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Cabin Girl 2023 ★★★
I would like to know what the budget on this one was. I also like being surprised by these low budget horror affairs.
A van girl streamer (people call her an influencer, but we never see her hock stuff) moves into a cabin after an accident. I'm sure that won't come back to bite her in the tush.
Things starts heating up when her new dream home then again, streamers and influencers always end up with stuff they totally love, wink turns out to be the former home to a supposed witch. So get our share our witchypoo possession and small town collusion. All leading up to a nice twist with a predictable red herring that, in the end, does not completely work out the way I thought he did.
All sounds pretty by the numbers and sometimes, it kind of is. But as a style exercise, it worked for me. Rose Lane Sanfilippo made for a believable vlogger, Sam Ingraffia fits the role of the small town doctor and Austin Scott does a good job as the boy with the heart of gold.
For those willing to sit through low budget trash in order to then stumble across this stuff.
Killer Book Club 2023 ★★½
Proving once again that hype and Netflix don't match. When Netflix hypes a horror, it's (usually) time to get sceptical. I have a soft spot for non-English spoken horror in general and since Rec and Voces Spanish horror in particular. So I dove in and gave it a try.
Killer Book Club is an all in all okay style exercise that borrows (very) freely from source material like Scream and I know what you did last summer. From the premise to the tone to the character. There's a shot of Nando that reminded me of Ryan Philippe and another gives away a bit of a Skeet Ulrich-vibe. Also, the book signing. Am I the only one who saw that and immediately JLH go What are you waiting for, huh?!
Also, what's with the text dubbing? The original langauge is Spanish, the dialogues are in Spanish and yet, for some reason, all the texts and even the headlines in a clearly Spanish newspaper are in English. I don't know what's more annoying: the pandering to the more lazy part of the audience or the fact that for a lot of people (the ones willing to listen to a language they do not necessarily understand), this will come across as half assed.
As I said, it's a style exercise, so it follows the tropes of the meta horror, with the self referential lines and what not. So we get the characters turning on each other like in I know, the Scream-style of communicating (at least they are now apping instead of calling).
So a lot of it is ripped off with just a tiny few tweeks here and there. That said, a style exercise can have its merits and the merits of this film are a decent pace and good kills with a good division. It has some good gore and Professor MeToo and the killer(s) get the most gnarly kill.
(Only) for slasher fans looking to expand their collection. And for fans of Spanish horror. No Voces, but kind of fun in its own way.
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