Nonsensical Horror: BFTW 8/8/25

I’m already having a little buyer’s remorse about returning to Shudder/AMC. It was cool to rewatch shows like Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block, Deadwax (in which Mindhunter's Hannah Gross plays a master music thief searching for an LP that kills listeners!), and the Slasher season that's basically Win David Cronenberg's Money. But I might need more of a break from B horror movies than I realized. Or maybe the crossover arthouse successes of recent years have forced undue ambition on lesser filmmakers.

I wasn’t exactly hate-watching The Dead Thing, at least not until the last scene. It was more of a boggle-watch, fascinated how a movie could be half-right and all wrong at the same time. Blu Hunt plays Alex, young graphic artist stuck in a dead-end job and scrolling the apps for easy hook-ups. Alex meets Kyle, a blankly handsome fellow who seems far sweeter and more ingratiating than most of these losers. Shocked to be ghosted afterwards, Alex chases him down, discovering…well, spoilers ahoy…in case you want to watch a streaming horror movie I didn’t really like.
Kyle turns out to be a ghost, creamed by a car immediately after seeing she had swiped right. Oblivious to his passing, he went on their date anyway, and moved onto another woman after that. He even gets catfished into seeing Alex again, somehow not remembering their last encounter. This blithe app spirit is rattled once Alex reveals his true nature, and soon they’re having a last tango in purgatory, Kyle growing lethally possessive. Cuz…uhh…

I suppose their could be a metaphor here about narcissists latching onto the needy, and Elric Kane’s direction is relatively tasteful for low, low budget horror. But Ben Smith-Petersen’s Kyle - while believable as a pleasant cad whose cavalier nature would rattle a girl’s ego - doesn’t reveal the layers necessary to explain Alex’s addiction to him, let alone his supernatural power. To be clear, horror movies don’t have to justify their violence with metaphors. A fuckboy from hell could just be a fuckboy from hell. But, like Smile, The Dead Thing seems to think it’s saying something resonant about how we process and transfer trauma, ironically rendering its cliche scares and stakes-raising arbitrary and distracting. THREE BAGS OF POPCORN.

I wasn’t quite as frustrated by In A Violent Nature, which had some genuinely striking action sequences and an undeniable novelty hook: Friday The 13th from Jason’s point of view. But by the third time we watched the undead murderer get his steps in between teen-offing locales, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to think about, other than that it would suck to be Jason Vorhees. Good thing we don’t have to be zombie psychos on a violent, monomaniacal quest to slowly pick off randos whenever they accidentally upset our burial ground, right? Now we know. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.
Enough grumbling! Here’s two POPCORN CLASSICS I rewatched on Shudder, and was glad to do it.

Host was the first two great COVID lockdown found-footage films directed by Rob Savage. Dashcam stuck you on a truly toxic troll’s livestream, arguably more anxiety-inducing before things turned supernatural. Host, on the other hand, chronicles a Zoom hang-out for an extremely charming group of ladyfriends from college. I’ve never seen a better display of the warm, sisterly affection between old buddies in a movie, maybe because there isn’t supposed to be a plot to distract from it. Unfortunately, Zoom turns out to be a real bad place to hold a seance. While not as inventive as Unfriended in terms of utilizing the filmic possibilities of a laptop screen, the ensemble is considerably less insufferable than the hollering adolescents in that film. If anything, I’d warn potential viewers that Host might make you fear for your text thread crew, rather than eagerly anticipate the next on-screen offing.

Pontypool’s lead, an eighth-rate Don Imus named Grant Mazzy, would love to be as insufferable as teens in a horror movie. Unfortunately, his radio career has devolved to the point of handling mornings in rural Ontario, where school cancellations are of more interest to listeners than hot topics. He still takes pride in professionalism, however, so when the news outside turns obscenely sinister, his testy relationship with station manager Sydney winds up a saving grace rather than a burden. Most of the film involves watching these two and their techie listening to nightmarish phone calls, squabbling amongst themselves before, after and during. Director Bruce McDonald does an impressive job making this visually engaging, helped by real-life married couple Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle as the pros who never fathomed a day like this, and aren’t even sure what needs to be fathomed. It’s tempting to call Pontypool the most literary zombie movie ever, but I’m not sure either “literary” or “zombie” do the concept justice.

My popcorn rating are explained here. If there's something on AMC/Shudder you think would float my boat further than this stuff did - I should watch something from the 20th century, shouldn't I? Maybe something foreign? Feel free to alert me - or bring up anything else - via anthonyisright at gmail dot com.