and the engine's failed again, all limits of disguise

It's October already, and no haunts have been visited in September. At all. I have no explanation. Also a lack of updating, there's that. To the point that I might have to reintroduce myself to anyone reading along.

So, hi, I'm dy--I mean, I'm increasingly impair--I meant to say, hi, I'm locked in a pitched battle with my goddamn neurologis--

Errr. Let's try again. I'm Em. Hi. The rest is flavor text.

Aaaaaanyway...I had decided to do something potentially ill-advised, namely--the 21 in 31 Challenge. Now, there are existing 31 Days of Horror challenges. I know that. This felt more my speed, though.

For example, here's HordesofHorror's list:



She's following down her curated list, and even managed an explanation for each one. And I've seen both "You have to make your list on day one and stick to it!" and "Pick a movie a day you haven't seen!" camps for the usual 31 Days Challenges. I planned to fall in the middle of the road: I wasn't making a list beforehand, but I would watch each film all the way down. No five-minute "this is too terrible to continue watching" waffling.

And I'd do my best to pick things I haven't seen.

And then...several days more went by, and...here we are. So we're starting with "The Last Ghost Hunters", filmed in 2021, currently on Tubi--because it may be the only one I have energy to cover. Their capsule description says:

"Terror is about to break loose when a team of ghost hunters get hired to explore a vacant country house where several people have disappeared forever."

Okay then!



Now, I could have sworn the house used in this film was one I'd seen before, and my mind was saying Black Mirror. I checked, but as far as I can tell, it's not that. Maybe it's just similar to a lot of other houses I've seen, that were built in the same era.



So first off the bat: they do the best they can. I think all the actors did the very best they could, trapped between poorly-green-screened ghosts and the Big Evil of the piece...essentially some dude in a gas mask. There was a lot of gritting my teeth to get through the runtime.



And I'm not great at giving reviews without spoilers, so let me tell you this was the best shot I could get of the green screen, and even here, it's pretty bad. Add in special effects--smoke, fog, fire, ACTORS MOVING, whatever--and the believability sinks like a flan in a cupboard. I'm not sure, had it not been a challenge, I would have bothered to finish it, frankly.

Adding in to the "not bothering" camp: I saw Platform 2 had arrived, so I figured, I should probably try to finish the first one...and I made it twenty minutes farther in and stopped. Nope. Just couldn't do it.

Same thing with Terrifier--I liked the original anthology film that spawned Art the Clown, but not so much his segment of it. Then the first Terrifier film came out, and I tried to get through it, and...Look. I don't mind slashers. I don't mind gore. But I do have to have some greater sense of character than "woke up this morning and decided to saw into people". I don't need much of a why past that, but I do need at least that.

I even figured, hey, if I'm lost, I'll go back, but let's jump directly to Terrifier 2, since Terrifier 3 had just dropped.

Big huge nope. I just don't like the character. And this is likely the year that cements not wanting to push my brain, because...it's dealing with enough.

Is it Halloween yet?