31 Days of Halloween: Blumhouse off key with country music horror flick

Torn Hearts - Brea Grant – 2022

 

★★-Day 9 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Blumhouse night. This studio is pretty hit or miss. For me, this was definitely a miss. 

Set in Nashville’s country music scene, two rising musicians, Jordan and Leigh, seek out their idol, only to find themselves entangled in a twisted pursuit of fame. Good premise squandered by poor execution. 

 

Katey Sagal plays the idol with issues. Crazy how good she still looks. Strange familiar face in this one as well. Josh from The Blair Witch Project plays the manager/boyfriend of Leigh. Hard to recognize under all the facial hair though. 

 

Had a lot of hope for this. Loved director Brea Grant’s movie Lucky from 2020. But couldn’t get behind this movie at all. The writing was lazy as fuck. The reason all the killing and mind fuckery are going down is a mystery. 

 

My female companion grew up in Nashville. Her family was in the biz. She hated it, too, though she could relate better than myself. She mostly didn’t find the flick interesting. 

 

Biggest bright spot was the acting of Abby Quinn who plays the free-spirited Jordan. She was one of the profits or whatever in Knock at the Cabin. Playing the other half of the duo was Alexxis Lemire, who wasn’t great. The character, Leigh, is super lame and stupid. 

 

Overall, nothing special. Music industry horror has some potential, but movie phones it in. Acting is bad. Story is not only meh, but also confusing.

Knock at the Cabin - M. Night Shyamalan - 2023

★★★-Knock at the Cabin. M. Night Shyamalan's latest. Another apocalyptic psychological horror flick with some Christian bullshit at the center. Based on a 2018 novel called The Cabin at the End of the World by one Paul G. Tremblay. 

The stellar cast includes Dave Bautista who is hard not to love, Jonathan Groff from Mindhunter and the new Matrix movie who is phenomenal in everything (including this), Ben Aldridge whom I've never seen, Nikki Amuka-Bird (don't know her either), a little Asian girl named Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn who sort of steals the show, and Rupert Grint who played Ron in the Harry Potter movies.

Gist is an affluent family consisting of two dads, Andrew and Eric (Aldridge and Groff), and their adopted daughter Wen (Cui) are hanging out at their beautiful cabin in rural PA when they get a knock on the door by a stranger named Leonard. He claims that they are the “chosen ones” (sigh) to prevent the impending apocalypse by sacrificing one of themselves. When they refuse, saying these folks are obviously delusional and scamming them for some reason, they kill one of their group, saying “a part of humanity has been judged.” Pretty shitty "knock, knock" joke, am-I-right? Following that the world experiences “a plague.” The doctor, secular dad suspects that the attack is motivated by revenge and he escapes to get his gun and tries to prove that the intruders were lying. Eventually, the family realizes that the intruders represent the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse though I don't really think they line up very well with a few of them but whatever. Also, airplanes generally don't just tumble out of the sky when they crash. They can still glide even if both engines are out. But I digress. In the end, they have to decide if they are going to kill one of their loving family as they decide what they believe. 

Right after I watched it I hated it, however, I can't stop thinking about it though it is a total bummer of a movie with some stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Plus, the acting was out of this world. This Abby Quinn gets trying to act normal when extremely frantic down in the way of the insane I've been around in such a state. That mania in her eyes. Overall, interesting concept but a bullshit movie. Definitely better than Old, and far worse than Split.