Three Films Make A Post: There will be no leftovers.

Thanksgiving (2023): This is probably Eli Roth’s best horror film – I haven’t seen his kids movies, so I can’t speak to that very different part of the man’s career. But then, this really isn’t saying much, given the things he has inflicted on us, and consequently, Thanksgiving is not much of a movie. It really, really wants to be a knowing modern version of the nastiest kind of grindhouse slasher, but apart from the misanthropy, it never gets at the specific charms of these films. And the “knowing” part mostly consists of the kind of jokes Roth finds clever, and which thusly isn’t.

Otherwise, this is just a boring mediocrity lacking in suspense, mood, characters, or even enough cleverness to understand that this specific filmmaker simply doesn’t have the abilities to make a decent whodunnit slasher.

There’s Something in the Barn (2023): The astonishing thing about Magnus Martens’s horror comedy is how by the numbers and utterly predictable in every detail it is despite concerning the Christmas fight between an American family and Norwegian barn elves, which is not something I’d call by the numbers or ordinary.

There’s not a single plot point, nor development, not a single damn joke that isn’t so obvious you’ll make it yourself a second before the movie gets around to it. It’s mind-boggling how obvious this thing truly is in every aspect of its script, and truly astonishing that nobody involved in the production seems to have had a single even half-original idea once the barn elves were scribbled onto a napkin. This makes Roth’s film look like a work of deep creativity and intelligence, which it isn’t.

Death Forest aka Desu foresuto kyoufu no mori (2014): So it is left to this unassuming little Japanese movie to save this triple post. Not by being terribly original either – though it certainly beats the other two movies by the sheer power of possibly having had at least an hour or two of thought invested in it, and by not hiding behind the “comedy” label. The characters are cardboard, the structure pretty old hat, but then, there’s really not much you can squeeze into an hour of runtime. What makes Death Forest and its tale of various characters stumbling through a, wait for it, deadly spooky forest, fun are some pleasantly creepy and disturbing monsters that carry the genuine weirdness of the dark side of much of Japanese folklore. Which is more than enough for a direct-to-home-video movie based on a web game.

There aren’t too many movies whose characters find their end getting their upper bodies chomped off by a creepy, cheaply digital, flying head, at least.

Three Films Make A Post: When it's red you're dead.

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No (2015): Yeah, well, I kinda could have lived without this one. It’s not just that the sharknado jokes have grown kinda stale this time around (though I have to give the film points for actually going for sharknado Earth worldbuilding), it’s the addition of endless celebrity and politician cameos that drag this thing down, as well as the scenes that make a dubious advert for Universal’s stupid amusement park down in Florida. There’s also just only so many ways you can show Ian Ziering chainsaw a flying shark, alas.

Knock Knock (2015): I don’t think I’m ever going to get into the films of Eli Roth, and at this point, I don’t believe it’s my fault anymore. It is, in any case, a bit of a shame, for I don’t doubt there’s the talent in Roth to actually make great, or at least good movies. Visually, the man’s films are always slick, often inventive, and the man clearly has the basic’s of horror film and thriller structures down flat. The problem is he’s putting all these powers in service of films that are generally obnoxious, waste opportunities for depth by the dozen, and too often have the basic vibe of a visit to the world view and mind of a total asshat. So, as usual, this one consists of nasty things happening to characters the film never gives me a reason to care about, avoids all opportunities to say something interesting (or coherent) about class and gender wars while making pretentious gestures suggesting otherwise, and just isn’t compelling enough as a pure horror film to make it possible to ignore its vacuity.


Altergeist (2014): I actually found it a lot easier to squeeze a bit of enjoyment out of Tedi Sarafian’s (of those Sarafians) directorial debut. Not just because it’s easier to overlook the flaws in a first film but because this film – while not containing any more depth than Roth’s – does not pretend it’s any more than it is: a slick looking film about young, pretty internet ghost hunters getting very much out of their depth in a haunted winery and dying. That is, until the film’s final thirty minutes or so pull a different fortean rabbit out of the hat, and the ghosts become a mere sideshow to the true monsters. It’s all very silly, of course, but here, at least, I found myself having fun instead of becoming increasingly annoyed.

Three Films Make A Post: A Campfire Legend of Flesh-Eating Terror!

Holidays (2016): This holiday (all the Western holidays, I’m still waiting on Christian Orthodox horror, Chanukah, and so on, and so forth, though thanks to Hong Kong we’ll never need to be without a Lunar New Year horror fi´lm) anthology starts off strong, with a first half of segments that are female-centric, weird as all get out (I have no words to describe Nicholas McCarthy’s Easter bit) in all the best ways and not as dumb as V/H/S style horror anthologies often are. After that, unfortunately, there comes a dreadful Kevin Smith thing, and two five minute jokes that sort of work but aren’t exactly the place you’d want to end a film. On the other hand, Sarah Adina Smith’s and Anthony Scott Burns’s pieces in the first half are so strong, it’d be worth watching the film for those two alone.

Retribution (1987): Guy Magar’s late 80s low budget horror about a depressed artist attempting suicide by jumping off a roof only to survive and add “astral body possession through burned to death gangster” to his list of problems is a bit of a frustrating affair. It’s a film that’s often too subtle and interested in its characters as relatable human beings instead of fodder for the killing scenes to be your typical piece of 80s horror, but on the other hand way too interested in your typical 80s horror nonsense (neon and disturbing haircuts and overlong gory kills) to work as the subtle and psychological horror film the other half of it attempts to be, ending up in an awkward half-way place. It’s too bad too, for there aren’t too many places elsewhere in 80s horror where you will find actual sympathy for (and a bit of a romantic idea of) the left behind and losers of this world, a competent yet empathic female psychiatrist who isn’t falling in love with her patient, and Dennis Lipscomb in a pretty great leading performance?

The Green Inferno (2013): This on the other hand is exactly what you’d expect from Eli Roth making a cannibal movie: it looks really nice, but is utterly thoughtless and vapid. It is of course the sort of stupid film that thinks it’s oh so clever and can’t help but grin smugly in your face. Unlike the Italian cannibal films, which at least came by their bad taste in an honest attempt to do the Roman circus thing, this is tasteless in that pointless sort of way I can only tolerate from three-year-olds playing with their own poo.