October Positivity: Catching Faith 2: The Homecoming (dir by John K.D. Graham)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Taylor family returns in 2019’s Catching Faith 2!

It’s been four years since Alexa (Lorena Segura York) and John Taylor (Dariush Moslemi) forced their son to confess to drinking two beers at a high school party. As a result of his confession, Beau Taylor (Garrett Westton) was suspended from playing during the regular season and was briefly the most unpopular guy at his high school. However, it appears that did not keep Beau from getting into a good college and eventually make it to the NFL.

Meanwhile, Ravyn Taylor (Bethany Peterson) has also moved out of the house, presumably to attend MIT. As we saw in the previous movie, she was so moved by Beau’s decision to confess that she decided not to cheat on her Latin midterm. Apparently, that decision paid off because Ravyn still became the class valedictorian.

Alexa and John now live in their huge house with only Alexa’s mother, Loretta (Sandra Flagstad). Loretta is suffering from Alzheimer’s and she is often confused and angry. Alexa has been offered a job with an up-and-coming design firm but she’s not sure how she can balance working and taking care of her mom.

When he’s injured in a game, Beau is informed that his football career is over. Using crutches and struggling to find the strength to even bend his knee, Beau returns home and takes a job as an assistant to his old football coach (played by Bill Engvall). While Beau is learning how to coach and coming to terms with the loss of his dreams, Ravyn is preparing for her wedding!

Alexa is excited that Ravyn has gotten married because Alexa has spent the last 20 years planning Ravyn’s wedding. However, she’s a bit less excited when she learns that Ravyn’s husband is in the army and is scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan and that he’s Nathan Adams (Shane McCamant). Nathan is a good and responsible guy but he’s also the son of Jezi Adams (Alexandra Boylan), who was once Alexa’s best friend until they had a falling out over Alexa forcing her son to confess to drinking beer. Jezi felt that, by forcing Beau to confess, Alexa put the future of the entire team (including her son, who was the quarterback) at risk. Jezi and Alexa immediately start to argue, in their own passive aggressive way, over their conflicting visions of what the wedding should be like. Of course, neither one ever bother to ask Ravyn what she wants.

Changing Faith 2 is better than the first one, largely because the characters are all now adults and there’s nothing in the film as ridiculous as Alexa and John forcing their son to put his entire future at risk just because he had a beer at a high school party. As opposed to the first film, there are only a few scenes — mostly featuring Alexa talking to her bible study group about how difficult it is to balance all of her responsibilites — that indicate that this is meant to be a religious movie. I also liked the fact that the sequel spent more time focusing on Alexa’s heritage, which was something the first film barely acknowledged.

That said, with the possible exception of Ravyn, none of the Taylors were particularly sympathetic characters and the film features a “shocking” death that, because you’ll see coming from a mile away, ultimately feels a bit manipulative. The scenes at Alexa’s new job (where everyone is a flakey millennial) feels like some sort of boomer fever dream of what young people are like and Jezi is portrayed in such a cartoonish fashion that the ultimate reconciliation between her and Alexa never quite carries the emotional punch that it should. Catching Faith 2 is an improvement on the first film but it’s still weighted down by its own heavy-handedness.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.2 “The Poison Pen”

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Ryan, Mickey, and Jack all end up going undercover at an ancient monastery, where one of the monks is using a cursed pen to take out anyone who annoys him.

Episode 1.2 “The Poison Pen”

(Directed by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 10th, 1987)

The second episode of Friday the 13th: The Series begins at an ancient monastery that is run by a religious order known as The Brotherhood. (It’s never explicitly stated what denomination the Brotherhood belongs too. Their practices seem to be an odd mix of Buddhism and Anglicanism.) The Abbott has gone to top the roof of the monastery. He suddenly starts to float in the air. He thinks that he’s having a religious experience but, just as suddenly, he crashes down to the ground and is killed.

At the antique store, Jack sees a story in the newspaper about the Abbott’s death and he immediately realizes that someone at the monastery purchased a cursed pen from the store. The pen can be used to kill. All one has to do is write out how they want the death to happen (preferably in as florid language as possible) and then write down the name of their victim. That’s a powerful pen and obviously, it must be retrieved!

So, of course, Ryan and Micki have to go undercover as young monks. However, since it’s The Brotherhood and not the Sisterhood, Micki will have to pretend to be male which means tying back her hair, taking a vow of silence, and allowing Ryan to bind her chest. Jack forges a letter of introduction, though you have to wonder why he didn’t just go undercover with Ryan instead of forcing Micki to go through the trouble of trying to pass for a male.

Ryan and Micki move into the monastery and try to figure out which of the monks owns the pen. Unfortunately, they don’t do a very good job of it and two more monks are tragically killed, one suffocated in his bed while the other is beheaded by a guillotine that just happens to be in a storage room for some reason. In fact, Ryan and Micki prove to be so ineffective that Jack is eventually forced to go undercover as well.

Eventually, the owner of the pen is revealed to be Brother Le Croix (Colin Fox), who makes the mistake of writing out Jack, Micki, and Ryan’s death warrant on a piece of paper that already has his name on it. This leads to Brother Le Croix getting a guillotine blade to the back, finally bringing his reign of terror to an end. Ryan and Jack return the pen to the antique store and Micki finally gets to let down her hair and wear a bra again.

I personally think this episode would have been more effective if it had aired later in the season because a good deal of the episode’s humor depended on the idea of Jack, Micki, and Ryan all knowing each other extremely well. Instead, since this is just the second episode, it seems reasonable that Jack barely knows either Micki and Ryan, which makes some of his overly familiar interactions with them feel a bit odd. Unless there was a year-long time skip between the pilot and the second episode, it just doesn’t seem like everyone should be as comfortable around Jack as they are.

As for the episode’s premise, it was all a bit silly. The main problem is that the pen was so powerful that you have to kind of wonder why Brother Le Croix didn’t just use it as soon as he became suspicious of the new monks. Instead, he waited until everyone was gathered in the same room as the guillotine and then he forced them to watch as he wrote out how he wanted them to die and then, he actually announced, “Now, I just have to write down your names!” Why didn’t he write down their names first? It seems like evil was defeated less to due to the actions of our heroes and more because our villain was a true idiot.

Oh well. The important thing is that the pen will write no more!

Next week: Jack, Micki, and Ryan go to college in an episode directed by Atom Egoyan!

Icarus File No. 13: Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (dir by James Nguyen)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s Birdemic 2 picks up four years after the end of the first film. Society has recovered from the vicious bird attacks. Humans and bird are once again living as friends. Actually, no one seems to have learned a thing from the last movie because global warming is still out of control, blood rain is falling in California, and a woman is attacked by what she calls a “giant jumbo jellyfish.” This can only mean that nature is getting ready to fight back once again.

Rod (Alan Bagh) was one of the few people to survive the previous Birdemic. He is still rich and he is still dating Nathalie (Whitney Moore). They adopted Tony (Colton Osborne), the little boy who they rescued during the first film. At one point, Tony mentions that his sister Susan is now dead, having died as a result of eating the fish that Rod caught in the first film. (Apparently, this was an ad lib from actor Colton Osborne and, since director James Nguyen doesn’t believe in multiple takes, it made it into the film.) Rod invests in a movie being directed by Bill (Thomas Favaloro) and starring Bill’s new girlfriend, Gloria (Chelsea Turnbo). In fact, Bill and Gloria pretty much act exactly the same way that Rod and Nathalie acted in the first film, which feels a bit redundant since Birdemic 2 already features Rod and Nathalie.

Anyway, there’s a lot of scenes in the film that are meant to act as a commentary on Hollywood, with craven studio people showing that they are not capable of understanding Bill’s artistic vision. At one point, Bill talks about how he directed a movie called Replica. He and Gloria also pay a visit to Tippi Hedren’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because it wouldn’t be a James Nguyen film without a Tippi Hedren reference.

Unfortunately, a blood rain causes the resurrection of several birds and two cavemen from the La Brea tar pit and soon, filming on Bill’s movie is delayed by the cast and crew running for their lives. It’s pretty much the same as the first movie, except that the birds are now bad CGI as opposed to clip art and, for some reason, there are also zombies involved. Why are the zombies there? Who knows?

Birdemic 2 was made to capitalize on the camp success of Birdemic and several scenes from the original film are recreated for the sequel, right down to several pointless walking scenes, another boardroom celebration scene and another scene in which the female lead strips down to her underwear and asking her boyfriend if he likes what he sees. Damien Carter also makes another appearance, singing a different song and leading a new dance party. (Nathalie is still the best dancer in the Birdemic films.)

Birdemic 2 is a bit more self-aware than the first film, which means that some of the attempted humor is presumably intentional. Unfortunately, the charm of the first Birdemic was to be found in just how cluelessly earnest it was. James Nguyen sincerely believed he was making a good film with the first one. With the second one, he seems to be trying to re-capture something that he didn’t really realize that he had captured in the first place. That said, even with all of the deliberate camp, there’s enough lectures about climate change to leave little doubt that, at heart, Nguyen was still taking this film far more seriously than anyone else on the planet.

He certainly takes his films more seriously than the people who appear in them. Much as in the first film, Whitney Moore struggles to keep a straight face and it’s obvious that many of her co-stars were specifically hamming it up to see what they could get away with. Alan Bagh, for his part, remains as unexpressive but strangely likable as ever.

Birdemic 2 tries but, in the end, there’s no beating the original!

Previous Icarus Files:

Horror AMV Of The Day: Sweet But Psycho (High School of the Dead)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How about a High School of the Dead AMV?

Song: Sweet But Psycho by Ava Max

Anime: High School of the Dead

Creator: Hey Dante (as always, please follow this creator’s channel)

Past AMVs of the Day

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Clinton Road (dir by Richard Grieco and Steve Stanulis)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2019’s Clinton Road features what might be my favorite Eric Roberts cameo appearance.

Roberts appears standing outside a club in New Jersey. He’s speaking to the woman who is working the door and trying to convince her that he should be allowed into the club, even though she doesn’t think that he’s on the list. He explains that he’s Eric Roberts. The woman replies that he’s not the Eric Roberts that she knows but then, suddenly, she realizes that he is Eric Roberts the movie star! She apologizes profusely. Eric says its okay and gives her a fist bump. Everyone waiting to get into the club applauds.

Seriously, that is the extent of Eric Roberts’s role in Clinton Road. It comes out of nowhere and it has nothing to do with the actual plot of the film. Why is Eric Roberts waiting outside of some club in New Jersey? Who knows? He’s just there and he’s a cool dude and everyone loves him. As with so many of his cameos, one gets the feeling that Roberts just happened to see some people shooting a movie and he decided to be a part of it.

Eric Roberts is not the only well-known actor to make a brief appearance in Clinton Road. The film itself was directed by actor Richard Grieco and it’s obvious that he asked some of his well-known friends to help out. The manager of the club is played Ice-T and he shows up long enough to tell the urban legend of the vanishing hitchhiker. The owner of the club is Vincent Pastore, who played Pussy on The Sopranos. Private investigator-turned-character actor Bo Dietl shows up, playing the mayor of the town and barking orders at people. Everyone gets a chance to be, at least briefly, the center of attention but none of them play characters who actually have anything to do with the film’s main story.

That story is about Michael (played by former American Idol contestant, Ace Young), a fireman whose wife disappeared while walking down Clinton Road, a haunted rural road in New Jersey. (For the record, Clinton Road is real and, as this film states, it’s the center of many urban legends.) Michael is ready to move on and marry his new girlfriend, Kayla (Lauren LaVera). However, Michael’s former sister-in-law, Isabella (Katie Morrison), convinces Michael to go out to Clinton Road with her and make one last effort to contact his wife’s spirit. Accompanying them is a medium named Begory (James DeBello), Begory’s girlfriend, Gianna (Erin O’Brien), and Michael’s brother, Tyler (former Big Brother houseguest Cody Calafiore). Tyler is loudly skeptical of Begory’s claims to be able to speak to the dead but it soon becomes clear that the group is not alone on Clinton Road.

To my surprise, I ended up liking Clinton Road. It’s a very low-budget film and the plot doesn’t always make sense but it was obviously made by people who both loved New Jersey and who loved the legends that have sprung up around Clinton Road. The atmosphere was ominous, the imagery was often surreal, and, when they did appear, the spirits were effectively creepy. The fact that the characters all had an attitude that was more appropriate to The Sopranos than to a standard lost-in-the-woods horror film only served to make the film all the more entertaining. If you’re going to set your horror film in New Jersey, you might as well go all out and make the most New Jersey horror film imaginable.

I enjoyed this film. I just hope Eric Roberts didn’t make the mistake of turning down Clinton Road on his way home.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Horror On TV: The Hitchhiker 5.6 “Renaissance” (dir by Bruno Gantillon)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, David Soul plays a greedy developer who runs afoul the Parisian underground. It turns out that thinking big is not always the fool-proof strategy that the developer thinks that it is. The cocky developer finds himself forced to confront his own dark side. Myself, I’m curious why the opening credits always feature The Hitchhiker walking through the desert but, since the 5th season began, he’s pretty much just exclusively been hanging out in France. Seriously, who is this guy?

The episode originally aired on July 14th, 1989!

October Hacks: The Last Slumber Party (dir by Stephen Tyler)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Woo hoo! School’s out for summer and that means that it’s time to have a slumber party! It’s time to gather at the home of whoever has the biggest house and dance around in your sleepwear before falling on the couch, watching a really bad TV show, and talking about how all the boys in town suck. What fun! Seriously, I used to love slumber parties! Of course, the parties I went to were a lot more fun than the one featured in the film that I am about to review.

The 1988 film, The Last Slumber Party, is called The Last Slumber Party because it features an escaped homicidal lunatic who wears surgical scrubs and mask and who carries around scalpel. The lunatic shows up at the party and makes sure that, for the majority of the cast, it is their last slumber party. But, to be honest, I think this would have been the last slumber party even if the killer didn’t show up just because the party sucks so much that I don’t think anyone would ever want to run the risk of throwing another one.

Seriously, this is the most boring slumber party that I’ve ever seen. First off, there’s only three guests and only one of them, Chris (Jan Jensen), has a personality. Of course, that personality is not a particularly likeable one, in that it leads to Chris constantly cursing and making fun of every boy at the school for being, in her opinion, gay. Speaking of the boys at the school, four of them attempt to crash the slumber party but again, none of the really have a personality beyond not being able to open up a can of beer without spilling it on their shirt. As well, most of the guys are quickly dispatched by the scalpel-wielding killer. The girls are a bit perturbed when the guys start to mysteriously disappear but none of them are upset enough to actually look for them or to pay attention to the reports on the television about an escaped murderer. Instead, Chris just suggests that the boys got scared off because they were gay. Seriously, Chris is a bit obsessed.

Also obsessed with Dr. Sickler (David Whitley), who is the father of one of the girls and who was scheduled to give the escaped lunatic a lobotomy. Of course, Dr. Sickler isn’t obsessed with his missing patient as much as he’s obsessed with remembering to pick up some orange juice. His wife really likes orange juice and there’s way too much talk of orange juice in this film. Oddly enough, Dr. Sickler never actually picks any up.

I’m grasping at things to say about this film because there’s not really a whole lot to be said about The Last Slumber Party. Judging by the accents of the majority of the cast, The Last Slumber Party was a regional production and it was made down in my part of the world. I actually enjoyed hearing the familiar accents but I just wish the characters had been a bit less unlikable and the dialogue had more of a natural rhythm. As it is, this is just one of those slasher films that’s full of padding and feels considerably longer than just 77 minutes. For the majority of the film’s characters, this would indeed be their last slumber party. It’s a shame they couldn’t have ended things with a better get-together.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: The Chill Factor (dir by Christopher Webster)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1993 film, The Chill Factor, is a bit of an oddity.

The film opens with a shot of young, attractive people racing their snowmobiles across a snowy landscape. One of them, Jeannie (Dawn Laurrie), narrates. She tells us that she can still remember everything that happened as if it was yesterday. She and her friends were visiting the ski slopes of Wisconsin. She was engaged to be married to Tom (Aaron Kjenaas), who she secretly knew didn’t really love her that way that she loved him. She mentions that they were traveling with their friends and none of them had any worries because they were young and the year 2000 was right around the corner. She mentions that one of her friends was “dating a black girl.” It’s an odd line, especially when heard in 2023, when interracial couples in movies and television are so common that it’s almost become a bit of a cliché. One thing that makes the line feel all the stranger is the rather flat tone of the narrator’s voice. The narration almost sounds as if it’s being delivered by someone who is under hypnosis.

Jeannie, Tom, and their friends stop off at a rustic lodge. Karen (Connie Snyder) is Tom’s little sister and Chris (David Fields) is her boyfriend, as well as being a medical student. Ron (Jim Cagle) is a friendly football player who has just been drafted by a pro team. Ron’s girlfriend, Lissa (Eve Montgomery), is the black girl mentioned in Jeannie’s opening narration. When two local racists confront Ron and Lissa and spit out a racial slur, friendly waitress Bessie (Bekki Vallin) makes it up to the group by telling them about a great place to race their snowmobiles. It’s called Black Friar Lake and Bessie promises to tell them why it’s named that if they come back. Even though Tom has been drinking all day long, he insists on going out to Black Friar Lake.

At Black Friar Lake, Tom pulls a Kennedy and crashes his snowmobile into a tree. His friends drag the unconscious and blood-covered Tom to an abandoned Dominican summer camp. They bandage his wounds and try to keep him warm. Chris says that Tom probably has internal injuries. However, Tom suddenly opens his eyes and, other than having a headache, he acts as if nothing serious has happened. While Ron heads back to town to try to get help, Karen searches the camp and comes across a makeshift Ouija board. Even though Jeannie believes that Ouija boards can actually summon evil spirits, she still joins the others in fooling around with it. (As Jeannie explains in her narration, “It was my nature.”) Soon, Tom is waking up more often and speaking much more aggressively than usual. (When Karen — HIS SISTER — tells him that he’s a pain in the ass, Tom tells her, “I’ll give you a pain in the ass,” and then suggests that she and Chris should go have sex.) Soon, people are dying, blood is being spilled, and the Ouija board keeps trying to send out messages.

The Chill Factor is an odd film. On the surface, it seems like a typical mash-up of slasher mayhem and Evil Dead-style supernatural activity. But there’s an intriguingly off-center quality to the film. The film moves at its own dream-like pace, with certain scenes going on longer than one might expect while other scenes end rather abruptly. When the group first arrives at the summer camp, their conversations are a bizarre mix of the mundane and the philosophical. Random shadows can be spied moving along the walls and the main characters never seem to notice that fresh blood is flowing from the eyes of a statue of Jesus. Towards the end of the film, there’s a Rosemary’s Baby-style sex scene between Tom and Jeannie, except occasionally it’s not Jeannie that Tom is making lover to but instead Karen. The falling snow gives the entire film a chilly and rather bleak atmosphere. (This may be the only film to feature a demon chasing his prey on a snowmobile.) The cast was obviously made up of amateurs and the majority of the performances are extremely stiff. However, even that contributes to the film’s otherworldly atmosphere. Indeed, watching the performers, I was reminded of Werner Herzog’s Heart of Glass, in which Herzog had his actors perform under the influence of hypnosis.

Finally, there’s an interesting subtext to this film. Jeannie, who fears that Tom will never love her the way that she loves him, has a night of passionate sex with him, just to wake up the next morning and discover that he had suddenly changed. He’s not the man who she thought he was. Now, in Tom’s case, this is because he’s been possessed by a demon. However, this scene captures a fear that every woman has felt. Will your lover still be the same man when you wake up in the morning? Or, having gotten what he wanted, will he then reveal his true self? As much as Jeannie feared the Ouija board, she still used it because, deep down, she wanted to know who Tom really was. And the board revealed the truth. In her final piece of narration, Jeannie speaks of still dreaming about that night with Tom and her flat tone leaves it up to the audience to decide if she dreams of who Tom become or who she thought Tom was before.

I suspect that The Chill Factor may have been a happy accident, a case of a low budget and an amateur cast actually coming together something that turned out to be far better than anyone was expecting. Accidentally or not, The Chill Factor is an intriguing work of existential horror.

A Blast From The Past: Stoned (dir by John Herzfeld)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1980’s Stoned, Scott Baio plays Jack Melon, a teenager with a problem.

Jack is shy, awkward, and can’t escape the shadow of his older brother, Mike (Vincent Bufano). Mike is champion swimmer. Jack is someone who can barely walk down a hallway without walking into a wall. But then Teddy (Jack Finch) gets Teddy hooked on marijuana, the so-called weed with roots in Hell! Soon, Jack is acting weird, making strange jokes, and getting all of the attention in the world. Unfortunately, Jack is also alienating those closest to him and his newfound habit leads to a near-tragedy.

Stoned was aired as an ABC Afterschool Special and, while it’s not quite Reefer Madness, it does adhere to the general anti-drug formula. In record time, Jack goes from being shy and dorky to being goofy and potentially dangerous. We get all the expected scenes of Jack devouring ice cream, Jack wandering around in a daze, Jack realizing that the girl he likes what’s nothing to do with the new Jack, Jack’s well-meaning teacher (played by the show’s writer and director, John Herzfeld) confronting his students about their drug use, and Jack accidentally hitting his brother with an oar. Jack thinks that marijuana is opening his brain because, while stoned, he suddenly realizes that a tree looks like “Old Man Eber.” Stoned goes on to show Jack ruining his life but I have to admit that I spent most of the running time wondering who Old Man Eber was. (Seriously, Old Man Eber sounds like some sort of Lovecraftian ghoul, waiting in the shadows to drag one to an Arkham cemetery.) Of course, someone nearly dies as a result of Jack’s marijuana use. What’s interesting is Jack is able to save the person’s life, even though he’s stoned. Would non-stoned Jack have been able to do it?

From the fashion choices to the cast to the message that marijuana is the most dangerous thing on the planet, Stoned is one of those TV specials that epitomizes its time. This was a film that was made at a time when it was inconceivable that there would some day be commercials for edible gummies and it shows. Watching Stoned is like stepping into a time machine.

Today, of course, Scott Baio is better known for his politics than his acting. Whenever I see a headline that reads, “This veteran Hollywood star is calling out his industry for not understanding America,” I know the story is inevitably going to be about Scott Baio complaining about his taxes. That said, Scott Baio is convincing when he’s playing Jack as being awkward and insecure but he definitely goes a bit overboard once Jack starts smoking. While that probably dilutes the effectiveness of the film’s message (because, let’s be honest, real stoners are going to watch this and easily recognize the fact that Jack is trying way too hard to convince everyone that he’s stoned), it does give this film a certain entertainment value.

Here is Stoned, complete with the commercials that aired when the show was original broadcast on November 12th, 1980:

Corbin Nash (2018, directed by Ben Jagger)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Corbin Nash (Dean S. Jagger) is a New York cop who has been suspended for shooting a rapist. While he and his stepfather (Bruce Davison, making a cameo appearance) sit in a bar and talk about how much the world sucks, they are approached by a mysterious man (Rutger Hauer, also making a cameo appearance) who explains that Corbin’s father was not just a minor league baseball player but he was also a demon hunter who was murdered by his enemies in Los Angeles. Jack confirms that what the stranger says is true.

Corbin does what anyone would do. He moves to Los Angeles, joins the LAPD, and starts to investigate cases of missing children. This leads to Corbin being captured and held prisoner by two vampires, a drag queen named Queeny (Corey Feldman, camping it up to a cringe-worthy degree) and Queeny’s lover, Vince (Richard Wagner). Queeny and Vince force their prisoners to participate in cage matches until finally feeding on them. Corbin escapes but, as the Blind Prophet (Malcolm McDowell, collecting a paycheck) reveals, Corbin is now a vampire. Like a less memorable version of Blade, vampire Corbin sets out to battle evil.

The film’s overall tone is grim and serious, which makes Corey Feldman’s mincing performance as Queeny feel all the more out-of-place. Watching him in films like this, it can be easy to forget that Feldman was actually a fairly good actor before his career went off the rails in the 90s. As a child, he appeared in some classic films and, as a teenager, he often redeemed otherwise subpar material. But he never made the transition into adult roles. Being one of “The Two Coreys” didn’t help and he had the misfortune of struggling with drugs before Robert Downey, Jr. made rehab cool. Well into his 20s, he was still playing high school students and, even today when he’s in his 50s, Corey Feldman still comes across as being the world’s oldest teenager. That’s certainly the impression that I got from Corbin Nash, where Feldman seems like a high school theater student who is more interested in showing off than actually acting.

Of course, Feldman’s self-indulgence is still more interesting than the rest of the film, which feels like an origin story for a super hero who never really took off. There are a few interesting idea to be found in the film but mostly, it just feels like a cut-rate version of Blade and a dozen other recent vampire films. Corbin Nash never creates an identity of its own.