'RESIDENT EVIL' (2026)......FROM ZERO TO TENTACLES IN LESS THAN FIVE SECONDS........

 Resident Evil (2026)

   Writer-director Zach Cregger, the newly crowned horror genius of 'Barbarian' and 'Weapons' probably didn't have to work as hard as he did to make us forget those endlessly repetitive 'Resident Evil' movies from Paul W.S. Anderson and starring his wife Milla Jovovich. 

      (Who the hell remembers them anyway?  Maybe Anderson and Jovovich's immediate families...)

      But given the amazing results here, just about everyone's glad he did make those films nothing but lost memories.....turning this new version into a hilariously entertaining, stripped down 90 minute rollercoaster ride......the kind with multiple 360 degree loop-de-loops. 

       So no one should waste their time looking for deep character development, plot complications or any rational explanations for what's unfolding in front of you. 

        Just lock in the safety bar down on your lap and enjoy that you're still alive when the ride's over. Which is more than we can say for any of the poor souls in the movie itself......

         A moment here......one thing we've always wondered through all the R.E. moves, including this one......

         Do the stockholders of the vast Umbrella Corporation ever question that every new innovation from the company's Research and Development department invariably touches off an extinction level apocalypse of zombies, mutants and assorted monsters? Leaving millions dead, dying or transformed into all of the above.....

          Just askin'......given their track record, we would've unloaded our Umbrella stock decades ago. And with that amount of managerial incompetence on display, who's running the place anyway?  The Trump family? (well, that would explain everything)

         But let us now have some fun with Umbrella's latest disaster inflicted on their much beleaguered home base,  Raccoon City.....(and whose residents should've know way better than to move into a town named Raccoon City.....)

        Hapless shlub Bryan (Austin Abrams) ekes out a living delivering organ transplants to hospitals, presumably because it pays more than GrubHub, Door Dash and Uber. His new gig, unfortunately,  takes him to, you guessed it, Raccoon-arama, where every single person he runs into (sometimes literally) is either a gibbering, multiple tentacled abomination....or a human due to go on the menu at any second.... 

           That, dear BQ visitors, comprises the be-all and end-all of this movie. Abrams, very funny, by the way, mutters how utterly effed he is as every new variety of catastrophic carnage and squishy tentacles befall him. He's like a modern day Job and everything including the kitchen sink thrown at him.  And he began this trip into hell thinking his newly pregnant girlfriend was the worst of his problems .....heh, heh, heh...... 

       Let's not forget to give a shout out to that gem of a scene stealer Paul Walter Hauser, who briefly shows up as a panic stricken Umbrella underling. His moment with Abrams, with each of them outdoing each other in escalating comedic frenzy, is pure laugh out loud gold. 

      As for monstrosity maestro Cregger, he's not likely to enter the Oscar conversations with this one but he most definitely brings orgasmic euphoria to fanboys and fangirls everywhere. But whether he gets away with film's abrupt, nihilistic ending, well that's for you viewers to decide.  

     Given the film's drips with doom from beginning to end anyway,  we didn't mind it all that much.....

     We doubt we need to spend any time describing who this film's made for.....either hop on this coaster or move on to the cotton candy and the whack-a-mole booth.....

       4 & 1/2 tentacles (****1/2).

          

        

MID WEEK MADNESS WRAP UP.....SPECIAL 'ARC DE DUMPSTER' EDITION......

 

'CRONE'.....DEEP IN THE DARKEST HEARTS OF DARKNESS......

 Crone by Keith Rosson  (2026)

     All lovers of Take-No-Prisoners, Leave-Nobody-Unscathed blood dripping, gore drenched horror.......... fasten your seatbelts and try to keep your stomachs in the upright position. Because what goes on in author Keith Rosson's Pacific Northwest little town is more than equal to any of the monstrosities lurking in Stephen King's New England burgs.

     It seems to start out like a grungy, gritty crime noir, filled with psychotic low level drug lords and their pathetic hopelessly addicted customers. Trapped amid them is disgraced ex-cop and ex-addict Eli Lamp, with a backstory riddled with gut-wrenching tragedy, a life strewn with all the wrong roads taken. Eli, when still on the skids of addiction, was utterly destroyed by the disappearance of his nearly blind teenage daughter Hannah, who foolishly accepted a van ride in the middle of a dark rainy night. His further descent into violence left him in a vise-like obligation to drug kingpin Dave and reduced to eking out a dissolute existence as an enforcer and delivery boy of Dave's graft payouts to the town Chief of Police.

     And now Eli's bedeviled life takes an even darker stranger turn. Anton, one of Dave's two thuggish sons has been found mutilated beyond all rational description.......and Dave's offered Eli a way out of his eternal servitude as a gang minion - to use his rusty skills as a detective to hunt down and deliver up Anton's killer to a revenge frenzied Dave.

     To Eli's growing dread and Dave's stunned amazement, more mutilations and impossible happenings unfold before their disbelieving eyes. And the very last thing victims see is something humanoid, something female, something with enormous jet black wings that block out all light. This escalating carnage appears to coincide with the return of Hannah's best friend Avery,, who's lived with the guilt of doing nothing to stop Hannah from getting into that van. Avery's been drawn back to town by nightmare visions of Hannah and she brings her own set of troubles with her, feeding her powerful drug addiction with money belonging to one of Dave's rival drug lords.....a certain death sentence.

     Beyond the endless, graphic horrors that erupt every few pages or so, I felt equally gripped by the overwhelming sadness and inescapable tragedy in the beleaguered lives of Eli, Avery and Hannah. Even in the constant churn of the cruelty and grotesque supernatural events on display, the book still manages to make you ache and worry for these poor accursed characters. To me, that's what lifted this book into the level of Stephen King excellence and why I'm giving out 5 stars. "The Crone" packs in more fast moving thrills and scares than any multi-episode streaming horror series I've seen in the last few years.

        Anyone fearlessly devoted to seeking out the darkest reads of the spooky season.(or any other time), your search ends here. 5 stars (*****).

'IN THE WOODS THEY WAIT'......AND YOU WON'T FIND THE TEDDY BEARS' PICNIC IN THERE.....

  In the Woods They Wait by Carrie Lee South (2026)

     This 'something-awful-in-the-woods' thriller takes a good amount of pages (and two separate timelines) to reach its nightmarish finale, but when it finally does......a properly gruesome good time is guaranteed for all.

     Readers should keep in mind that use of 'unnatural' in the book's description.......so we're not talking about a big old bear here, or even Bigfoot. We're dealing with all-out monstrous horror, something apt to give you the willies for nights to come.

     Audrey Figg's career as an Ozark National Park ranger had its haunting, tragic origin in her adolescence. Back then, annoyed with her 13 year old brother Benny as they went hiking through the park trails, Audrey teased and frightened the boy until he lost his way......and then disappeared forever despite exhaustive searches. Telling no one about what led Benny into who knows what fate, for fifteen years Audrey's lived with the deepest guilt and shame, It's this tormenting burden on her mind that led her to stay in the Ozarks, devoting her life to never stop looking for Benny and keep other park visitors safe.......... hence her job as the Park's most skilled Ranger who knows those forests and trails all too well.

     And now another child, a young girl named Ivy has gone missing in the park. As Audrey and her boss Scott organize another massive search, all the terrible memories of Benny's disappearance come flooding back to her. And in Scott's brief sudden expressions of absolute terror, Audrey begins to suspect he knows more than he's ever let on about what Benny and ivy might have encountered. on those remote trails.......and what those cairns, those strange piles of stones left along the way really mean.

     Now that was more than enough to get my heart racing to stay with this book until its final terrors come out in full force. Yes, it makes for a slow burn and there's a point where the chapters flashing back to Benny's story only serve to make you want to get them over with and move on to the good scary stuff. But I do appreciate the time author Carrie Lee South takes to deepen the bonds Audrey has made with her two allies in the search for Ivy, her lifelong friend Corbin (and maybe something more) and her quirky knowledgeable new trainee Porter.

     There's a mixture of hair raising thrills and heartbreak as the book barrels toward Audrey's grandly horrific showdown with whatever's out there and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. And neither should anyone else who can never resist this kind of a shiver-worthy read.

     4 stars (****).

'CAT PEOPLE'.....IM-PURR-FECT ROMANCE.....BUT NO HARD FELINES WHEN IT'S OVER......

Cat People (1982)

      Well, what the hell. We're only a mere 6 weeks away from Halloween, so let the Spooky Season begin.....

           Here's a film appropriate as any for the kickoff point....writer-director Paul Schrader's update/remake/re-invention of producer Val Lewton's famously creepy 1942 original. 

      Coming 40 years after the first film, Schrader's version is a far more erotic and exotic take on the basic idea.....with naturally, amped up gruesome special effects and violence that Lewton's films never indulged in,  always leaving the worst horrors to the audience's imagination.

       But the primary Cat Girl casting is eerily similar in both movies. Lewton found his ethereal feline shapeshifter in diminutive, delicate French actress Simone Simon (also famously featured as the Satan's temptress in 'The Devil and Daniel Webster').

        Schrader's choice couldn't possibly be more on the money.....the otherwordly sex bombshell of the 1980's Nastassja Kinski, daughter of the notorious Madman of cinema Klaus Kinski.  

      With her enormous expressive eyes and compact curvy frame, Kinski virtually radiated the heat of a vaguely foreign, dangerous Manic Pixie Dream Girl. If you could believe any girl could transform herself into a slinking, snarling black panther, it was her. 

        But first we start off with the origins of cat people, set in a prehistoric, sand swept landscape and set to the moody warblings of David Bowie. It's where some unknown tribe serves up their virgins for some cat canoodlin' with the head panther who lounges about in an artistically constructed twisted branch tree. 

        Then we move on to modern day New Orleans (another great choice for a setting) where fresh off the boat, sweetly naive Irina (Kinski) arrives to reunite with her long lost brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell, still exuding the sexually charged feral threat he perfected in "A Clockwork Orange")

         Yes, they're cat-siblings sure enough and their conversions into dark furry predators wreak some bloody havoc on ordinary mortals......including zookeeper Oliver (John Heard) who's fallen hard for Irina....(in her luscious Kinski-form, that is)

        There is one genuinely ghastly death thrown into the mix here,  but Paul Schrader devotes much more of his attention to the sensual, carnal aspects of his script and in the seductive expressions and physicality of Kinski, he clearly found his muse. She's way more of a convincing half-human kitty than any of the Catwomen in any of the many Batman films. 

       (For those who still well remember the '42 'Cat People', the film does pay homage to it, with its own version of that film's unnerving swimming pool scene, only this time with a literally stripped down Annette 'O Toole as the terrified stalkee.....) 

       Moody, seductive  and coated with one of Giorgio Moroder's thrumming electronic scores, 'Cat People' may not quite satisfy today's hardcore horror viewers who demand over-the-top shocks every few minutes. But 44 years later, it still manages to cast its own weird unearthly spell.....

         And overall, steamy as hell, we might add. So there's that....

          3 stars (***). Not a bad way to jump start a Halloween festival of spookery. 

        

             

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL EDITION - "DON'T WORRY! I, YOUR PRESIDENT, WILL CONTROL A.I.!!"........

 

BQ visitors.....enjoy a terrific weekend and thanks always for stopping in to check our posts.

Trumpanzees:  So very sorry to break this news to you particular  "But I didn't vote for THIS!" MAGAmorons......Lobotomies you underwent before you voted for Trump in 2024 cannot be reversed......but it's possible for you to muster enough brain cells you have remaining to put the brakes on your Orange Jello Jolly Bad Fellow on November 3. Save the date......

R.I.P. THE KENNEDY CENTER......FOR NOW......UNTIL THE NIGHTMARE ENDS

ln the midst of all the non-stop insanity, let's take a moment for some positivity.......

Believe, if you can, that when the misery, madness and stench of the Trump era lay in the past, the Kennedy Center can rise again to its former glory......

And America's community of gifted performers will once again delight and amaze audiences as they return to the Kennedy Center's stage....

Call us a crazy optimist, but we don't believe it's outside the realm of possibility....

We can only live in hope the Center's restoration will be included among the many tasks that lay ahead to return this country to sanity, civility, decency, the rule of law and a national discourse free of distrust, anger and hatred of one another.....

     And we can all start on the long road to make that happen on November 3rd.