I’ve never met a FINAL DESTINATION movie that I didn’t enjoy. Even its most maligned sequel (2009’s fourth entry) is fine by me. I absolutely relate to the series’ inherent paranoid catastrophizing and I was born to dig its melodious marriage of the horror and disaster movie genres. Furthermore, I admire the franchise’s commitment to creative deaths and appreciate its consistent spotlighting of folks like myself suffering from Cassandra complexes. Happily, the latest entry, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES grabs the series’ calamity baton with gusto and delivers a fine blend of crowd pleasing shocks that push the series into fresh territory while still providing gratifying fan service (not to mention a lovely adieu to beloved horror icon Tony Todd) that cleverly weaves the installments together without painting itself into a corner. This is definitely a movie that should be seen in the theater not only for the legit visual spectacle of it all, but to share in the inevitable hoot and hollering it inspires with fellow audience members. I don’t have to tell you the plot do I? Of course not. Just know this is the rarest of birds, a late entry in a franchise that may arguably be its finest. I do have to tell y'all that I saw FD:B in something called 4DX which I never even heard of before. It literally blew me away. The chairs went up and down like a darn roller coaster, wind was blown when appropriate and water was squirted into my face during scenes of blood splatter! There was even a rubber house wiggling around my ankles to simulate shuffling debris (but it really just reminded me of the good old days when you might encounter a rat in the theater searching for fallen popcorn). I was a little scared that I had to sit next to a potential lughead (!) but my dude turned out to be a great provider of hilarious commentary and clearly enjoyed the bone crushing mayhem as much as I did. All in all, it was an incredible experience I will never forget and the most fun I’ve had in ages.On the complete opposite end of the fun-o-meter is the devastating bleak-grenade BRING HER BACK, the latest flick from the undeniably talented Philippou brothers whose previous effort was the truly terrifying (imo) TALK TO ME. This unabashed dread porn overdose is beautifully shot, stuffed with indelible images, exquisitely acted and somehow a bit too dour and depressing even for a card carrying Eeyore Stan like myself. I think it even threatened to knock me into the same psychotic pit of depression that THE LODGE did back in 2019 and I can't say I was fully down with that. I guess the filmmakers could not have known that I was in a fragile state having had to dispose of a poor dead opossum that died in my yard earlier that morning but I still feel mercilessly psychologically bullied and tormented all the same. I know I signed up for horror but a mere 5 minute intermission involving cartoon puppies (not opossums) would have been much appreciated by yours truly. This unrepentant non stop funeral dirge begins with a teen boy named Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind younger sister Piper (Sora Wong) discovering the dead body of their father in the shower. The two hapless siblings are threatened to be separated but wind up being foster-cared for by a woman named Laura (Sally Hawkins- who is frankly, TOO GOOD at playing a manipulative lunatic and now I’ll never see her any other way). Laura is beyond unhinged, she’s hinge-repellent and she lives in an unnerving mid century modern home with too many windows where it rains all the time (you can nearly smell the mold and mildew) with a kid who looks like young Jason Voorhees and (of course) a perpetually vulnerable cat named I believe, “Garbage Man” (and probably on street called “Ari Aster Lane”). Naturally, Laura is a great big personified urn of spinning grief because her daughter (who was Piper’s age) somehow drowned in her annoyingly shaped pool. Not to be cruel, but Laura should have just gotten over it instead of causing havoc, flirting with witchcraft, convening with basement cults, making Susan Tyrell in BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER (’82) look sane and acting like she never saw Mary Lambert’s classic adaption of Stephen King’s PET SEMATERY before. I mean, if I’m advising a person to “move on” in life, you know that person is seriously circling (in this case, almost literally) the drain.BRING HER BACK is an admirable work of art that expertly wrings every once of woe and gloom it can from the viewer… and I want it to go away and never cross my path again. I will not be buying the DVD to proudly place next to my valued copy of TALK TO ME on the shelf because I am sure I will never be in a secure enough mental space in the future to watch it again. So I say congratulations on a job well done but no thanks to this joyless misery crawl (actually there was one funny part when Laura’s (not long for this world) co-worker visits, sees the gaudy bedroom Piper is residing in and quips “Good thing she’s blind” under her breath. That was indeed high comedy but it was like drowning in the ocean and spying a life preserver floating way too far away to ever possibly reach).FEAR STREET: PROM QUEEN reminded me a lot of my own 1980’s high school experience in that it is filled with a lot of forgettable characters and it should have been a lot more fun. Which isn’t to say that there are not a few bright spots. There’s a couple of amusing kills, the music selection is impeccable and I did enjoy seeing both Lili Taylor ('99's unintentionally hilarious THE HAUNTING) and Chris Klein (I watch JUST FRIENDS (2005) nearly every Xmas) having fun chewing the scenery. Unfortunately, the whole affair is so busy pirating the past that it forgets to find its own identity and its sad killer reveal is so brazenly obvious from the get-go that it lacks any sting. Its comically campy climax is almost worth the slog but its failure to make any of the young characters even remotely identifiable from each other is almost painful. It’s definitely not up to the quality of the previous trilogy loosely based on the works of R.L Stine but I suppose you could do much worse in the teen slasher department. I’ll give it some leeway based on its soundtrack alone even though I can assure you that it’s depiction of high school students having “dance-offs” to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” circa 1988 is about as historically inaccurate (not to mention cringe) as you can get. Amusingly, one of its promotional ads sports a tagline that reads “This Party Is So Dead” which pretty much turns out to be a rare example of truth in advertising.
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