Director: Joseph Scrimshaw
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Hoping for a fun night in, a woman and her friends spend the time watching an old horror film with her uncle, but as the night wears on, the group suddenly finds themselves thrust into the DVD itself and forced to overcome the special features and the movie itself to get back to reality.
Review:
Overall, this was a massively likable and enjoyable genre effort. Among the better elements within here is a rather strong setup that allows this to look into the concept of nostalgia and longing for the past while also generating some unique concepts by itself. The whole idea of this one involving the group staying up late to watch movies together and managing to find out the truth behind a cursed piece of media that they’re all immensely proud of and are forced to navigate out of it offers the kind of formulaic but still worthwhile starting point that it allows them to come together rather well. By making plenty of mention about how this has to be accomplished by watching the film on DVD and accessing the special features through the disc to get into the specific universe, the special mindset created here is all reflective of a love of old-school media as a warmth for the past against the lifeless, digital sheen of modern life.
This all manages to create the kind of full-throttled universe where this can enjoy plenty of fun wrapping through the various aspects of not just the main movie but the actual contents of the disc itself. These encounters focus on the group trying to make their way through the house while fending off the characters from the movie-within-the-movie or the special bonus features available on the disc as they invade their house through different doorways leading to new adventures along the way. Using the movie monsters’ abilities against them to avoid becoming like the creatures themselves, this has some enjoyable enough elements that are kept in check with some fun action and clever motivations to bring them together alongside the great make-up work featured here.
There are some issues here that bring this one down pretty heavily. The main issue here is that, for all the good this does at establishing the groundwork of nostalgia at the heart of the film, it rarely does as well with regards to the horror scenes it’s supposedly satirizing. Focusing on the action within the scenes here is generally fun enough and gets a lot out of them in that regard, but the whole thing gets undone when the means of setting up these scenes is yet another cliché that doesn’t stand out at all from the more creative uses of nostalgic longing for the past that this spends more time doing. The other issue with this one is the somewhat problematic sense of comedy where it might not always be as funny as it thinks it is, trying to make the running joke of them fawning over the actor playing their favorite character in the film and trying not to freak them out, which is a bit hit-or-miss, making for some big issues that bring this down,
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally fun if slightly problematic meta-horror effort, there’s a lot to like here which comes off well enough to like a lot of what goes on here to the point of holding off the few issues with this one. Those who are curious about it, who have an appreciation for the kind of style or approach of this one, or who don’t mind the issues here will have a lot to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment