31 Days of Halloween: The Wretched

 2019, The Pierce Brothers (Dead Heads) -- Netflix

Starting in 2011 we (Marmy and I, as Kent is not much of a horror fan) began celebrating the Halloween season (all of October, of course) by watching too many horror / Halloween related movies, most of them bad.  2012 had a few flicks but not the full month. Un/Re-employment killed 2013. Apathy slayed 2014. But we returned in 2015 with a full run. 2016 had a good start, but stalled in the last few days, likely due to work life. 2017 almost started with a fizzle, but then I remembered, "It's October 1st !"  It still fizzled. Life abounds. And in 2018, almost the entire year was Halloween *ahem* as in the year of posting was mostly October. 2019 did alright for itself, considering I went off to Las Vegas sometime in the month.

This year has its own built in horror. In fact the whole year has been a bad horror movie of racial strife, political nightmares, and of course, The Pandemic. Seriously though, its been fucking terrible. So maybe a bunch of movies where people defeat monsters, survive psychos and even maybe squash some zombies is cathartic. And not as bad as reality.

First up, a monster movie. In fact a movie that once again had me wondering when Sam & Dean were going to show up driving Baby, asking the local authorities (and cute waitresses in bars) too many weird questions before they end up at the main character's house with notes about a Dark Mother. Is that a spoiler? No, not really. Explanations are not what this movie is about.

Ben comes to spend the summer by the bay at his divorced father's house, which sits awful close the the Hot Young Neighbours and their kids. Ben's a teen, Hot Rocker Mom is in her 20s, and catches Ben's eye. Of course, Ben's a bit messed up, a bit of a troublemaker, but his dad puts him to work where he works with the Cool Weird Girl and runs afoul of the Mean Kids. Meanwhile Hot Rocker Mom hit a deer and decided to gut it herself, which doesn't go well. Little does she know what's inside the deer carcass.

If a monster is well known enough to have an entry on a "Witchipedia" website, then it better damn be in a world with monster hunters. This creature crawls out of the Feywild (dark fey, of course) via a twisted, nasty looking tree, and into the skins of its victims, manipulating and eating the unwary. It creates pawns from those it doesn't eat, lumbering zombie fools to do its bidding, while it kills more, collects more, filling its larder before the skins it wears rot away. Kind of makes me wonder if that is what Drew from Lifechanger was supposed to be, maybe a spawn who forgot his origin story? Anywayz, how do you defeat such a creature, maybe with fire or magic or a silver blade? Or maybe you just have to let it eats its fill so it can sleep again...