Fear the Night: Sisterhood of the vengeful deaths

Fear the Night - Neil LaBute - 2023 

★★★★-Loved this flick. I could watch beautiful women murder right-wingers every day, which I pretty much have for the month of October.  

Gist of this film is Tess, a battle-scared Iraq War vet with booze issues, comes home to pick up the pieces and mend fences with her sister, Beth, on their way to their other sister’s bachelorette party at the old family farmstead. On the way, she makes some wannabe military good old boys feel small and then keys one of their trucks, I love that shit. Now we are getting a feel for Tess. She’s uncomfortable in a crowd and hostile toward jerky men and senses some bull shit going down with the farm's caretakers.  

As the party gets underway, lone wolf Tess spends most of her time by herself outside. During a stripper chef routine, the group gets ambushed by a gang of hilljacks who make the fatal mistake of killing Rose, the younger sister. Tess, with all her combat training, goes full Rambo, turning the farm into a fortress and leading the remaining party-goers in a desperate fight for survival.  

Only face I recognized was Maggie Q, as Tess, from her role as the lead in the CW television series Nikita. The others billed include Kat Foster, Travis Hammer, and Gia Crovatin.  

Directed and written by Neil LaBute. He’s done some stuff I liked alright, notably Your Friends & Neighbors and Nurse Betty, and some episodes of Billions, as well as some stuff that I really didn’t, the remake of The Wicker Man (2006). But I pretty much loved this flick. 

Some notes... Not all the women are created equal here. Opening the door, for example. This leads to most of them getting captured. It all ends up being over a small grow/meth operation. 

The sister throwing the party, Beth, fucking sucks. I guess we don’t know why she hates her veteran sister who has issues with alcohol and men, but she hates her. 

Stripper chef is a funny and disgusting concept. I bet he can’t cook for shit. He’s a handsome bald guy but could have just as easily played one of the rednecks. When shit hits the fan, he tries to take over, as guys do, but it doesn’t end well.  

Trigger warning here. Dudes are really focused on the rape aspect of the home invasion.  

The guys think the caretakers were the ladies’ boyfriends, which is insane. Thinks Tess is slumming it. He ends up giving “her an out.” However, she is all about killing this guy in hand-to-hand. This fucking tweaker. She hands his ass to him, quickly and with vengeance. And all they did was cost her a sister and her sobriety.  

Fucking cops show and just do a lot of victim blaming. Female lawyer that takes no shit is having none of that shit. But then the end implies that one of the sisters knew about the meth lab, so I guess he was right in the end to suspect them of something. If I read that right, it was meh, but I’m ignoring it to give this movie four stars.  

Overall take: Watching badass bitches kill right-wingers is my kink. Sexually. Personally, I like the Courtney Love track star chick who offers herself up as bait. She doesn’t run like a track star, though she is wearing men’s shoes. But she is adept at smashing a guy’s skull. Lot of top-tier flicks like this lately. The Becky films. You’re Next a decade ago. 

Fantasy Island is the worst movie of all time

This was a bullshit movie. Maybe you had to be into the show. I'm not entirely sure if they are even connected. It seems like it might be a prequel, the timeline is all kinds of fucked up on that. All I know is this movie sucked. Sort of started out interesting and kept getting worse and worse before coming to a crescendo of suck. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Fantasy Island tries to show audiences the dark side of wish fulfillment, but mainly serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of exhuming long-dead franchises.

Oh boy. Gist is a group of young people win a free trip to Fantasy Island, where they get one wish granted during their stay on the island. The place is Westworld for the lazy. The island is magic, you see, with some magic TV rock and water that does shit too. However that shit comes at a price, and who is to say that they aren't part of someone else's fantasy? Late in the movie we find out that is exactly what's up. Spoiler. Her fantasy is to get revenge on all the people that led to her losing the love of her life, who we find out she went on sort of one date with. She fucking cray. 

Directed and co-written by one Jeff Wadlow, who is behind some of my personally most loathed films. Cry Wolf and Truth or Dare?, for instance. Stars Michael Peña, who I hate, as the dude who runs the island. He's sort of the Richard Alpert in Lost. Peña is the sidekick from Ant-Man. He's also a Scientologist. Again, hate him. The beautiful Maggie Q whom you might remember from Mission: Impossible III  or the Nikita reboot from 2010. Lucy Hale from Truth or Dare?. Austin Stowell and Portia Doubleday I don't recognize. Doubleday plays a woman who bullied the cray chick and has continued to be pretty much a piece of shit. But she's learning. Jimmy O. Yang from Silicon Valley,  Ryan Hansen from Party Down, and Michael Rooker from The Walking Dead and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies (he's the blue guy with the arrow).

Not really sure that anyone really won the movie. Maybe Doubleday, who actually showed a little bit of range. However, didn't really give her, or anybody, a lot to work with. This is not a good movie.