Night of the Mad Max

Film: Wyrmwood
Format: Streaming video from Prime on Fire!

I have said before that the zombie subgenre is pretty packed right now. Unless you make something that is so gonzo and amazing that it can’t be denied (say, Train to Busan), you have to do something else to stand out. Wyrmwood, also called Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, takes this to heart, offering a number of completely new ideas into the zombie world. It’s an inventive screenplay, and because of that, it’s a movie that is hard not to enjoy on some level.

If you aren’t aware right away that this is an Australian film, you’ll be made aware the moment someone speaks. Barry (Jay Gallagher) lives in the outback with his wife Annie (Catherine Terracini) and their daughter Meganne (Megann e West). Barry’s sister Brooke (Bianca Bradey) is a photographer working with an assistant and a model when the model suddenly and unexpectedly zombifies, and, biting the assistant, zombifies her. Brooke manages to climb into the rafters of her studio, keeping herself safe. She calls Barry and tells him what has happened, and soon enough, he and his family are being attacked as well.

I Would Walk 500 Miles

Film: The Long Walk
Format: Market Square Cinema Theater 2

When I was a Junior in high school, I was just starting out as a horror fan. Around that time, it was revealed that Stephen King had published five books under the name of Richard Bachman. Four of those books were published in a single volume called “The Bachman Books.” I liked all four of them but of them, The Long Walk was the best of them. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have been waiting 41 years for this movie. It is a brutal, vicious book, and I was hoping that the translation to film would be the same. The Long Walk has some significant differences, but it tells the story extremely well.

You’re going to hear people talk about this in the weeks ahead, and they are going to make comparisons to things like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, and I’ve heard someone dismiss it as just a new version of Squid Game. Please know that this came first—King’s book was published in 1979. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this is derivative of those stories, since those stores came later.

What I've Caught Up With, August 2025

August was an interesting month, and I didn’t watch a ton of movies. I also didn’t actually get through a full television series. Not a great deal to say, honestly. As the sign says on my office door, I can’t wait until we get back to normal fucked up instead of super fucked up.

It's Mr. Stay-Puft!

Film: Marshmallow
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire!

I can’t honestly say that I’ve been getting more and more into obscure movies lately since there’s definitely a part of me that has a sort of hipster mindset with film. Years ago, when I was a lot more involved in music than I am now, I liked looking for little-know bands and artists simply because I got bored with a lot of what was out in the mass market. I love a lot of pop films (Sinners remains a favorite from 2025, for instance), but I love uncovering a gem that most people don’t know. Such is the case with Marshmallow, which is honestly better than its current reviews on sites like Letterboxd (Rotten Tomatoes has it more accurately).

Marshmallow is set up like a classic slasher movie, at least after the first couple of minutes. We’re going to start by being introduced to Morgan (Kue Lawrence), who witnesses his grandfather (Corbin Bernsen) have something like a stroke. Soon after, Morgan is sent away to summer camp, something he’s not very excited about. Morgan is a shy kid and doesn’t look like much of an outdoorsy kid. He’s also plagued with nightmares and has a desperate fear of drowning.

The Dracula Story, Take 25

Film: Dracula A.D. 1972
Format: DVD from Mokena Community Public Library through interlibrary loan on basement television.

There are a lot of basic stories that crop up on this blog over and over. It seems like there’s a Holocaust movie every year, for instance. Nothing shows up here more than Dracula, though, although there may be more zombie films overall. Dracula is probably the most frequently mentioned character, though, and that’s especially the case if you include Count Orlock as essentially the same character. With Dracula A.D. 1972 we are once again diving into the Dracula story, with the only real difference being the setting. If you have to have something to separate your Dracula movie from all of the rest, having cars and 1970s technology is at least a start.

After the original Dracula story where the Count goes ham on Mina Harker, all of the Dracula stories are essentially variations on a theme. Dracula, who was killed in the previous film (or in this case, simply killed in the past) is resurrected in one way or another. He hyper-fixates on a young woman, kills a few others to gain strength, makes a few lesser vampires to assist him, and generally speaking dies just as he is about to turn his obsession into his newest vampiric creation.

ChatGPT

Film: The Artifice Girl
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I like science fiction and I always have. Sci-fi and fantasy were more or less my introductory genres to reading beyond children’s books. I got Ray Bradbury collections for Christmas when I was 8 and I was hooked. One of the reasons I love science fiction is that the best of it asks a great existential question that really isn’t answered by other genres: what makes us human? The advent of AI has given us this theme more and more, and The Artifice Girl explores it in a way that is interesting and worth the time to consider.

This is a question that has been asked for a long time. It’s come up regarding aliens (The Man Who Fell to Earth, for instance, or Spock’s funeral in Wrath of Khan where Kirk says that Spock was truly human), but it comes up more commonly with robots, androids, and artificial intelligence. Sometimes those intelligences are benign (Her), amoral (Ex Machina), or actively evil (Upgrade), but the question is best asked by presenting us with an intelligence that seems to walk that tightrope between human intelligence and uncanny valley. If we start with the premise that the AI in question can pass the Turing test, then the question of its humanity becomes a real one.

Out for a Bite

Film: Maggie
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

Maggie is a movie that is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it’s very much a zombie movie, but there are only a couple of zombies that appear in it. It’s slow and contemplative, the sort of zombie movie that a horror fan could legitimately show to a non-horror fan with the hope that they might actually enjoy it. The second thing about Maggie is that it’s evidence that Arnold Schwarzenegger can act.

Yeah, I know. Up to this point, Arnie’s best performances were in the first two Terminator movies and a mindless killing machine and then as a mindful killing machine. In Maggie, he’s asked to play a truly emotional role, one that would be difficult for any actor, and he pulls it of surprisingly well. Arnie has some chops, and that’s kind of surprising.