Due to a lot of other personal projects, this blog will be on hiatus for the time being.
The biggest project is my up-and-coming World Anvil page for my homebrew D&D setting. If you’re looking for monsters, magic, cities, world-shaping events, and NPCs both ally and enemy, check out my homebrew world of Nexus.
It’s a work-in-progress as I fill in all the details of our recently completed world-saving In The Shadows campaign. Once that’s done, our current Adventures Ahoy pirate campaign will be added next.
Overview
Paul is an average guy. He likes movies, and pizza, and average guy things. He does not like... musicals. But Paul's small world is about to come crashing down under the weight of unspeakable terror! Now he must run, run for his life, as something sinister spreads, and grows, and sings, and dances! The town of Hatchetfield is plunged into a musical hell in... 'The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals!'
Details
Movie Media
Other
Movie Status
Available
Movie Rating
Very good
I stumped across The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals looking through animatics on YouTube. A horror-comedy that’s basically Invasion of the Body Snatchers (not the bad one) with songs? I’m down. And it was fantastically hilarious. The comedy is on-point with some of the best jokes & one-liners I’ve heard in a long, long time. The actors are great and so are their characters. General McNamara is probably my new favorite parody of the stereotypical American military patriot badass.
That’s not to say this show doesn’t have its serious moments though. The show leans more towards comedy, but drama and tragedy both have a strong presence here too. While this is more comedy than horror, the horror is still here. The characters’ terror grows as the show goes on and their situation gets worse and worse. Some break faster than others and this is a pretty good indication of who’s getting body-snatched next.
Now, this is a little different from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers assimilation plot. And not just because of the songs. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Body Snatchers, but I don’t recall the aliens being a hive mind. But I’m not sure they could have not used a hive mind because how else are you going to explain the choreographing? Eh, whatever, it’s still a ton of fun.
You can watch this for free on Team StarKid’s YouTube channel. It kicks off the Hatchetfield series, which also includes Black Friday and the upcoming Nerdy Prudes Must Die.
End the curse.
20211 h 54 min
Overview
In 1666, a colonial town is gripped by a hysterical witch-hunt that has deadly consequences for centuries to come, and it's up to teenagers in 1994 to finally put an end to their town's curse, before it's too late.
Details
Movie Media
VoD
Movie Status
Available
Movie Rating
Very good
Actors
Starring:
Kiana Madeira,
Olivia Scott Welch,
Benjamin Flores Jr.,
Ashley Zukerman,
Gillian Jacobs,
Darrell Britt-Gibson,
McCabe Slye,
Emily Rudd,
Sadie Sink,
Fred Hechinger,
Julia Rehwald,
Jeremy Ford,
Randy Havens,
Michael Chandler,
Jordana Spiro,
Matthew Zuk,
Elizabeth Scopel,
Lacy Camp,
Todd Allen Durkin,
Ted Sutherland,
Charlene Amoia,
Mark Ashworth,
Jordyn DiNatale,
Keil Oakley Zepernick,
Emily Brobst,
Kevin Waterman,
Lloyd Pitts,
Daniel Thomas May,
Maya Hawke
Man, what a fun trilogy. For all the horror movies I watch, it’s rare to find one (or three, in this case) I genuinely consider good. It’s equally rare to have sequels leading so directly into each other and nice when it happens. Just the fact that this is good isn’t too surprising since it’s based on the works of R.L. Stine. Now, I never actually read the Fear Street books but I was very much a Goosebumps kid and this story definitely feels like Goosebumps aimed at an older audience.
There’s a lot of vibes to classic slasher films here too. The direct sequel thing is pretty akin to Friday the 13th II-IV, as is the campground setting of the 2nd movie. A lot of the humor and the whole slasher vibe in general, particularly in the 1st film, is very reminiscent of Scream. They even poke fun at the situation they’re in not working like a horror movie at one point.
Part III here is kind of an odd duck because it’s basically two movies. The first half is in the titular 1666 and shows us how all this curse nonsense got started. Then it jumps back to 1994 so the modern day characters can finish doing their thing. But what really stuck out was that through it all, across three films, it stays good. The first movie sets the bar and by the end of the third, we’re still there.
As Jack Black portraying R.L. Stine said in the Goosebumps movie, “Every story contains three parts: the beginning, the middle, and the twist.” That pretty accurately describes a lot of the actual R.L. Stine’s work and it extends to this adaptation. A fantastic trilogy I can’t recommend enough for horror fans or people just looking to watch something good and spooky. Man, I really hope we can get some more of Stine’s work adapted now.