Poor Little Timmy. Mommy Loves You.

AFTER DARK 8 Films to Die For has returned!

This makes me so happy, you have no fucking idea.

Not happy enough to give out prizes or anything because Uncle Bob ain't got that kinda scratch but very, very happy.

That brings us to today's review.

Oh,  Bastard, you glorious... bas... yeah, that didn't work but YES on the Bastard.

I mean, this movie's got some problems and we'll get to that in a bit but I dug it.  And I'll tell you why.

Tonya Kay.

Also known as The Most Dangerous Woman in Hollywood.  Known for driving a vegetable oil powered scooter, being a raw vegan, burlesque dancing, whip-cracking, fire poi twirling, crotch grinding with an actual metal grinder, Wanting to be a Superhero and showing up on Conan O'Brien to have knives thrown at her.

Her.  She looks like a fuckin' pixie but she'll cut'cha.

Questionable dietary choices aside, I adore this woman.  She's not even IN that much but she makes everything she touches more awesome by sheer proximity.

ANYWAY, we're not here to talk about just her.  There's a movie we have to deal with.

So, Bastard (and since it's new, I'm not going to give away too many spoilers) is kind of a less slap-stick-y, non-vampire, slasher From Dusk Til Dawn and I, for one, appreciate the direction it took.

Don't get used to this motherfucker.

It follows a young couple (of serial killers), their bitchin' (stolen) ride, another young couple ( of runaways who have secrets of their own), a gay (suicidal) cop and Rachael (Tonya Kay) who runs the B&B they all end up at.  Rachael also has a long-term guest that we don't really get to meet.  And a child.  Mommy's just trying to make the best of things now that daddy is gone.

Suffice it to say that the serial killers are not the people you need to be watching out for.

That tree totally deserved it.

So, without giving away to much, the movie is, underneath the gore and pegging (ask your internet friends what "pegging" is) and inappropriate relationships between hitchhiker and hitchhikee, it's about motherhood.  The thoughts women have prior to becoming mothers and what mothers will do for their children.  What women give up to be mothers.  This isn't evident in the plot or what happens, necessarily but the dialogue makes the theme of the film abundantly clear.

Beyond that, as I said before, this is From Dusk Til Dawn by way of David Lynch.  It goes from serial killer spree to slasher-stalker to straight up WhatTheFuckVille via Crazy Town.  It's odd and quirky throughout but the end is all WHAAAAAA?

Yeah, that's how I felt, too.

Now, this movie has some humor but it's NOT a horror-comedy.  The humor here is strictly used to break up the bleak and bleak, we have plenty of.

Let's talk flaws, though.  What's here, visually?  It's almost perfection.  The order in which the editor placed it?  What... the fuck?  Seriously, do they not teach you people about continuity?  How time needs to basically be linear or people don't know what the fuck you're doing?

Jesus, that's cinematography 101 right there.

And there's a LOT of stuff that really doesn't need to be in the film at all.  Complete non-sequitor stuff.  It derailed the film a little too much and made getting back into the main plot like arm-wrestling a bowl of pudding.

Mostly, though, this is a GREAT little indie horror flick and I appreciated it after waiting so long for 8FTDF to come back.

Grab a snack and go pee now.  Mommy isn't stopping until it's over.

And That's Final!

The high hopes.

Oh, I had them.

And then I was ever so cruelly reminded that I'm not allowed to have them.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I did not hate this movie.  It's a good movie, for what it is, but, like Cooties, I found it somewhat lacking.  Not overly so, but there are some pain points.

ANYwhosawhatsit, The Final Girls is a story of loss, hurt, wish fulfillment and the understanding that we can't always have what we want.  I want good horror cinema but can I have it?  NooooooOOOOOOOOoooooo.

Max, played by the ever-close-to-tears Taissa Farmiga, loses her actress mother Amanda (Malin Akerman) in a car accident and just can't fucking let go.  I mean, yes, the death of a loved one is difficult to bear and it's very painful but after a while it's time to move on.  Swanning about the moors hoping that everybody forgets the one thing that made your mom famous isn't healthy.

Fortunately for us, director Todd Strauss-Schulson is well aware of this and every other character in this movie makes painful, direct points to Max about how spending all of her damn time in mourning is keeping her from actually having a fucking life and, frankly, it's affecting their's, too.

For fuck's sake, go to therapy.

In the midst of all this "woe is me", a dear friend... well... a friend... well... an acquaintance who happens to be related to a friend convinces Max to go to a screening of Camp Bloodbath, the film-within-a-film we will be forced to endure for the next 90 minutes and the movie that her mother is best known for.  Suffice it to say that Max hates this idea.  She hates it a lot.  She goes, anyway.

Aaaaaaaaand, they get sucked into the movie.

Say what, now?

No explanation.  Not a dream.  Just a random set of circumstances that, normally, would have just fried everyone in the theater until their heads popped like... dammit, you're gonna make me do this, huh?  Fine.  Corn.

AND CORN IS WHAT WE SHALL HAVE!  By way of a director whose only idea of a horror movie trope is "If you have sex, you die".  Yeah, there's a touch of "Dumb Blondes Die First", "Brunette Badass" and "Drugs and Alcohol are Gateway Deaths" and, of course, "The Final Girl" (which is a trope that's starting to wear thin since it's seriously limiting to diversity and creativity) but the big no-no is don't flash your sweater puppies.  Don't show 'em, don't touch 'em, don't let anyone else touch 'em.  Todd's message is "sex, eeeeeew" and for that I need to slap him with a confused lobster.  No, I don't know why the lobster needs to be confused.  It just sounded good.

I mean, they literally taped a girl's hands into oven mitts and slap a quilted vest on her to stop her from performing her scripted strip-tease until they'd laid out a trap.

Come on, man.

Oh, you...

Unlike The Cabin in the Woods, Tucker and Dale or Scream this is meta, knows it's meta and thrives on being meta but the problem here is that it's not meta enough to be truly effective or even truly funny.  Sure it's got in-jokes and shout-outs and an "I'M OK!" chuckle or two and who doesn't love those but there's a MILE of space between this movie and the Scary Movie franchise and this could have done with a hell of a lot more in the way of winking splat-stick and without even coming near "parody".  It needed to have more "I know why you think this is funny" and less fucking "tee-hee".

This douche always needs a knee in the nads.  I HATE this guy

Like I said above, though, it's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours and for being Todd's second feature film, I'm willing to give him a little leeway.  Not a lot, because those who are not punished don't learn, but some.  More like a healthy slap followed by a cookie.

A small cookie.

Like one of those cookies that comes in those fucking 100-calorie packs.

Just one.

Circle, Circle, Dot, Dot...

Class?

CLASS!?

CLAAAAASSSSS!!!

Now that I have your attention, let's aim our peepers at today's assignment:

 Ah, Cooties.  How have we survived so long without you?  A zombie movie where the only zombies are kids?  Surely you jest!  You don't jest?  This is fo' real-real, not fo' play-play?

SQUEE!

Only just a little squee, though, because this movie?

Not great.

Yes, even though it has pigtail girl in it.

So, our story goes a little like this.  Tainted chicken nuggets infect school kids with a zombie virus.  Because they're school kids, they're complete asses about it.  Enter the new summer school substitute teacher, Elijah Wood, an"author" who's never actually been published and who has decided to use his classroom like a set of pint-sized editors.  For a horror novel.  And wonders why he hasn't been published, yet.

Of course we then meet the rest of the staff.  Former high-school jock turned gym teacher aching for the glory days, hyper-vigilant Tea-Party enthusiast, sweet and lovable old flame, kooky science teacher with "previous brain injury" realness, and obviously gay .  Basically a group of unlikable jerks (barring sweet and lovable, up there and kooky kind of grows on you but never quite gets there).

Obligatory OHNOES shot.

So, one of the cool things about this flick is that we're watching the outbreak from step one which, unlike ANY of the Cabin Fever films, is actually well done and makes some fucking sense.  You know... barring a disease that takes a few hours to hit the first girl who bites into that nasty chicken nugget and doesn't even bother to notice that it's fucking black and oozing green stuff but then hits both of her first victims within minutes which should be patently impossible but we pay movies to make the impossible possible so why am I even questioning this?

ANYWAY!  Yes, kids, there are a lot of parental fears wrapped up in this one and they aren't being analyzed, really.  They're being lampooned.  Which I love.  Because fuck parental paranoia.

"Pink slime"?  We, as Americans, didn't LIKE the shape of actual chicken so we made nuggets.  How else do you think those little nuggets of chicken meat get shaped to look like a fat California?  It's still meat, it's just ground like hamburger.  Cows don't come in a patty shape either.

This is what happens when you get a dork to play a gym teacher.

"Anti-vaccination"?  Yep.  If you don't get your kids vaccinated, they will turn into snarling Hell-beasts and eat you.  Or, y'know, just die from a completely preventable disease before passing that shit on to people who either can't get immunizations for one reason or another or people with auto-immune disorders and FUCK YOU if you think that vaccinations cause autism because, seriously, if it really comes down to it would you rather have a live kid with Asperger's or a dead one.  For real, fuckwads.  You choose.

"The horrors of puberty"?  Yeah, not so much.  That's the kicker, here. 

Who let the hobbit drive?

So, what do I think of Cooties?  I think it's a decent way to spend a couple of hours and that the producers spent a little too much on star power and a little too little on script writing and special effects.  There was just a hair too much CGI blood (and, seriously, Hollywood, fucking quit it) for me to lose myself in it and while it was funny, it wasn't the side-splitter I thought it was going to be.  If you're going to produce a movie that features ONLY zombie children as your unstoppable monster force, you'd better make my stomach feel as if I'd done a million fucking sit-ups. 

I mean, it's enjoyable but it needed work.  My husband hated it but he's generally bored by horror movies anyway so he doesn't count.

OK!  Now that that's out of the way, who wants nuggets?