"Would you rather..."

I bet you thought I wasn't going to post a review this week.  I bet you thought just because the Devil's Attic is open tonight, Ole Scratch was gonna leave you high and dry to pick out a movie for yourself.

Don't worry.  I know this is gonna be my last review before Halloween and picking out a scary movie at this critical juncture is too much responsibility for you. You've got a lot on your mind,  like whether to dress like a slutty princess or a slutty pirate. You know who you are, ladies, and I do not care how many nerds say that trend needs to go, you keep up the good work.

That all said, I am incredibly busy whipping my collection of evil souls into a hellish fury, so I gotta keep this review pretty tight. Let's get to it. 

Would You Rather is a movie from 2012 directed by David Guy Levy.  Brittany Snow plays Iris, a young woman going broke trying to care for her sickly brother. The family doctor refers her to a philanthropic trust to help her with the bills.

Jeffrey Combs, of Re-Animator fame, plays Shepard Lambrick, the super rich guy who wants to help. He tells Iris she'll be all set with her schooling and her brother's medical needs. All she has to do is attend a dinner party at his house,  play a game and win.

But philanthropy turns to misanthropy when Iris finds herself seated at the table with half a dozen strangers, just as desperate as she, ready to play a grisly version of "would you rather". The first question: Would you rather give the stranger next to you an electric shock, or would you rather shock yourself? The violence escalates with each round of the game until the last person alive is named the winner. 

 

It's like House on Haunted Hill meets Saw.

Would You Rather streams on Netflix. Look at it. I'll see you soon.

"I will do whatever it takes for this role. "

Traditionally, I expect a ceremonial pentagram to be illuminated by candles, but this week's Thursday Thriller sets a precedent for glow sticks I can no longer ignore. The movie is called Starry Eyes and it's about an ambitious, young actress named Sarah (Alex Essoe) who  must decide how far she is willing to go to achieve her Hollywood dream.

You know, to fellate or not to fellate. That old saw.

Her day job is at Big Taters, one of those awesome, chauvinist restaurants that require its waitresses to wear skimpy uniforms.  She quits when she lands a series of successively creepier auditions that lead to the casting couch of the producer of Astreus Pictures.

But Sarah's not that kind of girl. She refuses the producer's advances, and goes back to Big Taters to beg for her job back. Her friends try to console her. A cool guy who lives in a van offers her a part in his movie, which won't mean any money, but at least they'll make a movie. She accepts the role, and they celebrate by dropping acid. During the pool party that follows, Sarah has a change of heart. Maybe performing a little penilingus to achieve your dreams isn't so bad. I mean, she already had to say, "I'm a Taters girl," just to go back to slinging curly fries. How much worse could it be? She calls Astreus and reschedules.

When she finally puts her mouth on it, he says, "The gateway is open, Sarah. Kill your old life, bury it in the earth, and join us in the skies."

(If anyone has ever said anything that crazy to you while you were doing them the Good Deed, I want to hear about it in the comment section.)

I don't know what was in the old fellow's old fellow, but after Sarah sucks it, she gets really sick and loses her serving job for good. She starts acting like a junkie. Her hair and nails start falling out. She asks her roommate if that's her menstrual blood she smells. She pukes live maggots. When she receives a taunting phone call from Astreus, she comes to the conclusion that a murder spree will put all this right.

I don't want to give any more away. You'll have to watch it yourself. Starry Eyes was made in 2014 by Kevin Kolsey and Dennis Widmyer. It's available on Netflix.

I hope it can tide you over for the live thrills and chills we have in store at The Devil's Attic. Only two weekends left. I'll see you soon.

"Tubby time"

This week's Thursday Thriller is a fairly unlikely pick called Creep.

This 2014 film stars Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass, who also wrote the movie. They're the only two people you see on screen. Brice directed it. The whole movie is pretty much a two-man operation.

I call it an unlikely pick, because, for starters, that title couldn't be more generic. Secondly, it's a found footage movie, which is a style I thought I'd long grown tired of, with a few standout exceptions (Blair Witch Project, Troll Hunter, V/H/S). It's also short on special F/X, and because it has only two people, that puts the bulk of the scary on Duplass's shoulders in his characterization of Josef. More on that in a bit.

Creep opens like a lot of horror films, with the main character driving to the butt end of nowhere. Aaron (Brice) explains to his camera that he's going into the mountains because he took a videographer gig that pays $1,000 and requires he be discreet.

When he reaches his destination at the top,  he meets Josef, who promptly welcomes him with a hug, pays him, and fleshed out the details of the assignment.

Josef tells Aaron he has cancer and wants to make a film about who he is, in case he dies before his child is born, like in My Life starring Michael Keaton. Once the goal is explained Josef gives Aaron another hug, and goes straight to the bathroom and takes off his clothes to shoot the tubby time sequence. 

See, when Josef was a baby, his dad would take baths with him, and they called it tubby time, so Josef's just trying to recreate a bonding moment for his yet unborn son, during which he sits in the tub and mimes giving the baby a bath.

Shortly after that, Aaron discovers Josef's werewolf mask. It's okay, though, that's just Peachfuzz. Josef's dad used to wear it to make kids laugh. He even had a little song and dance he did while wearing the mask, which Josef demonstrates. Josef has a lot of fond memories of his dad.

Once Josef has had Aaron film him naked in the bath and dancing around in a werewolf mask, he starts acting a little weird. Aaron slowly discovers that Josef is a manipulative psychotic with a penchant for stalking as the layers of deceit peel back and fall away.

As a performer,  Duplass walks a tight rope as Josef is often sympathetic and scary. One minute,  you feel sorry for the guy, the next you want to get as far away from him as possible, and yet you keep watching, wondering what he's going to do next. 

My only complaint with the movie is it begs of Aaron's empathy one time too many, and in the third act, he makes a decision far removed from any realism or common sense, so I didn't care for the ending. Still, I enjoyed Creep overall and I hope it whetstone your appetite for live, in-the-flesh scares at the Devil's Attic this weekend. 

See you soon.

"Somebody got fucked. Somebody got killed. I'm going to gym."

I know how you feel: A lot of the haunted houses you want to visit don't open til tomorrow night, including The Devils Attic, but you need something now! You need something to get you in the mood, to whet your appetite for live scares. You need a Thursday Thriller!

My pick for this week is All Cheerleaders Die.

The title alone builds expectations of a certain kind of movie, a well-worn VHS rental from 1983 that comprises helpless teenage girls with taut, little bodies being terrorized by a faceless maniac with a power tool of some kind. Toss those expectations aside. Yes, there are taut little bodies, but they're not displayed collectively in a gratuitous shower scene or anything. The nudity is fairly brief.

Society has made a lot of progress in 30 years. Now the girls are the monsters, unless you want to count the football team captain as the monster, or maybe you think the real monster is the intense pressure and rigid social pecking orders of life as a teenager. I'm getting sidetracked here.

This 2013 film written and directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson delves into the world of high school cheerleading, the most dangerous of all high-school sports, according to squad captain Lexi in the opening sequence. She's only referring to catastrophic injuries, which happen soon enough. She and most of the other characters lack the self-awareness to see that the true danger lies in chasing a fleeting bit of social status above all else. In that subtext, All Cheerleaders Die is kind of like Mean Girls. In fact, if it was my movie, I might have called it Very Mean Girls, or Bloodthirsty, Undead, Incredibly Mean Girls, Indeed.

Again, I'm sidetracked. Sorry.

If I can just tell what happens quickly and without giving too much away, Lexi dies in one of those catastrophic injuries she was talking about. So Tracy steps in as squad captain and immediately starts dating Terry, the captain of the football team. That leaves a place open on the squad for Maddy, a misfit, closeted lesbian, who has an axe to grind against Terry. Maddy's been working on her revenge plot for a while and spends all her money on fancy clothes so she can blend in with the cheerleaders. She successfully infiltrates the squad and seduces Tracy.

So Tracy and Terry get in a big fight at a back-to-school party and Tracy tells Terry in front of everybody that he has a small dick. That doesn't sit well. One thing leads to another and on the drive home, the football boys run the cheerleader girls off a cliff, and just as the title promises, all cheerleaders die.

But it turns out Maddy's lesbian ex is a stalker who's into witchcraft. She uses some glowing rocks to revive the squad, who do a slow-walk into school the next day looking hotter than ever and ready to kill.

After that it gets kinda gory. Gossip Girl got nothing on this drama.

All Cheerleaders Die is streaming on Netflix, if you wanna give it a look. See you soon.