31 Days of Halloween: Malum

 2023, Anthony DiBlasi (Last Shift) -- download

I am pretty sure in the dozen years we have been writing this blog, I have never done a post about a movie we turned off. We rarely turn off movies, but at about mid-point through this ghosts & gore flick, I just said, "Are you finding this tiresome?" She agreed and clicked-off.

But I am still writing the post because of the reason we watched this movie. In reading about horror movies for the season, this one came up again and again. The interesting detail is that it is the 2023 remake of the movie we watched during this run in 2015, called Last Shift. In my mind, I saw this as the "American remake" of the Scottish movie we saw, and recall enjoying, starring Liam Cunningham and Pollyanna McIntosh. Except when I go back and read the post I just linked, to Last Shift, it also says that, that we thought the movie might be the "American remake" of the Scottish movie, which is actually called Let Us Prey. So, in the end, DiBlasi just ended up doing a remake of his own movie from a decade earlier, both being American. And the fond recollection I had, was for an entirely different movie. My opinion of Last Shift was less than favourable.

The movie is once again about a small American police station being shutdown and a young rookie is assigned the duty of sitting in the place for its last night, basically to man the phones and redirect all calls to other station houses. This was  the station where her father returned after killing a bunch of homicidal cult members, and rescuing three girls. But on the same night he did so, he went berserk killed a bunch of cops before putting barrel of a shotgun in his own mouth. Other cops are not fond of Jessica (Jessica Sula, Split) because of who her father was, but also because its Kentucky so add in some racism & sexism.

And like the first movie, ghosty things start happening as soon as the doors close. But also culty stuff. Despite her father killing most of the cult, we can guess some survived for their symbol is all over town. And followers are causing havoc for other stations. But unlike the other movie, which irritated me to no end by having weird shit happen in the background, for us only to see, this movie just has non-stop, gruesome, gorey jump scares. After about a dozen, that were not scary at all, I was just annoyed. And we turned it off.

This is the kind of movie that separates me from traditional "horror fans", and I have mentioned this before, the kind that attend horror-cons and love the magazines like Fangoria (dude, you already whined about that AND used those comparisons THIS MONTH). I ascribe the enjoyment by those fans as always looking for the next gorey scene to top the last, the next jump scare to make you squeak louder, the next scene to make you wince even more. Not really my interest.