Even if you did not already know it, you could probably guess who directed this video. Everything from the back lighting to the color filters to the fog machine to the leather jackets and the gang of shirtless body builders identifies this video as being the work of Joel Schumacher.
This video, which was filmed in Balboa, California, was made during Schumacher’s Lost Boys/Flatliners phase. His infamous Batman films were still several years away. INXS guitarist Kirk Pengilly has gone on record as disliking this video because he felt that, unlike the other videos that INXS was doing at the time, it was “too American.” He was probably right. The video’s mix of strippers, bikers, yuppies, and rent boys feels more appropriate for a film adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis short story than an INXS song. Even if it isn’t an ideal INXS video, Devil Inside is still probably one of the better entries in Joel Schumacher’s filmography. If I have to choose, I will always pick this video over watching Batman and Robin.
With the video’s help, Devil Inside was one of INXS’s most popular songs in America, reaching the number two spot on the Billboard Hot 100. By comparison, it peaked at #6 in the band’s native Australia and only reached #47 in the UK.
“I fear that the only way to stop those possessed by the spirits of the book is through the act of… bodily dismemberment.” — Professor Knowby
The Evil Dead is the kind of movie that feels like it should not have become a classic, at least not by conventional standards. It was made cheaply, filmed under brutal conditions, packed with unknown actors, and built around an extremely simple premise: five college friends head to an isolated cabin in the woods, unwittingly awaken an ancient evil, and spend the rest of the night being torn apart by demonic forces. Yet more than four decades later, Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror debut remains one of the most energetic, inventive, and genuinely nasty independent films ever made. It is rough around the edges in ways that are impossible to ignore, but those rough edges are a major part of its appeal. The Evil Dead feels handmade, hungry, and a little bit unhinged.
The story starts with Ash Williams, his girlfriend Linda, Ash’s sister Cheryl, and their friends Scotty and Shelly arriving at a remote Tennessee cabin for what is supposed to be a relaxing getaway. It is one of the most familiar setups in horror history now, but Raimi and his collaborators made it feel threatening before the real violence even begins. The cabin is decrepit, damp, and isolated to an almost absurd degree. There is no real sense of civilization nearby. The forest itself seems hostile, with tangled trees, strange sounds, and an atmosphere that makes the woods feel less like a location and more like a living organism surrounding the characters.
The group soon discovers a cellar beneath the cabin, where they find an ancient book bound in flesh, a dagger, and a tape recording left by an archaeologist. The recording describes the Necronomicon, a book of demonic incantations, and naturally the characters make the worst possible decision by playing the tape aloud. That act releases the evil presence that has been lurking in the forest, and the movie moves quickly from creepy cabin story to all-out supernatural nightmare. The concept is simple, but it gives Raimi room to focus on mood, visual invention, and escalation rather than complicated mythology.
What makes The Evil Dead special is how aggressively Raimi directs it. Even in his first feature, he had a style that was impossible to mistake for anyone else’s. The camera is constantly moving, lunging through the woods, creeping around corners, tilting at unnatural angles, and racing toward people as if the audience has become the demon’s point of view. The famous “demon-cam” shots are still startling because of how physical they feel. The camera does not glide elegantly. It charges. It crashes through the environment. It feels like something has broken loose and is hunting the characters.
That restless filmmaking gives the movie a personality far larger than its budget. Raimi turns limitations into an advantage. The cabin becomes a maze of shadows, floorboards, trap doors, windows, and hidden spaces. A cheap-looking hallway can suddenly become terrifying because the editing, sound design, and camera movement make it feel unstable. Raimi understands that horror does not always come from seeing a monster clearly. Sometimes it comes from the sense that the camera itself has stopped behaving normally, that the space around the characters is warping, and that even the trees outside are watching them.
The special effects are another major reason the film still has such a devoted following. They are obviously practical, often messy, and occasionally so exaggerated that they cross into dark comedy, but they have a tactile quality that modern digital effects often lack. The possessed characters look genuinely diseased and wrong: pale skin, dead eyes, rotting makeup, distorted faces, and unnatural movements. When the deadites attack, they do not simply become generic zombies. They taunt their friends, laugh at them, imitate their voices, and enjoy causing emotional pain. That cruel playfulness makes them more disturbing than ordinary monsters.
The makeup work on the possessed Cheryl, Shelly, and Linda remains especially effective because it turns familiar faces into grotesque masks. Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, and Theresa Tilly bring an unsettling intensity to those transformations, switching from frightened victims to shrieking, mocking demons. The performances are broad and theatrical, but that is exactly what the material needs. Nothing in The Evil Dead is subtle for very long. The film keeps pushing the characters past the point of normal human behavior until they are laughing, screaming, convulsing, and bleeding all over the cabin.
Bruce Campbell’s Ash is interesting because he is not yet the wisecracking, chainsaw-handed cult hero he would become in the sequels. In The Evil Dead, Ash is mostly an ordinary young man who slowly realizes he is trapped in a situation beyond comprehension. Campbell is still charismatic, and there are flashes of the physical comedy and wild-eyed determination that would define the character later, but this version of Ash is more vulnerable. He panics, hesitates, and suffers. By the end, he looks exhausted in a way that feels earned, covered in sweat, dirt, blood, and trauma.
That difference gives the original movie its own identity within the larger Evil Dead series. Evil Dead II would remake and expand many of the first film’s ideas with more money, more comedy, and a much more overtly cartoonish sensibility. Army of Darkness would take Ash into full fantasy-adventure mode. Those later films are arguably more polished and more immediately entertaining, especially for viewers who love Campbell’s comedic performance. But The Evil Dead has a rawness that the sequels never tried to reproduce. It is a horror movie first, even when its excesses become funny.
The film’s tonal shifts are one of its most fascinating qualities. Raimi clearly understands that grotesque violence can become absurd if it is pushed far enough, and the movie occasionally seems aware of its own madness. A possessed hand reaches through a window. A character gets stabbed with a pencil in one of the film’s most infamous scenes. Bodies erupt in streams of colored goo rather than realistic blood. The final destruction of the deadites is so elaborate that it feels like Raimi and his effects team were determined to empty every container of slime they had available. It is disgusting, but it is also gleefully imaginative.
At the same time, The Evil Dead can be more unpleasant than people remember. Its treatment of Cheryl in the woods is difficult to watch and remains one of the film’s most controversial moments. The scene is meant to establish the cruelty and violation associated with the demonic force, but it is not necessary to enjoy the movie, and it has aged badly compared with the more comic-book brutality of later entries. Raimi himself would move away from that kind of material in the sequels. It is worth acknowledging because the scene changes the tone of the film and may be a deal-breaker for some viewers.
The sound design helps make the movie feel more oppressive than its modest production would suggest. The woods groan, doors bang, voices echo from impossible places, and the demonic chants on the tape recording create a sense that something ancient has been invited into the cabin. Joseph LoDuca’s score adds another layer of unease, using shrill strings and harsh musical stabs to make even quiet scenes feel unstable. The soundtrack is not trying to be elegant. It is trying to make the viewer tense up, and it succeeds.
There is also something inspiring about the movie’s independent spirit. Raimi, Campbell, producer Robert Tapert, and their crew famously made the film through determination, ingenuity, and a willingness to endure conditions that sound miserable in retrospect. You can feel that effort on screen. Every strange camera angle, handmade prop, and splattering effect carries the energy of filmmakers trying to prove they can do something bigger than their resources should allow. The Evil Dead does not hide its budget. It turns that budget into part of its legend.
For horror fans, the movie is essential not because it is flawless, but because it is so alive. It captures the feeling of discovering a forbidden VHS tape or stumbling into a midnight screening where the audience is laughing, cringing, and yelling at the screen. It is scary in places, silly in others, and relentlessly committed to its own bizarre nightmare logic. Raimi would go on to make superhero movies, westerns, thrillers, and studio blockbusters, but the wild visual imagination that defined his career is already fully visible here.
The Evil Dead is a scrappy, blood-soaked supernatural horror movie that earns its reputation through pure filmmaking nerve. Its story may be basic, its acting may be uneven, and some of its material has not aged gracefully, but the movie’s pace, practical effects, demonic imagery, and manic camerawork remain unforgettable. It feels less like a carefully manufactured horror product than a curse someone managed to put on film. That is why it still works: Raimi and his team did not just make a movie about evil invading a cabin. They made the entire movie feel possessed.
And so the first four days of Horrorthon come to a close. Why not celebrate with an AMV?
Song: Thriller by Michael Jackson
Anime: Aria the Scarlet Ammo, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Everyday Life with Monster Girls, High School of the Dead, Interviews With Monster Girls, Rosario + Vampire, Rosario + Vampire Capu 2
2026’s Sorority House Guillotine does not feature a guillotine or a sorority house. It does, however, feature a lot of footage from Bikini Guillotine and a monologue about John Cassavetes.
The majority of the film features a group of young women in bikinis hanging out at the pool. One of the women announces that she owns the house and that she’ll be having a party every weekend. Everyone says, “Whooo!” and raises their red Solo cups. Most of the footage is lifted directly from Bikini Guillotine, but it’s also obvious that a lot of it was taken from outtakes that weren’t included in that film. There are a lot of scenes where the women clearly aren’t acting, but are instead just sitting around waiting for the next shot to be set up. Members of the crew appear in the background. The shadow of the director is visible more than a few times. The camera rig is sometimes visible. There are also quite a few scenes where the women aren’t filmed from the best possible angle, and that feels rather unfair to them.
(Everyone, regardless of how attractive, has at least one unflattering angle. I’m usually pretty happy with how I photograph, but I know that if someone snaps a picture while my head is turned a certain way, all anyone is going to notice is my nose. A good director — especially one who is directing a movie in which the entire cast is half-naked for the entire running time — doesn’t include unflattering angles in the finished film.)
Because Bikini Guillotine had a nearly incoherent soundtrack, this film handles things by just featuring voice-overs over the scenes of the girls hanging out by the pool. We hear about how, when you’re young, you don’t worry about anything. “Someone says fried chicken and everyone laughs.” We’re also told that, “Gina asks Tina, ‘Why is everything so blue?’ Tina says, ‘Because you’re looking at it too long.’ ‘No, why is everyone blue?’” Wow, that’s deep. It’s the type of weed-fueled nonsense that I thought was profound during my senior year of high school.
When the voice-over isn’t talking about life, it’s talking about the movies. We’re told that the girls are talking about Charlie Chaplin and Josef von Sternberg. Eventually, they start to talk about how much they love Deep Red and the scene where David Hemmings sees his reflection in a pool of blood. Then we’re told that one of the girls is talking about how much she loves the work of John Cassavetes because Cassavetes just captured life without any studio-imposed drama. These are not the type of things that a bunch of 20-year-old girls are going to be talking about while hanging out at the pool. When I was 20, I loved movies, but I still didn’t talk about them while I was rocking a bikini next to a swimming pool. I was usually too busy trying to make sure I was giving everyone my most flattering angle.
The killer eventually shows up about 55 minutes into this 77-minute film. As opposed to the killer in Bikini Guillotine, he just wears a medical mask and carries a knife in this one. At first, I wondered if maybe the girls had been called back to shoot all-new death scenes, but as I watched, it became obvious that the scenes were actually either filmed auditions or rehearsals for the first film. The kills are once again bloodless.
What an odd movie! For all of its flaws, I do have to admit that the out-of-place voice-overs did add a bit of a surreal edge to the action. With the frequent appearances from the film crew and the cameras, one gets the feeling that Hatanaka was either trying to say something about the filmmaking process or, even more likely, he was trying to fool people into thinking he was saying something about the filmmaking process.
This film mostly just made me want to go hang out by the pool on a nice sunny day. Maybe I’ll even talk about Argento.
1993’s City of the Vampires opens with a news report about Braddock. The city appears to be dying, and no one is sure why. The population numbers have plunged. People are scared to go out at night. Most of the people interviewed for the news story talk about how they can’t wait to get out of Braddock. As I watched, I found myself wondering if this was the same Braddock that would later elect John Fetterman as mayor and appear in those Levi’s commercials. The commercials aired around 2009–2010 and were all about how important it was to save the city of Braddock. I remember watching them and thinking, “Why is some Yankee city more worthy of a commercial than the cities that are struggling in the South?”
(Fetterman, at the time, was branded “America’s coolest mayor” by The Guardian. People forget just how much the media loved Fetterman when he was just another predictable liberal.)
As for the movie, it follows Sam Helling (Matthew Jason Walsh) as he explores the city of Braddock at night. He’s looking for his girlfriend Christine (Anne-Marie O’Keefe), but instead he finds himself in a city that has been taken over by vampires. I should mention that some online sites insist the character is named Sam Helsing, which would seem to be a callback to Dracula’s Dr. Van Helsing. Watching the movie, though, it’s made clear that Sam’s last name is indeed Helling. Leave the Van Helsings out of this.
City of the Vampires is a shot-on-video horror film, and it definitely deserves some credit for its ambition. Whereas most SOV horror films were content to just rip off the latest slasher and zombie pictures, City of the Vampires was obviously meant to be a low-budget action epic. There are a few interesting camera angles. There’s a deliberate echo effect on some of the dialogue, the better to give it a supernatural, dreamlike feel. There are several fairly convincing shots of melting faces. Despite the low budget, the filmmakers were obviously trying to make something memorable. One could easily imagine an alternate universe where City of the Vampires launched a whole franchise about vampires taking over American cities in decline. Look out, Gary, Indiana. The bloodsuckers are coming.
That said, it’s still a shot-on-video horror film, and the low budget really does show in more than a few scenes. The film takes place largely at night, it appears to have been shot at night, and there are several scenes so darkly lit that it’s a struggle to make out what’s happening. As cool as the echo effects were, the soundtrack is generally not that clear, and I sometimes found myself straining to hear what people were talking about. Proper lighting and sound recording have been the downfall of many SOV films. They’re the kind of thing people take for granted until they’re gone.
Still, I’ll give this film credit for its ambition. I always appreciate the effort, even if it’s not fully successful.
In 2025’s Amityville La Llorona, a couple (played by director Jamie Grefe and Sloane Tower) move into a house and spend the entire time arguing about every little thing. Eventually, the husband has visions of a mysterious woman (Skya Theobold) and a strange figure who keeps shouting, “Mama! Mama!” The film is only 63 minutes. Unfortunately, the dialogue is largely improvised and it takes forever for anything to actually happen in the movie. I felt every one of those 63 minutes.
Since there’s really not a helluva lot to say about the film, let’s talk about La Llorona.
The legend of La Llorona is a well-known one in Mexico and the southwestern half of the United States. It’s a story that I was told by both my mom and my aunts and, as a result, I never went off with a stranger while I was growing up. Of course, I also had some pretty intense nightmares but that’s kind of the point. If someone tells you the story of La Llorona and you don’t end up having a nightmare about being drowned by a weeping woman, they didn’t tell the story correctly.
La Llorona was originally named Maria. She lived, in a rural village, with her family and she was famous for both her beauty and her virtue. When a wealthy nobleman saw her and immediately proposed to her, Maria accepted. However, the nobleman’s father was upset that his son was marrying into a poor family and he refused to accept Maria as his daughter-in-law. Maria and her husband ended up having two sons and living in a house by the river. Maria’s husband doted on their sons but he ignored her and eventually, Maria learned that he was having an affair.
In a fit of blind rage, Maria drowned her children in the river. After realizing what she had done, Maria died of grief. However, when she arrived at the gates of Heaven, she was asked why her children were not with her. When Maria explained that she had lost them, she was told that she would not be allowed to enter Heaven until she found them. Now, known as La Llorona (or “the weeping woman”), she wanders the Earth, crying and looking for her children.
Where does one find La Llorona? It depends on who is telling the story. Some stories say that you’ll only see her near a body of water. My mom used to tell me that La Llorona could be anywhere, including under my bed or in the bedroom closet. Regardless of where you might find her, La Llorona is always wearing her wedding dress and she’s always sobbing. Approach her and she’ll grab you and either kidnap you or drown you, all the while begging for forgiveness. Many have seen La Llorona but few have survived to tell the story.
“And thatis why we do not talk to strangers,” my mother would say while I looked out the bedroom window, searching for the sight of La Llorona walking through the Texas night.
Though Skya Theobold’s character is credited as being La Llorona in Amityville La Llorana, she doesn’t have much in common with the true La Llorona. Then again, this film also has nothing to do with any of the previous Amityville films. Amityville, as either a town or franchise, is never mentioned in this film. Normally, I’m willing to cut an exploitation film a little bit of slack when it comes to having a misleading title. Usually, that’s just a part of the game. In this case, though, it just serves to remind me of how cool a film about the real La Llorona visiting the real Amityville house would have been.
As I mentioned earlier, the dialogue in this film appears to have been improvised. One of the unfortunate things about improv is that everyone thinks that can they do it. They think that as long as they’re given a scene to play, they’ll be able to come up with appropriately compelling dialogue. This film proves that is not always the case. As I watched Amityville La Llorona, I found myself hoping that Michael Scott would kick open a door and shout, “MICHAEL SCARN, FBI!”
Michael Scarn in Amityville. Now that would be a movie!
At the time, Toho was no longer making Godzilla films but they remained popular on American television. Marvel’s Stan Lee, no longer constrained by the comics code’s restriction on monster and horror comics, approached Toho about licensing the character. Lee bought the rights for Godzilla but not for any of the other monsters from the Godzilla films. Mothra, Rodan, and all the others were just out luck. Toho took the money and didn’t pay much attention to anything else that Lee and Marvel did with the character.
Unlike Marvel’s famous adaptation of Star Wars, Godzilla was dropped straight into the Marvel universe. When he attacked San Francisco, the Champions saved what they could of their city. When he roamed through New York, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four teamed up to fight him. Godzilla’s most frequent nemesis was SHIELD. Dum Dum Dugan found himself in charge of the anti-Godzilla effort.
It all started with the first issue of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Written by Doug Moensch and featuring the art of Herb Trimpe, the first issue was published in August of 1977 and featured Godzilla being awakened by nuclear tests in Alaska. Soon, he was heading towards Washington State. SHIELD saved Seattle. I wonder if Nick Fury ever regretted that.
Godzilla was officially a part of the Marvel universe for two years. After the series was canceled after twenty-four issues, Marvel lost the rights to the character. However, Red Ronin, who was originally introduced as an opponent of Godzilla, continues to appear in other Marvel titles. Godzilla is still there, even if no one is allowed to talk about him anymore.
Kyle Williams (Matthew Le Nevez), the newly appointed sheriff of a Louisiana parish, wants to know why so many people have disappeared in the swamp. Oilman Frederick Schist (Jack Thompson) puts the blame on activist Rene LaRoque (Steve Bastoni), who lives in the swamp and has been vandalizing Schist’s oil rigs. Indigenous shaman Horn (Rawiri Paratene) suggests that the culprit is actually a legendary spirit that lives in and protects the swamp and is angry because Schist cheated the local Seminole chief out of his land.
Loosely based on one of Marvel’s most endearingly weird characters, Man-Thing had a modest budget, decent special effects, and an insanely detailed swamp. It also had a lot more gore and nudity than the usual comic-book adaptation. What it didn’t have was a decent script or a cast that could do much with what they were given. (The great Australian actor Jack Thompson is ludicrous in the role of Frederick Schist.) Considering how simple the plot is, Man-Thing has a lot of head-scratching moments. If the Man-Thing has been summoned to protect the swamp from the oil companies and the rednecks, why does it also kill a Native shaman? In the comic books, at least, the Man-Thing had once been a man before he was transformed into a swamp monster. In this one, there’s no real origin for the creature. This movie could just as easily have been called Plant-Thing.
Man-Thing was actually one of the most interesting characters introduced when Marvel started publishing horror comics in the 1970s. Formerly a biochemist named Ted Sallis, Man-Thing lived in the Everglades and could detect emotions. His touch could burn, but only if the person being touched was afraid of him. With no memory of his former life as a human, Man-Thing was the guardian of the Nexus of All Realities. When Man-Thing got his own series, writer Steve Gerber gave him an eccentric and colorful supporting cast, including Howard the Duck and teenage sorceress Jennifer Kale. The comic-book Man-Thing provided a lot of good material for a potential film, so it’s too bad that this version turned him into just another swamp monster.
Man-Thing was originally meant to be a theatrical release but was dumped onto the Sci Fi Channel instead. (It did get a brief theatrical release in a few international markets, including Spain, where it bombed.) In the later Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character played a supporting role in 2022’s Werewolf by Night, so who knows? Maybe he’ll get the film he deserves someday.
Decades ago, a bunch of small, furry aliens crash-landed on a studio lot. The little aliens may be cute and they may love to laugh, but they’re also evil. They’ll make fantasies come true and then use those fantasies to kill their victims. The lot’s caretaker, Mr. McCreedy (Jeffrey Culver), has dedicated his life to making sure the hobgoblins remain locked away in a vault. After the hobgoblins kill a security guard who fantasized about being a rock star, Mr. McCreedy has to hire a replacement. Teenage Kevin (Tom Bartlett) takes the job because he’s trying to prove to his girlfriend, Amy (Paige Sullivan), that he can be responsible. Kevin accidentally frees the hobgoblins. Now he and his stupid friends have to stop them before they start granting fatal fantasies.
I don’t know that I really believe in the idea that a movie can be “so bad that it’s good,” but Hobgoblins comes close. It’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it also features scenes you will never forget. Early on, there’s an extended scene where Kevin and his friend Nick (Billy Frank) have a fight with a rake and a garden hoe. The scene goes on forever, it doesn’t add much to the plot, and then it ends with Amy, who is supposed to be a sympathetic character, getting mad at Kevin for losing. Later, when Kevin tells his friends that their lives depend on not fantasizing about anything, everyone reacts by talking about their favorite fantasies, and weirdo Kyle (Steven Boggs) immediately calls his favorite phone-sex hotline. When the hobgoblins are tracked down to a bar called Club Scum, it turns out that the prudish Amy has always fantasized about being a stripper who apparently doesn’t take off her clothes while performing. After Nick survives being in the middle of an explosion, he and his girlfriend, Daphne (Kelley Palmer), duck into a van that immediately starts rocking while everyone else just casually stands next to it.
The acting is amateurish and the plot is incoherent. Even after they’re set free from the vault, the hobgoblins don’t seem that interested in doing anything other than stalking the same small group of people. The hobgoblin puppets are actually not bad, and I like how they pop up in the background and start laughing whenever someone is having a fantasy. Hobgoblins has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made, and that reputation is probably deserved, but I dare anyone to look away once the movie starts.
There aren’t many movies that can claim to start with a rock-and-roll fantasy and end with a rockin’ van and a joke about phone sex. Hobgoblins is one of the few.
When I was 11 years old, I spent about a month and a half living in a motel with my mom and my sisters. We were between homes, and since my mom didn’t really have the money to pay for our rooms, she and my two oldest sisters would work as maids during the day while my sister Erin and I stayed in our own room and watched stuff on the television that we probably shouldn’t have been watching. (“What are you watching!?” Mom would say as either Erin or I grabbed the remote and tried to get the TV off of HBO as quickly as possible.)
In retrospect, I know that all probably sounds very dramatic and traumatic, but I have to admit that, at the time, it just felt like an adventure. I was jealous of my mom and my sisters getting to wear uniforms every day and basically go anywhere they wanted in the motel. I would ask my mom and sisters about what they found in the rooms they had to clean, and I would beg for a chance to go with them because I figured it had to be fun to see how other people lived. They always refused. Years later, my sister Megan would tell me that they usually just found discarded underwear, used condoms, and half-eaten fast food.
Sometimes I would sit in the front lobby, bothering whoever was working behind the desk and trying to overhear conversations. I loved watching the various people who checked in and out of the motel, and I would imagine amazing identities and life stories for them. At night, I would listen for sounds coming from other rooms. One time, the police were called because the people below us were fighting, and I remember watching the reflection of the red lights flashing across the walls of my room.
That said, I think my main memory of living at that motel was that there was a creek right next to the hotel (though I always envision it as a raging river whenever I think back to those days), and on the other side of that creek there was a drive-in movie theater. Every night, I would go out on the balcony and look into the distance, at the silent images flickering across the giant screens. The fact that I couldn’t actually hear what Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were saying only made the experience more enjoyable. I could make up my own stories to go along with the images. Watching those movies became a ritual for me. I had to watch every night, at the same time, and if anyone tried to keep me from doing so, I would throw a fit. Though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, for me that drive-in came to represent stability.
I found myself thinking back to those days as I watched Surviving the Sleepover, a Lifetime film from 2024. Hannah (Sloan Mannino) is a teenage girl who has been living in a motel with her mother (Dawn Marie) ever since they moved to a new town. Hannah, whose father was killed in a fire, does not have any sisters or a drive-in to keep her company. Instead, she uploads videos and spends her time missing all of her friends. However, when popular girl Melissa (Jenna Hogan) invites Hannah to a sleepover, it seems like things might be looking up.
Of course, they’re not.
Melissa is mean as well as popular. Melissa is also obsessed with her stepbrother (Joshua Bertell), and when it becomes apparent that he likes Hannah, Melissa goes off the deep end. Soon Melissa is threatening her guests with a knife, tying people up in the attic, and basically being a very bad host.
This is an enjoyably berserk little Lifetime film, one that understands the importance of embracing the melodrama. Jenna Hogan gives an entertaining performance as the unhinged Melissa. From the moment she complained that Hannah was still “salty” just because Melissa had attempted to drown her earlier, I knew this film was going to be a Lifetime classic.
And yet, as I watched the film, my main thought was that this all could have been avoided if the nation’s drive-ins hadn’t closed. When you don’t have a drive-in theater to visit, you end up threatening people at sleepovers. That’s just the truth of the matter.
Kyle Williams (Matthew Le Nevez), the newly appointed sheriff of a Louisiana parish, wants to know why so many people have disappeared in the swamp. Oilman Frederick Schist (Jack Thompson) puts the blame on activist Rene LaRoque (Steve Bastoni), who lives in the swamp and has been vandalizing Schist’s oil rigs. Indigenous shaman Horn (Rawiri Paratene) suggests that the culprit is actually a legendary spirit that lives in and protects the swamp and is angry because Schist cheated the local Seminole chief out of his land.
Decades ago, a bunch of small, furry aliens crash-landed on a studio lot. The little aliens may be cute and they may love to laugh, but they’re also evil. They’ll make fantasies come true and then use those fantasies to kill their victims. The lot’s caretaker, Mr. McCreedy (Jeffrey Culver), has dedicated his life to making sure the hobgoblins remain locked away in a vault. After the hobgoblins kill a security guard who fantasized about being a rock star, Mr. McCreedy has to hire a replacement. Teenage Kevin (Tom Bartlett) takes the job because he’s trying to prove to his girlfriend, Amy (Paige Sullivan), that he can be responsible. Kevin accidentally frees the hobgoblins. Now he and his stupid friends have to stop them before they start granting fatal fantasies.
