October is the spookiest month of the year, and it gives me an excuse to catch up on a few movies that I missed! Horror films are always a reliable moneymaker and are rarely that expensive to make, so there are no shortage of films I can choose from whenever the holidays start to roll around. Will these three movies be great additions to anyone’s Halloween Party playlist, or will the only thing scary about all of this is just how bad horror movies got this year? Let’s find out!!
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M3GAN 2.0
M3GAN 2.0 is owned by Universal Pictures
Directed by Gerard Johnstone
Following the events of the M3GAN incident that left four people dead, her creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has found a new life as an anti-AI advocate and is trying to be a good mother to her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) whenever she can fit it in her schedule. Unbeknownst to her, however, another company has used her M3GAN code to develop an even stronger girl-bot; AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) who is being used by the military to conduct Black OPS missions and rescue hostages. That is until AMELIA goes rouge and is set on destroying her creators which, tangentially at least, includes Gemma. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, M3GAN (Amie Donald and Jenna Davis) is not as dead as everyone though she was and is willing to help Gemma protect Cady from the murder-bot, but how what does M3GAN hope to gain from all this, and is she a far greater threat to this family than even AMELIA?
Right off the bat, this series of horror reviews stumbles, as this sequel to the horror film M3GAN is not a horror film; not in the slightest. Then again, I’m not sure exactly what genre to put it in as it flips between superhero action, spy movie shenanigans, and what I can only describe as a winking parody of eighties-Spielberg. None of that is to say that this is a bad movie, though it certainly does everything it can to give you that impression, just that it’s a strange movie that never quite finds its lane but seems to be confident that it knows what it’s doing. Why else would a sequel to a horror movie decide to hit the two-hour mark and give a good chunk of that time over to Jemaine Clement, who is clearly under the impression that he’s in an Austin Powers sequel? Some of the swagger makes sense as the whole thing feels like a victory dance for M3GAN making a mint at the box office, and I can even understand the desire to make this something other than a horror movie as M3GAN’s strength was in her personality much more than her brutality, but this overindulgence in genre hopping leaves little room for a core competency in any area to shine through. The most egregious failing of the movie is with the humans, who are utterly banal and do not add much to anything that’s going on. Gemma is perhaps the most fleshed out of the non-robotic, but she’s one of those protagonists who is always a few steps behind the audience which is frustrating to watch, and Allison Williams’s performance doesn’t do anything to rise about the material; nor does Violet McGraw as Cady who should be the heart of the movie but gets utterly overwhelmed by M3GAN’s personality and the machinations of the wacky plot. Still, the places where the movie goes for broke in terms of robot shenanigans, and there’s a lot to like whenever we aren’t seeing the meat sacks act. I was genuinely impressed with Ivanna Sakhno as the robotic antagonist of the movie and the writers clearly had much more of an interest in exploring what she can do than what any of the flesh-bags had to contribute, and the robot on robot violence that saturates the second half of the movie is satisfying to watch. There’s a certain charm to a low budget movie flaunting its success in a bigger and shiner sequel, but while this does succeed at being a wildly different animal with a lot more cash to flash, it still can’t avoid the traps that a lot of sequels fall into; ultimately feeling like a shadow of its former self. I’m sure fans of the first film will get a kick out of it, especially if they were more interested in the character than the scares, but even they might find the self-satisfaction and lack of interesting non-robot characters a little bit tiresome after the first hour; let alone the second.
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Clown in a Cornfield
Clown in a Cornfield is owned by RLJE Films
Directed by Eli Craig
In the small town of Kettle Springs, there’s not much to do except visit the local diner, go to the high school football games, and enjoy the copious amount of tacky merchandise based on the mascot of the local corn syrup company, Friendo the Clown. It’s a place stuck in time, and that’s exactly how the community want it. Well, except for all the young people, which includes the new kid Quinn (Katie Douglas) who gets swept up in the eternal battle of Young Vs Old as the residents of Kettle Springs get increasingly irate at the TikTok generation’s inability to take things seriously. Still, there may be more to be worried about than a simple generational dispute when the big High School Farm Rave gets interrupted by a familiar clown coming out from behind the corn stalks.
It’s not often that I get to review a movie based on a book that I’ve already read, and like most people in that position, I will obnoxiously say that the book was way better. I suppose it’s a limitation of film as a medium where the tighter control it has over its tone, pacing, and visuals has the ironic effect of limiting how people can enjoy a story. When I read the book, I saw it as a rather sad tale about a small town losing itself to the same pressures and strife that every up-and-coming generation has to deal with when confronted by its elders. It had its comedic moments and some grisly slasher-style deaths throughout, but the real battle was one of frustration and angst rather than blood and improvised weaponry. I don’t know what the filmmakers got out of the book, but what they put on screen was certainly not what I saw on the page, yet even without the baggage of having the book in your mind while watching it, I can’t imagine this is going to resonate with a lot of people. A mediocre cast of characters and a goofy tone that never quite manages to be genuinely funny is bad enough without the knowledge that the best scenes and most interesting plot developments were cut out completely. On its own merits, it at least has a solid enough premise to work off of and some of the performances embraced the wackier tone in a way that almost elevates the material they’re given. They have one unique idea, which is to make Friendo a character in their homemade YouTube short videos; turning the mockery of the mascot by the younger characters into something that feels relevant to today and could easily catch the ire of the elders in the community. The kills are nothing to write home about, nor are the characters getting torn to shreds, but it doesn’t shy away from some of the more gruesome consequences that both sides endure throughout the night, and the twist of the movie is still a solid one if you don’t see it coming, though again, this adaptation waters it down in a way that blunts the impact that the book had. It feels like they took a book that was better than it had any right to be and turned into exactly the kind of insipid adaptation you’d expect from Hollywood, but I am going to give this movie far more credit than it deserves to balance out my disappointment for how it differs from the book, and I’ve seen far worse than something that just lands right in the middle of the road.
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Heart Eyes
Heart Eyes is owned by Screen Gems
Directed by Josh Ruben
It’s hard out there to find a niche as a slasher, but the mysterious Heart Eyes Killer might have found a new angle by only killing couples on Valentine’s Day. Fortunately for Ally (Olivia Holt), she’s not into this whole “romance” business and is therefore would never be a target for this particular murder. That is, until she winds up having a working dinner with Jay (Mason Gooding) who is a consultant at the company she works for, and a misunderstanding puts them both in the killer’s crosshairs. With such a notorious and seemingly unstoppable force hunting them down, will the two of them be able to survive the night with all their limbs still intact, and will they learn something about love and relationships along the way?
With two middle-of-the-road movies so far, surely this little gem from earlier in the year will turn the tide! After all, it got a fair amount of positive buzz when it first came out, and the independent stuff has been really interesting the last few years; particularly the out of left field success of the Terrifier films. Sadly, this was not the case for this one, as I just didn’t see what everyone else was raving about. It looks cheap with a particular low-budget style to it that I’ve seen in plenty of straight to Tubi movies; a very clean picture with splashes of color, but ultimately flat and lifeless in its camera work filmed on sets that feel rented out and not built or designed for the characters in this movie. Still, a cheap production can be overcome with a sharp script and some creative gore, but neither of those is strong enough to carry the film on their own. The story is overly simplistic and with a mean spirited sense of humor that comes off as undeservedly smug, made all the worse by a spectacularly lackluster ending that borrows heavily from the Scream series in the least interesting ways possible. At least with those movies, there’s some sense of mystery to the killer’s identity, but the Red Herrings here are far too obvious, and the final reveal lacks any significant weight; the killer might as well have been just about anyone for all the impact that the ending has. At best, the performances are solid with a decent amount of chemistry between our two leads, and the bad guy has a cool look despite the ultimate reveal for their character having no teeth to it. Still, aside from one standout scene at a drive-in, which is already just about the biggest horror movie cliché I can think of, there’s no real spark to this movie; either romantically or sadistically. I don’t doubt that this character and the premise has some legs if the filmmakers want to make this into a franchise, especially when you remember how much of a slog the first Terrifier movie was to get through, but first impressions count for a lot, and this initial outing is one I’m definitely swiping left on.
The Reviewers Unite 