Ready or Not leaves no rich bastard un-punished

Get ready to watch a hunt where I'm not sure everyone knew what was going on.

The genre of people-hunting-people stories has been done to death with every action type you can imagine. From the straightforward "rich people killing hobos" like Hard Target to the more politically acceptable "innocent man on the run" stories like The Fugitive, every action man on the planet has been chased and chased in return. Hell, even Arnold did it with Predator. In Ready or Not, we see Grace (Samara Weaving) marrying into the super rich and elite Le Domas family. The family has a little tradition, however, in that every new member has to play a game. Around once every generation or so, that game is "hide and seek," and the family hunts the new member and sacrifices them. Grace wonders who she can trust in this bag of crazy, even down to her own groom, as she fights for her life. Ready or Not gives a clever twist by making Grace seem like a real person without resorting to making her into a "final girl" aka the last girl alive in a slasher movie. Unlike Veronica as the assassin in Final Girl or Erin the survivalist in You're Next, Grace has no training to fall back on. She thinks things are a joke until maids start dropping and struggles to live for the rest of the movie, coming out of it battered and beaten. The family chasing her as equally as inept. They have not killed someone in thirty years and are rusty at it, up to and including using weapons. As the family is whittled down and Grace's wedding dress gets more tattered, the subversive ending creates a cheer-worthy pop to the senses in this laughter filled comedy-thriller. 

Come for the light dose of horror and leave wanting to know so much more about what other rich assholes have done for their money.

Ready or Not

You're Next'

Starring Sharni Vinson, AJ Bowen, Wendy Glenn, Joe Swanberg, Ti West

11. I Had a Bloody Good Time At House Harker (2016) Movie Review: Amazon Reviews Tricked M

Indie movies are fascinating to me. They can be god awful in every respect but if there's heart there, I give them a pass. If I hear they were a plucky youtube upstart, I'll watch with a lot more room on my plate than if they were studio backed. However, I often trust my fellow sheeple out there reviewing things to give me general consensus if movies are good or bad. The pack is often correct. This time not so much.

    Here's the plot: a bunch of guys used to making five minute sketches for the internet strung together a bunch of those sketches into barely feature film length. The Harker brothers, heir to the Dracula-killing Harker dynasty, are trying to raise money to keep their family's house or something. I stopped caring. At some point vampires show up and people die.

    The acting is vaudeville at best and Birdemic at worst. I say that because the only recognizable star is the lady from Birdemic whose name escapes me because she's the lady from Birdemic and I've got brain cancer. The slapstick starts in the front and continues to the end, each actor hamming it up louder than the previous. A straight man among the principle cast would have helped me figure out if these characters were wacky or if the world had melted around me into a looney goo of bloody fart jokes. They did get me a few times with surprise gags that jumped out like cats from dark corners.

    Overall, I feel that the Amazon rating system is flawed. When have the mass of people made such a horrible decision? And in the year 2016, no less?

    I'm referencing the 2016 presidential electoral election of 2016, by the way.

    I don't have brain cancer.

9. The Vault (2017) Movie Review: A Mash'em Up Horror Crime Movie That Banks on Your Attention Shifting

Taking old things and spinning them into new gold is pretty much what people have been doing for millions of years. Fire guy in the cave guy just played on what fire in the field guy was working with. Wheel guy leaped forward the tech of dragging stuff. Citizen Kane dared to ask the question: can we make film students more pretentious? Then there's movies like The Vault trying to bank on movies like From Dusk Til Dawn.

    It's bank robbing time. With only two recognizable cast members in James Franco and Clifton Collins, Jr (as well as that woman from that show Drive Nathan Fillion was in. You know her), the vault has believe that you will care if our bank robbers make it out alive. Because watch out, y'all, this bank got murder ghosts. Then the assholes get murdered and the hot girls live. Because horror movie.

    The mixing genre is not new, like I said. This movie wants to be From Dusk Til Dawn but has no one charismatic enough like George Clooney or good enough effects to pay off the B-movie premise. What we are left with is an unlikeable cast with shifting alliances that systematically get killed like every other horror/slasher movie.

    As a bank heist movie, it does work though. As an Elmore Leonard fan, I enjoy unlikeable assholes pulling off a crime and doing weird shit. As a horror movie, it also works in the same way House on Haunted Hill (1999) did in that I wanted everyone to die and the monster ghost thing to kill them. Mashed together, though, and the ideas fall apart because I'm not invested in either scenario enough.

    Also, I fell asleep and missed ten minutes in the middle and caught right back up. In a movie banked on twists, that's a bad sign. Also a bad sign, the ending cliche that's a mess of, "Oh, he was a ghost the whole time? So what?" being beaten out by me realizing while reading the credits just now that the lead was Clint Eastwood's daughter.

8. Insidious: The Last Key (2018): I Guess You Could Skip It If I Saw the Others

Horror movie sequels are hard to make. Do you rehash the original or do a new thing? Bring back the old characters or start with new people? Continue the story or just do whatever?

    I have no idea what this Insidious: The Last Key did. I never saw the other (three?) movies, so I can't say. But I can say that this one is B-grade horror at its best.

    An old lady who can see ghosts gets a job to go back to her old home so she can confront some ghosts of her own. See what we, the movie and I, did there? Because her dad was abusive so she has trauma and that can be seen as metaphorical ghosts and there's real ghosts. It's supes cogent.

    The jump scares are few, the jokes are peppered, and nothing really does great. Like, no great was had. Some fine happened. Some okay squeaked in there. They got me on one twist, double downed and kinda wasted it. Then threw in another and I stopped caring.

    In this movie, humans are the real monsters. Except when a demon is tricking or manipulating them? The whole thing is just a mess that plods along. I wish I could say it is at least fun, but I checked my phone during this one which is a sin in my world that gets you banned to hell where you watch this movie.

    Still, if you can't find anything on streaming one hungover day, yeah, there's better movies.

Invitation (2016) Movie Review: Because I can't get enough what the fuck did I just watch

Going home is hard. In this life, our new generations has decided that home is an expansive topic and we create our own families bereft of blood. So recreating those cobbled relationships after devastation is frightening as the people we choose choose different paths.

    Will and his girlfriend attend a party given by his ex-wife Eden and her new husband as well as all their friends. The gang hasn't all been together since Will and Eden separated and find it awkward, especially when Eden starts talking crazy cult nonsense and shows a snuff film. Are Eden and her new husband in a murder cult or is Will just seeing an imagined spectral trail of insanity stemming from deep trama?

    I'm not answering that fucking question because the truth is kinda amazing. Director Karyn Kusama has lacked some punch in her previous directorial efforts, especially the high profile and campy fun Jennifer's Body, but man… The suspense and tension in this movie as you wonder what the hell is going on builds and builds. Just a crazy good story.

    Not sure how to end this. Wanna talk about the ending? Well, you see, after everything goes down and all the secrets are

Piranha 3D (2010) Movie Review that proves people love boobs. I mean, fish. Wait, no, boobs.

Long ago in my life, an older cousin or friend or creepy guy, I don't remember who it was actually. We were in an alley. Anyway. He sat me down and we watched a Porky's and Friday the 13th double feature. After that, I realized that you can have a boner and be scared at the same time.

    Piranha 3D fails at the scares, but it reaches for the boner at every turn. As Stephen King once sorta said, when you can't horrify, scare them, and when you can't to that go for the gross out. What better way to gross out an audience than small fish monsters.

    It's spring break and the town of wherever the fuck is having boob day on the water. There's a kid who wants to see boobs, his mom slash sheriff who wants to protect people while hanging with a scientist, and a boob-video maker weirdo who used to be the fat kid from Stand By Me. Where can you go wrong?

    If you come to Piranha 3D looking for characters or plot or that normal movie crap, then check your bags at the door. Why did you even bring bags? You're a weirdo. Just sit down and watch the naked people get eaten with the rest of us. Maybe get fucked up first. With friends, if you have any. I watched this alone.