Icy Horror, Nazi Snowballs, Dumb Artificial Intelligence

All this apocalyptic Seattle snow (the worst in 70 years, according to the panicking news) got me in the mood to watch a few guilty pleasure snow horror movies, the irony being that we’re buried in huge, steaming piles of snow with more predicted to seal us in igloo coffins.

I have The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 30 Days of Night (2007), Dead Snow (2009), The Last Winter (2006), Frozen (2010/the teen horror movie, not the same-titled Disney horror movie), and Unnatural (2015) queued up. All that’s left to do now is crack an ice cold beer and chill. Heh.

While we’re waiting to thaw out — probably by the end of March — here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not bite like frost…

THE HOUSE (March 5, 2019)
“Set in the frozen wilderness of Norway during WWII, two German soldiers escort a Norwegian soldier and prisoner of war, but the weather is taking a toll on them. They find an empty house near the forest where they finally can get some rest. However, what seems to be a warm and welcoming shelter turns much more sinister and deadly. They begin to wonder if they have somehow have stepped into a sort of psychological hell from which there may be no escape.”

Finally — Nazis on the other end of the pain stick. I bet they start a snowball fight to end all snowball fights.

DEMON EYE (2019)
“A young girl returns to her father’s country house in the Moors following his mysterious death. There, she finds a cursed amulet that will grant her greatest wish, but at a price.”

The cursed amulet that grants me my greatest wish is a beer bottle.

AMI (2019)
“Cassie has become a recluse ever since her mother died in a car accident. In an effort to fill the void, she downloads AMI, the latest intelligent personal assistant. As their relationship quickly deepens into a twisted co-dependency, Cassie falls deeper and deeper under AMI’s spell; not realizing that everyone she knows is in serious danger.”

I wish I had artificial intelligence.

Pools of Horror, Zombie Submarines, Misshapen Monsters

Just watched Unacknowledged (2017), that amazing documentary on the disclosure cover-up of UFOS and the technology they bring to the conspiracy dinner table. Did you know the government has known about UFOs since the late ’40s and that they won’t publicly admit it? if I was an alien, I’d be hot around the lunar collar that I went to all that trouble to come here, just to be associated with that whole “fake news” hoopla. So much for cordial relations with our space brothers.

Speaking of hoopla, here are a few new horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be fake…

12 FEET DEEP (June 20, 2017/VOD)
“Sisters Bree and Jonna get trapped beneath the fiberglass cover of an Olympic sized public pool after it closes for the holiday weekend. They find themselves at the mercy of the night janitor, Clara, who sees the trapped sisters as an opportunity to solve a few problems of her own.”

This one was originally titled The Deep End. I think a porn movie already locked up that one. The plot is just a reworking of 2010’s Frozen, wherein two guys and a gal get stuck halfway up the mountain on a ski lift that just closed for the weekend. Which begs the question — would you rather freeze to death or be trapped in a public pool that also serves as a all-inclusive toilet for the less discreet among us? Think I’d take my chances on becoming a human popsicle.

DARK BEACON (2017)
“Amy Wilcock loves the married Beth Gadbsy with a fierce and tragic passion. When Beth’s distraught husband Christian dies in an emotional intervention, the now widow disappears with her daughter Maya into secret seclusion. Amy eventually tracks Beth down to a distant lighthouse only to find her broken and maddened in the midst of an alcoholic abyss. But that is not all she finds. They shockingly discover that the spirit of Beth’s spurned husband will not rest until he takes the surviving trio with him. Can Amy save them all from the spiral of madness and the crazed and hell-bent supernatural threat?”

First thought — waaaay too much plot getting in the way of a simple ghost story. For a really fun/funny (it was meant to be serious, but I didn’t interpret it as such) back-from-the-dead lighthouse/beach movie, give 1960s’ Tormented a spin. In that one a jazz musician “accidentally” kills his side trim (jazz term for “groupie”) by “letting” her fall from a lighthouse. She, of course, comes back from the dead, headless and yelling her head off, “Tom Howard killed me!” Those could be good lyrics for a snappy dance number if Tom would just roll with it.

OPERATION RAGNAROK (2017)
“In a town in southern Sweden, tensions between the locals and immigrants grow. Meanwhile, a submarine carrying a strange plague enters the town. The crew infects police officers out to investigate and a full-blooded outbreak begins. The town is isolated by the Swedish army, but the survivors inside, immigrants and locals alike, must band together against the infected.”

This one was originally titled Zon 261. I don’t know what a Zon is. As for the plague aboard the submarine, you sure it just isn’t a case of jock itch gone wild shared by guys stuck underwater for weeks on end with no windows to air out the place?

THE BLOB (2018)
“When a band of miners uncover something hidden deep beneath the earth they unwittingly unleash a hideous creature beyond imagination. Now the townsfolk must fightback, before it destroys everything.”

A remake of a remake of a sequel of a cool 1958 horror movie starring a young Steve McQueen. Really glad back then they made the blob a reddish brown (and growing more red as it consumes screaming citizens). If I saw a big brown blob headed down the street, I’d totally cover my nose and reach for a case of Febreze™ because it could be that King Kong just dropped one heckuva steamer.

What An Ice Hole

Don’t know why, but movies set in the snow (The Abominable Snowman/1957; The Thing/1982, Dead Snow/2009, are always exciting. And hey, snow is fun! You can draw on it without using a metaphorically big pencil (don’t let the steam sting your eyes); You can make lovely patterns in it using only your butt (“snow lungs”); And you can slide on it like a freshly oiled floor and giggle like a little schoolgirl while doing it, especially if you’re drunk (every winter since I turned 21).

So it’s with anticipation  I wait for the release of The Dark Below, a new horror thriller (pending 2015) making a big splash at Fantasia. As the press release says, “In this visually stunning, experimental thriller set on Michigan’s wintry frozen Great Lakes, a brutish serial killer imprisons his still-living latest victim in the watery depths. Thus begins a uniquely chilling story of survival and shocking revelation.”

Fangoria magazine goes further and declares, “You haven’t seen anything like it. This accomplished experiment in narrative storytelling tears every convention apart.”

I’m thinkin’ a snowball fight of epic proportions.

Wishful thinking aside, The Dark Below, starring the legendary Veronica Cartwright, is a “terrifying tale about a divers struggle to stay alive beneath a frozen lake while a killer hunts them from above.”

I bet The Dark Below is a sort of distorted reality wherein the killer is some sort of reverse land Orca hunting humans to eat as they swim and frolic below in the icy water. Relentless pursuit has always been the hungry whale’s first line of culinary strategy.