31 Days of Halloween 2018

The House That October Built 2 (2017) - A few years after the first trip where five friends Brandy, Zach, Bobby, Mikey and Jeff travels to haunted attractions. They are internet famous after there encounter with Blue Skeleton, a group of extreme haunters who made the friends internet sensations with the video streams of the scares they endured. Brandy Traumatized still initially bows out of going on the road again. This time though they are to be guests of the haunts, paid to make the appearances. So a lot of the plot centers around Brandy refusing to go. Of course without the now famous "Coffin Girl" the group can not pull in the larger appearance fees so there is an effort made to get her to come along. When she finally agrees we again follow them as they go to haunts. The plot is more complex this time and actually I liked it better than the first movie. Zack is making deals to get the scares the internet wants without telling Brandy who although there is clear she does not want to participate in any extreme scares. We get different kind of haunts from a zombie pub crawl in Minneapolis MN to a haunted hayride, and a zombie 5k where runners try to avoid zombies as they run a course. Zack is focused on Hell Bent another extreme haunt place insisting all the time that Brandy does not have to participate. There is more of a twist here though and we get to watch it all unfold as friends show their true colors and the Blue Skeleton wants new videos to drive traffic on the internet. So raise your hand if you have ever lost a friend because he put his needs ahead of your friendship.

Tales From the Hood 2 (2018) Anthologies are always hit or miss, some messages connect more than others, cliche sentence, cliche sentence. Then we get to this new straight to streaming film, an anthology with a purpose. Now as a viewer I have to say that it seems the intent of the film was to throw shade on an American society that has shown its ugly racist underbelly, not just the last two years but for 227. It is not subtle but it is satirical and hits the viewer over the head with stereotypes. It holds back nothing dissecting the all too common and ever more vocal racist attitudes in this country. Broken into four tales and a connecting story it brandishes hamfisted hands to get its points across. Not that it is bad by any means, well maybe the connecting story that swipes so hard at American racists that it would knock them into yesterday where they belong. The first story playing with the idea that if only rape culture had defenders to pay back the bad behavior is only mildly interesting. The next we see how fetishistic collecting of racist pop culture gets punished. Leave no doubt the stereotypes of the white witless collector and her equally banal black friend are funny and she should be at least educated but this film really is about punishment. In the third story thug life is pitted against community service exposing how greed and selfishness damage the black community. The fourth has the ghosts of black historical struggles coming around to teach a currently co-opted African American lessons about the interconnected threads of sacrifice for the greater good. Overall this film did what it should it made me uncomfortable. Writers / Directors Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott within the bounds of a horror film challenge people of all colors to check there privilege and pay attention to the attitude still pervasive in our society. Entertaining maybe a bit too on the nose the film is always honest and it still played really well for me.