3 - The Munsters (2022)

 Oh, i'm just trying to find decent movies to watch, and it's the hardest part of OHMRAT every year.  I look and look, and it's a race to see if I can find a movie to watch before the day is over, and squeezing the review in before midnight so it registers on the right day.  The life of a movie critic isn't easy, amirite?  Yeah, all you movie review critics out there know what i am talking about.  Usually, you guys get paid for it.  Me, I work for free.  I mean.  I don't want to, it's just.. nobody is paying me.  yet.  Hoepfully soon.

The Munsters (2022) is... not a horror movie.  Or a comedy.  Or...  well, i mean.  it's a movie, I guess.  I would say it's coherent, but... ok, it's awful.  I mean, awful, awful.  Oh my god.  Robb Zombie made this mess.  I thought his Halloween remakes were bad, but oh my god.  I don't know how he convinced netflix to pay for this steaming pile of crap.  I don't know what the man does for a living, but if people are paying him to make movies for him, they are idiots.

The only person i know in this movie is Sheri Moon Zombie, (who i just realized, is married to Rob Zombie, which makes more sense now), and she plays Lily, Herman's future wife.  This movie is more of an origin story for the munsters rather than a reboot, which is just, awful, I mean, he destroyed the origin story of Michael Myers, and then did it again with the Munsters.  I mean, i watched the munsters on TV and they were nothing like this.  I couldn't even get through this movie last night, I had to shut it off.  it made me so disappointed I just couldn't even finish it.  I'm not going to lie and say i sat through the rest of it, either.  I fast forwarded through the second half, watching a few minutes at a time, til I got tot he end.  The end wasan't even good.  There were no funny parts. like none.  Zero.  The dialogue was awful.  At one point there was a Sonny and Cher musical number.  For no particular reason.  It wasn't scary.  Zero scares.  This movie had absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever.  I feel bad just for having watched it.  It's extremely rare a movie makes me feel this bad for wassting my time on it.  I mean, i sit around drooling on myself and watching guys in godzilla suits duking it out in old japanese monster movies.  I mean, come on. if I can enjoy that and not enjoy the Munsters?  It has to be awwwful.

Okay, to sum up.  The Munsters.  netflix.  Awful.  I would tell you not to watch it, but nobody seems to believe me when I try to help them, so you can decide if you want to waste your time on it or not.  I will probably never watch another rob zombie movie in my life.  Just on the memory of this awful thing.  Ugh.  Like purposely eating a worm.  Only nobody dared me.  ugh.  Moving on, trying to forget I ever aw this.

In other news, I missed last night's post because I picked an awful movie to watch, so there's another movie review coming up very soon.

2 - The Wretched (2019)

Okay, now tonight's movie was an actual horror flick, not like last night's movie, and it's on netflix, in case you want to check it out.  Off to a rocky start but that's expected after what was essentially a two-year absence.  Of course I was going to be a little bit rusty, but that's what tetanus boostr shots are for!  Yeah!  Right.  Now what was I saying?  Oh yes, the movie review.

The Wretched (2019) is about a forest spirit that comes into town to wreak havoc.  I mean, I'm not giving anything away here, the movie description on netflix literally mentions a forest spirit.  The coming into town to wreak havoc part, that's what I added.  So.  Um.  Yeah.  That's basically what happens.  I mean it starts out so-so, there's some derpy-looking teenager arriving on a bus with a busted arm or something, to spend some time with his dad, and his dad's new neighbors are a little weird, and then, well, you know how this shit works.  All hell breaks loose.  I mean, it's pretty much the summation of every horror movie ever made.  Apparently we think there are walls around Hell and every time hell breaks loose, we got to slap some metaphorical spackle on that shit, and cover the hole.  Sorry, i get ahead of myself.

So this movie had a bunch of completely unknown actors, at least to me.  There was some teenage hijinks and the usual doubting parents because let's face it, every parent thinks their kid is whacked out on drugs and alcohol and lying to them...  and for the most part, they are usually right.  But not this time, nuh uh, nossirreebob!  heh cool i worked in a nossirreebob, have not done that in a while.  I am very proud of myself.  gonna take a minute and bask in the glow of my own unique cleverness.  ok, moving on.  So after the teenage hijinks were over we get into the nitty gritty of the story, the battle with the forest spirit.  I kept thinking "Damn, that forest spirit is hard to kill." not that I have much experience killing forest spirits.  I mean.  I accidentally ran over a baby rabbit with a lawnmower once, and i still feel really bad about that.  That was pretty horrible, though, I was just a teenager and I probably should have sought some therapy over that one.  Anyways.  Enough about my trauma.  Forest spirit looked pretty decent, so the effects were not horrible.

What else to say about this movie.  Cute ladies, some nudity, some blood and gore.  Kinda short.  Coulda done with some explanation of more of the characters.  One kid seems to pop up in the story just for the express purpose of getting kidnapped, like she literally wasn't in the tale before and then poof she's being kidnapped, but maybe I just wasn't paying much attention and I missed her earlier in the film or something.  hey, it happens, I am not perfect.  I know, it's hard to believe.  Me, not perfect?  Nonsense, you say?  well, I thank you for the compliment, but really, uh, anyways, we should be moving on before I start telling you about my crappy golf game.  The Wretched, worth a watch, on Netflix.

What else is going on in the world.  Who cares?  It's spooky season.  The world can take care of itself, because I just do not have the spoons to deal with it this month.  Fuck it.  I'm gonna have me a bratwurst and a beer and enjoy the rest of my day.  Happy Oktoberfest, and I'll see you all with another review as soon as I find some decent horror to view.  Later!

1 - The Devil all the Time (2020)

Yea, it's that time of year again, boys and girls.  It's time for OHMRAT, The October Horror Movie Review A Thon.  It's only the first of the month, and already all hell is breaking loose, but enough about my personal life.  Let's get to the movie.

The Devil All The Time (2020) is not really what i would call a horror movie, but sadly, Netflix has listeed it on the Halloween "Streams and Screams" section of its page.  Why did I watch over two hours of Not-horror movies, do you ask?  Because I am a bit of a masochist and I enjoy hurting myself.  No, I really didn't know there wasn't going to be any horror in it.  I mean, there was killing and bodies and, I guess, the horror of humanity?  But I live with the horror of humanity every damned day.  So for me, this was about as scary as the nightly news.  Which, granted, can be pretty frightening sometimes.  Quick plot summary, a boy grows up in a bad place, and it doesn't get any better.

I wasn't particularly a fan of this movie, mainly because there were no monsters in it.  There was Bill Skarsgard, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson in it, and some other folks who I didn't bother to look up, because I didn't care enough and I'm having a bout of depression due to chronic pain issues, so quit nagging about it before I start crying.  There were no cool CGI special effects because there were no monsters, no demons, no ghosts and no aliens, and I am pretty upset about that.  I would go watch another movie, but like I said, this was over two hours of drama, and it took me an hour of buildup before i realized it was jut going to be boring-ass human drama, all through the rest of the movie.  I did cry then, making this the first actual horror movie to make me cry, out of sheer boredom.

Horrible way to start off a month of horror movie reviews, and I was going to go find an actual horror movie to review, but you know what?  After a couple hours, i just want to warn folks that The Devil All The Time is more of a human drama movie than what I personally would call a horror movie, but hey!  Opinions do vary.  Maybr you'll watch it, and be horrified by the evil acts that humanity commits upon one another.  if so, you really need to get out more.  Or watch the news.

In other news, it's the first of october!  yay!  The spooky season is here!  I have already decorated my house for Halloween.  Which is good because I think I've used up all my energy for the month.  It's already getting cold around here.  We've gone from 80s around labor day to high's in the 50s and 60s.  By the end of october, we'll be down to daily highs in the 30s and 40s, and it'll be time to put up xmas decorations, but I get ahead of myself.  Oktoberfest is winding down, the first time they've had it in several years, due to Covid.  Did you know that's really the only time Oktoberfest is ever cancelled?  World Wars and Global pandemics.  I hope to get there someday, but I am going to have a bratwurst and some beer this weekend, because I am nowhere near being able to afford to go to germany right now.  But not tonight, because i had some painkillers.  Important reminder for kids, do not mix painkillers and alcohol.

All right, I am not sure if I am going to make it to 31 reviews this month, but I will do waht i can.  1 down, 30 to go.  Woohoo!

Lou (2022)

Yep, it's that time of year again!  OHMRAT is just around the corner!  The October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon is a comin!  I may not actually get 31 movies reviewed in 31 days this year, not only because I just lost all my premium channels (no money for them at the moment) but the horrors of real life have finally caught up with me.  and by horrors, i mean i need to look for work.  Yes.  I'm sorry. I know that word is as horrifying to me as it is you people, and i'm sorry to have said.  some would say i've gone too far, just by mentioningt he word.  But this is generally a horror movie review blog, so i know you folks are made of sterner stuff.

Tonight's movie is Lou (2022) which just dropped on netflix (currently the only streaming service i have, but i'm working on it).  Lou is about an old woman living on an island, next door to a mother and her child.  They showed Reagan on TV, so I'm going to guess this was set back in the 80's.  Lou is going through some stuff, and can be downright ornery at times.  But then a massive rainstorm hits the island, and someone kidnaps the mother's child.  With phone service out and no one to turn to, the mother runs to Lou for help, and Lou...  helps.

I don't want to give anything more away than that, but suffice it to say I did not see the twist coming on this one until about 2/3rds of the way through.  Yeah, i am getting old, now that you meantion it, and maybe I am losing my touch.  But in retrospect it wasn't too surprising, really.  Top marks for action on this one, it starts out and then rewinds a bit so you can see what's going on then fast forwards again to get you back to the action, which, i thought was unnecessary sicne you basically just saw all of that and didn't need to see it over again, but i guess they wanted to show you the same sequences that you just saw in the new light of understanding.  so, the beginning is a littl annoying but not too much to throw me off the movie completely.  things get better after that.  was a good watch.  definitely a good popcorn movie.  shit, i even liked the ending.  how the hell often does that happen?  yeah, i don't know either.

Matt Craven plays Sheriff Rankin, and I only mention him first because when I saw him i went HOLY SHIT IT'S MATT CRAVEN because i hadn't seen him in a while.  and yes i did shout it aloud like that.  Allison Janney plays the title character of Lou, the old woman with a lot going on.  Logan Marshall-Green plays Philip, Jurnee Smollett plays Hannah (the mother) and Ridley Asha Bateman plays Vee, the daughter.  There are some bit parts for the other characters but nobody i recognized as being important.  Interesting side note, I wondered where I knew Logan Marshall-Green from, and he looked so damned familiar to me that I mistook him for Tom Hardy at first, but the voice is not the same.  Turns out Logan Marshall Green played the "mechanic" in Devil (the old killer elevator movie from 2010 i've reviewed on here a few times, remember?) and Matt Craven played one of the security guards from that movie, so these two have worked together before!  Man!  six degrees of separation, amirite?  Where the hell is kevin bacon when you need him?

So, lessee, lots of rain, a little old-80s-crap going on in the background, and mostly lots of action here.  decent fight sequences, looked semi realistic.  i'm always amazed when character go through hell and just keep getting back up again for more punishment, but i guess thre's more than on captain america in the world.  maybe, in a way, we're all like captain america, but we don't wear red and blue spandex or have a butt like that.  what's my point, you ask?  i'm not really sure, i lost my train of thought.  i guess what i'm trying to say is, if more of us had vibranium shields, the world would be a safer place.  on second thought, no, that's just ridiculous, i mena, who the hell can toss a shield and bounce it off stuff and then catch it like captain america?  i certainly couldn't.  shit, i hurt my hands just breaking twigs to make kindling for the fire pit.  sometimes my knees, too.  yea, you know when you have a thick stick and you lean it against your knee and pull with both arms to break the stick?  yea, well, when your knee cracks instead of the branch, it's time to stop that.  trust me.

Let's see, what else is going on in the world.  Oh, the queen died this month.  i was as shocked as anyone else that a 96 year old woman would pass away due to natural causes.  took me totally by surprise.  she looked so young.  i would not have guessed she was a day over 85.  I watched her roll out of balmoral over the internet and then spend a bunch of days with people streaming past her coffin on all sides, and just like everyone else, i asked, "why did that royal guardsman pass out?"  but the important thing is, she's been laid to rest next to her husband now, and her coffin is lined with lead so superman cannot look through hr clothes with his x-ray vision anymore.  yea, come on, you know that little smirk on his boy scout face was from just x-ray-visioning every woman that walked by him.  don't even start your shit, you know he does.  nobody who spends all his days fighting bad guys smiles like that all the time.  it wears you down, you know?  yeah, trust me, i know.

all right, i will start posting horror movie reviews again next month (probabl all from netflix, at this rate), assuming i can afford to still pay for my internet.  no promises.  shit's going downhill fast, and i'm hoping for a miracle, or, you know, at least a part time job.  i'd take one or the other, they're both about as equally likely at this point.  til then, superman, you perverted bastard, stop x-ray-visioning me, you're probably giving me skin cancer on my ass.  yea, don't think i can't feel that.  it's like heat vision without the... hey, you.. you son of a bitch, you burned off the back of my pants.  i thought i felt a draft!  you prank loving motherf-...  STOP THAT GIGGLING!

Demonic (2021)

Okay, so it's been a while since i had a review posted.  Or one about a decent horror movie.  Or one that was culturally relevant.  Rejoice!  Thse days have returned.  At least for a while, until I run out of money and they take my house and I become a street bum raving about the time I had a multibiollion-dollar successful horror movie review blog.  Hah!  Those were the days.  Tonight's movie is, of course, a horror movie, because why the hell wouldn't it be?

Demonic (2021) is about a woman who is getting some bad dreams about her mom.  Like most folks in reality, this woman doesn't live as part of a sitcom family, and she and her mom don't get along very well.  In fact, this woman's mom has been in jail for so long that she doesn't even know her mom is in a coma.  So it is with some surprise that a company comes to her and offers to connect her with her mother's unconscious mind through some state-of-the-art technology that allows her and her mother to communicate in a virtual universe...  like that facebook Metaverse thing, only it actually works.

Okay, now for the review.

There isn't a huge cast in this movie, maybe half a dozen folks at most.  There's the woman, Carly, played by Carly Pope, and her comatose mom Angela, played by Nathalie Boltt.  Chris William Martin plays Martin, Carly's old boyfriend.  Kandyse McClure plays Sam, Carly's friend, and the only Actress I actually recognize from somewhere else.  Michael J Rogers and Terry Chen play the lab folks who invite Carly to virtually visit her mom.  Acting in this movie is passably okay.  Most of the action happens virtually, so the graphics are semi-pixellated in a way that makes it look like you've got a crappy graphics card and you're watching a cut-scene from a computer game that's like ten years old.  When the Demon first shows up, the best special effects they can manage are a bunch of spikes shooting off of things, which makes it look like there's a graphics glitch and they need to update their video drivers.

The plot's not horrible, but it reminds me of that movie where the exorcist goes into people's heads to get the demons out.  And yes, minor spoiler, there's a demon.  It looks like the outline of a crow or something.  Yeah, the graphics aren't that good in this movie.  There's some brief sub-plot about a team of gun-toting exorcists but it sort of flits in and out like a bad dream that you can't really rememeber.  It doesn't affect the main plot, which I want to say is that Carly's mother can treat her like crap for her whole life and then blame the whole thing on a demon, but that's probably not what's really happening here, and may be colored by my own personal perceptions.

Directed by Neil Blomkamp, Demonic lasts 1 hour and 45 minutes, and can be found playing on Showtime this month.  I saw this movie once, and probably won't be watching it again.  It wasn't really that good.

In other news, tomorrow is Mother's Day!  Well, technically it's today since I am finishing this up late Saturday night / early sunday morning, while watching Saturday Night Live.  Love that weekend update, am i right?

This Mother's day is going to be a hard one for me, as my mom passed away about two months ago.  We only learned that mom had some mild dementia in 2019, and then mom was doing pretty good health-wise during 2020, despite being stuck in the house because of the pandemic.  A series of Urinary Tract Infections made her a little more confused (normal for old folks with UTI's, apparently) in 2021, and we couldn't seem to get them cured for more than a few weeks at a time.  She was gradually getting weaker, and then she had a stroke in early February of 2022.  Mom spent a month trying to fight her way back, but I guess her 89-year-old body finally gave out and she aspirated the food from her feeding tube into her lungs.  They had to remove the tube and put her on comfort care only, and mom still managed to stick around for 4 days before passing peacefully in her sleep in early March.  But hey, she had a good 87 years of fun before the pandemic hit, and lived 89.5 years in total, and that's not bad for a woman who was born in 1932.  She was definitely a tough old bird.

I'm slowly piecing my life back together after being her full-time caregiver, and i'm learning to adult on my own.  So, I'm gonna miss my mom tomorrow, but the horror movie reivews are going to continue as soon as I find another decent one to review.

In other other news, the spring has been crazy here.  Last week we had snow on the ground when I woke up, this coming week it's going to be 80 degrees and sunny and my lawn needs mowing.  Spring in western new york is crazy.  I hope everyone is doing their best to enjoy the nicer weather, because let's face it, we don't have forever to enjoy ourselves.

That's all for now.  Happy Mother's Day.

Giving Thanks 2021

Time for my annual thanksgiving post!  I don't think i posted one last year, because i couldn't find anything to be thankful for, in the time of COVID.  I don't know what i was thinking.

There's always something to be thankful for.  Horror movies, science fiction, action movies, even the occasional romantic comedy that i never watch, as far as you know.  Thankful for my mom, who's been getting a string of UTI's this past year, and still won't give in to them.  She fights every day to keep going.  Why?  Because she likes to fight, that's why.  :-D  She's a belligerent old cuss, and I am thankful for her grumpy persistence.  I am thankful for comedy movies, because goddammit, if we've ever needed a laugh, it's been in these past few years.  Thankful for my friends, who've helped get me through everything that's happened the past couple years, the crazy mood changes as my pain levels have gone up, the ranting and raving at everything life has thrown at me.  Thankful for life, because if not for life, then how the fuck could I play video games?  EXACTLY.

Oh yea, also thankful for video games, even if they've gone off the rails lately.  Forty nine dollars for farming simulator 22?  What the actual fuck.

Oh!  Thankful for my imagination, even if it plays tricks on me sometimes.  One day i am dozing off and suddenly i find myself dangling by a cable from the bottom of an airplane, thousands of feet above the ground, and I am INSTANTLY wide awake again.  The next day, I am nodding off at my PC and I am LEEEEROOYYYY JENKIIINNNS and i am just giggling myself awake.  Okay, imagination, i forgive you.  This time.  That dangling from an airplane shit is getting old, though.  Stop giggling.  Don't think I can't hear you in there.

Thankful for the holidays.  I don't care that the xmas music starts the day after halloween.  I have scoffed at folks in the past for listening to it, decorating their houses the first week in november.  I didn't know how much they needed it.  This year, I needed it.  I started listening the second week in november.  I started decorating my house for xmas then, too.  Sometimes, you just need to.  You just need to.  Xmas music is awesome, isn't it?  I've been loving Sia's santa is coming for us and candy cane lane lately, i don't know why.  Just has a nice beat to it.  Sounds happy.  I need happy.

I am thankful for being able to write, to express myself, even if the pain puts a damper on it some days.  The days that aren't dampened are fun.  Even the days that are damp, I...  wait, why the fuck am i damp?  :-/  Whew.  Really need to lay off the pepperjack cheese.  Moving on.

I am sure there is much to be thankful for in my life, things i've forgotten to list.  I will try and get to them next year, if I am still kicking.  In the meantime, hope everyone has a happy thanksgiving, and I will post again when I have a movie to review.

OHMRAT in Flux

No OHMRAT this year, in case you were wondering.  The skeleton out front should have told you.  Sadly, my mother is in ill health, and since i have become her only 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week caregiver, i barely have time to sleep, let alone watch and review horror films.  I am enjoying what I can when I can, and hopefully next year will be better.  Tomorrow is promised to no one, as the saying goes.  There's a joke in there but i am too tired to find it right now.

Quick review, just because I have a few minutes.  Watched Midnight Mass, on Netflix.  Spoiler alert, it's a vampire story, not that it's any big surprise.  There's 7 hours of episodes about a sleepy little town on an island that has cell phone service and an islamic sherriff, but has never heard of vampires.  They get a new Priest, who spend about 6 of those hours preaching from the pulpit about how glorious his meeting was with this "angel of the Lord," who, yeah, looks exactly like what you think an old cave-dwelling vampire might look like, and yes, the guy tells the same story about meeting this vampire maybe 4-5 different times in 4-5 different episodes.  I had to fast-forward through the preachy parts, msotly because I have a tendency to fall asleep in church, which means i probably skipped about 6.5 hours of the entire netflix series, but that last half-hour isn't half-bad, I guess.  I mean, it pretty much goes as expected, so if that's the twist ending, that everything went as expected, then sure, okay, you surprised me.  Good one.  If you can't stand the 6 hours of preachiness, basically sitting through entire hour-long sermons where nothing happens but some guy is preaching to a church full of townsfolk, and I mean literally every word of his sermon is in multiple episodes, then maybe skip that one.

Megan Fox's latest on netflix, "Till Death," wasn't absolutely disgusting.  Suuuch a slow starter, I did turn it off early on, but it was right before the good parts started.  I honestly had a tough time watching two people walking around like zombies, pretending they were alive, and that was even before anyone died.  Think Gerald's Game, only with Megan Fox.  Once the killing starts, the action keeps going til the end, so at least the rest of the movie was not as boring as the first part.  That's about all i can say about that one, that it was mostly action, once you get past the boring parts.  Sadly, no monsters, unless you count the human kind.

I also watched the Chestnut Man, also on netflix, another series.  I can't recall how many episodes there were but it wasn't bad.  I was kind of hoping for a more supernatural ending but I was again disappointed.  Seems like we humans can't really conceive of anything more horrifying than our fellow humans.  Having left my house once or twice in the last few months, I can see where that comes from.  it's a scary world out there, mainly because we are in it.

That's all i got for now.  Can't promise anything else before the month ends.  Too damned busy.  Hopefully I will find some more time to post in the future.  Until then, Happy Halloween!