The Offering (2016)

This movie is also known as "The Faith Of Anna Waters" for some unknown reason like many films, one title is never enough.

Summed up....

Our heroine, Jamie, goes to Singapore after the death of her sister to investigate said grissly end. It turns out that the sister, Anna killed herself live on video and told her daughter that she would return in seven days.

Anna's ex-husband teams up with Jamie to delve into this death when it's revealed that another girl did the same killy-death-on-video thing, also claiming that she'd be back in seven days.

Then comes a secondary plot where two priests think that the Biblical Tower of Babel is going to be rebuilt and the church websites are being hacked by an unknown something.

Back in plot 1, the daughter is visited by spooky stuff (thinking it's her mum coming back) and the two detectives discover satanic marks and what seems to be a plan to bring back an ancient demon.

So we have a lot of plots and stuff going on and overlapping. Our film creator is left spinning a lot of plates and dosn't quite carry it off. There is simply too much in too short a space of time. When we do get to the crunch, it wasn't worth it really and we're left with a big bag of over-used cliches and rip-offs.

Overall the tone of this was quite good and full of promise, quite a few jumpy scares and a drag-you-in story, until it all goes to plop.

The Offering started to bring something new to the table and then just dragged it away. Maybe with a re-cut or an extended version we could get a quite decent film but as it's been released it's not amazing.

Not bad, just not amazing.

4/10 Masks

Intruders aka: Shut In (2015)

Home invasion films are one of those genres that it's really hard to make a good movie with. Some, such as You're Next or Mother's Day (even Them) work well where as others come off like a low budget version of Panic Room.

Intruders is one that makes it hard to tell. It's not up there with the greats, it does try to bring something new to the table buuuuutttt....meh.

Basically, you have a woman who is scared to leave her house. So much so that when her brother (who is terminally ill and that she is looking after) dies, she can't even bear to go to the funeral.

Thinking that she is away and knowing that she has been left a great deal of money - a trio of burglars sneak into her home with hopes of finding the loot.

What they find is our heroine  - who has not been using her paranoid time shut away in vain and has rigged up a bunch of R-Rated Home Alone surprises.

That's the basic plot. Not much else to tell, A few good splats and crunches but really not much else to keep you hooked.

1/10 Masks

#HORROR (2015)

#Horror (HashTagHorror as it's also known) was one of those films where you know that you're just not getting that time back. In fact you could guess this about 15mins into the film.

Summed up - the film opens with a few throat slashings and then turns into a pile of massive annoying smelly donkey plop.

There's a group of spoilt rich girls in a big posh house running about being mean to each other. There's some sort of underlying thing about "a social media site" which seems to pop up but you never find out what it is or why, or how it's relevant. The girls are constantly on their phones but then decide to lock them up.

They dress up, they are mean to each other, they get drunk, they dance - basically you're watching a bunch of annoying 12-year old girls mucking about and having a party, just waiting for the slashy-man to come murder them all.

But it doesn't happen until like... the last 10mins! Even then you're a bit confused as to what the hell went on.

No suspence, no shocks, no action, very little plot. Summed up - #wasteoftime.

1/10 Masks

The Veil (2016)

The makers of this kinda-some-star-flick made a very sensible move. They were going to produce this as one of those "found footage" films and then some bright spark piped up and said "wait a moment....that would be awful!". So they made a normal film instead. Hooray!

What we have is (another and so soon) movie based on the Jonestown religious cult and their leader the Reverend Jim Jones - in fact in The Veil, the leader (played by Thomas Jane) is called Jim Jacobs.

Our cult have all killed themselves 25 years previously, which would make their rather hippy 70s looking cult actually based in the early 90s assuming that The Veil is meant to be set in modern day. They do all seem to be wearing plaid shirts and moaning a lot so it might be based in the 90s.

The cult, known as Heaven's Veil seemingly all took their own lives leaving only one survivor, Sarah Hope (that one out of American Horror Story) who is approached by a group of film makers (led by Jessica Alba) hoping to capture her story.

While carrying out their Scooby-Gang investigatings they notice other video cameras in old pictures from the cult's time and go back to the Heaven's Veil camp in search of the previously unseen footage from them.

This previously unseen and unfound footage is found in the first room they come to, organised alphabetically and numerically, on a shelf labeled "previously unseen footage tapes". Next to it is a perfectly working projector and a screen... you know how these things are.

The films show a series of experiments carried out by Jim Jacobs trying to push his body's own limits and conquer death. Free the spirit from the body, go beyond, all that jazz. Of course when you mix conquering death with religious nutters and a scary old camp...you get spooky ghosts and possession.

The history and true purpose of Heaven's Veil is revealed, including some very unsurprising secrets of the Scooby-Gang.

Kinda slow, kinda dumb, not really very scary or surprising and mutiple false endings to rival The Return Of The King. Saved only really by Thomas Jane's performance as Jim Jacobs.

4/10 Masks

The Boy (2016)

Here at HBTS I have been pretty strict about never posting spoilers - however I feel that by sticking to this I am restricting my reviews quite a bit so may bend this - so...

**Warning - May contain spoilers!**

The Boy was an interesting flick, it was hard to guess which path it was going to take when there were so many ways that it could have.

The story focuses on Greta, an American nanny who has re-located to rural England to look after the boy,  Brahms. Upon meeting the family she notices that they are quite elderly and then when she meets Brahms, that he's actually a doll. A doll you say? That's right, a doll.

The family treat him like any other boy and lay out a list of rules for Greta to follow when they go away. Loving the big house all to "herself" and putting the doll to one side, Greta's peace is disturbed when spooky happenings start around the house - seemingly Brahms can steal clothes,  move, cry, and make snacks.

Malcolm, a local delivery chap that comes by for the odd flirt tells Greta that Brahms was a real boy that presumably died in a fire about 20 years ago, he'd always believed that the doll was the family's way of coping with the loss, but that (the real) Brahms had also been thought to have murdered a local girl before his death.

Greta thinks that maybe Brahms the doll carries the spirit of Brahms the boy and sets about following the rules on his list and generally having an OK time, since Brahms seems not to want to case her any harm.

So once the plot has unfolded we're left wondering which was it will go - is the doll possessed by the spirit of Brahms and if so is it friendly? Or is Brahms still about? Did he have some kind of power or was he "special" - many references are made to the real Brahms being "different".

One thing for sure is that the blank face of the doll is creepy as hell in the old house and moments of what seems like normal life (as normal as it can be when you're caring for a doll) are just waiting to be disturbed.

The surreal atmosphere is punctuated with a couple of jump-scares and The Boy was good enough to keep me watching. I wasn't over-keen on the ending but you can't have everything - felt that it changed the mood a little too much. Still, a good enough little odd horror.

5/10 Masks

FLASHBACK - Terrorvision (1986)

 Since I've been rather neglecting to update this page as much as I'd like I have decided to throw in the odd "Flashback" section which will highlight some old classic scares you might have missed. Today - the 1986 "classic" - TERRORVISION!

Set in the 80s at the dawn of satellite TV we have an alien monster that is simply too destructive and dangerous to be kept on his own planet, so what do the aliens being terrorised do? They transform the beast into pure energy and beam it out into space. It instantly bounces round the cosmos and ends up beaming straight down into the Putterman family's brand new satellite dish.

 The Puttermans are made up of two swinging sex-obsessed parents, a heavy-metal-mad daughter and her boyfriend (called just "O.D" played respectivley by the awesome Jon Gries and Diane Franklin), along with an insane survivalist grandad and his faithful sidekick their youngest son, who spend most of the movie running about playing solidiers.

Once the alien beast has been beamed to earth it proceeds to be able to live inside the magic of  TV and in time manifest itself outside of the TV box and of course then.... it kills everyone.

As soon as the beast has fed he is able to shape-shift parts of his body into those he has eaten in order to lure in more victims. Which is both awesome and gruesome, sort of a slapstick version of Society (not seen it? That'll be my next Flashback then)

What makes this flick so great is the gooey darkness and camp 80s comedy that come with it. The gore comes hand in hand with the laughs and makes for a messy, cheap special effect ridden slime-fest.

Since the action takes place  mostly round the house there is some outside influences. There's Medusa, a large-breasted TV host (a poke at Elvira no doubt) who wants to get a look at the monster and an alien from the beasts's home planet that tries his best to stop the spread of the beast and to save mankind (and fails).

So bad that it's bad but great - you can probably find this flick on the internet in a second....enjoy!