Girl On The Third Floor (2019)
a review by Evan Landon
Okay…
Let me first start off by stating this: I am a huge fan of professional wrestling. I am also a huge fan of horror If that does not send you running to the hills and not hearing my opinion about this movie for those reasons alone and you are still here, I think you might have a clue about why I wish to speak on this film.
This movie stars a Phil “CM Punk” Brooks, who was a very popular professional wrestler somewhere around 5 years ago and left the business for a plethora of reasons I cannot fully get into right now. It is probably easier, for the uninitiated, to go ahead and look up any interviews or videos to which he speaks of his experiences. Long story short, he left to pursue other avenues of entertainment, such as mixed martial arts, writing comic books, and finally acting. Is he any good at any of these? Well, we’ll get into that in a minute.
I, myself, am a very big fan of the professional wrestler formerly known as “CM Punk” and fully commend him on trying out different ventures that interest him. Not very many people, successful nor otherwise, have the balls to do such a thing. I admire that in anyone, not just someone who I am a big fan of. That being said, I am somewhat biased in my opinion of him as an actor, writer, or anything else he attempts, even if it isn’t up to the standards I hold most to. In his defense, I will say that in this film, Phil “CM Punk” Brooks is trying his hardest to harness his inner Bruce Campbell, even bearing his own freshly shaven chin. He wore Mr. Campbell’s Evil Dead garb in the first few scenes as an obvious homage to the actor too.
Now, for the film, The Girl On The Third Floor. The story is a clusterfuck of ideas that seem very incoherent, shot on an obvious shoestring budget (to which I still cannot find an exact budget for at the time of writing this article) that was shot in a home that was in the middle of being remodeled in real life. Mr. Brooks does his best to carry the film, but without any acting chops to fall back on, it seems to be an exercise in futility. What is essentially a character driven film, all of the characters are so haphazardly slapped together that you end up caring little to nothing for them. What does carry this film, however, is the practical effects and gore that won it multiple awards at festivals this year. You better bet that they touted this fact when promoting the film wherever they could.
I won’t go into spoilers because even if I did it wouldn’t make much sense anyways, but the practical effects and camera shots are impressive. There are some very memorable scenes, but taken out of context the viewer is left wondering just what the fuck is happening immediately after seeing it. The ending is atrocious too which I could easily chalk up to the producers running out of money and ideas. My two major gripes in the script, for anyone still reading this far, is: 1. How did they buy a house that obviously has a third floor (thus the title), and 2. What are the motives of any of these characters to do anything they do in this film. Also, two words: Anal beads. If you see this movie, you will know what I mean. The less I say about that, the better.
So, the big question is do I recommend this film? Like I said, it is an obviously low budget movie that spent their load on practical effects which I absolutely adore. Any fan of that aspect in their horror genre, by all means, check it out specifically for that, even though it doesn’t really start picking up until the final half hour. For a 90-minute movie though, that ain’t half bad. For anyone who is not a fan of horror movies and loves a cohesive storyline and good acting, I say stay away. It is definitely a low budget, independent, haunted house of gore galore that refuses to relent as soon as it gets going. It is difficult to say if this movie will bomb or not because it was just released in theaters today, October 30th, 2019, but if I was a betting man, I would say there is a 90% chance that it will. I guess we will find that out together. In the meantime, maybe just go watch Evil Dead 2 again and don’t worry about seeing what this one is all about.
Again. Anal beads.
2 out of 5
3 FROM HELL (2019)
a review by Evan Landon
For my first review on this wondeful, glorious webpage, I chose to write a review on Rob Zombie’s 3 FROM HELL, the third movie in the Firefly Family Trilogy which has just came out on Blue-Ray, October 15th, 2019. It also made enough profit for Fathom Events to re-release it to theaters a second time on this date only, which is odd, but I’ll get into that later.
Now, I have only read the few reviews I could find for this film only because I don’t think anyone except for hardcore Rob Zombie fans would wish to go see it, but none of them were good. I don’t usually jump on bandwagons, so that should say something about this film and how much it sucks. When I realized that this and our other article that we have just put out are both “Zombie” movies, I left an imprint of my forehead permanently etched into the work desk. I can already hear the keyboard warriors in the comment section wondering how this film is a “Zombie” movie, so I will merely direct you to the name of the writer/director’s name. Do you now have the same imprint on your table?
Some harrowing news does accompany this review, however, so you may dismiss it right after this next sentence: I could not watch any more of this movie after 20 minutes. In the world of cinematic critics, I understand this would mean that my review should be disregarded and thrown out with the trash. That being said, you would find my opinion right next to a copy of this movie that had been stepped on, run over, lit on fire, and thrown into the trash heap right next to it.
Considering that I have seen both films that precede this, I am somewhat familiar with the characters, but nothing in any of these films has made me feel anything at all for any of the characters; I do not care about the victims, the Firefly Family themselves, nor any of the cops or innocent human barriers that stand in their way. To me, they might as well be the same as any extras walking by in the background, but they sure as Hell (no pun intended) don’t get paid the same.
I make this post fully aware that Sid Haig has recently passed away at the ripe old age of 80 this September, so I want to make it perfectly clear that in no way do I diminish what an accomplished and profoundly remarkable character actor he was. His prominence was on full blast in his later years highlighted most of all by his portrayal of Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie’s movies. I take nothing away from the other actors who have worked with the writer/director/producer as well: Danny Trejo, Chris Hardwick, William Forsythe, Rainn Wilson, etc. whom have all had accounts of having improved a good portion of their lines due to lack of script and on set changes. What does make me a little sick to my weak ass stomach is how he flagrantly throws his wife around in his films like a maniacal stripper for the whole world to see and them to screw to at home. It’s not quite porn for the viewer though; it’s more like a softcore snuff film for adolescents.
I could go on and on about the cinematography, the art design, special effects, blah blah blah… But like I said, I only watched 20 minutes of this god-awful movie. So I’ll just stop now and leave you with some of the numbers: With a budget of $3 million (from Hell, apparently), the movie pulled in a measly $2.24 million which most likely barely covered advertisement costs, making this a solid bomb and begs the question as to why entertainment content provider, Fathom Events, would open it again for one night only. In comparison, Devil’s Rejects came in at $19.4 million to a $7 million budget and House Of 1000 Corpses bringing in similar numbers. We can all only hope that this is the final nail in the coffin of this franchise, much less Rob Zombie’s moviemaking career. But, as we all know, some poor idiot will give Rob Zombie more money to make another film despite how hard this one underperformed, so we can unfortunately expect another sequel.
1.5 out of 5