We’ve got a fun bunch this week. We’ll hang out in the yard with “The Woman in the Yard,” take a visit to “Caddo Lake,” before going home to “825 Forest Road,” which is located in “Crazy, Texas.” Then we’ll all die repeatedly in the third installment of the “Final Destination” Series.
The latest issue of “Horror Monthly” is now on sale! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com
Pick up our newest book, "The Horror Guys Guide to the Academy Awards of Horror" at https://www.horrormonthly.com/horror-guys-guides/academy-awards-of-horror
Mainstream Films:
2025 The Woman in the Yard
Directed by Jaume Collet-Sera
Written by Sam Stefanak
Stars Danielle Deadwyler, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peyton Jackson
Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The cast is excellent and it all looks good. They manage to ramp up the tension out of what is sometimes not much, sometimes quite a bit. We do gradually get to piece together what’s really going on more or less. It does have a wrap up, but we found it pretty disappointing in the end.
Spoilery Synopsis
A woman watches a video of her husband talking about naming their farm. Ramona watches it over and over, clearly depressed. Her son, Taylor, comes in and breaks up the depression; the power is out, and he wants her to call someone. As she finally gets out of bed, we see she’s got a broken leg. She says good morning to her imaginative daughter, Annie, and heads downstairs.
Ramona’s husband, David, the man on the video, has obviously recently died, and the family has lots of unpaid bills. The food in the fridge is going to go bad pretty soon, and she can’t call the power company because her phone is dead. We soon get a flashback to the traffic accident that caused all the trouble, but then that’s interrupted when Taylor reports that there’s a strange woman in black out in the yard.
When Ramona decides to go outside and see what the woman wants, the kids act terrified of the stranger. It takes forever for Ramona to get to her on crutches, but she makes the attempt. “How did I get here?” the woman asks. She’s weird and seems to know more than she should about her and David. “You called and I came, Ramona.” Ramona gets scared and goes to the garage, where she plugs her dead phone into the car lighter plug. The car is dead, too.
Ramona comes back inside and locks all the doors. She makes up a story for Tay and Annie. A little while later, the old woman is now sitting closer to the house. We see that the old woman’s shadow affects things in a bad way.
The family dog had been barking non-stop, but Ramona notices it’s gotten awfully quiet outside. She goes outside to see about that and finds nothing– the dog is missing. Taylor wants to drive to a neighbor’s house; Ramona can’t drive in her condition, and Taylor’s not old enough. He wants to walk to a neighbor’s house– it can’t be more than a couple of miles.
The old woman gets closer, and Annie steps on something that cuts her foot. While Ramona deals with that, Taylor goes outside to look for the dog. He notices that all the chickens are dead. He goes out to the garage and fears that the woman is stalking him outside the door. He figures out that the car is dead and the dog is gone.
Taylor comes inside and accuses Ramona of knowing who the woman outside actually is. Taylor gets his father’s gun out of the safe and threatens the old woman. The woman stands up and walks toward him, taking off her veil. “Your mother’s been lying to you– about everything.” She explains that Ramona lied about the accident that killed David.
Taylor confronts Ramona about what really happened that night. They went out to dinner and she told him that she wasn’t happy with her life. She wanted to leave David and the kids, but he made a perfectly reasonable argument. She drove them home in the rain. Ramona notices a woman in black on the road in her rear-view mirror. She’s watching the woman when they hit the other car head-on.
Meanwhile, we see Annie inside the house, but the shadows are moving things around to scare her. The shadows menace her, but she doesn’t see them right away. Soon, everything in the house starts moving and flying, and they all see it. They quickly see that if they hide where it’s dark, there are no shadows, so they all go up to the attic.
Whatever it is outside, it bangs on the walls and doors, wanting in. Then they start seeing the woman inside the attic. The shadow eventually disappears, and takes Annie with her. They hear Annie downstairs, so Ramona and Taylor go down after her. Ramona goes through a tunnel into a reality where David is there, replaying the scene from her phone. She notices all the words she can read are backwards; it’s some kind of mirror-world.
Now, Ramona is the woman in black sitting outside the farmhouse, and we see the first encounter with the woman from her point of view as she talks to herself, a few hours ago. She then replays the scene in the attic with her in the part of the monster.
Ramona, now with the gun, talks to the woman, who says she only wants to help, the way she asked her to. The woman talks to Ramona about her long-planned suicide; Ramona wants to die. “I’m the corners of your mind. The scary parts. Today’s the day.” The woman talks to Ramona about going through with it to set her children free.
Ramona sends the kids to walk to the neighbor’s farm. She goes back inside and checks out the gun, as she only has one bullet. The woman shows her what to do.
Ramona goes back outside to the kids, who have returned. “Will she come back?” “If she does, we’ll be ready.” Suddenly, the lights go on and the dog shows up. Was any of this real? It’s a happy ending!
We cut to a painting with her signature– it’s backwards.
Brian’s Commentary
The ending was vague, but I guess by actually killing herself she went to the mirror universe and had a happy ending. Hooray for… suicide?
I have no idea why everyone was so scared for the first hour. An old woman was sitting on their lawn, and they were talking about calling the police and getting out the gun. Sure, it was an unusual situation, but why the overblown fear of an old woman who has done or said absolutely nothing?
There were only three characters, and two were children, so we weren’t expecting much of a body count, but we didn’t expect the monster to just be another case of depression. Especially since the kids saw the woman outside as well.
It looks good; the acting is good; it’s well paced, but the actual plot and resolution were pretty awful.
Kevin’s Commentary
I thought the cast was great, including the kids. And I was impressed with how they ramped up the tension when there wasn’t really a lot going on when you thought about it. The explanation of what’s going on wasn’t that impressive though. The script was on the disappointing side, I thought. So mixed feelings.
2024 Caddo Lake
Directed by Logan George, Celine Held
Written by Celine Held, Logan George
Stars Dylan O’Brien, Eliza Scanlen, Caroline Falk
Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
We went into this pretty much blind, and it was more than either of us expected. It goes along with not too much out of the ordinary happening for a while, only some hints of weirdness, as we get to know the characters. Then things abruptly take a turn and stay wild from there on. We both really enjoyed it.
Spoilery Synopsis
A man and a woman wake up in an already-flooded car. He gets out, but she doesn’t. We see that they went over a bridge. Credits roll.
Today, Paris and his coworker, Zed, talk about how they keep finding stuff in the swamp due to low water levels. They are removing old pipes and junk for scrap. There’s an old, damaged dam being repaired, and it’s messing with the whole ecosystem; there’s a full-on drought. Paris and his father, Ben, are supposed to go to a funeral, but Paris doesn’t want to see “her” there, so he just drops off his father and leaves.
We cut to Ellie talking to Anna about Ellie’s annoying mother and where Caddo Lake got its name. They take a small boat out to deliver groceries to some people. They find a dead alligator; something bit it in half. Anna finds some dead moths that are supposed to be extinct. There’s also talk of wolf sightings, but there aren’t any of those there any more.
Paris talks to a doctor about his mother’s condition. His mother shouldn’t have been driving. She just had a seizure at a bad time was all, according to the doctor. When he gets home, he runs into Cee, whom he’d been hoping to avoid at the funeral. They walk over to a very-unfinished house and pretend to make pasta in the very open-air kitchen.
Later, Celeste throws a family dinner and talks to Ellie, her daughter. They talk about Ellie’s dad, who’s been missing for years. She needs his death certificate for college admissions. Her stepfather, Daniel, is a nice guy, but she clashes with him.
Paris apologizes to Cee about not appreciating her attention after his mom died; he was in a very bad place at the time. Paris’s dog, Wally, has been barking at the water a lot this week, and that’s not like him.
We cut to Ellie, whose boat hits something in the water and breaks the propeller. She and Paris and Wally hear something loud and boomy out there. Ellie sees wolves, supposedly impossible, but there they are.
That night, at her friend’s house, Ellie gets a call from Celeste that Anna’s gone missing. By the time she gets home, everyone is in a full panic. Someone has taken the boat that Ellie literally arrived in moments before.
Paris and Zed are working on removing more exposed pipes in the drought. They don’t know what these old pipes were for, but they’re good for scrap. Paris follows the pipe on dry land through the woods while Zed circles around in the boat. He traces them to an old abandoned oil pump, until he starts hearing weirdness and his hands shake. He catches up to the waiting Zed. Paris untangles some garbage from the boat propeller and finds the chain that Anna was wearing.
Paris talks to his dad Ben about his mother’s medical records– he’s still obsessing over her death and possible misdiagnosis. Ben does not approve, he’s thrown out all that stuff. His mother had a chain just like Anna’s - though he doesn’t know about the missing Anna. Now he has two of them. He takes Cee to where he found the necklace.
That night, they find Anna’s boat, but Anna and her life jacket are gone.
Celeste and Ellie argue over their treatment of Anna, and Celeste throws Ellie out of the car. They argue over whether Ellie’s father went missing or just left them.
Paris compared his experience on the swamp with his mother’s seizures; he thinks they may be related and it happens when the water is low. Cee thinks maybe those seizures are hereditary.
Ellie goes off searching alone, at night, and hides from other searchers. She crosses the weird “sound barrier” that Paris found earlier. She gets disoriented and loses her phone. She’s out there all night; in the morning, she flags down a fisherman and gets a ride home. When she gets home, everyone is freaking out about Anna, as if she’s just gone missing. She sees herself arriving on her boat outside. Her hands start to shake as she steals the boat while her past self goes into the house. That explains who took it from before.
Ellie and Paris both approach the same bridge, but for Ellie, the bridge looks broken down. Ellie hears Anna yelling and time-warps again; she finds Anna– but it’s not her Anna.
Paris walks through the time dilation, and for him, it’s night time– no, now it’s midday. He is very confused. He also finds Anna in the woods– injured and unconscious. Due to a lost tooth that hasn’t been lost yet, Ellie realizes that the Anna she found is from a month ago, just out in the swamp on her own. Ellie returns home with Anna a month ago, after a big fight, which is confusing for Ellie considering how angry her mom and stepdad are. That wasn’t this Ellie.
Paris, on the other hand, is much further back in time, and he sees the old dam being built. The booming noises they heard are explosions from controlled detonations during construction.
Paris learns that it’s 1952, and he hasn’t even been born yet. He leaves the little girl he found, Anna, with some men driving by in a truck who will get her medical care. 1952 was the year of the great drought; Paris had a chart of all the droughts. He realizes that maybe he can time travel back to when his mother died and fix things. He sees wolves and moths out in the woods.
Ellie learns much the same, and she uses a long rope to find her way through the maze of time periods. Paris finds her rope and follows it back to Anna’s boat. He takes her boat but soon runs into the police. That goes badly, and they send him to the hospital for questioning by the sheriff.
Ellie’s in 2005 now. She steals the necklace from Cee’s vehicle, they argue about it being Anna’s. Cee yells at Ellie for making her baby Ellie cry. Cee is actually a younger version of Celeste, and she’s putting up posters of Ellie’s missing father– Paris, missing since 2003. Paris’s mother is little Anna who traveled to 1952, grown up. Paris and Ellie have been in different time periods all along.
Paris can’t explain anything to the sheriff. He sees a news broadcast about 8-year-old Anna Bennet going missing just a few days ago. He knows who that is. He breaks loose and finds a room with his much older father on his deathbed. Ben hasn’t seen Paris in years, and it’s a big shock. In his getaway, Paris steals Celeste and Daniel’s car by chance, and she recognizes him as he drives off.
Ellie looks up Anna Lang and finds that she died in a traffic accident in 1999 - the scene we saw at the beginning which was Paris and his mother. She looks up Anna’s yearbook picture on the Internet and sees her there. She follows her whole story up to her obituary. It looks like she had a happy life with love and friends.
Paris drives his stolen car, pursued by the police and jumps off the dam to escape them. The police yell that the dam isn’t safe, and he watches it break - with a flood of water rushing toward him.
Ellie returns to the swamp, finds her rope, and follows it back to her time just in time. She watches as water starts flooding the woods, and the water stops the time dilation effect– the woods are normal now. She hears people calling for Anna and Ellie and gets picked up. Anna’s been gone three days. Daniel talks about a guy who stole Anna’s boat and their car. The guy killed himself jumping off the dam, and he looked just like Ellie’s father. Ellie tells Daniel that she knows Anna’s OK.
Paris is mentioned in the news as a drowned man with no id, and the authorities don’t know who he is. Celeste is watching it, and she knows. Ellie shows Celeste one of the missing person posters she grabbed from 2005. “He didn’t mean to leave us.”
Brian’s Commentary
We’re almost an hour in before we see that this is a time travel story, and what twisted story it is. We were a ways in before I realized that Cee and Celeste weren’t the same character, and then later, we find out that they are. That was both excellent and very confusing casting going on.
It’s more of a time-travel drama than horror, but it’s really awesome!
Kevin’s Commentary
So that was the reason that the actresses playing Cee and Celeste were chosen to look so much like each other. I went into this thinking it was a creature feature, and the half-eaten crocodile early on was a red herring. It turned out to be so much more than I was expecting, and I thought it was great. Not horror, but I’d put it in my favorites of the year so far.
2025 825 Forest Road
Directed by Stephen Cognetti
Written by Stephen Cognetti
Stars Elizabeth Vermilyea, Kathryn Miller, Joe Falcone
Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was an excellent film. Creatively done with the same section of time replayed from three different points of view, and then a wrap up that brings it all together. We loved everything about it.
Spoilery Synopsis
Two girls have theories about a haunted house, and they’ve been doing research forbidden by their parents. Ashley hears a knock on her bedroom door, but she’s the only one home right now. She looks around, and there’s no one there, but then the knocking continues.
Maria, Isabelle, and Chuck walk around the house they’re considering buying. Isabelle isn’t their kid, but Chuck is her brother. They move in and find the roof leaks badly. Maria does some kind of sewing podcast, and she’s got a terrifying mannequin in her studio.
Chapter One: Chuck
Larry, a neighbor, introduces himself. Chuck complains about the leaky roof, but the roof is supposed to be new. Larry mentions that the old owner killed themselves. Chuck takes a photo of the buckets of water, and when he looks later, he sees a shotgun in the photo– but he doesn’t own a shotgun.
The next morning, Martha the mannequin is outside. Larry comes over to ask about the very real-looking mannequin. Larry asks about Isabelle’s mother who died in the car accident. This house seems to prey on the most vulnerable, so he warns Chuck to keep an eye on Isabelle. Larry also suggests that he read up on the town history at the library and join a gardening group.
At the library, Chuck runs into Ashley, one of the girls from the opening sequence, and she’s been crying. “Just put the books back and leave. It’s real. It’s all real. Don’t look for it. Just get out of this town.” The librarian jokes that he’ll never find Forest Road in those books.
Chuck teaches piano, and Olivia, his first student, arrives at the house. Someone is playing music and Olivia is in the other room with Chuck. “There’s an old woman at the piano,” she says, but no one is there when they go back in that room. Olivia can’t wait to run out the door.
Larry invites Chuck to a secret meeting in the basement of a building, and the people there talk about things they’ve seen. “We haven’t had a suicide in years, until Ashley. Everyone here has been affected by her in some way. She feeds on suicides.” Helen Foster has been inflicting pain on the people for decades. Everyone knows about her, but no one knows how to stop her. They have to find 825 Forest Road, that’s where Helen killed herself in the 1940s.
Chapter Two: Isabelle
We go back to when they moved in, and Isabelle isn’t thrilled about being there. She keeps having dreams about her mother. Chuck asks if therapy is helping. She’s an art student, and she drew a perfect picture of the new house, but she drew it years ago.
When the mannequin ended up outside, Chuck blames her, but she swears it wasn’t her. After the secret “gardening meeting” Chuck comes home to be questioned by Isabelle, who says Ashley, a girl at school, killed herself last night. Isabelle doesn’t think it was suicide; she’s been seeing things.
Luke, a friend from school, comes over to talk to Isabelle about what she’s seen. Everyone knows about the “gardening group” and he knows what’s been going on. He tells her about Helen Foster, who’s daughter faced continual bullying. When the daughter killed herself, Helen wiped out the bully and their whole family. She lived at 825 Forest Road, but that’s not on any map. Back in 1980, the town council was going to do something about it, but they were all killed in a massacre.
Isabelle and Maria go to a local art museum. Maria mentions that she’s got bipolar disorder and Chuck just doesn’t get it. One of the paintings changes, scaring a patron, and the gallery closes as they put a cover over the painting.
Chuck wants Isabelle to move to campus and get out of the house. Chuck and Maria may move in a few days as well. Luke mentions that he met Isabelle’s mother downstairs a few minutes ago. Isabelle points out that her mother is dead. Luke leaves, and Isabelle and Maria see the dead woman and run upstairs.
Chapter Three: Maria
We rewind again to Maria’s point of view of the first time they see the house. Later, she waits outside the library as Chuck gets his book. Chuck tells her that therapy is a scam, which Maria doesn’t agree with. Isabelle was the one driving when her mother was killed, so Maria knows that Isabelle’s gonna need lots of it. Maria didn’t want to move to this little town, but she didn’t have much choice.
Chuck explains that the town renamed and renumbered all the houses back in 1953 for some reason. She does her video blog and notices that right in the middle of it, her mannequin moved.
Later, Maria is afraid of the mannequin and wonders if there’s something wrong with her bipolar medication. She skips a dose.
After the art gallery incident, Maria tells Chuck what happened. He thinks she’s complaining about moving to the small town. On her next live video broadcast, we can see the mannequin’s hands moving in the background. That thing is clearly alive. She gets a text from her audience, “get out of the house.” It starts chasing her around the house, and later, she has Chuck burn it in the backyard.
Chuck says they may have trouble selling the house, and he has doubts about her experience. A thousand people saw it on the livestream, so it’s definitely not in her head. We cut to the incident with Isabelle’s mother in the kitchen, and we see what happened from Maria’s point of view.
The crazy old ghost-monster-woman scares the crap out of Maria. Maria goes into Isabelle’s room, and she’s bleeding.
Chapter Four: Forest Road
Luke comes to the door and tells Isabelle that he’s found the house at 825 Forest Road. He’s found plans and followed the power grid rather than street maps. He’s found power lines that seem to go nowhere, so that’s where Forest Road is.
Bonnie, the realtor, comes to the door, wanting to film a testimonial. Maria volunteers to do it. Chuck and Isabelle go searching for the house, leaving Luke to watch over Maria. Bonnie has a film crew to record an interview with Maria, and we soon see that Maria is being possessed by Helen, telling Helen’s story.
Chuck and Isabelle drive to the end of the road. They soon find a house and break in. Under a floorboard, they find a box with letters inside. Letters that Helen wrote to the bully’s family– the bully family’s address is their house.
Maria turns into a monster right on camera and kills Bonnie and the cameraman. Luke runs, but it gets him too.
At the house, an arm grabs Isabelle. When Chuck tries to stop it, it pulls them both into the bedroom and slams the door.
Everybody dies!
Brian’s Commentary
It’s kind of a mystery, as everyone tries to learn what’s really going on. Everyone knows something is happening, but they have no idea how to stop it. The three different points of view is a neat way to tell the story. It’s a ghost story, but it’s not about a haunted house; it’s about a haunted town.
I liked this one a lot. It’ll probably be in my top ten for the year.
Kevin’s Commentary
Like Brian, this one really clicked with me, too. It was unique enough to be interesting, and everything about it came together - cast, script, effects, and direction. It was great.
2025 Crazy Texas
Directed by Francis Juarez
Written by Jordan Bradley, Marc Isaacs, Francis Juarez
Stars Wes Gillum, Anna Pena, Belle Fawn Crow
Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
We didn’t care for this one much at all. It lacks a plot, or at least we couldn’t really pick up on much of one. The story, such as it is, just kind of sits there stalled. The performances are just okay. Nothing stood out for us, and we were bored. The cardinal sin of a movie.
Spoilery Synopsis
Rocky and Trevor talk about playing a trick on some girls. Trevor describes a kidnapping, and Rocky is a simple fellow who goes along with it not fully realizing the bad thing they are doing. We cut to a bunch of Christmas Carolers. The two kidnappers break into the house and put everyone to sleep. They carry out two women and drive away. They stop and change cars and clothes then pass right through a police checkpoint. Credits roll.
The two women, Avery and Lilly, wake up chained to chairs.
We cut to a funeral where Avery and Lilly mourn their grandparents. After, they hear the reading of their will; the two girls got a large sum of money to split.
Trevor plays Christmas songs on the record player at the wrong speed and torments the girls. He says he knows everything about them. He says they are both here because they are “true believers.” He seems like a religious fanatic, but there’s probably more to that.
Lilly wants to do what the man says and get released, but Avery wants to escape. He knows about their inheritance and their grandparents. Avery remembers Trevor from church. Avery is confused about the date, and she’s told that it’s Christmas Eve.
We flash back to Trevor and Rocky; Rocky wants to talk about the girls. Trevor puts him off until evening. As they talk, it appears that Trevor’s not into religion at all, even though he acts otherwise.
We cut to Lilly and Avery talking to Trevor about their inheritance problem. It’s all very civilized, and he seems to be a counselor or therapist.
Back in the lair, the three talk about Olivia, Avery’s friend. “Would you like her to join us?” We cut to Olivia, who shows Avery’s photo to Rocky. Rocky comes to Trevor for his payment. He shows them the girls and then hits him over the head with a baseball bat.
Back in therapy, Trevor tells Lilly about an unconventional therapy that he tried once. “Sometimes unconventional methods are necessary.” He says he needs Lilly’s trust and help, and she agrees to help.
Olivia comes to Trevor’s door, and he tells her he’s there alone. He offers her “counseling” but he’s creepy and she leaves. Olivia goes to her friends and tries using a Ouija board to locate Avery. “Avery Help” is the message.
The police are out investigating Rocky’s disappearance. They talk to the girls’ parents, who are also Trevor’s clients. Trevor explains that Lilly is helping Avery “find her way.” “Change doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a process.”
Avery is very religious, and Trevor says it’s all a lie. His grandfather left him a notebook with lots of twisted stuff, and we get a flashback to those days. “The Bible is only one side of the story; other accounts exist.” He reads to them from his book.
In therapy, Lilly complains about how Avery is changing, but he reminds them that “we have a plan.”
Back in the room, Trevor does a ritual with powder in circles on the floor and blood. Olivia returns, and this time, Trevor gets her too. Then he gives Avery a long explanation about something… blah blah.
Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door; it’s the police, looking for Rocky. He gets rid of them easily enough. He goes back to the overly-long Satanic ritual.
Avery wakes up and rises from her coffin in foggy woods. She goes through a door and hears monsters inside. She sees an older woman inside and gives her a rose. She gets further instructions from the woman.
Back in the real world, Trevor gets upset because Avery didn’t bring back the Morningstar. He kills Olivia in retaliation. Lilly wants to change the plan; their whole plan was to make Avery insane to get her half of the inheritance. She and Trevor have planned this whole thing.
Lilly whacks Trevor over the head with a hammer and then chokes him.
Avery wakes up in the hospital, and Lilly admits everything. The two sisters are happy after that as they go visit Olivia’s grave.
We cut to the girls’ parents, who are now reading Trevor’s grandfather’s book.
Brian’s Commentary
This is just awful. It’s like someone heard the blurb for “Heretic” last year and tried to make a movie like that, but got it all wrong.
We were starting to lose interest about a half hour in and wondered when the “plot” was going to start. At about the one-hour point, we were still wondering what the point of all this was.
Wes Gillum once played Charles Manson in a film, and he’s definitely got the same look and vibe here. Other than him, it’s a very “indie” cast, most of whom seem like they’ve never acted before.
The dialogue here is slow and pretty clunky. Why did Olivia think Trevor was involved in the girls’ disappearance? Avery’s dream sequence looks good, but that’s just a few minutes of an otherwise incredibly dull film.
Kevin’s Commentary
I kept finding myself being drawn to looking at other things on my phone and computer as we watched this. It just didn’t hold my interest. It seemed to be stuck in neutral without really going anywhere, though I kept hoping and expecting that it would. I didn’t think it was entertaining at all. I wouldn’t recommend it.
2006 Final Destination 3
Directed by James Wong
Written by Glen Morgan, James Wong, Jeffrey Reddick
Stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Kris Lemche
Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This one is more of the same, only different specifics. A vision before a disaster saves some people who were meant to die, then death comes after them. The deaths are even more Rube Goldberg, and suspenseful and creative, this time around. The acting and direction gets the job done, the effects are good. If you’re a fan of the previous films, you’ll probably enjoy this one too.
Spoilery Synopsis
We see footage of a carnival as credits roll. When that’s done, we cut to a bunch of people on a high-drop ride. Wendy takes a photo, where the ride is “High Dive,” the photo shows “High Die,” with the V gone dark. Wendy, Kevin, Jason, and Carrie are having fun, and Wendy is also taking photos for the school yearbook. The group decides to ride a roller coaster with a talking devil on it. Wendy’s weirded out about it, and they all argue about where to sit. A weirdo, Frankie, wants to sit behind a couple of hot girls and takes Wendy’s seat. She and Kevin end up sitting in the very last car.
We cut to a hydraulic leak somewhere on the ride. They ride up to the top hill and let loose; Yep, it’s a roller coaster! Frankie drops his camera, which breaks something, and the whole coaster starts coming apart. Everyone dies.
We flash back to everyone getting on the coaster. Wendy says, “We have to get off here. It’s gonna crash!” This results in a fistfight, and most of the characters get off. The ones remaining ride the coaster… and die.
Some time later, Wendy looks at a memorial to the dead students. Kevin tells her about the people in the first movie; there was a death-avoiding premonition then, too. It does sound like her situation. Wendy isn’t listening.
The two girls who should have been in the front of the coaster go to the tanning salon (remember those?). The attendant is really busy and lets them self-serve. We see that the shelving unit is loose, the attendant gets locked out, there’s a high voltage sign: this place is a deathtrap. One thing leads to another, and they get trapped inside the tanning pods. They burn to death before the attendant can get back inside.
Wendy tells Kevin that she feels that Death is following her; she can feel it. She admits that she’s looked up Flight 180, and now she believes the group is doomed. The kids should die in the same order in real life as they did in Wendy’s vision, so Frankie Sheets should be next. There’s another whole thing involving out of control trucks and a slow drive-in window. Wendy and Kevin avoid death, but Frankie, in the car ahead of them, doesn’t. Wendy’s photos tell how people are going to die, but only vaguely.
Kevin and Wendy go to see Lewis, who’s working out in the gym. Wendy tries to see a pattern in the photos, but there are just too many ways to die in this place to narrow it down. He works on a machine directly under a pair of sharp-looking display swords. The swords fall, and don’t do what they all expect, but he dies anyway.
We cut to Ian, who is shooting pigeons at the hardware store with a nail gun while standing on a forklift. Erin lets in Wendy and Kevin. They think Ian and Erin are next, but they are skeptical. The forklift gets caught in a chain, there’s glue, wind chimes, antifreeze, saw blades, and power tools, oh my. Well, stuff happens. Erin gets nailed and Ian lives… for now, but he shouldn’t have lived. And he’s very suspicious of Wendy now.
Wendy’s sister Julie was next on the roller coaster. Amber and Perry were probably with her. Wendy goes after her to the centennial celebration, where Kevin is working security. A cannonball rolls downhill, messing with a trailer support. As the fireworks start to launch, the trailer they’re on starts rocking. A horse goes berserk and ends up nearly killing Julie. We soon figure out who was sitting next to Jule on the coaster– ouch!
Kevin almost gets burned alive but Wendy pulls him away at the last minute. Ian walks through the party, and Wendy thinks he’s involved with her death. He mocks Wendy and says he’s beaten death and completely safe. He’s… not immune.
Five months later, Wendy’s in the big city. She hears a song, sees a number, and wonders if it’s all over for her. She wants off the subway, right now. She runs into Julie and doesn’t get off as she wanted. She finds Kevin on the train as well. All three of them “beat” death– or did they? As the subway train crashes, we see that no one beats Death. And we wonder why it took five months.
Wendy reverts back to just before the accident. It was another vision and it’s happening again!
Brian’s Commentary
We’re both pretty sure we’d not seen this one before. No one from the previous two films are in this one, so it’s a whole new start. The deaths in this one are the whole point of the film, and they are more Rube Goldbergy than ever. You know who’s going to die next, but the various clues and hints as to how are often red herrings.
It’s well made with good special effects and very creative deaths. If you’re a fan of the series, this is pretty much just like the others, more of the same.
Kevin’s Commentary
I had seen a clip of the opening chaos scene before, the rest was new to me. This one did seem to have more of a focus on the death scenes, which were a bit more elaborate and involved this time around. We knew someone was going to die, but exactly who and how wasn’t made clear until the resolution. I thought this was a worthy sequel, as entertaining as the previous two.
Contact Info:
Email: mailto:email@horrorguys.com
Websites:
https://www.horrorguys.com / https://www.horrorweekly.com / https://www.horrormonthly.com
Share this post