Josh Bell
What if childhood chant “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and beloved 1980s comedy Caddyshack were … horror movies? This week’s low-profile VOD releases offer the answer to that unwarranted question, along with a giant centipede in a Thai hotel, a serial killer on the streets of Hong Kong, and a disastrous destination wedding in Florida.
The Plus One (Select theaters September 29; VOD October 3): The guest from hell that bride-to-be Lizzie (Ashanti) hopes to prevent from attending her wedding is so blatantly obnoxious and destructive that it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to spend even a moment in her presence. Then again, she’s only slightly more insufferable than everyone else who’s invited to Lizzie’s wedding, including Lizzie herself. That’s the main problem with this tedious comedy about a bunch of self-centered people grinding through sitcom-level misunderstandings at a fancy Florida resort for the wedding of Lizzie and Luke (B.J. Britt). Lizzie’s best friend Marshall (Jonathan Bennett) brings his on-again, off-again girlfriend Marie (Cassandra Scerbo), who sucks up all the attention for herself. The wedding dress gets ruined, Lizzie accidentally gets high on pot brownies, and everyone seems to be constantly shrieking. The scenes are harshly lit and crudely edited, without any comedic rhythm, and even the reliable Cedric the Entertainer (as Lizzie’s dad) can’t find a decent punchline. Grade: D+
Limbo (VOD and select theaters September 29): There are plenty of stock genre elements in this crime thriller from longtime Hong Kong director Soi Cheang, featuring a volatile veteran police detective (Ka-Tung Lam) teaming with a by-the-book newcomer (Mason Lee) to track a serial killer who leaves gruesome calling cards all over the city. The procedural aspects are basic but effective, and Cheang focuses more on style and characterization than on investigative details. Shooting in crisp black-and-white, he portrays Hong Kong as a dingy, cramped city overrun with garbage, both literally and metaphorically. The killer leaves severed body parts in trash heaps, and the detectives frequently have to sift through refuse to find clues. Lam’s Cham Lau is angry and abusive, terrorizing the recently paroled woman who was responsible for his wife’s death in a DUI accident. At times Limbo gets overly grim, especially in a brutal rape scene that goes on far too long, but that bleakness fits with Cheang’s stark, unforgiving aesthetic. Grade: B
Mary Had a Little Lamb (VOD and DVD October 3): While Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey somehow became a viral sensation, producer Scott Jeffrey has been churning out dozens of other micro-budget horror movies based on various public domain characters and/or concepts, like this one “inspired” by the children’s nursery rhyme. There’s no real narrative or characters in the source material, so screenwriter Harry Boxley and director Jason Arber throw some rhymes into a generic slasher movie with a lamb-like killer and an antagonist named Mary. Christine Ann Nyland is suitably creepy as Mary, an older woman living in an isolated house in the woods with her “little lamb,” her hulking, murderous adult son who may be some sort of animal-human hybrid. The protracted, slapdash set-up about true-crime podcasters doesn’t lead anywhere interesting, the victim characters are annoying, and the filmmakers eventually just give up and clumsily copy The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the rote finale. As a horror villain, Mary’s little lamb is no Winnie-the-Pooh. Grade: D
Creepy Crawly (VOD and DVD/Blu-ray October 3): Connecting a monster attack to the rise of Covid is a promising avenue for social commentary, but this Thai horror movie doesn’t aspire to that level of thoughtfulness. It’s set in a quarantine hotel in mid-2020, which mainly provides a reason that the characters can’t leave when strange things start happening. Those strange things are caused by a centipede-like creature whose abilities, motivations, and vulnerabilities are never clear, and seem to shift depending on the needs of the plot. Writer-directors Chalit Krileadmongkon and Pakphum Wongjinda rely heavily on characters’ terrified reactions to offscreen horrors, although when they finally show the monster, the CG effects hold up better than expected. The hotel becomes infested with hundreds of normal-sized centipedes along with the giant abomination, and those are unsettling enough on their own. The filmmakers pay more attention to cheesy interpersonal drama than to the gross bugs, though, striking the wrong balance between creepy-crawly and touchy-feely. Grade: C
Caddy Hack (VOD October 10; Blu-ray October 24): The devious gopher that repeatedly thwarts Bill Murray’s unhinged groundskeeper is one of the most memorable elements of 1980 comedy classic Caddyshack, but it’s not exactly scary. Writer-director Anthony Catanese’s gory homage to Caddyshack isn’t scary, either, but it isn’t meant to be, instead aiming for even lower-brow laughs than its forebear. No one would call Caddyshack subtle, but it’s a model of restraint compared to Catanese’s grating horror-comedy, in which mutant gophers that look a bit like the Quiznos Spongmonkeys terrorize the hapless employees of an upscale golf club. The performances, including Jim Gordon as a club owner inexplicably styled like Donald Trump, are so cartoonishly broad that the actors seem constantly on the verge of a stroke, and the soundtrack is filled with more “wacky” sound effects than a morning zoo radio show. The hyperactive visual style is as unpleasant as the humor, which is at least 50 percent tiresome double entendres about balls. Grade: D-
