(For an explanation of what these posts in October are, see the parent post.)

Synopsis

An affluent son starts to suspect that his parents, and maybe his entire life, are not what they seem.

Opinion

Holy geebus, this movie 100% embodies the WHAT DID I JUST WATCH meme.  It’s a paranoia-induced mystery where a rich teen keeps seeing odd things out of the corner of his eye, notices people acting strangely, and can’t figure out what is real and what isn’t.  And for the first two thirds of the movie, it held my attention based on that alone.

(spoiler alert)

And then, the movie descends into a body horror fever dream the likes of which I’ve never seen.  It puts From Beyond to shame, and gives Reanimator a run for its money.  It goes into utterly bananas territory with an equally bananas victory for the hero.

Does this make it bad?  No, it truly kept me guessing and delivered the promised shocks.  The actors did a fine job, the effects were good where they needed to be and cheesy when it was warranted, and the director did a fine job for his debut.  I’m glad I saw it — but can I recommend it?

Recommendation

Society is unapologetically a body horror film, so if you are grossed out by that, do not watch.  But if you want to see something you’ve never seen before, and can handle the (bloodless!) gore, check it out.

(For an explanation of what these posts in October are, see the parent post.)

Synopsis

Upper-class high school friends check out a waxworks museum, only to get trapped in some of the exhibits.

Opinion

Waxwork feels like it is trying to be a Charles Band/Full Moon horror movie but the final result has half the quality and even less charm.  It can’t decide if it’s trying to be a horror-comedy, flat horror, or just “quirky”, and it fails at all three.  Which is a shame, since the premise is somewhat original:  People who wander into incomplete waxworks scenes end up living the scene itself, and, if killed, becoming part of it forever.  It’s a great idea!  It’s just a shame the movie can’t pull off any of the three tiers of execution it is going for.

The low budget didn’t help.  Waxwork was filmed for $1.5 million.  If it had $1 million less money in the budget, it would have been a flawed but admirably ambitious film.  If it had $1 million more money in the budget, it would have been able to pull off more scary effects.  But what got onto celluloid just falls flat.  It’s even distracting to watch at times — some dialog gets cut together with dialog that feels like it was an alternate take with alternate lines.  One character fires a machine gun as he dies (trope alert), but since they couldn’t afford an automatic machine gun, you can see the character pulling the trigger while “dead”.  Some characters are caricatures while the two main characters play it completely straight.  It’s a mess.

Recommendation

I hate to kick a movie while it’s down (especially since, based on the commentary, everyone had a fun time making the film), but you should skip it.  For every scene that works, there are three that don’t.  Your time would be better spent watching 4 episodes of Tales from the Darkside (or even 4 episodes of Monsters).