Beyond Re-Animator

(2003) ***1/2



Like the other 2 installments of the series, Beyond Re-Animator begins and ends with excessive grossness. In the positively ghastly opening sequence, a young boy helplessly watches his sister being strangled to death by a walking corpse with no mandible.

Flash forward - Dr. West has had 14 years in prison to reflect upon the deadly consequences of his mad science. He concludes that he was right all along and his indignant disposition hasn't changed even slightly. If anything, he's more determined than ever to continue his research in reanimating the dead. In prison he's forced to endure abuse from the other inmates as well as the crusty old warden who is hell-bent on making everyone around as miserable as he is.

Hope arrives in the form of a newly assigned prison doctor. It is soon revealed that this doctor has closely followed West's career as he is none other than the child I spoke of in the 2nd sentence. It is he who supplies West with his favorite thing in the whole wide world - a syringe full of the neon juice! It takes Dr. West 35 seconds (I timed it) from the moment he's handed the syringe to the moment he injects a dead body with it. This includes time taken out to contemplate and respond to the question "what are you doing!?" Lo and behold, said corpse awakens and becomes an uncontrollable frothing monster prone to fits of extreme violence.

Everything quickly spirals out of control as they tend to do in this series. The warden gets his mitts on the juice and uses it to revive criminals who got off too easy with the death penalty for the sole purpose of furthering their suffering. By the time the credits roll, you'll have witnessed a prison riot, an exploding druggie who shot the stuff into his veins, and most distressingly, a penis being bitten off, spit out, and carried away by a mouse. Try having a nice day after that one.

What seemed like an unnecessary, ill-conceived idea managed to overcome the odds and become another amusing, worthwhile addition to the madness.

Willard

(2003) ****



Willard is simply pathetic, or so his mother tells him on a daily basis. "Maybe you'd have found a girlfriend if you had a more 'handsome' name like Mark" she advises him. Her negativity is only one of many factors that has reduced him to the meek shell of a man he is. His evenings are spent caring for his sick (in every way) mother in a house infested with disgusting rats. No relief can be found at his day job, where his self esteem is further pummeled by his ogre of a boss, whom you may remember as that awful, awful man from the new Chainsaw movie, R. Lee Ermy. Mr. Martin goes out of his way to belittle Willard, and reminds him that the only reason he still has a job is out of respect for his deceased father, who helped start the company.

Willard manages to find friends in the only available place - his nasty basement. He notices an abnormal intelligence in his rats and begins to form a powerful bond with them, two in particular. There is the leader Socrates (named for his brainpower), and Big Ben. Like the clock, Ben is unusually friggin' enormous. Remarkably, the rats are able to understand and obey his wishes, granting him a rare advantage in life. Willard uses his newly acquired power to exact revenge on both his enemies and anyone else who threatens his “friends”.

Forget Marty McFly, Willard is the role Crispin Glover was born to play. He completely embodies a sense of powerlessness and self-loathing that most people fall victim to at times.

I know I'm not the only one who finds rats to be the most despicable form of life on the planet. They truly are wretched, disease-infested creatures of squalor. This is actually an invaluable asset to the movie. The viewer is overjoyed to see Willard grow a spine but can’t help but feel revolted by the means in which he attains it.

Special effects wise, there are some noticeable CGI moments but overall it’s pretty damn effective.

Slither

(2006) ***1/2

I grudgingly refer you to Summerisle's review of this movie, which I liked a lot more than he did. I'll admit I have a built-in bias, since I'm a huge Firefly fan and that series's frontman Nathan Fillion is the lead in this. But this movie is cool! Really.

I saw this when it came out, and at the time it seemed to me that it suffered from an affliction that hits many films in the genre: failure of niche. It was marketed as a horror/comedy, which is always a dicey-sounding mix for any horror fan. But comedy is a protean thing, and for me the laughs in this movie felt more like quick brushstrokes of character that leant the town more personality than the same amount of grim, serious dialogue could ever manage. Example: The interior establishing shot of the local watering hole, where we see a woman giving the stiffest-ever karaoke performance of The Crying Game, then the camera swings around and shows us the four people in the bar. Or after the alien-infected Grant takes off into the woods with one arm already starting to transform into a tentacle, the deputies track the subsequent livestock disappearances by sticking little squid stickers on the town map. I like this kind of funny better than the overt wink-to-the-audience variety (which seems to be at work in Feast, reviewed by JPX below). It allows for the coexistence of genuine emotion; when Elizabeth Banks delivers her "marriage is a sacred bond" speech to her now-monstrous husband, it may be ridiculous -- but it's a real scream she lets out when he passes the point of no return (pictured below...and no, that's not him).

I thought the alien life cycle was pretty creative, too. I can understand Summerisle's impression that it was unfocused, but I liked the touches they brought off. Grant the host organism transforms enough to impregnate that unfortunate woman whose bloated, bloody countenance has popped up on our blog again and again. She bursts alien slugs all over, and the slugs crawl into people's mouths and turn them into acid-spitting alien zombies. Here's where two of the details I love are introduced. First, all the zombies now think they're Grant himself, so when they go chasing after his wife they're all forlornly yelling "Starla! Starla!" Second, the teen bathtub girl manages to grab her slug's tail with her fingernails, and after a struggle pulls it back out -- but during the struggle she gets flashes of the alien's point-of-view, from when it was conquering its last planet up to possessing Grant. So when she joins the survivors, she's their source of info about the invader. Sleuthing out the problem can be a chore in horror movies sometimes, and I saw that as a smart, deft touch.

And since I've given up trying to not sound defensive about this movie, I need to rebut Summerisle's point about calling the military. See, they try, when the sherriff tells the switchboard girl (Pam, the receptionist from the U.S. version of The Office) to call the Center for Disease Control. But before she can summon the environment suits and machine guns, she's slugged. They're all slugged.

But as much as I want to prop up this movie, I can't rate it any higher than I have. It suffers from general thinness, there's a number of sub-satisfying CG effects, and the script shoots far lower than it could have. When the zombie folk have ripened enough, they merge with the main biomass, and upon seeing this happen Nathan Fillion says "now that is some fucked-up shit." Having seen what that actor's capable of, lines like that are pretty disappointing.

There are two thing about the ending that I love, but can't fully divulge. One is a line delivery by Fillion that includes the word "awesome." The other is a side effect of the climax, and it earns Slither some points for horror-y goodness.


Hey, what's that on my face?


Ohhhhh.

Cry Wolf

(2005) **1/2


Eight privileged brats attending an exclusive prep school see a ripe opportunity for mayhem after a classmate is found brutally murdered. Rather than sympathy, the antisocial snobs concoct a fear campaign by sending a mass email to everyone in the school, which is a fictional account about a serial killer with a penchant for students.
Apparently the goal of this email is to see how many people the elitists can frighten before their hoax is discovered. The fun ends quickly when dead students start to turn up, murdered in the same manner detailed in the email!

I watched Cry Wolf a few weeks ago and I’m hard pressed to remember much about it except that I couldn’t stand the characters, which is the death knell for me. I do recall that there were some okay twists and turns and I must admit that I didn’t see the ending coming, so it had that going for it. Overall this was a bland slasher rolled up in a barely-interesting whodunit storyline. Like I said, the characters will make you want to punch your TV. Here’s the gang,

jerks.

Rest Stop

(2006) ***


This direct-to-DVD cheapie resurrects the Spielbergian Duel idea of the faceless assailant in a big truck. In Rest Stop young lovers Nichole and Jess run away and head for Los Angeles. A quick detour to a dingy, out-of-the-way rest stop turns horrific when, after using the restroom, Nichole discovers that her boyfriend is missing. Adding to her problems Nichole finds herself drawn into a cat and mouse game with an unseen man in a big yellow truck. Seeking refuge in the gross rest room (think Trainspotting), she begins to read the graffiti written all over the toilet stalls. The graffiti, dating back to 1971, refers to the yellow truck and it’s license plate number. Coupled with a huge bank of “Missing Persons” flyers posted on a bulletin board outside, it appears that yellow truck-driver man has been torturing people for 3 decades. Eventually she hooks up with Joey Lawrence.

Whoa!

Dimwitted Joey is quickly taken down by the man in the big yellow hat, er I mean truck and Nichole is again on her own. Will she be able to stop this menace once and for all?


Rest Stop had the potential to rise above its direct-to-DVD status. However, despite its simple creepy premise, a few strong scenes of gore and some pretty decent action sequences, it ultimately misses the mark due to the improbability of it all. Yes I know this is a horror film so I should suspend some disbelief. But come on, are we really supposed to believe that the police haven’t been able to figure out what’s going on in 30 years when (a) our protagonist figures it out within 5 minutes; and (b) there is graffiti all over the restroom identifying the bad guy, including his license plate number? It would be national news if this many people disappeared from a tiny rest stop and the FBI would be all over it. Also, given that the bad guy appears to operate around this rest stop, wouldn’t your first instinct be to get as far away from it as possible? Our protagonist keeps returning to it throughout the movie. We never learn the motivations of the bad guy except that he appears to get off on raping and torturing women. The fact that there are 3 alternate endings (none of them satisfying) suggests that the director had no idea what to do with this thing. A fun rental but nothing you would watch twice.

Poor Joey

Feast

(2005) ***1/2


Winner of 2005’s Project Greenlight, the screenwriting contest show created by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Feast is a surprisingly gory, low-budget monster movie with echoes of Alien, Evil Dead, Dog Soldiers, and especially From Dusk Till Dawn. A group of mostly unlikable people find themselves trapped in a seedy bar in nowheresville. As the film begins we see these barflies doing what barflies do; shooting pool, drinkin’, fussin’, feudin’, and fuckin’. Moments after the opening credits conclude an “action hero” bursts though the doors bloody, battered, and bearing an uncanny resemblance to Ash from the Evil Dead films, which come to think of it, was probably an homage. Ash-homage informs everyone that “they’re coming” and to prepare for the fight of their lives. A horrible creature then consumes Ash. That’s pretty much it. The rest of the film follows the surviving gang as they attempt to thwart an evil creature onslaught.

Feast is a lot of silly, monster fun. As the film begins it is clear that the writers intended this to be Evil Dead 2-ridiculous. As each character is introduced, we get a freeze frame with their stats and survival likelihood, such as this example.

What I really liked about Feast was the way the writers screwed with our horror movie expectations. By killing off the “action hero” immediately, they set the stage for more unexpected surprises that will please you. Make no mistake, this film is gory, just make sure you watch the unrated version. Overall Feast is a very satisfying monster movie in the capable hands of individuals with an obvious love of the genre.

Creepshow II

(1987) ***1/2


Five years after the original Creepshow, the King/Romero tandem brought us another chapter in the Creepshow anthology. This one was shorter and had fewer chapters and pared down much of the comic book style of the original.

Ol' Chief Woodenhead

Ray Spruce (George Kennedy), a general store owner in a dying town is on the verge of retirement. In more prosperous times, the store put food on the table, put his daughters through college, and helped them start families of their own. Now it's nothing more than a lifeline for an Indian reservation with no money left to spend. As Ray is lovingly touching up the paint job on his wooden indian statue, he's approched by Ben Whitemoon, a trusted representative of the tribe. Ben bears a satchel filled with precious stones and metals -- the only collateral the tribal families have left to offer and convinces Ray to accept it until the tribe can arrange more suitable payment for the debt they've accrued.

Shortly after he leaves, Ben's thuggish nephew Sam barges into the store with his two white stooges. They toss things about, clean out the register, and demand the satchel of loot. In the mayhem, Sam shoots Ray's wife Martha point blank with a shotgun, before killing Ray as well.

When the thugs flee the scene of the crime, Ray's trusty Indian statue wakes up with a blood-curdling howl. He hunts down the three assailants, saving Sam for last.

This segment got completely up in my head when I first watched it at age 10. It was the shotgun blast that killed Martha that disturbed me so. Ben and Martha are kind people, people of warmth and honor. Their killers are such despicable slimeballs, so brutish and obnoxious. What God would allow them to be taken so coldly by such, well, annoying shits? The vengeance, when it comes, is swift and righteous.

And this Indian statue could take the little Zuni dude from Trilogy of Terror and just kick his ass all the way to Milwaukee and back.

The Raft

Based on a short story from Stephen King's Skeleton Crew anthology, The Raft tells the story of two couples, pot-loving college kids who drive up to a remote lake for a bracing November swim. There's Deke (hunky football jock), Laverne (Deke's slinky, sexy girlfriend), Randy (Deke's sidekick, who obviously would rather be smooching Laverne than his own girlfriend), and Rachel (Randy's moody girlfriend, played by Darryl Hannah's homely sister). The four nutty kids wade out in the ice cold water to a raft in the center of a lake. There, they notice a curious mass of sludge floating towards them.

Rachel crouches at the edge of the raft, staring into the sludge, transfixed. Suddenly, the sludge snaps out at her, melting the skin off her forearm and hauling her into itself. The swimmers stand horrified as her body is quickly eaten away. There's a brief panic during which Deke decides to try to swim for shore. He doesn't even make it back into the water before the slick attacks him through the boards of the raft, whipping a snaky appendage up his leg and pulling him through the boards. Now it's down to Randy and Laverne, who stay up until morning keeping watch, holding each other closely to keep out the chill.

In the early morning, Randy decides, in an inexplicable bout of horniness, to try to put the moves on the slumbering Laverne. He lays her down on the raft, lifts her sweater (Marked "Horlicks University" -- the same school featured in "The Crate" in Creepshow I) and places some tentative kisses on Laverne's breasts. Laverne turns her face up to look Randy in the eye and that's when we learn that the slick has already eaten off half her face. She screams in terror, pain, and accusation, and is pulled into the slick just like Deke and Rachel before her.

Randy wastes no time, diving into the water and swimming back for shore. He manages to make it out of the water, but only gets a couple seconds to savor his escape before the slick curls up in a mighty wave and smothers him.

Top notch gross-outs in this sketch, what with all of the acid-melted skin and everything. Heavy kudos to Tom Savini (who also appears as the Crypt-Keeper-like narrator -- ironically, the make-up job for his own character is really, really stupid looking) for his work in all three chapters.

The Hitchhiker

The snobbish wife of a successful New England attorney is hurrying home from one of her trysts when she drops her lit cigarette onto her lap. While frantically trying to put it out, she mows down a hitchhiker. She looks on, dumbfounded, as his destination placard (Dover) flips onto her windshield and then tumbles away. Seeing headlights looming around the corner, she screeches off uttering excuses and rationalizations.

A few miles later, she skids to a halt. Peering into her rearview, she sees the same hitchhiker limping down the road towards her car. He attacks her, repeating over and over again, "Thanks for the ride, lady!"

The hitchhiker hounds her all the way home. She smashes up her car to bejeezus and back trying to lose him but she only succeeds in mangling him more and more with each encounter, his "Thanks for the ride"s becoming more and more gutteral and blood soaked with each turn.

One final note: the narrator tells us as the movie comes to a close, "Until next time kiddies, try to stay scared." This movie came out TWENTY freaking years ago and the third one still hasn't come out. How much fear do they expect us to muster in that time?

-----

Well, that's it for me. It's been great fun being involved in this year's Thon. I began with the sole intention of increasing upon my pitiful total from last year. I managed to toast that goal in the first 40 hours of the contest. Proudly, I have now met my revised goal, which was to average at least one movie a day through the month of October. My last reviews turned in, it's now time to sit back and wait to see if Summerisle managed to squeak in more last minute movies than I did.

Immense thanks to everyone who read the blog, whether you left comments or not. It's been a privilege taking part in this insanity, alongside such fine writers and funny, funny guys. And it's been an honor knowing that people I've never even met before have been reading my words. This whole experience has been a delight. Thanks a lot, everyone.

Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood

(2003) **1/2


Finally

At the opening of Lep 6 we get a brief history of the Leprechaun. They were summoned by a king, along with other forest dwellers, to protect the king's gold from opposing armies, against which the king was otherwise defenseless. Word spread that the Leprechauns were pretty grim customers and gradually the threats to the king's riches subsided. When the king died, all of the Leprechauns went back to the forest.

Except one -- our villain. He stays the course and becomes tainted and evil over time.

Now back to the hood. At a construction site for a Compton community center, the Leprechaun is locked into a struggle with a fierce priest, armed with shamrock laced holy water and the Good Book. The priest prevails, sending the Leprechaun underground. The priest is mortally wounded in the fight.

One year later, we meet Emily. She works at a beauty salon and is desperately putting savings together to get out of the hood and to begin a new life. Accompanied by her spunky friend Lisa, she visits a fortune teller who informs her that she's about to come across fantastic riches, but that she should reject them lest she suffer terrible consequences.

Later, at the still unfinished construction site, she gets into an argument with Rory, her ex, and falls into a hole. Underground, she finds the Leprechauns treasure and hauls it up, generously agreeing to split it with Rory, Lisa, and their other friend, Jamie.

They have fun with their new riches --- moving into new apartments, buying new cars, dolling themselves up with new clothes and makeovers. But their free spending awakens the Leprechaun and he crawls out of the construction site dirt to hunt them down.

At one point, the quartet seeks Leprechaun advice from the fortune teller. Jamie asks why a crucifix won't help in their fight against the Leprechaun and is informed that it's because Leprechauns predate Christianity.

I did research while watching the Leprechaun movies. I read quite a few Leprechaun related websites and bookmarked the Wiki Leprechaun page (nothing on any of those pages about Leprechauns having an aversion to shamrocks, but maybe the people responsible for these pages haven't read the lore.) From what I've been able to gather, the first mention of Leprechauns didn't happen until the 1500's --- one full millenium after the death of St. Patrick.

Going off of the math in the Leprechaun movies, though, the Leprechaun had his millenial birthday on St. Patty's day 993 and 1993. So his actual inception was no later than 7 BC, maybe as early as 1007 BC or before. So yeah, according to the Leprechaun movie mythos, he did predate Christianity.

What that means though is that he also predated IRELAND. The island of Ireland was home to scattered tribes around 500 AD and wasn't recognized as a unified country until 1171, meaning the Leprechaun was at least 1,178 years old when Ireland first came into existence. So he's not so much a little Irishman as he is just a really huge fan.

To illustrate this point, it'd be like if Jesus were alive and well and were a Vikings fan. He'd put on his face paint and his parka and stroll out to the Metrodome screaming, "GO VIKES! THE PACKERS SUCK!!!"

And with that, my involvement with the Leprechaun franchise comes to a triumphant close.

Leprechaun In the Hood

(2000) ***


There isn't a single problem in this entire world that isn't solved by throwing Ice-T at it. The scientists at Leprechaun incorporated sacrificed every ounce of breadth putting their guy in deep space. So with no further boundaries to cross, we're brought back in to awesome Compton for one more chapter.

The story opens in New York in the seventies, with Ice-T sporting an enormous afro and bell-bottoms. T and his flunky bust into an abandoned building to discover a huge cache of gold piled around the Leprechaun in his familiar statue form. T is immediately attracted to a gold flute at the top of the pile, leaving the flunky to gather up all the rest. He foolishly reaches for the medallion hanging from the statue and promptly gets his neck sliced open by the revived Leprechaun. T manages to escape when, in the middle of a scuffle with the Leprechaun, the medallion is flung into the air and lands squarely on the Leprechaun's shoulders.

Flash forward 25 years and Ice-T has become the kingpin of a successful gangsta rap label. He's approached by a trio of young rappers with terrible rhymes about positivity and non-violence, who, given Ice-T's reputation, have obviously come to the wrong producer. He kicks them out of his office.

Later, the young rappers decide to exact retribution by breaking into T's apartment and stealing his stuff. One cracks into a glass case containing the Leprechaun statue and swipes the medallion. They're interrupted when T unexpectedly walks in. Postmaster P, the do-gooder of the group, shoots T and then goes through his pockets, still dazed by his surprising act of violence. In one of T's pockets, he finds the flute.

He discovers later that this is a Magic flute. When he plays it, others in the vicinity are immediately transfixed. He blows it before the trio plays a show and all of a sudden, everyone's on their side.

Anyway, it turns out that Ice-T isn't actually dead. The bullet is stopped by his gold chain and he gets up moments after his attackers leave. So now the young rappers have to fend off the attacks of both Ice-T and the the Leprechaun.

Do they make it? I won't say. But I will say this: their plan of defense hinges mostly on cross-dressing. Lots of it. This movie is up to its freakin eyeballs in cross-dressing. That's not all though. Leprechaun V goes for laughs in every bizarre stock way it can remember. There's goofy dancing Asian dude; there's get the Leprechaun high; there's a blind woman trying to feed collard greens to the Leprechaun only she keeps missing his mouth!; and there's a crapload of men dressing up as women. Leprechaun V leaves no stone unturned to try to get a laugh and occasionally it succeeds.

Also, Leprechaun V contains a blatant violation of its own rulebook. The heroes manage to trap the Leprechaun in an iron safe, which is supposed to completely neutralize his powers, yet somehow he's able to telepathically contact his small force of scantily clad ghetto chicks to come to his rescue.

Plus, there's actually a copy of "Leprechauns for Dummies" featured prominently in this movie. And it's huge. So maybe somewhere in there is the explanation for the iron-immune telepathy. At the very least, I'd like an explanation for why the little bugger hadn't used that particular skill until the fifth movie.

C.H.U.D. II

(1988) ***1/2

When Head of the Class was popular, American high-school girls would watch Brian Robbins and think, "Gosh, he's so funny and charming. And he's got such bitchin shoulder length hair and a fantastic wardrobe. I'd totally stay up past 11 on a school night with him!" And then Kurt Cobain caved in his skull with his Fender Jag-Stang and nobody ever looked back.

Ugh, the 80's. I don't know what was wrong with you people, but all of the lamest people became popular in the 80's. I mean, Dabney Coleman got his own television show in 1991 -- So powerful was the fame accorded to Dabney Coleman in the 80's that it spilled over into the next decade. Then everyone came to their senses and the show was cancelled in 92.

Despite Brian Robbins and his bodacious to the max style sullying every square inch of this movie, it still managed to be the funniest horror-comedy I've seen this year. This is largely on the strength of Gerrit Graham's (Used Cars, Police Academy 6!) performance as Bud the CHUD and a completely over the top performance turned in by Robert Vaughan.

Three high-school kids boost the incapacitated Bud from the local morgue to replace another dead guy they...forget it, the series of mishaps behind why Bud was able to hit the streets defies any attempt at logic.

Anyhow, Bud's on the loose and our three teen heroes spend the entire movie chasing him down. Hot on their tail is Robert Vaughan and his markedly unthorough team of military men. Vaughan himself spends most of the movie indescriminately hitting things (like poor defenseless orchids) with his riding crop and speaking without any kind of filter for taste or politeness.

Meanwhile Bud runs amok across town infecting people everywhere he goes with his CHUD virus. The CHUD project was an attempt by the military to create a merciless army, immune to pain or even death. All it really does though is make the infected lurch about and groan for meat. It's this last part which puzzles me the most --- the CHUDs get so psyched by the idea of feasting on meat and not a single one of them actually spends any time eating a person. All the CHUDs do is take one, maybe two bites out of a person's neck before moving on to other projects. So it appears that their taste isn't so much for meat as it is for making more CHUDs.

Also, unlike ordinary zombies, the CHUDs still have their full range of facial expressions and there are some classic looks coming from Bud.

The teens manage to corral all of the CHUDs in one spot, due mostly to the massive CHUD love for the female heroine --- all of them, man and woman alike can't get enough of Katie and she bravely uses herself as bait for much of the movie's last act. The heroes' solution to the CHUD problem is a pretty ambitious idea for a gang of high school students, so maybe Brian Robbins is hiding some extra brain in that gorgeous hair of his.

Octo picked this one out deliberately so that he could add a one-star rating to his list. Then he slept through most of it, which would make just about any movie from the 80s seem boring. Stay awake through this one and you'll be rewarded with a few pretty good laughs.

Grudge 2

(2006) ***1/2


Grudge II builds upon the events of both the first Grudge movie and Ju-on -- I like to consider these stories to be mutually exclusive, having happened to two different groups of characters at different times. Someone with more experience with the Grudge saga may take it upon himself to hit me over the head with a trout and say, "Duh, you twit. That's so painfully obvious." The difference is, now that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has burned down the Grudge house, the spirits are free to roam wherever they please and drift off to remote locales, like Chicago. It's here that my favorite of the Grudge threads takes place.

The movie is divided into three distinct chapters, broken up in time and interwoven, but all connected in some way. JPX explored the aftermath of the Sarah Michelle Gellar arc in his review and Octo, with his massive "Head of the Family" brain and word economy will probably find a way to squeeze the entire plot into his review.

Chicago -- The film opens with Trish at the stove placidly cooking bacon as her husband Bill enters the room, seething because Trish came home late the night before. He thunders at her from his dining room chair until Trish floats over to him and pours a panful of bacon grease onto his head. I'm thinking, surely there are going to be awful repercussions for such a bold move, but then Trish whacks Bill on the head with the frying pan, ending that particular concern, and calmly sits down to enjoy Bill's bacon.

Tracking back an indeterminate amount of time, Trish is just moving in with Bill and his two kids, Jake and Lacey. Bill and Lacey take to the change immediately. Jake is iffy about the whole thing, but Trish's warmth is irresistable.

Jake is becoming increasingly rattled by the happenings in the aparment next door. He spots a hooded figure creeping around the place and at night he hears awful sounds. His eyes become darker and his behavior becomes erratic. It's happening to everyone in the apartment. Obviously to Trish and Bill, as the events of Scene 1 demonstrate. But also to family friends. When Lacey goes over to brag to her friend Sally about making the cheerleading team, Sally greets her with a cold stare and then chugs an entire gallon of milk and then vomits the milk right back into the jug.

There are some excellent shocks lurking in Grudge II. I particularly enjoyed the events in a school psychologist's office and those in a photo darkroom. But Grudge II works less because of its shocks and more because of its permeating dread. It's at its finest when everything is quiet, when the particular weirdnesses on the screen billow and mingle -- the milk scene is a fine example.

I postulated to Octo after the movie that this could be the beginning of a massive Grudge epidemic --- I've been on a big apocalypse kick ever since Dawn of the Dead. Octo panned my hypothesis, saying that the Grudge works on a much smaller scale, taking out small groups of people. One of these days, though, the ghosts are going to crawl towards someone really popular, like a president or a movie star, and then everyone is going to have to deal with Cat-boy and Mrs. Croakfire leaping out of their morning coffee.