It’s not often I see a horror movie with such a paper thin script that it blatantly pads the run time. And even when it pads the run time with filler, it still only amounts to a seventy two minute film. And it’s barely seventy two minutes when you don’t factor in the closing credits, and long opening credits. Filmed on a $150,000 budget, what I imagine happened was director/writer Steven M. Smith wanted to film a movie in the vein of “Saw.” He got a hold of a primo haunted house and decided to build his script around the house. That’s likely why the movie’s entire narrative begins and ends in this haunted house, and nothing ever feels organic.
Tag Archives: Indie Film
Black Pumpkin (2018)
I could definitely picture re-watching Ryan McGonagle’s “Black Pumpkin” down the line. If anything it’s so bathed in Halloween ephemera that it’s a decent bit of background sounds for the respective Halloween geek. What holds it back though is that there seems to be so much behind the narrative that we’re not informed on, thus there feels like a big chunk of the intend narrative is either cut out or missing. That’s due to the fact that “Black Pumpkin” is technically a sequel to the 2016 movie “Bloody Bobby,” later-released in 2021 as “The Legend of Fall Creek.”
So, it’s a sequel—kind of. But not really…?
Pumpkins (2018)
Director Maria Lee Metheringham’s “Pumpkins” is a film that would have worked so much better as a short form segment in an anthology horror film. As a feature length film, it falls painfully flat. Everything that needs to be resolved about the narrative is literally resolved in the first half hour. Everything else is merely filler that transforms what could have been an interesting revenge tale in to another slasher film.
The Michoacan File (2023)
In this documentary, Mexican cuisine is front and center, from its history to its influence on other culture’s cuisine, the fight to get it recognized internationally, and how beloved it is.
Malicious (2023)
A family goes to a lakeside cabin for a weekend retreat and to reconnect with each other. Once there, a stranger finds his way in the house and things take a turn.
The Pumpkin Man: Demon of Fall (2021)
There’s nothing really more Halloween than a villain with a pumpkin for a head, and “The Pumpkin Man” introduces what should and could be a fun horror villain. “Demon of Fall” watches a lot like a mix of “The Ring” if penned by RL Stine for “Goosebumps,” and I mean that as a compliment. It’s a short film with a small budget, but it has a neat concept I’d love to see translated in to a feature someday.
Binge and Purgatory (2022)
I can’t say that I responded too much to director Becca Kozak’s short dark comedy, too much. While I dug the inherent creativity behind the premise, the movie really doesn’t offer much of a narrative. There’s a lot of gore and grue, and two characters that spend their time one upping each other in grotesque ways.