M3gan (2022)

!Killer dolls are nothing new (just ask Chucky) and even killer robots have been appearing on our screens for years now (Westworld, anyone?) but a killer robot doll, something meant to bond with a child and provide joy and happiness that suddenly turns sinister, and offers a chance to serve as a cautionary tale about how much we're letting technology control our lives (Alexa, turn on the ominous music) now THIS I gotta see. As a horror fan, I must see all the new horror movies as soon as possible, and this one needled some of my own fears about how intrusive technology has gotten in our everyday world, so I was stoked to get the chance to see it today.

M3gan stands for "Model 3 generative android." When a young girl's parents are suddenly killed in a horrific accident, she is shipped off to live with her aunt, who happens to be a talented robotocist who works for a toy company. The aunt is testing a new design, M3gan, who is set to be the toy everyone will be asking for as soon as she's released. M3gan is a robot that is designed to bond with a child and become that child's favorite playmate, with programming that lets her adapt and learn from the child and the doll's environment. Predictably, this all goes horribly wrong as the sentient toy becomes a little TOO all-knowing and takes on a mind of her own. This starts small, with disobeying her creator's orders, and slowly escalates to something far more terrifying - and deadly.

I'll admit to being a kind of fuddy-duddy when it comes to technology. I get creeped out by Alexa as she's programmed to respond to voice commands, because I can't help but flash back on 2001: A Space Odyssey and how well everything worked out for those folks when technology took over, so I'm the perfect audience for this kind of movie since I'm already half in the bag when it comes to thinking this kind of technology is a bad idea, so I don't need much convincing to freak out when the robot doll starts acting a little too lifelike.

The child actors in this movie deserve major props. the three actresses who portray the lifelike doll M3gan manage to inject lots of actual menace into the proceedings, and the girl who plays the Orphan, Cady, is very likeable and draws us into her world. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and protect her from all harm, which is exactly how I was supposed to feel and it made me really connect with her character. Allison Williams, the actress who plays Gemma, is endearing, and we get the feeling that she really is devastated by grief and just wants to reach out to her niece and take her pain away, which leads her to make some rash decisions with regards to trying out the new technology on her niece without perhaps installing enough safely protocols, you know, in case the doll turned evil as they are wont to do. There is plenty of cat-and-mouse stalking that goes on as the movie is PG13, so we know there won't be much gore, but the movie ratchets up the creep factor so greatly that we don't really need it. I even felt for side characters, like the crazy old lady with the dog, so their subplots worked for me, and when M3gan finally goes whole-hog with her evil robot antics, it genuinely creeped me out. There's not much new ground to tread here, with the "technology is wonderful but what if it takes over" plot many films have tread, but this one treads well-worn pathways with panache, so I definitely recommend this fun little chiller.

I Haz Boox

my first two novellas are available on kindle! These are probably pretty amateur because I wrote them years ago, and they're both very angsty and very gay, but I love them, and they're here! Yay!

Check this out! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN7G79QR?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_ts_80R1P377VX6ZH4KYNCMP

Check this out! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN7KGC1T?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_ts_6MPPPGAW24CN8TDQ6C59

Pitch Perfect

Here is a possible Pitch for my book "The Ins and the Outs: How to Know what You Don't Know You Don't Know"

In 2021, a woman has a psychotic break. She goes to bed one night in her apartment and awakens the next morning in a holding cell at her local jail with no idea of what happened or how she got there. She fights for five and a half months to have her mental health evaluated before she is finally released. Over those five and a half months she learns what it's like to be in jail, the crime she committed that she doesn't remember, what the other women in jail are like, and what life is like on the other side of the world she never knew existed. Through it all she finds her way back to her faith in God even as she loses everything else in her life (her job, her apartment, her identity). She learns what a "dark night of the soul" truly is, and how to make it throguh when you think you can't make it through anymore. Her poems, journal entries, and cartoons drawn on scraps of paper from her cell make up the pages of this irreverant and unconventional memoir.

EDIT:

I've heard from a reliable source that the synopsis of the book should only be one sentence long, so here's my attempt at that, does it sound ok?

Culled from poems, cartoons, and journal entries written on scraps of paper in her cell, this irreverent memoir tells the story of a woman who went to bed one night and woke up the next morning in jail, with no memory of how she got there.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #118: "The Sadness (2021)"

When this movie came out, it caused quite a stir. First of all, there's the graphic violence and gore people keep saying is in this movie. Now I watch a lot of horror, and some of it is very graphic and sadistic, but I found that out myself by watching it. When people start warning me about the gore and violence in a particular movie, I start to get worried about how graphic it got before they felt the need to issue a warning. The second thing people commented on for this movie was that it was heartwrenching and depressing. I have to be careful with that, too, because my depression can be triggered if a movie is too bleak and depressing. So basically what I'm saying is that this movie is dangerous and I have no idea how it will effect me! Let's roll!

In this movie, as Taiwan succumbs to a viral pandemic that transforms peaceful citizens into sadistic, bloodthirsty maniacs, a young couple must battle to be reunited before they too become infected. That's the description of this movie, and it doesn't sound too shocking, just because I've seen similar things happen in movies before, like 28 Days Later, so I'm wondering what it is about this movie that goes so far that people felt the need to issue strong warnings about this movie before I even watched it.

When they say bloodthirsty, boy they mean bloodthirsty. People in this movie who catch the virus turn into bloodthirsty maniacs, and they just start stabbing and gutting and biting people and licking up their blood and it's really gross and icky and sticky. The gore in the movie is well done too, the bites look real and they're just taking chunks out of people's ankles and necks and faces. One guy grabs an axe and starts using it and the camera cut away and I'm just like WHY?! It's already disturbing as hell, cutting away now won't help!

I don't know why this movie is called The Sadness. Yes, it's sad that all these people are doing all these horrible things to other people, but the people who catch this sickness seem very happy indeed to be doing all these depraved things, and when they pass it onto othere people those people become happy too while they're sawing away at other people and eating their skin. There's one really rapey guy who just seems impossible to kill. Oh wait, never mind, he just died finally. This movie is messed up. Oh hey, we've reached the part where a doctor or scientist explains what's going on with the virus. Oh hey, this doctor guy is messed up. Damn, everyone's infected (except for one person, and that person better make tracks before they get dead). Oh here we go, that's messed up. And now it's over. I still think The Sadness is a weird name for this movie. The Plague would be better and more accurate, but perhaps not as likely to get people talking, so that's probably at least one of the reasons why they named it The Sadness. Well that was a good little movie, and it didn't poke my depression too badly, either. Bonus!

October Horror Challenge 2022 #117: "Summer of 84"

I tried watching this earlier in the challenge, but that was the day I decided to film my own horror movie called "The Burning Oven" and I started a fire in my oven when I turned it on, which was a bad time (the whole cabin filled with black smoke and I had to use the fire extinguisher to put out the fire and open the door to air out the black smoke, so it was a big bunch of drama and I never got back around to watching "Summer of 84," so this is round 2 with this movie, and I'll try not to set anything on fire this time.

In this movie, a teenager named Davey Armstrong is a conspiracy theorist who begins to suspect that a neighbouring police officer is a serial killer. With help from three friends, Davey launches a daring investigation that soon turns dangerous.This movie rings true for me because when I was a kid my friends and I were always trying to solve mysteries we were sure were going on around us. This would have been about 10 years after this film is set, in 1994, but the spirit of camaraderie and friendship between these boys rings true to what I remember.

It's a good thing there was no mystery actually going on in my hometown when I was a kid, like the very real murders going on in "Summer of 84," because my friends and I would definitely have gotten ourselves into real trouble, probably worse than the boys in this movie did, if I'm being honest. Everything in this movie is nostalgia of the 80s, but one of the biggest for me is that huge video camera the characters use to try and record evidence. I just watched a movie called "Deadstream" where the main character is livestreaming himself and the handheld cameras he uses are so small compared to the one in this movie. My how time flies and technology marches on.

The friendship between the five boys in this movie rings true, like I said earlier, but it also serves to push the action in the movie along because the characters spar back and forth and spur each other on to keep the action in the movie going. There's not much gore in this movie, but there is one memorable jump scare with some gore and an accurate twist to the movie that feels real at least to me. once you've passed a certain point in this movie, there's some almost unbearable tension that comes from just knowing what's going to happen next, and I almost had a heart attack when a certain point in the movie hit (jump scares like that will always be my kryptonite). Overall this is a solid little period piece and it definitely ratchets up the tension at the end. Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #116: "Mom and Dad"

I heard a little bit about this movie when it came out. I usually try to avoid spoilers, but I ascertained that this is a movie where parents kill their kids, and that kind of stuff is a big trigger for me with my twisted family history. I think i mentioned before that I used to love Nicholas Cage when I was younger, and I used to love Selma Blair too (and I feel so old that I'm now at an age where I have to talk about Selma Blair as an actress I "used to love when I was younger," because she doesn't seem that old to me) so I was excited to see them together in this movie. Let's do this thing!

In this movie, a young teenage girl and her little brother try to survive a wild 24 hours during which a mass hysteria of unknown origins causes parents to turn violently on their own children. It starts quietly, with a news report on the radio about a mom who reportedly attacked her own kid, mostly ignored by the family as they have dinner and argue about regular family things like boys and dates and visits with grandparents. The tension slowly builds as little things hint that something is wrong, A school day is interrupted a few times by phone calls, a few parents appear to become irrationally angry about some things, there's a bomb scare at the school, something is rotten in the state of Denmark, then suddenly everything starts to happen all at once.

I've been through bomb scares at school, and though chaotic, none that were as bad as this one, thankfully. And then the movie really starts, parents want to kill their kids. They're like violent killing machines who won't stop untill their kids are dead. The hysteria, or whatever it is that makes the parents go against their natural urges to protect their kids and suddenly want to kill them, makes them like little terminators bent on distruction and nothing will stop them until they've completed their task and killed their kids. This is supposed to be a black comedy, but I don't see the comedy here in parents wanting to kill their kids. There's one scene where grandma and grandpa show up that made me laugh, so I'm guessing a lot of this is supposed to be funny and I didn't get it on account of being the most humorless person in all the land. There's plenty of biting social commentary here though, and there's sufficient gore and violence going on to keep most horror fans happy. This is a nasty little flick and I'm glad I checked it out.

October Horror Challenge 2022 #115: "Friend Request (2016)"

I'm still in the mood for a social-media themed horror movie. Maybe this one will be everything I dreamed the other movie would be. It sounds like this movie is focused on social media in general and Facebook in particular, since it's about a girl who sends a friend request to a classmate that winds up with some deadly consuquences. Ever since I saw the movie Unfriended and really liked it, I've been a fan of these types of horror movies that take the social media we use every day and explore the possibilities for horror in them. I'm hoping this movie is a good one.

In this movie, Laura, a popular college student, graciously accepts a friend request from Marina, a young social outcast. To everyone's shock, Marina decides to committ suicide after Laura decides to unfriend her. Soon, a disturbing and mysterious video appears on Laura's profile and her contacts slowly dwindle. When her friends suddenly begin to die one by one, the frightened young woman must find a way to stop the carnage before it's too late.

This movie is ringing serious bells in my head. I swear I've seen it before. I watch so many movies that it's bound to happen from time to time when I repeat a movie I've been before. I can't find it in my archives of reviews, but it definitely reminds me of a movie I've seen before. I've definitely seen this one in the last six years that it's been out. I'm calling it now. I recognize character names and even lines they say to each other, and the creepy things a certain character is doing are familiar to me, too. This is definitely a repeat watch.

It's not a bad little movie, though. Laura, the main character, is likeable enough, even though she makes some boneheaded moves that never end well in horror movies. I kinda wanted to yell at her right from the beginning when she befriends the strange, lonely girl named Marina in her class. I get that she felt sorry for the girl but then she lied to keep the girl away from her birthday party, then posted pictures of the party all over Facebook where the girl was sure to see, which is a stupid thing to do. Then she unfriends the girl and starts off a chain reaction of horrible things that bounce off each other. Soon bodies start to pile up and there seems to be no way to stop it. One of the friends actually comes to a pretty smart (albeit twisted) solution and thinks he's figured out what he has to do. Bonus points for creativity, minus a million points for craziness. There are some bad CGI bugs that were more effective when it was just one bug crawling out of a guy's ear, so i don't know why they ordered a whole swarm and it looks pretty silly whenever they show up. This movie has a lot of jump scares, those are its favorite kind of scares. There's a cool turnaround at the end of the movie. All in all this is a cool little movie. Could have been better, could have been worse. Obviously worth watching twice.