We’ll start off the week with “Whistle,” released this year, along with “The Strangers Chapter 2” from last year and “The Car” from way back in the seventies. Finally, we’ll continue our series coverage with “Return to Silent Hill” and “Godzilla: Planet of Monsters.”
All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #54, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:
Mainstream Films:
2025 Whistle
Director: Corin Hardy
Writer: Owen Egerton
Stars: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Nick Frost
Runtime: 97 minutes (Note: some sources report up to 108 minutes)
Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A group of young people come into possession of a cursed whistle that summons the future death of anyone who blows it or hears it. So they learn about the magical situation as they are getting picked off one at a time.
It’s a little formulaic, but it’s well made and above average in quality. We were both entertained.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a basketball game with the Stalkers versus the Wolves. One of the players, Horse, sees something weird up in the audience. As he makes the winning shot, he sees someone who appears to be on fire that scares him off back to the locker room. The player runs into the locker room and smashes an old-looking urn as the smoky-ashy-man approaches. It sets him on fire in the shower. Credits roll.
Six months later, Chrys argues with her cousin Rel about unpacking her stuff. It’s her first day of high school after moving here. She’s assigned Horse’s locker and some of the kids take offense to that. We get to meet some of the other “kids” of the school, as well as a teacher, Mr. Craven. Also, Chrys may have a bit of history. Grace tries to be nice to the new girl, but doesn’t get any support.
Inside Horses’s locker, Chrys finds all Horses’s stuff, still there, including that ancient urn with an ugly skull-whistle inside. She’s about to blow it when the bell rings.
Mr. Craven looks at the whistle, and it’s got ancient writing on the side which he just happens to be able to read. Someone Googles the script and says it means “Summon the Dead.” He blows in it to see if it works and it makes the mirror shatter.
Chrys meets Noah, a youth pastor who invites her to church. He’s very sketchy– no, he’s also a knife-wielding drug dealer. Meanwhile, Rel steals the whistle off Craven’s desk. Not long after, a bloody bald man crushes Craven’s lungs and makes him lose all his hair.
At Grace’s houseparty, Grace blows the whistle, and they all cringe at the sound. Ellie is nice to Chrys and invites her to the harvest festival tomorrow night. Chrys soon develops a crush on Ellie.
Later that night, Grace works on her homework next to the pool. She hears someone scrabbling around on the deck and checks it out. She gets a jump scare, but that’s all.
The next morning, Rel and Chrys arrive at school and hear about Craven’s death from lung cancer last night.
Chrys and Ellie go to Horse’s house to return the whistle to his parents. His mother, Ivy, is broke and has to sell all her possessions. She’s very self-obsessed. “You didn’t find it, it found you,” she says about the whistle. It doesn’t say “Summon the dead,” it says “Summon YOUR death.” It shows you how you’re going to die. It brings Death to you earlier; you die in the way you were meant to, but much sooner than intended.
Could Mr. Craven have used it like Horse did? Ellie works at the hospital, so she checks on Horse’s death records. Horse’s dental records show that he was in his forties, but he was really just seventeen. He would have died in a gas leak at age forty. Mr Craven would have died of lung cancer eventually, but it happened last night because of the whistle.
It’s time for the harvest festival, and it’s quite a party. Rel and Grace are there. She buys some weed from Noah, who then tries unsuccessfully to sell some to Chrys. Meanwhile, Grace goes into the scare maze and runs into a terrifying old woman who chases her. It catches her and she ages seventy years in a matter of seconds.
Ellie and Chrys explain the whistle to Dean and Rel; they all heard the whistle, so it’ll be coming after them as well. Dean doesn’t believe any of it until he gets home and sees himself after a drinking and driving death.
Chrys tells Ellie about how she OD’d last year and her father died on the way taking her to the hospital. This leads to a makeout session. Meanwhile, Rel has visions of his death at the steel mill.
The next morning, they all go back to see Horses’ mother about Choka, the whistle of Death. She says there’s no way to stop it, but they can change its course. “Give your death someone else’s life. Offer Choka a new sacrifice. Mark another with your blood and you will be spared.”
Alone in his bedroom, Dean dies from a massive traffic accident in the grisliest way possible.
Meanwhile, at the church, Rel has decided to trade Noah’s life for his own to break the curse. Noah takes his gun away, but Rel knows he’s not going to die that way. Rel knocks him out and takes him to the steelmill. Chrys and Ellie show up and talk Rel out of marking Noah with his blood. The invisible steel-chewing machine then kills Rel as the girls watch.
Chrys says they summoned Death and have to die– but they don’t have to stay dead. Ellie’s a diabetic, and she’s got enough insulin to kill both of them and then revive. Ellie injects Chrys, she dies, and then Ellie resuscitates her.
Noah, meanwhile, breaks out of where they had him tied up, and he works on getting into where the girls are.
Noah gets in with his gun as Ellie lays on the floor dying. She’s bleeding out, but Noah dips his fingers in the puddle like it’s a religious experience. Yep, he’s marked with Ellie’s blood now. His own Death comes after him, and he doesn’t escape it.
Three months later, Chrys is back in high school and she’s with Ellie. We cut to another girl opening a locker and finding the whistle inside…
Brian’s Commentary
I went into this one blind except for knowing a cursed whistle was involved. I liked it quite a bit. The casting, soundtrack, and deaths were all good, and the plot was fairly unique. The film leaves it wide open for a sequel, and it was good enough that I’d watch it if there was one.
Kevin’s Commentary
The basic formula seems familiar. A group of friends in their 20s still in high school get their hands on a magic object that kills them off one by one in unique ways. I thought they milk things out a bit, but overall it’s well made and entertaining. The effects are excellent, the cast is good as are all the technical aspects.
I’d call it above average for this type of movie.
2025 The Strangers Chapter 2
Director: Renny Harlin
Writers: Alan R. Cohen, Alan Freedland (Based on characters by Bryan Bertino)
Stars: Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Froy Gutierrez, Ema Horvath, Ella Bruccoleri
Runtime: 98 minutes
YouTube Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Immediately after Chapter 1, survivor Maya wakes up in the hospital and has a peaceful recovery. Okay, not really, the Strangers are still after her. There’s lots of chasing and incidental body count. The Strangers are persistent, and we get hints about their origin. And then it stops and says, “To be continued.” Yep, that happened.
Spoilery Synopsis
As credits roll, we get flashbacks to the three “Strangers” killing a man in the woods. We cut to Maya, from the previous film, who wakes up in the hospital. She describes them and tells the story to Sheriff Rotter, who is still creepy. She wonders who “Tamara” is that they kept asking about. The people in the local diner speculate about the killers, and they’re all suspicious-looking themselves. We cut to an angry little girl who has a doll that looks like Dollface.
That night, at the hospital, the place is nearly empty. Maya gets a phone call, “Is Tamara here?” Then there’s screaming out in the hallway. Suddenly, the lights go out, and her cell phone stops getting reception. Soon, she sees Scarecrow wandering around with his axe. Fortunately, it appears that Maya is the only patient in the huge hospital. Soon, they’re all playing hide-and-seek in the hospital’s basement workings.
She hides in the morgue, in the same drawer as her dead fiancé, Ryan. This works pretty well, so she gets away from the hospital and runs outside into the rain. She runs into a woman who tells her that the sheriff isn’t going to help her “Because he’s–” and then she dies. Maya runs into a horse farm or stable to hide.
Running back outside, she’s picked up by two women whom Maya obviously doesn’t trust, but at least they have a car. They pick up two guys on the road, and she finds it all very suspicious. It’s all very tense. She panics and jumps out of the moving car and back to the woods.
As the sun comes up, Maya uses a stolen first aid kit to sew up the wound in her side, screaming all the while. Somehow, the three baddies have tracked her to this location as well, even though there are miles of forest between where Maya jumped out of the car and where the bad guys were left behind. Instead, Maya gets attacked by a wild boar, which is pretty random.
She’s having a really bad day. But not as bad as the pig.
Pinup comes across the scene and has a flashback about playing with baby pigs herself.
Maya makes her way back to the murder cabin from the previous film and grabs a knife, some clothes, and food. She meets a man who says he’s with the State Police, and they get into his car. He doesn’t last long before the masked women kill him.
She hurries to another house, with a strange man inside, and passes out. When she wakes up, Turns out this is the house of the two men from the car she was in earlier. Gregory is creepy, but the women say it’s fine to ignore him.
Family has sent an EMT to pick up Maya at the house, but he stops at a gas station and maybe tells the wrong person where he’s going.
Back at the house, Gregory explains that this stuff has been going on for years, and she’s the only one who has survived. After a few minutes, Pinup arrives and tries to break in. Dollface, however, is already in her bedroom somehow. She makes it outside to find the EMT’s ambulance and his dead body outside.
Pinup is waiting inside the ambulance, and they have a quick fight. She dies. Later, Scarecrow takes off her mask, and we see a face inside; it’s– I have no idea who that is. We get another flashback to the creepy, animal-killing little girl. The little girl kills Tamara, another girl whom she was jealous of. The little boy sees what she’s done and smiles.
To be continued.
Brian’s Commentary
Takes place immediately after the first film in the reboot series. Ever notice how deserted hospitals in horror movies get at night? It’s like doctors, nurses, and patients all go home at closing time.
The film is mostly just Maya running from one bad situation to another, with The Strangers ahead of her at every turn. There’s lots of suspense and tension, but not really much in the way of a plot, except for watching bad things happen to Maya.
You know how in many horror movies, there’s a part in the middle where everything just drags a little bit before the exciting finale? This whole movie is that draggy middle part.
A waste of time.
Kevin’s Commentary
The hospital made for a good cat and mouse setting for Maya vs the killers, but it was absurdly empty of people other than them and a very few folks at the wrong place and time.
It’s quite remarkable, to the point of silly, how the Strangers are able to travel from place to place wherever Maya flees.
Brian summed it up perfectly referring to this as the draggy middle part of a mediocre movie. A looooong three-movie movie.
I was not impressed.
1977 The Car
Director: Elliot Silverstein
Writers: Dennis Shryack and Michael Butler
Stars: James Brolin, Kathleen Lloyd, and John Marley
Runtime: 98 minutes
Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A small desert town is terrorized by a killer on wheels. As the body count and attacks climb, the local sheriff and his crew struggle to stop it, and gradually learns it’s no ordinary car and driver. The pacing is a little clunky, but a good cast and decent script with some surprises elevates it. It’s not excellent, but we were both entertained.
Spoilery Synopsis
After the credits, we open in the desert as a couple of bicyclists zoom down the desert road and into a dark tunnel. We see a car drive into the other end of the tunnel (from the car’s POV). The not-so-subtle music hints that something bad is going to happen. The car comes up behind the bikers and both young people die gruesome deaths. The car, on the other hand, honks gleefully and drives on.
Wade and his girlfriend Lauren wake up and do hanky-pankie as his young children listen outside the bedroom door. Elsewhere, John Morris plays his French Horn outside grumpy old Amos’s house. John puts out his thumb for a ride when the car swerves to hit him. It misses, but then comes back for more.
Wade is the sheriff’s deputy, and he gets called out to Amos’s place, where the car has repeatedly run over John the hitchhiker. His description is a little sketchy, but it was obviously intentional. Not long after, they find the dead bicycle girl, but they don’t find the boy, who went over a bridge at a different point.
Meanwhile, Amos’s wife, Bertha, is at the police station. Sheriff Beck wants her to sign an abuse complaint against her husband. Beck’s had a crush on her since high school. Beck watches as the car zooms toward Amos, but it hits and kills him instead. An old Indian woman sees what happened and blames an evil spirit; there was no driver in the car. Wade takes over as the new sheriff, and he’s not happy about it.
There’s going to be a parade rehearsal this afternoon, and Wade knows it’s a bad idea. They get a call that they’ve found the bicycle-boy’s body, so that distracts everyone for a while. In the meantime, Deputy Luke starts drinking again.
At the fairgrounds, the kids and teachers practice their parade marching as the wind picks up and visibility drops. Everyone panics when they hear a car horn, and the horses go berserk. The kids all run a mile or so to the cliffs instead of going into a building or onto the bleachers or something. They all hide in the old cemetery, but the car stops just outside the gate and waits as Lauren taunts it from inside the fence.
Deputy Ray spots the car in the desert and follows it. All the other cops move in sped-up footage to get to that area. Things go badly for Ray as the car slowly pushes him over the edge of a cliff.
Somehow, the car rolls over, takes out two more police cars and comes to a stop in front of Wade and his little pistol. Wade shoots the car’s tires and windshield, but it appears to be bulletproof. It then knocks him down when he approaches the driver’s door - which has no handles, and Wade passes out.
In the hospital, the deputies all discuss what they know. Lauren wonders about the wind at the parade; it was almost like magic. Luke admits he’s started drinking again and simply forgot to cancel the parade rehearsal with everything that’s been going on.
Deputy Chas drives Lauren home, and the car follows them. As she goes into the house, the wind picks up; the car wants revenge for all her taunting earlier. It drives right through her living room and kills her. We get a long scene where Wade is sad. Luke thinks the car didn’t go into the cemetery because the ground was hallowed. Wade is skeptical, but he doesn’t have a real explanation that beats that.
Wade has a plan, but he needs Amos’s help with explosives. We get a long scene of Wade repairing his motorcycle, only to find the car is in his garage. After a standoff, the car chases Wade and his motorcycle down the road. He lures the car to where the surviving deputies and Amos are rigging up dynamite in the cliffs.
Wade keeps the car busy while the deputies finish wiring everything, and blow it up excessively. Afterwards, Wade and Luke debate what they saw in the fire. As the closing credits roll, we see the car is in a city now…
Brian’s Commentary
There’s no explanation for any of this. We never find out why the car is killing people.
It’s got a lot of similarities with “Duel” from 1971 as well as “Christine” from 1983. One came before, and one after, but the influences carry over between films. It may be stretching things a little, but “Rubber” (2010) is also in the same neighborhood.
The dialogue and the pacing are really weird. They focus on lots of things that aren’t really all that important to the plot. The cast is surprisingly good for such a weak film; most of the actors were big at the time, or would become big later.
I was entertained, but it’s a long way from great.
Kevin’s Commentary
I saw this one when it came out at the theater. I was eleven, and it was a formative movie for my enjoyment of horror. I haven’t seen it since, and I was interested in seeing what I thought of it now.
In one scene a group of teachers and kids seeks refuge in an old cemetery, and the car doesn’t follow them in. It’s said that the car wouldn’t go on hollowed ground, and I thought at the time I first saw it that it made perfect sense - it was afraid of falling in the hollowed ground of graves. It was years later that it suddenly occurred to me oooooooh, they said “hallowed ground,” not “hollowed.”
The cast has lots of familiar faces of actors from the 70s that were in lots of stuff before and after. James Brolin was young once.
That’s quite a few deputies for such a small town, though they do have a big area of land to cover, but that was necessary for the action and body count.
Watching it now, almost 50 years later, I was still entertained.
2026 Return to Silent Hill
Director: Christophe Gans
Writers: Christophe Gans, Sandra Vo-Anh, Will Schneider
Stars: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson
Runtime: 106 minutes
Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
James gets a letter from his lost love imploring him to return to Silent Hill, and so he does. Once there he goes through a series of encounters and scenes with creepy stuff, very much like walking through a video game, interspersed with flashbacks of his relationship with Mary.
While the setting and creatures are similar, this doesn’t seem to be connected to the previous two movies in terms of characters or story. The plot is sparse, mostly just a quest that goes on for quite a bit of time through scene after scene of strangeness. It was… okay.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a man driving too fast through the windy, curvy, mountain roads. Unsurprisingly, this goes badly, as he nearly hits a woman in the road, causing her to miss her bus. She talks about Silent Hill, her hometown. She’s Mary, and he’s James, and he offers to drive her home.
James wakes up– that was all just a dream. He’s very drunk and gets thrown out of the bar. His therapist calls to nag him about his appointment tomorrow. He goes home and finds a letter asking him to come back to “their place” from Mary. We get a flashback to James and Mary’s big romance. James returns to Silent Hill. Credits roll.
A woman named Angela tells James to grab a sandbag and follow her. There are ashes falling from the sky, and she says some fires are still burning. Then, there were floods, and she warns him not to go to town.
James walks into town, and it’s not only deserted, it’s also covered in ash and haze. James gets a flashback to the people of Silent Hill talking about Mary’s father, Jacob Crane, and all he’s done for the town. Meanwhile, outside, an armless monster attacks a homeless man.
Suddenly, an air raid siren goes off, and everything gets really dark. He sees all sorts of weird creatures outside, and runs inside to hide. He sees, or imagines, seeing a great deal of weirdness and calls his therapist back.
James runs into Eddie, a man hiding in town, and he talks about all the monsters that just moved into town. They find a little girl, Laura, trapped behind some bars. Eddie turns on James, but that’s not as bad as a Pyramid-Head, who starts chasing James through the old building. He then runs into a giant spider-woman who chases him some more. Pyramid kills the spider-woman and cuts her arms off.
James runs into Angela, who tells him he shouldn’t have come, as there are too many secrets here.
He next runs into Maria, who leads him through town to the hospital, but Mary’s not there. She tells him about Joshua Crane, who was an old-time cult leader in the town. The two walk into a room full of freeze-frame nurses who chase them. Maria gets injured, so James finds Laura, who says she knows where Mary is.
James finally finds Mary, who is now a four-armed monster who kills him– no, he wakes up, that was all a dream. He’s in the Silent Hill Hospital, as a regular patient. There are doctors and nurses, and it all seems normal again. They tell James that Mary has been dead for months now, but he knew that.
We get another flashback to the couple in Silent Hill arguing about what her father did to her with the cult. This ends with him storming out and leaving town. He feels like he let her down.
Suddenly, James is back in the horror version of the town, explaining what happened to Maria. She looks just like Mary, and they kiss. They take the elevator all the way down.
James wakes up next to the river and watches as the hospital burns to the ground behind him. James remembers that Mary’s full name was Mary Angela Laura Crane; all the women have been Mary all along. He remembers her getting sick; her father had been poisoning her all her life. She wanted to die, and he smothered her to death.
Back in Silent Hill, James sees Mary turn into a big, undead-looking moth with four arms and flies away. He then puts her corpse in his car and drives into the river to drown…
Nope– another dream. We’re back in the opening scene where James almost hits Mary with his car. This time around, the two of them drive to anywhere other than Silent Hill…
Brian’s Commentary
This seems to ignore all the previous films. It is much like a video game, with James running from one unexplained situation to another, because– why?
The setting is everything here. There’s no real acting or characterization to speak of. There’s only a hint of a plot; it’s mostly just one scary scene after another, just like a video game.
This was dull, made no sense, and was overall… atrociously bad.
Kevin’s Commentary
They stepped up the creepy and unsettling encounters a bit in this one. And it has the video game vibe, almost more so than a movie. The plot is thin; it’s really all about the quest and encounters. It started feeling tedious after a while.
I can’t help but think I’d be more into these movies if I was a fan of the games. This one is said to be based on the game Silent Hill 2 from 2001. I’ve never played any of them.
2017 Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters
Director: Kōbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita
Writer: Gen Urobuchi
Stars (Main Cast): Mamoru Miyano, Takahiro Sakurai, Kana Hanazawa, Yūki Kaji
Runtime: 88 minutes
Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s far in the future, and refugees from space come back to Earth after everyone left due to the giant monsters ruining everything. Before they can resettle, they have to deal with Godzilla. This one is an anime style animated movie, but it’s still considered an official movie in the Toho series. Brian enjoyed it quite a bit, while Kevin - who has a bias against cartoons - didn’t get much of anything from it.
Spoilery Synopsis
Aboard a space station, guards point their guns at a docked spaceship. The pilot, Captain Sakaki, is refusing to take colonists to Tau-E, which everyone knows is uninhabitable. They’re just trying to dump and abandon their elderly. The old colonist in charge calls Sakaki, and he says the colonists want to land on the planet, any planet. Sakaki gives in and launches toward the planet below. From the space station’s window, Sakaki watches as the landing shuttle explodes in orbit. Credits roll.
We hear a report about monsters appearing on Earth at the end of the 20th century. The monsters came from everywhere and Godzilla was the worst of them. Aliens, the Exif, arrived, and they wanted to live here. Then the Bilusaludo, another race arrived as well. They also offered to rid Earth of Godzilla. Godzilla overwhelmed them as well.
Sakaki remembers life on Earth and the rush to evacuate to the stars. Life aboard the space station wasn’t much better. Sakaki, now in jail aboard the ship, researches the history of Earth and Godzilla. He wants to go back and fight the big monster. The ship’s chances of finding a habitable planet are really small; returning to Earth is maybe the only option. Due to relativity, over a thousand years have passed on Earth.
There’s a plan floating around that says they can defeat Godzilla; Sakaki wrote it, and the Exifs say it might be possible. Everyone rushes to the windows to see their homeworld; the younger generation have never seen it. It’s been 10,000 years on Earth, so even Godzilla couldn’t still be around.
One of the drones goes dead. It must have been Godzilla and his atomic breath. He is still alive down there, which brings on a lot of discussion. Sakaki is released from jail to lead the fight.
The space force lands on Earth and prepares the area for a battle. Sakaki explains his whole plan, and there’s a lot that has to go right. Godzilla has a hidden organ that gives him protective shields, and he hopes to disable it.
Life on Earth has changed. Some of the trees are razor sharp, and the air is barely breathable. A group of flying monsters attacks the base, and they’re something completely new. Nothing could have evolved that quickly, could they? Turns out, they were really gone for 19,200 years, so… maybe?
Martin, the scientific leader, says there’s no real benefit in staying since everything here is toxic now. He wants to set up a base on the moon instead. In order to retreat, they have to join up with another company that still has working ships to evacuate. In order to get there, they have to pass through Godzilla’s territory.
Metphies, the Exif scientist, suggests that Godzilla will be looking for them. He’s “the vengeful hammer for the arrogant.” He’s seen it before with other races.
Godzilla soon shows up on the scene, and he somehow causes the human’s ship to crash. They use a failed attack by Colonel Leland to figure out where Godzilla’s shield emitter is located. With Leland dead, Metphies is the new commander, but he puts Sakaki in charge instead.
There’s another battle with Godzilla, but in the middle of the fight, more of those flying things show up to get in the way. The group leads Godzilla to the trap point, and they set off their traps. Godzilla is mostly buried, and they hit him with everything they have.
Godzilla has been defeated– the plan worked! Martin thinks this probably wasn’t the original Godzilla from 20,000 years ago but one of his descendants. If they find another one, at least they know they can beat it.
Suddenly, there’s an earthquake. Something even more powerful than Godzilla is coming! It’s… big. Yes, it’s the original Godzilla, and he’s spent millennia growing to be mountain-sized.
Everyone retreats as Sakaki vows to kill the monster…
Brian’s Commentary
This one is animated, but still counts as an official Toho Godzilla film. It’s a much more ambitious, complicated story than more non-animated films.
Overall, it added a lot of new stuff to the far-future world, and it more or less all made sense.
Godzilla himself only shows up toward the end of the story, but he makes an impression. Overall, I liked it more than I thought I would.
Kevin’s Commentary
Anime something something cartoon blah blah.
It’s highly detailed with top notch animation, there’s a lot happening in the story, the technology is advanced, and Godzilla is more powerful than ever. All that said, this really didn’t do much for me at all.
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