Three Films Make A Post: Will Haunt You!

My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022): Unlike most of the internet, I liked this snarky teen horror comedy about – well, you guessed it, with its completely overdone attempt at an 80s vibe just fine. But then, I did find the Grady Hendrix book this is based on as superficial and self-congratulatory as most of the author’s books I’ve read, so I just might be looking for something very different from this sort of thing as many of my peers.

Don’t get me wrong here: Damon Thomas’s film certainly is no masterpiece. The pacing is just ever so slightly off, tonal shifts work only about half of the time and the film’s humour is something of an acquired taste I’m not sure I care to acquire. The 80s emulation is so over the top, this nearly becomes a satire on contemporary attempts at The 80s™. Still, there are also some perfectly decently realized moments of actual horror, the young cast do their best with what they have to work with, and things do at least look glossy at all times – it’s the sort of brainless entertainment I can work with on a day I don’t want to watch anything with proper human emotions, meaningful themes explored in meaningful ways or even just decent jump scares.

Grimcutty (2022): John Ross’s Grimcutty contains one great idea that by all rights should have made this a clever and fun little picture: reversing the poles of the usual Internet and social media horror (hi, “Black Mirror”!) by suggesting the kids are perfectly alright, but the grown-up hysteria against a way of life and communication they can’t understand is the main problem.

While I – being an old fart myself – would at least partially disagree, this is definitely a good basis on which to comment on social mores in a scary and interesting way. Alas, there’s little else that’s good about the film. Its plot can’t wait long enough to actually define the baseline normality things are supposed to deviate from, characterisation is so flat I’m not quite sure the script is actually by Ross and not a bad AI, and the scary parts don’t just lack any imagination, they aren’t even good at the very basic jump scare biz of modern mainstream horror. Visually, this is professional enough, apart from the ridiculous and childish design of the titular creature, but professionality does not a good movie make.

Where Evil Lives (1991): I have to admit that, in comparison, I enjoyed this cheap, tacky and generally artless early 90s anthology movie in which Claude Akins presents three extremely generic – in the US post-EC style - tales about very traditional monsters, as directed by Richard L. Fox, Stephen A. Maier and Kevin G. Nunan (middle initials are mandatory), quite a bit more. At least, the tales do seem to know the kind of cheap and cheerful horror nonsense they want to be, present the little they have going for them in a short and efficient manner, and then simply disappear into the video aether.