An interesting mix today...
Bedeviled (Netflix) **
Harmless teenkill nonsense in a similar vein to last year's Countdown (though this one was made back in 2016): in the wake of one of their friend's suicide, an agreeably diverse group of teenagers download a mysterious AI app that's actually some kind of netherworld demon which promptly syncs up with all their social media and confronts them with their worst fears until they kill themselves. Some of their fears are unusual: a battered childhood teddy, a creepy old woman from an old photograph; though one is lumbered with clowns (which are creepy, sure, but we've seen creepy clowns before and the nod to It is hammered home with a red balloon). It's disposable, unremarkable, not terrible but nowhere near essential viewing.
The Doll 2 (Netflix) ***
Rocky Soraya has six Indonesian horror films on Netflix and three of them are the Doll franchise: the most unfriendly-looking dolls imaginable possessed by the restless spirits of the dead children who once owned them. Though this begins by tying up the last loose ends from the first film, it then cuts to a completely different possessed doll terrorising a new family after the young daughter died in a car smash. It's a bit long (nearly two hours) but generally pretty entertaining and has a couple of nice twists to it. And I'll probably include the third one in a future binge.
Freaks (Netflix) ***
This played at both the London and Glasgow FrightFests last year but I didn't get to see it; a shame, especially considering what I ended up seeing against it. A young girl is kept locked in her home by her overprotective father (Emile Hirsch), supposedly to protect her from the bad people who would do her harm but there's much more to it than that, with echoes of (of all things) some of the X-Men movies. Bruce Dern is a possibly creepy ice-cream seller always just outside the front door. Well worth a look, as it veers off into surprising and unexpected directions.
The Mermaid: Lake Of The Dead (Prime) ***
Agreeable Russian fantasy horror in which a young man meets a mermaid - not the cute and romantic Daryl Hannah type, but a figure of demonic folklore that, having seduced its (her?) prey, then torments him when he rejects it (her) in favour of his human girlfriend. As usual in these things, they have to find out who she is and how to defeat her. It's generally pretty decent, unusual enough to stand out a little and enjoyable enough.
Tau (Netflix) ****
Petty thief Maika Monroe is abducted one night and wakes up in a basement with an implant surgically inserted into her neck; she's resourceful enough to escape but then finds herself in the fortress home of a bastard tech zillionaire (Ed Skrein), tasked with improving the thinking process of his revolutionary AI system named Tau (voiced by Gary Oldman), which would actually make it more human than he is. Essentially a three-hander that mostly takes place in one of those gloriously ridiculous superhouses for the absurdly wealthy; it's involving, exciting in its final reel and looks great. A more than decent conclusion to Day Two and the best film of the weekend so far.
Next up - Day Three...
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