GRANNY KRAMPUS (2024)

Six family members, each duller than the next, gather together at grandmother’s country estate for Christmas. Nothing happens for a very long time, then eventually a silly-looking troll critter in a Santa suit shows up and kills a few people in extremely boring ways. The End.

I will give it to the filmmakers, GRANNY KRAMPUS is a fucking awesome name for a movie! Unfortunately, that’s where all creativity ends. The main problem I have with this film is why does it have to be so goddamn dreary? You have two depressed sisters (whose parents recently died) visiting their estranged (and creepy) grandmother who lives with her invalid, brain dead brother in a poorly lit house. Then, the adult son (who is an alcoholic and gambling addict) visits with his socially awkward, “true horror podcast” loving son who appears to have the personality of an iceberg made out of frozen three-toed sloth urine. Once together, everybody argues and acts like dickheads. Merry Christmas!

I was wide awake while watching GRANNY KRAMPUS, but even still, I started zoning in and out during these long, pointless scenes of sad people talking. It was torture. INTERIORS, it isn’t! Then, when the Krampus kritter finally showed up I was honestly confused for a few seconds because I had completely forgotten that I was watching a horror movie! And that’s not a joke. It really did happen. I was like “What the fuck is that thing? Oh, yeah, this is a horror movie!”

Slow pace that never goes anywhere, boring monster, weak kills, very little blood, zero gore, zero nudity, zero cheerleaders, average acting (but I do have to commend everybody cause they had literally nothing to work with), shit script, okay camerawork, pretty house, a disappearing car driver, shadow of camera on actor’s shoulder. As a horror movie, GRANNY KRAMPUS is a disappointing nothing of a movie. But as therapy, it was kinda nice. Very quiet, lots of long boring scenes, no jump scares, no ups, no downs, no surprises. It was very chill and gave me lots of time to zone out. I appreciated that. As a matter of fact, as I'm writing this, Charlie is still sleeping on the sofa. Looks like he's been shot with a tranquilizer dart.

So, should you watch GRANNY KRAMPUS? Nah, it’s a 2/10 max and totally forgettable. But…THE JACK IN THE BOX: AWAKENING is a 4/10. So that’s twice as good, right? Similar British(?) country estate setting and a much better killer.  Yeah, I know all of the Jack in the Box movies suck, but I still have faith in the series.

SMILE 2 (2024)

Voss Water presents Damn, This Motherfucker Is Trippin’! a.k.a. Smile 2.

[This is simply a placeholder until I can get my hands on a physical copy for a real review with screenshots. But yeah, I enjoyed S2. It’s definitely better than the first film. Although, the double jump scares did get old. If I can find inspiration between now and then to write a legit review, then I will. But I’ll probably just wait until I can watch it again at home and take notes. Until then I'll just re-watch Angel season 2, episode 2.]

Part 1 - Smile (2022)

THE SADNESS (2021)

Taipei, Taiwan. Not a lot of story up in this one. A dude drops his girlfriend off at the train station (so she can go to work) and while he’s heading back home…a full on zombie apocalypse happens. And not with the older style shuffling zombies either, but the mean-spirited, Brian Keene-style rape zombies that want nothing more than to cut you open and fuck your bleeding wounds. So now, the rest of the movie is our two heroes trying to get back to each other while getting the shit kicked out of them each step of the way. Which, oddly enough, is pretty much the same story as the 2016 zombie outbreak movie SEOUL STATION.

I enjoyed THE SADNESS, but it just wasn’t violent enough and the story / character development / world building was almost non-existent. I wanted to like the two main characters, but with almost no information given about them, I didn’t give much of a shit about what happened to them. Especially since both of them made some dumb decisions and the ending was telegraphed midway through the film. That said, it’s still worth watching and has a few awesome moments (the subway car bloodbath and the old lady in the cafe were my favorites). I just wanted more! Hopefully there's a Part 2 and it will go completely insane.

Here's some zombie nudity for you weirdos.

How considerate of the zombies to use a bendy baseball bat.