Josh Bell
This week’s low-profile VOD releases travel back to the 1980s for a camp-counselor massacre, a small-town showdown, and a snowbound fight for survival, while in the present, a kangaroo and a bunny incite danger in highly different ways.
Ted Bunny (VOD February 13): It’s hard to say whether this first movie in the planned “Twisted Serial Killer Universe” from producer Jeff Miller is too tasteless or not tasteless enough. Obviously the offensiveness is the point for a series of movies bringing together pun-based variations on infamous real-life murderers, but director and co-writer Michael Fredianelli takes the premise surprisingly seriously, even showcasing a remarkably affecting performance from genre legend Dee Wallace. She plays a previously unknown survivor of serial killer Ted Bundy, who secretly gave birth to his illegitimate son. Ted Jr. has grown up into a hulking, Leatherface-like simple-minded slayer, complete with creepy bunny mask thanks to his mother’s fixation on rabbits. Most of Ted Bunny is just an unremarkable slasher movie, with uninteresting characters, clumsy dialogue, and minimal suspense. Once Wallace exits the story, there’s nothing to keep the audience engaged, other than the prospect of what kind of further cheap transgressions might show up once Ted Bunny teams up with Jeffrey Dollmer. Grade: C-
Blood Barn (Screambox February 17): This loving but haphazard homage to 1980s horror movies has its heart in the right place — which is somewhere outside the body, oozing with blood. Director and co-writer Gabriel Bernini knows how to emulate the look of low-budget vintage horror, but he doesn’t offer much more than that. The loosely plotted movie draws its most obvious inspirations from The Evil Dead and Night of the Demons, trapping a group of horny young people in a remote location where they’re beset by vaguely defined supernatural threats. Awkward Josie (Lena Redford) invites her fellow camp counselors to spend a weekend partying on her family’s remote property in what everyone refers to as a barn, even though it has multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and a full kitchen. Barn or house, it’s clearly possessed by the spirits of Josie’s weird ancestors, although Bernini and co-writer Alexandra Jade don’t bother with specifics. Cue the “charming” low-fi practical effects and stilted performances, which aren’t any less tiresome for being period-accurate. Grade: C
Hellfire (VOD February 17): Stephen Lang isn’t famous enough to qualify as a geezer being teased in one of producer Randall Emmett’s notorious“geezer teasers,” which means he actually stars in the entirety of this threadbare thriller. He puts in a genuine effort, too, unlike Harvey Keitel and Dolph Lundgren, who coast through their more traditional Emmett-ian roles as a crime boss and a corrupt sheriff, respectively. Lang’s nameless military-veteran drifter wanders into a small Texas town in 1988, recalling John Rambo as he’s hassled by the local authorities and pushed to his breaking point. He’s more stable and more calculating than Rambo, but he still causes more damage than good as he decides to defend the townspeople from the drug smugglers who rule over them. Reliable DTV action director Isaac Florentine pulls off a couple of decent action sequences, but Lang is no Scott Adkins, and the combat is more rote than dynamic. The bare-bones plot is even less lively, sluggishly limping along to its underwhelming finale. Grade: C
Kangaroo Kids (VOD February 17): There’s really only one reason to watch a movie titled Kangaroo Kids, and that’s to see cute kids interacting with a cute kangaroo. This tedious, interminable family comedy seriously skimps on the adorable animal encounters, though, spending most of its time on a pair of feuding crews of inept adult criminals. Ostensibly, the plot is about a small Kentucky zoo getting a famous kangaroo as its new star attraction, which will somehow help raise the money needed to avoid the requisite impending foreclosure. Angsty orphan Johnny (Josefina Baeza) forges an immediate and theoretically heartwarming connection with the kangaroo, but director and co-writer Fairai Branscombe Richmond is far more interested in the repetitive wacky antics of the bumbling robbers who have a convoluted, nonsensical plan to get rich by kidnapping the celebrity creature. The kangaroo is the only cast member who isn’t painfully overacting, and she spends most of her screentime stuffed in a sack. Grade: D+
Last Ride (VOD February 20): Combining the earnest coming-of-age drama of Stand by Me with the gritty survivalism of movies like Alive and 127 Hours, writer-director Cinqué Lee (brother of Spike) delivers an unwieldy but often heartfelt story about childhood bonding. In 1982, three young boys from the U.S. are on vacation in Norway, where an impromptu mountaintop excursion leaves them stranded in a cable car high above the snowy landscape. After a freak electrical storm disables the car and kills their adult Norwegian guide, the boys attempt to keep themselves alive while formulating a plan for rescue. It’s a simple, mostly single-location story that sometimes feels stretched a bit thin, but Lee balances the urgent needs of survival with the emerging interpersonal issues among the friends. British stars Roman Griffin Davis, Felix Jamieson, and Charlie Price struggle with their unnecessary American accents, and some of the dialogue gets lost to mumbling. The characters’ bond comes through even if all their words don’t, giving emotional weight to the bittersweet ending. Grade: B-
