Review – Insidious: The Red Door

Despite being a big Lin Shaye fan, I was relieved to see this series give up on the Scooby Doo prequels and return to the family from the first one. Unsurprisingly, hypnotically repressing memories of the whole journey-to-the-ghost-dimension thing just leaves father and son even more vulnerable when the same crap crops back up again. Maybe I was just in the mood for a dumb ghost story, but I really enjoyed this more than most of the other movies in the set. Mildly amusing

Review – The Conjuring: Last Rites

Though I’ve seen the word “last” used deceptively in horror series titles in the past, this did have the “tired of making these things” feeling that suggests an actual final chapter. If that proves true, then the Conjuring set ends with a whimper, neither as innovative as the first, as petulant as the second or as off-the-rails crazy as the third. I should also note that early in the movie, Ed Warren is giving the standard tour of his basement museum of evil curios, warning against touching because “everything in here is either possessed, haunted or has been used in a ritual.” At which point someone in my viewing group MST3K’d it with “Half this stuff has been in Anton LaVey’s ass.” After that it was impossible to grant the production the sense of gravitas it demanded. Mildly amusing

Review – Tarot (2024)

The title of the movie pretty much guarantees in advance that the story isn’t going to be rich in original thinking. Indeed, there’s no need to even summarize the plot. Imagine what you’d think it would be, and that’s what it was. But production values are reasonably good, and some of the shocks are at least kinda shocking. Mildly amusing

Review – The Carpenter’s Son

Predictably enough, this is what you get if you mix a horror movie, a Christian message piece and Nicolas Cage. During his unrecorded teenage years, Jesus has some awkward moments as he kinda figures out who he really is. The premise is interesting enough, but the writing is weak and the pace is lethargic. This also relies too heavily on tropes such as “snakes are demons” and “anyone who’s pretty but behaves strangely is automatically evil.” Mildly amusing

Review – Grace: The Possession

Exorcism movies are notorious for having little to no sympathy for the victims of demonic possession. So I thought perhaps a movie shot almost entirely from the point of view of a woman trying to fight off a bad case of evil spirits might be an exception. Well, kinda. Predictably, strict adherence to the POV format imposes some limitations on the storytelling. Nor is it clear whose perspective we’re getting. Has the audience become the protagonist? The demon inside her? Somehow neutrally observing from inside her head? The story’s cohesive enough to get where it’s going, but I was genuinely disappointed by the lack of effort to really show what the experience would be like (beyond “full of rug-yanking hallucinations”). Mildly amusing

Review – Highway to Hell

I guess I don’t have too much trouble believing that hell looks like a terrible movie from the 80s. A demonic cop kidnaps a woman from the title location, and her fiancee spends the rest of the picture negotiating with a range of implausible characters in an attempt to find and free her. If Orpheus and Euridice had been dropped on their heads as babies, this is how their story might have played out. See if desperate

Review – Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies

If I keep watching this series long enough, eventually I’ll get to Wishmaster: Wish I’d Skipped It. But like its predecessor, this one’s more mediocre than genuinely terrible. This time around the Djinn is stuck in prison (which cuts down on the screaming women at least) trying to grant 1000 wishes so he can kick-start the apocalypse. Fewer familiar faces, less Wes Craven, but otherwise second verse same as the first. See if desperate

Review – Bornless Ones

But not bore-less, alas. A handful of 20-somethings move into a cabin that turns out to have a demon infestation problem. Nothing new here. See if desperate

Review – The Crucifixion

The story is pure tedium: journalist investigates the case of a possessed nun who died during an unconventional exorcism. Though the plot is paper thin, it holds together enough to tie some creepy sight gags together into a movie. Production values are also high enough to distance this from much of the rest of the sub-genre. Mildly amusing

Review – Demonic (2015)

Maybe 20 minutes’ worth of plot gets stretched to feature length by annoying cliches such as hopping unnecessarily (and sometimes confusingly) back and forth in the timeline. Detective and psychologist good-cop-bad-cop the sole survivor of a ghost hunting team that held a seance in a demonic murder house. Wow, that was barely a sentence. So not even 20 minutes. See if desperate

Review – The Unwilling

A rich old man dies, leaving his obnoxious heirs a box that, when opened, releases a supernatural force that’s equal parts evil, stupid and predictable. Bickering and bush league gore ensues. The cast includes a few faces – particularly Lance Henriksen and Dina Meyer – who used to have better agents. See if desperate

Review – Smile 2

I admit to skipping the first one (cat death), so if there’s something significant about characters occasionally grinning like idiots – beyond the explanation awkwardly shoehorned in toward the end of act two – then I may be missing the reference. Beyond that this is an exceptionally mopey piece about a singer slowly going nuts. Or is she? Or does it even matter? Honestly this spends enough time on centered shots to come across as Wes Anderson on PCP and horse tranquilizers. If your notion of horror is mostly just awkward, prepare to be chilled to the bone. See if desperate

Review – The Exorcism

 When did horror movies turn so damn mopey? Probably around the same time a casting call for “corpulent and dull” got the attention of Russel Crowe’s agent. This is a fictionalized “making of” adaptation of The Exorcist, with scary replaced by strange. For example, the protagonist horrifies his long-suffering 16-year-old daughter (played by 25-year-old Ryan Simpkins) by pulling a Verne Troyer in the lobby of their apartment building. Is he possessed by a demon? Has he fallen off the wagon? Is he gripped by PTSD from being molested by a priest as a child? After an hour and a half of this, I honestly didn’t care. See if desperate

Review – Late Night with the Devil

Serious third act problems. The set up here has potential: a struggling talk show tries to boost ratings by featuring a guest who’s possessed by a demon. The making-it-look-like-archive-video approach is clever and entertaining. Even when the “commercial breaks” give way to less realistic behind-the-scenes footage, the story still holds together. But after the demon puts in a hypnosis-induced appearance, they don’t seem to know where to go from there. Mildly amusing

Review – Satan Wants You

This documentary does a solid job of uncovering the roots of the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s, a time when a fraudulent “memoir” called Michelle Remembers convinced gullible evangelicals that the world was beset by a vast army of child-murdering Satanists. The whole thing would be funny if it hadn’t served as an excuse to ruin a lot of innocent people’s lives. The production also does a good job of reminding viewers about how often the perpetrators of this sort of thing are truly awful people. Mildly amusing

Review – The First Omen

Satan certainly has complicated relationships with his baby mamas. And of course getting a conspiracy within the Catholic church involved doesn’t exactly make things simpler. Overall it’s a different look and feel from the first entry in the Omen series, which is a shame. Mildly amusing

Review – Immaculate

It’s odd that this spent years in preproduction limbo and yet still manages to come across as a mockbuster version of the slapdash prequel to The Omen. Sydney Sweeney fans fear not; she plays a nun, but that’s no deterrent to nude scenes. They try to turn things arty with an extremely long take toward the end, but otherwise this is a run-of-the-mill tale of demonic impregnation. See if desperate

Review – The Devil on Trial

This documentary covers the real murder that supplied the story for the third Conjuring movie, the ridiculous case of a defendant who sought acquittal based on the notion that he was possessed by a demon at the time of the crime. I both loved and hated the decision to wait until the end of the movie to let one of the interviewees tell the truth about the whole mess. Mildly amusing

Review – The Pope’s Exorcist

With all the resources at the Pope’s command, you’d think he could come up with a better exorcist than a curmudgeonly Russel Crowe, a rogue priest with his own brand of demon expulsion. Despite his extensive track record, the old guy’s really struggling with his latest assignment: a boy who apparently spent long enough in a creepy church to end up with a bad case of demonic possession. Along the way to casting out the unclean spirits, we get a lot of backstory drama that doesn’t make the tale dramatically more interesting. Mildly amusing

Review – Krampus Origins

This movie starts out stupid (WW1 battle taking place nearly a month after the war ended for no apparent reason) and goes downhill from there. Though I admit I’ve lost some of my once-formidable tolerance for amateur hour crap, I can still stomach bad production values if I’m at least given some semblance of a script. But the most unpardonable sin committed here is to slap the name “Krampus” on some shadowy, long-winded demon of the apocalypse that doesn’t even put in an actual appearance until the movie’s mostly over. The only thing this thing has in common with the popular Yuletide baddie is the presence of horns, and even those are part of its helmet rather than natural features. Mess with the horns, get the bull. Wish I’d skipped it