For a week and a day in June of 2019, Chicago’s historic Music Box Theater played host to the third annual Cinepocalypse genre film festival. The trademark mix of beloved and/or maligned classics—Flatliners, Total Recall, Hot Dog…The Movie, Tammy and the T-Rex (Original R-Rated ‘Gore-Cut’!), Airheads—and not-yet-released films once again populated this year’s programming. TV-VCR consumed a lot of these new things in order to regurgitate the following pull-quote-ready blurbs:
- With more breast implants on display than actual talent, Glenn Danzig’s pretentious, amateurish anthology of shit, Verotika, plays like a film student’s thesis after a weekend of binging giallo and Pornhub. Danzig and Tommy Wiseau share more in common than just bad looks—like The Room, Verotika is a rollicking, hilariously earnest disaster, best viewed in a crowded, rowdy theater. Believe the hype. Grade: a resplendent F
- Part Conjuring/Insidious-style paranormal investigation, part Sicario/Narcos-style law enforcement procedural, Belzebuth squanders a truly horrific opening massacre on a bunch of seen-it-before CGI exorcism hooey. Grade: C-
- Sure, Punta Muerto (Dead End) relies on a one-note gimmick, but it’s a good one; the style of a 1950s whodunit is committed to for an admirable 77 minutes of this sketch of a mystery picture. Grade: B-
- This year’s icky, black comic oddity (see: The Greasy Strangler, Attack of the Adult Babies), Mope is a more depressing and surreal take on Boogie Nights‘ tragicomedy about hapless porn actors. Points for a grimly sarcastic drop of Drive’s hit, “A Real Hero.” Grade: C
- Cinepocalypse 2019 Best Actress award winner Azura Skye definitely went all-the-fuck-in for The Swerve, an embarrassingly histrionic melodrama with Lynchian aspirations about a woman’s mental deterioration. Too bad it wasn’t for better. Grade: D
- Ghost Killers vs. Bloody Mary is a cheerfully silly and gross horror-comedy version of Grave Encounters, owing a lot to the early work of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson (but unfortunately not as memorably). This slapstick import knows precisely what it is, referencing its future Netflix home and pointing out how it unabashedly rips off Ghostbusters throughout. Grade: C+
- May and The Woman horror maestro Lucky McKee takes a run at less gory fare than usual: the cheesy, ’90s domestic thriller-style pleasures of Kindred Spirits. Grade: B
- Speaking of The Woman, star Pollyanna McIntosh returned for sequel Darlin’—also her feature debut as writer and director. Like McKee’s controversial 2011 predecessor, Darlin’ is a more-entertaining-than-it-should-be combination of darkly-funny satire and gooey genre schlock. Grade: B
- Satanic Panic is deeply rooted in ’80s video store tropes as an unsubtle, suburban horror-comedy featuring a pizza delivery driver, B-listers hamming it up, and a heavy emphasis on practical gore. Grade: C+
- Local Chicago production The Lurker boasts a cool retro score, but little else besides a parade of well-worn slasher movie clichés. Grade: D+
- Why Don’t You Just Die! won the Audience Choice Award handily with its pleasingly derivative cocktail of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s sickly green, Rube Goldberg-ian aesthetic, Guy Ritchie’s hyperkineticism and violent asides, and gallons and gallons of fake blood and gallows humor. Grade: B+
- Best Feature Film winner The Last to See Them plays like Sofia Coppola’s take on the home invasion thriller; nothing really happens in Sara Summa’s ambling anti-horror debut. Grade: A-
See you next FEAR (year), genre fans.
