Author: Joel Fisher

Chloe (Kristen Kaster) is a bioengineer in a secret facility underground in a forgotten cold war bunker. She’s also the only survivor of the attack as a creature has mutated and made his way out of his confinements and wreaked havok, killing everybody in sight. However, there still needs to be a final girl and so Chloe has ended up being that person, but she needs backup.

Step in James Beckett (Jeremy Ninaber) and his elite team of soldiers who are sent in to finish a job that should never have gotten out of hand in the first place. The trouble is that they’ve never really faced anything like what they’re about to encounter before. So, the team find themselves being slowly picked off as the monster decides on his next prey.

Death Valley is a sci-fi horror exclusive to Shudder, written and directed by Matthew Ninaber and starring his brother. It must be nice to have such a creative and close-knit family as the Ninaber brothers seem to have because Matthew has a ready to go action hero in the form of his brother. Together, they’ve directed and starred in a few action movies on a similar budget as this as well.

It’s just a shame that so much of it comes across as one egotistical passion project after another as they assumedly try to build their own brand. In fact, Matthew Ninaber could even do better work playing monsters as he did in Pyscho Goreman playing the titular character, but here we are.

You have to feel sorry for the women in these films too because they all end up either as love interests, cannon fodder or the villain which leads Jeremy to have to finish off the she-demon herself, which unfortunately gives their films a rather unpleasant tone.

It’s also a shame that the dialogue for Death Valley isn’t all that much better than their last film and that Matthew Ninabar’s delivery has yet to improve.

Death Valley is a generic, action thrusting, testosterone fuelled monster movie which should have been forgotten long ago. It’s just a shame that pride and ego may make the Ninaber brothers want to do more.

Alma (Molly Kunz) is a classically trained pianist and has been in training for the past eight years. She has very important exams coming up and it could determine her future career as a musician. She also has somewhere she calls home and while on a break from her exams, she decides to go to where her grandfather lived by a lake with wild animals not so far away.

There she meets Joe (Graham Greene), an old family friend who helps Alma get settled in and introduces her to a wolf that likes to come by from time to time with her cubs. Alma instantly falls in love with the cubs and is drawn to one who she calls Mozart.

Meanwhile, a plane that’s carrying live cargo is having trouble in a storm overhead and a passenger makes his escape. Wandering around, a little lion cub soon finds its way to Alma and to meet Mozart and soon the lion cub and the wolf cub become close friends. However, there are people after the wolf and the lion; Eli (Charlie Carrick) who’s an animal conservationist and Allan (Evan Baliung) who wants to get back his lion cub for his circus.

Alma knows all too well though how circuses treat animals, so she decides to hide away Mozart and Dreamer, raising them herself and giving them a home.

The Wolf and The Lion is a feelgood family drama about a woman looking for a different life who finds friends in the most unlikely of places. Mainly aimed at children, The Wolf and The Lion is a great combination of cute animals and places a strong message of acceptance and one of animal conservation.

There are issues with the script, but mainly due to it being aimed at such a young audience. This means that although the kids can enjoy the cute animals and let the message wash over them, the adults may question the logic of the plot’s finer details. Also, the villains of the film are rather two dimensional and issues are raised by certain characters without any prior knowledge to their feelings.

The Wolf and The Lion gives something for a family with young children to enjoy, just try not to think about what Alma had to do to get enough food to feed a growing lion.

Lucas’ (August Maturo) mother has just died. He’s not dealing with it very well either what with his folklore monsters and the way that his brother, Tom (Mike Manning) treats him isn’t helping either. Tom is Lucas’ sole guardian now after their mother died and although he wants the best for Lucas, he’s going about it all the wrong way. He makes Lucas play a game he invented called Slapface which is quite self-explanatory, slapping each other in the face as they talk about their problems. However, Tom’s treatment is the least of Lucas’ problems.

He’s also being bullied by a group of girls, although one of them, Moriah (Mirabelle Lee) takes pity on him and soon they become friends. Although that doesn’t mean the bullying will stop and Moriah is torn between peer pressure and her feelings for Lucas.

Then one day the girls push him into an old building, daring him to try and drive out the spirits that are said to be lying within. So, Lucas starts making a noise to attract attention and something comes out of the shadows. However, Lucas finds that the monster is more of a protector than an aggressor and Lucas becomes the one that the monster wants to protect – at any cost. Soon Lucas finds himself caught in an increasingly desperate situation as he tries to stop the monster from doing what comes naturally.

Slapface is a slow burn horror and Shudder exclusive, written and directed by Jeremiah Kipp and adapted from his short film of the same name.

Using the idea of a folklore monster and connecting it to other cases and articles throughout the media, Kipp’s script builds on an idea which some may believe has plausibility. Add to that the brotherly dynamic which has tones of toxic masculinity and an atmospheric, small-town aesthetic and Slapface is a prime example of classic horror.

However, there are some issues and unfortunately it seems that although Kipp’s short film may have been well received, extending the story makes it lose some of its impact. The creature effects are good and the script pulls no punches, but it feels like the audience may guess where the story is going from the very start. Also, despite the anti-bullying message at the end, the bullying scenes don’t feel real enough and only slow down the movie.

Slapface is something for monster horror genre fans, but being drawn out beyond its short story premise, it shows that there’s more work to be done.

Saul (Kentucker Audley) can’t sleep. Due to a mandatory sleeping pattern which has gone global, it seems like he’s the only one. He seems to know that he’s the only one too and perhaps he has volunteered to give up his time so that his family or maybe even the world can sleep. That is until he meets Amalur (Suzanne Clément), a woman who also cannot sleep and unlike Saul, has decided to keep as far away from her family as she can.

Although with Saul it’s more of a case that he cannot accept reality, because he’s using mannequins to recreate his life with them even though he knows that they’re asleep. Hopeful that he can finally share his thoughts and feelings, Saul talks to Amalur, but the problem is that she can only speak French and doesn’t understand English and it’s the reverse for Saul.

Regardless, Saul and Amalur only have each other while the world sleeps, so they do the best they can to get to know each other.

Saul at Night is a drama with a science fiction type setting in the background. That element where the world sleeps though is never truly explained which leaves a lot of the film up to interpretation. So much so in fact, that Cory Santilli’s feature debut may start to resonate with many audiences who may feel that they’ve had a shared experience.

Saul feels like he’s alone, it feels like the entire world has come to a standstill and his family are all doing the same thing because the government have told them that there’s nothing they can do. Surely there’s something in there that we can all recognise.

The funny thing is though, that audiences may be surprised to learn that Saul at Night initially came out in 2019 which suggests that the filmmakers knew something that we didn’t. Of course, this is just one interpretation.

The best thing to do with Saul at Night is to find something while reading between the lines, because that’s half the fun. However, there’s still a question of whether the film goes from interpretation to pretention in its final scene.

Romina (Lora Burke) is a nurse and works long hours so she doesn’t often get time to relax at home. However, one night she has some time off and heads home, only to be met by Chris (Nick Smyth) who has broken into her home and has a man tied to a chair and he looks half beaten to death.

At first, Romina is scared for her life but she calms down once Chris explains to her that the man in the chair raped his daughter and he wants justice. Torn between her medical oath to do no harm and seeing Chris at peace after finally finding the man who raped his daughter, Romina agrees to help and to get a confession. However, confusion arises when she starts to think that Chris has the wrong man and there’s only one way to deal with it.

For the Sake of Vicious is a home invasion horror movie with a twist. Instead of a helpless female victim fighting for her life against an intruder, here we see her as potentially one of the people on the other side of the violence.

For the Sake of Vicious is seemingly a torture porn movie with a conscience, but for those familiar with the genre, the morality of these tales doesn’t last long.

Soon Romina starts to wonder what can be done about the man in the chair and that’s when Chris says he has a plan. What follows is a basic, but very real and terrifyingly disturbing look at how vigilantism can go wrong. It’s also the point where the movie starts to lose its message.

That’s because half of the film does start talking about the moral quandary of what Chris is doing, but then reminds itself hallway through that it is indeed a horror movie and so it feels the need to fill its quota of gore and violence.

For those who are looking for a dark drama that doesn’t pull any punches and explores the grey area of taking the law into your own hands then it may not be for you. For those who want to forget all the things that they’re supposed to think about deeply, then sit back, enjoy the violence and try to ignore the contradictions.