The Void

 A father (Daniel Fathers) and a son (Mik Byskov) ruthlessly shoot and burn a woman on the doorstep of her cabin. Another of the cabin's occupants (Evan Stern) escapes, wounded; "Won't get Far," says the father, before driving off in pursuit. Meanwhile a white-robed figure observes from the treeline, a black triangle -the same one we saw on the front door of the cabin- stenciled on the front of his closed veil.

 The survivor makes it to a nearby road before collapsing, where he's picked up by sheriff Carter (Aaron Poole) and taken to a local hospital. This being a horror (and low-budget) movie, the hospital is being renovated after a fire and currently only hosts a tiny skeleton crew and a couple of patients. Oh, and the head nurse is Carter's estranged wife (Kathleen Munroe), to add some (very) mild drama to the proceeds.

 Things go to shit very quickly: not ten minutes go by when one of the nurses goes into a trance and stabs a patient to death with a pair of medical scissors, and then attacks Carter, who shoots her dead. A state trooper appears to take custody of the wounded man Carter brought in (his disappointment in Carter's shoddy resolution of the nurse attack is pretty funny)... but then the both of them run into the resurrected remains of the nurse, who's turned into a shambling mountain of hungry flesh - an extremely cool monster, done entirely in practical effects.

 I think we can all agree all this qualifies as a pretty busy night, but things are just getting started. Carter and co. haven't even dealt with the gooey monstrosity formerly known as nurse Beverly when the father and the son from the opening rush into the hospital waving a rifle around, looking for the one who got away. At the same time a horde of stab-happy hooded cultists start forming a cordon around the hospital, knifing anyone who tries to leave the facilities.

 From there the film turns into a series of expeditions into increasingly dark and derelict corridors, as people find different excuses to go into the hospital's bowels and are chased by some freaky monsters. An explanation of sorts for the night's madness is put forward, but while there are some cool concepts at play, the plot depends on all of the events being tied together with a lazy patchwork of coincidences and contrivances.

 I've now watched 2016's The Void three times, and I've still got the nagging feeling that another watch is going to do the trick, that next time I'm going to fully click with it for sure. I like it well enough, but I should probably accept It'll never live up to the movie I want it to be. There is a *lot* to like here, but I can't deny that it feels like it's missing something vital.

 
 It's a movie that's clearly attempting to recapture the magic of John Carpenter's incredible run of 80s horror movies - you don't even need to squint to see the overt attempts to invoke the ghost of The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13, with a healthy showing of The Fog, Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness. Clive Barker's Hellraiser is heavily summoned for the third act, as well.

 It makes sense that this comes from the writing/directing team of Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, both of whom are alumni of the Astron-6 film collective - at the time this movie came out they were best known for grindhouse pastiches Father's Day, Manborg and The Editor (Konstanski would go on to do the wonderful Psycho Goreman and Frankie Freako).

 It's not like any of those films just stole stuff and hoped for the best, but whereas those movies took every chance to wink at their audience, The Void is dead serious - and the script does not manage to hold it together. The characters are a little weak, the second act drags a little, and the ending feels a little rushed. It's clear that a lot of thought and effort went into trying to make this more than the sum of its borrowed parts, but as it turns out, it wasn't enough.

 None of that takes away from all the coolness in the film. It oozes ambiance and menace, manages some striking visuals, and of course it sports some truly wonderful monsters. The Creature effects were crowdsourced, and no one could ever accuse Kostanski and his crew of taking the money and making a runner; every cent is on-screen, and it looks a whole lot better than many studio movies.
 There's a cool sense of mystery I really respect to the story, too. This keeps the characters opaque, which prevents investment in any of their interpersonal drama, but it also makes this one of the very rare movies that actually feels like it understand what makes cosmic horror work. I may not like many of the plot specifics, but they still manage to paint an intriguing mystery that feels successfully otherworldly, all the way to a pretty cool final shot.

 Obviously, I need to watch it at least one more time. Ask me again how I like it in four years or so,

  

Frankie Freako

 Eighties (and early nineties) nostalgia doesn't get much more specific than Frankie Freako, writer/director/editor Steve Kostanski's love letter to cheapie Gremlins knock-offs, kid-friendly comedy/horror/sci-fi like The Gate or Suburban Commando, and all things Charles Band. It coasts on enough weirdness and an odd likeability that it gets to be the rare bad-on-purpose movie that manages to be worthwhile. Just about.

 Conor (Conor Sweney) is the caricature of a drip, a ridiculously square office worker and a fuddy goodie-two-shoes whose idea of being adventurous consists of getting two different types of cheese on his pizza, and who's brought to orgasm within seconds by just holding hands with his loving but understandably frustrated wife (Kristy Wordsworth). When a series of events at the office with his boss at the office (Adam Brooks) bring to his attention that maybe he is a bit... boring, he gets a bit of an identity crisis.

 Bristling at the temerity of such a baseless accusation, Conor calls a party hotline hosted by Frankie Freako, a diminutive, ugly red dude voiced by Matthew Kennedy, and soon three lovingly realized but slightly stiff puppets are running amok in his house, thrashing the place in the course of their partying.
 Part of the film is Conor pitting his wits against the tiny invaders (he's hopelessly outmatched) plus a side of comically inane corporate intrigue, and then the back half expands the scope to explain a little about the Freakos and enlist Conor in a really mild interstellar adventure.

Here's an early attempt of me trying to find out how to watch this. PSA: Winners don't use AI!

 The music's pretty good! A couple of dead ringers for the sort of obnoxious party rock that dominated teen horror at the time, plus some excellent synth-driven tracks from Blitz/Berlin that are similar to, say, College in that they sound more like we think the eighties sounded than they actually did.
 The puppets' design is very solid (one of them is a pretty direct homage to Puppet Master), but they really don't animate that well. By design, of course, but if you're expecting the sort of low-budget practical effects wizardry Kostanski is known for you'll have to wait until things go haywire at about the halfway point. It's totally worth sticking around, in case you're wondering.

 The acting is also bad on purpose, with some truly odd choices from the cast (I'm still not sure what Wordsworth's accent is supposed to be - sounds like a mix between Australian and a made-up Eastern European country?). I wouldn't be surprised to find out there was a lot of improvisation on-set; At least everyone looks like they're having fun, which makes sense as many of the actors and crew go way back to at least Father's Day.

 The oddest misfire is the script, which packs in plenty of jokes but often forgets to make them funny, possibly in a sly wink to such comedic masterpieces as Munchies or Hobgoblins. Maybe it's on purpose? Arch, good-natured postmodernism, played straight. Maybe. I'm not sure! But I kind of love that uncertainty.

 It's all abetted by an obvious affection for the material it's spoofing, and leavened with the same type of transgressive humour that made Kostanski's Psycho Goreman so essential (but dialed all the way back to one or two). Only mildly amusing and kind of half-arsed, but weird and agreeable enough that it never outstays its welcome, Frankie Freako seems destined to be another bit of Canadian low-budget weirdness for stoners to obsess over as they stumble upon it in the dankest reaches of the streaming lists over the coming years.

Leprechaun Returns

 Leprechaun Returns is a much better film than a syfy original seventh sequel to a not-that-good B-movie has any right to be. Because the continuity had gotten a bit... Wait, these movies never had a continuity - they even have conflicting origin stories, an episode set in the hood and another one in space (beaten to the punch by Pinhead, but way before Jason). So, this is more of your traditional 'legacy' sequel in that it follows the events from the first movie and ignores the rest, but it doesn't invalidate any existing sequels. Brian Trenchard-Smith/Leprechaun fans rejoice.

 The story picks up twenty-five years after the end of the first film, where the evil leprechaun sealed in a well. As it turns out, that same house has been turned into student housing for a nearby university, and is being refurbished by a sorority to become completely self-sufficient.
 Lila (Taylor Spreitler), the daughter of one of the people who put the leprechaun down, has just joined the sorority after her mother passed away. A bit contrived, but... OK.

 Her sorority sisters are Katie (Pepi Sonuga), a little ditzy and well-meaning; Rose (Sai Bennett), a nerdy goody-two-shoes, and Meredith (Emilie Reid), a drunken mess. And the first thing they do when Lila arrives... is to connect a pump to the well. Uh oh.
 After friendly man-child Ozzie (Mark Holton, returning from the first movie) gets a faceful of leprechauntaminated water, the little guy (played by Linden Porco) bursts out of him and into the scene, hat and all. Poor Ozzie; At least he's got to be in one of the cutest/funniest scenes in the movie before that

 From there he starts stalking the girls (and a couple of guests), and you get all the standard slasher-adjacent stuff that are these movies' bread and butter, plus some really obnoxious, forced humor. The Leprechaun's thing, you see, is to be an insufferable little shit, always coming up with really bad rhymes and even worse puns. Sometimes it's funny in a roundabout way, but mostly it isn't. Good thing his sadistic streak is still alive - there are some excellent, very gory kills here.

 I'm probably making it sound worse than it is. I mean, I don't think anyone's supposed to find anything the leprechaun says funny, he's just a little twerp. But the script (by Suzanne Keilly) sometimes feels a bit strained as it tries to inject humor into everything - a few scenes with Marvel-style deflating humor (you know: "Let's do this!" People start walking purposefully towards the camera, record scratch: "Umm... I have no idea how to do this"), and it really stretched my tolerance for corny puns.
 Other than that it's a lot of fun. The plot is simple. Ridiculous and fairly simple, sure, but this is a movie about a killer leprechaun, so the ridiculous is a given. Enough of the humor works, it's got some clever conceits, and the characters are very thinly sketched but still fun enough to watch as they try (mostly unsuccessfully) not to get killed in ludicrous ways. Not perfect by any means - for all my complaints so far, it saves some of its worst ideas for the end - but it's well worth it if you're in the market for this sort of thing.

 A big part of why it works so well is that the effects are a consistent delight - lots of puppets, goo, makeup effects, and one hell of a great-looking explosion. A few CGI missteps doesn't really undo all the great stuff around it.
 No surprise, then, that the director is Steven Kostanski (of The Void and Psycho Goreman fame). I'd rather see him follow his own batshit crazy muse and come up with original shit, but he and his crew obviously had a lot of fun whipping up some eye-popping (literally, in one instance) practical effects to depict the crazy shit Keilly dreamed up.

 I'd go as far as saying that this is probably the best Leprechaun movie. Sorry, Warwick Davies.

PG: Psycho Goreman

  "OK, here's the deal man. Winner is champion of the universe, loser gets buried alive," says precocious moppet Mimi (Nita Josée Hanna) while putting her hands on the ball. "Got it?"

 "That's fair." says his brother Luke (Owen Mire).

 As butt-rock guitars wail into the soundtrack the kids launch into a match of crazy ball, a made up game full of arcane rules. We get close ups of the kids running, throwing balls at each other, doing a jumping jack flash face-off...
 Then the guitars suddenly stop and the cameras pull away, and the game is shown as it is, not as the kids see it.

 It's a hilarious, extremely well made scene that captures so many things so well I'm kind of in awe of it. It doesn't just get you caught up in the kid's ridiculous game, it's also a pitch-perfect recreation of a certain type of 'Extreme!' 90's commercials aimed at kids, it's a great representation of children's state of mind, it's setting up plot points for later (Crazy ball will return). And it's full of funny bits of trash talk and John Woo-style ball throwing.

 Best of all is the punch line: once Mimi finally wins (with a bullshit move called a switcheroo, which will also factor in later) it cuts to Luke digging a full-sized grave under Mimi's smug supervision.

 While digging, Luke stumbles upon an ancient tomb with some sort of gem affixed to its lid. Fooling around with it, Mimi manages to take the artifact just before they get called to bed.

 The tomb was really a prison to an ancient galactic menace (Matthew Ninaber wears the suit, voice by Steven Vlahos), and the removal of the stone sets it free after eons in stasis. Upon reviving he tries to resume his reign of terror; Unfortunately for him, the gem Mimi retrieved allows its bearer absolute control over him. And she obviously uses it to basically make the ancient evil her pet. She and her brother dub him Psycho Goreman... PG for short.

 To say much more would spoil the fun in this ridiculous, twisted spoof of such early nineties' kid's entertainment as The Power Rangers (well, maybe The Guyver is a better comparison) and Urban Commando. There's a bunch of cool monsters as alien forces come to hunt down PG, and a lot of entertaining confrontations between PG and avowed little maniac Mimi. Director Steve Konstanski (off the Astron-6 collective) is an effects guy, so we get lots and lots of gorgeous, extremely expressive practical effects both for creatures and gore.

A Power Rangers-like fight ensues. <3

 The acting might be a sticking point for some (Mimi can be a bit much), but I loved it. The kids obviously are having a blast, with Luke given the thankless role of the straight man, and Mimi running around chewing scenery with abandon and spouting some truly inspired lines. The humour leans bizarre, and is very, very funny.

 It might not look it, thanks to some exemplary practical FX work, but it is a pretty low budget movie, and sometimes the script displays that slightly-stretched feel indie films get when trying to fill out ninety minutes. But all of the scenes and developments are worth at least a couple of good jokes, a great line, or a cool effect, and none overstay their welcome.
 Psycho Goreman is unpredictable, well made, agreeably disturbed, and it gets the period its spoofing down to a tee (stick around on the end credits for not one but two tailor-made songs.) I frigging adore this movie.