661
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Hooked Up
The fact that Hooked Up begins with an extended vomit sequence does nothing to get me on board with the film. I’m into this thing largely because of the excellent cover, it shows a gross ghostly girl in a cell phone. If this isn’t a haunting, I’m going to be really upset.
We’ve got found footage of two swinging bachelors in Barcelona, with one of them trying to get over his ex girlfriend… You know what? This sounds suspiciously like the plot to Hellraiser revelations, and that’s never a good sign!
The usual, drinking and whoring, but then I get a tip to go to the Apollo, a club where they can absolutely get girls!
They get girls indeed, and then head back to the girls place, where things start to progress as you’d expect… Until one of the guys gets bit in the junk. At that point they’re heading out to train hit the hospital but find that they’re locked in, and that’s when the lights go out. Around that time they also noticed that the Windows are boarded up as well. This is when it turns into a siege film. One of the girls has been destroyed, cut up and left for dead, and the other is wearing a mask and racing through the house with a knife to get them. In another room 
they discover a newspaper article that gives us the backstory… She’s a ghost of someone who was raped and murdered by American tourists… Suggesting that she now lures them here to take revenge.
At this point it’s basically Blair Witch in a building, punctuated by the occasional psycho attack, but don’t let that deter you. This thing is crazy tense with a couple of unexpected twists. It’s also got one of the things that I prefer in my horror movies, an actual monster… And unlike the Blair Witch, she shows up pretty regularly.
If shaky cam is upsets your stomach, you may need to sit this one out, otherwise, it’s actually a bit of a recommend. It’s one of the better found footage that I’ve watched, with some genuine scares to it.
85% of the cast is under 25
Cover misrepresents the movie
found footage
Mostly one location
going camping or roadtrip
The Invoking 4 : Halloween Nights
The Invoking series
invoking part four! Did that sound enthusiastic enough?I have to give them credit, they’re doing pretty much the same thing now it’s an anthology although they’re trying to tell you they’ve got a Halloween theme this time… don’t buy the propaganda. It’s no such thing, but rather the same disjointed collection of unrelated shorts. (And shame on them for that cover and it’s obvious knock off of Tales of Halloween!)
Man, the first sort of bump in the night segment actually gets to me a bit… because I live in an old house that makes lots of creepy sounds. It’s not the sound of that creepy child laughing or anything like this… But it does hit just a little bit too close to home for me. Creepy closets have never bothered me so much though… For me it’s always attics or basements, but after the short, perhaps I’ll rethink that
We have a little girl who fears something may be in her closet…. and let’s just say she’s correct. The whole “what’s in the closet” theme… and the closet as a portal… that I dig. Beyond just the Narnia influence (or House for that matter!), it really feels smart and the whole thing is done in a wonderfully creepy way.
The next sort of “I am the Devil” story on the other hand doesn’t do a whole lot for me. It just feels so different tonally, leaning more into fear of strangers and being lost in the middle of nowhere than… Well let’s just say, closet horror. A mother whose husband was murdered by something evil is stranded on the road and a stranger comes knocking into the car – but when he leaves, he’ll be taking one of them with him.
Our next one though, it’s weird because these films are all so different even though it’s some point you always feel there’s some way of trying to relate them tangentially. we have a kidnapped woman, tied up, with cult members making a ritual sacrifice… It’s it all fits together really well and makes you want it to be part of the same story. The absolute horror of the demon hand pulling its way out of the woman is really worth the price of admission for this collection itself, and the aftermath is both shocking and satisfying
For our next film; in an unknown location on an undetermined date, a group of women who have been captured and impregnated for milk and other sadistic reasons. We have a bunch of kidnapped women in terrifying and appalling conditions until one of them gets loose and goes after the captor…. This is one of those that I feel like it really should have been merged with the prior short. How great would this be if this was happening back at the cults homebase, while they are trying to offer up their sacrifice in the demon womb?
Maybe that’s just me trying to gloss over the inherent rapyness of this particular section, because I really don’t enjoy these sort of stories. Then again, the whole tongue ripping scene is definitely the sort of thing that I am here for.
Finally we have the killer mime selection…
Wait a minute. I’ve seen this one before!
It’s a black and white throwback called Creatures of the Night that was at the end of Conjure X….which remember, was “From the people who brought you the invoking series”… another one snagged and reused, just like with part three! We’re actually watching this black-and-white movie on television, but it’s a great way to introduce the idea. a couple of people are illuminated by the glow o
f the television. We keep getting back in the movie though, it may be getting more screen time than people watching it. It’s classically overreacted and melodramatic. We are almost as annoyed as the viewers when a cell call interrupts the film.
It’s her ex, so she goes into a long spiel about what’s going on and how she needs to just kind of blow the guy off. She asks her friend to take her phone and hide it from her so she doesn’t give into the temptation to answer it. They go back to drinking and watching a movie. It’s time for the big reveal, both in the movie, and in the short! I assure you, the monsters aren’t what you think they will be!
It’s got a very twilight zone feel to it, perhaps a little bit more dire towards the end, but never mean spirited. Just creepy. Good stuff. It’d be a recommend if it weren’t already part of a better collection…..
The Speak
“The Speak”. Like many other mockbuster ghost hunter types, this has a group of people exploring a haunted site, in this case an abandoned hotel in the middle of the city (not isolated or tucked away like the other movies we’ve been talking about). Of the bunch, this is probably the most like “Grave Encounters” in that these guys are trying to create a “Ghost Hunters” kind of show. Once inside, they preform a ritual called “The Speak” which is designed to open the door to the spirit world and let the ghosts in.
Really, this is the best of the bunch I watched 
here. It has an interesting style in that it is billed as one continuous shot through the entire hour and a half film. First and foremost let me just poke a couple of holes in this claim, because I was really excited to check this out. There is at least one sequence late in teh movie that is a cut, but possibly it’s just an insert….they cut to footage they are watching on a camera, then back to the characters in the movie. There are at least two other moments that could he bidden cuts in the film. The last minuet or two of the movie are cut normally, but that may not count as it not necessarily supposed to be that first person POV anymore. So yeah, not a TRUE one take deal, but close enough that it’s still impressive what they did here.
You have to keep this in mind too. We get some pretty good performances from these actors considering it’s basically one long take. I spent twenty years on stage, and I get how hard that can be in of itself, but you got to understand this is WAY more complex than theater. You’re performance is constant, going up stairs different floors different rooms, up on the roof, the scope of the blocking and choreography in this film is staggering. It makes what might otherwise be considered average performances shine a lot brighter.
I liked this one. Good monsters and possession, incredibly creepy atmosphere (far creepier than Greystone Park and with fewer resources- imagine that) good ideas, and really a genuinely well done film. It’s definitely worth a rental, though it might not really be a buy. If I have this on my shelf next to Grave Encounters, I’m still going with Grave Encounters, but of the lot, this comes the closest and works the best by far.
Okay. I’m sufficiently creeped out for the night. I think I’ll read some Violent Blue to clear my head before hitting the sack. Happy nightmares everyone!
660
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
The Time of Her Life
The time of her life is actually billed as “Steven smiths the time of her life”. It begins with a overacting young man in period dress Throwing flowers into the lake. It’s so pretentious it hurts still, I should give him a break. This is his first film.
We get two girls chatting at a bus stop and then heading home. Our lead character, Ally. She dreams of the past, and The dream disturbs her so much that she stays home from school. Instead she goes out to photograph rainbows. Better be careful, I bet Louisa Warren’s leprechaun is lurking right around the corner!
No, it’s not the leprechaun, it’s her best friend. And she sent them up at double date.
They head out to explore an old English state, which is of course, a for the other couple too. Alleys date, tries to get some, but gets re-buffed. And of course, in the woods, a ghost watches. Buddy pops off to take a leak, and the ghost chasers in through the grounds. He goes to self, it leaves her in a slightly catatonic state, and she continues to dream of the past, eerily lit in black light. When she wakes up the next morning, the ghost followed her home.
Estate, to photograph it., Ghosts and all. We get glimpses of the estates passed, flashbacks of the ghost’s story, as she takes photographs. And we get the full backstory as she takes it to her through the house. Next, she visits the church on the neighboring property, complete with a graveyard, where are all the family in the house of buried. She sees a ghost in the tower, and the local vicar admit, you see strange things from time to time around here, but you’ve learned to live with it. Well she can’t live with that, and when the next ghost appears she and her very tight jeans run off. (seriously, she does not change these very… curve Defining… Pants do this whole movie)
More dreams.
When she returns to the property, the ghosts finally reached out… Excited that she can actually see it! He says, it takes time to be driving and he wants her to help him. Is she perhaps the reincarnation of someone who lived in that house? Someone the Duke son loved?
Watch check. 53 minutes in, 42 to go.
Ali find the letters between the Duke son Emmett, and her past life Catherine. We get the entire story through them. She was a servant girl, and he was in love with her, but could not marry her. They took long walks through the grounds, the Woodhouse, surrounded by nature, and more importantly, location they didn’t have to pay for the way they would in the manor.
Leduc found out though, and he made Catherine disappear. Emma never found out what happened to her, but Allie knows… That answer is in her dreams.
I feel like this is a Hallmark movie directed by Neil Breen. It’s shot on video, cheap, with a blue tint and weird phenomenon, ghosts and reincarnation. To make things more difficult, the soundtrack is overpowering. Not just loud, but heavy… And never ending. Powerful where it needs to be subtle, and almost oppressive in its pervasiveness.
The film is also too long. You can see it… It’s a rookie mistake in filmmaking. Smith is in love with every frame that he shot, and it all has to go in. We linger over the shots, repeating them from scene to scene, which has the unintended consequence of in advertently patting the film. Some judicious editing could easily cut this down to 80 minutes from the agonizing 96 that apparently clocks in at.
I give Smith credit, he’s limited by his budget and resources, but he tries to show at least as much and as often as he tells. It’ll be easy to just give the entire backstory in dialogue, but he makes a real effort to illustrate it in film. During a period piece… Or half a period piece… For your first film is ambitious as well. He pulls it off by keeping them isolated, therefore not needing more than two or three. Costumes at any given time, and setting it on a historic estate (Hylands house in Essex).The setting does have his work for him. It’s a shame we can’t actually go in the house most of the time. I bet they had a single days worth of shots there, Lincoln Ford anymore.
The film is not nearly as pretentious by the end as it felt at beginning, but it does aspire to be more than it’s capable of, and the shortfall is felt. Still, it’s reasonably well-made, and definitely a good enough: card to set up for future projects.
Or perhaps it’s just too gentle for me, but what I really want is schlock.
659
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
The Body Tree
Body tree starts with slick looking credits in standard parts, and stunning drone shots of beautiful Russian countryside with cars driving along dirt roads.
The group is going to a holy place in Siberia to mourn a lost friend, and things basically start to get weird from the word go. Shamanistic rituals, dinner with a doll representing the dead, a holy wishing tree… I’m just going to buckle up and hang on for the ride.., particularly after the shaman makes the dead doll levitate and then slam into the ground, bursting into flames.
Are we really only 24 minutes into this thing?
The ritual causes nightmares. Wake up and its time to make another wish on the sacred tree. The problem is, something just like the shaman is out in the woods with an ax, and he’s coming for them. Finally! Now we’re back into Familiar territory!
The problem is, the ceremony was supposed to release their friends soul, but if there were bad feelings, hatred or malice, it also releases those negative energies in the form of a demon… which now stalks them, Jumping from body to body, potentially making a killer out of anyone. This night, they will all die, unless they can somehow Break the curse. Not all secrets go to the grave.
This is one of those films where it was important for me that hang onto the third act, where it becomes more of an entertaining slasher. The thing is, the body tree alternates between weird and spooky, and soap opera talking, with no real distinction. The plot isn’t fully formed enough to really drive the film, and while the imagery is top-notch, I feel like I need a guidebook sitting beside me as I watch this thing.
I’m not discounting it yet, but I think I may need a rewatch at some point to really pass judgement.
The Invoking 3 : Paranormal Dimensions
The Invoking series
In
voking part three starts off as a found footage film. We get similar timestamps and locations as we would see in part two, but otherwise, we open on a young man who is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado making an expedition to an Abondoned mine, searching for the final resting place of an ancient Aztec temple. Somethings come across in his dissertation and research. It’s supposedly a passageway between the realm of the dead and the human realm. Things get very freaky very quickly. Strange noises in glimpses of some sort of findish thing. Markings on the walls, and fresh blood? Whatever else, they are not alone down there.
Nevertheless, we’re only 15 minutes in… Just as I suspected. We’re in another anthology…and it has nothing to do with that “Poltergiest dimension/paranormal dimension ect subtitle. That’s OK, the last one was really well done, and considering how scary this first segment was, I’m actually looking forward to more. I do have to say though, these next couple are very short. Less than 10 minutes each. I realize it’s only an hour and 13 minute movie, but the short of these things get, the harder it is to connect.
Our next-door takes to New Jersey, with a girl alone in her apartment. She’s got mice problems in her home, and the landlord isn’t doing too much about it.
A pretty powerful mice though, making fairly terrifying sounds between the cabinets. Are you sure it’s just mice? Or do you perhaps have a bigger problem.
Next up as a tourist in New York… And if you recall the film selfie man… That’s actually the premise of the short. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was where the idea came from. As the girl takes photos on her vacation, things keep appearing in the background of them.
We got another county footage reporter style bit, with a group investigating a haunting. Or kidnapping or…
Wait a minute. I’ve seen this before.
This Hannah story about a father and mother going to try and get there a little girl who was kidnapped… But not really kidnapped, she was being protected by some sort of monster… Yeah. This is part of another movie! This is in the middle of Conjure X….oh look. “From the people who brought you the invoking series”. Well, that certainly confirms my suspicions that This is it just a sequel name only, but it’s a jumble of a bunch of stuff that I have come from different sources… Not stuff specifically put together for this movie.
Weird. It throws me so much, that I’m probably not paying as much attention as I should to the weird road trip going on in the next segment. That, and the legend of the lady in white that haunts this stretch of road.
From Venezuela, we shift over to Prague with a blended family any younger brother is having a hard time with it.
Also the creepiest hop scotch chalk drawing ever. Of course, it makes the little sister disappear or get possessed or something like that. She starts describing “the other playground“… What are you finish the game. The others are already there. Brilliantly creepy. With some genuinely good FX.
Back in New Jersey, a lot of bad things seem to happen in New Jersey!
Another woman home alone, I wonder if she’s in the same apartment building as the girl with the rug from? See, that would be interesting!
It all seems perfectly normal and lonely until we start hearing the emergency broadcast signal. She put on a creepy dress and finds a dead guy in her bathtub. I’m not sure I understand this one… Or why she love her home.
However it’s nice to be back in my home state of Ohio… I was just in Akron yesterday… Where our next story takes place. We have a couple watching a video from their missing son… Creepy things happening in the background. Morning
Across the pond for our last one. Brawl house in a sunny, woodsy area of England. It’s another one of those isolation creep out. A woman all alone, strange noises… That sort of thing. I kind of feel like I’ve seen this one too many times in this collection already, and that bothers me a little. Nevertheless, it keeps you on your toes and gives us a nice way to round out this particular collection of shorts.
This thing is still recommend. The fact that they’re keeping the format familiar is to the credit. But just go in, doing this isn’t really even an apology as much as it is a collection of short films, and you’ll be fine.
658
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
657
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
The Car
The Car : Revenge, it’s just confusing. It starts off with a very fast and furious cheese, goes into a demolition man judge in court room setting, and then shifts to fight club in an underground venue where the bad guys in various outrageous dress getting their mission. This thing runs at a fast clip, so you better pay attention.
Off to steal a microchip that has evidence of their crime ring. So they head out and grab… I think a district attorney or a evil corporate type. Either way it ends up with him getting thrown out of window and landing on his beloved car.
I think we established our origin now, right?
The Car begins to hunt down the villains… And it really feels like a crow movie. That’s sort of superhero revenge deal, with a cast of villains as colorful as anything we saw in those movies. From the guy with the drill and his middle finger, to the flamethrower Furiosa, to the white jacketed boss villain and his army of weirdos in gas masks, it feels very much like one of those sequels… Perhaps even a bit better.
The car of course needs allies, it needs somebody to drive it. And it’s got it’s all on the girl they targeted for death, as she works with the detective trying to solve murders. The car isn’t real big on the detective though, he’s dividing her loyalties in the car wants it for himself.
This speaks to one of the real strengths of this movie, in that they give the car a great deal of personality for an inanimate object. It’s not just fast precision driving and running over bad guys, there’s some actual character here.
Of course once the gang decides to go full on Mad Max on the car and trapped in a weird crevice in an abandoned warehouse, they 
discovered there’s no driver. Doesn’t matter, they set it on fire, smash the windows, beat it down and take the girl… In the microchip. The car I’ll be back though, after some modifications, getting it ready for the final act.
This thing is a trip and well worth the watch. Seriously. Don’t let the average cover art scare you off, this one’s a buy.
Toe Tags
Toe tags is so 1990s that it hurts. Not sure if it’s the hairstyles for the clothing or the music, but it’s just so 90s… In fact it feels earlier than that in the 1996 film date. A film on both the DVD pack and the IMDb description, it never went anywhere. That’s fine I’m digging the hour run time and general vibe.
After the murderous opening, we meet two attractive slackers. Mom (also the mom from Webster) is fed up, and about to start charging them rent.
Can you get a job at a shady doctors office,and hijinks ensue. Bodies so that assistant can prep them. However, they stumble into a murder investigation and now it’s up to them to clear the name of the local hottie rockstar and find who really killed her manager!
I I actually mistook this for John carpenter and Tobe Hooper’s body bags… And to be fair, the cupboard really does evoke a whole different sort of show to me. However, it’s surprisingly fun and I enjoy it for what it is. I can see why the pilot never got picked up, but it’s perfect fodder for a little box set like this.
656
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
The Documentary
10 seconds in, and The Documentary already gives us the whole backstory. It was uploaded on the Internet and subsequently taken down by authorities. Nice way of saying “based on true events.”
It’s unclear at first what this documentary is supposed to be about. The filmmaker likes photos and footage of insects dying, and a weird bit of porn that doesn’t exactly show the actual act… It’s bizarre and indescribable. But we soon get into phase 1. He warns the actress that it’s supposed to be uncomfortable. And what we see is a mounted camera of her leaving her home, and masked man sneaking in.
There’s occasional jumps to the edit bay, to remind us that this is in fact, a documentary. Interviews and such going on in there…
Next, we see him kill somebody. It’s brief, and we’re right back to the mounted camera shots. Getting to know you chat, or the guy staying over.
The filmmaker is mking her think somebody’s coming for her. And then we see some behind-the-scenes stuff. It’s very meta-and very strange. It’s not just the mounted camera or someone is creeping outside her house with a handheld.
Another girl dies. Another one that thinks she’s auditioning for a role in his documentary. He gets off on murdering them on film. And obsession… And we’re only now past the first half hour.
It’s time for phase 2
He sneaks into her house and swipes her keys while she’s sleeping. Boyfriend has to pick her up. Between that and the whole documentary boyfriend. Nevertheless, she’s Excited about it.
Ultimately, this is very much a voyeuristic serial killer. It’s not a bad idea, but I feel like they needed a script… Or a few more passes Whatever script they did have. Despite an intriguing cover, this one is Probably a pass.
The Invoking 2
The Invoking series
In
voking part two is just weird. Completely disconnected from the first, with someone picking up a hitchhiker… And then things going weird and wrong in a ghostly sort of way. I suppose this is par for the course, the subtitle is paranormal events, and this one’s obviously gonna focus more on ghosts.
After the credits we open with a timestamp and a location… Like a ghost hunter show. That’s probably not a good sign. We have two people heading into a building… Using the back door because it’s the only one that hasn’t banking down. It’s actually a real estate type, showing an old abandoned asylum off to a Director who wants to make a movie… It’s subject matter he’s approached before, but this would give it the actual real authenticity.
They’re kind of investigating an old case, patiently Mary who gave birth in the sanitarium but then killed herself. It turns out that the real estate broker happens to be the ancestor of that insane patient, and it’s her ghost that haunts The asylum. The first 20 minutes here are very much a grave encounters ripoff. Perhaps with more disemboweling. The smoky ghost effects are very good though. Somebody really knows their aftereffects, and the cinematography is top notch. It’s kinetic and full of action… But again. We’re only 20 minutes in, so what am I supposed to do for the remaining hour?
Crap. This is an anthology isn’t it?
We have a young wife on the phone with her husband. She’s reveling in the joys of being home alone. Netflix and food and stuff, and it all goes well until she hears a sound at the back door. But is she actually being haunted by ghosts? Or is she just crazy?
Our next story is a man on the lamb, a refugee, who gets mysterious notes after a disembodied knock on his motel door.
Still, she is doing better than the girl hanging out at the cabin with her boyfriend and friends who keeps hearing creepy weird things scratching in the walls… You know?
I’ve got to say, I’m really digging the last one here. It’s got a very slasher, Halloween, strangers vibe to it. A person in white, with a sack head over top… Just standing outside looking. It’s the shortest of them all. I really quickly, but incredibly effective.
Well now, if we had any lingering doubts about this being an in name only sort of franchise, that’s suspicions definitely been confirmed now. I know I groaned with exasperation when I discovered this was a anthology, and I stand by that reaction. But here’s the thing, it’s actually a really good anthology. I mean I really dug this. Every single feature was a banger, everything was good everything worked. Somewhere longer than others, but every single one was a fun film. I recently compared another anthology I watched two cinema wastelands short film block. If we’re judging, using that as the standard, this absolutely holds up. It’s that perfect kind of Balance and I’m genuinely pleased I actually watched this thing. I have no idea what’s gonna happen next with the series, but I’m glad it brought me to this film. High recommend.
Kill Kill Overkill
Kill Kill Overkill (also known as “Twisted Fate”) opens with a girl on a motorcycle heading home, with a pop rock song overlaid. Jody arrives to find a tape by her TV labeled “Denise”. She pops the tape in and walks away, making a phone call to see if you can find any friends with any other blank videotapes. The videotape features a girl rolling around on the bed – complete with Jackson’s trademark corner cut-offs were somebody didn’t remove the lens fully. We’re about six minutes into the movie before she realizes it’s a tape of her boyfriend been cheating on her.
We cut through the credits to Peter being released from a doctor’s care. Even though he doesn’t want to go, his brother Luther insists they are going to head out on the road and it’ll be the best adventure ever!
Back at the house, the boyfriend tries to convince Jody that the tape is just an audition for his porn career. This particular conversation ends painfully for him.
Down the road a bit, the two brothers from the beginning rescue a hitchikking girl in the process of being assaulted. They jumped out with thier trusty baseball bat. You can tell it’s Jackson at his best here, he choreographs the baseball bat fight as if it were a sword fight with the same moves and flourishes.
The girl joints them on the road, though I’m not in entirely certain what the point of the trip is. I think they’re looking for a new home after getting out of the hospital for the criminally insane?
“I’m so tired of the road Luther, we need a home!”
“Home? Home is where you hang your hat!”
Despite Peter being the one recently getting out of the hospital, Luther seems to be the crazy one. He suddenly snaps and assaults the girl with duct tape. (We’re going to see a lot of duct tape in this movie). “It’s not that she wasn’t a nice person, there’s just not enough room in our truck for three people!”
“I’m so tired of the road Luther, we need a home!”
“Home? Home is where you hang your hat!”
We shift to home videos, shot by the motorcycle Jody’s friends. They’re heading out on a girl’s trip to a cabin in the woods. Jody’s friends are heading out ahead of her (while she fixes her motorcycle at home) and they’re documenting the trip with the videocamera – found footage style (before found footage actually was a thing).
Up in the mountains, the brothers find what they think is an abandoned wood cabin. Of course, it’s the same cabin that the girls are headed to… albeit delayed by a flat tire.
The guys head upstairs to hide as the girls get there. The women notice signs of people having been there, a paper that’s only days old, a huge mess and the ominous sight of a baby doll with its mouth duct taped.
Things take a real turn for the worse around the 15 minute mark when the lights go out and the girls find themselves locked in a room. They find a trailer that looks like blood down to the basement… Only to find out it was all a practical joke by one of the girls! The joker get’s herself exiled to the basement bed.
In the meantime, motorcycle girl finally gets her bike fixed and resolve to head out to the cabin in the morning. The problem is, the boys are there tonight! As the girls go to sleep they come out and begin to creep around. The first girl to be attacked is the one in the basement. Another one of Jackson’s trademarks… foreshadowing something that 
happens about five minutes later. One by one, each of the girls is captured and bound in duck tape. This guy apparently has a fetish.
“Time to ask this girl is the most important question of their lives! What would you do to stay alive tonight?”
In the hands of a different actor that could be the most chilling line of the film, unfortunately it’s being delivered Buy a hyperactive wombat on speed. Still, I almost feel sad for the younger brother who doesn’t want any part of this and just feels… Lonely. I found myself literally cheering when he laid his brother out with a frying pan. It only knocks him out for a second though, he should’ve hit him harder, but there’s still 15 minutes left in the film to go, and the brothers continue to terrorize the girls all night.
Motorcycle girl wakes up the next morning and head to the cabin. She arrives just-in-time to give the guys a beat down and free her friends. It’s a predictable ending, although Jackson throws one more unexpected twist in the end – as well as anther expected but a satisfying one, wrapping up one of Jackson’s better movies.
655
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Intro to Steven M. Smith
Steven M. Smith is one of those artists that I’ve been watching for a lot longer than I realized. I’ll admit though, The film that made me sit up and take notice was Dollhouse. The familiar Greenway Entertainment logo came up, but then, much to my shock and delight, I saw Louisa Warren as part of the cast. I knew she had done just as much acting as directing, but t
his is the first time that Smith‘s name clicked in my head in association with hers. I recalled seeing her talk about completing a film called the Ghosts of Borley Rectory on her Facebook page and sent back for a moment. That name sure did sound familiar. I ran back into my library and dug through my stack of DVDs from the dollar tree. It wasn’t there, but rather something called the HAUNTING of Borley rectory was. I checked the name. Another one of Smith‘s films.., and one that I had watched just a month or two back. I recall liking it.
It’s a varied filmography as well. A jumble of television, horror, and gangland interest… All especially with a more rural feel. We see his Native Essex frequently featured prominently in his movies.654
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Dear Diary
Dear Diary is a hard movie to peg with its opening. We have a son coming home from college, and a sister happy to see him. But at night, she suddenly goes crazy and murders her entire family with a knife, very Michael Myers style.
We go into a long talky bit with her psychiatrist trying to figure out what’s going on and looking at her history, before a moody shot of him walking through the dark and hallways of her ward. It’s a cheap jump scare before we get into more diary reading. An ominous warning, whoever reads it will be forever cursed. The curse crosses into his dreams, as we go through particularly effective nightmare sequence, and it’s just the first. The film quickly turns into the psychiatrist haunted by dreams, who’s out of touch with reality… Turns out, he’s not the first. The girl had another shrink as well and the diary had cursed him to, until he killed himself.
Our pre-climax feels strange, feeling like it comes out of nowhere… Almost like it’s the ending to a different film. And the real ending is a little all over the place. Even at 78 minutes, this whole thing feels a little long. There’s a good concept here, but it sort of thing that might be better served as a Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt episode done in 50minutes rather than attempting to be a feature.
The Invoking
The Invoking series
I spend at least the first 10 minutes of the invoking trying to figure out where it’s in the redhead before. Seriously, both his voice in the eyes seem really familiar. Quick check up on IMDb tells me this is Trin Miller, and the place I saw her aunt was in the third gamers movie… The hands of fate. She plays the ingenue. I had also seen her more recently In the lackluster Saint Agatha.
We have a group of college agers heading out into the middle of nowhere to check out a house that our main character Samantha, Inherited. Boy, we’re starting in with the tropes already!
It’s a long drive up the path to get to it, involves unlocking an old metal gate. The greeted by Eric, and strikes me as the doomsayer type and let them in through the gate. The house 
itself is buried in the woods… Looking a little raggedy cabin like, surrounded by Japanese lanterns and including a cheap above ground pool.
Our doomsayer give us the backstory that night around a bonfire. Sam was born here, in fact her grandfather used to own the entire area… It was called sailor Rich. Period remember any of her life in fact, before she was adopted by her foster parents.
Creepy visions start about a half hour in.
They brushed them off though, and instead start to explore the property, spreading out across the land and the out buildings. It’s also a good time for some soap opera style drama between the various characters. Something to try and let you know they’re not just here to be set up and killed. Still, at 50 minutes in, I’d hope to have seen some more haunting, and not just weird relationships with no backstory and a girl 
half searching for her past.
Still, it seems like the past is intruding on the present, with Sam sinking into visions of domestic violence and hearing a disembodied prayer every night.
Things start to take a sharp left turn around the one hour mark and perhaps this is an a haunting after all. Or is it more than that? Is it just weird?
It is. The ending is not exactly a twist, but it is twisted. I’m not exactly sure what happened here. But it’s very smart. However, if they’ve spent more time setting up where they’re going with this ending in less time on the domestics, it probably would’ve 
been more effective.
At the end of the day it’s hard to say whether this is a recommend or a pass. The thing is, it’s not terrible. It’s a very slow burn, but they don’t stick the landing with the jumbled ending. Still, it feels like it would be the perfect kind of movie for a box at collection of other low budget movies from the horror film festival circuit. Indeed, I did pretty well on the circuit, and Jim actually got some recognition for her performance here.
The actual title for this was Cedar Ridge. This is another one of those where the distributors change the title to make it an easier sell. The invoking though, doesn’t really describe or give the correct impression of what this film really is. There’s a similarity To the conjuring… As far as the sound of the word, but otherwise there’s really no good reason to have renamed this thing… Unless of course you’re trying to kick start a franchise.
Imagine my shock when I discovered there’s four more.
653
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
652
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Argo City Comics 