Expelled Grey Matter

"Hokum" is a word that basically means nonsense, often in reference to something supernatural.  It doesn't really do anything to tell the viewer what the movie is going to be about, but what I understand about writer and director Damian McCarthy is this is something he likes to do.  Previous movies have had one-word, eye-catching titles meant to make the potential audience curious.  In this case it is a rather routine haunted hotel story with a healthy dose of folk horror thrown in. Ohm Baumann (Adam Scott) is an American writer with a significant amount of family baggage.  As he begins the finishing touches on the last entry in his popular Conquistador series he decides it is time to give his parents' ashes a proper resting place.  He travels to a rural hotel in Ireland where they enjoyed their honeymoon to leave their ashes in a nearby tree.  Baumann has an elitist attitude that does not make him popular with the staff, although he does strike up a friend...

I can safely say not many people really like influencers.  This is not a blanket dismissal of content creators, many of whom work hard and do a great job on presenting commentary.  It should not be a surprise that I like seeing people reacting to music or movies for the first time and many of them have interesting or new takes on the subjects.  That is much different than those who make a living trying to call attention to themselves by doing ridiculous stunts and then wonder why they are suddenly looking at having to navigate the job market in the real world.  Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) runs a YouTube channel called The Wrath of Shawn  in which he films himself facing his biggest fears.  That may sound fine until one realizes he does so in the worst ways, such as filming himself being smuggled over the U.S. border from Mexico or making himself a general nuisance to others and law enforcement.  After getting cancelled for one of his stunts and losing ...

When I heard about the recent version of Resident Evil a thought crossed my mind: "Didn't this happen already?"  I wasn't a huge fan of Paul W. S. Anderson's original series of films but each one was enjoyable.  Definitely not great movie making, but they entertained, even if they had little to do with the games.  They managed to tell a story of sorts and, after they ended, I frequently heard about the possibility of a reboot.  I didn't remember anything about it until Zach Cregger's movie came out this year. What surprised me is that Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was already five years old.  2021 was a year when many movies were still coming out on streaming due to the COVID-19 pandemic and those were by and large films that were already completed before the shutdown in 2020 and the writers' strike shortly afterward.  It is no surprise that a reboot to a series that was more of a cult phenomenon would slip through the cracks, especially one ...

The V/H/S series has been around for 14 years now.  Despite the fact that a number of now-renowned directors have provided shorts for the series it is almost tempting to say that of the 9 movies in the series there have been 9 good segments.  That's exaggerating a bit, but despite the fact that this has carried on from its humble beginnings none of the films up to and including V/H/S/99 have surpassed V/H/S/2 in quality.   We begin the film with a kid making a movie with his army men and see various other flashes of things on the same VHS tape.  After a bit we are introduced to a group of teenagers who film their vandalism and trespassing, in this case going to an old music venue in which a band tragically after being trampled to death by their fans when a fire broke out.  As can be expected the band's ghosts can't wait to play an encore.  Next, we have a woman named Lily (Ally Ioannides) pledging for a sorority in which part of the hazing ritual is t...

The first three Evil Dead films are classics.  It was a disappointment that we didn't get anything new for a while after Army of Darkness , but eventually Ash vs. Evil Dead showed up and for three seasons everything was right with the world. Before that, though, we got a reboot called Evil Dead .  It had some things that connected it to the original films but the humor was missing and the characters were the usual annoying young people that showed up in most 2000s horror.  Then, when we were afraid there would be no more Evil Dead, out came Evil Dead Rise .  It was more on track with the originals but, although it was nice and bloody and substituted an apartment building for a cabin in the woods, it was also underwhelming.  There is something about modern horror that just doesn't work with these movies and that sad trend continues with Evil Dead Burn .  Alice (Souheila Yacoub) and Will (George Pullar) are restaurant owners in a toxic relationship.  One...

I became obsessed with liminal spaces a long time ago.  There was a Stephen King novella called The Langoliers , which unfortunately is better known for an awful television miniseries adaptation from the 1990s.  It tells the story of a group of people on a private plane that lands at an empty airport.  they discover that they have somehow slipped a moment into the past.  The world is empty, everything has an aura of age about it and, worst of all, there are creatures coming that devour that world in order to clean up the remains of the past.  This simple premise has lead to dreams as well as some influence over my photography and storytelling.  I'm sure for many others the disquieting feeling of being stuck in a bland service corridor in a mall or some other place that is in stark contrast to the world around it has had an impression.  A large part of the appeal of the original Dawn of the Dead is that the main characters are forced to live in these s...