Worth Mentioning - In Walked Old Misery

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Full Moon and David Slade.

BRING HER TO ME (2023)

Back in the early days of his company Full Moon, Charles Band produced and directed a film called Meridian, which was basically an erotic horror take on the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. Band’s son Alex (you might know him from his hit songs with his band The Calling) has said that one of his earliest memories is of being on the set of one of his dad’s movies and seeing “a woman having sex with a giant rat”. That had to be Meridian... and there are more problematic elements to that film than just the idea that little Alex Band was running around on set and seeing things he shouldn’t have seen. Thirty-plus years later, the latest Full Moon production is another erotic horror film called Bring Her to Me – and while the story and setting of this one is very different from Meridian, I couldn’t help thinking of that earlier production while watching this movie. And in some ways, Bring Her to Me comes off like an attempt to make up for questionable decisions made during the crafting of Meridian.

Bring Her to Me stars Bec Doyle as Mara, who is plagued by nightmares that see her drifting into a dark void where someone is waiting for her... something that appears to be a man, but also transforms into a demon. These nightmares are terrifying for Mara and she wakes up from them feeling completely drained, like the dream is feeding on her energy. When she tells her coffee shop pal Raz (Kalond Irlanda) about this problem, he reveals that he has sought help for nightmares himself, and a woman named Abagail (Ros Gentle) – a dream interpreter who is “admittedly eccentric” – solved the problem for him. Mara agrees to give Abagail’s services a try... and the advice she receives is to see the dream through to its conclusion.

So the bulk of Bring Her to Me’s short (under 60 minutes) running time consists of scenes where Abagail and Raz come over to Mara’s apartment to watch her sleep while her subconscious takes her to that dark void to meet with the man who’s waiting for her. Played by Emerson Niemchick, this man is willing to give Mara anything she might desire, whether that might be fruit, drinks, or a pile of cocaine. Yet she still finds him too terrifying to give into, especially when he shows off his demon look. While Mara dreams of this man, the film cuts away to Abagail and Raz looking like they’re not as trustworthy as they initially seem, but we can’t be sure if that’s reality or an extension of Mara’s nightmares.

As mentioned, there is an erotic element to this film, so chances are that many viewers are going to put it on primarily in hopes of getting to see Bec Doyle in various states of undress – and those viewers will be rewarded, because there is plenty of bare skin of display despite there being less sex scenes than some might expect. But Mara isn’t just there to be ogled. As the story goes on, she gets to show off an inner strength that isn’t apparent at first. I was impressed by Doyle’s performance, and left wanting to see a movie where she gets to play a badass, in-control character for the duration. While Doyle gets to play both terrified and strong, her co-stars get to have over-the-top moments and chew the scenery in a fun way.

Bring Her to Me comes to us from the same creative team that was behind the goofball Full Moon movie The Gingerweed Man, director Brooks Davis and screenwriter Kent Roudebush, and is just the second feature directorial credit for Davis. Having proven he could bring silliness to the screen with his first movie, Davis proves here that he’s also capable of taking a bit more of a serious approach and delivering a good erotic horror movie. If Bring Her to Me were slightly shorter than its already short runtime, it would have been a strong segment of an anthology, and that’s kind of what it still feels like. But instead of a segment in an anthology, it’s another chapter in the ongoing Full Moon saga, and it’s an enjoyable addition to the company’s massive library.

I just have one question: what is up with the locations in this movie? Every place is a rundown mess. The walls are falling apart in the coffee shop, and even the walls of Mara’s apartment look disgusting. It’s no wonder she’s having nightmares, living in a place that looks like that.

Bring Her to Me is now streaming on FullMoonFeatures.com.

The review of Bring Her to Me originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

DARK HARVEST (2023)

I thought director David Slade’s 2007 vampire film 30 Days of Night was one of the best horror movies of the last twenty years, so I was hyped when I heard that Slade would be directing another horror film, this one dealing with a supernatural being rampaging through a small town on Halloween night in 1963. The resulting film, Dark Harvest, is definitely not what I thought it would be... but that’s part of its charm. Slade made a very odd and unique film that may not be something I’ll be revisiting on a regular basis, but is a movie I enjoyed largely because I had never seen anything quite like it before.

Scripted by Michael Gilio and based on a novel by Norman Partridge (which I haven’t read), Dark Harvest is set in the ‘60s, but it’s a version of the ‘60s that feels like it exists in a reality separate from our own. That’s because the small town where the events take place shuts itself off from the rest of the world... and because supernatural events occur there on a regular basis. Every year on Halloween, in fact. That’s when a pumpkinheaded supernatural creature called Sawtooth Jack rises from the cornfield that surrounds the town and starts heading for a specific church. If Sawtooth Jack reaches the church, the town’s crops will be destroyed. That’s why the town keeps its teenage boys locked up without food for a few days before Halloween. When the day arrives, the boys are unleashed into the streets to stop Jack, kill the creature, and eat the sweet treats that are packed into its guts. The family of the winning boy will be set for life. The winning boy himself is gifted with $25,000 and a car – and the boys always use these cars to get out of town and never come back.

The brother of Richie Shepard (Casey Likes) won the Sawtooth Jack chase in ‘62, and even though direct family members of winners are exempt from participating in the run, Richie is determined to go after Sawtooth Jack himself on Halloween ‘63. The film follows Richie’s journey to his confrontation with Sawtooth Jack, during which he falls for new girl in town Kelly (E'myri Crutchfield) and discovers some disturbing secrets. The truth about Sawtooth Jack.

It’s an interesting story and Likes and Crutchfield do well in their roles. They also have solid support from the likes of Elizabeth Reaser, Jeremy Davies, and Luke Kirby – with Kirby nearly stealing the show with his performance as despicable police officer Ricks. He shines in this movie in a way I never would have imagined while watching him in his previous Halloween horror movie, Halloween: Resurrection.

The strangeness of Dark Harvest may be off-putting for some viewers, but it worked well enough for me. For the most part. My only issue with the film is the ending, which would have been more satisfying if things had gone in a different direction than they do.