KJ

Doctor Mordrid (1992). A researcher for the NYPD discovers her neighbor (Jeffrey Combs) is a sorcerer whose nemesis has just arrived to destroy the Earth. The credits say this is "Based on an idea by Charles Band" which is a very funny way of saying "This was supposed to be a Doctor Strange adaptation but the rights expired during pre-production" (lol).

This is very short, a tight 74 minutes, and extremely cheesy. Nobody gets much development or depth. I saw someone describe this as feeling like the pilot to a 90s procedural, and yeah, that feels about right. The main appeal is of course Jeffrey Combs, who honestly feels fairly awkward in the role of hero main character. To be fair, none of the direction or anything else is doing him any favors.

All that said, this DOES have a stopmotion battle between a T-rex skeleton and a triceratops skeleton, and that's pretty great, honestly. I'd say that probably was worth the price of admission all by itself.

The villain looked vaguely familiar, and I looked him up and found the actor went on to play Luke in the Buffy pilot and then the Judge in S2. Neat.

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The Passenger (2023). A shy, awkward fast food worker in his early 20s (Johnny Berchtold) gets kidnapped by his cowoker (Kyle Gallner), who vacillates between gunning people down with a shotgun and providing his own fucked-up version of therapy in hopes of teaching our main guy to stand up for himself.

I somehow had osmosed a very different premise for this movie; I was maybe conflating it with He Went That Way, or some other carjacking movie? Some kind of "violent sadist terrorizes innocent person" story, which is extremely not my jam. This, however, is weirder and more complicated than that, and overall I enjoyed it a lot, especially considering it clearly didn't cost much to make. The dynamic between the two guys is interesting (I can totally see why there's a few hundred fics on AO3), and there are some genuinely very nice shots. I especially liked the opening sequence of driving through town just before dawn, and how the movie comes to a climax at nightfall. I also appreciate the movie's commitment to an extremely late 80s aesthetic for its fast food joint. Overall, a pleasant watch.

I do find it funny that I've seen Kyle Gallner in exactly two things (not counting his SPN appearance as a kid), both recently, both opening with him trying to kill people with a shotgun. He does have a real stereotypical redneck look about him, especially with the mustache.

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Bring Her Back (2025). Directed by the Philippou brothers, who made Talk to Me, this is about a teenage kid and his younger, visually impaired stepsister who, after their dad dies, go to stay with a foster mother (Sally Hawkins, ie Elisa from The Shape of Water) and her extremely creepy other foster child.

This is in fact not out yet, but I got to see it at the Monday Mystery Movie showing last night. It also is not the sequel to Talk to Me (even though I swear the title is a line that appears in Talk to Me). There is a sequel to that movie greenlit, it's just not this movie. Just to clear all that up!

Anyway, I liked it a lot. The two main kids are great, and especially the kid playing the older brother puts in a great performance supported by some pretty nuanced writing as he tries to navigate this escalating situation that is so much worse and weirder than he realizes. Sally Hawkins is fantastic, and what's going on with her character is satisfyingly horrible, I feel, with some glints of pretty fun black humor. I also appreciated that the story arcs here don't map directly onto real life issues the way the demons in Talk to Me were basically a one-for-one swap with drug use. This story is too weird to allow that kind of straightforward interpretation.

The star of the show here has got to be the creepy other foster kid, Ollie, who starts out mute, staring, and occasionally banging on things, and then gets a lot weirder from there. The entire concept of his character is executed really well, just very effective and fresh with images that will stick with you. I love the angle this story takes on the trope.

FYI the foster mom's cat experiences some harm (although not super obviously, I missed it and someone had to tell me after), but as far as we know it survives the movie.