We’ve got three new releases this week as well as a pair of oldies. We’ll open on the not-Poohverse “Piglet” and then go to church for “Consecration.” For our oldies, we’ll take a look at one more episode that even Pinhead didn’t show up for in “Hellraiser: Revelations” from 2011, followed by the remake of “House of Wax” from 2005. And we’ve got more shorts as well!
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Mainstream Films:
2025 Piglet
Directed by Andrea M. Catinella
Written by Harry Boxley
Stars Alexander Butler, Lauren Staerck, Alina Desmond
Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This isn’t the Piglet from “Pooh: Blood and Honey,” it’s a separate tale. This Piglet is a big, mutated guy wearing a mask and having a big appetite for killing. Reminiscent of Leatherface from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movies. The music and accents required subtitles. Brian was harsher on it than Kevin was, who found it entertaining more than not. But we both agree it didn’t show us enough new to really be interesting. It’s not a standout film, and we thought it was okay at best.
Spoilery Synopsis
A prison van stops in the woods so the driver can pee. “Is it true what they say about him? About the experiment… and his family?” The prisoner was part of a scientific experiment that deformed him. Dr. Bickley turned the scrawny man into a huge killing machine. He then murdered the people in the prison. Naturally, the prisoner gets out of his chains and kills all three of the inept security guards. The masked killer returns to his lair and puts on a pig mask. Credits roll.
A carload of party girls stop on the side of the road so one of them can throw up. Kate is upset about hiding from her insane boyfriend. Two other girls talk about the pig serial-killer who used to operate in this area. A man comes out of the woods and tells them not to go to the camp, as bad things always happen there.
A man in a cowboy hat talks to Piglet about the girls who will be coming to stay at the farm. Piglet can have his pick of one of the girls; the rest will go in the freezer.
The girls arrive at Mr. Hogarth’s farm for the first time in ten years. Kate sees Piglet in the woods, but only for a moment. Mr. Hogarth, the man in the cowboy hat, shows the girls around; he runs the camp.
On the road, three other people stop their car with a breakdown and have to walk the rest of the way to camp through the forest. Courtney is autistic or something and forces them to stop so she can draw. As they wait, the other two stop for sex. Piglet kills the couple, Riley and Bruce, with a big meat hook. Courtney goes looking for them and finds herself in a bear trap until Piglet catches up to her.
Kate gets a scare from a man covered in blood. The police come and pick up the homeless man as Mr. Hogarth assures the girls that animals won’t come into the camp. One of the girls tells the story about the local serial killer they used to call “Piglet,” who fell in love with a girl named Kate.
Judith soon finds Courtney chained up in the barn and hides while Piglet comes in and kills Courtney with a hook before killing Judith as well.
Kate and Susie talk about Spencer, Kate’s crazy ex, who used to follow her around and stalk her. She feels like that again. They both plan to move to Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, Alex and Dianne make out in the hot tub as Mr. Hogarth watches. Hogarth then kills Dianne with an axe.
Alex, Kate, and Susie wonder what happened to all their friends. They talk about making a phone call, but try to drive to town instead; the car has been sabotaged.
Hogarth and Piglet work together to kill Alex with a sledgehammer. Kate thinks Spencer has followed them and is causing all their troubles. Bret, the weird harbinger from the woods, shows up and tells them they need to leave– he offers them gas for their car. They soon see Piglet, and the chase is on. Bret shoots Piglet, and then the girls take his gun and force him to drive them to town. Bret explains the whole thing, but Susie and Kate are skeptical. Hogarth comes outside and blames Bret for keeping a bloodthirsty monster on the grounds.
Piglet shows up and kills Bret while Hogart shoots Susie in the leg. Piglet takes Susie to the barn and chains her up. He then peels her face off with the help of his knife.
Kate runs to the road and flags down a cop, Officer Burke, who handcuffs her and takes her back to Hogarth and Piglet. They all sit around and sing “Happy Birthday to you” to Kate. Instead of a birthday cake, they give her a foot with a candle wedged on top; they’re cannibals. “Piglet’s chosen you. We want you to join the family. He needs a mate. He’ll take the mask off for the honeymoon.”
Kate seduces Officer Burke and attacks him as well as Hogarth. She runs out to Bret’s car as Piglet comes up behind her. She rams him with the car and then drives off. The car stalls out not too much later, and Kate walks to another barn, where she encounters a man in a welding mask. Piglet grabs the man and kills him right away. She steals the man’s car, but crashes it as well.
Kate knocks Piglet down and goes at him with the axe. She pulls off his mask, and he just vanishes.
Brian’s Commentary
This isn’t part of the “Poohniverse,” as this version of Piglet is just a deformed man wearing a pig mask, not a mutant animal at all. The mask, however, looks just like the one in “Blood and Honey,” but it’s a whole different story. The weird family is more closely related to the one in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” instead.
The music was so overbearing in the beginning that we had to turn on the subtitles to catch all the details of what was being said. The thick accents were strong enough that we would have needed the subtitles anyway.
The acting is really weak, and the accents are atrocious. If you can make it through the pre-credit sequence and keep your sanity, you might like this one. That opening scene was really the worst of it, but it never really gets good.
It’s not awful for a low-budget indie flick, but it doesn’t really do anything we haven’t seen many times before. I never thought I’d say it about a movie, but it’s no “Pooh: Blood and Honey.”
Kevin’s Commentary
I don’t disagree with any points Brian made, but I did find it entertaining enough to keep me interested - a fundamental requirement to get any kind of thumbs up from me. The short run time helps, with minimal time wasted - it does have a lot of gore and kills, and the effects are realistic.
2023 Consecration
Directed by Christopher Smith
Written by Christopher Smith, Laurie Cook
Stars Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Thoren Ferguson
Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This has a little bit of a slow start, but we do gradually get to find out what’s really going on and who’s behind it. The movie blurs the lines a little between good and evil, right and wrong. And raises some questions about who is really in charge. We thought it had a cool wrap-up and liked it a lot.
Spoilery Synopsis
A woman walks down the street thinking about guardian angels. Suddenly, an old nun walks up and points a gun at her.
We cut to the same woman, Grace, giving an eye exam to an old woman. She goes to see John, an old friend and teacher, about the old woman’s case. She goes home to work on her computer when, suddenly, the lights go out. We get glimpses of a nun in the background, inside the house, but Grace doesn’t see anything. She gets a phone call from the police, who say they’ve found the body of her brother, the victim of a murder suicide.
Credits roll as she travels to the remote convent where her brother’s body was found. DCI Harris fills her in on the investigation. They think Grace’s brother, a priest, killed another priest and then himself. Harris is trying to piece together what actually happened and why. He tells the story about how one of the nuns thought they saw the devil and poked their own eye out. They’re an extreme sect.
Grace and Harris meet Mother Superior, and we see that Grace isn’t interested in religion at all. The old woman blames a demon for the deaths. She gets a vision of Michael warning her that it’s not safe there; then she faints.
When Grace wakes up, she meets Father Romero from the Vatican. She goes back to sleep and dreams about a middle-ages witch hunt. She goes to the place where Michael died and sees many nuns dropping off the same cliff. She faints again and wakes up in the convent. She confronts the whole group of nuns at dinnertime.
Father Romero takes Grace on a tour of the ruins of the old church and explains the history of the place. He seems straightforward and honest, exposing that the Mother Superior cleaned up Michael’s body before the police arrived.
She goes through Michael's books and finds a really weird one that she can’t read. Except that she can read it somehow. We get another flashback to young Grace doing things she shouldn’t be able to.
We cut to Romero arguing with Mother Superior and the other involved nuns. Grace and Sister Meg talk about life in the convent.
DCI Harris questions Mother Superior. Kate’s rude to all the religious people, and we soon get a flashback as to why. Her father was a religious nut who kept them locked in cages, which explains her attitude and also why the two siblings have a secret code that only they can read. Kate watched as her father killed their mother.
When their father was captured, the convent tried to adopt the two children. We get a flashback to that as well, but the old priest and nun really only wanted Grace. As the kidnapping progressed, something happened, and a truck ran into the kidnappers.
She tells this to Romero, who believes Michael came there to find a relic. He offers several ancient books to Grace, and they’re in code as well. The same code she thought was her and her brother’s. The books talk about the Knights of the Morning Star and his shadow. We get another flashback to Grace’s brother Michael being tortured for information about the relic. He refuses to talk, and when he gets up he stabs the old priest, which is how he died.
Grace watches as a nun stabs herself, and the next thing we see, she’s talking to DCI Harris about what she’s learned. She stops in at the prison to meet her father and asks why he did the things he did. He believes that she’s the devil’s own child, and he should have done even worse. He’d died in a storm, and she prayed for him to come back, which he did, but he wasn’t the same after. When she tells him that Michael died, he tells her to “bring him back.” He doesn’t think she can die. He points out that wherever she goes, death and destruction soon follow.
Mother Superior talks to Harris, and she says that Grace is the relic; not only that, but Grace knows this herself.
Grace watches as an invisible force beats up one of the nuns who was trying to hurt Grace. She walks back to the convent, where no one seems surprised that she’s now covered in blood.
Father Romero does a prayer to “consecrate her,” and then opens up a door to an underground place beneath the church. “She must be contained for eternity; her power is a threat to Christ,” we hear someone say. As Romero tells the nuns to seal the crypt, all Hell breaks loose in the church, killing him. “So that was your plan, to bury me in a tomb? What happened to forgiveness?” Grace asks.
Grace goes up to the “suicide ledge” and starts walking backwards, the way Romero explained to her. Before she gets too close to the edge, Harris shows up and tries to talk her out of it.
She jumps. And falls very, very slowly. Slowly enough for another flashback. We see that somehow, Grace has been time-travelling through young Grace’s childhood, saving her from many bad things, sometimes invisibly. She even has a conversation with the about-to-die Michael. She tries to persuade him not to, but he says he must. The mother superior and two nuns there feel invisible Grace push past them and see Michael’s one-sided conversation with invisible Grace. Before he jumps to his death. Then she finishes her own fall off the cliff.
In the morning, Harris sends boats out to find Grace’s body, but that’s not easy and nothing is found. Mother Superior tells him that Grace isn’t dead; she’ll go on using her power until she’s stopped.
We flash to Grace, drinking with her old friend John. She’s looking very healthy now. She still doesn’t like churches. John mentions that the old woman from the beginning now has perfect sight; it seems to be a miracle.
We cut back to the opening scene, with Mother Superior pointing a gun at Grace on the street. Out of nowhere, she’s hit by a vehicle and killed. Grace is her own guardian angel...
Brian’s Commentary
It’s slow going in the beginning, and we don’t know who’s good or bad for a very long while. Still, the mystery and suspense build up continuously, and it comes to a fun ending.
It looks good, it’s well acted, it’s a mystery where we do get all the answers in the end. I liked it.
Kevin’s Commentary
I liked the places it went with theology and angels, and how far people would go to protect the status quo. Basically, I think, she’s a fallen angel slumming as a human, hiding the memory of who she really is from herself most of the time. Very cool. It does have a slow start, but I thought the finish was great. I highly recommend it.
2025 Self Driver
Directed by Michael Pierro
Written by Michael Pierro
Stars Nathanael Chadwick, Reece Presley, Lauren Welchner
Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
We weren’t sure going into this one, the trailer looked iffy. But it turns out the trailer doesn’t do it justice. It was very good. Nathanael Chadwick is perfectly cast in the lead, which is good since the majority of the movie is about him driving around and doing stuff. It moves well as things get more complicated through the night. We both liked it a lot.
Spoilery Synopsis
A man drives a car as the credits roll. D, the driver, eats his generic fast food in the car and gets a phone call from his landlord, which he ignores. His girlfriend calls and asks when he’s coming home, but this is Friday, the day that pays the best. She complains that there’s no WiFi; he probably didn’t pay the bill.
He opens the VRMR! App, a rideshare thing. He picks up people and takes them where they want to go, and he does a variety of weird characters that are all critical. They. Are. Annoying.
One of the clients offers him a business card for Tonomo, a new company that offers better pay and a signing bonus. Four or five thousand dollars a night, with the right attitude. He doesn’t actually say it’s legal, but D thinks about it. D calls VRMR! on the phone, and it’s the usual annoying runaround with the voice system and “hold music.” He wants to get paid early, but that’s not going to happen.
He keeps on driving and picks up two drunk women, one of whom pukes all over his back seat. It costs even more money to wash the car. The VRMR! app says it’s time for a mandatory 8-hour break.
He calls Nick with Tonomo about the job. Nick installs an app on D’s phone. D signs the mile-long “Terms and Conditions” page. “Always do what the app tells you; never speak to the clients. If you quit in the middle of a job, you lose all your money.”
D hits “Start,” and the app tells him where to go. He misses a turn, and that already cost him a penalty deduction. He gets to the destination, and the app has him wait. He picks up a woman and drives her where the app says to go. As he drives, she changes into an angel costume. He drops her off in an alley, but she wants him to wait for her.
The payment for the job comes to $100. The next job is for $500, but he promised the girl he’d wait. He accepts the job anyway and drives on. The whole thing has a lot of time pressure, so he has no choice. On this job, he just carries a package.
D stops and a man gets in, and he’s loud and obnoxious; he says he’s a pusher. D drops the guy off and continues with the package. He goes around the block, and the app tells him to pick up the same guy. It looks a lot like he’s a getaway driver now. D and the man argue over the route, but D insists on following the app. The man gives D a gun to dispose of and some drugs as a tip. He ends up with $450 for that job.
Between jobs, D tastes one of the drug-coated sugar cubes the man gave him but doesn’t really take it.
He takes on another $500 job. This one has him move to the back seat next to a passenger and hit the man. “It’s OK, just do it,” says the man. D does the job. Each punch is $50, again and again. It gets easier for D around the fourth punch. With all the bonuses, he makes a bunch.
The app tells him to “rest now.” He uses the time to clean up the blood on the back seat. He goes back to the place he dropped off the angel woman, but she’s not there.
The next job is $2000. Before accepting, he tries one of the sugar cubes. They stop and pick up two girls, one is very high or drunk, and it might be a matter of sex trafficking. She cries and fights, and D just sits there. About this time, the drugs D took start kicking in. He sits there while the brother and sister carry the stoned girl into a warehouse. When they come out, they yell at each other and then start making out on the hood of the car.
D starts seriously hallucinating now, but he’s also driving where he needs to go. Something went wrong with the girl they dropped off, so they need another one. They stop and grab the girl with the angel wings from earlier. They drive back to the sex trafficking warehouse, and the brother and sister have to deal with a more immediate problem.
D digs out that gun from earlier. He gives the angel girl the other sugar cube, and she wakes right up. The two run away from the car but the two soon catch and beat up D. The car itself rescues D from the evil pair.
“Job abandoned: Payout $0” D loses all the money for the evening’s work.
He gets back in his car and drives away. VRBR! sends him a text asking if he wants to drive some more, which he accepts. Back to the grind…
Brian’s Commentary
The trailer didn’t do this one justice. It’s mostly just one guy and a few passengers, very simple. For quite a while into this, I was thinking, “I’d do this job,” but then it got a bit excessive.
The jobs weren’t that hard from D’s point of view, I dunno what he thought was going to happen taking LSD or whatever it was during the work.
It was well shot, looked good, was nicely paced, and kept my interest throughout. Very cool!
Kevin’s Commentary
I was reminded of “13 Sins”(2014), where the guy had to do progressively more twisted things with anonymous instructions.
I like being pleasantly surprised by a movie, and this is one that does that. The trailer looked like a maybe, and it turned out to be a winner. Things build nicely and move well, with just enough dark humor to spice it up. I’d recommend it.
2011 Hellraiser: Revelations
Directed by Victor Garcia
Written by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Clive Barker
Stars Steven Brand, Nick Eversman, Tracey Fairaway, Jay Gillespie
Run Time: 1 Hour, 15 Minutes
Trailer:
Watch it: https://amzn.to/43zJXQp
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Unlike some of the previous sequels that were a standalone movie with a little Hellraiser stuff barely tacked on, this was made as a Hellraiser movie. Clive Barker wasn’t involved because he no longer held the rights, and he vehemently denounced it, but it does tap into a lot of elements from the first two movies. Doug Bradley isn’t involved either and reportedly said bad things about it. There’s a different and less effective Pinhead actor. All things considered, though, it was surprisingly pretty entertaining and certainly better than some of the previous sequels.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a found-footage style camera view of two guys leaving L.A. to get one of the guys some sex. Nico and Steven are going to Tijuana for hookers. Their car gets stolen, and the next thing they know, they’re playing with a cursed puzzle box. Lights blink, bells ring, and the walls glow. Pinhead shows up for his box and Nico’s soul.
We cut to Steven’s mother and sister discussing the video we just watched. Ross, Steven’s father, doesn’t want to talk about Steven, but Emma does. They all argue. Pinhead listens from another dimension. Emma sneaks into the bedroom and watches the rest of Steven’s video. Nico kills a hooker, so that kinda spoils the trip.
Back at home, Steven’s parents, Ross and Sarah, talk to Nico’s parents, Peter and Kate. As far as they know, both boys went missing and were presumed murdered. We see that Emma has the puzzle box. As she plays with the box, Steven suddenly appears, more or less alive.
The phones are dead, and now all of a sudden, everyone’s cars are gone. The parents think some kind of psycho has followed Steven and has cut the phone lines and stolen the cars. They lock all the doors and plan to run for help in the morning.
Emma continues to play with the box, which escalates the weirdness inside the house. When the lights come back on, Steven is gone again. They soon find him outside, “They’re coming. The vagrant called them Cenobites.”
We get another flashback to Mexico, where the boys talk about not getting caught for the hooker’s murder. A vagrant comes over and offers them a puzzle cube; “It’s experience. A form of ultimate arousal.” He gives the box to Nico. Not long after, Nico opens the box and all Hell breaks loose. Pinhead comes and takes Nico away.
Steven hires a hooker and kills her as well, thinking it will help Nico. Her blood brings Nico partially back, but he needs much more.
Back in the present, Steven flashes back to having his skin peeled off. Steven wakes up and makes a move on his own sister before kissing her.
The vagrant shows up outside. “He’s here. The one who escaped. They will have him again.” Peter shoots the guy, but the vagrant then slices up Peter’s face, killing him. Steven then shoots Ross. “This isn’t you talking,” says Ross.
Flashback to Mexico again as Steven hires and starts to kill another hooker. He stops halfway through when he sees she has a baby. Nico comes in and argues with Steven, who finishes the job. Nico wants one more, a man, so he can wear his skin. Steven refuses, so Nico kills him and takes his skin. This has been Nico in the house with his parents all along!
After much monologuing from Steven-skin-Nico, Emma brings him the box. She stabs him as well, but he still forces her to open the box.
Pinhead and the other Cenobites, including Steven as an apprentice Nailhead, come for Nico. Pinhead only wants one thing, and that’s Nico. When Ross shoots Nico, Pinhead needs someone as payment, so he tears Sarah apart. Then they send Emma home with Ross, who dies. Emma looks at the box, maybe she’ll try again.
Brian’s Commentary
This is the first film where Pinhead isn’t played by Doug Bradley. Stephen Smith Collins isn’t a great substitute. Clive Barker refused to have anything at all to do with the film in a very clear way. That said, at least it is clearly a Hellraiser story, unlike a lot of the past half-dozen films in the series. Despite Barker’s opinion, this is not the worst of the series.
Kevin’s Commentary
After the previous sequels, I was bracing myself for the worst. I was pleasantly surprised to find this one wasn’t too bad. It’s not great, certainly not up to par with the first two movies, but it does have some of the elements from them. Trivia says it was a rush job thrown together so the company could maintain their rights. I’d call it watchable with no regret, having seen it.
2005 House of Wax
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Written by Charles Belden, Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes
Stars Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert
Run Time: 1 Hour, 53 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a remake, in name only, of the 1953 original. That said, though, this had a good script, actors who knew what to do with it, good direction, and excellent special effects. Plus top-notch death scenes. It’s a good one to go into blind if you can. We thought it was very entertaining.
Spoilery Synopsis
It’s 1974, and we watch as someone fills a mask mold with melted wax as their child calmly eats cereal. The other child comes in, and he’s an out-of-control monster who has to be tied and duct-taped to the high chair. That kid ain’t normal. Credits roll.
In the present day, Carly and Paige talk about starting their internships after their trip, as Wade shows up. Blake finds a shortcut on the GPS for their planned road trip. Nick and Dalton are also going, but no one really wants them to.
Halfway through the shortcut, there’s a detour, and they all decide to pull over for a nap. Nick is just out of jail, and he blames Carly and Wade for ratting him out. Nick and Carly are twins, and they clearly don’t like each other much. The wind kicks up, and there’s a terrible stench coming from the woods.
A truck stops nearby, just sitting there with the headlights on high, shining at them. Nick throws a bottle at it, smashing one of the headlights. The truck backs up and drives away. After the group goes to sleep, Carly hears someone skulking around outside in the darkness.
In the morning, they all pack up, but Dalton seems to have lost his camera. When they look to see where that smell is coming from, they find a huge pit full of dead animals and at least one person. The group watches as a roadkill collector dumps carcasses from his truck. The hand in the pile is just part of a mannequin.
Also, the belt on Wade’s car has broken - probably sabotaged though they don’t realize that. Wade and Carly go with the roadkill guy to the gas station for a replacement belt to fix Wade’s car. The driver is creepy, has a big knife, and the window won’t open. It’s tense, but he turns out to be okay. The road’s washed out, so they walk the rest of the way to town.
Blake, Paige, Dalton, and Nick get stuck in traffic in the big city; they’re gonna miss the big game, so they turn around and head to where Carly is.
Wade and Carly make it into the little town of Ambrose, but there’s no one on the streets. But there are puppies in a shop window, and they see a lady peek out through some upstairs curtains. They go into the church, and there’s a funeral in progress. They exit quickly. Bo angrily comes out. He runs the gas station. The funeral’s gonna be going on for a while, so they decide to visit the big house of wax they walked past earlier.
Wade notices that “The House of Wax” is literally covered in wax on the outside. It’s closed, but they go inside anyway. The floor and walls are made of wax, as well as almost everything else. The place is dusty and old, but it’s got lots of cool things to see. Carly gets skeeved out, and they go back to the gas station. Carly tells Wade about her being the good twin while Nick was the “vile one.”
Bo returns and invites them to his house to pick up the fan belt. Bo talks about Trudy, who used to be the main artist there. Vincent was Trudy’s son. Dr. Sinclair was Trudy’s husband, a doctor who did bad things. She went crazy, Sinclair killed himself, and their two sons went to foster homes.
Wade soon comes to the conclusion that Bo is one of Trudy’s sons, just before the power goes out and someone attacks him. Bo chases Carly around outside, and she runs back toward town. In the center of town, all the lights come on and there are city noises, but nothing at all is moving.
Vincent drags Wade into his workroom and starts cleaning him up and sewing the hole shut, and waxing all his hair off. Wade is put into a “wax shower” that coats him completely.
Carly runs back to the church and sees that all the parishioners are wax figures, the priest included. It’s Trudy Sinclair’s funeral, and it appears to have been going on for a long time. Bo comes in to talk to his Momma and looks around for Carly, and soon catches her. He straps her to a chair and superglues her mouth shut.
Nick and Dalton arrive in town. Carly yells after getting her lips apart, and Nick comes downstairs and releases her; he knows about Bo now. Dalton goes to the wax museum and finds the very immobilized, yet still alive, Wade. There’s not much skin left under the wax. Vincent shows up and chases Dalton toward the basement workroom before beheading him.
Carly and Nick go to the woman peeking out of the curtain, but that’s just an animatronic wax figure. So are the puppies.
Meanwhile, Paige and Blake have sex in their tent out in the woods. Blake stops to check his phone messages and hears bad news from Carly. Vincent shows up and kills Blake, but Paige runs and hides, but not long enough, so he gets her as well.
Nick and Carly run to the movie theater, which is showing “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.” Inside, they turn the tables and finally kill Bo. Wade and Dalton had the car keys, so the pair decide they have to go back inside the house of wax to find them.
Carly finds a news clipping talking about how Bo and Vincent were Siamese Twins joined at the head. Dr. Sinclair separated them. Vincent ended up with a half face. And Bo was the violent one. We cut to Bo, not as dead as he appeared. Outside, Vincent drives up with Blake and Paige’s bodies in the back of the truck.
Bo and Vincent talk - well, Bo talks - and they’re clearly in on the plot together.
Nick finds Dalton in the wax machine and pulls his reconnected head off by accident. Vincent shows up, and the three fight as the wax-cooking fire flares up. The fire gets out of control, and since the whole building is made of wax, it starts melting. Carly beats Bo to death with a baseball bat for real this time, and Vincent starts to chase them, but the whole place is falling down around them. After a battle, Vincent is killed too.
Bo and Vincent fall through the floor into the burning basement, and Nick and Carly have to claw their way through the walls as the whole place oozes down around them.
In the morning, the police arrive, and there are wax-covered bodies all over town, so no one doubts the story. The sheriff explains that the town has been deserted for ten years, and most people forgot the place even existed.
We hear over the sheriff’s radio that the Sinclairs didn’t have two sons, they had three. On the way out of town, Carly notices the weird roadkill guy waving to them on the way out.
Brian’s Commentary
“Town of Wax” would be more accurate. This is almost nothing like the original from 1953.
The melting building was really well done, but where would anyone have gotten that much wax? The acting was fine, the characters were distinctive, and it didn’t get boring. The whole idea is a little hard to believe, but overall, it was a fun movie
Kevin’s Commentary
I really enjoyed this one, it was actually the third time I’ve seen it. Even knowing the twists, it’s a fun movie. The whole package - script, cast, effects, direction, all work for me.
Short Films:
2018 Short Film And The Baby Screamed
Directed by: Dan Gitsham
Written by: Dan Gitsham
Stars: Fionn Gill, Lisa Backwell, Otto Gitsham-Mair
Run Time: 3:27
Watch it:
What Happens
There’s a baby crying on the baby monitor. The baby is always crying on the monitor, so the parents argue about whose turn it is to check on the screaming. The father does his thing, and it stops for a bit. Not a long bit, as the crying starts again. And again. And again.
The father finally comes up with a solution to get a good night’s sleep. This turns out to be a really bad idea.
Commentary
It’s a simple idea and a simple story, but it’s still very effective. It’s darker than I would have preferred, but it does all take place late at night, so I can deal. For a hair over three minutes, it’s worth taking a look.
2024 Short Film The Night Nurse
Directed by: Tim Delaney
Written by: Tim Delaney
Stars: Francesca Anderson, Rachel Brun, Emily Jon Mitchell
Run Time: 12:15
Watch it:
What Happens
Tallulah’s stuck in the nursing home at Christmas time. She looks longingly at all the visitors that other people are getting. A stranger waves at her, and Tallulah ignores her; she’s a little bitter. The nurse comes in and reminds her that the sun lamp will help with her memory. He’s nice, and then he leaves.
Late that night, Tallulah hears something from her neighbor and goes to investigate. She sees that smiling stranger from earlier biting her old neighbor’s neck. Could she be a vampire? Whether she is or not, will anyone believe an old woman with dementia? Would it be a bad thing to have just one visitor?
Commentary
The vampire here is surprisingly convincing… and tempting. She makes a lot of logical sense. This old lady’s not so far gone that she can’t put up a fight, and that’s exactly what happens. I had a very good idea how it would end, as they projected that too early on with the nurse.
I was immediately reminded of “The Rule of Jenny Pen” (2025). Old people in nursing homes are generally not taken very seriously when they complain.
It’s well shot, nicely paced, and I thought it was really good.
2023 Short Film Red Velvet
Directed by: Blake Simon
Written by: Blake Simon
Stars: Austin Lynn Hall, Alisha Erozer
Run Time: 13:00
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What Happens
Jack practices introducing himself; he’s nervous about asking a girl out. He calls an escort service and orders an escort for his motel room. It’s all very automated, and Cassandra will be joining him shortly. He bumps the radio and overhears people discussing that the end of the world is imminent, like tonight, imminent.
Jack’s already ordered the prostitute, so what’s he gonna do? He turns on the news to verify what he heard, and yeah, that’s all accurate. He looks down at his arm, and he’s already infected with whatever it is– maybe. It messes with your head first.
Cassandra comes to the door, and he lets her in. Could she be infected? It’s all very confusing. She’s good enough at her job to almost make Jack forget what’s happening outside. Almost.
Commentary
I kept wondering all along if he was just imagining it, which is what we’re supposed to be wondering. Right up to the end, we’re never sure. But we do get answers!
This is fun. We get enough information about the situation to make it tense, but then Jack’s got a whole lot of tension even before the story begins, and it only gets worse for him.
2024 Short Film “O”
Directed by: Dominik Balkow
Written by: Dominik Balkow
Stars: Nadine Scheidecker
Run Time: 14:06
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What Happens
We open on a dried-up, mummified-looking mouth making the “O” face. We zoom into the mouth for our story…
A woman looks into the hole, back out at us, and smiles. We cut away and see that she’s looking through a hole in a brick wall. She stands there watching the hole all day, well into the night, until a stranger bumps into her and breaks her concentration.
That night, she dreams about the moaning hole and goes right back to it, this time, with a flashlight.
What’s in the hole? She reaches in and finds nothing.
Before long, all holes start doing it…
Commentary
I immediately wondered if we were going to get some kind of play on the glory-hole, much like “Glorious” from 2022. It’s not quite that twisted!
It’s black-and-white and very sharp. It looks great, and all along, we’re wondering what’s in there, as does the woman. It’s a fun tale of obsession and compulsion.
It’s very weird!
2022 Short Film Sushi Noh
Directed by: Jayden Rathsam Hua
Written by: Jayden Rathsam Hua
Stars: Felino Dolloso, Geneva Phan, Jodine Muir
Run Time: 18 Minutes
Watch it:
What Happens
Ellie dances to the music until her uncle yells at her to turn the music off. He seems grouchy and doesn’t like her noisy toys. He breaks her toys and won’t let her call her parents. He’s stuck babysitting her while the parents are away at a conference. He has someone coming over tonight, so he demands that she keep quiet. He turns on a TV show about making sushi, and it’s very strange.
Uncle Donnie gets one of the sushi-making machines that’s even weirder than the commercial. Uncle Donnie soon has his date, but she clearly doesn’t like him. He offers her sushi, and she doesn’t like it. Turns out, his big date is really just trying to proselytize to him. She talks about visualizing their dreams, and Ellie listens to all of it.
Ellie learns to “Emanate” her desires.
Commentary
“Emanate!!!!”
I may never eat sushi again. That may be the worst date ever.
I guess the moral of the story is don’t abuse your family, or you may wind up the victim of a sushi curse.
This is awesome, both silly and terrifying at the same time.
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