Scream VI is a celebration of the Scream franchise.

Four survivors of the Ghostface murders leave Woodsboro behind for a fresh start in New York City. However, they soon find themselves in a fight for their lives when a new killer embarks on a bloody rampage.

I apologize for this very late review of Scream VI, I saw this March 9th, I hadn’t reviewed it yet because I wanted to be sure to get each of my thoughts down. Anyway Scream VI is the 6th installment of the franchise and serves as a sequel to Scream (2022), this is a franchise that is known to always hit it out of the park. Even with it’s weakest entry (Scream 3 in my opinion) it’s still not a terrible movie, Scream VI brings a whole lot to the table and ends up being one of the franchise’s best.

For starters the cast truly blends so well together here, I have always said this but one thing that truly makes the Scream franchise so great is how easily the characters can blend so well together. There’s so many moments and Scream VI that really show that very well, there’s a lot of standouts here such as Jenna Ortega, Hayden Panettiere, Courtney Cox, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown. Each performance truly feels special and adds quite a lot to the whole film.

If Scream (2022) was a love letter to the franchise than Scream VI is a huge celebration of the franchise. There is so much here that dives into several moments from the other films, tons of callbacks as well that don’t feel shoehorned into the movie. They have a purpose of why they are here and add to the overall plot, the whole use of the New York City setting was truly fantastic. I was a bit worried they weren’t going to take full advantage of it considering some slasher movies in the past really failed to do so, but luckily that wasn’t the case here. Between creative kills, use of environment and Tyler Gillet’s and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s direction it was very successful.

There’s tons of scenes here that are some of the best of the franchise and have already been celebrated by many fans, the main one being the ladder scene that is just so well done. Between the atmosphere, the overall situation and the thrilling nature with the camera angles there is so much there that really hits the viewer hard. There’s the third act which is definitely divisive among fans, however I do think it matches the overall nature and atmosphere the movie was going for throughout it’s running time.

Scream VI had this nature of not knowing what to expect and the least unexpected could pop up in your face, it’s something that truly pulls bizarre moments out of hat and throws into the viewer’s face which ends up being wildly entertaining. Which definitely matches with what the third act really did. Plus when you combine that with the kills that are truly some of the franchise’s best you get some really strong results.

Overall Scream VI is phenomenal and one of the best films so far this year, it’s a film that is truly a celebration to this fantastic franchise that I can’t wait to see where they go next.

Scream VI is available in theaters.

10/10 A+

Children Of The Corn (2020 or 2023) is more proof this franchise needs to go away.

Possessed by a spirit in a dying cornfield, a 12-year-old girl in Nebraska recruits other children in her small town to go on a bloody rampage and kill all the adults and anyone else who opposes her. Soon, a bright high school student who won’t go along with the plan becomes the town’s only hope for survival.

Children Of The Corn (2020 although it finally released in 2023) is the if you can actually believe it eleventh installment to the series and the second remake to the 1984 movie. In the past I’ve expressed my opinions about the series, but for those who are new here it’s a series that I think is horrendous. Even with the first movie the series unlike other horror franchises has failed time and time again to bring something interesting and really solid to the table.

There’s this pattern of each new release being worse than the last, which leads us to Children Of The Corn (2020). The main reason why it says 2020 is because it got a very small release in Sarasota a county on the Gulf Cost of the U.S. state of Florida, after that the movie went through the “it’s coming this year” phase over and over again until January 2023 when RLJE and Shudder acquired the streaming rights, it then finally released in March…so what is the end result?

To put it simply Children Of The Corn (2020) is horrendous in every possible way you can think of, they clearly wanted to do a reimagining here but that quickly backfires. The editing is absolutely atrocious and makes what should be very simple scenes all the more confusing, especially when it’s trying to use flashback scenes or something to do with time. The acting is just straight up horrible, the child actors in particular give very lifeless and very unthreatening performances. Even if I didn’t like the original 1984 movie at the very least the kids in that movie gave somewhat creepy performances (although you can argue that it doesn’t hold up well and they are unintentionally funny).

Perhaps the biggest issue with this movie is that it takes itself way too seriously, from the kills, gore and even writing this installment wants the viewer to take it seriously right from the beginning. With that sort of writing that even tries to throw in this whole “the adults are destroying the children’s world so they want revenge” plot into it is just very baffling. While the idea itself isn’t the problem, it’s the overall execution which is nothing but just some gory kills and also slap in some horrible looking cgi monster at the end.

The movie also barely explains the whole feud between the adults and children, one day some girl named Eden gets possessed and convinces the children to attack. And the viewer is just supposed to accept that without getting some actual conflict outside of a few adults making fun of the kids.

Honestly I’m not sure what more I can really say Children Of The Corn (2020) is by far one of the worst films I’ve seen so far this year (I’m counting it as a 2023 film, that 2020 release was so small it almost felt like it didn’t come out at all), what I just described to you in my review was pretty much the entire movie. It’s about as bare bones as you can get and is just another awful installment to a horrendous franchise that needs to stop.

Children Of The Corn (2020) is available on all VOD platforms.

Disgrace To Cinema F

Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey makes what could be a fun concept dull and uninspired.

Now feral and bloodthirsty, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet terrorize Christopher Robin and a group of young women at a remote house.

I actually had some sort of hope for Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the whole idea of a horror themed Winnie the Pooh movie sounded like it could be campy fun that could give the viewer a ton of entertainment….unfortunately that’s not what happened here.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is what happens when you take an absurd concept and make it into the most dull way possible, for starters the movie is ultimately some guy in a $5 Party City Winnie the Pooh mask going around killing people. Piglet did fair a bit better but that’s not saying much considering he felt like an entirely different character, I understand the movie was very low budget but come on this is about as unimaginative as you can really get.

The acting and writing are both horrendous especially when we meet the main protagonists who serve nothing more than to be killed off, they are some of the most poorly written slasher movie characters I’ve seen in awhile and that is truly saying something. They have no personalities, no character moments and absolutely no qualities that make the viewer care at all. Rather than exploring the whole plot surrounding Christopher Robin we instead follow these characters which really shows uninspired the movie really is.

I’ve hinted at this but if you took away the whole Winnie the Pooh idea away you are left a very bare bones slasher movie that so many other movies completely outclass it in every single way possible, I am all for absurd ideas in fact I’ve liked quite a few movies in the past which had very out there ideas. However if you are going to make one of those movies, the number one thing to absolutely avoid doing is making the execution as dull as possible.

Which is unfortunately the biggest downfall of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, it takes the concept and does absolutely nothing with it. Instead it’s just a very low budget slasher movie that has nothing going for it or has anything that stands out, making this whole thing feel very pointless. It’s a shame because as I said at the beginning there is potential for a horror Winnie the Pooh movie to work, it’s just not happening with this one.

Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey is currently in limited theaters

Disgrace To Cinema F

Unwelcome is a mess when it comes to tone.

A couple escape their urban nightmare to the tranquility of rural Ireland, only to hear stories of mysterious creatures who live in the gnarled, ancient woods at the foot of their garden. As warned by their new neighbors, the creatures come when called to help souls in dire need of rescue, but it’s crucial to remember that there’s always a dear price to pay for their aid.

Unwelcome is an odd one and I don’t mean that in a good way, this is the very definition of not deciding what sort of tone you want for your movie.

The first few minutes of the movie is actually kind of dark, performances from Hannah John-Kamen and Douglas Booth make it work quite well (although the script does hurt it a bit), then soon after that the movie goes for this throwback to the attack of little creatures era. You know like Ghoulies, Critters, Gremlins and maybe even the Leprechaun franchise? Which I’m all for we haven’t had one of those types of movies in awhile, the problem is where as those movies knew what sort of tone they wanted and stuck with it. Unwelcome doesn’t do that, it wants to be one of those movies but at the same time wants to be taken seriously.

That’s especially shown when the goblins start attacking, the scenes aren’t anywhere near as goofy as you would expect. They have this very odd serious tone to them that makes them goofy in a sort of way that isn’t very fun at all, I will give Unwelcome this…it’s a nice movie to look at. There’s a surprising amount of decently well done shots here that really caught me off guard, they might not be anything to write home about but they do match the setting quite well.

Lastly there’s the writing which as I hinted at before it’s not exactly that great, while it’s not terrible it does fall on the bare bones side of things. Something you can get elsewhere and far better too.

Unwelcome is at least decently made and has some good moments, but ultimately has a very hard time deciding what sort of tone it wants to go for.

Unwelcome is available on all VOD platforms.

4/10 D+

Cocaine Bear is bizarre classic B movie entertainment.

After a 500-pound black bear consumes a significant amount of cocaine and embarks on a drug-fueled rampage, an eccentric gathering of cops, criminals, tourists, and teenagers assemble in a Georgia forest.

Where to even start with Cocaine Bear? In some ways the film is exactly what it says it is, an American black bear gets a hold of cocaine and goes on a rampage. Cocaine Bear is loosely based on a true story that happened in 1985.

To start with Cocaine Bear does a really great job of mixing genres together, it combines the horror comedy genre with the killer animal movie genre and does it quite well. There’s tons of hilarious moments and even some thrilling ones as well, the film also has that classic B movie type feel that really works in the film’s favor. It’s B movie entertainment that really has just about anything you could want.

The acting can definitely be a hit or miss at times, a lot of the characters are admittedly only there to be killed by the bear, which I do have to say the kills are a lot better than I expected. There’s some quite gory and gnarly kills that really add to the film’s B movie atmosphere, whether it was intentional or not it does feel like a bit of a callback to how gory some very low budget films from the 80s were.

As far as execution on the premise goes Elizabeth Banks did a really solid job here, she definitely found her footing after Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Pitch Perfect 2. She makes sure to make the film as bonkers as it possibly can and while the third act isn’t quite as strong as it could have been, it’s still a very satisfying way to pull off such a bizarre premise.

Overall there might not be a whole lot going on in the story and character department, but that doesn’t stop Cocaine Bear from being an incredibly wild ride from beginning to end. It’s a very solid film that I do recommend checking out!

Cocaine Bear is currently in theaters.

8/10 B+

Spoonful Of Sugar is a spoonful of missed opportunities.

A disturbed babysitter experiences a sexual awakening while using LSD to treat a seemingly sick child from a family with dark secrets.

I definitely think Spoonful Of Sugar had all the makings and ideas of being a little disturbing horror movie (well at least a bit more out there than other horror movies). The problem however is how it’s executed and doesn’t quite reach the potential that it had.

The acting is fine enough and there’s definitely moments of intriguing ideas being introduced, but just as quickly as they are introduced they are abandoned and the movie moves on to the next one. The pacing is very inconsistent with a slow beginning and middle combined with a very quick third act it becomes a bit disjointed. A lot of themes such as sexuality is just sort of there, and the movie apparently being an LSD trip is honestly not very crazy. There’s plenty of films that have far stronger LSD like moments and actually execute them well, a lot of this movie has a lot of creepy kid elements that are fine enough but just don’t do much for the movie.

At the very least I can say Spoonful of Sugar is well made and there definitely was some level of attempt to make it work, it just wasn’t executed very well unfortunately.

Spoonful of Sugar is available on Shudder.

5/10 C

We Have a Ghost is a flawed but fun gateway horror movie.

The discovery that their house is haunted by a ghost named Ernest makes Kevin’s family a social media sensation. But when Kevin and Ernest get to the bottom of the mystery of Ernest’s past, they become targets of the CIA.

Christopher Landon really has shown he’s quite a great director in recent years. He went from Paranormal Activity The Marked Ones and Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse to Freaky and the Happy Death Day movies. So how does his newest film We Have a Ghost stack up?

Let’s start as usual with the performances, I got to say David Harbour is quite great here. He doesn’t speak out the movie and instead uses his facial expressions to tell his character’s story which I have to give credit where credit is due is not an easy task. He really does a great job of building his character and really making him charming to the viewer, his bond with Jahi Di’Allo Winston is also really beautiful as well. Sure it might be another one of those “child or teenager befriends a creature or something supernatural” type of story but the two really make it entertaining and charming.

Jahi Di’Allo Winston and Anthony Mackie are also pretty great, as I said before Winston has a beautiful bond with Harbour. Mackie just has some really strong screen presence here, the humor can definitely be a bit hit or miss but for the most part I do think they get the jokes down pretty well. The movie is definitely a gateway horror movie which as I said before in my reviews while I’m not a huge fan of the sub-genre I’m glad it exists. We Have a Ghost is actually one of the better ones, mainly due to the combination of dramatic moments, comedic and a few horror ones as well.

The glaring problem however is it’s 2 hours and has absolutely no business being this long, this is what ultimately really holds this movie back from being anything more than just a harmless movie. You really start to feel it’s length by the time the third act rolls around and the third act is what you expect it to be. Luckily Christopher Landon’s style is present here and one thing Landon is quite good at is he knows how to entertain an audience, and there is tons of moments here that do just that.

Overall while We Have a Ghost isn’t one of Landon’s strongest movies it’s at the very least quite fun, this is something I will probably never come back to but I am glad to have watched it.

We Have a Ghost is available on Netflix.

6/10 C+

The Strays is a forgettable Get Out clone.

A Black woman’s meticulously crafted life of privilege starts to unravel when two strangers show up in her quaint suburban town.

I typically don’t like calling movies “another Get Out clone” because I feel like that it’s such a common trope when it comes to critiquing film, plus half the time said movie is almost nothing like Get Out at all. With that being said however there are times when a movie pushes things way too far and is quite obviously trying to be a clone and that is very much the case here with The Strays.

The Strays is basically if you took every single element that made Jordan Peele’s Get Out work so well and managed to make them dull in every single way possible. Outside of the performances especially from Ashley Madekwe who really gives it her all with such a lacking script, plus a few scenes that are decently effective due to the atmosphere. You are really left with a movie that just does not have a whole lot going for it.

It uses the topic of race which had the potential but unlike Get Out the movie doesn’t have anything really insightful to say about it, the movie more less repeats what was already said but does it in such a puzzling way that I’m not even sure the writers knew what they were doing.

Overall The Strays is a movie that presents itself as being super deep when in reality it’s just a clone of a better movie as well as being Netflix release date filler.

The Strays is available on Netflix.

3/10 D-

Attachment falls short.

Maja, a Danish has-been actress, falls in love with Leah, a Jewish academic from London. Leah suffers a mysterious seizure, and Maja returns with her to London. There, she meets Leah’s mother, Chana, a woman who could hold dark secrets.

I really don’t have a whole lot to say about Attachment, there’s definitely something here that almost worked but didn’t quite make the landing.

The positives come from the performances with everyone involved, they really match the tone and atmosphere the movie is going for and does contribute a lot to what made the first two acts of the movie work well. The movie is also competently directed, there’s this nice style to it that does make it stand out a bit with some nice intimate moments between the two leads with chemistry that’s quite fascinating.

Unfortunately what drags this movie down is the third act, where everything just stops. The movie just sort of decides to end and leaves you thinking “wait that’s it?” Which is very disappointing considering how well the slow development of the movie was, it results in a payoff that is incredibly lacking and makes a lot of what came before it seem very pointless.

Attachment is available on Shudder.

5/10 C

Attachment falls short.

I really don’t have a whole lot to say about Attachment, there’s definitely something here that almost worked but didn’t quite make the landing.

Attachment is available on Shudder.

5/10 C