Villains (2019) & C.H.U.D. (1984) Reviews

I have two NEW horror reviews today!!! Likely to be the only new ones I write all month instead of just re-posting stuff I’ve already written. Well, maaaaaaybe I’ll review Halloween 1 through 6 since I just rewatched all of those (well, I watched 5 & 6 for the first time ever). Dunno. I’m not in a blogging place at the moment. Find it difficult to put any words together on anything lately. We’ll see! Now what the heck am I going to say about these two films…

Villains (2019)

Directed & Written by Dan Berk & Robert Olsen

Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Maika Monroe, Blake Baumgartner, Jeffrey Donovan, Kyra Sedgwick

Plot Synopsis: (via IMDb)
After a pair of amateur criminals break into a suburban home, they stumble upon a dark secret that two sadistic homeowners will do anything to keep from getting out.

My Opinion:

I liked this one. For some reason, I’d not heard of this one at all despite it being recent & on Netflix (it’s actually a 2021 release here in the U.K.). It doesn’t have huge megastars but it still has names well known to movie fans so am not sure why I’d heard nothing about it. So thanks, Film Miasma! I first heard of this when reading your review.

I’ve liked a lot of the films Maika Monroe has done so far, especially It Follows which not everyone loves but I do. She’s admittedly been in some real rubbish but I think she stands out in those films & expected her to be a bigger star by now. I didn’t love The Guest but appreciated its style and the fact that it felt original plus, again, I liked Monroe in it.

I also really liked a film of hers called Bokeh, which I keep putting off reviewing since nothing whatsoever happens in that movie. Honestly. Which is quite an accomplishment for a movie about everyone on the planet suddenly disappearing other than Monroe & her new fiancé (or maybe it was new hubby, I dunno) while vacationing in Iceland. But I’ve always been obsessed with end-of-the-world stories so I liked it plus the movie was gorgeous and I badly want to visit Iceland now. It was a really good tourism advert for Iceland! But, see? This is why I can’t write anything lately. I’m way off topic! This is turning into a Bokeh review. (But, hey – I did like Bokeh a lot so watch it if you just want to watch a pretty young couple do nothing other than wander around & go swimming while looking at beautiful landscapes. I’d give it 6.5/10).

So, yeah, I liked Monroe in this film too. But what I liked the most was Bill Skarsgård & the relationship these two had. I’d even say that this somewhat strange sort-of-horror-thriller-almost-horror-comedy-movie had a nice romance going on with these two. They were good together & had a nice chemistry. But Skarsgård was kind of adorable. I’m not sure why. I mean, he’s Pennywise FFS. That’s creepy. And I’ve never given him much thought other than thinking he looks bizarrely like a young Steve Buscemi. So maybe it’s because I adore Buscemi but I really liked Skarsgård in this and I wanted these two to get married & live happily ever after. And I liked the thing she did with her hair to calm him down. It was cute.

So, I won’t give away the story as wanting to find out the crazy secret that the two above weirdos, played by Jeffrey Donovan & Kyra Sedgwick, were hiding was the whole reason I wanted to see this movie after reading the synopsis. I’ll just say it wasn’t as crazy as I was expecting for some reason but it’s still a decent story and these two did a good job playing normal looking middle class American psychos. Those are the worst kind of psychos, right?! And I liked it being one of these movies with slightly bad people who meet really bad people, which makes the slightly bad people the really good people. And I can see some not loving the very end but I really liked how this one ended up. Overall, it’s not a movie as over-the-top as it may sound, it’s just a bit quirky. And it has an interesting mix of genres & better characters than we get it in a lot of horror-comedy-thrillers. It’s also one where, after writing about it, I like it a little bit more.

My Rating: 7/10

C.H.U.D. (1984)

Directed by Douglas Cheek

Starring: John Heard, Daniel Stern, Christopher Curry, Kim Greist, J C Quinn, Michael O’Hare, Peter Michael Goetz, Sam McMurray, Frankie R Faison, John Goodman, Jay Thomas, Hallie Foote, Graham Beckel, Jon Polito, George Martin

Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia)
The plot concerns a New York City police officer and a homeless shelter manager who join forces to investigate a series of disappearances, and discover that the missing people have been hunted down by humanoid monsters that live below the city.

My Opinion:

I don’t have as much to say about this movie. I’ll just start by saying, yes, I love the ’80s. I grew up in the ’80s. The majority of my favorite movies are (and always will be) those from the ’70s & ’80s. That includes some movies I know are bad. Is C.H.U.D. bad?? Okay, it’s not great. You know what? I never saw this one until now!!!

I admit I’m always happier to find an older film like this to watch for the first time than to watch some mediocre & boring modern film. Give me some ’80s nostalgia instead! And this one has lots of old familiar faces, so that was cool. I’d always known of the existence of C.H.U.D. thanks to great old videotape covers but never realised it had so many people I knew in it. Plenty of old horrors star unknowns. (This one isn’t on the level of those starring in The Sentinel from 1977, though – what a waste of a good cast that was).

If you’re old like me, you’ll know that C.H.U.D. stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. And that D.A.R.Y.L. stands for Data-Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform. But C.H.U.D. actually stands for something else in this movie. I can’t remember the exact words & I’m too lazy to go check. Besides – it’s a big plot spoiler anyway. It’s a part of what this cheesy looking movie is actually about: How the homeless are cast aside & ignored in society. The problem of these mutant cannibals crawling out of the sewers & killing people is completely ignored while it’s at first only affecting the homeless community.

The biggest roles are played by Home Alone‘s John Heard as a photographer doing a project on the homeless people of NYC who live in the city’s underground and, interesting connection, also Home Alone‘s Daniel Stern as a man who runs a homeless shelter. They were both good, especially for this type of film, and I liked Stern’s character. There are other familiar faces but not exactly household names & most would only be known to old people like me. But worth mentioning that John Goodman & Jay Thomas have small roles as two cops. James P. Sullivan!

Well, I liked this. You probably won’t like it unless you’re a fan of ’80s horror & special effects. I mean, yeah, these mutant cannibals look cheesy as hell now. But I was surprised that the story was actually pretty good & also that it had a message about how homeless people are treated. The acting was also better than you expect from this sort of thing. All of my blog posts auto-tweet or I tweet them again for various reasons but this is the only one recently to get a couple replies on Twitter from people who like it so I guess it has its fans. Too bad I didn’t watch it in the ’80s but am glad I finally took a chance on it now.

My Rating: 6/10

Home Alone 3 (1997) Guest Review

This review for the John Hughes Blogathon comes from Ryan of Ten Stars Or Less. Thanks for the reviews, Ryan! He liked Only The Lonely okay – Let’s see his thoughts on Home Alone 3. 🙂

**WARNING: SPOILERS**

run time: 102 mins
rated: PG
considered: Action, Comedy, Crime
starring: Alex D. Linz, Marian Seldes, Olek Krupa, Rya Kihlstedt, Lenny von Dohlen, David Thornton, Kevin Kilner, Haviland Morris, Scarlett Johansson

movie summary: It has been a few years since Kevin McAllister was left home alone, only to prevent two burglars from robbing his house, fast forward about six years and a similar situation develops in another Chicago suburb. Alex Pruitt (Alex D. Linz) is home sick for the next few weeks with the chicken pox. His next door neighbor Mrs. Hess (Marian Seldes) has just returned home from San Francisco and accidentially got her luggage switched at the airport, so she ends up with someone’s bag that has a brand new toy race car in it. She gives it to Alex as payment for shoveling her driveway, but little does she know that four mastermind international criminals are looking for the toy car and are coming to find her.

Petr Beaupre (Olek Krupa), Alice Ribbons (Rya Kihlstedt), Burton Jernigan (Lenny von Dohlen), and Earl Unger (David Thornton) travel from the west coast to the mid-west to find Alex’s neighborhood. They buy a house at the end of the street and begin to scout the neighborhood before breaking into homes during the day to find the bag. Alex’s dad Jack (Kevin Kilner) flies away for a business trip while his mom Karen (Haviland Morris) works from home and runs errands for a few hours each day. On the first day Alex is left alone he spots Beaupre lurking inside a house across the street so he calls the cops. After the cops search the house and find no signs of a break in they get disappointed that Alex called in a false alarm. The very next day Alex spots Beaupre in another house so calls 911 again. His mom gets very upset with him as the police chief explains the severity of Alex’s recent prank calls. Alex is grounded up in his room with his pet mouse Doris who is the only one that believes him.

His mom heads out the next day for work and should only be a couple of hours which gives Alex enough time to set up a video camera on the toy race car. He drives the car into the house where Beaupre breaks into and catches him in the act. Beaupre realizes the toy car is what he is looking for so he radios the three others to chase down the car. Amazingly all four of them stumble their way through the neighborhood yards only to come up empty-handed. Beaupre figures that the car belongs to a kid in one of the few houses he hasn’t searched yet, so the group targets Alex’s house and plan one final break in.

Alex gets up real early and ushers his mom off to work before assuring her that he’s going to be ok all alone for the afternoon. He begins to set up traps all over the house, at every point of entry, and in the back yard swimming pool. Beaupre and the gang ascend on the house and run into trouble at every turn. Within a few minutes everyone has either been electrocuted, knocked out, tarred, feathered, sprayed painted, burnt, or shot. Despite all the trouble just to get into the house they continue until they get inside and can’t find Alex. He is upstairs watching the events unfold on tv before escaping down the in-house elevator. The guys get upstairs into Alex’s room only to see him running away, so decide to jump out the window onto the trampoline that was covering the swimming pool. Alice falls down the elevator shaft while Beaupre manages to get away and head over to Mrs. Hess’ house to kidnap her. Alex finds her and rescues her when Beaupre threatens to kill him if he doesn’t give up the race car. He pulls a gun on Alex who reaches into his backpack and pulls out a gun of his own. During the standoff, sirens can be heard in the distance which leaves little time for Beaupre to get what he came after and for Alex to prove he wasn’t lying about the break-ins.

my thoughts: Home Alone 3 is the first movie in the series that didn’t feature McCauley Culkin as the lead character. The franchise had to move on without its star and create a new set of heroes and villains which are disappointing. Instead of two small time house robbers, this home alone kid has to deal with some not so bright international thieves who are looking for a computer chip that can control nuclear weapons.

Alex D. Linz is a funny kid who has big shoes to fill in the lead role and manages to pull it off quiet admirably. He copies some of the tricks used in the first two films but has many gadgets to expand his arsenal to stop the bad guys. The toughest part for all the characters in this story is that audiences have already seen this story played out before and know exactly how it is going to end. In an attempt to keep audience engaged, the computer chip storyline was presented to add some real life drama, even though it is highly unreasonable that some kid will be able to stop highly trained criminals from getting what they want.

This movie sadly lacks the charm from the previous ones but that never stopped my grandmother from absolutely loving this movie. She would watch Home Alone 3 every holiday season and just laugh at how Alex would outsmart these guys again and again. I haven’t watched this movie since she passed away in 2012 and when I saw it was still available for the John Hughes blogathon on Cinema Parrot Disco, I thought it would be fitting to finally watch it again and remember one of the many things that made her laugh.

my star rating: 3 out 10