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Blumhouse CAN be good or decent, but this is yet another one that makes me feel like they put meticulous research into finding out what are the most critically panned and disliked ingredients of their catalogue & then make new films out of them.

Sure, it's a competent enough film with one or two potentially compelling albeit overused themes, but it's also tiring, uninspired, tedious, flat, predictable, lukewarm & ultimately pointless and empty feeling.

It's rare for a movie that's under 90 minutes long to feel this very stretched out, and it's a damn shame that such weak scripts get greenlit with casts & crews that are too good for it.

The worst Jaume Collet-Serra flick, can only compete with "Black Adam" maybe.

SPOOKTOBER chapter 22: A Blumhouse film

After seeing this, it almost seems that the better movies Blumhouse distributes come out silently and sort of under the radar - "Soft and Quiet" last year, and "The Passenger" this year. They both are, perhaps, not straight up horror, but to me they're made into ones by ways of disturbing themes and visceral violence. "The Passenger" is so far my second favorite horror film of 2023.

Carter Smith ("The Ruins") helms a script by Jack Stanley, which sees a young man in early 20's, beat down, anxious, with no self-esteem and otherwise an absolute mess with a certain trauma in the past start his work day in a remote fast food joint. A particularly stuck-up colleague bullies him so much, that another, more mysterious colleague, has enough of that and goes to the car to get his double-barrel. What follows is a life-changing (for the characters) and thought-provoking (for us) on-the-road thriller, with spurts of high octane violence, dark topics of conservation, and thick, down-beat atmosphere.

While, perhaps, never outlining a bigger point, "The Passenger" is written and directed compellingly, and has excellent production design, photography and aesthetic. What's even more amazing, are the two lead performances. The timid, silent young man portrayed by Johnny Berchtold, and the impulsive, equally wise and demented Benson - by Kyle Gallner, who is slowly becoming a favorite via some good indie and horror flicks ("Scream", "Smile", "The Cleansing Hour", "Red State" etc.).

It's my favorite kind of horror, all proposed and executed by highly human forces and characters. "The Passenger" bears similar vibes to such great and effective horror films like "Speak No Evil" or "Coming Home in the Dark", and these have a tendency to stay with me for a while. This one ends on a rather uplifting note for its kind, in a very good way though. My rating: 8/10.

SPOOKTOBER chapter 20: A Horror set on Halloween

Have a lot of mixed emotions after "Bad Candy", enjoyed it more than expected, but it's also a considerably bad movie all around. "Trick'R'Treat" has been, and still is, by a mile, the best, definitive Halloween horror comfort film to me, and "Bad Candy", as badly as it might wish, doesn't ascend half as high. Nonetheless, in this intensively colorful and feverishly edited anthology where every story somehow mysteriously feels the same, some seasonal fun is to be had.

I went for some candy because it's a Halloween themed horror anthology, narrated by Corey Taylor, leader of one great band called Slipknot. Well, vaguely narrated... He's "Chilly Billy" on his radio show of the same name, and together with his co-host Paul they tell horror stories live on Halloween night, on Psychotronic FM.... Sounds pretty cool, but, as the stories kick off, we quickly get the gist of what we're in for, and it doesn't really get better, or any different moving forward.

I love for the amount of effort that has gone in "Bad Candy" - the lighting department went demented at some point, the production team probably bought out every Halloween store within a 50 mile radius, the editor and DP's must've been on 10 red bulls a day, because it's a fast paced frenzy where space and time is mixed up sometimes, and at least half of the actors are having good fun in their pastiche roles. While there's always something going on, the budgetary constraints and silly writing, and choppy overall direction remain active flaws throughout, there's some quite bad cgi sprinkled throughout, the acting is wonky frequently within the many characters, dialogue can be pretty kooky, and every story, while different in plot, somehow manages to feel too similar to each other. If there would've been more variety, if "Bad Candy" would be an anthology in a more distinctive way, I would've given it that 5 I was considering.

It's like a C grade horror flick, it's cheap and feels amateur, or like a YouTube video more often than not, but the heart is in the right place, and "Bad Candy" should find its way to those who are true suckers for Halloween vibes. Regardless of quality, it can be felt that makers of "Bad Candy" love the topic. The list of downsides is hefty, so it might be hard to love it, but not very hard to have fun with it. My rating: 4/10.