Rituals/The Creeper (1977)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Astral Bellevue Pathé

Runtime: 89 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: Five doctors that are long-time friends go on vacation deep in the Canadian wilderness. After all but one pair of the party's shoes disappear over night, the remaining shoed camper decides to hike out and go look for help. Soon after he leaves, his remaining companions realize that something is very wrong when a decapitated deer head is left just outside their camp. Even though they still don't have their shoes, they decide to follow their friend's trail out of the woods, but their path is blocked by someone who doesn't want to see them leave the forest alive.

Review: Rituals, or rather The Creeper as it's called on the various Mill Creek multi-DVD sets (and also the more actuate title, IMO) is a classic stereotypical lost-in-the-wilderness backwoods horror movie in the vein of Deliverance and all the many movies have since borrowed from that, such as the Wrong Turn series among many, many others. What's special about this one however, is that it came beforeall those other ones, minus Deliverance, so while a lot of what this movie does has since gone on to become typical backwoods horror movie tropes, it was actually fresh and new at the time this movie initially came out in 1977. And, for reasons I'll get to below, I actually felt was stronger than all those, including Deliverance.

To begin with, the killer (or killers, it hints at both during the movie and I won't say which it actually is, but for the sake of the review I'll just refer to it as a singular) is wisely kept off-screen for most of the movie. We stick with the main core group of characters during the entire movie and the director only ever lets us see what the characters themselves see and discover only what the characters discover for themselves, never taking us away from them to give us information they don't have or bringing out some random third-act new character to unrealistically deliver exposition and explanations and then leave again. For the sake of the movie, we as viewers are essentially treated as fellow people in this group of friends and we never leave them. Because of this, I feel it adds a whole new layer of tension as it really makes it easier to put ourselves in the mindset of the main characters. We don't ever actually get a solid look at the killer, nor what his reasoning behind hunting these people down is, until toward the very end, leaving it entirely up to our imaginations during the bulk of the movie as to the who and the why.

Alongside the killer himself, the characters also have to deal with surviving the regular dangers of being lost out in the wild in the middle of nowhere, such as getting past raging water rapids, down steep dangerous cliffs, run away from angry disturbed killer bee hives, and careful not to disturb other hungry animals that may be in the vicinity, in addition to battling starvation and dehydration after all their food supplies get ruined. Even if you were to take out the murderous assailant that is hunting and terrorizing them you would still be left with a pretty gripping wilderness survival movie.

Of course the movie wouldn't really be worth a damn if you couldn't stand spending the length of the movie with it's characters, and luckily the movie did great there as well. There's really good chemistry between the cast, even when the characters themselves aren’t always getting along, and they really did come across like very long-time best friends on a weekend camping trip that may harbor the odd negative feeling toward one another here and there, some pent up frustrations if you will, but at the end of the day are still best buds regardless. They were also written in such a way so that the movie really made you unsure as to who, if anyone, would be the sole survivor, choosing not to make any one specific person stand out above the rest, and giving you reasons to care for each character equally. Because of this, it really was genuinely shocking, and even sad at times, whenever anyone got killed off. One of the more unsettling and heartbreaking scenes deals with one of the main characters being discovered hung from a tree, burning to death, while he pleads for help but none of the others are willing to risk getting killed themselves to help him, despite supposedly being best friends.

And yes, there was plenty of death. I won't say how many people actually survive the movie, but I will say that horror fans will not be disappointed here. From being burned alive, to decapitations, to any number of inventive traps set along the way, there's certainly a good number of kill scenes. What is disappointing however, is that while the movie is uncut in any of the rare releases under it's original title of Rituals, it is very much heavily edited for gore under the much-more common title The Creeper, which is the version I saw, so most of the death scenes ended up being very badly chopped up and edited.

Unfortunately, the video quality on the specific release of the move that I saw (Mill Creek's Drive-In Classics 50-pack) was incredibly bad, to the point that any scene that took place at night or in the dark (and trust me, there are a lot of them) were near-impossible to pick out what exactly was happening in them. This was most troubling during the ending of the movie as it made the entire climax pretty much unwatchable and I still don't quite know what went on during that scene. Sadly, other than the very rare and near-impossible to find release of this movie under the Rituals title, this heavily-edited and incredibly-poor video quality release under The Creeper title is probably the only one you'll be able to easily get your hands on.

Rituals, aka The Creeper had the perfect mix of character and heart, suspense and horror, nature survivalism, and beautiful Canadian scenery, all wrapped up in one movie. It actually surprises me that this movie is mostly an unknown one, because I feel it's the strongest in this sub-genre and deserves way more recognition than it has, especially when it comes to matters such as DVD transfers and releases. The only thing that really bogs this down in any bit is, indeed, the terrible low-quality transfer that makes entire portions of the movie, including the most important portion (that being the climax) pretty much unwatchable and the distractingly terrible editing when it comes to the scenes with gore. If you can get through those things though, there is quite a nice little hidden gem of a survival horror movie waiting for you that will definitely stick with you long after watching it.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward 

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V/H/S (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Collective

Runtime: 116 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire a rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they bargained for.

Review: V/H/S is a horror anthology movie made up of 5 short stories and a bookend wrap-around story, all of which was made in the found footage style of film making. Like with all anthology movies, some entries were great while others...well, not so much. I'll start first with the main wrap-around story. It involves a group of trouble-making hooligans that video tape their crimes and potential attempted rapes and all that, and they get hired by a mystery man to break into this old guy's house and steal a VHS tape. While in there they come across a room filled with VHS tapes and start checking them out, which leads to the various short stories this movie is made of. I really hated this wrap-around story, especially since it led to nothing at all and even finished mid-way through the movie, before the movie was even over and while more of the short stories were still to come. There was nothing scary here, and there was no build-up to anything good, just a quick flash of something before the camera shut off and that was it. Out of all the characters in all the stories of this movie, these were the most hateable and the ones you wanted to see get their come-uppance the most, which is why it's even more frustrating that you don't ever see anything all that bad happen to them, and most (if not all) get killed off-screen.

The first two of the actual short stories were great though. The first deals with a group of party-loving college friends that are having a night on the town and trying to get laid, but one of the girls they pick up and bring back to a hotel room isn't exactly what she appears to be. This one was creepy as hell and is easily my favorite of the bunch. Even the questionable CGI moments didn't bother me at all and if anything, added to the creepy factor more often then not.

The second story was classic Ti West movie, but in 20 minutes as opposed to full-length. Ti West is a controversial horror director, where I find people either love him or hate him and there isn't much middle ground. Personally, I love him. In this entry, a honeymooning couple is traveling across the U.S., but an unknown stalker is following them across the country and keeps recording them with their own camera, from inside their hotel rooms while they sleep at night. As is usual with his fare, this entry has a bit of a slow build and not a whole lot really happens until the very end, but it still remains creepy as hell and tension-filled through and through, and it uses that slow build, as Ti West often does, to make you A, care for the characters and B, slowly build the tension to a boiling point that comes to a head at the very end. My only complaint with this one is that the ending was really predictable, as I called it almost right away, however that doesn't make it any less shocking when it hits.

The third story is about a group of four college friends that head up to the family cabin that one of them owns, but their vacation is cut short by a vicious killer made entirely out of static, and seemingly only visible through a camera. No way around it, this entry was total lameballs. Not even remotely scary, just stupid. Not even on the same playing field as the first two stories. The first two felt like they could have easily been theatrical movies if made longer, while this one just comes across like a micro-budget student project, and a bad one at that. This one is the worst that this anthology has to offer, though also luckily the shortest. I can't recommend enough to just skip this one all together.

The fourth story deals with a girl webchatting with her doctor boyfriend, whom she's in a long distance relationship with, as weird paranormal activity seems to be escalating in her new apartment. Over all this entry was a nice step up from the previous one, and was actually pretty intense for the majority of its runtime, and it was kind of a better attempt at a Paranormal Activity movie then a couple of those sequels had been. Unfortunately it all comes completely apart in the final few minutes, once the big shocking twist is revealed, and that made this entry take a very quick nosedive for me, and just ended up leaving me more confused then scared. Also, when you stop to think about it, you can't help but wonder exactly how these webchats are being recorded? Especially when the fact that they're not being recorded is a plot point mentioned several times? While I liked this entry more then the previous one and more then the initial wrap-around story, it's still a far cry from the awesome first two stories, although the potential was totally there had it not been for that dreadful twist ending that just ruined the entire thing.

Luckily the final story is back to being pretty good, however it still doesn't quite reach greatness. It follows a couple of friends as they arrive at a Halloween party they had been invited to, only to find the mansion empty...that is until they find a cult in the attic doing very unspeakable things. This story's biggest fault, to me, is that its too short. Out of all the entries of this anthology, this is the one that could benefit the most from being extended into a full-length movie as I felt not nearly enough time was given for the subject matter, so its just a huge rush job on an otherwise really interesting story. You're not given time to get to know the characters, and thus you don't feel anything for them, and it starts throwing all these good ideas at you such as devil cults, possessed people, and a haunted house that seems to be alive with walls that morph over windows, doors that shrink or disappear entirely, and other creepy as hell things. But you only get to spend a few seconds on any given topic because they have to cram so much into such a short runtime, and you never really get the chance to enjoy any of it because it's instantly moved onto the next wild and crazy thing. With a longer runtime and more room to flesh everything out, this entry could end up being a really creepy and fun horror movie. As it stands as just one more short story in an anthology, it remains not as good as the first two stories, but certainly better then everything else in the movie.

Overall, there's some great stuff in V/H/S, but also some huge crap in there as well, just like with most anthology movies. Luckily, due to the wide range of quality, there's more then likely at least something in there for everyone.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 3 (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: POP Films/MTV

RUNTIME: 84 mins

FORMAT: MoD DVD

PLOT: Having endured the torment of high school, survived the bloodbath at the Rollerdome, and then confronted her serial killer father at the Boneyard - ending his reign of terror once and for all - Skye Rotter is ready to break free of "Psycho Skye" and head to college for a new life. But before Skye can truly escape her dark past, there's still one last party she has to attend - her estranged sister Alex is having her Sweet 16, and someone has made certain the Lord of the Rink's bloody legacy lives on. One way or another, the party will end here.

REVIEW: Putting in the disc for My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 3 was a bit bittersweet for me; On the one hand, with this comes the end of my one-a-night Super Psycho Sweet 16 marathon which I've been really enjoying and having a lot of fun with. On the other hand, knowing how much I enjoyed My Super Psycho Sweet 16, and even despite some flaws present in My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 2 I still enjoyed that one quite a bit, I've been really anxious to find out how everything finally plays out and comes together in this explosive final entry of the Super Psycho Sweet 16 trilogy.

My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 3 picks up two years after the end of the previous movie and Skye, finally having moved on and living a free life now that her psychopathic father is finally dead for good (i.e., see the second movie), is set to go off to university with her new friend, Sienna. While on the road, they get a call from Skye's younger sister (first time Skye has heard from her since shortly after the events of the second movie, despite Skye's numerous attempts to get in touch), and she's inviting them to stop by her country mansion on their way, to celebrate her Sweet 16. Skye reluctantly accepts, feeling really uneasy with the whole thing but after all, she is Alex's last remaining family. What Skye doesn't realize however, is that somebody plans to use Alex's Sweet 16th birthday bash as a means to carry on Charlie Rotter's sick legeacy of terror.

Now, to start things off with, I do have a bit of an issue with this plot – really, it's only a minor nitpick but it did stand out enough to me to totally take me out of the movie doe a bit: Are we seriously supposed to believe that Alex is only turning 16 years old just now? Skye turned 16 in the previous movie, and now she's going away to university so, at the very least Skye has to be 18 now (possibly even 19, depending on exactly when her birthday falls), which means that in order for Alex to be turning 16 in this movie, she had to be (at the absolute oldest) 14 in the previous movie, again with room for her to have been even younger then that. I'm sorry, but there is no way she was 14 or younger in Part 2, not with some of the things she did or the way the character was portrayed as (same goes for her friends, at that). Not to mention the actress herself looks to be in her late 20's as-is.

That pretty annoying nit-pick aside though, I actually really enjoyed the plot of this one and the setting itself was a much-welcomed change for the series. While I never really touched on it in my review for that one, Part 2's setting was pretty much just a carbon copy of the first movie's, where-as here it's completely different, giving us a fresh new location, complete with more of a variety of visual sets instead of just going back over the same basic locations and sets that the previous movies had – we have the mansion itself, filled with all sorts of different style rooms to provide great horror movie atmosphere (seriously, that one Study with all the poached animals – Creepy), but in addition to the house itself, we also get to have some good stalking scenes in the areas surrounding the outside of the mansion, such as the mist-filled forest in the pouring rain. After two movies of basically the exact same kind of locale, this one really needed to take place somewhere different to keep things fresh, and I'm so happy that it did exactly that. One scene in particular really stood out to me, on a visual level, and will probably go down as one of the most memorable images of the entire series for me – One of the characters are in the above-mentioned creepy Study filled with poached animals and animal heads stuck on the walls, being stalked and toyed with by the killer while the house's security alarm is going off and security lights are flashing like a disco ball. On purely a visually-pleasing angle, that scene was quite spine-tingling and made me really excited to see what other awesome scenes awaited in the confines of the remainder of the movie (Spoiler: I was not disappointed).

Along with the location setting, one other major aspect had to be changed up from how it was in the previous two; the killer had to be a whole new ballgame in this entry, since Skye's psychotic father, Charlie Rotter, died for good at the hands of Skye during the climax of the previous movie. Essentially, the identity of the killer had a complete clean slate this go-around, which means that you would expect the killer's identity to be a secret and be more like a classic Whodunnit-style of teen slasher, where we know the killer is one of the main characters but we don't know which one for sure. Sadly, that's not exactly the case. That entire angle gets dropped really early on, when they reveal who the killer is during the very first chase and kill scene. On top of that, in the first half hour leading up to that moment, it was really easy to guess who the killer would turn out to be because the movie doesn't make any effort to try to keep it secret – all the characters find this other character really creepy and weird and they feel uncomfortable around him, and that's exactly who the killer turns out to be. Even this person's reasoning as to why they're doing all of this was extremely weak and pretty uninspiring, and came across as a last minute addition. Adding to that, much like with the second movie, the killer here doesn't really wear any sort of costume at all – just their regular clothes and not much more. In one scene there is a nice little nod to the King mask that Charlie Rotter used to wear, but it has no impact on anything in the movie other then to be a nice little wink to the previous entries for a couple seconds. What I did like about this killer though, is that where-as Charlie Rotter just sneaked up and attacked, this killer likes to taunt and play with his victims a bit first, before moving in for the death blow. For example, the killer here has total control of the house's security features, such as the alarms, the cameras, the speakers, and even the electronically-controlled doors, and he (or she, but I'll stick with 'he' for sake of having to define a gender for easier writing) uses all of those to great mental-torture of his potential victims. He's even able to use this system to lock people in various rooms, or even open up certain pathways through the house that leads one of them into a trap. For all my misgivings when it comes to the identity and reasoning of this killer, I really do love his style here, which of course wouldn't have been as entertaining to watch had it not been for the excellent new location as well.

Unfortunately, for a third and final movie in a horror series, the body count is disappointingly low. The previous two movies had between eight and ten deaths each, where-as this one had only four (five if you want to count the killer's death as well), with one character seemingly coming back from the dead with no explanation, for the typical happy 'Let's laugh together as we walk away, because we survived this mess' ending. With that said, they make up for the lack of deaths by making them much more brutal then we've gotten in most cases with the other two movies – I don't think there's a single person who dies instantly in this movie, but instead has to suffer for a minute or two, gurgling blood up from a slit throat or stumbling around with their head half-bashed in, or unsuccessfully trying to stop their guts from spilling out, before their life ultimately leaves them. Much like each of the other entries in the series, Part 3 certainly does not hold back in the gore department, even though it has a much lower body count.

As for these victims (or would-be victims in a couple cases), to start off with there's the character of Alex Bell, Skye's younger sister, returning from the second movie. As seen at the end of Part 2, she still holds quite a bit of resentment towards Skye for the events that transpired and led to her friends and entire family being murdered. Sure, it wasn't Skye herself who killed them, but she still blames Skye for having been the reason that Charlie Rotter showed up to begin with, and since he's dead now, Alex needs somebody to blame (remember, as established in the previous movie, she has major mental issues that leads to her having anger problems and and she gets emotional very easy, so she isn't always the most reasonable of people). With all that said, she's working hard with her psychiatrist to get over all that, and she's willing to attempt to patch things up with Skye, thus leading her to invite her out of the blue to her Sweet 16 birthday party, though most of her newer friends (much like her previous friends) don't really think much of Skye, and have no problems letting her know that. Just like with the second movie, none of these side character friends really get any characterization and are just cardboard cutout characters and in the movie purely for one thing – to die a gruesome death at the hands of the killer. All of these side characters are acted decently enough, but none of them are really all that outstanding either. Passable at best, really. Even Kirsten Prout as Alex continues to be a rather low spot in the line-up of actors, continuing her so-so performance from the second movie. She has a few moments of really good acting, but for the most part it's more of the same from what she turned in for the previous movie.

The two shining stars this time around are Jillian Rose Reed as Skye's new friend Sienna, and of course Lauren McKnight as Skye continues to impress and own every scene of the movie that she's in – seriously, why she's not getting more movie roles, and bigger movie roles at that, is far beyond me. Even in this entry, where she has to play her character a bit different then at any time up to this point, she still steals the show; This version of Skye is an ass-kicker, through and through. As for her new friend Sienna...well she's both instantly annoying and lovable all at once. In any lesser hands, the character would have just been annoying and that's it, but thankfully they gave the role to an actress like Jillian Rose Reed who single-handily makes an annoying character simply a joy to watch, as her portrayal of her is just filled with so much cuteness and entertainment. Out of all the characters in the movie, other then Skye herself, this was the one I was really hoping to not have to see a death scene for. However, as things tend to go in these kinds of movies, it rarely pays to be the best friend of the lead girl.

I suppose by this point you may be wondering about Brigg, Skye's love interest from the previous two movies. Well, he is here, and him and Skye are indeed still together...but he's been reduced to a cameo role. He's in the first couple minutes of the movie via a webcam chat that Skye has with him before she heads off to university, and then he shows up at the very end again for a minute, and that's the extent of his character here. I know he had a smaller role in Part 2 then he had in the first movie, and he may not be the most engaging or deep character in the series, but his lack of presence in the movie was certainly felt while watching, making it feel like the movie was missing just that little something that you can't quite place your finger on at the time. As it turned out, the actor that plays him, Chris Zylka, has since become a genuine movie and TV star during the time between the second movie and this one, so I can understand not being able to really get him back for anything more then a cameo, but it still would have been nice, especially where this is supposed to be the final movie of the series.

You don't really get too much time to lament about Brigg's absence though. You see, the first movie had a slow build to it, but it wisely used that time to set up the characters, the second movie had an even slower build and did not bother to use that to set up any of the new characters, save for one or two, and thus the movie felt unnecessarily slow for the first bit, but for this movie takes the route that I prefer – if you're not going to bother using the slower pace to help give the new characters any bit of characterization and make us care about them, then don't bother having a slow pace to begin with. It takes a few moments to bring us up to speed as to where Skye and Alex are with their lives now, and then it quickly jumps right into the thick of the plot and then moves at lightning speed and doesn't let up until the end; this movie was an hour and a half but it just zoomed right by so fast that it was over before I knew it, and it felt like only 40 minutes or so had passed. Due to that, any parts where I felt the movie fumbled the ball a bit (i.e. No Brigg, lack of death scenes, 'meh' acting, ect), were not given much time to really stick in my mind before something really awesome was happening that made me forget all about those things (for example the really brutal, yet very awesome, climatic fight).

Now, one thing this series has done really well with in the past, are surprising last-minute twists. This movie, being the final entry, really doesn't have one of those, per sey. It does, however, have a twist midway through. Even though it's painfully predictable for anybody who's a fan of the series, it's still a welcomed twist because up to that point I was getting a bit worried that they were maybe going to ignore an aspect that they started to set up in a previous entry, but luckily that turned out to not be the case and they were saving its continuation for the second half of this movie. As I said, easy to see coming from a mile away, but I'd rather that then them just decide to drop that part of the story, so really, there was no way they could have pulled that off and still manage to keep it a surprise.

While neither of the sequels quite reached the greatness of the first movie, both of them put up a really commendable effort, and this one did come pretty close at times. With just a few slight changes here and there, this could have easily been just as good, if not better, then the first. As it stands, it's still a solid second-place, and an excellent conclusion to the trilogy...though it does leave things off in such a way so that if they decide they want to continue it down the road a ways, the door is left slightly ajar for them.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 2 (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: POP Films/MTV

RUNTIME: 84 mins

FORMAT: MoD DVD

PLOT: Skye Rotter is on the run, having fled the Roller Dome massacre from the end of the first movie. With nowhere left to turn, Skye heads to the quiet town of Mill Basin and the mother who abandoned her years ago. There, she meets her younger half-sister, Alex and Alex's manipulative best friend, Zoe. Skye hopes she's finally found safety in her new family, but she's about to learn she can't outrun her past. While her friends Brigg and Derek desperately try to locate her, Charlie Rotter comes to town with one bloody mission: to turn Skye's upcoming birthday into a Sweet 16 she'll never forget, turning a weekend rager into the savage setting for a Rotter family reunion.

REVIEW: After last night's viewing of the first My Super Psycho Sweet 16, I was pretty anxious to get home from work this evening so I could pop in My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 2 and watch the continuing reign of terror brought down upon Skye Rotter by her psychopathic over-protective father. I got home in out of the drenching rain that was pouring down outside, quickly showered, ordered a pizza, and away I went with My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 2, hoping for something even half as enjoyable as the surprisingly-good first movie had been.

In this one, Skye Rotter has left town, running away from home and away from her friends, ashamed of her actions at the end of the previous movie and as well as wanting to escape from her psychopathic father and go into hiding so he can never find her again, and she can live a life where people don't know her history. She tracks down her long-lost mother, who ran out on her and her father when Skye was just a baby, and she finds her living in a far-away town, in a large mansion located in very nice cushy expensive neighborhood, now re-married to quite the money-maker husband with a daughter of their own that's roughly Skye's age. They reluctantly take her in, though it seems only the husband has any real interest in doing so, and both Skye's mother and half-sister Alex seem resistant to the idea. All the while, Brigg and Derek (Skye's only friends from the first movie) take it upon themselves to ignore the message she had left for them about not trying to find her, and  attempt to track her down anyway, eventually doing so, just as Skye's half-sister Alex begins to warm up to her and starts enjoying having a sister around (though her snobby stuck-up friends still dislike Skye pretty heavily). Upon finding out that it's Skye's 16th birthday, Alex invites her to a big party being held at an abandoned nightclub dubbed The Bone Yard. Of course, if Brigg and Derek are able to track Skye down then so can the infamous Charlie Rotter, Skye's murderous father who never did get apprehended at the end of the first movie. And thus, the terror starts all over again, culminating in a family reunion of epic proportions.

This follow-up certainly has a much-slower build then the first movie had, to the point where I almost want to go back and revise my review of that one, removing my comment about a slow pace in the first half an hour, because that movie moved at race car speed in comparison to this one. At least the first movie used its down time to properly establish all the characters and give them good characterization – this one doesn't do any of that with the new characters it brings in, with the exception of two. Hell, apart from Skye herself and her half-sister Alex, most of the characters in this movie are just completely unlikable with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Alex and her friends fill the 'Snobby rich girls' quota for this movie, which the first movie set with the Madison character and her friends. Luckily Alex is only a snob on the surface and the movie does a good job of delving further into her then that, showing that she really does feel out of place with those kinds of people and only acts like that, and does the things she does, to fit in with them and to feel like she belongs. While she dislikes Skye at first (upon her initial showing up out of the blue and dropping a huge bomb into Alex's otherwise normal teenage world), Alex does end up warming up to her and finds herself really enjoying having a sister around, allowing her guard to drop and showing her nice, more real, side to Skye, who openly accepts Alex for who she is far more then Alex's so-called 'friends'. There's also a minor sub-plot with Alex, where it goes into her having a history of these slight mental issues where she gets really angry and really emotional very easily, and thus she's on several kinds of anti-depressant medication and has to see a psychiatrist weekly. The other new character that the movie gives some decent characterization to would be Alex's best 'friend' (if she can be called that), named Zoe. Now Zoe is kind of the leader of that group of snobby stuck-up brats, and she's the one that is constantly making Alex feel like she has to do questionable things to fit in and be accepted. She's also the one who slyly discovers Skye's past (where Skye is trying to keep it a secret), and holds it over Skye's head as blackmail, to get her to do whatever Zoe wants her to do which ends up leading to a rather funny, albeit also intense, confrontation between the two. Other then these two characters though, the rest of the new characters are brushed over rather quickly and are nothing more then soulless cardboard cutouts of characters from the first movie, and are purely in the movie to be cannon fodder for the killer.

As for the returning characters, both Brigg and Derek have far less screen time then they did in the first movie, being regulated to spending 90% of their short time in the movie pining over Skye having ran away and disappeared, only to finally show up towards the end with one of them having next to no impact on really anything else that happens in the movie other then to just 'be there', while the other is used to follow in Scream 2's footsteps by unexpectedly killing off a returning survivor of the previous movie; I actually have to applaud that scene as I didn't see it coming at all, and I'm happy that the writers had the decency to give this character a really well-done 'last stand'. In addition, even though the other returning character didn't really do much, that scene made it quite clear that he could also be killed off at any time as well, and thus made the remaining scenes with him in them pretty suspenseful.

And then of course, there's Skye, having tracked her long-lost mother down and running to her for help, even though she herself hates her mother for running out on her. That disdain is added to even more once she sees the kind of life her mother seems to have been rewarded with for doing so, and Skye realizing this could have also been her life too if her mother hadn't left her behind with a psychopathic father. She doesn't have much time to spend thinking about that however, as she's too busy making nice with her new half-sister and trying to fit in with her friends and possibly create a life for herself here, where nobody knows who she is and what her history is (well, other then snoopy Zoe, but Skye puts her in her place before too long). I also really enjoyed the few times that this movie took how Skye ended things off in the previous movie and threw a couple red herrings out there to make it seem as if maybe this would be the movie where she finally snaps and follows in her father's footsteps. Suffice to say, red herrings were all those were, but it was still nice to see them take the time to build upon what had been established in the first movie, and it added a breath of mystery to this entry as it made it difficult to tell how things would turn out, especially knowing that these movies are not above throwing last-minute twists at you.

Which thus brings me to the final returning character, the man of the hour himself, the Lord of the Rink as he was referred to in news headlines – Charlie Rotter, the murderous overprotective father. Having also managed to track Skye down and realize where she's hiding out, he plans on killing her new family and taking herself and her mother back with him, so they can all be one reunited family....which then kind of begs the question as to why he goes around and kills all these totally unrelated-to-his-plot teens at the Bone Yard party, but hey, I'm willing to overlook that little plothole simply because a lack of a gruesome body count would make for a really lame teen slasher movie. Unfortunately, he doesn't really wear any sort of creepy costume in this movie, just his regular clothes. Sure, there are a couple kills where he retains that same clear plastic King mask, but he does so without the costume attire that he wore with it in the first movie, and even the mask itself is only worn a couple times; for the majority of the movie he kills with neither costume nor mask – just himself as-is. Though don't get me wrong, the actor plays 'crazy' very well (Jesus, those eyes...) so even without any sort of memorable get-up, he's still able to come across as scary and threatening, but it still would have been nice to see that medieval attire from the first movie return. Also dropped along with his previous costume is his taste in medieval weapons. Where the first movie had a nice range of unique death scenes via a different medieval weapon each time (plus more in some cases), this one he goes less inventive and simply uses a knife, and mostly just the knife (though there is one awesome scene where he uses an electric can-opener on the back of the head of a girl while she's busy making out with a guy).

Luckily the death scenes are still surprisingly gory for a made-for-TV movie, making up for any lack of imagination when it comes to the weapons themselves. One of the first kills of the movie happens off-screen with absolutely no blood to be seen, so that had me worried and thinking they were possibly going for a more toned-down route with the kills this time, but I'm happy to report that I was premature with those thoughts - once the killings really started kicking into high gear in the later part of the movie, there was no short supply of the gooey red stuff to go around. Hell, if anything this one may have been even more gruesome then the first, by just a smidgeon.

Just like the first movie, most of the acting here is all top-notch stuff, and way better then an MTV-made movie would be expected to have. Everyone returning from the first movie continues to turn in quality performances, with Lauren McKnight as Skye Rotter once again totally stealing the show with every scene she was in. The real surprise this time though was Stella Maeve as Zoe. Sure, her character was a total unlikable manipulative bitch, but she played the role to perfection, making it so even though I hated the character, I loved watching the actress portray her. Unfortunately, I didn't think that Kirsten Prout was quite up to snuff with everyone else in her portrayal of Alex. She came across as quite stiff and emotionless most of the time, and even when she was showing emotions it came across as quite fake and stilted – that is, until that final twist at the end.

Yes, much like the first movie this one throws a last-minute exciting twist which I also will not spoil here, but I will say that Kirsten Prout's acting in that scene was leagues better then anything else she turned in during this movie, and it has me really excited to see her return in the third and final entry of this trilogy, both in terms of the actress herself now that I know she's capable of giving us a better performance, as well as in terms of seeing where her character goes from here and how that will turn out for all involved.

Was My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 2 as good as the first? No, most certainly not. Did it at least meet my hopes of being, at the bare minimum, half as good as the first? Oh, for sure and then some. Despite the few detractors I mentioned throughout my review, the overall end product was still vastly enjoyable and a worthy follow-up to the amazing first movie. Those final couple of scenes alone was enough to make the time spent with this movie worth it, and with how things played out here it leaves off with the promise that the third and final movie will have to be a total game-changer, and I'm more then excited to find out how that will all play out and how things finally end off for these characters.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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My Super Psycho Sweet 16 (2009)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: POP Films/MTV

RUNTIME: 87 mins

FORMAT: MoD DVD

PLOT: Madison Penrose, spoiled throughout her life, convinces her rich parents to re-open a nearby rollerdome for her Sweet 16 birthday party. The rollerdome once closed because a series of brutal murders took place at the locale, and, of course, the killer returns to wreak havoc during her party.

REVIEW: I was always interested in checking out this little made-for-TV Super Psycho Sweet 16 horror trilogy, because despite being made by MTV of all channels, I've heard mostly nothing but good things about these movies from the usually-harsh horror community. Of course with my luck, these movies ended up being really hard to get a hold of – they're not available in stores at all, and they're only on Itunes in the U.S. (I live in Canada, so that made me shit out of luck). I'm not ashamed to admit that I even got desperate enough to resort to looking on less-then-legal sites, but still came up with nothing. Luckily Amazon.com pulled through and one day ended up putting them on their site as Manufacture-on-Demand titles, which means they make a copy of the movie when one gets ordered kind of thing. Not usually my cup of tea because I know through previous experience that the video quality on those kinds of titles tends to be a bit weaksauce, but I was willing to make an exception for these since there was literally no other way to get my hands on them and they were listed for a reasonably-cheap price.

This first movie in the Super Psycho Sweet 16 trilogy starts off 10 years in the past, with a man who runs a very popular roller blade rink, Charlie Rotter, who is a bit on the weird side due to a slight mental disorder, and he kind of does some age-inappropriate things such as dressing up as the mascot of the building – a Medieval King mask and costume, complete with old-style speech - to bring a dinky birthday cake to an older teenager who's there with his friends to celebrate his birthday – certainly something that a five year old might find enjoyable (as his young daughter does while watching this take place), but a sixteen year old? As you can imagine, this leads to the teenagers mocking him and teasing him and the confrontation gets a bit physical, all amounting to something snapping inside the man's head, to the point where when two of these teenagers sneak back in for some 'fun' after hours, Charlie Rotter goes on a murderous rampage while still wearing the medieval garb, and takes them out in gory fashion...all in front of the eyes of his little daughter, Skye. It's not long (literally, like 10 seconds) before the cops show up, discover six more dead bodies in the basement, and haul him away to a mental institution, which shortly after he supposedly dies during a car crash while being transferred from one facility to another.

Cut ahead 10 years and Skye Rotter is now a growing teenager herself and lives with her aunt who adopted her, while at school she's a social outcast with only one actual friend (another social outcast and all around quirky dweeb), and she herself gets picked on and teased by the popular kids of the school. One of these rich, spoiled, popular girls, Madison, manages to talk her daddy into getting the roller dome re-opened (which had been closed after the murders 10 years prior) for her upcoming big Sweet 16 birthday bash. When Madison's ex-boyfriend, Brigg, starts taking a notice in Skye and begins to develop feelings for her, well, Madison clearly can't have that and begins to play really nasty pranks on Skye as revenge. This leads Skye and her one and only friend, Derek, to sneak into Madison's big birthday bash at the dome, purely to piss her off, which leads to Madison and her vicious gang of girls to take matters into their own hands in making sure Skye and Derek realize they're not wanted around. It's not long after that when someone once again dons the old medieval mask and costume, grabs an arsenal of medieval weapons, and starts going to town on the party guests in brutal gory fashion (a javelin is used in one scene, a mace in another, a battle axe in a third, a sword soon after that, ect). Is it Skye, having finally snapped just like her father had? Is it her father, somehow back from the dead? Is it Skye's friend Derek who seemingly disappears during every scene that someone is murdered? Or is it someone else entirely, using this situation to capitalize on a sick fantasy?

Well despite the movie trying pretty hard to make the identity be a surprise reveal, thanks to the back of the DVD case for coming right out and naming who the killer is, it ends up not being much of a surprise at all. Although really, based off how the killer looks (i.e. tall man with a wild unkempt beard), even without the back of the DVD case spoiling it, it's extremely obvious early-on that the killer is neither Skye nor any of the other school students it occasionally tries to use as a red herring, and thus there really is only one person it can be – Skye's father, Charlie Rotter, having faked his death years earlier, now back once more to (in his eyes) get revenge on the spoiled rich kids of the area who bully his daughter. I have to hand it to them though – while the identity of the killer may have been 2009's worst-kept secret, the costume he wears is really quite awesome, and very creepy in most of the scenes of him wearing it while stalking (and eventually killing) each of his victims. One scene in particular stands out, where he's terrorizing a girl in the bathroom of the Roller Dome while wearing said costume. It was given a whole new layer of creepy atmosphere, due to the way the scene was lighted and framed as he repeatedly bashed her head in  – it provided an uber-creepy visual that won't soon be forgotten. Actually, for a made-for-TV movie aimed largely at tween girls, especially from MTV at that, this one is filled with all sorts of violent death scenes like that one, and was overall surprisingly quite gory.

Of course, in order to sell those death scenes really successfully, they would have had to have really good actors playing the parts...and thankfully they do. All the actors in this movie - from the main characters down to the smaller roles that may only have a couple scenes - all of them did a far better acting job then I would have expected. And not to take away from everyone else, but the main actress Lauren McKnight (Skye Rotter) easily steals the show and continuously impressed me more and more as the movie went on – why she's not a bigger name and in more stuff is beyond me, because she totally deserves to be. Even in the earlier scenes, her comedic timing with delivering various funny lines and reactions was spot-on. Likewise, Julianna Guill was almost just as perfect in her role of playing the spoiled stuck-up self-centered bitch of a rich brat, Madison. This girl knows how to play 'snobby' and come across as believable, with her truly shining moment being this one scene towards the end where she's excited over this gigantic super-expensive cake being rolled out, and this comes right after one of the characters finds a dead body and starts rollerblading out to warn everyone but along the way she gets decapitated and her headless body (while spurting out blood) continues rolling and slams right into the cake, destroying it. While everyone's screaming and running, Julianna Guill plays her character as utterly mortified...but not at the sight of the headless body of her friend, oh no, she's utterly mortified at the fact that her cake is ruined and nothing more, and she sells the delivery of that reaction hilariously well.

In point of fact, despite that the title is poking fun at the groan-inducing hit show on MTV, My Super Sweet 16, the movie itself is played mostly straight with only a few funny moments sprinkled in here and there (mostly at the expense of the spoiled rich girls). When I first heard of this movie, I was actually expecting a full-on spoof of My Super Sweet 16, and ended up being pleasantly surprised when what we got in the end was something far more intelligent and enjoyable then what that would have been. Actually, if anything, it takes a bit too long for things to really get going as the first half of the movie (after the opening flashback) is a tad bit on the slow side before things really start heating up. Though thankfully it uses most of that time to really establish the characters well and let us get to know them before their bodies start piling up (or, well, some of their bodies). One character in particular I was a bit saddened to see bite it when their time came, which is due to the director using that slow build to help build that character, among others, to one that we can care about.

Of course, with Skye being the 'Sidney Prescott' of the movie, she got the most development, and it was hers that I found to be most interesting, and not just because of the fact that she looks and sounds eerily like Ellen Page, but I really loved how it hinted at Skye possibly developing mental issues of her own, and maybe starting to go down the same road that her father had, by showing her having continuous nightmares about her father and seemingly developing anger and rage issues over the course of the movie. Could this maybe be a hint of what's to come down the road in the other movies – Like father, Like Daughter, perhaps? I'm really interested in finding out, and I'm really glad I waited until I had all three of the movies so I can just go ahead and jump into the next one to find out, as opposed to waiting a couple years like those who initially watched this on TV had to.

I of course can't write a review on this movie without at least mentioning that amazingly mind-blowing twist at the end in regards to Skye. I won't go into specifics because it is well worth your while to stay spoiler-free on this one aspect of the movie, but I will say that despite how obvious the 'secret' of who the killer turned out to be was, I honestly did not see this twist coming, and it's not something you usually see filmmakers do in regards to a heroine of a teen slasher, so mucho props to the writers for throwing that curveball into the party mix. Like the other aspects of Skye's character that I mentioned above, how this one specific scene plays out also makes me really excited to see where she goes, characterization-wise, in the following movies.

This little made-for-MTV slasher flick is an infinite amount better then it had any right to be, and was more enjoyable then the majority of drivel that Hollywood has been putting out in recent years and calling horror. If the following two movies in this series are just as good as this one, then even though the budget is immensely smaller, this series just might get put up there right next to the Scream franchise as being among my top favorite teen slasher series'. I can't possibly understand why MTV continuously refuses to give this series a proper DVD release, especially considering that the ratings for these when they aired were excellent, but in my opinion they are really missing out by not making this more readily available, and in much better quality then what's offered on an MoD release.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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