As we near the end of the year, we’re going to cover three more newer releases and still do a couple of oldies. Since it’s so close to Christmas, we’ll deal with “The Carpenter’s Son” first, then play a “Werewolf Game” because it’s “In Our Blood.” Then we’ll continue our seemingly eternal series of kaiju reviews with “Godzilla 2000: Millennium” and the classic 1972 film, “The Legend of Boggy Creek.”
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Mainstream Films:
2025 The Carpenter’s Son
Directed by: Lotfy Nathan
Written by: Lotfy Nathan
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Noah Jupe, FKA Twigs
Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Inspired by “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” where the idea is that Jesus was born with his full powers, in the body of a boy who didn’t know he was Jesus yet or what to do with it. It’s quite slow moving, mostly quiet, and low on action. The horror elements are there a little, some creepiness, and lots of religious elements. It’s well made but mostly we thought it was pretty dull.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a woman giving birth. The father looks up and sees a bright light from the sky along with Heavenly whispering. The baby is born, and as they leave the cave, they pass a bunch of people screaming and sacrificing a baby. They want the couple’s newborn baby, but they hide it. As the sun rises, the man sees the devil in the desert. Credits roll.
The couple and the baby have been in hiding for years, and the baby is now a young man. The father narrates that the son has powers that can’t be explained, but it’s his responsibility to protect him.
The father is a carpenter, but the only work he can get is carving pagan idols. The boy watches as the new neighbor, Lilith, a mute girl, takes a shower. He also gets annoyed when his father insists that he pray for forgiveness. The boy has a recurring nightmare about being nailed to a cross with his mother crying at his feet.
The boy runs into a girl who wants to play games with him. They find a man with leprosy, and that goes badly. His father still wonders if he’s from the angels or from demons; he’s not really sure. That night, the leper returns and claims that the boy’s touch has healed him. Now all the lepers want to be touched. Later the girl gives the cured leper a peach, and the next day the carpenter and the boy see the leper dead.
The girl offers the boy a carved wooden snake and suggests that keeping secrets feels really good, not being subtle about tempting him.
Lilith collapses with black stuff coming out of her mouth and bites a chunk off her mother’s face who screams that it’s the boy’s fault. His father finds the toy snake and there’s a whole argument that comes from that. The father insists that the boy would be dead without his protection.
The boy sneaks off to meet with the girl, who is busy poisoning more peaches, and she takes him to see a site where prisoners are being tortured and executed for the crime of sorcery. The girl explains that the carpenter isn’t really the boy’s father at all. When he asks his mother, she’s evasive, and he knows she’s lying.
The boy is thrown out of school for talking about things he couldn’t possibly know. The boy then goes back to the place of torture and pulls the demon right out of Lilith, who is chained there. He releases her and sends her away. Others there see the whole thing, and they’re gonna talk.
The father and the mother argue about the boy’s conception and crimes. The father is bitten by a snake, and the boy heals the wound right away, clearing up any doubt the father had. He also tells the boy who his father really is. The villagers come for the family, and that goes badly for some of them.
As the strange girl tells the boy her origin story, the sky turns red. She admits that she’s The Adversary. She then opens up the gateway to Hell and gives him a peek. The father arrives and interrupts this until the boy stops her from killing him. After a brief argument, she stabs the father anyway.
This all leads to a serious fistfight between the boy and Satan. The boy wins, but the father tells him not to kill her and forgive her instead. The boy moves to heal Joseph, but Joseph tells him to let him go, and the red sky clears with a beam of sunlight shining down on him as he dies.
The boy goes over and forgives the strange girl, who tells him about his own end. The boy, Yeshua, and his mother, wander off into the mountains. We’ve probably not heard the last of these two…
Brian’s Commentary
So many flies. If you don’t like flies, then this is definitely a horror movie.
Nicolas Cage plays this one mostly straight, although he does get one yelling scene, which is something he’s always good at. The rest of the cast is good too, although the story is a bit weak. Yes, it’s based on one of the apocryphal gospels, but they could have spiced it up a bit more.
It was an interesting concept, but a little boring in my opinion.
Kevin’s Commentary
I thought this was slow moving almost to the point of boredom but at least it’s only a little over an hour and a half run time. Knowing how it was going to end took away much of the suspense they were trying to build.
The cast is good at what they were doing, but it seemed like a wasted opportunity that they could have done more with.
2025 Werewolf Game
Directed by: Cara Claymore, Jackie Payne
Written by: Jackie Payne
Stars: Tony Todd, Robert Picardo, Bai Ling
Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Twelve strangers with various issues are kidnapped and sent to an island for a deadly game of “werewolves” and “villagers.” Kept in line by security devices and guards, they have no choice but to play and gradually eliminate each other. It’s got the horror elements of kidnapping, human prey, and murder, but it’s really not a horror movie. Brian gives it a thumbs up, and Kevin gives it a thumbs down.
Spoilery Synopsis
As the credits roll, we get lots of action shots and text that explains “The Werewolf Game” a social game of survival where random people all over the world are kidnapped and divided into two groups: werewolves and villagers. It’s one side versus the other, and only one can survive.
We open on a dozen people gagged and tied to little student desks. A man in a mask comes out and welcomes them to the game. Three of them will be wolves and the rest villagers. He explains the rules. One man tries to fight back and loses a finger for his trouble.
The Judge in the mask introduces Chris, Monica, Demi, Natalie, Bill, Suzie, Zak, Seth, Pepper, Matthew, Emmitt, and two people whose information is not revealed.
Demi doesn’t want to play and tells the others that she’s a werewolf. The others all vote on who the werewolf is, which is really obvious since Demi just admitted it. Demi tells the others all about herself before the final vote; she wants to get it over with. One of the guards then blows her head off. That’s one of the three werewolves discovered.
All the other contestants are then released on the island and go their separate ways to cabins. Matt and Raymond, one of the players with no background, talk. Seth and Natalie do the same. Chris grabs everything he can use as weapons. Monica helps Bill with a gunshot he received accidentally.
There are three problems on the island. First is the sonic weapon that can kill them. The second is that they’re all going to kill each other. We don’t get to hear what the third one is.
Some of the others talk, and none of them remember how they got here. Monica wants to die but can’t make herself jump off the cliff.
Night falls, and after 3 a.m. the werewolves are allowed to come out and kill. Everyone is terrified as they wait. A person in a werewolf mask comes into Suzie‘s cabin and kills her.
The whole group gathers the next day, and Raymond talks about the company that runs the game. He used to work for them but hacked the system. They’re all skeptical about that. Chris talks big about the traps he’s set; he’s got military experience, but no shirt. He’s not very social, and the others want to “vote him out.”
Everyone is called to the great hall for the daily vote. Old Zack won’t answer his door, and he looks very ill inside; the guards violently force him to attend. Now, they all have to decide who to kill. They all vote for Zack, who has just been acting weird throughout.
Monica and Emmitt start getting close, which annoys Pepper. Chris finds a shirt and talks to Natalie about winning.
On the second night-hunt, Monica and Emmitt spend the first part of the night together, but he goes back to his cabin before the deadline. Emmitt is killed by a werewolf.
In the morning, Raymond explains more about the company. It’s all an experiment in mind control and social engineering. Seth gets all argumentative.
The group decides to vote equally for Monica and Raymond to die, forcing a tie. They don’t play fair and vote for Raymond to die.
Bill says he’s solved it; Matt and Monica are the werewolves. He used to be a detective, so his opinion matters, even though a lot of the others don’t agree with him. That night, the wolf kills him.
In the voting the next day, Chris kills two guards and is killed in return. This is the last round of voting, as there aren’t enough players left to keep the mystery up. The group decides to gang up on Seth this time, but he accuses Pepper.
Monica, Natalie, Pepper, and Matt are left. Maybe two of them are werewolves, but one certainly must be. Monica thinks Pepper is the werewolf, but she still denies it. Matt blames her as well. Matt and Pepper are the werewolves. Instead of killing Monica and Natlie, the group decides to kill the judge instead.
The Judge says the three girls have won the game. He takes off his mask and explains that the brass upstairs requires a big show. He shows them videos of previous winners. He says he’s been rooting for them all along, and the company wants them to join the management and guide humanity.
Natalie goes after the Judge with an axe and kills him. With the judge dead, the guards all fall down dead, as their mind control no longer works. The three girls take a boat and go home.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s like a feature-film length version of one of the games from “Alice in Borderland,” with lots of logic and violence. There are no real werewolves in the film, and they don’t pretend that there are.
Why hire someone as big as Tony Todd and then have his face obscured by a mask throughout the film? I know he wasn’t very healthy toward the end of his life, but he didn’t look bad.
Overall, it’s a sort of deadly whodunnit, more of a thriller than straight-up horror, but it certainly had plenty of paranoia and we had plenty of theories.
I didn’t know until the film was almost finished that it was all based on a party game.
There’s a lot here that I didn’t quite follow on the first viewing, and a lot of the “company” stuff never did make much sense.
The overall plot, pacing, and mystery were pretty decent however. Overall, I liked it.
Kevin’s Commentary
I didn’t like the choice of keeping Tony Todd under mask either.
I just found the paranoia and the accusations and bickering and debating to be tiresome yada yada. All they had for any of the roles, werewolf, oracle, village, bodyguard was the word of the person saying what role they were. There’s really no way to tell.
It’s well made with good acting and production values, but I thought the script was stupid. I didn’t like it.
dy, E.J. Bonilla, Alanna Ubach
Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A filmmaking couple travel to see her estranged mother, making a documentary along the way so that the entire thing is entirely found footage style. It’s very slow moving as we travel along with them trying to figure out what’s going on, then things escalate abruptly, so stick with it. All is explained, and it’s very good.
Spoilery Synopsis
Emily and Danny park on the side of the road to get some footage at a scenic place. She explains that she’s visiting her estranged mother, who is “clean” now. She’s been an addict forever, and the plan is to record their reunion for a reality film.
They arrive at the house in the desert and have a tearful reunion. They all sit down for dinner. Sam, the mother, wants to “make it right with you” after all these years. Emily turns out to not be as forgiving as she thought she’d be. Sam invites them to the clinic where she works in the morning, and then they go to a motel for the night.
In the morning, at the clinic, Sam isn’t there; she called off work. They interview Ana, the program director there at the rehab clinic. They talk to the homeless there, and they all talk about people going missing.
Afterward, they go back to Sam’s house, fearing a relapse since she won’t answer her phone. Emily finds a skeleton key in Sam’s bed. A photo is missing, and they look at it on yesterday’s footage– Sam burned it for some reason.
Emily spends all day waiting and looking for Sam, but she’s just gone. They start to track down some clues and end up talking to some people who saw her just last week.
When they get back to the motel, they find rats and a pig’s head in their bathtub. Ana suggests it’s a gang thing trying to intimidate them. Someone doesn’t want them here.
The next day, they interview Isaac and Beth, people who were in that burned photo. One of the people in the photo used to work for the coroner’s office but was fired when a body went missing. Of the people in that photo, one is dead and two are missing.
They go back to Isaac’s place and find another pig’s head. They get a letter from Sam, but it may have been forged. Emily goes to a bar where the gang hangs out, and that goes badly but the gang doesn’t have Sam.
Emily gets a call from Beth. Isaac has left her and left a probably-forged letter. In his office are hundreds of bags of blood, like in a blood bank. Isaac was selling it, but Beth isn’t sure that Sam was involved.
Emily and Danny go back to the rehab center, where they’ve been staying, and Red, one of the patients, goes crazy and attacks Emily. Ana explains that Red was always afraid of Sam. They track down where Red lives, and he’s got a whole “crazy wall” about the missing people. He’s got a photo with Sam and Isaac circled, so he knows about that.
Danny thinks Red is a serial killer and gets really upset. Emily talks him into staying with her and visiting Red in jail. Red’s being released, so they follow him to Ana’s house, where they find all the stuff from Red’s room.
Ana comes in with her pet pig and wants to show them something downstairs. She pulls a gun on them and tells Danny to keep filming, no matter what. She’s got a little pig farm down here, but past that, they find Isaac and Sam chained to the wall. “Sam is not your mother anymore,” Ana explains.
Ana cuts her hand and shows the blood to Sam, who sprouts fangs and hisses. So does Isaac. Sam and Isaac are vampires. She then cuts Sam’s throat, which heals up nearly instantly. They’ve been abducting homeless people and others who won’t be missed, and only Ana noticed. She then beheads Isaac and then hands Emily the ax to kill Sam. Sam admits that the world would be better without her. Emily does it.
Ana explains the skeleton keys, which represent the vampire’s lineage. She explains the whole thing.
Emily then kills Ana, drinks her blood and then finishes off Danny. She then does a final report to The Commission, the group of vampires behind the organized blood bank. They have a whole rulebook for this kind of compromised cover. She resigns, and The Commission sends someone after her…
Brian’s Commentary
It’s basically a mystery, and we don’t know what’s really going on through most of the film. We don’t know until more than an hour in. It was a little slow and tedious for that first hour, but it did pick up a lot after the reveal. There was a hint toward the end of much larger things going on, and that would have been interesting to explore more of, but it’s just a teaser. Do they have a series in mind? I don’t know, but I’d be interested in seeing more of that.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s found footage with heaping scoops of trauma, angst, and guilt as we get to know the main duo and her mother. Then things get stranger and more interesting after mom disappears. A little more interesting. And then things make an abrupt leap. And suddenly it’s a vampire movie! Though I suspected that’s where it was heading. Though it was a surprise that Emily was infected and killed Ana and Danny. And cool that it turns out to be a vast and organized conspiracy.
I thought it was pretty great.
1999 Godzilla 2000: Millennium
Directed by: Takao Oawara
Written by: Hiroshi Kashiwabara, Wataru Mimura, Takao Okawara
Stars: Takehiro Murata, Hiroshi Abe, Naomi Nishida
Run Time: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a sequel to the 1954 original that ignores all the other movies in between. Godzilla is back to save us all by battling an alien kaiju, creating lots of collateral damage and mayhem in the process of course. The effects are much improved from earlier films, there’s lots of action, and the story is entertaining. It’s a fun one.
Spoilery Synopsis
The Shinoda family, Professor Yuji and his daughter Io, work to set up antennas and equipment outside one evening. They are checking out seismic disturbances that shouldn’t be there. Meanwhile, at the lighthouse, the man inside feels the ground shake and then spots a huge creature eating a ship. Credits roll.
We get various shots from around town as people first encounter earthquakes and then see Godzilla’s big feet pass by. The Shinodas come face to face with the giant lizard creature. They narrowly avoid getting squashed in their car. The professor notices that Godzilla seems to be especially attacking power stations and energy sources.
Meanwhile, a submarine in a trench drops probes and explores underground caves. They’re looking for a meteorite that recently crashed down in the sea. They find it and manage to raise it to the surface.
Yuki, the photographer, goes to see the “Godzilla Prediction Network,” which is really just the Shinodas again. Young Io runs the business and tells her father, the professor, what’s going on.
Back at the meteorite raising, something goes wrong. The rock starts to rise on its own without balloons. It floats? They soon learn that it’s 70 million years old and has something metallic inside, perhaps even a living creature from outer space.
The professor learns that Godzilla is heading toward a nuclear plant next. They shut down all the reactors. Katagiri, the head of CCI, the Crisis Control Agency, comes to them for information about how to kill Godzilla. Shinoda doesn’t like the idea of killing such a rare animal.
The floating meteorite then continues floating up into the air, flying above the surface. It flies away from the scientists’ boat.
The army talks about plans to kill Godzilla; they’ve developed a new kind of missile that’s sure to hurt him. As he approaches the nuclear plant tanks and helicopters arrive, and the shooting begins. The new missiles do work, blasting out bloody chunks from Godzilla, who still doesn’t stop. He gets angry and his back starts to glow.
The flying rock heads straight toward Godzilla. It blasts him good and him sprawling. Godzilla shoots back with his atomic breath and exposes metal under the rock. The scientist, Professor Miyasaka, thinks that it crashed here millions of years ago and sank to the bottom of the ocean. Bringing it back up into the sunlight allowed it to recharge.
Shinoda, Miyasaka, and Katagiri get together and share information. Godzilla’s got an amazing recovery and healing speed. He’s regenerated from the attack already. They name this power “Regenerator G-1.”
The sun comes out and charges up the alien spaceship enough to free it from the rest of the rock. The scientists wonder if it’s actually alive as it shoots down the helicopters that have been following it. It lands on the roof of Yuki’s building and parks there for the night.
Something is hacking all the computers in the city. They soon figure out that it’s the spaceship. They bring huge bombs into the building to blow up the ship. Shinoda and Io run inside to help Yuki, but she’s found some important information from the hacked computer.
The blast bombs go off, but they don’t seem to have done anything to the ship. Messages start appearing on computer monitors. “Destruction. Dominate. Alteration. Prosperity. Revolution. Kingdom.” It’s all very dramatic but Shinoda gets out of the building in time.
And then Godzilla shows up, nearly forgotten for quite some time. He wants revenge on the flying saucer. It animates cables from the street to tie up and drag Godzilla around the city.
The ship takes some Regenerator G-1 from Godzilla’s wound and uses it to grow legs and a face. It was alive the whole time! Suddenly, the body and ship separate. It cannot adopt the Godzilla cells for its own use. Godzilla gets back up and blows the ship apart with his atomic breath.
Now there’s a regular old kaiju (named Orga) that came out of the ship, and it gets into a punching match with Godzilla. Orga can regenerate even faster than Godzilla, so that’s a problem. It’s also continuing to mutate and grows a mouth bug enough to swallow Godzilla whole. Godzilla’s atomic recharge goes into overtime, and the whole thing just explodes dramatically.
Godzilla roars in victory. Then it comes and kills Katagiri, who is OK with that for some reason. Godzilla then destroys the other half of the city on the way out…
Brian’s Commentary
So many iMacs and Netbooks.
The special effects have definitely improved, but the CGI on the ship itself hasn’t dated terribly well. The Orga creature is very neat and works well.
I like it. It doesn’t rely on the tons of lore from the previous films, but it’s implied that the characters already knew who Godzilla was, so he’s been there before.
Kevin’s Commentary
It was an interesting choice doing this as a sort of modern reboot. The models and effects have certainly improved since the early days. There is a little CGI, but it’s still mostly practical effects. I especially enjoyed this one.
1972 The Legend of Boggy Creek
Directed by: Charles B. Pierce
Written by: Earl E. Smith
Stars: Willie E. Smith, John P. Hixon, Vern Stierman
Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a documentary of encounters with a Bigfoot sort of creature in the area around Fouke Arkansas, presented as entirely real and true. Unfortunately like so many cryptid studies, any solid evidence is scarce. There are multiple recountings from real people, and many of the cast play themselves. It’s kind of interesting, a snapshot of life in the area in the early 1970s. They try to play it up for tension and scares, but it’s rated G so it’s pretty tame. Don’t expect much horror, but it was an interesting watch that we enjoyed.
Spoilery Synopsis
We’re told that this is a true story, and some of the people on-screen are the original people who participated in the real drama.
We watch various scenes of a swampy area and hear lots of wildlife animal noises, to the point of it all getting a little creepy. Suddenly, there’s a roar, and all the little animals go scurrying.
A little boy runs to town and tells the old man about a “wild man” who’s hanging around his mother’s house. The old men laugh and send him home. On the way back, he hears the thing roaring in the woods; Jim tells us about it– he’s the little boy, all grown up now. Credits roll.
We’re told about Fouke, a tiny town near Texarkana. We hear about Smokey and Travis Crabtree, a couple of locals. It’s a pleasant place to live– until the sun goes down… We cut to a few locals describing their encounter with the thing in the woods. Some of them have lost livestock to it. The creature has terrorized the area for the past fifteen years.
As the people tell their stories, we see a dark hairy creature lumbering through the woods. It’s a Bigfoot, but they don’t call it that.
We watch a scene with three women alone in a cabin one night as the creature skulked around outside. We next watch a little boy hunting deer shoot the creature.
The Fouke community set up a big organized hunt for the monster. The dogs refused to trail the creature, but some of the hunters tried anyway. Injured, the creature disappeared for the next eight years. They assume he went deeper into the woods to hide.
We then get a nature montage along with a song about the Sulfur River and the Creature who lives inside the forest. It’s really something. We then cut to Travis Crabtree, a local boy, and get a song about him. Travis is out camping and visits Herb Jones, a recluse who lives out in a cabin. Herb tells us about living out there, but he’s never seen nor heard any monsters.
Somehow, the Fouke Monster returned, drawn to civilization. The word “Sasquatch” finally gets brought up and explained. A farmer and a group of children see the monster and his footprints. We see several more late night encounters with terrified women alone at night.
The creature returns the next night and reaches into the window. The men go outside looking for it, and they shoot at it. The sheriff thinks it’s a panther. It returns again, and they shoot at it again. It jumps out and grabs one of the men and he’s so freaked out he runs through the door without opening it.
The narrator warns us to keep an eye out if we ever come to that region. He’s still out there somewhere…
Brian’s Commentary
It’s rated “G,” which puts this almost in a class by itself right there. We watch the creature kill a dog and are told how he ripped its skin off.
From IMDB: “The film is based on actual reported encounters with a Bigfoot creature in the Fouke-Boggy Creek area of Arkansas throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Most of the actors in the film were the actual people from the encounters.”
We heard and saw a lot about Travis Crabtree, but he never had anything to do with the monster, so why was he included? He even got a song about himself included.
The documentary-style narration and interviews make this all seem very real. I don’t doubt that many people, when this came out, did believe it. Bigfoot was huge in the 70s, and this was most likely a big part of that. I think the realistic way it’s done and the earnestness of everyone interviewed really make this one stand out.
It’s very dated and cheesy to a modern eye, but in the 70s, this would have been amazing. I still like it.
Kevin’s Commentary
I wouldn’t be surprised if I hadn’t seen this before, but I really don’t remember it. It’s said that it was very popular as a drive-in movie and was the tenth grossing movie of 1972.
It was one of the first feature length documentaries, and was very influential in boosting the popularity of Bigfoot and cryptozoology studies.
I found this mostly relaxing and enjoyable with all the nature scenes, rural people, and the soothing voice of the narrator. Plus a music soundtrack that includes a ballad for the creature that was pretty amusing.
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