Lovable losers are always great fodder for an angsty teen horror flick. The outcasts, the weirdos, the ones who can’t find friends, even the ones who don’t want to find friends. Nonconformists who find comfort in conforming to nonconformity. As Frank Zappa once said during a show, “Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform and don’t kid yourself.”
The uniform for the outcasts in There’s Someone Inside Your House, the new adaptation of the novel by Stephanie Perkins, is wokeness. The film takes place in a small town in rural Nebraska, and the small band of teenage protagonists seem to be the only folks in town who are on the right side of social justice. It’s something that hangs heavily over the film, even in the moments where it drifts away from commentary and just tells a story. If there’s one thing we love here at Missile Test, it’s being lectured to by a movie. Just kidding. We don’t like that. We do like slasher flicks, though! Continue reading “There’s Someone Inside Your House”
After a four-year layoff, Bob and Harvey Weinstein wanted another Hellraiser flick. They also didn’t want to pay a lot of money for it, so they optioned a direct-to-video film. That meant no big stars, no big budget, and a script that was clearly written as a different film and reworked to insert iconic Hellraiser bad guy Pinhead (Doug Bradley) into some scenes.
Like the previous Children of the Corn flick, this fifth entry in the series, subtitled Fields of Terror, features a future star in the cast, in Eva Mendes. But, that’s not all. There’s also a lesser Arquette and a Zappa progeny. The best part is, all this is wrapped up in a package more in tune with the ley lines of shitty cinema — more aware that bad movies survive on spectacle, and less on good intentions.
One thing we love here at Missile Test is spotting a former A-list star slumming it in a low-rent shitty movie. There’s nothing mean-spirited about it. We like low-rent shitty movies quite a lot, so we feel blessed when the inevitable career turn occurs, and former Oscar-winners and contenders are forced to make due in productions of lesser means and artistic intent. But, what we like even more is when a low-rent shitty movie features a future A-lister — a performer who has yet to prove they have the talent to take them out of the muck. Rookie performers such as these often do the best job in the film, and raise its overall watchability, without having too much of a negative effect on its shittiness. Preserving that je ne sais quoi is important for the shitty movie fan.