Hello and welcome to another edition of The Blog Complainer’s Netflix Watch-a-thon. This won’t be like any of the other specials you’ve seen from me or any other special you’ve seen in your entire life. Tonight we are not going to look at 3 movies, but 4 movies! Since it’s the month of fear we’re going to look at the most scary and terrifying obscure movies that I could find on Netflix. This will be a long one so get comfy, get a packet of your favorite junk food and make sure you note what time you start reading this because if you double that then that’s how many hours of sleep you will never get back.

To really get into the Halloween spirit I decided to dress up  as one of those smiley people from Truth or Dare. Would I make a great Trick or Treater?

So let’s get started with our first movie of the night which I didn’t choose because of the title but because of how scary it is and how many sleepless nights I had after watching it.

Super Scary Movie Number 1

Zombeavers (2014)

Zombeavers isn’t actually as bad as I thought it would be.

Zombeavers is an R rated horror comedy that is about a bunch of beautiful people going to a cabin and all they do is talk dirty stuff and do dirty stuff until the Zombeavers show up and try to kill them. I wasn’t really expecting much when I saw the title of the movie but it somewhat surprised me. I’m going to start off with my negatives first so then we can jump to the fun stuff.

My main problem with this movie, while overlooking the cheapness factor, is that the first act of the movie is really boring. I know this is how most horror movies are set-up, with the main characters just having a good old time before something comes to kill them, but this takes up a third of the movie and it really drags on. Also, for an R rated comedy, it feels very tame for most of the movie while excluding all of the dirty talk. I’m mostly thinking about the violence like the first guy that dies in the movie who serves no purpose other than to stretch the run-time and also he’s killed off screen so you don’t see how he dies.

After that, when the evil Zombeavers decide to do something else besides stalking the main characters, things get a bit better. The Zombeavers are like feral Muppets and it’s pretty funny watching these characters trying to fight a bunch of puppets. The characters in this movie are clichéd and I do appreciate that they all serve some sort of point except for one of the guys who looks like Archie from Riverdale who tells his friends he’s going to run to get some help but he is literally crushed by a small tree in the next shot.

The last act of the movie is where it goes nuts and that’s where I think the selling point of the movie is. The Zombeavers work like normal zombies and when they bite people they turn into zomhumans with big beaver teeth. It’s not being a wuss anymore and they are some violent gruesome deaths and it’s no longer holding back which is all I could ask for from a movie like this.

Zombeavers is dumb and it’s very cheap. It’s probably best to watch on a Saturday night with some friends or while drunk. I did neither and my experience is a 5/10 on the so bad it’s good meter. The cliched horror tropes hold it back from being something different and it’s in the middle because it plays it too safe to reach any of the more interesting areas.

You liked it? Good, we got 3 more to go and this one is ten times scarier because it has 10 or so different scary stories.

Scary Movie 2

Holidays (2016)

Holidays isn’t really a movie but more of a collection of short films all themed around the holidays. So all of these shorts are themed on one particular holiday and they’re all horrific in some way. So it’s got the layout of a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment and it’s as messed up as a typical episode of Black Mirror. This movie was distributed between nine different directors, which work in this format because they are all very different from each other. All of these shorts are well acted, well shot and they’re all pretty well paced. Since this isn’t really a movie I’m just going to rank them from worst to best and say what I think about each of them.

8. News’s Year Eve

This is the last short and it’s my least favourite. A murderer goes on a blind date and he gets more than he bargains for because his date is crazy too. (Brilliant.) This one is pretty straightforward and that’s why I put it at the bottom and it is the most uneventful of all the shorts.

7. Easter

This one is also pretty straightforward. Little girl can’t sleep on Easter Eve, she sees the Easter Bunny and this bunny will definitely stick with you after watching this short. A recurring theme in most of these shorts is that I felt like they should’ve been longer to expand on the idea and this one kind of annoyed me when it ended abruptly.

6. Halloween

This one feels like I’m watching a mini Black Mirror episode because it focuses on a despicable person and it’s about watching the victims get their revenge on the despicable person. Again, this one I think would’ve benefited from being longer. The situation with the girls being forced to work in poor conditions because of their horrible boss and coming up with a plan to rebel against their boss I think would’ve made a great TV episode. Instead it’s so short that it feels a bit underdeveloped.

5. St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day is a short where WTF will stick in your mind for the whole time your watching it. A little girl makes her teacher give birth to a snake, I think. This is the only one that made me think I needed to re-watch it a couple more times but I don’t particularly care to. The only enjoyment I got out of this was seeing how weird this short could get.

4. Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is another weird one. This one has a woman who always gets pregnant when she has sex. She goes on a retreat and things get weirder from there. This one I understood right away but it’s also very enjoyable to see what happens next.

3. Valentine’s Day

This is the first short and it’s very straightforward. Psychotic girl loves her school coach and she is constantly picked on because she’s weird. It’s a good starting point for this movie.

2. Christmas

Seth Green is in this one and he plays a dad who lets a poor man die on Christmas Eve so he can get his son the latest VR video thing. You put the headset on and it broadcasts things on your mind. I mostly like this one because of the sci-fi concept and for how crazy it gets. This one could’ve been better if it was longer and it’s a good idea for a episode of Black Mirror.

1. Father’s Day

This is the one that I had some sort of emotional connection to. This one is about a young woman receiving a tape recorder from her long lost father and the majority of the short has the woman slowly discover what happened to her father. This is my favourite one because it’s perfectly paced and it uses its runtime as an advantage.

Altogether I think this movie, full of mini short movies, is definitely worth one watch and I’m not going to give this a score because I don’t count it as a movie.

Our next movie actually did terrify me after watching it, so that’s why this is the Intermission period.

 Did anyone actually have an Intermission? Whatever, next movie.

The Next Movie

Hush (2016)

Blumhouse Productions brings us Hush. Hush is a low budget Horror Slasher movie and it’s about a deaf woman who is a well-known author and she lives alone in the middle of the woods because that has never been done before, and because she lives alone in the woods some random guy decides it would be fun to torment her outside her house and that’s an hour and 20 minute movie.

I may have sounded a bit negative at the start there (because that’s what I do best) but I am stretching it because this is a solid watch. This one is kind of like Zombeavers where once you get past the boring set-up things get way more interesting except with this movie it’s the opposite effect to Zombeavers. Pretty much the only thing I liked with this first act is that it cleverly sets things up that’ll play a major role later on in the movie, especially with the whole thing about her having trouble finishing her latest book which I didn’t understand what was really going on until it was brought back up again later in the movie. I’m just going to call it a M Night Shyamalan moment.

Let’s jump to when the killer guy shows up which is never really explained why he is stalking this woman besides I’m guessing because it’s a fun pastime for him. But this movie does a good job at making him intimidating and someone to be feared as he proves that he has the upper hand over this defenseless woman and that gives us a reason to hope she finds a way out of this.

What I love about this movie is that for most of the movie is it’s always quiet.  There is no music distracting you or giving you a cue to react to a jump scare (well sometimes). As the title suggests, it’s mostly silent because if you want to build suspense cut out that noise. This movie is really good at building tension and it’s also quite violent which I think raises the stakes.

I do have minor complaints and if I had more time I could tell you about all the little details that bugged me, but I’ll spare you the details. One of the main things on my mind was some of the decisions this girl makes kind of makes me nod my head. But I can justify them because I could imagine myself being in her shoes and imagine my soaked pants, but then again I don’t see myself deciding to live in the woods all by myself anytime soon.

I don’t really have much to say except it’s a good thriller because it feels more like a thriller then a typical slasher. This movie surprised me because it’s actually good and I highly recommend it.  If you’re interested you’ll have a pretty good time. A 8/10 – leave your drinking buddies at home for this one.

We’ve finally come to our last movie of the night, I hope you had a good night because this one is about to ruin it. So buckle up we’re going to end this with a flop!

The Last Movie of the Night

The Open House (2018)

Our only Netflix Original of today was pretty terrible. It’s about a 22 year old looking teen and his ma staying in an open house while getting over the death of a loved one. Then weird stuff happens leaving me confused for the whole flick.

This movie is kind of a mess but before I get into what’s wrong with this plot I’m just going to compare this movie’s tone with another movie I’ve just watched recently called Wish Upon. Wish Upon is a teen comedy and a horror movie and it sucks at both, the teens don’t act like teens and the horror scenes are unintentionally hilarious. (If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it, you’ll have a great time.) Like Wish Upon, The Open House is a simple drama and a horror movie and it sucks at both. The drama has been mostly sidelined and not given enough time to develop. The horror is also sidelined and it fails to add any tension to the scenes because half the time you don’t know what you’re looking at.  That’s because they don’t reveal what the threat actually is until there is only 15 minutes of the movie left.

I’ve noticed watching a lot of these Netflix shows that they all have great cinematography and they all look fantastic but the stories are very mediocre. It’s kind of like looking at a painting with no hidden meaning or any real depth to it, it’s just a pretty painting. The Open House is very much like that.  It tries to be artsy but it comes off as pretentious and for the story they’re trying to tell it doesn’t really work.

Okay let’s go to the story but I’ll just do the Cliffnotes version so we’re not here all day.

• The first 10 minutes shows the main guy’s dad being run over and so they move away to an Open House, which I felt kind of slowed the movie down a bit and this should’ve been shown in flashbacks.
• The guy and the mum meet their next door neighbor at a gas station or something and this woman is very weird and she is entirely pointless other than to throw you off the scent of the killer.
• They meet another friendly local in a clothing store where he gets along with the mum and he is completely pointless too.
• Once they’ve settled into the nice house everything feels eerie and so a Jump Scare will be around every single corner.
• The killer guy stalks the house and takes things for some unknown reason, I’m guessing to add to the invisible tension this movie has.
• The mum can’t have a proper shower without the water heater going out and I‘ve noticed here that the basement has no lights so it’s always pitch black. They turn the pilot light back on in the dark and the mum is the only one in this house to use the shower.
• When staying in this show no one ever thought of asking the mum’s sister what’s wrong with her house and especially after learning from the repair man that this isn’t the first time someone has called about the broken water heater.

I’m just going to jump to the killer guy because he frustrated me the most. This guy I cannot believe was written by an actual human being because this character MAKES NO FREAKIN SENSE!!! This character sneaks around the house and messes with their stupid water heater pilot light and moves your things around because ………… annoyance!! Then we get to the epic final which is easily the worst ending to a movie I’ve seen all year. The killer guy finally decides to kill these people because someone should! He teleports throughout the house picking off the store guy and the mum and then when the guy escapes and takes a breather the killer guy teleports directly behind him and, The End, he’s off to do the same thing again. This character is terrible because we are given no good reason on why he does this besides vague hints that don’t add up to anything, secondly we never see his face besides his body shape and his hands look kind of old and he’s basically unstoppable. That’s what I hated about The Slender Man. We know nothing about him except if you see him, then you’ve already lost. There’s no point running because it’s over and that is boring!!!!!! Without any sense of reality or any rules this character doesn’t work. Without explaining why they’re doing what they’re doing  you’ve failed at making a scary antagonist.

Oh yeah, I didn’t hate this movie although I think the only really good thing from this movie is the cinematography as I mentioned before. I also liked the performances from the guy and the mum. The guy can be a bit off with his fresh new deep man voice but at least he tries. Other than that don’t watch this movie – it’s a 3/10 on the so bad it’s good meter.

Oh it’s over. Welcome to the end of this special, uh… have a good Halloween and don’t go out. Stay at home and watch TV – that’s the perfect way to spend Halloween – watching the most random movies you can find on the internet. Hopefully these movies could be a good starting point and maybe we could revisit this every year.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to spend my Halloween removing all the plastic surgery I did to my face. Til next time, I’m the Blog Complainer, have a great holiday folks.