sex workers, like someone who makes money on Onlyfans, should look at how they and their own labor are being exploited first. As someone who both has a day job and wishes I could be making money to support myself with my site, podcast, and books, I totally get it. I used to look at it as I was making this sacrifice to a corporate overlord to allow me to do the things I want, but there is no quid pro quo, the moment they no longer see your labor as having any value, you're out, and beyond any severance, there's no thought to you as a person and what losing your job might mean; and to be fair, if someone came to me and said "I'll pay you what your current salary is to make your podcast and site," once I signed that contract the next email would be my two weeks notice--though to be fair again, the company would still be able to pay its bills without me. All that to say, beyond the fact that I don't think we should judge sex workers, including ones who earn money on Onlyfans, I always respect people who have found a way to make money doing what they love to do, outside of the corporate wage slavery system, and I wish we all could do it.

As this is an indie screener, I wanted to use this paragraph to highlight some other names in the film. First, we had four others that we've seen on the site in other films. First, Drew Marvick, our leading guy, played a man dealing with housing insecurity in Tony Schiena's The Weapon, which was also on podcast episode 135 with Ty. He's been in a ton of low-budget horror films, and he was a lot of fun here, so I'll have to check out more of his stuff. Then we had Adriana Uchishiba and August Kyss, who were in another Joe Williamson screener, Flesh of the Unforgiven, which had Debbie Rochon. Both were great, but Kyss's part was much smaller, while Uchishiba was one of the core vampires that made the film work. And then there was Ginger Lynn as Marvick and Jupiter's mother. Way back on the fifth day of our site, May 7th, 2007, we did Mind, Body, and Soul that had her and Wings Hauser in it. Here it's a small part, but it's always fun to see her. For first timers on the site, there were three who really stood out to me. First, Nina Lanee Kent, really great as the group leader, almost like a Julie Strain to Kansas Bowling's Shannon Tweed, if you will. And then we had the fourth member of the group, Meredith Mohler, she has an iconic scene where her outfit is similar to a Hooters server, which might be the ultimate dreary corporate job, and then she proceeds to bite a guy's scrotum off. We seem to have a lot of prosthetic penis and testicle mutilation in these screeners, don't we? Finally, Jessa Jupiter Flux as Gwen. Her character goes through one of the biggest changes, and you almost could've had two separate movies, one that focused on Reese getting more in touch with being a vampire, and one that focused on Gwen quitting her job and finding a new life in vampirism. A lot of great performances in this from actors who have been in a ton of stuff I now have to find and watch!

Finally, beyond the fact that one of the stars has the last name Bowling, bowling also plays a part when Scarlett, Selena, and Zooey take out a bunch of pick-up artist bro types at a bowling alley. I recently saw a More Perfect Union video about how bowling has become enshittified. It feels shark jump-ery doesn't, but then you watch the video, and see the jerkoff CEO of Bowlero who's straight out of central casting, and how he's bought up tons of independent lanes and turned them into Lucky Strikes with their strings holding up the pins, exorbitant lane fees, and even more exorbitant Sysco bar food--not only that, he's bought the PBA! I want to rhetorically say "how did this happen?", but we already know the answer. It's been a downhill trend to enshittification since Reagan and neo-liberal economics, with its deregulation and monopolization, and now finally Corey Doctorow came in and gave us a word to describe it all. Fortunately here in Philly, while we do have an enshittified Lucky Strikes, we also have some independent lanes, so maybe I need to go and support them. The problem is, I'm from New England, and we do candlepin bowling up there, which you can't find down here as far as I know. Still, keep your enshittification off our bowling you Bowlero jerkoffs!

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is currently on Pluto and Fawesome here in the States. It is a little long for a horror comedy, but it's also a really fun time, and a great way to support indie films. De Alba, Ragsdale, and the cast and everyone else involved nail the old Full Moon/Jim Wynorski feel of this, which you can't go wrong with.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23950972/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

ApoKalypse (2025)

This was an indie screener request from the film's creator, Lutz Geiger, one I had intended to do back in August, so I feel horrible that I'm only getting to it now. Maybe that should be a New Year's resolution, stay caught up on indie screeners. Let's see if I can keep to it!

ApoKalypse is an animated feature that follows Apo (Chris Koehne), a young man trying to get his skateboarding accessory company off the ground with his friend Jamal (Raven Wong), while the two work at a burger joint in the mall called Buns of Steel. The problem is, it's the early 2020s, and while the COVID vaccine is available, a cadre of unserious Americans don't want to take it. That's where the mall's director, Mr. Degeneres (Andrew Helbig), finds a way to get more people to his dying mall: he pretends to be a health influencer who pushes rat poison as a cure for COVID, which causes all these unserious Americans to come to buy it. Unfortunately, one side effect is it turns the people who take it into zombies. Now Apo, Jamal, and Apo's friend Cho (Ao Mikazuri) from the Korean chicken spot in the mall, need to find a way to escape. Will they get out alive?

This movie gets a lot of stuff right, which is great, because we live in unserious times, especially here in the US, so watching something like this acts as a form of catharsis. Beyond the depiction of Karens and other MAGA types and how ridiculous they are, I also liked the depiction of Apo trying to find a way to make money in an economy that's increasingly more difficult for people his age. The other thing I appreciated was the animation softened the grossness of a lot of the stuff that happens, like when a pregnant zombie Karen kicks her baby out, and said baby is swung around by the umbilical cord to attack a fleeing patron, or when we get to the end and the mall is a pile of dead bodies, rotting zombies, and feces, it's a lot easier to take when it's all a series of drawings. There are some moments, especially early on, where scenes take a little longer than I'd have liked to develop, but the entire film clocks in at just over an hour, so none of it hurts too much. Especially after the year we just had, this might help you feel a little better, so it's worth checking out.

The concept of the Karen has grown in the age of social media and viral videos, to the point that content creators have turned to hiring actors to portray Karens in staged scenarios. What I liked here was Geiger was able to bring the concept of the Karen back to the racist elements that it was born from. It wasn't just about entitled upper- and middle-class white women asking to speak to the manager, it's about these specific women using the levers of society at their disposal to harm black and brown people, and that's what we see here, whether it's the Karen on the street trying to get Apo arrested for riding his skateboard, to the one at the burger joint trying to get Jamal fired for not giving her a free water. I think if you hear "zombie Karens" in 2025, you might think of the staged, viral version of that we see today, but that's not what we have in this movie, which I appreciated, and I think helped make this work.

Another area where the zombie metaphor worked for me is in this discussion around what people should do if they have these unserious, uncouth MAGA family members in their lives. It's fortunately not a discussion I've personally had to deal with, but when a close family member would rather eat horse paste than get a vaccine shot, or believes all of the ills of our society come from undocumented immigrants, trans people, and honestly teaching America's racist history in schools, there are no easy answers on how someone should approach that. Older generations have this idea that family relations are important no matter what, and everyone needs to agree to disagree; while younger generations are quicker to go no-contact and spend holidays with friends or alone instead of enduring uncomfortable family situations. That's where the zombie metaphor is best, because sometimes you just gotta get out and save yourself; but then later when Cho's parents are stranded in the mall, Cho convinces Apo to help her save them, because they're not racist zombies, they just give Cho a hard time. It's like, if they're full on zombified, you gotta get out of there; but if they're just a pain in the ass and don't have any abhorrent views, you can't just abandon them to the zombie apocalypse.

You may have noticed that Uwe Boll is tagged in this. He did the voice of the sleeping police officer in the mall, who sleeps through the entire mess, then wakes up and finds a finger in one of his donuts, which he proceeds to remove, lick the chocolate off of, and then toss aside. We haven't seen Boll on the site in almost 11 years, when we reviewed the third In the Name of the King movie. At that time we were close to our unplanned hiatus, we only had two more reviews after that until I came back in 2019, and Boll himself went on a hiatus himself in 2016. He was someone on track to be another Hall of Fame director, and looking at his bio, he has another 7 or 8 movies we could review, which would put him at 15 directed movies, more than enough to get him in. It might be something we look at going into the new year, especially since we're almost finished with Isaac Florentine's filmography, so we'll have open slots for other director posts.

Finally, one area that this film didn't get into as much, is the male equivalent to the Karen, the doughy guy in Ray-Bans with a late 90s goatee that probably wasn't in style when he had it back then, let alone 25 years later. Geiger opts for more militant types, thinner guys with shaved heads, which works, but I always think of that collage of profile pics where all those MAGA guys looked the same. And it is an interesting double standard, because while we have staged viral videos of actors pretending to be Karens, we don't have the same thing with actors playing those types of guys, even though here in South Philly I think you're more likely to see those guys than you are Karens. I'm not an actor, but being a bit on the doughy side myself, and being in my late 40s now, it is interesting to consider if a content creator in this area came to me to play the part of a MAGA guy in a staged confrontation with restaurant workers. I guess first off, if my day job found out they may not take it well, even if it was staged, but that aside, could I do it, especially if the money was good? First I'd need the goatee, which, when it was popular in the late 90s my facial hair hadn't matured enough for me to be able to do the mustache portion, let alone the connector to the goatee, so I've never had that look before. Add on the Ray-Bans for someone who never wears sunglasses, and I think I might scare myself, even before I put on the "These Colors Don't Run" shirt. I don't know what content creators pay for that kind of work--or if they provide their own Ray-Bans and "These Colors Don't Run" shirts, because I can't afford my own Ray-Bans, and without a car it's hard to get to the Shore to buy one of those ridiculous shirts--but if the number was good, maybe something in the four figures range, I could use that money to do some trips to see some ballparks I haven't been to before--again, assuming my day job never found out. I can see the Zoom call now, "hey Matt, what's with the goatee?" "Oh, you know... just trying something new out... you like it?" "Um... as long as you like it, Matt, that's what's important."

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently rent this for $2 on Prime. It's a fun way to support an indie creative, plus I think it's cathartic as well considering the year we just experienced. Lutz Geiger and company do a great job handling these issues, and the animated aspect makes the gross parts easier to manage, so it all worked for me.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27166284

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Flesh of the Unforgiven (2024)

This is one that producer Joe Williamson sent me a screener for a few months back, and I'm finally making it happen now--it was another one of those where, by the time I got to it, it was already available on Tubi, but better late than never, right? And at least that means now you can screen this on Tubi too.

Flesh of the Unforgiven stars Debbie Rochon and Joe Hollow (who also wrote and directed) as Sienna and Jack, an estranged couple trying to make it work after Sienna's indiscretions. Jack's also a writer dealing with writer's block, while Sienna is dealing with scary nightmares. When Jack gets a VHS in the mail with a piece of paper with the word "inspiration" written on it, he thinks it's from his publisher, who's on him for a new treatment. Luckily he's got a VHS player, and once he gets it all hooked up, he finds the video is about all kinds of creepy, gory stuff, including a guy with a disco ball mask keeping his own estranged girlfriend chained to her bed, where he's abusing her. At the same time, we have a woman named Vivienne (August Kyss) who's dealing with her own stuff and decides to end her own life. When she meets Jack for a fling at a local bar, Jack has a dream about her and his wife and the disco ball guy. What could it all mean?

This is probably not my kind of movie, but I think if it were, where it would lose me is that I wasn't sure whose story this was supposed to be focused on, Sienna's or Jack's, and then if it is one of theirs, what do I do with Vivienne's? Was it a situation maybe where this was always supposed to be Jack's story, but then Hollow was able to get Rochon attached and made her role bigger? In that case, I think that's a good move, because she's a stronger screen presence, and anytime a filmmaker is working with a budget, to have someone like Rochon onboard always helps, this film included. There were some other interesting elements that worked in some respects, like Adriana Uchishiba's Livinia character, who brought a twisted Harley Quinn vibe on the one hand that really worked, but her wicked laugh sounded like the laugh that opens The Surfaris' "Wipe Out," so every time I heard it, I was waiting for that iconic surf guitar to come in after it. The other big area I had trouble with was Debbie's nightmares, because she seemed like she didn't know where they were coming from, but she should've known the whole time, unless I missed something on that. But, again, with those nightmares, they were tense and powerful. In one of them her character is getting strangled, and the way she wakes up struggling to breathe was so realistic I found myself having trouble breathing too. And I think that's where I ultimately fall, between Rochon's performance, plus some of the other performances, combined with the other tense, scary moments in the film, if this is your kind of movie, you should definitely check it out, especially now while it's on Tubi.

I figured we'd had to have run across one or two Debbie Rochon films at some point on the site, and I was right, she was in Tromeo and Juliet, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, and Battledogs. Going through her CV, she shouldn't just have more films on the site, she should be a Hall of Famer, but she's another name who lost out when my site shifted to covering more low-budget action as those posts got more engagement than the horror ones. I do have the power to change that, especially considering she has over 40 movies on Tubi, and a good chunk of those look ripe for reviews. The thing I loved about her here, was she sold this premise completely, and not as much in a physical sense as a dramatic sense. It's like when you watch Loki and Jonathan Majors is sitting across from Tom Hiddleston saying "I'm a scientist from the 31st Century," you need to sell that, because the line by itself is ridiculous, right? And I don't know that this movie has anything quite so ridiculous as that, but especially at the end where Rochon is tying up loose ends and telling us who everyone we barely got to meet in the film was, normally you need to put on your eye goggles to protect yourself from those loose ends flying together like that, but Rochon is selling it, so it mitigates that need for eye protection. Hopefully we'll see her again on the site soon, but for fans of her work, this is one to watch her in.

In the scene where the Vivienne is about to kill herself, in the background the song "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" from the film Dancing Sweeties is playing, and as you can imagine, 80s music fan that I am, I had to listen to the Ultravox song of the same name--which isn't related to the 30s song from this film. For this scene in the film, the 30s song created the haunting quality the scene required to make it work, and I think of all the music in this film, and there were a lot of original pieces, that one worked the best. The interesting thing is none of those songs are listed in the IMDb credits. That soundtrack section is a Godsend to reviewers like us, it means we don't need to go back to the end credits to find out what that hip hop song that was playing during the flashback montage was. Anyway, it's that time of year when "Do They Know It's Christmas?" gets played, which Ure co-wrote and produced, so it was fitting that the film got me to queue up Ultravox's "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes," which is one of my favorite 80s songs.

I usually don't do screens with captions, but I had to get that interchange below. "You look like a wet fart"? What does that mean? And I guess I know what "I feel like a wet fart" means, but how does that feeling equate to the feeling of having a hangover? When I was in college, a large group of us were going out, and we broke off into two groups, then as we reformed into one, we noticed one of our number was missing. Someone in that second group informed us that that missing individual told them "oh no, guys, I gambled and lost," and had to run home to change, and even though I don't think the "wet fart" interchange in this was that deep, it could be a metaphor for someone who gambled and lost themselves, which technically the Jack character did. During the final credits, Joe Hollow was singing a song called something like "Diary of Pain," and it sounded like "Diarrhea of Pain," which may be another "wet fart" reference. You may or may not be asking "now that we're going lowest common denominator, Matt, you've done the 'fart' half of 'dick and fart' jokes, when do we get the 'dick' half?" No worries, I'm getting there. We have ourselves another prosthetic penis mutilation, in this case it's a double prosthetic penis amputation--could we say "disarticulation" if an erect penis is technically referred to as a "boner?" And what is the deal with indie horror doing prosthetic penis mutilations, after we had one in Brute 1976 too? I think the only other prosthetic penis mutilation we've ever had on the site was when we covered Street Trash in 2007, so one in 18 years, and now we have two in a matter of months. I may have to put up a "no prosthetic penis mutilation" policy for screeners.

Finally, the word "inspiration" comes up a lot in this, and it reminded me of when Adam Richman got into hot water on social media when he used the term "thinspiration," and people got on him because that term can be triggering for people dealing with eating disorders. Instead of saying "I'm sorry, I was trying to be the quirky, husky, Gen Xer that people love, but I can do that in other ways," he chose violence, in one instance telling a commenter to get a razor blade and draw a bath. Richman apologized after, and I think as a result wasn't cancelled for it, because he's still doing shows now, but I think there was a sense that by the mid-2010s that that trend from five-to-ten years before of these husky, coastal Gen Xers in their open coats layered with quirky T-shirts underneath them, complete with charming puns-a-plenty, had run its course, but man, was that a thing in the mid-to-late 2000s. For some reason Richman's show, Man v. Food, doesn't have his episodes on HBOMax, but they are on Tubi, so I watched one where he went to the Research Triangle in North Carolina to eat a bunch of chili dogs. I realized that for me, it was more about the traveling and seeing parts of the US I haven't seen before, the same way I liked Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives for the travel more than for Guy Fieri, who was bringing a different kind of West Coast energy compared to Richman's East Coast vibe (instead of open coats over quirky T-shirts, it was quirky bowler shirts and sunglasses on the back of the head). And while I do think that's why I connected better with Richman, because he made more sense to me as an East Coaster myself, I also kind of see how the market was saturated with those guys--I think Top Chef had one in every season, and when Bourdain was a guest judge that guy was always his favorite. Anyway, because they're on Tubi, it's fun to go back and watch some of those Man v. Food episodes. Maybe I don't need a market saturated with husky, quirky, coastal Gen Xers, but sometimes in smaller doses they're a nice slice of all right.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Speaking of Tubi, you can now get this on their too, or you can rent it for $1.99, which isn't a bad deal either. Between Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, supporting indie creatives is always a great move, and this is some indie horror you can get behind. Thanks again to Joe Williamson for sending this one our way!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32421430

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Brute 1976 (2025)

This was a screener submission I got from the film's publicist, Scott Motisko, and I was supposed to review it back in August when the film was released. I guess reviewing it now for Spooky Season is okay, right? And to be fair, the movie paid me back for my delay. Oh did it pay me back! Two words: "penis drill." 

Brute 1976 isn't to be confused with Brut 1976, the documentary that was never made about the famous aftershave's impact on men in the 70s. No, this film involves a group of Millennials who have been whisked back to 1976 in a VW bus, and before you can say "vocal fry," a family of crazed killers starts hacking them up. Will any of them survive? And if they do, will they make it back to 2025 in one piece? Maybe they'll show the baddies how to make some sourdough bread. The reality is, none of it really matters, it's all about the penis drill.

That's right, the penis drill. It happens at about the 50-minute mark on a 105-minute movie, and that was it for me after that. Stuff was happening, people were getting killed, there was plot exposition going on with twists and whatnot, but my brain couldn't focus on any of that after the penis drill. All that said, there was a lot to like in this movie. It looked beautiful, and some of the shot composition was next level. I also liked the performances by Adriane McLean and Gigi Gustin, the only thing there is with all the other characters we lose them for periods. I did have trouble with a few elements though. No, the story doesn't involve Millennials sent back in time to 1976, but it might as well have. And on some levels, it felt like the only reason why this was set in 1976 was so Gustin's character could have a platform shoe-related ankle break. I can still have an homage to 70s slasher films set in the 2020s and still have it look the way this did, and it would've made more sense to me. The other issue I had is one I'm sure you guessed by my mention of the 105-minute runtime earlier in this paragraph. It took us over ten minutes for the first kill, even though we know that's where we're going; and then throughout we had these moments where people were talking about whatever, and I think you gotta break that up with kills. I mean, how much am I watching a Gene Kelly movie to see him talk? I need my dance numbers, just like in a horror movie I need my kills. And I think that's where I come down on this movie, at 80 minutes, even with fewer kills, with how great it looked and some of the performances, it would've been a favorite for me, but at 105 it's a harder sell.

That previous paragraph might sound like I'm joining the parade of people dumping on Millennials, and that's not really my intention, it's more like people of a certain age--and I think I can even include myself among them to some extent--sound a certain way and carry themselves a certain way, and it stood out to me from the opening scenes when two characters who were supposed to be in 1976 were speaking in vocal fry. Also, since no one puts their ages on their IMDb bios anymore, some of them could've been Gen Z, but the point remains that no one really felt like they were from 1976. And I don't know how you fix that either. The most glaring one for me was the Ray character. He was supposed to be this mustache-wearing 70s dude, but it was more the Portlandia "the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland" kind of thing, as he reminded me of a guy who sold me pizza slices when I was there in the late 2000s visiting my sister. He looked like something out of the 90s 70s revival more than the actual 70s, only he would've been too young for it in the 90s when it was actually a thing. And again, I don't have a ready answer for this issue, I mean, did people born in the 30s think the same thing when they saw Nicolas Cage in Peggy Sue Got Married? I think Dazed and Confused was more made for people my age than people born in the 50s, so maybe this was meant more for people ten years younger than me, which I can appreciate.

Usually when I do a screener, I only use the stills provided, in part because the screener often has a watermark; but also because they provided them for a reason, these are the images they want me to pick from. I went off-script here though because there was no watermark, and I wanted to spotlight the beautiful shot composition. There was a hyped-up remake of a horror classic that came out around Christmas that was all about the shot composition, and I think I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with this movie over that--plus this movie didn't have any DTV Exorcist sequel-level possession scenes. Had the movie been 80 minutes, with a bunch of shots like this and some deaths sprinkled in, it would've been a five-star movie for me. The other thing is there was nothing necessarily 70s about any of this, it just kind of is its own thing, and had they leaned into that more, the Millennials in the cast wouldn't have stood out at all in trying to pass them off as people from the 70s, they actually would've fit that overall vibe--and that overall vibe still could've been an homage to 70s slasher films. 

I mentioned Gigi Gustin in the second paragraph, and fun fact about her on the DTVC, she was in Fast and Fierce: Death Race, an Asylum film with DMX that happens to be our second-most viewed post of all time. The film leans much more heavily on her in the beginning, and she was up to the task, so when the story went away from her, it felt like we were missing something. From there we had Adriane McLean anchoring the proceedings more, and she was good too, but it was like "what happened to Gigi Gustin's character?" And then the way everything was resolved, I would've liked better for both of their characters. This also isn't McLean's first time on the site, she was in the Art Camacho-directed Dermot Mulroney flick Ruthless (which, if you recall, could've lacked a little more ruth). I guess what I would say is, if you create strong characters in your movie, book, what have you, they need a proper end befitting that strength, otherwise it's a letdown, and the way this ended for them was a letdown for me.

Okay, it's time. Usually I save the seventh paragraph for something personal about me--and I had that paragraph locked n' loaded as I was going to talk about the 90s 70s resurgence, and how I watched Sponge's "Molly (Sixteen Candles)" video to bring back a better sense of that vibe. But then, we got the penis drill, and all bets were off. We've had the 300-pound Pork Roast. We've had John Barrowman's famous line in Shark Attack 3. And now we have the penis drill. The thing is, said penis is definitely a prosthetic, but even so, seeing a drill get shoved into it and turned on is tough to watch. And that was it for me mentally at that point. All dialog was replaced with "penis drill." Whenever there was dramatic music as someone was about to be killed, I was singing "penis drill" to it. Hell, I had "Sussudio" in my head for some reason, and I found myself replacing the lyrics with "penis drill." "Pee-pee-penis driiiiillll." Going back to what I said earlier, an 80-minute gore fest and I'd say a penis drill is right at home with that; but when you still have 55 minutes of movie left, and a lot of that is talking, there's no way you can hit me with a penis drill and expect me to manage through that. I clocked in the denouement at over ten minutes before anything happens, and they still tacked an additional ending onto that. When you come with the penis drill, you need to be wrapping things up with a flurry of kills, and then a bloodied McClean and Gustin need to be hitchhiking on a desert highway as the credits roll, that's about all I can be expected to give you after that. As an aside, I played "Sussudio" on YouTube, and the algorithm played "One More Night" after. "Pe-nis drill... ooh just pe-nis drill..."

And with that, we better wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Amazon Prime for $1.99, though word on the street is that version puts a censor bar over the penis drill. Normally I'd say that's like ED-209 in RoboCop, where the edited version is scarier than the real over-the-top (Stallone style) gore of the original, but with a penis drill, you may need it. I will say though, penis drill or no, if you're looking to support indie horror this Spooky Season, this is a great choice. (The algorithm just went to "Do You Remember," "we never talked about it, but I hear the penis drill was miiiinnne.)

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30561103

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

12 to Midnight (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on episode 210 of the podcast, and I figured with the Bronzi factor, it was worth covering on the site as well. I don't know how true that is actually, but I'm going with it.

12 to Midnight has nothing to do with the 10 to Midnight that it's cribbing its title from--thought that would be an interesting idea for a prequel, no?--but it seems like it might when we find out early on that Bronzi's wife was murdered by serial killer who's still on the loose, and could kill again. But this thing ain't shaping up to finish with Bronzi confronting a nude dude, oh no, it's a backdoor werewolf movie! Fortunately Bronzi's of Eastern European descent, and as such, this isn't his first werewolf rodeo--which, for an animal lover like myself, that may be the best kind of rodeo and the only kind worth supporting--so he's onto what's happening pretty quickly. Well, not quickly enough to spare myriad other victims from the werewolf's wrath, but if he didn't have that Eastern European background, this could easily be a 150-minute slog, so I'm not complaining. It's going to take everything in Bronzi's bag of tricks to bring this werewolf killer to justice.

This wasn't half-bad. You take the concept of Robert Bronzi having a career based on being a Charles Bronson look-alike, which is bonkers enough on its own, mix in Tito Ortiz and werewolves, and I think you have yourself a fun 90 minutes. To be honest, this is doing a lot better than a lot of modern DTV. It knows what it is, doesn't try to be anything it isn't, and the result is something that's pretty fun. That all being said, this is bonkers, and if you're looking at the cover expecting a hard-boiled actioner, you don't really get that. Bronzi has some cop on the edge in him, but once we add in werewolves, all bets are off. Sadie Katz, who we've seen before, looks like she could add in her own "sheriff on the edge," which would've been a fun twist on that premise, but, again, werewolves throw all that out the window. Sometimes you need that though. I don't know how many rough-sit Randall Scandals we've seen that probably would've been more palatable with the inclusion of werewolves. At least half the Bruce Willis ones anyway. 

We've now seen Bronzi twice on the site, which is four behind the actual Bronson's six. It's possible he could catch him, because Bronzi has a bunch of other stuff out there, and we don't really have anything more DTV-wise for Bronson--I'm a little less lax on what I consider DTV than I was in the past, and I don't know that any of the six we've already reviewed for Bronson qualify as DTV by the standards I have now. Anyway, everything, including the title, is meant to evoke Bronson. Throughout the film, characters tell Bronzi he looks familiar, so they're leaning into it, but I don't know how much I like that part. I almost would rather they act like we don't get what's happening, right? "Wait, what? You think Bronzi looks like Charles Bronson? That's crazy! I don't see it though... no, we cast Bronzi because he was the right man for the picture." "A picture about a cop from Eastern Europe living in Pennsylvania who kills werewolves? Bronzi's perfect for that?" "Exactly!" I don't know how many movies we'll see just for Bronzi, but he has enough listed on IMDb that I think we'll see him again, and considering how this one was pretty fun, it might be sooner than later.

Speaking of doppelgangers, Tito Ortiz has a name of his own from his time in the UFC, but he also fills a Vin Diesel niche if you need too. He needs to practice his Diesel yell ("The buster kept me out of handcuffs!"), but the rest is there. He's also a big guy, which helps too for action movies. We don't get to see much of any of that here, because he's down the list on supporting characters, more here to be a face they can add to the tin, which is fine, because he does have some films with bigger parts, like another Ty and I covered, Operation Black Ops. (Yep, that's right, technically "Operation Black Operations.")The other thing is, how much do we need movies with him as the star? Give me a Michael Jai White movie where Ortiz plays the leader of a biker gang or something. Either the kind of biker gang White needs to take down, or the kind where they and White have a common enemy, so Ortiz helps White bring down the baddie. As long as he's living his life .4 kms at a time, I'll be happy.

Another name we're seeing again is Sadie Katz. She plays a hardo police sheriff, who has a change of heart when she sympathizes with Bronzi's personal motives. The characters in the movie used a different term than "hardo" to describe her, which may have been a bit much, but she also came in hot in a way that made her character off-putting to start, so she was really working uphill to become likeable by the end. I think there's a happy medium between Lt. Chapman on Rockford Files and instantly friendly that her character could've existed in to start with, because when she does warm up to Bronzi, it's hard to believe it, no matter how well Katz can sell it. Since we first reviewed one of her films in Nipples and Palm Trees over ten years ago, she's amassed a great genre career, which would make her a big get for a film like this. That's one of the things about doing the site this long that's really cool, to see names that are just starting out grow into something bigger.

Finally, this film features a railroad connecting areas of Pocono County, PA, which as it exists in reality is something just for tourists, and doesn't function as a passenger rail service like it's depicted in the film. It's funny how the concept of rail is great in movies in America, but we can't fund them in real life, so for people watching outside the US, we can add a functioning, robust intercity rail service to the other myths movies perpetuate about us, like we're all pretty and speak region-free American English. And it looks like rail service in Pennsylvania is only going to get worse. Republicans in the senate here are blocking a budget that would help fund not only SEPTA, the Philadelphia transit system, but transit systems in other PA cities as well. It's part of this whole "us folk in Pennsyltucky want to make life difficult for those Liberal Elites who like riding their hoity-toity subways--plus oil companies give us a lot of money to attend Super Bowls and stuff, so there's that." The thing is, they're not very bright, and don't understand that properly functioning, robust transit systems are the engines that power cities, and for those Pennsyltucky senators whose own districts rely on tax revenue from cities like Philadelphia to keep their dead coal communities afloat, it means their communities will suffer too, perhaps even more, when Philadelphia isn't generating enough tax dollars to prop up their failing infrastructure. (Also, coastal elites don't ride the subway here in Philly.) But that's America for you, the country where passenger trains are more likely to exist in Robert Bronzi DTV werewolf movies than in reality.

And with that, let's wrap this up. IMDb lists this to rent on Prime, but as of this writing, you can also stream it free on Xumo too. Despite the bevy of commercials Xumo loads into its movies, I think that's the best way to go with this one. And also check out the podcast Ty and I did, number 210 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21913192

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Final Recovery (2025)

Producer Joe Williamson reached out to see if I would review Harley Wallen's newest film, but unfortunately I fell behind on screener requests and am only just getting to this now. I was excited to check this out though, because I really enjoyed Wallen's last couple films. Let's see how this one did.

Final Recovery is about a treatment center run by a woman named Nanny Lou (Charlene Tilton), who, on the surface seems like she really cares for her patients, but there's something nefarious underneath all that. It looks like she's running a racket where she has crooked cops bring in people struggling with addiction so she can bilk the state for their care, and keep them pumped full of drugs so they never recover. And should her patients get wise to what she's up to, she's got a bone saw in a back room that she can use to make sure they disappear. One of these patients, Rodney (Jasper Cole), has been stuck in this cycle for years, but when a new patient, Dustin (Damien Chinappi) comes in, Rodney thinks he may have someone who can help him bring Nanny Lou to justice. The problem is, Nanny Lou has been at this for a long time, and will be hard to stop.

This is another from Wallen that really worked for me. Like the previous two we've reviewed, Beneath Us All and Ash and Bone, he does a great job of mixing genre film with his themes of how society values some people over others, and that's especially true about people struggling with addiction. One area where this one doesn't work as well as those other two though, is I wasn't sure whose story was supposed to be the focus, Rodney's, Dustin's, or Nanny Lou's. Even Dustin's sister Cindy (Kaiti Wallen) felt like she could've been the focus from how she's introduced to us, where she's questioning to Nanny Lou on whether her brother should even be in the facility, I thought the story may have been moving in the direction of following her advocating for her brother and trying to get help for him through official channels on the outside, but it never goes there after that initial conversation with Nanny Lou. The other thing was the fact that the film was set in Flint, MI, and I felt like they could've done more to make that a bigger part of the story. When I look at what worked though, it starts with Tilton, who was absolutely chilling. Even without the genre film elements, had this just been a Behind the Bastards-style biopic about someone using people struggling with addiction to bilk the state and insurance companies, she still would've been scary. I also liked how Cole and Chinappi gave us grounded, human characters who were struggling with addiction. I think without those performances, Tilton's alone would've given us a fun horror film, but Wallen's message wouldn't have come through, and that message gives the film a little bit more. Overall, I really enjoyed this, and with it available on Tubi, you should definitely check it out.

We're now at five of Wallen's directed films here on the site (he has an additional tag as an actor in Realm of Shadows), which puts him up there among the most for an indie director. The thing about his work that resonates with me is that theme that runs through all his work I've seen so far, not simply that there are haves and have-nots, but even harsher, that society deems some lives worth more than others, and the way he marries genre film with giving a voice to people whom society deems less worthy is something I really appreciate, and something I think he nails here in exploring the way society deals with, as opposed to helps, people battling addiction, while still maintaining the film's horror genre credentials. What people battling addiction have to go through to get help is probably a real life horror film in and of itself, but will people watch that as much as they'd watch a horror film about a scary woman in tacky Christmas sweaters dismembering people in a back room? Probably not, but with Wallen we get the message wrapped in a fun horror movie, and he does both effectively.

That scary woman in tacky Christmas sweaters is played by none other than Charlene Tilton. We've actually seen her here before in the Jeff Wincott PM flick Deadly Bet, but I imagine most Americans my age know her from our moms watching Dallas on a Friday night. When an indie director like Wallen finds out they can get a name like Tilton, they're hoping for a great performance beyond the help that their name on the tin means for sales and streams, but what Tilton gives us is another level. I don't know how anyone who did a scene with her was able to interact with her offset afterwards, I think I'd be too afraid to. What her performance does is turns the entire facility into a kind of haunted house, like an old Vincent Price movie, her ominous presence looms over everything. In that way, it was smart that Wallen included the element of Rodney and Dustin leaving the facility to work in Cindy's store, because we as an audience needed a break from the tension in Tilton's performance too.

As I mentioned above, this took place in Flint, MI, and was filmed on location there as well. It's a city that's been through a lot, as far back as 1989 Michael Moore made his famous documentary Roger and Me about GM closing a plant there, which left 35,000 people out of work. Since then, things have only gotten worse, leading up to the Republican government in Michigan's takeover of the city, who, in an attempt to cut costs, changed the city's water supply over to a contaminated river, making many residents sick and leaving them without clean drinking water for years. Going back even further in American history though, Flint was one of the birthplaces of what would become the middle class in this country, union workers receiving a wage that allowed them to live a dignified existence, something that spread throughout the US in the middle of the 20th century, only to be slowly dismantled in the 80s and 90s, and forgotten in the 21st century. And I think this is where, for me, if I hear a film is set in Flint, I want a little more of that history and legacy embedded in the story, and made me wish we had a little more of that here.

Finally, we have the question of whether or not this is a Christmas movie. You know me, I'm more open to having as many films under that banner as possible, but what's unique here is Wallen uses the fun and kitsch of Christmas as a juxtaposition to the horrors happening around everyone. We have Christmas songs, Christmas decorations, and Nanny Lou's tacky sweaters, while Nanny Lou is having someone dismembered, or someone else is dying of an overdose. It's a use of Christmas that I'm not sure I've seen before, because Christmas doesn't really play a part in the film, like no one's exchanging gifts or having a Christmas party. Another aspect of Christmas is the way we use it as a society to bring family members from far away together to celebrate in order to reaffirm familial bonds. For many people struggling with addiction, they've been estranged from family members, which means Christmas can lead to more feelings of isolation, which could beget more using. Unless I missed it, that never really comes into play here, like we don't hear Cindy making plans for her and Dustin, or Rodney's ex-wife making plans for her and their daughter without him, or even just what that would feel like to be in a facility like that for the holidays. Maybe something to explore in a "Final Recovery 2".

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi or Plex, which I think makes it a fun choice for your Christmas in July film. This is another solid outing from Wallen and company, I can't wait to see what's next!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33727216

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!