Author Archives: Really Awful Movies

About Really Awful Movies

Horror movie authors and journalists who also review exploitation, action, grindhouse, kung fu, sci fi and other genre films. We are hosts of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, a celebration of low budget cinema - smart genre film chat, predominantly horror movies.

Better Watch Out

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As far as Christmas horrors go, Better Watch Out is one of the better ones, a compliment so back-handed it should be at Wimbledon.

It’s too bad too, because the definitive Christmas horror movie has yet to be made despite more and more of them coming out (let’s put it this way: the bloated Krampus doesn’t provide much holiday cheer, and if the admittedly stellar Christmas Evil or Black Christmas weren’t set on the big day, they’d probably be forgotten as quickly as the pair of socks or the dad tie).

Better Watch Out is a home invasion movie turned inside out, and features a much more interesting antagonist than we’re used to seeing around the holidays. So, considering the cheap holiday cash-ins that comprise the bulk of Christmas horror features, give some credit where it’s due: maybe in the form of a gift card.

Aussie Olivia DeJonge plays babysitter Ashley, entrusted to keep an eye out on Luke, the Lerner family boy (whose dad, Robert — Patrick Warburtin, Elaine’s vacant on-again-off again beau, Puddy on Seinfeld — makes no bones about leering at her). Luke is a sharp little hellion who knows how to push his babysitter’s buttons, guzzling a bottle of family champagne and snuggling close to her during frightening moments of a horror film.

Ashley is harassed by the usual workplace hazard of her profession: the menacing phone call (heavy breathing is a staple of Black Christmas as well). Then things take a wonderful turn.

Despite its R-rating, Better Watch Out offers very little in terms of gore. As a result, the critics slobbered all over it. The LA Times even pulled this out of its hat: “[Better Watch Out] says pertinent things about suburbia, holiday entertainment and toxic masculinity” [the latter phrase, meaningless bilge courtesy of the most laughable undergrad major there is, Gender Studies].” But the film says what, exactly? You can’t just let a phrase like that sit there, like a turd. Imagine a book report phrased thusly: “To Kill a Mockingbird says pertinent things about race.” “Moby-Dick says pertinent things about fate.” AND?

The performances are great all around, and things sag toward the climax with a particularly phony Foley artist workout involving a baseball bat.

Despite its delicious premise, Better Watch Out is a film that threatens to come alive every minute, but cannot…a kind of rolling boil of a horror. The places it should go, it doesn’t.

*** (out of 5)

Horror Movie Dictionary: Blood

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“I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” That’s from Macbeth.

Gory visuals of blood can cause a significant drop in both heart rate and blood pressure, reducing the amount of oxygenated blood flow to the brain. In a Ohio University study, more than 27% of respondents said they feared fainting before donating blood, compared with the figure of people who actually faint (4%). Blood injury and injection (BII) phobia is a really common psychiatric disorder

There’s a reason blood is so liberally deployed in horror films.

The real tragedy as far as the horror movie genre is concerned, is that scary films are seldom critically lauded except when there’s restraint when it comes to blood and gore.

Mass market sanguine-free supernatural releases are among the few times the tower gatekeepers descend from the parapets and deign it worthy to review a horror film. Occasionally, relatively bloodless slashers slip through the cracks (Halloween and Child’s Play were warmly received).

Blood doesn’t make a good movie bad, nor the reverse. And handled correctly it’s a showstopper. Handled incorrectly and it’s a CG mess, covering up sloppy film-making like a rust-bucket’s paint-job. Evil Dead, Blood Feast, and Dead Alive are a few of our favorite syrupy, bloody messes (for those interested in Blood Feast, listen to our podcast interview with maverick splatter-horror director, the late H.G. Lewis)

Oddly, many films with blood in their title aren’t all that particularly bloody (and there are a LOT of plasma-related movies: Bloody Wednesday, Blood Hook, Silent Night, Bloody Night, Blood Rage, etc, etc). But that’s probably just marketing.

Of note, two of most influential films in the entire horror canon have blood in their title, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast, and Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood.