Based on the books by the great RL Stine, the FEAR STREET trilogy of movies weaves together three updates of classic slasher films and the Salem witch trials to create a whole that is fresh and utterly compelling. I loved it.

Teenager Deena lives in Shadyside, a town plagued by a long history of poverty, bad luck, and brutal slayings resulting from a serial killer that pops up seemingly with every generation. She’s angry with Samantha, her girlfriend, who moved to Sunnyvale, a bordering town that is prosperous and where people live charmed lives. After a murder spree at a mall, they discover the local legend about a witch may be true, and seek to end the curse on Shadyside. To accomplish this, they must survive supernatural killers and go back into the past to understand the curse.

The first two films borrow heavily from classic horror slasher films like SCREAM and FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, and the last has a heavy Salem witch trial vibe. Despite the obvious creative homage, there’s a magic here where FEAR STREET’s identity stays solidly at the fore, accomplished by putting people we care about with meta stakes in a familiar situation. The whole comes together beautifully. Despite it being YA, there’s a considerable amount of gore, and every kill is far more painful than titillating. This isn’t STRANGER THINGS, where the meddling kids get off scot-free.

There were a few flaws for me, notably how some characters take horrible wounds but a few scenes later they’re perfectly okay. In typical YA fashion, several of the teenage protagonists are really annoying until they start to grow on you. There are a few minor plot holes. The central romance is fine but undeveloped to a point where I didn’t care about it.

But whatever. This is a solid horror story told with a lot of heart, great stakes, excellent lore, and a meta plot that all ties together beautifully. In short, I loved it.

In WILLY’S WONDERLAND, a mysterious loner (Nicolas Cage) battles life-sized animatronic characters in an abandoned family fun center. It’s ridiculous, but if you don’t take it remotely seriously, it’s a lot of fun.

The film begins with the loner driving through rural America, where his car ends up kaput. Lacking the money to pay for the repairs, he’s offered a deal: spend the night cleaning up Willy’s Wonderland, an abandoned family fun center, and he’ll earn the thousand dollars he needs and get back on the lonesome road. The catch is the center is haunted by evil spirits inhabiting the animatronic character mascots residing there. Meanwhile, a survivor of a previous sacrifice shows up with her friends to exact revenge. The loner, now the Janitor, resolves to clean the building as promised while fighting his way through animatronic monsters.

Okay, so the Janitor has zero character development other than he’s hooked on canned punch, the survivor’s friends are disposable cannon fodder making terrible decisions, the animatronic bad guys aren’t all that tough, and the whole thing is kinda cartoonish with a paint by numbers horror plot, but whatever. I knew going into this one not to take it at all seriously and that I’d get to see Nicolas Cage beat up animatronic mascots, a promise that is signed, sealed, and delivered. In short, I liked this one and thought it was good, clean fun.

Jumping 27 years ahead after IT, IT CHAPTER TWO (2019) brings the Losers’ Club back to face Pennywise again as adults. The sequel features the same terrific execution as the first, with a similar cast of great actors, but suffers from predictability and a lack of a satisfying group dynamic so heavily present in the first film.

The Losers Club of Derry’s brutal high school united to defeat the malevolent entity calling itself Pennywise, after which they made an oath to fight it again if it ever reappeared. Now, 27 years later, all except one have scattered, lost touch, and also lost their memories of what they did as kids. Mike Hanlon calls them to bring them back to fulfill their oath, leading to a final confrontation.

What I liked: The horror elements are again utterly freaky. The casting is terrific. If this were a standalone film, it’d be pretty solid.

What I didn’t: Because they lost their memories, the adults have all the same flaws they did as kids, so we have to see them try to conquer them again, this time not as neatly. The group dynamic, excellent chemistry, and terrific tension and stakes in the first film are largely missing in the second. The oddly timed jokes fell flat for me. A gay reveal appears grafted on for whatever. All of this would have been fine for me but watching it, I felt like I’d seen it before, resulting in a predictability of going through the motions to the point of numbness. Stephen King elements that work well on the page don’t always translate on the screen and come off as overly saccharine. Overall, despite all the fun bits, it was just damned hard to care.

Overall, I liked IT CHAPTER TWO but think the film would have benefited from a new group dynamic, maybe the adults having fixed their childhood flaws to the point of excess, and a refresh of the central conflict with Pennywise to create something new and less predictable.

GAIA (2021, found on Google Play) is an intriguing ecological horror film that ultimately, for me, didn’t live up to its atmosphere and ambition. I liked it, but my feelings about it are mixed.

The film is set in South Africa, where Gabi, a park ranger, stumbles across two men living a primitive lifestyle in the forest, a scientist and his son. She discovers that the forest is laced with a mushroom network that is sentient, infectious, and wants to grow. She wants to return to civilization and take the son with her, the scientist wants to stay to study and worship the organism, and the organism wants everything. It all comes to a head in a story with Biblical overtones.

I liked it overall but just couldn’t connect with it on anything other than a base aesthetic level. The forest is beautiful, the actors interesting to look at, and the organism and creature effects are well done. Dream sequences seek to take the film to a higher artistic level and somewhat succeed in this.

There’s a clumsiness, however, to the plotting and character development. The plotting issues are just annoyances, but the character development issues were more problematic for me. I never really know who Gabi is or what she wants, and it drags down what otherwise could have been an interesting dynamic. There’s an environmental message here as well, part of which works well (nature is beautiful but something to fear) and some, while being correct, doesn’t (humans are destroying nature and will ultimately destroy themselves). As a result, when it wrapped up, I didn’t feel much of anything.

Overall, GAIA doesn’t quite live up to its ambitions, but it’s an intriguing, atmospheric, and beautiful ride. Check it out if you’re into ecological horror.

SAINT MAUD (2019) is a powerful film that dares to ask the question, “Could God’s presence be more terrifying than his absence?” (If you know my work, you know this theme fascinates me.) The result is a story about the comfort and dangers of deep belief, a work of psychological horror that sometimes steps into cosmic horror.

Maud became a devout Christian after a mishap at the hospital where she worked as a nurse. Now she’s a hospice nurse with a private agency responsible for caring for a dancer dying of cancer. Feeling chosen by God for some great purpose, Maud often feels a direct connection with the divine, which at times takes on a powerful sexual pleasure, other times a body-contorting source of pain. Frustrated in her mission, she begs God, who takes pity and tells her what to do next…

This is a surprisingly effective work of horror, as we see everything through Maud’s point of view, and she’s obviously crumbling, using her relationship with God to hold together her psyche after a horrific incident in her past. Along the way, we question whether her visions are from God, from her cracked psyche, or perhaps from some malevolent spirit intent on using her. Fascinatingly, all three are equally horror, and all three lead to a questioning of the slippery slope where belief becomes a dangerous delusion.

It’s a slow burn, and it’s not exactly a positive and uplifting character arc, but overall, I found it very effective at doing what it set out to do, and I was affected, particularly by the ending, which delivers a terrific payoff.

At first glance, SUPERDEEP (2021, streaming on Shudder) looks like it’s going to offer a cheesy good time. A late Cold War Soviet underground research station at the bottom of a borehole, a ticking clock, a monster that if released could destroy all life on the planet, and tough Soviet commandos. It is strangely compelling yet a ridiculous mess. I don’t know how they botched this, but they did.

It’s the 1980s, and the Cold War will soon come to an end. Anya is a scientist working on a vaccine to treat Soviet soldiers fighting in Africa. Using highly unethical methods, she succeeds. Suddenly, she gets a call from her mentor, who tasks her with a new mission: accompany a team of soldiers to secure an underground research facility where a strange disease outbreak is occurring. Down the shaft they go, straight into survival horror. Can they get out? And can they get the thing that’s down there from getting out?

Again, this all promises a simple good time. Soviet Union, 1980s, remote research lab, survival horror with a disease/monster element. Count me in. Very quickly, though, it all goes wrong. The dialogue is horrendous, the actors seem to ad-lib plot twists and characterization on the fly, sophisticated precautions against deadly disease are used randomly, a budding romance hinges on a flirty motif, it borrows a little heavily from ALIEN and THE THING, and there are enough plot holes and wackiness that you end up laughing at how nuts it is.

I didn’t give up on it; I couldn’t, as it was all so weird I had to keep going, and besides that, the creature element is pretty cool. While I was watching, I kept picturing what it could have been with a few simple changes. Let the script be in Russian with English subtitles, keep the plot simple with realistic problems, make the characters rational, real people, and bang, it could have been amazing. I thought, what a great idea, I hope somebody makes this movie one day.

I hope none of this sounds mean, because some people obviously poured their hearts into it, and it is weirdly compelling and kinda fun for the monster and the setting. But I recommend going into this one with your willing suspension of disbelief cranked up to 11.