Have you read Pt. 1 of this series? NO? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING. Read “EVERY. TREEHOUSE OF HORROR. EVER. [REVIEW] (Pt. 1).” Oh, hello there! Glad you’re back. I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about these upcoming episodes. Season 5 through 10 were “my jam,” as annoying people are known to stupidly say. I own the DVDs (not to brag) and quote them often, so this is gonna be great. Are you guys excited? Can’t respond because you’re reading something and will look like a crazy person for talking out loud? GREAT. LET’S GET TO IT!

Treehouse of Horror VI (Season 7, Ep. 6)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Matt “Funk Lord of USA” Groening

“Attack of the 50ft. Eyesores” – Homer, a man obsessed with donuts, seeks a colossal donut from Lard Lad. Learning that the donut isn’t actually colossal, Homer steals the metallic donut from a statue, causing the statue to come to life! A bunch of other large advertisements come to life to destroy Springfield, and even when Homer gives Lard Lad the donut back, it doesn’t end there. Lisa has to get Paul Anka to sing a jingle to distract people from the mascots, claiming that ignoring advertising is what really hurts it. This was a cool segment visually, but not super funny. My favorite joke was Wiggum shooting a really tall guy, thinking he was a mascot, only to learn he killed the captain of the high school basketball team. DEATH TO TALL PEOPLE!

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“Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace” – Bart has a nightmare where Groundskeeper Willie scratches him with a rake and other kids at school reveal similar nightmares and injuries caused by janitorial equipment. Marge explains that at a P.T.A. meeting, the adults accidentally let Groundskeeper Willie burn to death in the boiler room because they vetoed spending money on virtually everything that could have spared Willie. Bart and Lisa realize they need to kill Willie in their dreams because it’s your classic Freddy Krueger scenario, with less child molestation. The climax isn’t very funny but is true to the spirit of A Nightmare on Elm Street, so who cares if you don’t laugh? We also got to hear Homer say, “Lousy Smarch weather,” which is one of the best lines from the show ever.

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“Homer^3″ – With Patty and Selma on their way over, Bart, Lisa, and Homer scramble for hiding places and Homer uncovers a portal behind the bookcase that he describes as, “…like something out of that Twilight-y show about that zone.” He teleports to a 3D universe, which was super wild for 1995. Marge calls in for help and even sends Bart in after him, but when a 3D cone pokes Homer, he throws it and creates a black hole in the universe which he gets sucked into before Bart can save him. Homer crash-lands in a dumpster in a live-action world and finds shelter in an erotic cake store. The episode mostly seemed like a reaction to how “advanced” other forms of animation were at the time and how The Simpsons stuck with 2D. There are some cool Poltergeist effects when Homer calls out to his family, so that’s really the only connection it has to anything horror.

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Overall Thoughts – Possibly the most ambitious “Treehouse of Horror” installment to date, so good for them! Even if there aren’t many super funny jokes, the 3D segment alone seems embedded in most people’s memories of the show attempting some really cool stuff. Once Homer walks into the erotic cake store in the last segment, the credits just roll over footage of the street Homer walked down, so you get this feeling of the episode never truly ending and that just never really sits that well with me.

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Treehouse of Horror VII (Season 8, Ep. 1)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Brad “To The Bone” Bird

“The Thing and I” – Bart and Lisa question their parents about strange noises they hear in the attic, and despite denying anything weird going on, Homer still responds with, “I work my butt off to feed you 4 kids…” before Marge reminds him they have only three kids, to which he says, “Yeah, three NOSY kids.” HOMER, YOU GOOFED UP. Marge reveals that Bart was a conjoined twin and when Dr. Hibbert separated the siblings, he knew one was evil and one was good, so the evil one, named “Hugo,” lived in the attic while Bart roamed free. When Dr. Hibbert confronts Hugo, he notices the scar is on the wrong side of his body and Bart is actually the good one! This means Bart has to live in the attic and eat fish heads once a week. Poor guy. Thinking of someone living inside your house genuinely creeps me out, so this segment resonated deeply with me. You could say it “spooked my bones,” if you’d like. Homer has some good lines and there’s a joke about twisted, solitary misfits hanging out at RadioShack, which was maybe a popular opinion in 1996? I don’t know, I was only 12.

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“The Genesis Tub” – When a tooth falls out, Lisa decides to start a science experiment to see what happens to a tooth in a bowl full of soda. Bart zaps her with static electricity, causing her to accidentally zap the tooth, creating life! Bart notices she’s created life and decide to mess with the civilization, which is evolving quickly, and the citizens strike back against Bart with miniature spaceships. The creatures shrink Lisa down to thank her for creating them, but unfortunately don’t have the technology to bring her back to actual size, so she’s stuck there. I liked the setup of this episode because it seems like something Lisa would actually do. Plus, you get to have Bart being destructive Bart, which is one of the best types of Bart! Oh yeah, and when he finds the bowl, he asks her, “Are you trying to grow a friend?” Haha, classic Bart!

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“Citizen Kang” – Kang and Kodos abduct Homer and threaten to replace the world’s leader. Homer mentions an election is about to take place, so Kang and Kodos replace Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. That’s when hilarity ensues! The aliens pretend to be politicians, yet have no idea what human society is like, so they say lots of hilarious things. It’s hard to believe that the lines, “Abortions for some, miniature american flags for others,” “Forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom,” and, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos,” all came from the same seven minutes! Despite how funny this segment is, it felt more like an opportunity to do some heavy political jokes shrouded in an alien replacement plot. For as hilarious as it is, I think these jokes could have been worked into any other episode and done something even wilder with Kang and Kodos.

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Overall Thoughts – Hard to top that first sequence and how well it blended horror with classic Simpson tomfoolery, but this was definitely a solid installment. I blame Lisa for dragging the whole thing down though, because, well, who the hell likes Lisa Simpson? NO ONE. GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, LISA. At least none of these segments involved Bleeding Gums Murphy. Yikes, remember those? This episode was definitely better than those.

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Treehouse of Horror VIII (Season 9, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Richard “I Wish I Was Dead” Sakai

“The Homega Man” – Wish tensions rising between Springfield and France, Homer reminds the family they don’t have to worry because he built his own bomb shelter, which is actually just a refrigerator box with “USA #1” painted on it. Homer decides to buy a new bomb shelter regardless, and while eating the rations inside one, nuclear winter kills everyone in Springfield. Now that Homer has the town to himself, he goes to church, changes the sign to read “Homer Rocks!,” and dances naked inside to “War” by Edwin Starr. Homer’s world comes crumbling down when mutated survivors of the nuclear winter interrupt him, hoping to eat his face. Homer goes to his house where he finds his family alive, protected from the radiation by the house’s layer of lead paint, and the happy family kills the mutants and drive Ferraris. OH MY GOD. THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD JOKES IN THIS EPISODE. When a missile rockets down Springfield’s sidewalks, Comic Book Guy says, “Oh I’ve wasted my life,” immediately before impact. Homer punches a bad driver after the nuclear blast, causing their head to shatter, to which he replies with, “Still got it!” THE SEGMENT ALSO MAKES FUN OF GARY LARSON BECAUSE HE WAS SUPER POPULAR IN THE MID-90’s! THE BEST.

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“Fly vs. Fly” – While rummaging through mad scientist Frink’s garage sale, Homer buys a matter transporter. It makes his life much easier, because now he can get to the top of the stairs without walking. While testing conveniences of his new machine, Homer tries grabbing a beer, but without being able to see what he’s grabbing, instead takes a big swig for a can labeled, “CAT EAR MEDICINE,” followed by, “Oh MAN that’s good.” When Bart uses the machine, a fly sneaks in and the two switch bodies. With Lisa’s help, Bart is able to get back in the transporter with the fly, after wacky shenanigans of course, and all is right once again in the Simpson household. Guys. This is another amazing sequence. Homer gets to say insane things and act crazy, Lisa is barely in it, and it’s a parody of The Fly. WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR?! Okay, how about Homer saying things like, “Ka-blammo!” when he accidentally sends his fist through the teleporter and punches Lisa in the face. What about overhearing the end of Homer telling a story that involves, “…so then Lenny says, as if! Don’t even go there, sister!” And then the segment ends with Homer grabbing an ax, implying he’ll smash the teleporter, only to chase Bart around threatening to kill him. Man…this was real good. I loved it!

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“Easy Bake-Coven” – Uh-oh, a period piece? This one could be terrible! It’s set during the Salem Witch Trials and Marge is accused of being a witch. The only way to test the theory is to throw Marge off a cliff to see if she survives, which she does! Bart exclaims, “Well I’ll be a son of a witch,” because he is. Get it? Marge meets up with Patty and Selma and the three decide to eat all the children in town. When Flanders offers a gingerbread child, the witches realize maybe they should just go around town demanding treats, and the tradition of trick-or-treating begins! With this segment focusing so heavily on Marge, it left the entire town free to just throw in one-liners, making it super funny. The two previous segments might have been funnier than this one, but what it lacked in jokes it made up for in Halloween spirit, so I loved it. I LOVED IT A LOT.

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Overall Thoughts: GUYS. THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE BEST ONE SO FAR. Holy cow. When I started thinking of watching all these episodes, the segments all just kind of blended together. I had no idea that three of the best segments were all in the same episode. It was a fantastic mix of movie parodies and Halloween fun. The first two segments were funnier than the last, but we got more Halloween spirit in the final segment. This is it, Simpsons creators, you’ve found the perfect formula. Please do this like 15 more times and I’ll be a happy guy. I’m sure the’re all this good, right? Right? HELLO?

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Treehouse of Horror IX (Season 10, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: “Sheer Terror Claws-Son”

“Hell Toupee” – Famous Springfield criminal Snake is given the death sentence for robbing the Kwik-E-Mart, but his hair is salvaged for a transplant. Hmmm…I wonder which character will get the hair? IT’S HOMER! HOMER GETS SNAKE’S HAIR! The hair starts to control Homer’s actions, and remembering that Bart was a witness to Snake’s crimes, the hair makes Homer try to kill his son. When Homer realizes what’s happening, he rips the hair from his head and the police shoot it dead. Since we’ve seen Sideshow Mel attempt to kill Bart multiples times, this episode didn’t seem much different from one of those. The highlight was Homer ripping his hair off to battle it, when the hair latches on to Bart’s face, causing Homer to repeatedly punch his son directly in the face. Haha, stupid Bart.

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“The Terror of Tiny Toon” – When the batteries in the TV remote die, Bart and Lisa replace them with plutonium they found in Homer’s work gear. While arguing over control of the remote, the kids get sucked into an episode of Itchy & Scratchy, with the mouse and cat proceeding to kill them. It’s weird watching cartoons get attacked by different cartoons and expect an audience to at all be invested in what’s going on. I just felt like I was watching a poor man’s Stay Tuned, a movie that I’m sure everyone had forgotten about by the time this episode aired. Luckily, there’s a Poochie cameo! Unfortunately, there’s also a Regis and Kathie Lee cameo. I don’t get it.

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“Starship Poopers” – Haha, it says poop right in the title! It’s gotta be funny! When Maggie loses her baby teeth, along with her “baby legs,” the family gets suspicious. Because, ya know, tentacles come out of her. Marge reveals that Kang impregnated her and he’s the real father, so the whole family goes on Jerry Springer to argue about it. WHAT. WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING. When Homer first sees Maggie on the ceiling, which she can climb because of her tentacles, it’s funny that all he can say is, “She’s entering her terrible twos alright.” Luckily we were spared from seeing Kang have sex with Marge, since he impregnated her with some ray gun or something, but I was getting reallllll nervous thinking we might see the two of them have sex. Now I’ll just have to picture it, much like I am right now. Gotta go!

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Overall Thoughts – I’m sure part of my reaction to this episode is based off of how good the previous year’s episode was, but it was also really frustrating to know how good the show could be and then see an episode like this just a year later. There was too strong of a pop culture influence this year, and I’m sure if you asked most younger people who Jerry Springer, Regis Philbin, or Kathie Lee Gifford were, they’d probably have no idea. Oh well, at least we got to see Poochie again!

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Treehouse of Horror X (Season 11, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Uh, An Ogre?

“I Know What You Diddiliy-iddly-did” – You guys remember the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” franchise? Maybe? Kind of? Either way, this is kind of a riff on those movies! Marge accidentally kills Flanders with her car and the Simpson family disposes of the body. Shortly after, the family begins to receive threatening messages that imply someone knows they killed Flanders. The reveal? Why, it’s Flanders himself! He’s still alive because he’s actually a werewolf. Who saw THAT coming?! Not you! Despite my trepidation over an homage to a not-so-classic horror series, I thought this segment was pretty good. Homer wasn’t the main focus so he just got to chime in with hilarious things, often to incriminate Marge. I laughed hardest at Homer using Ned’s body to pull off Weekend at Bernie’s style gags, but Homer is very rarely blameless in murder-related shenanigans so he got to hold that over Marge’s head. Consider me entertained! Much like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie Inventing the Abbotts.

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“Desperately Xeeking Xena” – After a horrible accident with an x-ray machine, Bart gains the powers of being stretchy and Lisa becomes super strong. Comic Book Guy captures Lucy Lawless at a convention and places her in a giant Mylar bag to preserve her forever in his collection of famous sci-fi personalities. Bart and Lisa, as the super duo “Stretch Dude and Power Girl,” help save her. That’s really it. I don’t know what the hell this had to do with Halloween, but I assume Lucy Lawless agreed to do a role and they just vaguely modeled this one around her. I guess Xena: Warrior Princess must have been popular at the time?

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“Life’s a Glitch, Then You Die” – WORDPLAY! You’re chuckling at the title already, aren’t you? I’ll bet you are. One thing to keep in mind is that this episode aired in 1999, a time when people thought Y2K would ruin the world. Can’t remember what Y2K was? READ A BOOK, MILLENNIAL! The town of Springfield prepares for the year 2000, but unfortunately Homer didn’t do his job correctly so when midnight strikes, all electronics go haywire. The family seeks out help in the chaos and find Krusty dying and they steal a letter from his pocket. There’s a rocket ship going to Mars! Only Lisa and Marge are allowed in and Homer and Bart get on another rocket that doesn’t have tight security. Tom Arnold, Spike Lee, and a whole bunch of losers are also on the rocket, which gets launched into the Sun. Hmmm…Y2K…that was uneventful, wasn’t it? At the time, everyone was going nuts about it, so maybe this was a commentary on how nuts people got? Or a long setup to make fun of Tom Arnold? Either way, it wasn’t that fulfilling.

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Overall Thoughts – The opening couch gag had references to previous Treehouse of Horror segments, which seemed to have promise that they’d be following their tried and true formula for success, but the dated segments didn’t really hold up. That first segment was solid, which also got my hopes up, but the Lucy Lawless segment could have been worked into virtually any episode and dealing with Y2K felt more like an obligation to discuss a big pop culture event instead of an opportunity to make some interesting jokes. Even though other episodes involved scenes taking place during the day, but it was the first segment that made me realize how un-Halloween-y the segments look when in brightly lit environments. I genuinely think if every scene of this episode took place at night, I would have enjoyed them more because they would have been more spooky.

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Stay tuned all this week for reviews on the rest of the episodes! Don’t miss any updates by following @TheWolfman on Twitter or liking “The Wolfman Cometh” on Facebook. You don’t want to miss updates, do you?

WE’RE TWO DEEP. TWO DEEP, I SAY! Read Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 to catch up on ten years worth of Treehouse of Horror segments before reading any further. Well, unless you’re an IDIOT who likes knowing NOTHING. I guess that’s been working out pretty well for me though. Get it? Because I’m an idiot? Who knows nothing? Anyways, I have little memory of any of these episodes because I think I was too cool for The Simpsons at this point in my life or something. Hahahaha. That’s crazy, because I was less cool when these episodes aired than I am now, which is not at all! Enough of the dilly-dallying, let’s tear into this crap-sack!

Treehouse of Horror XI (Season 12, Ep. 1)

Funniest Credits Nickname: The Dwarf from “Don’t Look Now”

“G-g-ghost D-d-dad” – Homer’s horoscope not only warns him that he’s going to die that day, but also says that he will receive a compliment from an attractive worker, which Homer hopes is Lenny. BOTH HOROSCOPES COME TRUE! When Homer gets to Heaven, he’s given 24 hours to go back to earth to perform one good deed worthy of letting him into heaven. After a few failed attempts at benevolence, he eventually saves a baby from careening into the street, but Saint Peter wasn’t looking, and Homer is sent to Hell. THE END! There are some good visual gags in this episode, like ghost Homer drinking a Squishee, only to have it fall on the ground and people slip on it. Also Homer’s attempts at doing good, like carrying Agnes Skinner across the street, only to fall and Homer claim she was going to be the next Hitler, were kind of funny. Still not Halloween-y enough for me!

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“Scary Tales Can Come True” – In this “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” parody, Homer loses his job as an oaf and since he can’t afford to take care of his children, he tosses Bart and Lisa into the woods. The kids come across parodies of the Three Bears, Rapunzel, and trolls. A witch tries to eat them but fails. Pretty funny, right? Okay, maybe that’s not the word for it. I guess it was kind of neat to see famous fairy tales in the Simpsons style? I wasn’t really into the concept of this one so I checked out early on, but it might be more up someone else’s alley.

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“Night of the Dolphin” – After a visit to an aquarium, Lisa frees a dolphin that she feels would be happier in the ocean, but that dolphin ends up being the dolphin ruler and convinces all other dolphins to revolt against humans. Now THAT’s funny! Dolphins start killing people one at a time, but their revolt escalates to coming up on land and forcing humans back into the sea. THIS ONE WAS GOOD. The story centered around Lisa, so every other member of the town got to pop in and act silly. My favorite moment was Mayor Quimby calling a town meeting to order and saying, “People, please, we’re all frightened and horny.” Hahaha, why are they all horny?! CLASSIC QUIMBY. Even though the concept was really silly, some scenes recreated classic moments from The Birds, with surprisingly creepy results. This is the Treehouse of Horror stuff I love! Keep it up!

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Overall Thoughts – The middle sequence was probably the least funny and least Halloween-y, but luckily that one was bookended by funnier/spookier stories. And you know me, I’m a sucker for ending with a story that brings the whole town into it, so this episode ended on a high note. Let’s keep the good times going!

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Treehouse of Horror XII (Season 13, Ep. 1)

“Hex and the City” – Hmmmm…hex? Will this be about witches?! No. It will not. Rather, the Simpson family travels to “Ethnictown” to see a fortune teller. Homer accidentally ruins the gypsy’s store so she curses Homer. Marge grows a beard overnight, Homer chokes Bart so much that his neck stretches, and Lisa grows hooves. Worst of all, a helicopter kills Lenny and Carl! No! To end the curse, Homer gets a leprechaun to battle the gypsy, but they end up getting married instead. Bart dies because his floppy neck is too weak to pull his head out of his cereal. Too bad! I liked the wacky versions of characters, and that Yoda officiated the wedding for some reason, but nothing much more memorable than that. Hey, it could’ve been worse!

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“House of Whacks” – Salesmen convince Marge to turn the Simpson house into a robotic ultrahouse, which I’m sure will happen without a hitch! The ultrahouse computer, voiced by Pierce Brosnan, begins falling for Marge and tries to eradicate the rest of the family. When the family realizes what’s happening, they shut the computer down in a scene reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but instead of deactivating completely, the voice instead loses its British charm. The family donates the computer to Patty and Selma, knowing they could use a man around their apartment, and the computer kills itself. Even though the Simpson family already had a computerized home (in Season 8’s “You Only Move Twice”), this story was different enough to not feel redundant. The episode referenced Pierce Brosnan, Matthew Perry, and Dennis Miller, and even though those people haven’t really been important to pop culture for 15 years, the jokes still worked, especially compared to the recent Jerry Springer or Regis and Kathie Lee references. When Bart sees Dennis Miller as an option for the computer’s voice, he asks, “Isn’t that the voice that caused all those suicides?” to which Homer clarifies, “MURDER-suicides.” CLASSIC MURDER-SUICIDE GAG! Maybe it’s that the pop culture references were clever and quick that they didn’t bother me? WHO CARES, IT WORKED!

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“Wiz Kids” – HARRY POTTER TIME! Bart and Lisa attend “Springwart’s School of Magicry” and as you can imagine, Lisa excels while Bart flops. Mr. Burns is re-imagined as Lord Montymort, who recruits Bart to be a wizard powerful enough to fight Lisa. When the siblings collide, Burns transforms into a dragon, and Bart learns the error of his ways in time to defeat Burns with his sister. I guess Harry Potter was so popular that the show couldn’t avoid doing their take on it, but I felt like a lot more could have been done, especially considering how many strong supporting characters center around the school. Oh well, guess I’ll have to write my own parody with better jokes!

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Overall Thoughts – Trivia! The creators were getting sick of coming up with silly nicknames for the credits so they dropped them this year. The show opened with a gag where Mr. Burns was putting up one not so spooky decoration, which started a chain reaction of events leading to some horrific things happening. I really like how this was clearly a one-note joke that they couldn’t fit into any of the segments so instead used it to introduce the show. None of the segments really fit the “horror” conceit, but since this aired shortly after 9/11, it’s possible that the creators didn’t want to do anything too grim so soon after a tragedy.

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Treehouse of Horror XIII (Season 14, Ep. 1)

“Send in the Clones” – When Homer breaks a hammock, he has to replace it. The end. JUST KIDDING. He buys a magical hammock that creates clones. Realizing how handy it is to have clones around the house to do the things he doesn’t want to do, he creates tons of them. Unfortunately, the clones are a little warped mentally, and when one clone kills Flanders, Homer takes them all to a cornfield to abandon them. He also throws out the magical hammock, which the clones get their hands on, and they create an army of Homers. The military intervenes, but the ending reveals that one of the clones replaced Homer! This segment, similar to “Attack of the 50 foot Eyesores,” felt like a great concept that never really figured out what it wanted to be. The best joke was the Simpson family seeing Kent Brockman report on a horde of Homers, and Bart turning to ask, “Dad, is there something you’d like to tell us about this horde?” See, because they all look like him! Get it?! It’s funny. Shut up. There was also a funny gag where the clones were replicating themselves so frequently that they were turning into different mutations of Homer, including the morbidly obese Homer from Season 7’s “King Size Homer,” the Homer from The Tracey Ullman Show, and even Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Ya know, because that show was just a slightly warped copy of The Simpsons.

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“The Fright to Creep and Scare Harms” – When Lisa reds a tombstone that mentions someone getting murdered far too young by gun violence, she convinces Springfield to ban guns. The police even starts a program to exchange guns for money! Unfortunately, the tombstone belonged to Billy the Kid, who returns as a zombie with other famous outlaw zombies. Now they have all the guns! Professor Frink invents a time machine to go back to a time before the guns were banned and instead encourages the town to go to the cemetery to shoot all of the corpses repeatedly as a preventative measure. Another time-traveling Homer appears, this time from the more distant future, and the town just shoots him. Meh. I guess the setup of this segment was clever, but they weren’t really able to capitalize on the premise, much like the previous segment. ALL WELL, CAN’T WIN ‘EM ALL.

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“The Island of Dr. Hibbert” – The Simpson family decides to take a vacation to the Island of Lost Souls, where Dr. Hibbert has been transforming Springfield’s citizens into animals. When Marge sneaks out of her cabin to investigate, she gets turned into a cat. When Homer tries to find a cure to turn Marge back, he finds Flanders has transformed into a cow-centaur type of thing and requests Homer to milk him. When Homer confronts Hibbert for these atrocities, he realizes that all animals do is eat and mate and roll around in their own filth, and volunteers himself for transformation! Hibbert turns him into a walrus and everyone is happy! Despite not being all that funny, I enjoyed seeing this interpretation of the H.G. Wells novel because it was much better than the 1996 film version. IMAGINE IF VAL KILMER WAS IN THIS? Now THAT would have been something. Maybe next time, guys. Maybe next time.

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Overall Thoughts – Considering how lacking last year’s installment was on the horror front, I was happy to see this year embrace that angle much more, even if none of the segments were that strong. The opening gag featured a seance to contact Maude Flanders, only for it to have been a practical joke where Bart got to reveal he was the prankster with the line, “It’s me, Bart Simpson!” FLANDERS KNOWS YOUR LAST NAME, BART. Also worth mentioning is this year marked the official transition from the episodes referring to themselves as “Treehouse of Horror” instead of “Simpsons Halloween Special.” DID YOU KNOW THAT, GUYS? THEY CALLED THE EPISODES SOMETHING DIFFERENT FOR 13 YEARS.

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Treehouse of Horror XIV (Season 15, Ep. 1)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Al “Halloween Names are Back” Jean

“Reaper Madness” – Death comes to take Bart, but Homer intervenes to protect his son. He kills the Grim Repear, making it impossible for anyone on earth to die. Homer must embrace the role of the Grim Reaper to restore order and hijinks ensue! When God forces Homer to kill Marge, he instead kills Selma and tries to trick God. The bearded guy (God) doesn’t fall for it, exclaiming, “This isn’t Marge, this is her fat sister Selma.” Hahaha, that’s awesome. I love how morbid this segment was. In the brief period where no one is able to die, Moe tries to hang himself but just dangles there. MOE TRIES TO HANG HIMSELF. Moe is notorious for living a miserable life, so his suicide attempt was incredibly dark yet also hilarious. There’s also a scene at a baseball game where Homer and Bart have terrible seats so Homer just kills everyone in their way until they get to the front. Strong start to this year’s Halloween special, guys! Keep it up!

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“Frinkenstein” – Professor Frink wins the Nobel Prize, and during his acceptance speech, reveals that he wished he could impress his dead father. The twist is that Frink kept his dad’s corpse and finds a way to reanimate it! This “Frinkenstein’s Monster,” if you will, wants to replace his old body parts with new ones, killing anyone in his way. Then….oh, I don’t know, he dies or something? They got Jerry Lewis to voice Frink’s dad, so similarly to “Desperately Zeeking Xena,” this segment felt like it was an opportunity to have a guest do a voice before figuring out the best way to utilize them. Since Hank Azaria imitated Jerry Lewis’s character from The Nutty Professor to create Frink’s voice, it only made sense to have Lewis voice the re-animated father, but I think these two worlds colliding didn’t work out too well. I would’ve much preferred a whole episode center around Frink and his father so Jerry Lewis wouldn’t have had to be so…Jerry Lewis. Then again, I’m sure the people who make The Simpsons have a better idea of what to do with things than I do, so I’ll go back to not trying to usurp them.

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“Stop the World, I Want to Goof Off” – Bart and Milhouse order a watch that stops time from an old comic book ad. When the watch arrives and actually works, Milhouse acts like a nerd and says he wants to use it to get far ahead on his homework. Luckily Bart talks sense into him and they do a bunch of silly things, most of which involve making people’s pants fall down. When the town realizes these two are responsible, they chase them down, but when Bart uses the watch to stop time long enough to allow them to escape, the watch breaks! It takes 15 years to read the repair manual, but they eventually do it and blame the whole thing on Martin. Stupid Martin. There were a lot of funny visual gags in this episode, because of, ya know, TIME STOPPAGE. Not very scary, not very spooky, but Marge wondering why Bart aged 15 years while the time had stopped and offering no real explanation made me chuckle.

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Overall Thoughts – SILLY NAMES ARE BACK! Phew, that was a rough two years. The show’s opening featured a violent fight between the Simpson family with bats and guns and fire over Halloween candy, which signified the return to more horror-themed segments in the aftermath of toning it down after 9/11. Kang and Kodos pop in to tell the family they’re stupid for celebrating Halloween in November, referencing the fact that the Halloween specials had been airing the first week of November for four consecutive years. STUPID BASEBALL. YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING.

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Treehouse of Horror XV (Season 16, Ep. 1)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Ghostly McGhosterson

“The Ned Zone” – Homer accidentally gives Ned a concussion while using a bowling ball to retrieve a Frisbee from the roof. Much like the events of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, Flanders begins to have visions of people’s deaths. Homer recognizes Ned’s new-found skill and attempts to cash-in on it. When Flanders admits to having a vision where he shoots Homer, Homer tries to antagonize Ned into shooting him, thus making the premonition come true. When that doesn’t happen, Homer goes to work at the nuclear plant, feeling safe that Ned wasn’t always right. However, Homer is real dumb and at one point thinks Flanders has encouraged him to push a button to make the core explode, and Ned must resort to shooting him to prevent a nuclear holocaust. Obviously I’m a fan of this segment being a Stephen King parody, but that’s because I’m a sucker for a solid horror homage. Also, when Homer asks Ned how he envisioned his death, Homer hopes that it’s in a “naked girl avalanche,” and since I’ve envisioned that as my own death, it resonated deeply with me.

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“Four Beheadings and a Funeral” – In Victorian England, the Muttenchop Murderer runs wild! Maybe this is a Jack the Ripper parody? WRONG, MORON. Instead, Lisa and Bart act like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Well, I guess it could be a parody of both, but who cares? Lisa and Bart track down clues and find that the murder weapon belonged to Ebenezer Burns. The two track Burns to an opium den where they see that Homer is the Muttenchop Murderer. Wait, no, it’s actually Wiggum. It doesn’t really matter because the entire thing was Ralph Wiggum’s opium dream. Man, I sure do hate when anything is revealed to be a giant dream, even in animated form! This segment felt more like a faithful adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story than a clever twist on Sherlock as a pop culture figure. Not that spooky, not so many chuckles. Womp womp.

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“In the Belly of the Boss” – At an “Invention Expo,” Professor Frink creates a shrink ray so he can shrink a giant pill down in size, but before he can shrink it, Maggie crawls in. Then Mr. Burns eats the pill. MAGGIE IS IN MR. BURNS’ STOMACH. Frink shrinks the rest of the family in Fantastic Voyage fashion so they can save Maggie. They run into every obstacle you are currently picturing to get to Maggie, but they didn’t realize the ship was so precisely calibrated that it couldn’t handle the weight of Maggie so Homer stays behind. Before he can be rescued, Homer expands back to full size within Mr. Burns, but with all of Burns’ loose skin, Homer is able to stay alive. I don’t know, guys. This felt like an episode of The Magic School Bus more than anything else. I’d probably give this episode a worse rating if it wasn’t for the weirdness of Homer expanding inside Mr. Burns’ loose skin, because that was REAL gross. Also, this episode gets points for making Maggie an integral part of the story, definitely the Simpson who has had the least importance in every Treehouse of Horror.

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Overall Thoughts – This episode opened with a parody of Perfect Strangers featuring Kang and Kodos, which was weird, and also closed with the Perfect Strangers theme over the end credits. I DON’T GET IT. Maybe this signaled a broader conceptual narrative going forward, since the creators abandoned the wraparounds years? I thought the episode started strong but then just ran out of steam with the next two segments. Faaaaaaaart.

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Stay tuned all this week for reviews on the rest of the episodes! Don’t miss any updates by following @TheWolfman on Twitter or liking “The Wolfman Cometh” on Facebook. You don’t want to miss updates, do you?

I’m doing it! I’m really doing it! I’m over the halfway point so be sure to check out Pt. 1, Pt. 2, and Pt. 3 before reading about installments XVI through XX. Can anyone confirm that this post is the first time I say, “I’m losing my mind”? I feel like that would be an easy thing to check, but I don’t have that kind of time. I was cautiously optimistic about these episodes because, even though I hadn’t been watching The Simpsons anymore, public opinion on the quality of these years was pretty low. Or maybe people just thought they were too cool to like the show. WHO KNOWS?! Point is, I was nervous that I would just hate everything, but there was some quality stuff in here! One segment I’d even consider a new all-time favorite! Well, what are you doing looking at this part? Just scroll down to see what the hell I’m talking about.

Treehouse of Horror XVI (Season 17, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Fearlicia Zalizombie-Decaplanated

“Bartificial Intelligence” – When Bart put himself in a coma after jumping out of a window, the Simpsons replace him with a robot son, similar to what happened in the film A.I., which I’m starting to think was an inspiration for this segment. When Bart finally wakes up from the coma, he and the new robot son compete for love from family and friends. Homer goes on a drive with Bart, only to leave him in the woods to die. Bart finds company with a bunch of discarded robots and befriends them. Bart turns on these robots to ultimately destroy his replacement, but before any of that can happen, Homer wakes up, revealing it all to be a dream he had while possessed by the Devil. WAIT, WHAT? Where did that come from? On the one hand, it’s kind of disorienting to negate everything we just watched by revealing it was a dream, but on the other hand, it’s also funny to willingly discredit everything you just watched. I CALL IT A DRAW! Still though, kind of weird to do an A.I. parody.

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“Survival of the Fattest” – Mr. Burns invites Homer to a hunting party, which makes Homer think he’s a real special guy. When he gets to Mr. Burns’ house, he sees that lots of other employees were invited, and Homer’s not that special. What a loser. Homer should learn to be thankful that there are so many other people at the party, because it ends up being a party for Mr. Burns to hunt people! Eventually Marge rescues Homer, but not before Burns can kill some people. Ummm, I guess this was okay? And I guess murdering other characters was kind of horrific and that’s why it was here? I don’t know, I think I’m starting to lose my mind.

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“I’ve Grown a Costume on Your Face” – Springfield holds a city-wide costume contest to celebrate Halloween, awarding a prized gift certificate to a woman dressed as a witch! When the judges call for the participants to remove their masks, it turns out the witch was a real witch. As punishment for making fun of her or calling her ugly or who knows what, she turns the town into living versions of whatever their costume was. Some of the town prefer their costumed lives, while some don’t, but it doesn’t matter because Maggie, now a witch, turns them all into pacifiers! OH MAN! Everyone in town celebrated Halloween, so that was great. Homer’s costume involved having a detached head, so when his head was actually taken off and he tried to drink beer, he couldn’t. Ya know, because he doesn’t have a stomach. Classic! I’m sure that even if this episode was called “Everyone Wears a Costume” I would have liked it, so the few gags it did have only sweetened the deal.

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Overall Thoughts – The episode opened with a gag about how boring baseball is, which I assume is another jab at how the Treehouse of Horror specials have to air in November. Stick it to the man, TV show! The first two segments underwhelmed me, so I’m glad the final segment hit all the things I come to know and love about these specials. Even if it wasn’t funny enough to redeem the whole episode, I was happy to end on a good seasonal note, at least.

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Treehouse of Horror XVII (Season 18, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: The Less Scary American Remake Of Daniel Chun

“Married to the Blob” – When a meteor lands in the Simpsons’ backyard, of course Homer eats the sludge that leaks out. You idiot. This goop transforms him into an eating machine, which he basically was before, but now he also grows in size. There’s a montage of Homer wandering around town eating people with a parody of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” know sung as “Baby Got Fat,” by the real Mr. Mix-A-Bunch guy himself! Dr. Phil tries to confront Homer about the issues behind his eating and the town solves the problem by opening a homeless shelter, only to have Homer be waiting on the other side. Guys…this one was pretty good! I liked that it parodied The Blob and I especially liked that it had a really dark ending featuring the deaths of dozens of innocent people. Homeless people, no less! Very mean-spirited. It also had Homer saying, “Must eat. Then poop. Then eat some more. Then eat while pooping,” which made me laugh, as well as a teen saying, “Tell my friends I died kissing a girl,” right before Homer consumed him. This episode is off to a pretty good start!

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“You Gotta Know When to Golem” – After a taping of Krusty’s show, Bart goes behind the scenes and finds Krusty’s Golem, a monster from Jewish folklore. Krusty writes orders for the creature on a piece of paper and puts it in the creatures mouth, who then comes to life to do his bidding. Bart takes advantage of the Golem and he now does Bart’s bidding. When ordered to talk, the Golem comes to life for good. The Golem expresses his guilt over all the evil deeds he carried out, so the Simpsons make a female Golem and the two live happily ever after. The fact that this segment told the story of the Golem at all won me over, since I’m really only familiar with the creature from 1915’s The Golem. The Golem was voiced by Richard Lewis and Fran Drescher voiced the female Golem, so that was perfect. There were also a couple of really funny moments, like Krusty explaining his show was broadcasting in HD and revealing how gross his face was when seen in high definition. Remember when that happened? When we realized how gross HD is? That was gross. Guys…this episode is really starting to come together!

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“The Day the Earth Looked Stupid” – During the Great Depression, the town of Springfield gets confused by Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast. When the radio says it was invaded by Earth’s closest neighbor, Homer ponders, “…Flanders?” Haha, Homer, you dummy! That’s YOUR neighbor! The town goes crazy and, the next day, Lisa is the only sensible one who tells the town they are stupid for being tricked by a radio broadcast. Kang and Kodos witness the confusion from space and realize how easy it would be to conquer Earth, which they do, and then make a reference to our invasion of Iraq. This was another solid parody, and the sepia-tone really set the animation apart from other segments in recent years. The Iraq War comparison was a bummer, but we also got to see a 1930s Disco Stu say, “Big Band Stu says 23 ska-doo!” so I guess those two cancel each other out.

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Overall Thoughts – Easily the best installment in years, with a solid mix of comedy, influences, and animation styles. Of course, the last segment took place on Halloween and we got to see various incarnations of Springfield residents, AND YOU GUYS KNOW I LOVE THAT! The intro to the episode recreated the intro of the Tales from the Crypt TV show, which was icing on the cake. Are things looking up for the Treehouse of Horror legacy?! STAY TUNED…FOR LIKE 30 SECONDS TO READ WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

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Treehouse of Horror XVIII (Season 19, Ep. 5)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Health Care in this Country

“E.T. Go Home” – When Bart goes to the shed in the backyard, he throws a baseball into it and discovers Kodos. Wait, how long have they had a shed? Anyways, Kodos asks for help building a communication device, and thinking that this will result in rescue, Bart helps. It turns out it’s actually a portal to allow more aliens to arrive on Earth and humans are enslaved. YOU IDIOTS! This parody hit all the major points of E.T. and then put their own spin on it, which I always love. One sequence of Homer getting into the shower with “Marge” (actually Kodos) makes this whole episode worth watching. When Kodos doesn’t respond to Homer asking if he can join the shower and gets no answer, Homer clarifies, “As always, silence means yes.” Kodos rubs Homer’s neck, with a request that he rub, “…the neck of my butt.” HAHAHA. Awesome. Followed by Homer warning, “Someone’s taking the highway to the danger zone.” BUTT STUFF. BUTT STUFF RULES. The episode also featured actual music from E.T. to add authenticity and at some point, someone used the phrase “space doggy.” OFF TO A GOOD START, GUYS.

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“Mr. and Mrs. Simpson” – This is a parody of the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Homer and Marge are both assassins and think their marriage is falling apart, only to realize it’s falling apart because they won’t admit to one another that they’re spies. There’s a shootout and they fall back in love. That’s it. This segment more than any other indicates that the Treehouse of Horror episodes can also be called “Treehouse of Movie Parodies” because this movie isn’t horror. It’s not scary. GUYS, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! The shootout sequence was pretty wacky to watch, mostly because Homer and Marge were violent attacking one another, but that’s really all it had going for it.

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“Heck House” – After pulling some successful tricks on Halloween night, Bart, Nelson, and other assorted Springfield children realize tricking is more fun so they go on a pranking spree. To show them their punishment for their sinning, Flanders sets up a haunted house. When it proves ineffective, Flanders transforms into the Devil and takes the kids to Hell to show them what punishment for sinning is REALLY like. Homer gets transformed into spaghetti for his gluttony and Moe is punished for being envious of people who are crotchless. The kids vow to stop sinning and the episode ends. This episode had A) People celebrating Halloween and B) Multiple residents of Springfield showing up. I LOVE WHEN THAT HAPPENS. We also got to see Hell, which was cool, and Moe got to talk about “the crotchless.” Not bad!

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Overall Thoughts -The episode opened with Marge saying, “Remember Halloween? It was last week!” Another classic burn on these episodes not airing until November. Seeing such a good parody of E.T. followed by a parody of something not at all horror was pretty frustrating, so I might have enjoyed that third sequence more if I wasn’t so grumpy. The whole episode ended pretty abruptly, so much like when Treehouse of Horror VI ended with a shot of a city street being confusing, this one also didn’t adequately prepare me to leave the episode behind. Although, to be fair, I only just watched this last week and immediately watched another Treehouse of Horror, but had I watched it live, I might have been bummed.

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Treehouse of Horror XIX (Season 20, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: “Enter Selman” by Mattallica

“Untitled Robot Parody” – Without many options, Bart resorts to buying Lisa a toy truck for Christmas. WAIT…CHRISTMAS? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. That truck transforms into a robot and then turns other mechanical devices in the Simpson house into robots. Then virtually every machine in the city turns into a robot and they all begin to battle. To prevent the city from being destroyed, Marge gets the robots to make peace with one another, but unfortunately they unite to enslave the humans. I’m glad this one was called “Untitled Robot Parody” because that’s what it felt like. Being set at Christmas was weird, but some of the visual gags of machines coming to life was funny.

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“How to Get Ahead in Dead-vertising” When Homer gets into an argument with Krusty, the clown accidentally falls into a tree shredder and dies. A group of lawyers come to Homer and explain that dead celebrities’ likenesses can be used freely, so they encourage him to kill more. After all the celebrities Homer kills see their likenesses being used without their permission, they storm down from Heaven to take him out. When Krusty blows Homer’s head off, he gets to Heaven before all the celebrities and locks them out to enjoy Heaven by himself. Haha, dumb celebrities! I liked the violence of this episode and seeing Homer just killing off George Clooney and Prince for no real reason other than profit. The segment opened with an extended parody of the Mad Men intro, and it’s too soon to tell if it will become dated, but I was relieved to see it wasn’t just a straight Mad Men parody, because, ya know, that’s not horror.

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“It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse” – OH GOD, A CHARLIE BROWN PARODY? This could be terrible. Milhouse sets out to a pumpkin patch to find the “Grand Pumpkin” in much the same way that Linus tried to find the Great Pumpkin. After Milhouse cries over never finding him, his tears bring the Grand Pumpkin to life, who then goes out to explore Springfield. After being fed pumpkin bread, seeing his pumpkin brethren get carved up, and seeing pumpkin seeds roasting and exclaiming, “You roast the unborn?!” the Grand Pumpkin goes on a rampage. Milhouse then prays to Tom Turkey, who comes to life to defeat the Grand Pumpkin, and the town holds a Thanksgiving feast in his honor, starting the cycle over. Man oh man, this was good. The whole thing was animated and colored in the classic Charlie Brown style, and when Marge was about to start talking and we heard squawking, we learned she was just practicing her trombone. Like all the great parodies the show has done, this segment hit the necessary beats of the original story and then explored what would happen if the ending went in a different, hilarious direction. And no, I didn’t cry watching this like I cry watching “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

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Overall Thoughts – The opening featured Homer trying to vote for Obama and getting eaten by the voting machine, so I didn’t have high hopes for this episode. I DON’T NEED POLITICS IN TREEHOUSE OF HORROR. Luckily, the show got better every minute and the final segment really tugged at my heart strings.

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Treehouse of Horror XX (Season 21, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: The Last Milhouse on the Left

“Dial ‘M’ for Murder or Press ‘#’ to Return to Main Menu” – That title might be long, but it’s worth reading because this is a Hitchcock homage! Parodying the plot of Strangers on a Train, Bart offers to “help” Lisa with her teacher if she helps him with his. She agrees, so Bart kills Ms. Hoover while Lisa merely ding-dong-ditches Mrs. Krabappel. Knowing that she doesn’t have it within her to kill a stranger, she instead kills Bart, who deserved to die. This was good! Maybe it shows the strength of Hitchcock that even a parody of his work could be compelling. This segment featured music from Psycho and was in black and white, just to be that much more faithful. I thought the funniest part was Lisa agreeing to ding-dong-ditch Mrs. Krabappel, only to have Bart clarify that you “ditch” the ding dong after murdering them. Hopefully the rest of the episode is this good.

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“Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind” – In a new Krusty Burger promotion, cows are fed grade A beef and then those cows are turned into burgers. This results in a zombie-like outbreak happening and then we are shown what has happened 28 days later. Ya know, like the movie…the movie 28 Days Later…that had zombies. In this apocalyptic world, the virus has spread and not many residents survive. The Simpson family leaves the safety of their house to find food, and when Bart accidentally eats one of the infected burgers and doesn’t turn into a “Muncher,” the family realizes he’s the key to surviving. Apu helps escort the family to safety, despite them bailing on him at their first opportunity, and to save humanity, the survivors must eat food that has been cooked in Bart’s bath water. The humor and horror combined with the apocalyptic setting made this whole segment feel truly cinematic. My favorite bit was Homer exclaiming, “To the panic room!” when his home was being invaded, and when he learned he didn’t have a panic room, he shouted, “To the panic room store!” HOMER HOW CAN YOU BE SO DUMB?!

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“There’s No Business Like Moe Business” – Instead of a movie parody, this segment is a parody of the musical Sweeney Todd, apparently. Moe accidentally wounds Homer critically and uses this as an opportunity to make his move on Marge. Serving her beer with Homer’s blood in it has a strange effect on her, which Moe uses to his advantage. To help Marge move on, Moe gives Marge a letter “Homer” wrote where he admits he’s gay. Homer springs back to life to win his wife back, which he does, and the show ends. You know how people love when there are songs in The Simpsons? Well imagine the opposite feeling of that. Are you picturing it? Well, that’s the feeling I have about music on the show. Just really not for me. Having a segment based on a musical, featuring singing and dancing, didn’t appeal to me at all, but I’m sure other people loved it. I must admit that Homer’s song about being gay was pretty funny, since it was so out of character for him, but that’s the only musical bit I enjoyed. Oh well!

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Overall Thoughts – I’m not that familiar with Sweeney Todd, but if I was, I might call this installment “Treehouse of Parodies” because of the quality interpretations of popular stories. But, I’m not, so I won’t. The opening of this episode was pretty awesome, featuring Monster Squad-esque archetypes putting on Halloween costumes to kiss babes at a Halloween party, only for their wives to catch them and get mad. I would’ve watched a whole segment with those guys! Another one of the better and more consistent episodes of the last few years.

Stay tuned all this week for reviews on the rest of the episodes! Don’t miss any updates by following @TheWolfman on Twitter or liking “The Wolfman Cometh” on Facebook. You don’t want to miss updates, do you?

HOLY CRAP. I DID IT. I WATCHED THEM ALL. Before reading my thoughts on the final segments, read Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3 and Pt. 4 now. NOW, I SAY! I’m so happy this is over and I’m so happy to have discovered so many cool segments of the show that I had no idea I’d enjoy so much. Oh, and I hate all of you who told me I should do this. Seriously? What’s wrong with you? Without further delay, here’s my rundown of the final five episodes!

Treehouse of Horror XXI (Season 22, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: “Eh, let’s go with yank my area again.”

“War and Pieces” – Marge interrupts Bart and Milhouse playing video games to make them clean the attic where they find a spooky board game called “Satan’s Path.” BADASS. The game transports them to a world where popular board games run rampant, much like Jumanji, but with board games. Form Monopoly to Battleship to Operation, the kids must navigate their way to safety. Milhouse sacrifices his life to help Bart, who uses violent methods learned in video games to destroy the threats, and finally confronts the final game, Mouse Trap. Despite the cage never actually falling correctly, Bart manages to escape and restore Milhouse. The two then play Hangman and die. I don’t know about laws and stuff, but I’m glad that this segment used actual games instead of just off-brand parodies like they did for “Attack of the 50 ft. Eyesores.” When you see Operation, they call it Operation. Highlight was someone riding in on a train and exclaiming, “There was a bank error in my favorite and I’m spending it all on Oriental Avenue prostitutes!” Haha, because prostitution is funny.

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“Master and Cadaver” – The segment starts with a shark puking up Homer, only for Homer to say, “Man, it’s been a crazzzzzzzzzy morning.” THAT’S AWESOME. He and Marge are sailing the seas when they rescue someone from a lifeboat. This stranger claims everyone on his boat was poisoned and he was lucky to escape alive. Something about the stranger makes Homer suspect he might be a threat. Homer kicks the survivor off the boat, but when he and Marge come across another boat, they realize the stranger was telling the truth. Then everyone on the boat is alive and…ya know what? It doesn’t matter. The segment ends with the reveal that this whole thing was dreamed up by Maggie while she was playing with toys in the tub. You all know how I feel about plot twists like that, right? I AM NOT A FAN. But you know what else? Homer getting puked up by a shark was pretty funny.

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“Tweenlight” – Lisa develops a crush on a new kid in school who, for some reason, likes her back. He wants to turn her into a vampire, but Homer doesn’t want that so he goes to Dracula-Land to find the boy’s father. They all confront one another and Homer gets the vampires to bite him and absorb his cholesterol and die. THE END. Remember when Treehouse of Horror did a Harry Potter parody, most likely only because of how popular it was? This just felt like the Twilight version of that. Oh yeah, and there was a scene where a character exclaimed “You’re tearing me apart!” in reference to The Room, which really solidified how much this segment relied too heavily on pop culture trends. I don’t really remember why, but at one point Homer danced with Santa’s Little Helper, and that’s about as funny as this segment got.

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Overall Thoughts – I should have known I wasn’t going to enjoy this installment as much as previous years from the opening gag alone. There was a bit about using DVR technology to fast forward through the whole episode, only to change the channel to a version of The Office but with monsters? I enjoy The Simpsons for its timeless references, so I think this one just relied too heavily on things in popular culture at the time. Really, do people think about The Office anymore?

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Treehouse of Horror XXII (Season 23, Ep. 3)

Funniest Credits Nickname: The Cabinet of Dan Caligari-neta

“The Diving Bell and the Butter Ball” – Homer falls off the roof while decorating for Halloween and also gets bitten by a black widow, causing him to be paralyzed. Lisa tries reading him “The Brothers Karamazov” but he farts to get her to leave him alone. This is how he communicates. With farts. Homer gets bitten by another spider, but this time it grants him the power to shoot webs like Spider-Man, despite still being paralyzed. This was a parody of the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but I’m curious how many people knew about that movie, even back in 2011. It felt like a really bizarre choice, because it’s not really a “horror” movie, and the whole segment feels weird. I don’t get it, guys.

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“D for Diddly” – While Flanders drives through a bad part of town, a voice that he thinks is God instructs him to kill bad people. He does this through the whole episode. BUT WAIT! It’s not actually God, it’s just Homer telling Flanders to kill his rivals. God intervenes and strangles Homer. What I can tell you is that, if you are a fan of the show Dexter, you might have liked this segment, because apparently it was a parody of it. As someone who has seen a few episodes of Dexter, I had no idea what the hell was going on. Maybe I missed a lot of jokes and references to the show and fans would have enjoyed this segment more, but it really wasn’t for me.

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“In the Na’vi” – THIS IS A PARODY OF AVATAR. Bart plays the wheelchair-bound guy who becomes an avatar to interact with native people, who look like Kang and Kodos. Bart impregnates one of the aliens or something and someone is mad? GUYS, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED. Again, Avatar had such a huge cultural impact, it was hard to avoid, but it really bums me out that the “horror” part of “Treehouse of Horror” gets ignored for the opportunity to do a parody. They should call it “Treehouse of,” I guess? But that wouldn’t make sense. Also, Avatar is like 15 hours long, so trying to distill everything that happens into a coherent 7-minute sequence only made the story that much more confusing.

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Overall Thoughts: Bad news: I didn’t really like anything about this episode. Good news: this is the first whole episode where I never really liked any segment that much! And I’m 22 episodes in! That’s actually surprising to me, since I figured I would have been burned out on the show much earlier on. I should also mention that the opening to the episode had a scene that parodied 127 Hours, another example of how being timely could seem like a great idea in the moment, but lose relevance just a few years later.

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Treehouse of Horror XXIII (Season 24, Ep. 2)

Funniest Credits Nickname: Halloween Name

“The Greatest Story Ever Holed” – A Large Hadron Collider creates a black hole, which Lisa is somehow able to take home and keep in the basement. As it’s sucking up things nearby and causing destruction, Homer calls down to ask if it’s a stray dog. When Lisa responds that it’s worse than a stray dog, Homer asks, “Two stray dogs?” HOMER, YOU GOOF! Lisa warns the family that they can’t throw things into it, otherwise it will grow bigger and destroy more things, the family doesn’t listen. Homer promotes a business called “Magic Craphole Waste Removal” and the whole town brings their junk. The black hole grows so big that it consumes the whole town, until Maggie’s pacifier gets sucked in and plugs it. On the other side of the black hole, the residents of Springfield learn they’ve been transported to another world and an alien race considered all of these items offerings. Hey, how about that? This wasn’t too bad! The whole town got destroyed, Milhouse’s first home run got sucked into a black hole (stupid Milhouse), and they even managed to slip a jab about Zunes in there. Things are looking up for Treehouse of Horror!

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“Un-normal Activity” – In a Paranormal Activity parody, Homer decides to record the strange events happening in their house while everyone sleeps. Footage captures Marge standing over Homer while he sleeps, and when he sees her, he tries to sleep with her. Haha, classic Homer! Much like the film series, a supernatural entity tries to take Maggie and Marge reveals her origins with the supernatural being, which involves her, Patty, and Selma worshiping Satan as kids. THAT’S SO BADASS! When the demonic force appears, he agrees he’ll leave the family alone if he can have a three-way…with him, another demon, and Homer, to which Homer agrees. WHOA. WHAT THE HELL!? That’s pretty wild. That’s the kind of crazy stuff I like seeing thrown into these episodes. Another bit that I laughed way too hard at was Marge spying on Homer while he’s peeing, and in Paranormal Activity fashion, time-lapse footage shows him peeing for an hour and a half. Haha, stupid big-bladdered Homer!

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“Bart and Homer’s Excellent Adventure” – In a Back to the Future parody, Bart travels back in time to 1974 to buy a comic book. He bumps into his parents and inadvertently prevents them from falling in love, but when he looks at a photo he has with him, he realizes his life would be better if they didn’t get married. When Bart travels back to the present, Marge has married Artie Ziff (once again voiced by Jon Lovitz) instead of Homer. This won’t stop Homer! He uses the time machine to get a bunch of versions of himself throughout history to confront Artie, and although he loses the battle, Marge realizes she loves all of these versions of Homer and they all live happily ever after. Not too bad, but most of what charmed me about this segment was the return of Artie Ziff! Great job, buddy!

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Overall Thoughts: Solid throughout! I might have enjoyed this episode more than I had reason to because of my disappointment with the previous installment, but whatever, at least I laughed at stuff! Again, the last segment was just another opportunity to do a movie parody, but it could have been much worse. Was there some sort of press release that explains why they just do a bunch of parodies now? Maybe I’ll never know.

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Treehouse of Horror XXIV (Season 25, Ep. 2)

Funniest Credits Nickname: World War B – with Animal Zombies

“Oh, The Places You’ll D’oh!” – Homer is “The Fat in the Hat” in this Dr. Seuss parody. It’s Halloween night and he comes to take Bart, Lisa, and Maggie on a Halloween adventure. Yo….straight up…I don’t know what the hell was going on. SO MANY THINGS WERE HAPPENING ALL AT ONCE. In that regard, I guess it was an authentic tribute to Dr. Seuss stories/animated specials? There was rhyming and a Dr. Seuss animation style, but I’m not a huge Seuss fan so I wasn’t at all interested. Remember how I didn’t like “There’s No Business Like Moe Business” because it was a musical? I assume this segment might be near and dear to someone’s heart, but definitely not to mine. Fart.

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“Dead and Shoulders” – While flying a kite near an airport to annoy planes, Bart gets decapitated when he ties the kite string around his neck. His only option is to have his head sewn to Lisa’s and go along on her daily activities. When Bart learns he can control her body when she goes to sleep, he attempts to chop her head off. Both of their heads get chopped off and the only option is for Lisa’s head to attach to Krusty’s and Bart’s head to attach to Selma’s. I….didn’t really like this one either. Not because it was too gimmicky or anything, it just felt kind of tacked on. Remember how I didn’t like “Homer’s Nightmare” back in Treehouse of Horror II? Well, this is the same thing. It just…exists. Dang, this is bumming me out. Can I be done yet?

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“Freaks No Geeks” – In a parody of Freaks, Mr. Burns runs a carnival where Springfield residents are given freaky attributes. Homer is the strongman and Marge is engaged to him. I don’t know if this is an actual line or just a note I took, but apparently “Moe is the ugliest freak!” Way to be on your game, Wolfman. Anyways, when Moe falls for Marge, Homer plots to get her to marry Moe, only to kill Moe and take his fortune or something. Things don’t work out that way and the freaks turn on Homer and turn him into a duck/man hybrid and kill Mr. Burns. The segment cuts to the present where Homer says, “And that, kids, is how I met your mother!” because apparently they really wanted to reference that sitcom. A pretty good homage to a really disturbing movie, but seeing the Springfield residents animated as sideshow freaks was more of a bummer than a joy. Also, Freaks in general is pretty disturbing, so it’s no surprise that even this version of that story is pretty unsettling.

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Overall Thoughts: Dammit. Maybe I let my hopes get too high after the last episode, thinking the worst of times was over, but that’s what I get for having hopes. On a positive note, the opening was directed by Guillermo del Toro so we got to see the classic opening with a bunch of characters from his movies thrown in there! WE EVEN SAW A PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE REFERENCE! Why couldn’t that have been an entire segment? Does anyone have a time machine?

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Treehouse of Horror XXV (Season 26, Ep. 4)

Funniest Credits Nickname: See No Evil. No Wait… There She Is

“School is Hell” – Bart gets stuck in detention for a really long time and uncovers a desk that’s a portal to Hell. Bart and Lisa accidentally travel through the portal to Hell’s elementary school. While there, the two attend classes that encourage demons to be as evil as possible, so Bart excels for once! Bart and Lisa travel back to earth but, after being such a good student, Bart asks if he can go back to Hell. He does, and his final test is torturing Homer. We’ve seen Hell in other Treehouse of Horror installments but never quite in this way. It’s generally just for a few scenes, but a big chunk of this episode treated Hell like an actual location and not just a gag. Another note I took was that apparently Nelson says, “I wanna see boobs in the soup,” at some point, but I have no goddamned idea what that means anymore. Oh yeah! And at one point, the demon version of Superintendent Chalmers yells, “Skin him!” when he gets upset, instead of his classic, “Skinner!” So far, so good.

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“A Clockwork Yellow” – By my count, this is the third time a Treehouse of Horror segment has referenced A Clockwork Orange! This one is MUCH more direct, in that it’s a retelling of the movie. Moe leads the gang of Homer, Lenny, and Carl, and they do bad boy stuff. When Homer gets invited to Marge’s house, the time-lapse sequence that mimics one in A Clockwork Orange just shows Homer eating all of Marge’s food. Ya know, because he’s fat. Moe gets kicked out of the gang and becomes a bartender. The famous eye clamp scene is recreated with Moe being forced to watch programming on FOX. Take THAT, TV network! Nelson and his pals take over the gang activity years later, but Moe asks his former pals to join him in one last confrontation. Moe’s gang infiltrates an Eyes Wide Shut type of orgy and the ensuing fight includes parodies to Full Metal Jacket and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The segment ends with Stanley Kubrick watching his creation and saying he wants to burn it and start from scratch. I really like how this segment, much like “Dial ‘M’ for Murder or Press ‘#’ to Return to Main Menu,” went all-out in parodying one specific filmmaker. It feels like they won’t make thinly-veiled references to Kubrick anymore because they did such a good job with this one. Also, the music was awesome because it’s the same music as in A Clockwork Orange.

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“The Others” – When the Simpson family finds frosty chocolate milkshakes in their house and the only thing on TV is Married…With Children, they realize something is off! After some investigating, they realize they’re being haunted by their former selves. Not, like, dead versions of themselves or anything, but haunted by their counterparts that haven’t been seen since appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show! Trouble arises when Homer falls for the alternate version of Marge, forcing the current Marge to compete for her husband’s attention. Thinking Homer is just attracted to ghosts, current Marge kills herself to seduce her husband from beyond. Tracey Ullman Homer gets mad that Homer is seducing his wife and kills current Homer. A whole bunch of characters all start killing each other and it’s complete madness and then more and more versions of the family show up! There’s a Pixar style family and an anime style family and an Archer style family and a Minions style family and oh my god it is just insanity. From a plot standpoint, this segment was a mess, but from a conceptual standpoint, it was pretty creative. Merely having the cast recreate their vocal styles from their original incarnations was cool enough, but seeing the family in all these different styles was neat and came from an organic place instead of a gimmicky one. It also gave the creators the opportunity to pay respect to other current animated shows, like Adventure Time and Archer. What a bunch of nice guys!

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Overall Thoughts: I was apprehensive when the show started because it was a late night talk show format introducing all these special guests and I figured they cashed in on a bunch of nonsensical cameos, only for these “special guests” to have been bodies nailed to a wall to spell out a seasonal message. Haha, fooled ya! Well, fooled me, not ya. Would that be “ma”? Whatever. Since last year was a little rocky, I thought this one was much better and hopefully signals more good times to come, and fewer movie parodies.

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THAT’S IT. IT’S FINALLY OVER! I am free of my curse! What did I learn? Well, I guess I learned my prediction was accurate about how the earlier seasons were going to be more solid, but that made the quality segments really stand out in later years. I’d say my absolute favorite installment, start-to-finish, would have to be Treehouse of Horror VIII. Come on, “Homega Man”? “Easy Bake Coven”? Those were unstoppable. Outside of that episode, these are my top ten favorite segments through the whole series, in chronological order:

1. “Terror at 5 1/2 Feet” – Treehouse of Horror IV
2. “Time and Punishment” – Treehouse of Horror V
3. “Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace” – Treehouse of Horror VI
4. “The Thing and I” – Treehouse of Horror VII
5. “Night of the Dolphin” – Treehouse of Horror XI
6. “Reaper Madness” – Treehouse of Horror XIV
7. “You Gotta Know When to Golem” – Treehouse of Horror XVII
8. “E.T. Go Home” – Treehouse of Horror XVIII
9. “It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse” – Treehouse of Horror XIX
10. “Dial ‘M’ for Murder or Press ‘#’ to Return to Main Menu” – Treehouse of Horror XX

That’s it! Thanks for checking out all of these reviews, if you did. If you’re only reading this sentence, how the hell did you manage that? I also have to say that this past Sunday’s Halloween episode of The Simpsons was a lot of fun and hopefully that becomes a tradition as well. Having a longer time allotment to tell a story really helps the show and makes things feel less rushed. Happy Halloweiner, everybody!

Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a traumatic childhood experience with one, but I’ve never had any sort of fear of clowns. Ever. I know they’re typically a go-to of creepiness for a lot of people, and clowns being a source of entertainment at kids’ parties is a thing of the past, but I never really understood it. Obviously there are examples like John Wayne Gacy, where the public identity of a clown masked an incredibly dark human, but going into ClownTown, I knew I’d need more than just, “See it’s creepy because the bad guys are CLOWNS!” but, sadly, that’s all I got.

Man, these clowns sure do look like some really twisted characters! Pretttttty scary!

A young boy murders his babysitter with a knife while dressed as a clown in a house that says “Strode” on the mailbox before the film cuts to a title card that reads “15 Years Later.” OH WOW, I WONDER WHERE THAT IDEA CAME FROM. Anyways, a bunch of coeds in the present are on their way to a concert when they get lost in an abandoned town, having realized one of the women lost her phone. While these doofuses wander around this dumb town, they start getting stalked by idiots in clown makeup. Why? Who cares. I guess it’s just okay that an abandoned town has psychotic clowns wandering around it. And then…well, it really doesn’t matter. I’m sure whatever you imagine in your head happens will be more exciting than what happens in this movie.

If you were nervous that a movie called “ClownTown” wouldn’t feature a character with giant boobs who distractingly wears a low cut tank top from the first moment she’s on screen, then fear not! You can breathe a sigh of relief about ClownTown.

Ugh. If you wondered what would happen if you plugged a bunch of generic horror movie concepts into a machine and let robots make a movie from the results you got, it would be ClownTown. As previously mentioned, it steals ideas from Halloween in the first five minutes (including an arbitrarily topless babysitter), the lost coeds/dysfunctional family villain dynamic from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and a “twist” about who the true murderer(s) are that feel ripped off from Friday the 13th. “But guys, what if we steal elements from other successful films but then also add clowns to the mix? IT’LL BE GENIUS!” I kept holding out hope that there’d be an interesting reveal of the origins of these clowns or justification of who let a ClownTown exist, but there was nothing. I did get to hear a resident of ClownTown deliver lines like, “Clowns are like a pack of dogs,” and, “Some people think that clowns don’t exist.” What the fuck? Does this movie take place in an alternate reality where clowns are mythical beings? AND THE SPECIAL EFFECTS WERE TERRIBLE. There are multiple sequences of violence where it looks like the attacker was told, “Okay, now use this prop as gingerly as possible, because if it looks like anyone could ever actually be hurt by this, it won’t be good for ClownTown.” The only thing even close to being good, or rather anything that wasn’t atrocious, in this movie would be that the score has moments that took influences from calliope music to fit the clown theme. That’s….that’s really it. Even that one not completely miserable part of the movie was tough to come up with, but maybe fans of clown slashers will find more appealing things in this movie than I did.

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Guys, it’s called “Satanic” so of course I’m gonna wanna check it out! Satan is the ultimate bad boy, second only to me. I’d never heard of this movie, but sometimes replying to emails with, “Yes, I would like a Blu-ray to review,” results in getting a package from FedEx containing a movie! Then you watch it. Then you tell people about it. Then they read about it. Except, in this case, I doubt anyone will read this, unless a lot of people Google “Movies from the producers of The Walking Dead,” in which case you did, hello! Thanks for reading, but Satanic has nothing to do with The Walking Dead, or really, anything to do with something good.

Finally a movie will use a Ouija board to make some spooky stuff happen!

When a group of coeds (goddammit, why won’t someone control these coeds that constantly get into trouble?!) head to L.A. for a vacation, they decide to spend their time sightseeing looking into locations where Satanic rituals and cult sacrifices took place, rather than try to find celebs. Hey, that sounds like something I’d do! After getting a hunch that following a few employees at some sort of Satan store could lead to adventure, the gang stumble across a ritualistic sacrifice that they bring to a halt by shouting. Good job, guys! When one of the coeds realizes they dropped their phone and a mysterious lady offers to bring it to them, these coeds learn their horrors have only just begun! Then a bunch of dumb spooky crap happens and who the hell cares, this movie was a turd.

Tattoos? Knives? Hooded figures? Naked ladies? Yup, we got all the fixings for a Satanic ritual!

When you watch a lot of shitty movies, sometimes all it takes is a somewhat clever concept to get you engaged, and I think Satanic has some merit in at least that regard. I’ve been to quite a few cities around the country and I always want to see the spooky and macabre sights, so I could at least connect with the characters’ motivations. Other than the initial concept, Satanic was incredibly dull. The characters stay in a hotel room where a ritual supposedly happened, and wacky stuff happens with the girl who returns the cell phone, but it’s never really clear if the spooky stuff that follows is being caused by a ghost or by Satan or maybe by a ghost of Satan? Also, none of the intentionally spooky things were really that spooky. A guy sees a pentagram in the foggy mirror after a shower, a bunch of CGI birds are found dead in a pool, and then silverware gets stuck in the ceiling. What the fuck do any of these things have to do with Satan? I HAVE NO GODDAMNED IDEA. The whole film felt like a cheap excuse to cash in on the phrase “Satanic panic” and give Sarah Hyland from Modern Family an excuse to add a movie to her filmography. What started as a clever approach to exploring cults and sacrifices devolved into a bunch of nonsensical, generic scares that never really culminated with anything satisfying.

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“After he went boating, he had to return to where his adventure began. JACK GOES HOME.” Okay, well, maybe that’s not actually the tagline for this movie, but it should be! Granted, Jack Goes Home has no connection to Jack Goes Boating, but Jack goes somewhere in both of these movies, so I wanted to start a campaign for the “Jack Goes Cinematic Universe.” He’ll go to the store, go to Vietnam, go to the bathroom…Jack Goes Everywhere! Oooh, maybe that will be the last movie.  Anyways, time to learn what happened to Jack when he went home!

“Listen, we need to talk about Kingpin…”

After learning that his father died in a horrible car accident, Jack (Rory Culkin) leaves his pregnant wife behind to help his mom (Lin Shaye) deal with the funeral arrangements. While home, he reconnects with old friends, spends time with his mom, meets an overly friendly neighbor, and discovers a cassette tape with a mysterious recording from when Jack was a baby. The tape features Jack’s father telling Jack to investigate the attic, whenever he hears the tape, which Jack now finds in the present to be locked. When Jack confronts his mother, he learns that the mysteries have only just begun, and he realizes that going home might be the biggest mistake he’s ever made and that some memories of home are best left forgotten.

Starring Cillian Murphy Culkin!

Okay, firstly, I’d like to apologize for how vague that description is because it sounds like I’m paid to cryptically market the film. BUT NO, I’m just trying to help! Ya see, what makes this movie so engaging is the dark and disturbing turns the plot takes. For a good chunk of its running time, Jack Goes Home feels like Garden State with a much more somber soundtrack. Remember when Natalie Portman dances around or something and then Zach Braff admits he was the reason his mom was in a wheelchair, and it was a big shock? Okay, well imagine the big shock was something WAY more fucked up, and that’s more like Jack Goes Home. Unfortunately, like Garden State, there’s some hokey melodrama that you have to put up with about family and friends and all that crap, but if you can tolerate that, you’ll be golden!

See? Boys can cry and bleed in the shower, too!

Although Garden State by way of We Need to Talk About Kevin might be a fantastic combination for some audiences, I’m unfortunately not one of those people. I couldn’t really connect with the more melodramatic elements about going home and haven’t had to experience the types of trauma shown in the film (luckily), so I never got emotionally invested in the characters or the story. Also, even though this isn’t a traditional horror film, the film goes to some truly horrific places and the last act features some very macabre elements and themes that felt artificially unsettling. Don’t get me wrong, I love some dark and depressing movies, but the last act gets to Von Trier-esque places, but it neither looks as beautiful as his films, carries the same messages of those films, or earns the depravity of those films. But hey! The performances are all good and if my biggest gripe is “it’s just not for me,” that’s pretty good! Luckily, you are not me, so if you like non-traditional horror thrillers, then Jack Goes Home is absolutely worth checking out!

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Remember how fucking good The Lords of Salem was? So fucking good. Considering how often I’ve voiced my opinions on his Halloween films, I wanted to make note of how much I enjoyed the latest outing from Rob Zombie, a.k.a. Bob Zombo, a.k.a Robert Zommy. I know that Lords was a financial failure and its subtle surrealism didn’t resonate well with Zombie’s diehard fans, but in certain horror circles, fans admired the new direction the filmmaker was headed, taking influences from Italian filmmakers more than grindhouse fare. I was apprehensive about which filmmaking muscles Zombro would flex in his latest film, 31, and I can say with confidence and certainty that not only is 31 Rod Zimbo’s worst movie, but it’s also one of the worst horror films of the year. You did it, Zongie!

I still think you’re cool, Jeff Daniel Phillips!

The film opens with a character called “Doom-Head” talking to the camera about–wait, the character is called DOOM-HEAD? OKAY, GREAT, OFF TO A GOOD START. Anyways, Doom-Head talks to the camera about how much of  bad boy he is, just in case his name isn’t twisted enough for you. Supposedly this guy is talking to someone he’s torturing, but it feels more like he’s alerting the audience to how painful the next hour and 40 minutes will be. Anyways, the film focuses on a group of carnies (because, why not, I guess?) who run into a group of bad boys while driving through the desert, who take the carnies captive. When the carnies wake up, they are told by a group of wig-wearing weirdos that they are about to play the annual game of “31,” which entails various twisted psychos trying to kill them over the next 12 hours. What follows is a completely bland and generic exercise in violence and foul language that Juggalos will absolutely fawn over.

“I play the character Doom-Head! Aren’t I twisted and abrasive?!”

Goddammit. Leave it to Ron Crombie to squander all of the good will he established with The Lords of Salem to give us this atrocious excuse for a movie. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie before, back when it was the video game Manhunt. I enjoy House of 1000 Corpses for the most part, and 31 was like all of the worst elements of that movie, plus Malcolm McDowell in a wig. Haha, I forgot that Malcolm McDowell is only ever in one location, in one outfit, making it clear as day that Zimboe could only hire him for like six hours. McDowell’s time on set it relevant because it just adds to how disjointed and segmented the whole movie feels. The carnies are the only constant from one scene to the next, and they’re all such boring characters that you don’t care if any of them live or die.

“And I play the character Psycho-Head! Or maybe I’m Schizo-Head? Either way, I am very extreme and that’s why I’ve written something dicks on my chainsaw!”

Did I mention that there’s a character named “Doom-Head” yet? At one point, we see him having SEX with a GIRL and then he YELLS at her when Malcolm McDowell calls him up to kill people, and then he calls the girl a BITCH because he is AGGRESSIVE. The only thing more arbitrarily abrasive and aggressive  all the characters in this movie are would be the director’s aggression towards his audience. Does he hate us? Did he make 31 to punish us for not going to see his last film enough? OH FUCK. I just remembered some characters are named “Schizo-Head” and “Psycho-Head.” Hahahaha. Why the fuck are all of these characters called “Head”? They’re just clowns. Also, why is the game called “31” where the only connection is that the carnies were kidnapped on October 31. There aren’t 31 clowns, there aren’t 31 rooms, it doesn’t last 31 hours, so what gives? Also, if the significance of 31 is that the events take place on October 31, why would Rod Tomboy have said that he set the movie on Halloween because he read a statistic that the most people go missing on that day of the year, but then have NO other connection to Halloween than an arbitrary number? FUCK, THIS MOVIE SUCKS. I know I’m not making sense and I’m all over the place and I’m cursing a shit ton to get my point across, but, it’s almost like, this review is as narratively cohesive and engaging as 31. Haha, take THAT, movie!

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TI WESTERN TI WESTERN TI WESTERN. See, what I’ve done is I’ve combined the writer/director’s name (Ti West) with a film genre (Western) to create a hilarious play on words, Ti Western. Do you guys understand how funny this is? It is incredible and I am glad to be the one to finally point out this wordplay to people. From The House of the Devil to The Innkeepers to The Sacrament, West has been on a great run of Horror features the last few years, so I always look forward to what he’ll do next. Hearing that West had cast Ethan Hawke and John Travolta in a goddamned WESTERN got me very intrigued, since I don’t normally like westerns, but was also exciting to see West getting some heavy hitters in his cast, which will hopefully lead to even bigger opportunities for his next film. Thanks to Hawke, Travolta, and the rest of the cast, In a Valley of Violence gives audiences an entertaining revenge thriller set in the Old West, which I know will appeal to many genre fans.

I should mention there’s a great dog in this movie. See it? See that great dog? It does a great job.

Paul (Hawke) really only wants to get to Mexico with his dog Abbey as quickly as possible, but that route leads him through a small valley, which I’m sure you could guess is the titular violent valley. His brief visit includes a less than pleasant altercation with Gilly (James Ransone) and his father, the Marshal (John Travolta), which causes Paul to move through town as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for Paul, leaving the Valley of Violence behind him is easier said than done, and Gilly has a score to settle with the stranger, following him out into the desert. Although Gilly thinks he’s taken care of the stranger for good, all he’s done is given Paul a reason to return to the valley to seek revenge and retribution, no matter who stands in his way. In a way, it’s almost like he makes the valley MORE violent, if you can even believe it! People die, others live, and there’s violence in the valley.

You tell ‘im, John! Tell him he needs to be nice to those ladies!

I know I said earlier that I wasn’t normally a fan of Westerns, but let me tell you, that opinion certainly has remained the same! However, In a Valley of Violence still has a lot going for it, most notably, its cast. Hawke, Travolta, and Ransome all play their stereotypical Western roles with authenticity, but it’s really the female characters that make the movie so entertaining. Taissa Farmiga plays the hotel clerk in town who hopes to convince Paul to stay a bit longer, while Karen Gillan plays her sister, Gilly’s betrothed who turns a blind eye to her husband’s behavior. Both of the actresses are tasked with delivering some of the more ridiculous lines of dialogue and must become the silliest of caricatures in the film, and both embrace the tone of the film with wonderful results. Although neither of them rely on a fainting couch or say anything about “the vapors,” the embrace the hopeless romantic longing to leave town and the spoiled southern belle archetypes with gusto and help break up a tale of terrible men being terrible to one another.

Taissa, if you’re reading this, which I’m positive you are, you did a good job in this movie. Keep it up!

Hey, listen, I know I’ve said a few times that I’m not an expert on Westerns, so feel free to totally ignore my opinion. However, this film has more to offer than Western tropes, so if you’re more of a genre fan, there’s still stuff to like! Ultimately, the story is about a man on a quest to begrudgingly seek revenge, but it just happens to take place in the Old West. I know that High Plains Drifter is cited as an inspiration, but for those who prefer more contemporary references, it’s like Death Wish or John Wick. However, rather than some balls-to-the-wall and blood-soaked festival of mayhem, it’s a slow, deliberately paced game of cat and mouse. West’s last three features and their emphasis on tone, atmosphere, and creeping sense of dread has often closely associated him with the phrase “slow burn,” which I pretty much cringe at every time I hear, but this film continues that streak. Despite the low body count and lack of graphic violence, this might be West’s most riveting film to date and the viewer can’t help but feel immersed in the bloodshed that’s unfolding in this small town. If you’re looking for a horror Western, you might have come to the wrong place, but In A Valley of Violence shows a restrained subtlely in West’s filmmaking and hopefully leads to him exploring non-horror genres further.

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Ah, yes, finally a movie about the most difficult of miniature golf obstacles! No, I’m kidding, that’s not what this was about. Although, honestly, I had no idea what it was about. I knew Noah Taylor was in it, and that guy’s great! Whether it be Game of Thrones, Red, White & Blue, or….Tomb Raider? Sure, why not?! Anyways, the Dutch are known for their tulips, their clogs, and their ovens, so I figured at least one of those things would be in this movie, but if you expected to see people farting under the covers, THEN YOU WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED. However, if you were hoping for a paranoid thriller with gnarly-as-hell practical effects, then The Windmill is for you!

Be careful, Noah Taylor, or you’re gonna keep getting spooked!

While a group of strangers vacation in the Holland countryside, they embark on a “Happy Holland” tour to see hotspots off the beaten path. When the bus breaks down, the tourists must seek shelter in the form of a nearby windmill. The weird thing? This windmill doesn’t really exist, according to a map! Don’t worry, we then learn that spooky witch stuff took place in this windmill, so obviously it’s a spooky apparition of a windmill. Bad news though, as the tourists start revealing things about their past (a botched surgery due to drugs, having set your house on fire, etc.), a Grim Reaper-ish character makes them all pay for their sins. With death. The Grim Reaper kills them. People get killed in a windmill. That’s what this movie is about. Pretty cool, right?

Oh no! Don’t do bad things in your life or this ghoul will haunt your bones!

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “This movie doesn’t sound exceptionally exciting,” and you’re not far off. The story itself isn’t all that unique, other than being set in Holland and in a windmill, I guess, but please don’t let that fool you. Now that we have almost reached the end of 2016, I can confidently say that The Windmill has some of the best practical effects kills of the year. Like, holy crap. I’ll admit my interest in the film started to wane in the first 25 minutes or so, but then the first kill happens and it is BONKERS. I mean, I don’t want to give any of them away, but they are ridiculous. The performances are fine, the concept is fine, there’s just enough mythology there to justify the story, but holy shit, THE EFFECTS. Also, and I don’t want to give it away, but just when I thought the ending was cliche and tacky (which I didn’t really have any major qualms with), the movie went a completely different direction. Man, those effects were rad as hell. I don’t really have any complaints about the movie, other than it feeling like stuff I’ve seen before, but the effects really push this The Windmill into new territory to make it head and shoulders above its competitors. Come for the supernatural tale of a bunch of sinners getting their punishment, stay for insane practical effects that will surprise even the most jaded of horror fans.

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I don’t think it’s too big of a stretch to say that The Strangers is one of the best home invasion horror movies, and definitely towards the top of the list when looking at all horror movies of the last ten years. That being said, what the hell happened to writer/director Bryan Bertino!? Well, after spending six months in hiding, he returned with Mockingbird, which in my professional opinion was “not great,” but other people claim is “pretty good, I guess.” Regardless of my opinions of his last movie, Bertino earned enough favor with his debut feature that he’ll have to crank out a shitload of turds for me to lose interest. Lucky for you, dear readers, The Monster is not a turd! Put THAT on a poster.

Never trust a mom if she has this stupid “mermaid” hair.

When Kathy (Zoe Kazan) and her daughter Lizzy (Ella Ballentine) hit the road on a dark and stormy night, they quickly run into some trouble, except by trouble, I mean a wolf. They are driving a car and hit a wolf. This movie sucks and I hate it. Luckily, the punishment for hitting a wolf is their car gets all fucked up and they have to wait for a tow truck AND an ambulance. However, when tending to the wolf they MURDERED, they see evidence that they might have dealt a fatal blow to the wolf, but it had clearly been injured by something more sinister. As the title implies, there is also a monster in the woods. I mean, that’s it. There’s a monster in the woods and the mother and daughter don’t want to get eaten by it so there’s screaming and running around. This is why I get paid the big bucks, because I can describe a movie as “there’s  screaming and running around.” Just…just shut up.

I bet you thought I’d post a picture of the titular monster, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?! Nope, I couldn’t find one, so here’s more Zoe Kazan!

Hey, if you like movies about  people trying to avoid monstrous creatures, then this one is pretty good! Much like Bertino did in Strangers, he establishes a tense relationship between the two leads to heighten the anxiety on-screen. In this case, he uses flashbacks to establish that Kathy is a pretty shitty mom who wishes she didn’t have a daughter, and Lizzy wishes he mom treated her better. When Kathy tries to calm Lizzy down, it’s not because she’s a supportive mother, but because she’s just sick of being stuck in a car with someone crying. Another strength of the movie is the cinematography. We’ve seen horror films taking place on rainy nights, but much like with Strangers, Bertino really knows how to frame a shot. He keeps the creature in the shadows as much as he can and shoots from inside the car often to really create a sense of safety inside the car but something terrifying and unknown just outside that shelter. For you monster movie fans, you’ll be relieved that the monster was created practically and not with CGI, but sadly, that also means the villain is a guy in a rubber suit, resembling what I imagine would be the result of a Xenomorph having sex with that thing from The Relic (and no, I don’t mean Penelope Ann Miller). The cat-and-mouse elements are fine, albeit predictable, but if monster movies are your thing, I’m sure you’ll dig it. Even if monster movies aren’t typically your thing, the cinematography and dramatic tension between the characters makes it stand out against similar storylines.

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A24 will release THE MONSTER In Theaters and On Demand on November 11.  The film is available now exclusively on DirecTV.

Listen, you can make fun of me all you want, but I haven’t seen México Bárbaro yet. Guys, I said you can make fun of me, I don’t care what you say, I’m in on the joke. Point is, I wasn’t super familiar with writer/director Isaac Ezban‘s work, other than knowing he contributed to that anthology, which I’d heard decent things about. The description definitely piqued my interest, so I was like, yeah, I can watch this movie! I’m a guy who likes movie and this is one of them! Okay, now you can make fun of me for how dull this intro is, and I get to be in on that joke also.

More like “Goodnight Daddy,” am I right!?

It’s 1968, we’re in a bus station, and a bearded man is just trying to catch a bus to get to his wife who just began labor outside the city. Due to a terrible thunderstorm, there are delays and cancellations and no sign of when he can leave. The longer he’s there, the more hopeful travelers join him, all with their own desperate reasons to catch the bus. As the radio starts delivering strange news broadcasts and the manager of the bus station becomes ill, the travelers begin to get nervous and paranoid about what’s going on. When the supervisor starts to “recover” but has undergone a peculiar transformation, the travelers have no goddamn idea what’s going on, how it could happen, or how to stop it. That’s all I’m gonna say, because the bizarre twists and turns are absolutely what make this film so enjoyable.

This kid was the only one to realize the true threat was on the ceiling the whole time.

This movie was good! The film started like an episode of The Twilight Zone, from the opening narration of some off-screen figure and faux film grain, and every time the story would run out of steam, a strange twist would invigorate everything. I’d say that each act on its own could count as an installment on the show, and Ezban blended them all together seamlessly. Again, I don’t want to take away from any of the twists, but they were just bizarre enough to have a more science fiction/surreal quality to them than a horrific one, but also hokey enough that the film didn’t need to take itself too seriously. The computerized black and white look and all the fake film grain stuff that was meant to evoke nostalgia got pretty grating at times, but I understand that they were good cheats to make the concept more effective. Had the film been shot in color or on 35mm, it wouldn’t have put the viewer in the appropriate state of mind for the unique state of mind necessary and the melding of both comedy and sci-fi. In short, The Similars (a title which will make sense once you see the movie) is the best feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone you’ll see this year.

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I could only assume this movie involved sitting someone down to watch Andrej Zulawski’s Possession over and over again to see how long it took for someone to transform into Sam Neill. That movie sounds fantastic! I kept watching the movie thinking people would start watching the movie any minute. Sadly, that’s not what happened, and unfortunately, watching someone watching Possession would be much more enjoyable than watching The Possession Experiment.

“I can do more than cameo as a creepy guy or star in Rob Zombie movies!”

You know how most movies involving exorcisms end with one? Well in this film, we see an exorcism in the beginning! Whoa! After we see Bill Moseley as a priest trying to compel the spirits out of a woman, we jump ahead a few decades to a college course dealing with religion or exorcism or whatever, it doesn’t matter. Hearing about the case of the woman from the introduction, one student (Chris Minor) wants to explore how feasible possessions really are, so he takes all the necessary steps to try to evoke a demon and persuade it to embody him. He recruits some crew to help him, he gets a straightjacket so he doesn’t hurt anyone, and then uses a Ouija board and spooky books and stuff. Although the results aren’t immediate, this student does start showing signs of possession, but then there’s a reveal of what’s really going on! Whoa damn that’s spooky!

Be careful, buddy, you might see something spooky!

Okay, I’m kidding, it’s not spooky at all. Before getting too down on it, I should point out that I haven’t seen a horror movie where someone wants to become a conduit of a supernatural being for the sake of science. When someone tries to evoke Satan, it’s usually for selfish reasons, so at least this movie took that one semi-unique approach, but unfortunately, its strengths begin and end with that. It’s…just so bland. The whole thing is very by the numbers and the “twist” can be predicted early on. I guess maybe if you’re a big fan of Bill Moseley, this is a good opportunity to see play a character that’s not a villain? Maybe? Whatever, just go watch Possession instead.

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I can’t say I’m super familiar with all of Darren Lynn Bousman‘s work, but from what I have seen, it’s always been pretty stylish. Whether you like that style or not is up for debate, but the guy knows what he likes and goes for it. Repo! The Genetic Opera wasn’t really my thing and I know there’s a growing fanbase for The Devil’s Carnival, so I figured at worst, Abattoir would be a movie other people would tell me they’d like and I could judge them. At best, this would be, I don’t know, I guess a good movie? POINT IS, I knew there’d be something I could take from the experience and, well, I was wrong.

Put that gun away! It’s not gonna be able to stop a spooky bad guy!

After a young woman’s entire family was murdered for seemingly no reason, she begins searching for answers. When she tries to visit the scene of the crime, despite the house having been sold, she discovers that the entire room where the murders took place has been removed entirely. What the hell? That’s weird! The buyer of the house has been linked to buying other houses where violent murders have occurred, which gets out protagonist interested. Her search for meaning among all these horrible crimes leads her to the town of New English, a place full of weirdos that has a dark past thanks to some sort of evil pastor type of person. Or something? Point is, someone is building a house out of pieces of houses where bad things have happened. Oh no! Will they do it?! Guess you’ll have to watch Abattoir to find out!

A knife? What’s a knife gonna do to stop a spooky bad guy?!

I know what you’re thinking: “What the hell does ‘abattoir’ have to do with anything?” See, that’s another word for “slaughterhouse.” GET IT? DO YOU GET IT NOW? THE BAD BOYS ARE CREATING A LITERAL SLAUGHTERHOUSE. For as silly as that concept is, the film pulls it off about as seriously as it could. Aside from the tone, I wish the concept was explored a little more, because this felt more like a murder mystery than something supernatural. Other than looking pretty slick and having an interesting concept, Abattoir doesn’t have much else working in its favor. Lin Shaye‘s inclusion felt like a wasted opportunity for a good actress, the supernatural elements didn’t come together, and the “twist” ending could be seen from early on. This movie might be worth checking out if you’re a fan of Bousman’s other films, but it’s ultimately a disappointing exploration of a somewhat interesting concept, and considering the story is based on a comic book, I think some of the story’s effectiveness was lost in translation.

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Imagine, if you will, a time and place where there was no hotter actress than Jennifer Lopez, a leading man no more charming than Vince Vaughn, and an actor no more fear-inducing than Vincent D’Onofrio. The time, ladies and gentlemen, was the year 2000, and the place was, well, movie world, I guess? Planet earth? Regardless, the cast of The Cell had it poised to become an enormous hit full of groundbreaking visuals cooked up in the mind of Tarsem Singh. I saw this film in theaters when it came out and some sequences really disturbed me, but since I hadn’t seen it since then, and it was on HBO Go, I decided to see how the film held up. Note: if you remember this movie being good, I do not recommend questioning that perception by watching it in 2017.

Not pictured is the scene where J. Lo arbitrarily smoked weed in her apartment wearing a thong and you kind of see her butt when she opens the refrigerator. Even more popular in 2000 than J. Lo was the mere concept of her big ol’ butt.

Catherine (Lopez) is a psychologist who uses cutting edge technology that allows a manifestation of herself to enter the mental landscape of her patients, allowing her to interact with them in a way like no other. When authorities realize that a serial killer, known for capturing and torturing his victims for days, has selected his next victim, Peter Novak (Vaughn) begins his hunt for Stargher  (D’Onofrio). A seizure leaves the killer in a coma, so Novak taps Catherine to enter his mind in hopes of gaining information about where his next victim is being held. Entering the mind of a serial killer obviously results in some horrifying landscapes, which Catherine ultimately falls victim to. Novak must enter Stargher’s mind to recover Catherine and the two aim to turn the tables on Stargher before it’s too late for his victim. Will they do it? Probably! Does it matter? Not at all!

“Hey, Vince, we know you’re wearing a garish gold outfit, but we’re nervous that your performance might be a little too subtle.”

I’ve complained about other films that are “psychological thrillers” that ultimately take place in one character’s mind and how that makes the whole film feel like there’s no actual stakes. Luckily for The Cell, the entire conceit of the film isn’t the physical dangers that the characters are faced with, but rather focuses on the mental impact, so this film doesn’t suffer the fate of other shitty “it was all in my head!” movies. Another advantage this film has is that, instead of something like Identity which is about imagined characters turning on one another at a motel, some of Singh’s set pieces are truly breathtaking, both with their surrealism and their originality. Multiple shots and sequences are gorgeous and I would have gladly watched some of those sequences without dialogue. Singh’s imagination is on full display in The Cell and it’s obvious why he would go on to tackle incredibly imaginative films after this one.

This is totally a thing a person would do if they were weird.

Sadly, that’s where the film’s strengths basically end. Although some of the set pieces are astounding, many sequences feel like they were cut from a Marilyn Manson or Nine Inch Nails video. Granted, in the early to mid-’90s, those two musicians gave us some incredibly disturbing pieces, but it makes The Cell sometimes feel too little, too late. Lopez and Vaughn mostly just exist in the film, walking and talking and saying their lines, but there’s not much chemistry between them. I should point out that little is done to establish a romantic relationship between the two characters, so it’s good to see the film avoid those cinematic tropes, but it also makes you less invested in either character. D’Onofrio’s terrifying at times, laughable at other times. He will thoroughly convince you that he is a “weird guy,” thanks to a scene where he is suspended from hooks connected to piercings in his back that allow him to hang over his victims and jerk off onto them, but as if reading what I just wrote didn’t make it clear, the film had a tendency to go a little too obvious. By the time we see him in his third garish outfit and delivering contrived dialogue, we very much get that he’s supposed to be a weird guy. Despite the quality of the film not holding up from how you remember it to be, there’s still some decent ideas in there and I wish we got to see Tarsem go even further with his visuals, but perhaps a reinterpretation of the source material at some point in the future could capitalize more effectively on that potential.

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FULL DISCLOSURE: survival horror typically isn’t my thing.  Sure, I enjoy Wolf Creek and Wolf Creek 2, and sure, you could describe a lot of movies featuring serial killers hunting victims as “survival horror,” but you know what I’m saying, right? In other words, the trailer and premise of Camino didn’t really do much for me. However, despite not typically being a fan of survival horror, two things that I typically am a fan of are Zoë Bell and Nacho Vigalondo. So my preconceived notions are at a stalemate! What on earth will my thoughts of the movie be?! I guess you’ll just have to read to find out!

See, the thing Avery “shoots” with is a camera, not a gun! Do you see how both things can be “shot” and how that ties into the movie?

Avery (Bell) is an accomplished photojournalist who is still coping with the sudden death of her husband who pursues a rare opportunity to tag along with Guillermo (Vigalondo), the benevolent leader of a rebel military faction in Colombia. Avery witnesses Guillermo’s attempt to help struggling communities, but considering the world of violence he exists in, is apprehensive to trust him. When Avery stumbles across Guillermo in the middle of committing a violent deed, she naturally snaps photos, which puts him on the hunt. The photographer heads further into the jungle as Guillermo turns his squad against her, implying that she pulled off the nefarious deeds. What follows is an intense game of cat and mouse, and some of the squad shows doubts about Guillermo and he tries to contain the damage done both to his squad and the potential damage that the incriminating photos could cause.

See, Guillermo is more familiar with “shooting” guns, but Avery “shoots” with her camera? Do you understand the similarities yet?

Does that synopsis sound good to you? Huh? Well, in that case, you’ll sure as hell like this movie! Vigalondo is equal parts charming and terrifying, which makes the charm he uses to persuade people to his side incredibly believable. Also, no matter the lengths he goes to track down Avery, he plays the character as a real-life villain and not some psychopath aiming to destroy everyone in his path. He has an image to maintain, so for as persistent as he is, you almost believe him when he says all he wants are the photos. Bell, on the other hand, is a well-known badass, so you might expect her to just kick the shit out of Guillermo immediately, but remember when I said she’s coping with her husband’s death? Well, that leads to some moments where she can’t mentally bring herself to do the things she knows she should to gain the advantage. Sure, we get a couple of badass moments where she gets to put her physical abilities on display, but it was also a battle of wits. Personally, I would’ve preferred more of her physical prowess being shown, but I understand why it wasn’t just a movie of fighting in the jungle. I should also mention Sheila Vand was pretty badass as Guillermo’s right-hand woman/love interest, so it wasn’t just two strong performances surrounded by fodder, but the supporting cast was solid as well.

When I said the ending was predictable, yes, the film ends with a kiss fight. Everybody wins!

Despite the strength of the cast, there wasn’t much else about Camino that stuck with me. But hey, remember when I said movies like this aren’t typically my thing? That still holds to be true! You don’t even have to listen to me if you don’t want to! However, I’ve been surprised by similar films in the past with how much I enjoy them, and this one didn’t really do that. It’s pretty by-the-numbers and does things you’d expect, but at least it had a good cast? Also, I suppose there were some shots of the jungle that were cool and some of the shot compositions were nontraditional, so I liked that the film ultimately had an interesting look, but the whole thing still didn’t resonate much with me. In other words, Bell and Vigalondo are badass, and the story might be predictable, but if you’re into these types of movies then you’ll sure as shit like this one.

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Please, for the love of god, whatever you do, do not confuse this 2016 film, The Boy, for the 2015 film The Boy. See, this film is set in England, which means we’ll get the chance to hear star Lauren Cohan‘s genuine British accent! That other The Boy? Psshh, there’s no British people in that…I don’t think? Anyways, I know this movie didn’t get that good of reviews, and I know it’s rated PG-13, which many people automatically veto as “horror,” but sometimes it’s good to see what preteens are checking out in theaters and, sometimes, the limitations of a PG-13 rating challenges the filmmakers to be more creative. So, is The Boy forgettable, dull drivel or an inventive attempt at scaring kids? Let’s find out!

Maggie, watch out, there could be a WALKER behind that painting! Like from your hit TV show, The Walking Dead!

Greta (Cohan) is a nanny who has just accepted a job at a spooky old mansion, The owners of the mansion say that they’re very selective over who watches after their son Brahms (is that a real name?) and Greta is immediately intimidated. Once she comes face-to-face with Brahms, she is both relieved and weirded out, because Brahms is just a doll. On the one hand, how hard could it be to take care of a doll? On the other hand, why the fuck is she getting paid to watch a doll? After talking to the grocery boy (Rupert Evans), Greta learns that Brahms actually died, or rather, was killed when townspeople thought the 8-year-old killed a friend of his in the woods, causing Brahms’ parents to grieve for him using a surrogate. The parents leave Greta to watch over Brahms for a vacation, but then her clothes and jewelry start mysteriously disappearing and moving throughout the house. Greta even notices Brahms moving around the room when the door is closed. What the hell is going on?! Well, I won’t reveal what’s going on, but, it’s spooky!

Guys…I had a lot of feelings during this movie. Firstly, remember how excited I was to hear Cohan’s real accent? Well, guess what? They made her character from America, which didn’t really heighten anything or make any beats of the story more compelling. Boo. The Brahms doll was wonderfully designed, as it wasn’t something sterile and sweet but also wasn’t obviously an evil fucking doll, like the one in The Conjuring. There was this weird blankness to it, while also looking human enough that it was just visually unsettling. I think the doll from PIN was the last doll that made me feel this uncomfortable, but not quite as much. Most of the scares and story beats were dull and predictable, so once I got over the weirdness of Brahms, I got bored and thought this movie sucked. However, there’s a reveal in the third act that took me by surprise and was an interesting turn of events, which drew me right back in. Sadly, I felt that the reveal opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for the movie that could have turned a mostly predictable PG-13 movie into something else entirely, but the film couldn’t fully commit and ended in a lackluster way. I read that the original version of the script was a more intense R-rated story that was toned down, but I would’ve LOVED to see what the filmmakers would have done had they been able to get weirder. Is this movie good? No, not really, but it definitely had some bizarre ideas and helped make a genuinely unsettling doll as an antagonist, so I’m crossing my fingers that we one day get a remake that will do the concept justice.

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People decide what movie they’re going to watch on Netflix for a variety of reasons. Maybe the description sounds interesting, maybe it has a high rating, maybe someone recommended it to them, and maybe its running time is the length that someone wants to stay awake. In the case of The Den, it was a combination of the last two. This film has been in my queue for a while and, when I saw that it was 75 minutes, decided it would perfectly fill the time before I wanted to go to bed. Also, I vaguely remember that when it came out, some people said it was pretty good! Man, those people were wrong as hell! This was a giant turd! But why was it a turd? Keep reading!

The only believable thing in the movie is that yes, sometimes we look like this when we open our laptops.

The film starts with Elizabeth (Melanie Papalia) opening up some fake ChatRoulette type of program, which ends up being just a pranky video. From there, we learn that Elizabeth is doing some vague type of research about humans, or something, and has to deliver a pitch to a board room to get a grant…I guess? Regardless, she basically looks into the camera and says, “I’m going to film everything all the time, otherwise this movie wouldn’t exist.” She goes from strange webcam user to strange webcam user when suddenly, one begins to harass her! Then a sextape of her and her boyfriend gets mailed out because, hackers, and the boyfriend goes missing. Elizabeth is stalked, gets weird videos, is kidnapped by assailants, and it turns out she’s just another installment in a series of videos where people get stalked and killed, only for the footage to get sold to weirdos online.NOT AT ALL CONVOLUTED.

It looks like someone got lost on the way to their audition for Strangers.

Whoops, I meant it was incredibly convoluted. Does this movie sound dumb enough yet? Oh, well I should mention, the conceit is that the audience is looking at computer and video screens as all of this stuff unfolds, because the plot alone wasn’t obnoxious enough. The film feels like it was pitched by someone walking into a room and saying, “Hey, you know what teens like? The internet! Well, what if there were bad people on the internet? And we make the movie screen look like a computer?” and they were handed a check and made this atrocity. Both in story and in execution, this film was just…bad. It is as pointless and erratic as actually surfing ChatRoulette for 75 minutes, and the film constantly cheated its premise. You know what movie is terrible? Unfriended. But at least with that piece of shit, the filmmakers stuck with the premise of only ever showing what could be seen on a computer screen. The Den just switched from screen to screen, however they liked, and made it look like a reality where no one ever actually called or texted one another, but just Skyped and FaceTime constantly. Does anyone actually do that? Do teens do that? I’ll be teens do that. I’d say Papalia did the best with the material she was given the problem was the material was complete dogshit. For the good of your own sanity, do not watch The Den at any cost, for any reason, ever in your life.

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Freddy vs. Jason. AVP: Alien vs. Predator. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. What do all these movies have in common? They combine two well-known characters/properties and make them square off against one another. What’s another thing they have in common? They all fucking suck. Okay, well, I actually think Freddy vs. Jason is fun, but it works better for the joke if I pretend I didn’t like it. The reason I did like it is because the characters are very different from one another and the film gives at least some explanation of the characters’ mythologies so viewers can understand why they’re fighting. So what happens when you take the two ghouls who take most of the responsibility for bringing the pale faced, dark haired supernatural specters into the horror film zeitgeist? Why, you get Sadako vs. Kayako, of course!  But is it any good? Well, how about you read this review and find out, dummy. As a warning, (no, not a spoiler warning, I won’t give too much away) I’m much more familiar with The Ring and The Grudge than I am Ringu and Ju-on: The Grudge, so I apologize in advance if I confuse any details that are different between the remakes and original films.

I’ve heard of having monkeys on your back but this is just ridiculous!

A young girl needs to transfer her parent’s wedding VHS onto DVD for their anniversary, so she buys a VCR that already has a tape in it. Yup, that’s right, it’s the spooky tape that is accompanied by a phone call and your death two days later. In another part of town, a young girl moves into a new house and after a strange series of occurrences take place in the boarded up home next door, she investigates. Yup, it’s a haunted house full of spooky ghosts. Luckily for the two cursed victims, a ghost hunter and his blind, pre-pubescent female accomplice know just what to do to get rid of both curses once and for all! Sadly, I won’t tell you what must be done, but you already knew this movie has a “vs.” in the title.

“Oh man, this will look so cool on my shell of antiquated forms of media!”

Despite this movie being predicated on two J-horror icons colliding in an epic battle, most of the film plays out like any other installment in the Ringu franchise. However, I did find the justification for why the spooky tape resurfaced to have been clever and made sense, because it’s not like anyone’s actually using VHS tapes anymore. However, I would’ve also enjoyed seeing the tape come into the possession of some genre fanatic that was stoked that the tape was an original X-rated cut that came in a clamshell box that he found on the way to that stupid Jerry Maguire VHS store, but there’s always the sequel. Anyways, the Ringu elements made sense and felt fresh, but the Ju-on elements felt like, “Oh yeah, and this house is still here and I guess ghost hunters still know about it.” The film probably could have been called “Ringu 5 and A Little Ju-on,” but that’s not as snappy.

Hahaha I forgot, this film implies that Sadako’s hair is deadly, like she’s the inhuman Medusa from Marvel comics.

Alright, so the premise works well enough, but how good is the movie itself? Well, each sequence involving Sadako and Kayako reminds you why those movies blew up the way they did; they’re fucking terrifying. The Ringu elements teased the contents of the VHS tape for a while, instead of giving it all away right up front, and the Ju-on sequences and that weird moan coming from Kayako are just as scary as ever. Unfortunately, like all those other vs. movies I mentioned earlier, the films try to introduce the conflict in the first act, but Sadako vs. Kayako took much longer and the combination felt totally arbitrary.

Okay, fine, Sadako and her long-ass hair are still freaky as hell, happy now?

Once the ghouls collide, there are some really fun and really goofy sequences which, without looking back at, I’m sure were all given away in the trailers. The effectiveness of the characters is how little they do and say when on-screen, so trying to create any authentic reaction from soulless monsters was nearly impossible, so seeing them collide was pretty wacky. Again, not having their entire backstories memorized, I don’t know if it would have been possible to have given the two spirits some sort of confrontation or connection while they were alive to explain the supernatural animosity towards one another, but there wasn’t much more than “Well see they hate each other because they are in the same room!” That could’ve taken, what, an extra week’s worth of writing? Oh well. In ways both good and bad, once the audience (me) began to lose patience with the film, it just ends abruptly. It’s like the filmmakers all realized, “Hey, we finally made Sadako fight Kayako, why are we still making this movie?” and everyone packed up their gear and left. Ultimately, Sadako vs. Kayako gives you twice the amount of creepy sequences from some of your favorite J-horror ghosts and it’s kind of silly in a fun way to see what happens when they collide, but some of it is so goofy that it feels like it would’ve been a sequence in Scary Movie 9. I think maybe “Sadako and Kayako” would’ve been a more appropriate title.

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Horror fans are obviously no strangers to remake, and with everyone announcement, you’ll be inundated with the same comments online about something being “sacred” or whatever. It’s the same thing, every time, and the movie comes out anyway, so here’s a friendly reminder to shut the hell up and just wait and see how the movie turns out. The goal, or intended goal, is generally to reinterpret a classic, or take the core plot elements, and reinterpret them in some way, shape, or form. When news came that a remake of 2002’s Cabin Fever was on the way, the reaction was one of confusion. The strengths of the film come from the disgusting gore effects and the unique brand of Eli Roth’s humor, with the film being so absurd that it borders on parody, so any attempt to reinterpret the film seemed like a difficult task. Well, now having seen the film’s remake, I can tell you the task seemed difficult because it was, and this film was a complete failure at any attempt to do anything at all interesting with the concept.

In the original, one character brings a BB gun. In the remake? He brings a fucking ASSAULT RIFLE. AND ACTS LIKE THAT’S A NORMAL THING TO BRING CAMPING WITH FRIENDS.

If you’ve seen the original Cabin Fever, this film has the exact same plot. Like, it’s basically a word-for-word, shot-for-shot remake. However, if you haven’t seen it, I’ll try to describe what happens. Five coeds head to a remote cabin to celebrate finals being over or something, but some strange events start taking place. One guy encounters a man covered in blood, boils, and blisters and, in shock, shoots the man and leaves him for dead. After that man finds the cabin and tries to get help from the coeds, they instead set him on fire. Shortly after, one of the girls sees similar symptoms that the man demonstrated, but the remoteness of the vacation makes it difficult to find help. From there, it’s a race against time to try to find help and not catch whatever strange disease the infected have developed, with all the characters achieving varying degrees of success.

Remember how, in the original, the scene with Cerina Vincent shaving her legs was, like, the grossest fucking thing ever? Well, this version does nothing at all to up the stakes and somehow makes it more dull. Great job, guys!

Right from the opening sequences, I knew this movie was going to piss me off. One of the first shots shows the coeds’ SUV driving through the woods in an overhead shot, accompanied by the same exact music from the almost exact same shot from The Shining. Some people might think, “Whoa! Cool! A reference to The Shining!” it stood out to me as something shoehorned in with the explicit intent of getting that reaction. Even worse, The Shining is a film that explores the concept of “cabin fever” and the effects of being isolated indoors can have on someone, knowing that this film wouldn’t pursue those themes just irritated me. From that opening shot, things only got…well, not worse, but continued to plateau as a putrid pile of garbage.

OH MY GOD, and remember how in the original movie, there was a weird, platinum blonde-haired kid who did ninja moves and yelled about pancakes? In the remake, he was replaced by a “creepy” kid in the bunny mask, removing any reason for the character to exist in the first place.

As previously mentioned, the strengths of the original film came from how absurd it is, both in the horrific gore and the ridiculously over-the-top characterizations of college kids. Despite almost the exact same dialogue, the characters felt much more subdued, causing you to just get bored with them and not even care enough whether they lived or died. In the original, the characters were so irritating that you just couldn’t wait to see their demises, but this film can’t even muster that. The effects are fine, and mostly practical, but there aren’t really any gags that give new interpretations on what we saw in the original. However, one sequence shows a character begging to be killed, and another character attempts to oblige them, but carries out the scene much longer than in the original film, showing the character fail at killing the victim and setting them on fire. WHY WOULD SETTING SOMEONE ON FIRE BE A BACKUP PLAN!? That is probably one of the most painful deaths someone could experience and they also aren’t guaranteed to die. The scene felt like the filmmakers said, “Yeah dude, we’ll really take it up a notch by setting them on FIRE!” and no one was around to say, “Why they fuck would you do that?”

Oh Jesus, that’s right, they also gender swapped Winston but gave her the same dialogue, which makes it all the less funny that she was saying flirty things and calling one guy the “Party Man.” Goddammit.

The original Cabin Fever might not be for everyone, as it’s hardly the first film to combine gore and humor in this way, but it holds a special place in my heart as one of the first “independent” horror movies I sought out on my own without someone having to show it to me. The thing is, no one really remembers the movie for how horrifying it was, so the pitch of “What if we remake this movie, but we are SERIOUS about it?!” would be like saying, “What if we do a remake of Step Brothers, but take out the jokes?!” It just doesn’t make sense! They completely removed all the charm that the original held and turned it into yet another completely bland horror movie with nothing going for it other than “cool gore, bro.”

Wolfman Moon Scale

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