The Murder Podcast (2021)

Pot humor may help The Murder Podcast eventually find a cult, but — as is the case 9 times out of 10 (or 378 out of 420) — the movie doesn’t need the boost of bud. It’s funny enough on its own.

The lead performance of unknown actor Andrew McDermott is up to 90% of the reason. Sporting a Michael J. Fox babyface that goes a long way for likability, he’s laugh-out-loud hilarious; scene after scene, line reading after line reading, his Chad is reminiscent of peak Steve Zahn. His Funyuns-and-Fright Night approach consistently cracked me up.

Living in his sister’s basement, Chad is a slacker with a poor work ethic and a poorer gag reflex. Rather than get a real job, he and his nerdy best friend (Cooper Bucha, Judas and the Black Messiah) harbor delusions of their ramen review podcast breaking big.

But when their suburban town of Harbor Falls starts seeing strange deaths after a homicide-free run of 20 years, Chad smells money in not noodles, but the caboodle of corpses — hence, The Murder Podcast. Their amateur investigation puts them afoul of cops, a TV news reporter, Chad’s brother-in-law and Sam Raimi-level spookies.

Although it’s similar in tone to Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, I don’t mean to suggest writer/director William Bagley’s first feature is quite as winning; the third act’s heavy shift to the supernatural tips the scales away from what the film does best. But it’s close enough to run circles around so many indie horror-comedy wannabes, from John Dies at the End to Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. Bagley’s premise is not just supported by strong effects and delivery, but timely in our nation’s collective true-crime obsession. That his lively movie is saddled with such a generic moniker is near-felonious. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Reportage November (2022)

After a woman is found dead in the forest, with her newborn nowhere in sight, an intrepid journalist (Signe Elvin-Nowak) and crew go searching for the truth. After all, over the last seven years, this female corpse is hardly the first to turn up in these woods.

As you’ve likely already deduced, their footage is the movie, Reportage November. And because it’s presented to us within a faux documentary driven by talking-head commentary, we enter knowing who will survive and what will be left of them, thereby heavily decreasing the chance for fun.

Although admirable, when found-footage horror reaches too far for the brass ring of authenticity, it can backfire. Why? Because reality is usually boring, and such is the case here. Now, where the movie ends up isn’t real, but not worth the sit to get there; just make do with the trailer.

This marks the sophomore feature for Carl Sundström, whose 2017 picture, Documenting the Witch Path, entails more of the same, with even more imitative elements of You Know What. If nothing else, Reportage November proves Sweden can make found-footage movies as dull as we Americans. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Kratt (2020)

Not to be confused with the processed cheese product manufacturer Kraft — or, for that matter, the sea monster Kraa! — a kratt is an mythological monster. Unlike your Medusa or garden-variety minotaur, the kratt is DIY; as legend has it, you build one from whatever you’ve got around the house, make a deal with the devil and, whammo, it does your bidding and brings you riches. Not a bad deal!

Or is it? From Estonia, the film Kratt examines this conundrum in a winning family comedy — assuming your family is good with repeated utterings of the word “fuck,” not to mention the potential inquiry of “Mom, what’s fentanyl?”

When their parents go on vacation, Mia and Kevin (real-life siblings and first-time actors Nora and Harri Merivoo) are left with Grandma (Mari Lill) in the country and, worse, without their phones. Boredom leads them to create a kratt, but a freak accident throws the Satan-swapped soul not into their ramshackle construction, but their grandmother! (It also plants a scythe in her head, but that’s beside the point.)

Instantly, the ever-robed taskmaster of little patience and a big generational gap becomes Mia and Kevin’s slave: a pancake-cooking, house-painting, coop-cleaning, sauerkraut fart-lighting machine.

Although Rasmus Merivoo — the writer, director, editor and kids’ father — smashes the Wes Anderson button a few times too many, he gets a great performance out of Lill and good ones from the children, particularly Nora. Whenever he shifts focus to the village’s bratty governor (Ivo Uukkivi) and squad of social justice warriors, the movie loses a few smidges of charm; these portions of political satire undoubtedly play in Peoria Estonia, but on this hemisphere, they feel like unneeded padding.

Still, Kratt stands astride the fiendish fantasy of Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale and the subversive goofiness of The Peanut Butter Solution, with an eye toward the good-natured gore of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. It’s observant, sharp and light of heart even when the comedy grows dark. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery Spot (2021)

Not knowing where a film is going isn’t the same as not knowing what a film is attempting to do. Although that may sound like semantics, the difference is immense. The former breeds suspense and surprise; the latter, frustration and resentment.

Mystery Spot brings frustration and resentment. Written, directed, edited and produced by Mel House (Psychic Experiment), the indie pic fails hard by not properly establishing its characters or feeding viewers anything beyond bread crumbs for story. At nearly two hours of wondering when things will truly “start,” the watch is wearisome. While Josh Loucka’s score hooked my ears, other creative elements come up short in a collective overreach.

Shot in Texas, the film is set at a roadside motel in the middle of nowhere. Decades ago, the place was a bona fide travelers’ attraction thanks to the Mystery Spot, an adjacent tourist-trap funhouse. Although long burnt down, its wooden remnants are whispered to be haunted. Running contrary to the title, the movie treats the spot as tangential until need be; of the 111 minutes, most tick at the motel.

In one room, a mopey, bearded slob (Graham Skipper, All the Creatures Were Stirring) auditions young women on camcorder for a supposed movie. In another is a middle-aged photographer (a fine Lisa Wilcox, Alice of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and 5) who’s checked in to the dump for a few days. Meanwhile, a cop (Bobby Simpson II) surveils all of the above through binoculars from his completely conspicuous car in the parking lot.

The many questions raised by this slim setup remain unanswered until the conclusion. The effect is like a first date where you can’t ask the other person where they’re from, how they earn an a living or what they do for fun. Also, every now and again, a pile of sand appears. The early ambiguity of Skipper’s situation appears to be calculated misdirection, but is revealed to be either miscasting, off-key acting or poor storytelling once House’s intent — pretentious and metaphysical — finally emerges.

Psych-rock pioneer Roky Erickson once sang, “If you have ghosts, you have everything.” Mystery Spot suggests otherwise. —Rod Lott

Final Judgement (1992)

After all those Chucky movies, seeing Brad Dourif play a sane, law-abiding citizen seems as rare as a ponytailed priest investigating a serial killer of strippers. Dourif does both in the erotic thriller Final Judgement, from Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures. (Note the title’s misspelling of “judgment”; perhaps the frugal Corman had a BOGO coupon for the vowel?)

A man of the cloth in the City of Angels, Dourif’s Father Tyrone finds himself Suspect No. 1 when a parishioner’s exotic dancer of a daughter, Paula (Kristin Dattilo, 1990’s Mirror Mirror), is found murdered after he counsels her. The true culprit is Rob (soap star David Ledingham in his lone movie), an artist living alone in one of those enormous warehouses. After convincing strippers to let him paint their portraits, Rob strangles each subject to death with picture-hanging wire — hey, like Corman, he’s resourceful.

When the police lieutenant on the case (Isaac Hayes, Truck Turner) won’t listen to Tyrone’s theory, Father heads to Paula’s club to look for a girl to pound for info. He finds her in Nicole (Concorde queen Maria Ford, Stripped to Kill 2), who at one point wears pants with a floral pattern so gaudy, it looked better as the guest room bedspread at my parents’ house.

Old pro he is, Dourif keeps Final Judgement from becoming less than perfunctory. He’s not helped by his director, Louis Morneau (Werewolf: The Beast Among Us), who lets Ledingham sail so far over the top (while Ford merely discards hers), he should have been reigned in. I doubt the script — written by then-future Hollywood Reporter film critic Kirk Honeycutt — called for such level of hysterics.

As a disciple of Andy Sidaris (read our interview with him in our book), I also wonder why Roberta Vasquez is the only woman on the poster, yet has such a small role. She’s not only a better actress than Ford, but better built for the part. The Lord works in mysterious ways, indeed. —Rod Lott

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