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. 

From Black, promising premise, but ultimately forgettable

From Black - Thomas Marchese – 2023

★★-Serviceable. Atmosphere is haunting/unsettling. Performances are solid. Story is engaging. However, it goes off the rails a little bit, getting unnecessarily challenging and tedious. There is a good movie that gets lost in an intricate web of a goat sacrifice, salt circles, hieroglyphics, spell conjuring, and dark takes on Finding Nemo. It was all a little overwhelming/complex. Feel that it kind of out-kicked its coverage. 

A young mother struggling with addiction is plagued by guilt after the disappearance of her young son, which she is suspected of causing. A man from her support group comes to her and promises to unveil the truth about what happened to her son and tells of a ritual that might bring him back. However, the cost she must pay has terrifying implications. In the end, she must choose how far she is willing to descend into darkness for a shot at redemption.

Directed by Thomas Marchese. Only other feature is a movie called Fallen that I've never heard of from 2017. Not a bad debut, though he isn't really offering anything super fresh into the well-trod horror genre. Stars Anna Camp as the lead, Cora, John Ales as Abel who introduces Cora to the dark arts, Jennifer Lafleur as the detective sister, and Travis Hammer as the druggy ex. 

Get a horrific child abduction and murder. Just a warning. The mother has an out-of-body experience that she has to watch. A demon tells her she can't speak, “lest this be your last memory of him.” Wow, that was f*****. The music makes the whole thing about 100 times worse. It's a disturbing series of burps. Thankful we were spared seeing the goat die. Eating raw goat meat doesn't seem like a good idea. 

The whole plot with the ritual goes off the rails. This is mostly because the guy running the ritual has picked a woman who can't follow instructions, which is on him. 

Towards the end something predictable, but satisfying happens. I think that's why the Critics' Score is so low and the Audience Score so high on Rotten Tomatoes. Tainted though so that gambit doesn't work. Demon didn't say anything about that when making his demands, which is lame. 

Something super messed up about this is the guy who kills her son was he was in her support group led by Abel at the beginning of the movie. It's a really complex, sinister implication. The way I read that is that this guy killed Noah so that Abel could use her as a vessel. There is some room for interpretation here. I feel this takes the movie up a star, for me. Sort of recommend for hardcore horror fans.