Sorority House Massacre

This week, I'm still not home yet, and my laptop was acting funny, so I apologize for the delay. With that in mind, I present a pretty random one, the bizarre Sorority House Massacre, starring absolutely no one I've ever heard of in my entire horror-movie-watching life. Great...I'll do You're Next as soon as I can get back to my apartment again to see it, I swear! Oh, and SPOILERS ahead...

So, we see, in the first scene, a young woman named Beth, sitting up in a hospital bed. Beth is visited by an older woman, presumably a neighbor, and she asks Beth "what happened". That, of course, leads into an extended flashback of the movie...

Beth is now walking along a sidewalk, and carrying an overnight bag. She heads toward a large white sorority house, then we see a figure sprawled out on a tiny bed. The house is entered, and the camera gives us a tour of spacious, empty rooms.

The figure in the bed begins to have convulsions, then we get to visit the second floor. As we see Beth arrive at the front door and open it, the stranger in the bed begins to punch their own arm. Kooky.

Beth is greeted by one of the sorority sisters, and then we finally see that the person in the bed is an unshaven man. He opens his eyes and stares into the camera, and there's a scream that brings a pair of interns running. Beth, meanwhile, is shown to room 5, which she'll be sharing with 3 other girls. She's not a member, but she was apparently invited to take a tour for the weekend.

The pair of schlubby interns exit the room again, and they reveal that they used tape to subdue the patient. They argue over whether to call a doctor named Lindsey, but decide that it can wait until morning. The patient is then seen struggling to free himself from confinement.

That night, Beth has yet another dream. In it, she's walking slowly toward the house again, but she watches a trio of little girls digging in the dirt and playing. They ask her where she's going, and she indicates the house. They warn her to be careful, and watch her enter again.

Beth makes a beeline for the dining room, where she finds a group of life-sized dolls seated at the table. As she circles around them, she notices that the silverware has been replaced by hunting knives. A drop of blood then hits the white tablecloth, and several more follow. Beth realizes that the blood is leaking through the ceiling, onto a chandelier, and the stain appears to be massive,

Beth goes upstairs to investigate, and finds the bedroom where the blood originated from. A glass container filled with marbles crashes to the floor in another room, so Beth wanders over for a look. She finds what sounds like a child in bed, covered entirely up by blankets, but pulling them back reveals more blood in the bed. Beth backs up, gasps as something behind her scares her, and the dream ends.

A girl named Sara bursts into the room, and they introduce themselves to each other. After trying to mooch a sweater from the houseguest, Sara makes a hasty retreat. This sorority house is like the Twilight Zone.

As various house sisters go on with their morning routine, we see Sara ask a girl named Cindy for a jacket, but she grumpily refuses. Another girl, Linda, tosses her a matching jacket for her blouse. Exciting stuff.

In the bathroom, Beth is just staring at herself in the mirror while other girls shower. Then we see a glimpse of our favorite mental patient, struggling to free his arms. He breaks free, tears the tape off of his mouth, then sits up. Finally! We're 11 minutes in, and I was starting to think that I had the wrong movie!

A girl named Tracy complains to some of the others that she finds Beth to be "glum". The other girls chastise her for being catty, then they all gossip anyway. Fortunately, they shut up seconds before Beth enters the room. As they head outside, they talk about having some kind of big party.

Beth realizes that she grabbed the wrong book, so she goes back into the house. In the bedroom, Beth looks into a mirror, but sees a guy glaring back at her instead of her own reflection. He raises a knife and plunges it through the mirror, where it gets trapped halfway into the glass, and drips with blood. One of the sorority sisters walks in, and Beth realizes that none of it was real.

The patient, now standing up, is busy throwing himself into the walls. A young female doctor asks an intern about how the patient acted the previous night, and they appear to be heading to his room. As soon as the flunky unlocks his door, the psycho attacks him, so the doctor swiftly shuts the cell door, then watches the scuffle through the door's tiny window.

After our sorority girls tell Beth a really corny story about a pet pig, we see that the killer has been sedated again. The doctor has a machine brought into his room, probably for something like electroshock therapy. BZZT! Do I smell toast?

We see a couple of the girls struggle in their classes, then Beth has another vision. This time, the killer is leering at her from the window. She disrupts the lecture, so she decides to leave.

A creepy nerd named Andy tells Sara about an experiment that involved killing kittens to see if the mother cat could sense the loss through telepathy. That discussion leads back to the killer. The machine is being used to see how his brainwaves react to the things she says to him.

Beth has a conversation with a woman who is apparently the house mother, Mrs. Lawrence. She's going away for the weekend, so she gives Beth some instructions to tell the other girls. Then she walks out of the movie, presumably forever. Is anyone else starting to think that this has way too much plot for a supposed slasher flick?

Back in the hospital, the doctor begins to ask the patient some questions about his sudden outbursts. After each question, she consults the machine, to see if his brain activity gets stirred up by anything. Oh, and before that, we find out that the killer has a rare condition, one that allows him to be both awake and dreaming at the same time.

Her questions get more specific, and she discovers that the killer had one of his waking dreams just before he went apeshit. She asks him what the dream was about, and he says the name "Laura". Who the heck is Laura?

The line on the graph starts to jump around like a kangaroo on crack, and the intern tells the doctor that he's amazed to hear the patient speak. Then we see Beth back at the sorority, nervously looking through each room for more scary images. As she sees flashes of her dead parents, the mental patient appears to be able to see her from his cell. Even worse, she sees him.

The patient has another outburst, so they pump him full of sedatives. They leave the room, but we see that he somehow managed to remain fully alert. Then Beth has a jump-scare while backing out of the house(Why do these nimrods always back into people?), and meets up with the group of girls from the previous sequence.

They all celebrate having the house unsupervised, and get ready to party. The wild night includes eating another girl's ice cream, and trying on some of Cindy's clothing. What a fun group. Girls Gone Mild. We even get a generic "look at us in different outfits!" montage.

At the end of the scene, they realize that Beth is upset. As she starts to discuss her dreams, we travel back to the psych ward, where the patient is about to get served his lunch. The guy delivering the tray has headphones on, and never hears the killer sneak up on him. The patient bashes his head into the wall, killing him. Then he boldly marches out into the world.

Beth wraps up talking about the dream, and they all decide to consult a book about dream interpretation. Then the killer literally jogs out of the hospital, and jumps a security fence. Yay! At this rate, he should get to the house by the third movie.

The girls start reading and drinking, while the killer strides into a sporting goods store. He smashes a display case, grabs the largest hunting knife he can find, then stabs the elderly clerk in the gut. Keep the change! Oh, and the old man does some Shatner-level emoting as he dies. Funniest scene in the film, so far at least.

Okay, so now the girls are looking up the images in Beth's nightmare about the dolls, and trying to sort through all of the possible symbolism. None of it goes anywhere, which is beginning to be a pattern with this movie, A car horn honks, and they abandon the book to see who it might be.

The killer steals a station wagon. Meanwhile, Tracy reveals that she had a bunch of stuff dumped onto the front yard, to decorate for the party. And then we see the killer reading highway signs. Would it kill this movie to actually be scary? I mean, I like plot and suspense, but this thing has no clue about where it's going.

A car arrives at the sorority, but it's just a collection of nerdy guys. Literally. Despite being the oddest misfits in the universe, the girls start to make out with them. The nerds see all of the random junk on the lawn, and offer to help with the decorations.

A bored-looking hospital worker discovers that the mental patient escaped, then we have to watch the sorority house being set up for the pow wow. This movie is an endurance challenge. A tent is put up, but falls over because one couple is inside smooching. I hope all of these people die in the most painful way possible.

The hospital worker announces the escape over the P.A. system, and we FINALLY learn that the patient is named Robert Henkel. At this point, I'm going to consider that to be progress. The only massacre has been the killing of time...

The girls are in the dark, literally speaking. The power has gone out. They build a fire, then accuse their nerdy dates of playing with the fusebox. The guys deny it, but then the nerdiest one scares the girls as a prank.

The hospital worker calls the cops, and one detective straight out of central casting arrives to interview him. Seriously, this guy is such a Danny Glover clone, I almost expect Mel Gibson to be right behind him. He gets a description of Bob, then starts looking.

The college kids sit around in a group, then try to scare each other. They talk about psychic energy, ghosts, and even refer back to the kitten-torture story. Then one of the guys claims that the house has a violent past. Of course, that's right where the scene ends.

More footage of Bob driving. Then one of the nerds, John, claims that a maniac killed his own parents in the house, and we see it in some flashbacks. The weapon was an axe. As we see the killer pick up a hunting knife and leave the house, the girls beg the storyteller, John, to stop.

After one girl leaves to rest, John continues with the tale. He describes the killer going after his 2 younger sisters, which we also see in a brief clip. Then the group disbands, spreading out around the house.

Beth finds herself alone, and tries a light switch. She bumps into John, and he offers to keep her company. Beth declines, claiming that she just needs some sleep. The others haven't paired off and ended the party, though...they're all watching Halloween. On television. In a house with no electricity. Think about that.

Dr. Lindsey is called. The intern leaves her a message, then the cop asks if she has a beeper. He gets laughed at, not really sure why.

Beth falls asleep, and then has a nightmare that the killer has entered the room. He comes toward her, but stabs at the bunk bed above hers. She gets blood all over her face and screams, and the rest of the group rush in. They wake her up, and the bed is now a regular one. Beth apologizes for being so much trouble, and they convince her not to be alone that night.

One girl decides to look at the fuses. As she opens the panel, her boyfriend Craig jumps at her, just to frighten her. He talks her into setting up the teepee for some sexy fun.

Bob arrives, parking at the house next door. As he looks at his childhood home, he starts to shuffle slowly towards it. Run, Bob, run! Get going on this massacre.

John asks for information about Beth's nightmare, and the girls give him an earful. Then Beth claims that she felt unafraid of the killer at first, as if she knew him...

Okay, I'm calling it. Beth is one of the killer's sisters. She somehow forgot about her family getting slaughtered by her brother, then also managed to pledge a sorority in the same house. It's stupid as heck, but I'm pretty sure that I'm correct. Just you watch.

Heh heh heh. She must have heard me, because now Beth "knows" that the killer hid one of his weapons in the fireplace. Intrigued, they all decide to have a closer look. Oh, and Bob is STILL just walking up to the house. How slow does he walk?

They put out the fire, and Beth points to a specific brick at the base of the fireplace. Sure enough, they find Bob's original knife.Of course, since a roaring fire was just there, the knife is incredibly hot to the touch. Andy ? fumbles it, and it get imbedded in a wooden surface in front of them.

They see dark stains all over it, and realize that it's blood. Sara picks up the knife, places it on the mantle, then declares that it's "neat". Another girl tosses it right back into the fireplace.

After Dr. Lindsey checks her phone messages,we see Craig pound in the last stake for the tent, using a brick as a makeshift hammer. He then tosses the brick a few feet away, and the camera clues us in to what the next weapon will be. Boy, that was subtle.

Doc Lindsey calls the intern back, and has him find Bob's file. They go over the details of the case, even telling us that one sister survived (See?), and manage to get the address for the house as well. The intern promises to give the address to the detective as soon as he hangs up.

Back in the house, Beth is encouraged to try to unlock memories through hypnosis. Andy then realizes how late it is, and leaves the party. As soon as he's alone, he runs into Bob. The killer stabs him, then heads for the house again.

Beth, now in a trance, is told to go back to her dream, then back to wherever the dream originated from. As I predicted, Beth is Bob's sister. She survived his killing spree by hiding in the basement. Oh, and she's also the mysterious "Laura" we heard about earlier in the film.

A flashback shows Bob finding Beth, and her friends see that she's in distress. After several attempts, they manage to break her trance. As ridiculous as this sounds, not one of them ever realizes that the event was something from Beth's actual past. This is just soul-crushingly stupid.

Tracy and Craig head back to the tent, and Bob watches from a hiding spot. As Beth and her date watch the rest of Halloween with the volume cranked up, he murders the couple. Some of the girls upstairs hear the screams, and assume that it's all from the television.

Craig gets away while Tracy is being killed, and shouts a warning to the rest of the household. He runs into the nearest bedroom, completely naked, and finds the phone dead, Then they remember that Cindy has a second phone line, so they rush to check it out. Just as they dial 911, Bob cuts that line as well.

He enters the house, walks straight over to the fireplace, and fetches his old knife. Then Beth, who somehow managed to fall asleep with John before the mayhem, has another nightmare about her brother. She finally wakes up, just as Bob prepares to stab her, and he ends up killing John instead.

Beth runs upstairs, with her brother close on her heels. She reaches the others just in the nick of time, and they try to figure out what to do as Bob pounds on the door. The pounding abruptly stops, but they can still hear breathing from the hallway.

They attempt to get help by yelling out the window, then breaking some glass, but the neighbors don't respond. Then one girl remembers that there's a fire ladder, which they hang out the window. Craig goes first, bracing the ladder for the others.

As Linda starts down, Bob rushes up behind Craig, covering his mouth and stabbing him under his ribs. Linda sees Bob waiting for her, and furiously scrambles to reach the window again. He grabs her by the ankle a few times, but Linda manages to get back inside, with help from the other 2 girls.

They unhook the ladder from the windowsill, but Bob manages to reach the window before they do it. They slam the window down on his hands, and Bob screams. Then they mace him, and Bob plummets to the ground below.

They decide to escape before he revives, in case the fall didn't injure or kill him. Bob wakes up, just as they reach the front door. They open the door, and Andy's corpse is discovered leaning against the door. After locking it again, they run back to the bedroom.

Beth remembers the crashing jar of marbles, and Bob crashes through the window and loses HIS marbles. They look into each others' eyes, and then the race to flee continues. They find another victim, then arrive outside. Unfortunately for them, he also reaches the yard.


He shambles in their direction, in a visual "homage" to Michael Myers. They get scared and back away, because running would make too much sense. Linda and Beth get away, but the third girl(Tracy? Sara?) is a goner.

They hide in the basement, and Beth tries to convince Linda that they can survive the rampage, Then Beth recalls that there is a spare key to the door. They run upstairs again, alternating between hiding and searching for the key.

They hear sirens. Linda tries to be optimistic, but Beth doesn't see how the police could know about their predicament. Beth finally realizes that she's related to the killer, and she dumbs it down for her new friend. She even explains that Beth is her middle name, and her real name is Laura.

And the dreams? And Bob tracking her down? Beth thinks they have a psychic link, like the mother cat from that story. How can a movie with psychic siblings, college babes, a high body count, and silly montages be so boring? This should be crazy-fun!

Bob gets into the basement, so they try to be even stealthier. Linda spots the spare key and grabs it, and Bob attacks them both as they hurry back up the stairs. As they lock him in the basement, Bob attempts to stab his way through the door. Beth uses her telepathy to time his next impact, and they run to the fireplace to grab the other knife.

Bob reaches them as they try to open the front door, and he corners Beth. She tries to hit him with a shovel from the fireplace, but it's small and ineffective. Linda helps by slamming him from behind with an actual shovel, but Bob barely reacts.

As he raises his arm to stab Beth with a fatal blow, Linda's shovel slams into the back of his head. She pummels him a few more times to be sure, then decide that he must be dead. As they limp away, Bob manages one final kill, planting his knife in Linda's back.

She takes a few more steps, then falls against a doorway and dies. Bob is trying to crawl after Beth like a snake, but she sees him coming. They attack at the same time, and Beth succeeds in thrusting her knife up through his chin, and out of his skull.

The cops find the house at last, and a pair of them help Linda. As she recovers in the hospital, she asks a nurse how bad the wounds are, and the nurse assures her that they'll be fine. After the nurse pulls her curtain shut, Bob pulls it back again. Beth screams, revealing that it was another nightmare. THE END

Wow, what a terrible experience this one was! There were only 2 silver linings: One was that the women were quite attractive and charming. The other was that we got to at least see some of Halloween. 1.5 killer trees out of 5 for this travesty.

And what did I learn from Sorority House Massacre?

-When the best friend is the character you'd rather see alive, you have a terrible main character.

-It takes all night to walk across a single lawn.

-It's possible to forget your entire past, despite seeing it every day in your head. Oh, and to also not remember where you lived, then move back in to the SAME DAMN HOUSE.

I'll have to pick my next one more carefully, to avoid getting a movie-related brain tumor. Any suggestions for a good slasher online that I haven't done yet?

Smiley

Well, I've been saying it since I started this blog, and now I have the proof: Slasher movies are destroying my brain! The movie that I was planning to watch this week, He Knows You're Alone, was one I had done already. Luckily, in a weird twist of fate, I was accidentally also sent Smiley, that movie that I never got around to watching last spring, when I was hospitalized. What comes around, goes around. So, back by no demand whatsoever, we get to finally watch Smiley this week. Settle in for SPOILERS...

So, this one begins with a fairly standard slasher premise: A young teen babysitter named Stacy is texting someone while on the job. A scary face suddenly appears in front of Stacy, but it's just the little girl she's watching, trying to scare her. Stacy puts down her phone to talk to the girl.

She discovers that the young girl is pretty Internet-savvy(What kid isn't these days?), as the kid shows her a Chat Roulette-type of website. Then the girl explains the legend of Smiley, the killer we're waiting for...Good, let's get in gear!

The legend is a basic rip-off of Candyman...You get onto any sort of online video chat. At any point during the chat, you type the phrase "I did it for the lulz", 3 times in a row. After the third time, a figure wearing a Smiley-face mask made out of flesh appears, then he kills you. Or the other person in the chat. Or something.

Believing the story to be nonsense, Stacy laughs it off. Then she gets jumped again! Oh, this time it's the little girl's father. He apologizes for being so late, then offers to write the babysitter a check. The entire time, he's also drooling over poor Stacy. Perv.

When she gets home, Stacy boots up her laptop. She signs on to one of those online chats, then browses through some of the possibilities. An angry-looking guy in thick glasses pops up, and his screen name is "Stranger", which seems kind of ominous. After a short introduction, Stacy tells Stranger that she likes his glasses. He replies that he's going to murder her.

A noise causes her to look over her shoulder, but the bedroom is still empty behind her. Stacy wanders down the hallway, finding a glass door slightly ajar. She creeps back to her room, still afraid that she might not be alone in the house.

She sits down to resume her chat with Stranger, then impulsively types "I did it for the lulz" 3 times. The bedroom door swings open, then Smiley grabs Stacy, stabbing her through the back. Stranger sees the murder, turns to a friend in the room, and starts to laugh. Then the opening credits roll.

Next, we meet Ashley, a cute young coed about to move into a house near her college. Her dad is nervous about her living off-campus, but she assures him that everything will be fine. After a quick hug, they part ways.

Inside the house, Ashley meets a girl with the unlikely name of Proxy. Proxy??? Not "Roxy", which would actually be a name, but PROXY? Really, movie, you want to irk me this early? What are the other characters called, Fallomba, Snik-snik, and Fartknockers? (By the way, if anyone who reads this wants to make a slasher flick with a character named "Fartknockers", I guarantee you at least ONE 5-star review.)

Anyway, Proxy sees Ashley as the stereotypical "innocent young woman trying too hard to fit in", and tries to ditch her by making plans to go to a party that evening. Ashley somehow misses the subtlety of her cold shoulder, and begs to go the party with her. Proxy gives in, and off they go!

They walk around the grounds of the campus, and Proxy reveals that she hasn't ever actually met most of the people at the party that they're going to. She knows them online, through the 4chan website. Ashley starts to get nervous about the party, so she and Proxy get a little bit buzzed on a joint along the way.

The party is pretty huge, and they soon meet a friendly guy by the name of Zane. He flirts with Ashley quite a bit, bragging that he's a bit of an expert on "The strange and retarded," whatever that means. Proxy says that it sounds like the title of a crappy soap opera.

Zane elaborates, explaining that he's fascinated by people who believe in myths that have no basis in reality, like Bigfoot or the Chupacabra. Then he makes a quick joke or two, and disappears to go get wasted, leaving the girls laughing over how strange he is. Or re...nah, too easy.

Proxy encourages Ashley to talk to another guy across the room, so she heads in that direction. His name is Binder, but Zane interrupts the conversation and dubs him "Pedobear". 2 other guys start to bully Binder, and one of them was the guy who laughed when Stacy was killed by Smiley in that online chat.

Speaking of that scene...it plays again, except now we realize that we're seeing it from his side of the chat. After Stacy is killed by Smiley, Ashley screams, and the group at the party just laugh. Proxy assures her that it's just a trick, and then repeats the legend of Smiley, and how to summon him.

The party gets wild and crazy, and so does Ashley. She gets plastered, and soon they're all just laughing and behaving like loons. At one point, she even starts to write stuff on a sleeping guy's face. I hope she doesn't have class the next day...

Ashley sleeps until past noon, and rushes to class. Heh. She gets to her first class just as the professor is giving his introduction, and she gets to the nearest seat. The class is called Intro to Reason and Ethics, and the instructor, Prof. Clayton, asks them why they think the class is a required course. Ashley gives him an answer that he likes, earning her some brown-nosing points. They talk after class, and he assures her that he won't hold her tardiness against her.

That night, Ashley and Proxy compare how their days went. Proxy teases her a little bit about how much she drank at the party. Then they see a video of the guy whose face Ashley drew on in that video chat site, and he viciously get attacked by Smiley. Ashley insists that they should bring the video to the police, but Proxy points out how silly the story would sound.

Ashley tries to laugh it off as well, but she still seems worried. Proxy offers to set her mind at ease by typing "I did it for the lulz" 3 times, just to prove that nothing would happen. They scroll through a bunch of random chats, before settling on some shirtless dweeb. Proxy then advises Ashley to envision Smiley in her mind before typing.

She tells the shirtless guy that he's going to die, and then types "I did it for the lulz" 3 times in a row. Nothing happens at first, so they relax. Then Smiley rises up and stabs the nerdy guy, and they scream.

Ashley declares that they need to go right to the police, but Proxy has a different take on the issue. She argues that going to the cops will bring them unwanted attention, and the killer could then learn who they are. The discussion is disrupted by a call from Ashley's father.

He can tell that she sounds tense, but she explains that she's just nervous about being away from home, and that she misses him. He buys it, then Proxy pops up, prompting Ashley to end the call. She goes back inside, and the matter of the video is dropped for the night.

In class the next day, Clayton gets the class into a discussion about how to prove a hypothesis. With her mind still on Smiley, Ashley asks the professor what you'd do if your hypothesis turned out to be so incorrect, that something seemingly impossible seemed to be the result. Clayton introduces her to the concept of ideology, the idea that you have complete confidence in something you THINK that you know. He lists guys like Hitler and Bin Laden as examples of people who followed their ideologies to extremes.

After class, Ashley decides to do some research at the campus library. While looking at various book titles, Ashley literally runs into Binder. They get friendly, and Ashley asks him if he believes in Smiley. Binder's theory is that some legends grow in strength as more people believe in them, and that Smiley is one such entity.

When Ashley asks him if that means that Smiley is real, he responds that, even if Smiley isn't real, the videos of him are. She likes that explanation, and they exchange phone numbers. Then she heads back to the house, just in time to be invited to another party hosted by Zane.

More crowds, more music, and more drinking. Proxy leaves Ashley to go find the bathroom, and Ashley overhears 2 girls talking about the latest video of Smiley. She spots Zane across the room, and decides to see what he knows about the urban legend.

Zane and his buddies laugh at her questions, but then Zane gets serious after his obnoxious friends leave. He asks Ashley what she knows about the murder of his friend, and accuses her of invoking the presence of Smiley. He admits that he even conjured up the killer, but assumed that it was all just a prank. Then he accuses Ashley of knowing more about what happened to his friend than what she's told him.

She staggers away, but not before Zane demands to know what she's going to do if Smiley comes after them next. She walks back to the house in a drunken stupor, then stop;s in the middle of the campus quad when she thinks that she spots Smiley. She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and the killer looms right in front of her, so a chase begins.

Ashley runs the rest of the way to the house, but Smiley follows her. The killer lurks at the front door, so Ashley goes from room to room, desperate to find a good place to hide. Smiley finds a way to enter the house, and ambushes the frightened teen, so she screams for help.

The whole thing turns out to have been a dream. Proxy finds her in the bedroom, screaming in her sleep, and doesn't believe that the chase was anything more than a nightmare. Ashley shows her a part of her blouse that Smiley ripped, but Proxy still doesn't see how that proves anything. After all, if Smiley had been there, then why would he have left her alive? Proxy asks Ashley if she takes any medications for mental disorders, and that gives Ashley a reason to awkwardly pause. Uh oh...

Yeah, she takes anti-psychotic pills. Or, she DID take them, at one point. Ashley weaned herself off of the pills gradually, as she reveals to the school shrink, but perhaps she might want to get her prescription updated. Oh, and the school shrink resembles Maura Tierney a little bit, so, you know, "hubba".

She doesn't tell the shrink about Smiley, so the advice she gets is pretty iffy, at best. She merely admits that she's been on edge and frightened with some frequency, and the shrink thinks it might be because she's far from home, and probably missing her deceased mother. Ashley gets a prescription for something that will calm her nerves, then is sent home.

As Ashley is leaving, Proxy collides with her. Apparently, Zane has informed her of another murder that was posted online. They quickly make their way over to his place to figure out the reason behind the killings.

Zane is over the edge. He's got a gun, and he's ranting and raving about security. It turns out that he's not really a student, but an elite computer hacker; the sort of guy who just hacks into national banks when he needs money, and delves in the personal history of anyone he might want to use and abuse.

He points his gun at Ashley, and demands to know what connection she has to Smiley. Then he admits that his hacking might have brought him to the attention of any number of government superpowers, but that wouldn't explain the presence of Smiley. Ashley proposes that the killer is somehow weirder and more powerful than any of those things, and Zane admits that anything might be possible. He sends them away, then returns to hiding out with his gun.

Ashley has another nightmare, then she endures another class. The discussion in class this time concerns the very existence of life itself, and whether or not we exist because something else exists on a level above us, allowing us to have self-awareness. Or something like that. I don't know, maybe this would have been better if I had watched it while high. Certainly wouldn't have hurt.

After class, Ashley decides to do some research about Smiley on the school computers. She searches for more of his murder videos, as well as information about 4chan, and other hacker knowledge. Unbeknownst to her, a dark figure is approaching the computer, and he has a knife in one hand.

It's Binder. She jumps at the sight of him, and he shows her an employee ID card, revealing that he's in charge of the campus computer network. She tells him about her research into Smiley, and he remains skeptical, until she says that she caused a student to die by summoning the killer.

Binder's reaction is...odd. He claims that when he tried to summon Smiley, nothing happened. Ashley explains that you have to strongly desire the harm to inflict it, and that only seems to get Binder more excited. Ashley gets upset, and decides to return to the house.

She returns to the video chat from her bedroom PC, and scrolls through a handful of different subscribers. Then she sees Smiley himself in the last one, waiting for her. She asks him what he is exactly, and he threatens to pay her another visit. She asks him where he is, and he responds, "right behind you", which is freaky. To make matters worse, his screen has gone black all of a sudden, with no indication of where he might be.

Ashley turns around, and finds Proxy standing there, demanding to know what she's up to. They have a fight, and Proxy storms out of the house. Ashley decides to call her father, but something at the window scares her, and she drops her phone on the sidewalk below, smashing the phone to pieces. Proxy is standing there, and she assumes that Ashley was throwing the phone at her.

Ashley decides to pay another visit to the school shrink. She tearfully admits that she's having some kind of breakdown, and the shrink decides that they should meet on a daily basis...starting tomorrow. For now, she just wants Ashley to get some sleep. She prescribes a stronger pill, then sends the poor girl back home.

On her way across the quad, she texts a quick apology for her abrupt exit at the library to Binder. He lets her know that he's been upset about the recent events as well, and that seems to ease some of her tension. She decides to pay a visit to Professor Clayton's office, and he's there to greet her.

They discuss whether or not the human race is doomed to kill itself off, and Clayton offers her a stiff drink. She declines, but he pours himself one. Then he launches into a diatribe about how our instinct to survive at any cost, and to use up every planetary resource to further our own progress makes us all parasites.

Oh, and he starts to close all of the blinds in his office, in the most menacing way possible. Clayton then hovers over her, whispering all of his crazy, menacing crap about death, all while slowly getting drunk. Ashley finally decides that she's had enough, gets up, and leaves his office.

She returns to the library to work on a school assignment, but gets the unnerving sensation that she's being watched. A glance around reveals nothing, but then Smiley appears on her computer monitor. He waves at her in a mocking manner, and she overreacts, smashing the computer, and yelling and screaming. She collapses onto the floor in tears, then becomes aware that other students are watching and even filming her.

Ashley returns to the house, where she has a brief hallucination of Smiley. She takes a couple of the new pills that she was prescribed, looks at them, then decides not to ingest them. She cries, and heads to her bedroom.

Another nightmare or hallucination occurs. In this one, several versions of Smiley appear in the bedroom, and one of them starts to strangle her. Ashley screams, and a shadowy figure darts past her bed. It appears to be her deceased mother at first, but then it transforms into Smiley.

Ashley screams and wakes up yet again, only to find Proxy at her bedside, holding her hand over her own face. Apparently, she came into the room to check on Ashley, and was punched in the face for her efforts. Ashley apologizes to her, then places a call to the police, to tell them everything she knows.

She meets a weary detective named Diamond, and gives him her statement about the killing spree. After making her recount every detail, he informs her that they've never found a single shred of evidence that a crime was ever committed. No bodies, no crime scenes, no murder weapons, just a big, fat pile of nothing. Oh, but they do have one thing: a video of Ashley, showing her destroying a school laptop.

The cops tell Ashley to stop wasting their time, and just go home. Detective Diamond also suggests that perhaps Ashley should get help from a psychiatrist, to which she sobs that she already is. That doesn't go over too well.

After a brief chat with Proxy, Ashley keeps her next appointment with her doctor. She admits that her sense of reality might be a bit off, and is told that she's making progress toward recovery. The positive feedback gives Ashley a reason to smile.

She calls Binder, and he visits her to give her some advice on how to keep her computer information encrypted. He even goes a step further, giving Ashley an old laptop of his, complete with the latest security updates. She thanks him, and they share a few impulsive kisses. Proxy breaks up the intimacy, and we discover that she's going away for the weekend.

That night, Ashley assures her dad during a call, that she's doing much better. She gets a message from Proxy, and the roommate is in a tizzy because her boyfriend isn't returning her calls. Ashley offers to go check on him, and she takes her phone with her.

At the boyfriend's place, no one appears to be home. Ashley finds the front door open, but no Zane in sight. A room-by-room search reveals that Zane has been added to the list of Smiley victims. Ashley calls Diamond to report the crime, but he hangs up on her.

She returns to the house, but Proxy urges her to place another call to the police. Ashley has a different plan in motion. She locks herself into the house, then tells Proxy to type "I  did it for the lulz" 3 times, to lure Smiley to the bait.

It's a terrible plan. Not only does he now have her trapped inside, but now he can be anywhere he wants to be, and just take her right out of existence. As if to prove their point, all of the Smileys come at her at the same time.

Ashley backs away from the many killers, then dives out of the nearest window. She dies. and the killers watch her from the window. Then they congratulate one another for the way they all pulled it off. Binder, Zane, Stacy, all of them. The rest leave, and only Proxy and Zane remain behind to chat. They grin into their webcams, then Smiley attacks Proxy, mauling her in front of  Zane. During the credits, we get one final scene, showing that Ashley isn't quite dead yet, but that she is ready to get back at them. the end...?

Let's hope so! I hate watching a slasher flick where there aren't any victims. And they wasted what could have been an interesting concept on such a dull film. I can't imagine what I would have thought back in April, when I was felling sick and confused. Yuk. 1 out of 5, for at least the concept of Smiley. Now just place him in a better story.

And what did I learn from watching this?

-Never assume that your "clever twist" is actually that clever, because it probably isn't.

-Colleges are filled with insane people.

-Friends don't let old friends murder new friends, especially if it's just for "lulz", or whatever.

Up next, a heartwarming tale about killer kids, and the families that have to murder them to survive. Fun, lighthearted stuff!

WatchUsDie.com

This week's entry isn't so much a slasher flick, it's a little more porn-y than usual. It's a movie from 2001 called WatchUsDie.com, and it's a softcore, porntastic example of movie magic. Am I being serious? Well, let's get SPOILED, and find out...

The "story" begins with an opening credits sequence with graphics that makes the first Tron movie look edgy and current. Hell, they even throw in the old "modem noise" that you used to hear when logging into AOL back in the Paleolithic Period. Hoo boy, this is going to be grueling.

Then the actual movie starts. We meet 2 women who use sign language AND speak, with no explanation for the signing. That's pretty damned random! Oh, and both are fans of a website called WatchUsDorm, a place for voyeur fetishists, I guess.

At the "dorm", we meet our primary cast. But first up, there's a short intro to the house...the "dorm" is actually a house, rigged up with sound equipment and 45 cameras, and the houseguests are filmed 24 hours a day. Also, the house is in a secret location(to foil would-be stalkers), and there's a pretty tight security system in place.

Okay, so let's get to know the victims: First up is "Amber Coldbath", a 23-year-old exotic dancer, who resembles a young, healthy Anna Nicole Smith; Constance Mercado, 22, who dreams of being an actress; Francesca, the stereotypical French chambermaid; Anya and Zen, the token lesbian characters; Sara, the hot black girl with an unfortunately grating voice; Evan, a guy who does maintenance and repair when needed; Pia, a cute, young blond described as "Latino/American", despite looking Scandinavian; and Sonja, a self-defense expert.

The owner/operator of the site, Manny gives a reporter and her cameraman the grand tour. As he introduces them(and us) to the cast, we also see a handful of the folks logged into the website. Among them are the women from the opening scene, an elderly woman, and some horny teens.

Speaking of the opening scene characters, they make a return. One of them, Brenna, is a struggling journalist, and she's on a waiting list to possibly move into the house. She plans to get in, then write an undercover article about any possible controversy she can unearth. Good thing Manny doesn't do background checks!

During the night, some of the women are sitting at computers, chatting with subscribers and each other. Evan wanders in, mostly to flirt. Then we get an homage to The Waltons, in which the various ladies turn to the camera to say goodnight. One subscriber tunes in to see Anya and Zen writhe around in their bed, and gets excited by watching them in "night vision", despite the complete and utter lack of any sort of "night vision" visuals on the screen. I guess we're supposed to imagine the green filter in the scene. This is easily the dumbest movie I've watched for this blog thus far, people. Appreciate my pain.

When everyone falls asleep, a mystery person sneaks around the house, placing a pair of shoes on the stairs between the first and second floors. Gosh, it's a shame that this isn't on the Internet, for a subscriber to see...oh, wait a second...

Eventually, Pia comes striding down the hall with a laundry basket full of colored paper, as well as a Barbie doll. Sure, that's entirely logical! She stumbles on the shoes, toppling down the stairs and dying right away. The doll dies as well, in a sad, unexpectedly poignant twist.

Manny, sitting in an office filled with scary masks, gleefully hears that the "accident" has caused a large increase in revenue for the site. At the memorial for Pia, Sara admits to Constance that she has no feelings about the death at all. How nice. Most of the girls are discussing how much money the site is earning, while subscribers are crowing about the first person to die on a live internet feed.

Manny briefly tells Constance that the death means more profit for the rest, then he kisses her and leaves. After our favorite journalist is briefly seen gushing over being next on the list to enter the house, the web-girls decide to honor Pia's memory by changing into lingerie and doing seductive dances for the subscribers. Even the handyman joins in. Y'know, I can't quite decide if this is sleazy and stupid, or just stupid.

On the other hand, I did pick this one myself...

Anyway, after the performance, Manny pays the ladies. That night, Sara prays by her bedside, probably for a less-annoying voice and a better memory. Constance gathers the rest of the girls together, and tries to incite a revolution against Manny. She tells them that being exploited on the internet demeans them all...then they all play "Strip Clue".

I don't know about Colonel Mustard, but I seem to have discovered a lead pipe! *rim shot* Oddly enough, a guy who looks like Ogre from Revenge of The Nerds makes an eerily similar joke. Creepy. The movie can hear me!

Sara decides to have a quick soak in he hot tub before going to sleep. Wait, the malfunctioning hot tub? Maybe she'll meet John Cusack from 20 years ago. Or just die, either way.

3 of the girls leave the game for a few minutes, so there are a TON of possible kill-scenarios in our future! Oh, and Zen isn't playing Clue either...she's stripping in front of a computer for a guy who sounds like an adolescent Dr. Claw. Seriously, when he's not trying to murder Inspector Gadget, he's busy masturbating to images of Asian lesbians. Duh.

Sara hears a noise and uses her whiny, nasal screech to scare them off. Then Dr. Claw tells Zen that some folks in the house will die sooner than others, right before a power surge electrocutes Sara. Complete with cartoony, blue lightning.

The survivors have another meeting with Manny, who insists that both deaths were entirely accidental. He also demands that they resume their "work", if they want to continue getting paid. Oh, and he creates a stir when he announces that Brenna The Undercover Reporter will be moving in right away.

Manny has Zen show Brenna to Pia's room after Francesca refuses. Then he tells the rest that they can return to stripping, waitressing, and starring in porn flicks *cough cough*, if they really want to leave. Oh no, not WAITRESSING!!!!! And back up a second, Manny...how are any of those options somehow worse than being murdered? Logic, bro.

Amber steps away to take a shower, complete with cheesy porno sax music playing over the scene. Brenna's roommate's boyfriend('s cousin's best friend's uncle's grandfather's valet's...) is watching, even while she's in the room. The roommate looks in on Brenna and says "Hi!", forgetting that her friend can't see or hear her. Man, this movie is getting dumber by the second.

Amber hears a sound outside the shower, and gets the scare of her life when Evan appears, holding a plunger. Scary stuff. He then leaves, and no one dies. Bummer. I was sort of hoping this one might end early.

Brenna maps out the layout of the house, then gets scared by Evan in the hot tub room. He doesn't seem to like her very much. He even glares at her as she leaves the room. Hmmm... Francesca is then attacked by a maniac in a mask, who turns out to be Manny. Toilet plungers, silly masks...where are Shaggy and Scooby and the rest of the gang? Probably in a better film than this.

Most of the women get drunk, then go online to chat with subscribers. Oh, and they make a crappy conga line. Brenna just stands back and watches everyone else go to work. Uh, what makes her exempt from the house rules? Fire her, Manny!

Brenna dictates into her recorder that it's weird to live in a house where she's constantly being watched. Um, if that's true, then how come Manny hasn't figured out that she's spying on everyone else in the house? This movie sure doesn't like making sense, does it?

A bunch of nameless teens visit the site, because one kid stole his dad's credit card. According to him, the women will only be in the house for 28 more days. Another perv finds a glitch when he tries to watch Constance, because Manny disabled the cameras in her room so that they could have sex.

They reveal that not only have they been screwing, but most of her distaste for the site is a show for the public. Manny proclaims that he'll make Constance more famous than "Buffy, Britney, and Xena combined", which sounds kind of silly coming from a guy in the adult entertainment business. Not to mention kind of outdated. As soon as he leaves her room, he uses a remote to turn her cameras back on.

Brenna walks into the library, where she finds Amber doing an impromptu striptease. While the horny teen group watches, Amber tries to seduce the shy Brenna with some heavy petting. Even Brenna's real roommate seems to be intrigued...

The handyman tries to make a move on the maid, then drags her into a small room. It's apparently the only room in the house where there are no cameras or microphones of any kind. She fights him off, then reveals that she wants him as well. Whatever, just die already, so I can watch a better movie.

Constance finds Manny looking at a calendar featuring one of the other housemates, and she accuses him of making empty promises just to get her in bed. She's a swift one, that Connie! While that's happening, Anya chats online with Dr. Claw, who threatens her life. He ups the ante by sending her pictures of the women he's killed so far. Anya rushes out of the room, where a masked figure is waiting for her.

Ugh, it's Manny again. How many times are they going to pull that gag? She tells him about Dr. Claw, and he assures her that he'll check out the chat logs. Yeah, right after he chainsaws her to death.

The women decide to do a tarot card reading together. While Francesca lays out the cards, some of the women discuss the possibility that the house was built over an ancient Indian burial ground. Great, now they're trying to drag a much better film down to their level!

Frannie gets them back on track, and starts to interpret the cards. She makes a dire prediction about "zee end...of PLEASURE!", and reveals that the final card is Death. They all get upset, and quickly leave the table. An exterior shot of the house reveals somebody in a hood running around.

Sonja visits Brenna's room, where she admits that she hopes to someday become an action movie hero. She then leaves, but not before promising to protect Brenna from danger. Okay is it just med,or are all of the other women in the house falling in love with Brenna?

Most of the women fall asleep, with the exception of Zen, who is still getting drunk. Heck, even the old woman who watches the girls has fallen asleep! Maybe they got a peek at the rest of the script.

When Zen finally passes out, the killer reveals that he/she was behind her chair the entire time. Oh, and they're wearing one of Manny's masks. With absolutely no suspense or buildup, they strangle Zen with a length of wire. One victim closer to the closing credits!

Over breakfast, the remaining housemates hear from Francesca that Zen has gone missing. Manny then enters the dining room, carrying a box containing a Zen garden. Wow-what-a-witty-thing-to-do. He also says that she left him a note explaining that she couldn't handle the pressure of living there anymore. Okay, so she was distraught enough to leave, but wanted to go out on a joke? Hey Manny, where'd you stuff the corpse?

The women look shocked by the news. Even the old lady weeps, wondering where Zen could have gone. Okay, seriously now? A handful of women have died, it's all on camera, and STILL no one has come forward with any information for the cops! What Bizarro Universe is this movie taking place in?

The women have another "private" meeting, where they all agree that Manny knows more about what's been happening than he lets on. Brenna calls her roommate ?, and asks her to do an online search for any info about Manny or the dead/missing women. Manny sees the phone call from his office computer, but can't listen in. So wait: they have internet that makes the "dial-up" noise, phones that somehow still work even when the prehistoric modems are in use, and microphones and cameras everywhere...but Manny can't hear anything from his PC? Every time this movie hits a new low, it manages to sink even deeper.

Francesca storms into his office to announce that she knows that he's involved with all of the recent craziness. Fake Ogre decides to watch Francesca while he's undressed, and imagines that she could get over her lover's disappearance if she seduced another housemate. Oh, and the killer is seen sneaking through the halls.

Francesca takes her last daily shower, and most of the subscribers we've met tune in to watch. While she soaps up, Francesca hears something fall and break. She exits the shower to go have a look, and gets bumped off when the maniac emerges from the shower when she returns. He/she bashes her head into the tiled wall several times, hard enough to crack the tiles.

Her dying screams wake up the rest of the house, and everyone rushes ouut to see what caused the commotion. Evan finds the corpse first, and Manny casually saunters in, all, "Good day, fair maidens, whatever seems to be the problem on this fine evening?"

Okay, I made that last part up. Manny finds out from Evan that Francesca is dead, and Manny tries to play it off as another random mishap. When they all gang up on him, Manny pushes the panic button on the security panel, effectively locking the doors and barring the windows. Now they're trapped with the killer!

The houseguests begin to lose their cool, and the elderly lady who watches them does likewise. She calls the cops to report the murders, and is outraged by the general lack of interest he seems to have. They argue a bit, and she angrily hangs up on him.

Faced with the possibility of death, they decide to split up to search for another way out. Evan and Sonja assault Manny, tying him to a chair. The site's subscribers freak out, with one even telling a friend that Anya and the others are definitely dead, "D-E-D, dead!"

As they all search for alternate escape routes, a thunderstorm rolls in. Francesca explores the basement with a flashlight, but even the few windows in there are barricaded. She finds one of the bodies and screams.

Sonja and Constance accuse Manny of harming her, but he's still tied to the chair. Then Francesca returns from the basement, tearfully informing the others that she found Zen's body. They confront Manny, trying to get him to confess to the murder. He insists on his innocence, claiming that he only found Zen and hid her body, nothing more.

Then he draws their attention to the fact that Evan now appears to be missing, and they stop roughing him up long enough to realize that he has a point. Then Brenna tries to send her roommate a message in sign language, but the boyfriend seduced her away from the computer before she could see it. Whoops!

Sonja has a goofy scene where she picks up a samurai sword, and we see the murderer running up some stairs. He/she approaches Manny, and the webcams temporarily lose their signal. The killer then calls Francesca, and the breathing sounds like that of a woman. When Francesca looks at the webpage, she sees that the killer has changed the name of the site to WatchUsDie. They should make a movie with that title.

The ditzy blond(Amber, I think...) is walking up a landing, then stops short when she sees a large shadow of something looming behind her. It's a male figure, with his back leaning against a wall. Amber cautiously approaches his back and nudges him, only to discover that it's Evan, who is now very dead. He had some blood running down his forehead, but it's not much. His body falls on top of her, and she pushes him off to escape.

Another woman, ?, makes a sign, which has the address on it and a plea for help. The killer pops up behind her, and manages to destroy both her and the sign before she can hold it up to the closest camera. Then they do one of those dorky scenes where the killer unmasks(out of range of the camera, of course), leading the dying girl to gasp, "It's...you!" right before she expires.

3 of the remaining girls are trying to escape together, when Constance reappears. She has a cut on her forehead, and she claims that the killer attacked her, but she managed to get away before he could finish her off. Um...then why didn't we see the attack? Keep an eye on her, kids, because my bullshitometer is going off.

The foursome get back to the ground floor, where they find Manny dead. As they all begin to accuse each other of murder, they hear sounds coming from the library. Then we see Amber scurry off by herself to hide. Oh, and Sonja pulls a gun on them, sending everyone in different directions.

Amber waits for a few minutes, afraid to leave the room she's hiding in. The first time she decides to try to get out, the killer nearly sees her, but she shuts the door again. The second time, the killer finds her, then simply slashes her throat.

Using sign language, Brenna uses one of the cameras to send out a message, even supplying the address. As she reluctantly steps back into the hallway, Sonja ambushes her, aiming the gun at her temple. As the web audience does the worst "panicked" reaction ever committed to film, Constance creeps up behind Sonja, then knocks  her out with a vase.

Brenna and Constance hug, then make another address sign for the viewers to give the police. They rush into the non-camera room to wait for the cops, then Constance begins to laugh. She speculates about how quickly she'll rise to fame.

When Brenna mentions her book, Constance drops the "nice girl" act completely, revealing that she had the security code during the entire ordeal. Her nefarious plan was to kill everyone, frame someone else, then become famous. Uh, I hate to keep bringing this up, but...wouldn't all of the cameras tell investigators the full story?

She tries to stab Brenna twice, but misses both times. Brenna gets the knife away from Constance, who runs back into the hall, making it appear that Brenna's the killer. Brenna chases her to the throughout the house, unaware that the subscribers are actively rooting against her.

Near the front door, Constance pops up from behind some furniture, and shoots at Brenna. Lucky for Brenna, she trips over a body, so the bullet misses her. Brenna fires back, hitting Constance in the forehead. This elicits cheers from many of the subscribers.

Brenna enters the door code that Constance told her, and the bars and locks all disengage. Many, many cops are waiting for her, and one nervously shoots her when she tries to give them her tape recorder. They surround her, and hear Constance's confession on the tape.

3 months go by, and Brenna has written a book about the experience. A fan hands her a copy of the book to sign, and Brenna comes face-to-face with a smug-looking Constance. THE END(Maybe...?)

Wow, this was cheesy. Many of the actresses were extremely cute, but 'generic' doesn't even begin to describe the movie. Plus, most of the plot just didn't work, given that the audience would have seen SOMETHING to clue them in to the killer's identity before the final, silly reveal.. No impressive effects, lousy acting, and even the slight nudity was dull.  Just bad. 1 tree out of 5.

And (ugh) What did I learn from WatchUsDie.com?

-Well, I guess now I know how NOT to make a slasher flick...

-Porn addicts make for a very gullible audience.

-...and that's it. I got nothing to work with here.


Next up is something called Don't Let Him In. Should be better than this tripe. No way that it could be worse! See you next  week.

Home Si--Uh, I mean "Fear Island"

Well, here we are again! Unfortunately, as I said in my update earlier this week, the copy of Home Sick that NetFlix sent me was pretty shoddy, so hopefully they can send me a better one. Not holding my breath, though..I'm still waiting for my second attempt to watch Smiley, post-convalescence.

Anyway, I found a quick replacement, called Fear Island. It looks generic, but it's also playable, so I'm up for it. Yes, my standards are delightfully low at this point. SPOILERS on the horizon!

The story begins on a confusing note, showing us a young woman being pursued through a forest. She runs and jumps quite a bit, and there are a dozen or so views of the same shot of her eyes in an extreme closeup. Oh yeah, this is going to be a quality film!

After about a minute of this, the gunmen find her hiding spot. They surround her, and seem to be a SWAT team or some kind of police task force. Then the title screen comes up. Okay, I'm mildly intrigued...or, as intrigued as I can ever get by these things.

The young woman is under arrest, and throngs of reporters are waiting for her at the police headquarters. During her interrogation, we find out that she has amnesia. D'oh! The detective questioning her doesn't buy into the amnesia story and starts yelling at the girl, but a psychiatrist named Dr. Chalice interrupts them.

The cop and the doc go into the hallway, where we find out that the cop has a questionable incident in his file that makes him unreliable. Oh, and it turns out that there were about 6 dead bodies found on the island where the young woman was captured. I guess that's a bad thing.

Dr. Chalice finds out that the mystery woman wasn't even read her rights, and goes ballistic. She informs the cop that she's putting the young woman in the hospital under her supervision, at least until they can locate the girl's family. Young Dirty Harry doesn't like it, but has no choice in the matter, given the condition the girl is in.

The mystery woman dreams about the dead people, hearing their voices, and wakes up screaming and writhing around in her hospital bed. Dr. Chalice, accompanied by a couple of uniformed police guards, enters the room and sedates her with an injection. When the cops leave the 2 women alone together, Chalice sits with the girl and watches her sleep.

The girl dreams about the incident on the island. The trip was some sort of getaway, because she and her friends were all going off to college soon, and this was supposed to be a final bash before they left. There are four of them, 2 boys and 2 girls, but another young man has arrived late, getting to the dock seconds after the small boat has launched.

As he watches the boat slowly drift further away, the latecomer makes the decision to leap for the boat. Oh, and he's the first character since Dr. Chalice to get a name: Mark. Hey, that's me!

Mark's running leap succeeds, and he manages to cling to a railing. They pull him aboard, and there are cheers and high 5's all around. Oh, and the young man who was told to pull away from the shore is named Keith. Wow, 2 names in one scene!

Our Jane Doe gets a name as well. She's Jenna, and she just got accepted into a performing arts school, as a dancer. They all make a celebratory toast, then Mark flirts with the other girl, causing Jenna to stand up and walk away. She apparently used to date Mark, and there's still some tension between 'em. She decides to hang out with Keith for a little while.

They approach the island, which is privately owned. There's the usual disclaimer about there being no phones or wireless signals, merely put in there for guys like me, so that we can't nitpick about the many ways they could get help. Eh, I still think it's just weak writing.

They tie up the boat, and head straight for the house. There's a hot tub(time machine?) with a lid over it, and they waste no time in getting it ready for use. Also, Jenna spots a strange wind-up toy, a monkey on a bike, spinning around on the back porch. Scrawled on the monkey's back is the word REVENGE.

Oops, end of flashback. The angry cop puts the toy in front of Jenna, claiming that it was found next to one of the dead bodies. The cop asks Jenna a simple question: If she didn't kill her friends, then who did? That leads into another flashback.

Mark still has a torch for Jenna, but is advised to back off. They apparently broke up 3 years ago, which is either sad or creepy on his part. Maybe both. This girl sure does have a lot of flashbacks to stuff she technically never heard or saw!

Oh, and she FINALLY remembers her own name! Sheesh, we knew it before she did. How does that work? While the cop asks another officer to verify the name, Jenna begins to cry. Then the cop reveals some new information: Witnesses saw 6 of them get on the boat. So how are there 6 dead bodies?

Jenna just now remembers that there was a stowaway on the boat. Uh huh, sure there was. Keith finds a cute young brunette on the boat while he's moving boxes. The new girl, Megan, just smiles a lot and bats her pretty eyelashes. Hey, I'm convinced she's harmless!

Then we FINALLY learn all of their names...Tyler is the leader of the group; his brother is some surfer dude-looking guy named Kyle; Jenna's friend is Ashley(oh, and I forgot this earlier, but she has a dog that she keeps in her bag, like Paris Hilton...); and we've already met Keith, Jenna, and Mark. Got all of that straight? There's a quiz later.

Anyway, Ashley and Jenna whisk Megan away to find her a bedroom. Back in the present, the cop asks Jenna to identify a head shot of Megan. Wait...if none of them were identified yet by the cops, how do they have portraits of them from when they were alive? Is this supposed to make sense?

Jenna claims that Megan was a threat, because of her sex appeal, but then contradicts herself by saying that Megan was "special" in some way. The cop responds by telling her that Megan was stabbed in the throat. So much for being special.

Back in the past, everyone makes fun of Mark, who has found a pair of tacky, bright shorts to wear. He asks Ashley where Jenna is, and ducks out to meet up with her at the dock. As he heads back upstairs to change his ugly shorts, Megan comes downstairs. Tyler grabs her by the hand, insisting that he should fix her a drink before they join the rest of the group.

As sick of the flashbacks as I am, Dr. Chalice gives Jenna a sedative to shut her up. Yay! As Chalice leaves the hospital room, she encounters the angry cop in the hallway. She tells him that Jenna isn't the killer, at least in her expert opinion. That probably means that Jenna's the killer...I'm going to laugh myself silly if I'm right.

Anyway, Angry Cop tells her that he looked into her background. It seems that she's not a very experienced shrink, and that she spends most of her time on the witness stand. As the cop vows to uncover the truth, we get more flashbackstory.('cause it's a flashback, and fills in the backstory...oh, never mind)

Ashley and her boy-toy are in the hot tub. At the same time, Megan and Kyle are doing shots, while Jenna is on the dock "doing ballet". The flashback is interrupted by the cop, who tells Jenna that he thinks she's been faking her amnesia.

Back to Megan and Kyle. Ashley's dog arrives, and drinks from one of the shot glasses. That somehow makes Kyle and Megan horny, so they decide to suck face. Someone seems to be watching them from outside. Ashley and Tyler are doing kinky things with an ice cube in the hot tub. Oh, and thanks to the subtitles, I finally discovered that the dog's name is Pierre.

Kyle sends Pierre outside, then resumes making out with Megan. As Jenna keeps trying to dance, Mark arrives to distract her with his general moping around. Mark asks her to "call a truce" for the weekend, but she seems to think that he's obsessive and creepy.

Megan lets Kyle carry her to a bed, but confesses that she's a virgin. In fact, she admits that she's only 15. Rut roh! To his credit, Kyle does the gentlemanly thing, and chooses to walk away. See, chivalry still exists! Some time after that, an unseen person finds and takes Pierre.

At the hot tub, blood somehow gets mixed in with the ice bucket water. Ashley has blood on one side of her face, and Tyler does a double-take when she turns to face him. Kyle comes outside to see what happened, and they all begin blaming each other for putting blood in the bucket.

As they're all shouting back and forth, Ashley finds out that Kyle let her tiny dog run loose in the woods. Kyle stomps away to find the dog, at which point Angry Cop asks the very same question that I had earlier: How can Jenna recall events that she never witnessed? She claims that the others told her things after they had occurred. Sure they did.

Dr. Chalice calms them both down, then asks Jenna to resume telling the story "her way", which she does. Kyle returns, without poor Pierre, and it's dark out. He guesses that Keith is holding the dog somewhere, as a prank. Kyle and Mark knock at his door, but he seems genuinely confused when they ask him to return the dog. When they leave, he reveals that the dog is hidden in a kitchen cabinet, whimpering and frightened. Man, what an asshole.

Okay, maybe not...he reveals that he did it to protect the dog, because he saw it drinking from the glass of alcohol. Ah, so he was the one watching from the window! Wait, I'm confused here...are we rooting for him because he protected the dog? Or is he creepy again, because now we know he's a peeper?

Keith sees the reflection of a figure trying to sneak up on him, and the scene ends with no resolution. When Mark and Kyle return to the main house, they report that Pierre is still missing. Kyle tells them that if Keith continues to try to intimidate them, he'll hurt him with a knife he carries for protection. When he shows them the weapon, it's already smeared in dry blood.

Jenna defends Kyle, suggesting that another intruder may be on the island. Tyler tells her that it's not possible, and that the island is surrounded on 3 sides by cliffs. They would hear another boat. When Ashley worries that it was Pierre's blood in the ice bucket, Mark assures her that the dog will be found alive and intact.

Back in the present, Dr. Chalice tells the detective that Jenna's parents were located. It turns out that they were away on a trip to Cambodia, but are returning right away to see their daughter. Reading my mind, the cop asks the shrink who would go to vacation all the way over in Cambodia? "Rich people" is apparently the answer. She leaves a file about Jenna with the detective, but tells him that her history is trouble-free.

Back in the interrogation area, Jenna suddenly cries out that it was Keith. Time for more flashbacks...Jenna makes coffee for everyone, but Ashley is a no-show. She woke up earlier, and immediately resumed the search for her dog. While she's out in the woods, Mark finds a jar of jelly filled with thumbtacks. Mmmmm, who doesn't love an old-fashioned peanut butter 'n' blood sandwich?

Ashley can be heard screaming, and the others run outside to find her. She comes sprinting toward the house, and the 3 guys decide to have a look at whatever caused her to scream. They don't find the dog, but they DO find Keith, who has been hung up by his ankles, with the word EVIL carved into his torso.

The cop and the shrink point out that she just contradicted her own story, because earlier she was yelling about the killer being Keith. Oh, and the cop is apparently named 'Armory'. Okay, so we have a doctor named Chalice, a cop named Armory...wanna bet that there's a chef named Ladle? I have a feeling that this script was written in crayon.

When Armory demands to know why they didn't all just get in the boat and leave, the shrink tells him not to personalize the case, and that the victims were not like his son. I think this movie hates me. Or maybe the movie became self-aware, and it literally hates itself.

It turns out that the boat vanished. They manage to call the cops from the house, but they won't arrive until the following day. At least that explains how they knew to look for Jenna in the opening scene. Some of this is starting to make sense...Did I just say that?

They all head outside, where they can hear that toy monkey spinning around in the vicinity. But who wound it up? Mark heads to the trees to find it, but hears an evil laugh, and hesitates. There might also be a voice, but the words can't be heard.

The guys decide to cut down Keith's body, and they tell Megan and Jenna to remain at the house. As soon as they leave, Ashley announces that she's going into the woods to continue her search for Pierre. Being such caring, compassionate women, they offer to search instead...and leave her alone in the house. These folks are geniuses.

Tyler tells Mark that the reason that Keith was around so much was because he was Tyler and Kyle's half-brother. When they arrive at the right tree, the body is gone. The blood, too. So the killer is still on the island.

Detective Armory shows Jenna a file, and it indicates that Keith's death was different than what Jenna described. Rather than telling us what actually happened, the script glosses over the details. Ridiculous.

Ashley wakes up from a nap, and she hears Pierre barking. She leaves the house, and approaches the hot tub. She finds a studded dog collar in front of it, and throws open the cover. As she gets in to search for her dog, the killer slams the lid down, ties it down, then raises the water temperature. Anyone hungry for boiled ham?

Kyle and Mark return from the hike, and find the house empty. They split up to get Tyler and the girls. Oh, and Ashley drowns. TTFN, Ash!

Mark finds Megan, but she's not with Jenna. They find her soon enough, but panic again when they realize that Ashley has disappeared. At the house, everyone meets up agin, and Megan spots the spiked collar in front of the hot tub. Painted on the lid is the word GUILTY. They pull her out of the hot tub, and her corpse is covered in blisters and burns. Jenna stops telling the story, and remembers how close she and Ashley used to be. Then she asks them if she can speak with her friend, as has to be reminded that Ashley is dead. Creepy.

On the island, they wrap Ashley in a sheet. Mark speculates that the killer might just be some random nutcase, and it's pointed out that, random or not, they're all still in danger. The conversation turns into a shouting match, with everyone accusing everyone else of being a potential killer. To make it worse, they realize that, even in groups, there were periods of time when each person was alone.

They bring the corpse to a freezer, then make a plan to remain in a group. In the storage shed they come across a pair of walkie-talkies. As they return to the house, they spot the toy monkey rolling around on the patio. Maybe the monkey killed them all!

Jenna is the first one to spot another word painted on the glass door leading into the house: INNOCENT. When Dr. Chalice points out that none of them were "innocent", Jenna again tells her that Megan was "special" in some way. When asked to elaborate, Jenna explains that Megan wasn't even supposed to be there, so the killer couldn't have planned on her arrival. So???

On their way back to the house, Kyle hears a noise. It's the sound of someone crying. He urges the rest of the group to go inside, while he investigates the sound. They give him a baseball bat for protection. Before they even have time to miss him, he steps on a bear trap. They work to free Kyle, then everybody heads inside, where they lock the doors and windows.

In her hospital room Jenna is reading a bible. She tells Dr. Chalice that it gives her comfort. Then she asks the shrink about Detective Armory's son, and is told that he died during some type of hazing incident. He drowned during a "water torture" gag.Detective Armory nearly killed one of the kids at the scene.

Dr. Chalice then gives Jenna her nightly sedative. After the shrink leaves, Jenna spits the pill out. It turns out that she made a secret compartment in the bible, where she's been hiding the sleeping pills. What a zany gal!

In the past, Kyle gets drunk to dull the pain from his wounded foot, while Tyler arms himself with a nail gun. Someone appears to be watching the house. Then the brainiacs decide that they should somehow move Kyle upstairs. As they all get him there, Jenna thinks that she sees the killer outside. She gets Mark and Tyler, and they go outside to have a look. Nope, nobody's out there!

At about 4 in the morning, Mark and Jenna nearly share a kiss, but then the power goes out. Megan goes upstairs to check on Kyle, but she can't seem to find him. Then a tree outside goes up in a blaze, and someone outside begins to fire a gun at the house.

Tyler is hit, and they all work together to drag him to a safe spot behind the couch. Then we end up back in the hospital. Jenna wakes up, and finds someone new in the room. A young girl, who is also a ghost I guess. Jenna calls her Regina.

Kyle can be heard pleading for his life, and the others find a walkie-talkie. Using the device, they try to figure out where Kyle has been taken. Jenna thinks that the words left at every crime scene might have a clue, so she writes them down: REVENGE, EVIL, GREED, INNOCENT, NAIVE, and ATONEMENT. When put together, the first letter in each word spells out REGINA. Friggin' Atonement, man. Did these guys watch Tormented?

Uhhhh, back up a sec...who's Regina?

She was a student who had disappeared the previous year. She had gone to one of their parties, and got herself pretty smashed by the end of the night. As Regina partied, they filmed the whole thing. And by "they", I'm referring to Tyler and Kyle. Megan hears the story and proclaims that she's safe, since she had nothing to do with whatever happened to Regina.

Jenna takes one of the walkie-talkies, and insists that Megan should have it. Megan accepts it, then leaves the others to their fate. But first, she promises Jenna that she'll keep in touch with them, as frequently as possible.

As Jenna recalls not being confident about trusting either Mark or Tyler, Megan gets back to the main house. She comes across Kyle's knife(which is clean again), then the others return as well. She's no longer around, but they find a mound of dirt and a little plastic shovel. The killer wants them to build a playground? Or does the killer want some beach toys? On an unrelated note, life can sometimes be a beach.

The sight of the dirt leads to another flashback-within-the-flashback: Apparently, something bad happened to Regina. After being raped and filmed, Regina tried to sneak away in the middle of the night, but Tyler grabs her wrist. A struggle ensues and Regina stumbles, dying when she receives a blow to the head on a piece of furniture.

He and Kyle buried the corpse in the woods. As Jenna insists on being shown where the body is buried, the flashback ends. Then Jenna discovers that her folks will be back home sometime the next day. That means the movie's almost over! Orgy at my place! Bring champagne!

Anyway...The characters seem to be having a weird role-reversal, with Armory believing Jenna now, and Chalice poking holes in her story. Yeesh, whatever. Just unmask the killer so I can head out and see You're Next.

A report from the coroner arrives, revealing that Jenna was either mistaken, or lied, about Keith being the first victim. Rather than explaining this, the movie decides to resume the flashback by showing Megan, back when she returned to the house. She backs out of the main room, and finds Keith looming behind her. Whoa...Keith's the killer?!?

The others arrive at the burial site, where it appears that somebody already did some digging. Tyler begins to dig, and they soon find not Regina, but Kyle, in the hole! D'oh!

...and that's when Regina uses her walkie-talkie. She sounds panicky, and tells them that Keith is alive. They hear her beg for her life, then the transmission ends on an abrupt note. Double d'oh!

They hurry back to the house, and Tyler vows to kill Keith for what he's done. He gets to the house first, and grabs a knife from the kitchen. Then he calls out to Megan, while searching the house. He hears a sound coming from one of the kitchen cabinets, and gets a chestful of venom when a snake emerges from said cabinet.

Tyler yanks the snake out of his chest and screams for help. Jenna and Mark can only stand by, while he dies right before their eyes. Jenna tearfully tells Mark that she feels responsible for everything that happened. She apparently witnessed the drunken 3-way at the party that night. It looks like Ashley also saw some of it.

At the police station, ?Jenna tells Armory that when she "heard what happened", she wanted to "kill them all". Uhhhh...didn't you witness it? Her story changes so often, they should write it as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.

Mark tells Jenna that they need to find a way to get back to the mainland, then they both hear a noise upstairs. Mark suddenly kisses her, then they head up the stairs. Nice time for romance, dude.

There's a large shape on one of the beds, but it's covered up with sheets. Mark draws a sheet back, expecting to see either a dead Megan or Keith, but it's the bony remains of Regina. Keith radioes them, telling them that Regina was an innocent victim. When they ask about Megan, he only says that she's been taken care of by him.

They return to the hallway, where Keith ambushes them. He claims that they need to suffer they way they lived. H?e also says that he cared about Regina, and that his feelings compelled him to seek revenge on all of them. Except Megan. She's special. Yeah man, we've heard.

Jenna bites Keith in the arm, forcing him to release his grip on her. Then Mark goes at him with the baseball bat, and both men fall to the first floor during the struggle. Jenna leans over the railing to have a look, and neither man is moving. She examines Mark, who appears to be dead, but Keith springs back to life and tries to grab her. Jenna then gets agitated when Armory and Chalice interrupt the story.

Keith pursues Jenna through the forest, but he trips. She nearly gets captured while climbing a hill, but a well-timed kick buys her some time. Unfortunately for her, she then gets snatched up by a rope trap, and is helplessly swinging by her ankles.

Keith soon arrives, and can't help laughing at her predicament. He compares what he's going to do to her to skinning a rabbit, then moves in for the kill. Fortunately, Regina pops up and attacks him with a shovel before he can hurt Jenna. Then she takes the knife, and uses it to cut the rope holding Jenna.

They limp to the dock, where the boat has somehow returned from oblivion. They climb aboard, even as Chalice and Armory ask why Megan didn't survive. While Jenna looks for boat keys, Megan speculates on what it must feel like to lose a loved one. And she edges away from Jenna. Uh oh...

Yup, there's another killer. Regina was Megan's older sister, and she wants her own revenge for what happened a year ago. Frankly, I'm just shocked that she hasn't said, "I know what you did last summer..." They've used every other cliche, more or less.

Megan takes out the knife, and Jenna claims that Megan and Keith were in cahoots. Chalice reads a file, and verifies that Megan and Regina were sisters. Armory just rests his head on the table, lol. I think I know how he feels.

Back to the boat: As Megan closes in on Jenna, Jenna "remembers" that she killed Megan in self-defense. While Dr. Chalice protests that Megan was stabbed waaaay more than a few times, Det. Armory argues that Jenna can go home until a decision is made by the district attorney, regarding filing any charges. Jenna just sits back and smiles.

In the hospital room, Jenna fixes 2 cups of water, then offers one to the doctor. Chalice takes a sip, then sits down. She tells the girl that there are many holes in her story, like the thing about her and Ashley being in first grade together. Or seeing a vision of Regina in her room, despite never having seen her before.

 Remember the hoarded sleeping pills that were hidden in the book? Well, Jenna sure did! She put them in the cup that she handed to Chalice, and the doc collapses to the floor. It turns out that Regina was like a sister to Jenna...in fact, she WAS her sister!

Jenna's parents arrive, and they ask about her condition. Armory reports that she's been through an ordeal, but should be fine. Then her mother sees the photo board, and asks why her daughter's picture has the name "Megan" underneath it...rut roh!

Okay, so go back, re-watch this entire thing, then switch Megan with Jenna...and it still doesn't quite work! Armory races to the hospital room, where he discovers that Dr. Chalice is...alive. Wow. So far, that's the best twist. Oh, and yes, I'm laughing, because I predicted this whole thing earlier.

The final sequence shows Megan on the road, having apparently stolen Chalice's car keys and business attire. The car breaks down, and she entices a motorist to give her a lift. Oh, and she calls herself Megan. THE END

Oh, where to begin? The ridiculous plot aside, the acting was terrible, the sets were monotonous(The interrogation area and the hospital were in the same building? HUH?), and it was very, very bland in the acting department. 1-and-a-half stars, and I'm already blocking this one out of my memory.

What did I learn from watching Fear Island?

-People should always have names that describe what they do for a living. On that note, I am now Sarcasmo the Mighty.

-If you get a young girl drunk, rape her, then kill her, make sure that she's an only child! Or just, I don't know, just a crazy thought, RESPECT WOMEN. Dagnabbit.

Stop trying to make Canada look like America. Or just make better slasher movies, Canada! Just because you guys made My Bloody Valentine, it doesn't give you a free pass to make crap like this later on.

I screwed up my NetFlix queue, so I didn't get a slasher in the mail this week. I'll peruse the Instant options, and hopefully find something worth watching. Have a great week!

Death Factory: Bloodletting

Well, I know this will be a HUGE shock, but my latest movie from Blockbuster never came in the mail, so my back-up plan is to watch another free slasher flick on YouTube. Probably not as much silly fun as Hell Night, this one is called Death Factory: Bloodletting. Prepare for disappointme--uhhh, I mean, "SPOILERS"...

Opening scene. Yay, a red bicycle and pictures of a mother and daughter. A young woman(the mother, I presume...) is setting up a video camera. She tells the camera that her name is Anna, and that, if we are watching the tape, then she must be dead. Then the title of the movie slams into the screen. Good thing I wear a seatbelt when I view this crap.

Anyway, we leave Anna's rollicking comedy tape, and head to Phoenix, Arizona, 6 months into the past. Time travel makes me thirsty! Anyone have any iced tea? No? Well, fine. I'm now officially watching this under protest.

Anyway, a radio evangelist is raving as a motorist listens, and talks back to the radio. The driver, a long-haired goon-looking type, is heading to a place called the Carter Brick Factory. Another subtitle tells us that the factory was shut down in 2005...what, is this for a pop quiz later? Just get to the point!

Anyway, Freakazoid drives his van into the closed warehouse, and walks outside to another empty-looking building, where we hear a child wailing. Freaky's flashlight reveals what looks like a community of homeless people, using the empty building as shelter. When one person starts to flee, Freaky shows him and the others that he has food for them.

After passing around the sandwiches, Freaky finds out that there are only 4 people in the group, and he sees evidence of drug use. When he confronts the group about the drugs, he stands up and starts to blow them away, Dirty Harry-style. The only one he spares is the baby.

So, what does your average nutjob do after feeding homeless junkies, killing them, and then abducting a baby? Why, he brings it back to his van of course! Freaky opens up the back doors, gives the baby a bizarre pep-talk about how the adults deserved to be shot, then plops him down on the floor of the van and backs away. Okay, that seems kindaHOLYWTF?!?!?!?!  A demon-shark-woman just swooped up from the interior of the van, and ate the baby! Say WHAAAT?

More subtitles. She's Alexa, the "little sister". Freaky is Denny, the "big brother". And I'm Mark, the "constantly perplexed second cousin, once removed". Then more time travel. 6 months later, to be precise. Screw it, I'm taking notes. And I'm still calling him Freaky.

A woman wearing only black panties is chained to the floor. She's being watched by a person in a control booth,via a security camera. Freaky is there too. A loud, blaring siren goes off, and the woman wakes up. After looking around for a few seconds, her name is given as "Jane Doe: The Object". How nice.

Jane immediately tests the strength of the chain holding her, and it seems pretty strong. She stares down helplessly at her hands, and sees that someone has given her a label: when Jane puts her open hands side by side, the word "whore" is spelled out. Whoever made this film, he seems to have some major issues with women.

Then we see some kind of altar, and a television. A person on the tv is delivering a sermon about doling out justice, Hammurabi-style. He seems to be fixated on murder in that vein. As the girl cries, the crazy she-beast from the van wakes up and hears her. Uh oh...this could get bloody.

As Jane tries to tell her captor that she doesn't deserve to be treated like this, Freaky gets on an intercom, and tells her why he sees her as a whore. While Jane tries to undo the chain that confines her, the she-beast comes after her and gets a taste of her second course. Blood-spray goes everywhere, and Freak just smiles. Lather, rinse, repeat. Is the entire movie going to be like this?

Oops, now back to Anna(the woman recording her last thoughts...), who may or may not be dead as we watch her. See? I paid attention! She raids a medicene cabinet, and mixes up a concoction to get herself higher than Cheech and Chong on the moon. Then, after a shower, she decides to resume recording her message.

Apparently, she plans to attend a ritual sacrifice, called a bloodletting. She doesn't want to do this, but it's part of a secret plan that Anna has been putting together for a long time now. She apparently lost a loved one, and believes that the people attending the bloodletting may have taken part in the murder. By posing as an online fan of these rituals, she has slowly worked her way into their ranks, hoping to expose them.

She also has a name for one of these sickos, Rubber Love. Anna strongly believes that he was the one who murdered her daughter, and wants to kill him herself, should the opportunity present itself. Anna only has 1 fear...that this might be a trap. If it is, then I get to go to bed early tonight!

As Anna arrives at the meeting place, a masked man assaults her. He holds a gun on her, and asks for her name, a password, and a sub-password. Satisfied that Anna isn't a cop, he lets her up, but binds her hands and tapes her mouth shut. A pretty odd assortment of other captives stare back at her.

The guy in charge directs one of the captives to untie the others. One girl immediately looks for a spot on the floor to pee on, and the gunman threatens to kill her for not peeing before the journey. Then there's a pointless altercation between a redneck and a black guy. The gunman leaves the group, and lets them all get to know each other.

While they all just pretty much pace around and give each other dirty scowls, Freak watches from his remote location. A camera goes glitchy, and he yells at one of his workers to fix it. Booooooooooriiiiiiiiiiing.

As I nod off, the folks trapped in the warehouse decide to get acquainted , by at least revealing their internet names. The Nazi-racist guy introduces himself as White Manson, a collector of nazi items and snuff films. Next up is Black Johnson, a guy in the sex-slave trade. Who's next, Green Hornet? Blue Beetle?

Nope, now we get the best name in the movie thus far, the intellectually-stimulating Slutty Baby. She's more or less an online hooker...for a tidy sum, she lets men do whatever they want to do to her. This week, she's being paid to appear in a crap horror flick. Why didn't they just cast Paris Hilton in the part?

And now we get the movie's token shy, nerdy guy. He's The Cock Master, I shit you not. His thing is homemade bombs and killing sprees. His introduction segues into another introduction, of a dominatrix and her slave, named Gretel and Hansel. Yeesh.

Then we meet an obese guy with a chip on his shoulder, who calls himself Rubber Love. Ooooh, remember him? Anna sure does! Rubber Love openly admits that he has a fetish for abusing children. Anna shoots him a look that would kill a lesser mortal.

When it's Anna's turn, she introduces herself as Massive 9, and her online persona is known for being able to supply and distribute any materials(movies, magazines, etc.) that the others ask for. Pretty ballsy of her to create such a huge character. She better hope they believe her.

Then we see Freak in a red room, praying. He asks God to accept the people he brought to the warehouse as human sacrifices. After the prayer, Freak watches his sister chained up, and "wakes up" her inner demon-cannibal. Then he just sits back and grins. I'm glad someone's happy.

Black Johnson pours himself a drink, then whines about having to wait for the main event to happen. Rubber Love claims that one bloodletting lasted 13 hours. Then Gretel orders Hansel to ask Slutty Baby to speak with her. The 2 women chat, and it turns into a lesbian booty call. Probably as bored as I am, Anna wanders away from the group to look around the warehouse.

Anna eventually finds herself in an area that seems to be isolated from the rest of the building. She looks at her surroundings for a few more minutes, decides that she's really alone, and removes a handgun from down in her pants. Fun fact: your ass is designed to store guns in. After checking that it's loaded and that the safety us off, she conceals it again. When Anna rejoins the group, she finds Rubber Love staring at a centerfold like it's the cure for cancer.

In a bathroom that seems far too clean for an abandoned factory, Gretel and Slutty Baby get down to business while Hansel just stares up at them. I swear, he has the best role in the film, if only because he doesn't have any horrible dialogue to say. Lucky guy.

Anna decides to confront Rubber Love, albeit while still in character as Massive 9. She gets him to talk about her daughter's abduction and murder on film, and he reveals that there was another person involved. Well shoot, now she can't kill him until he reveals the identity of this mystery person. This is getting too complicated for a slasher flick. Somebody die, will ya?

Whoops, I should be careful what I wish for...Filled with rage, Anna decides to shoot Rubber Love several times. Freak, um, "freaks" and demands that his accomplice rig up some electric fence to keep everyone confined. At the same time, Gretel sends Hansel out to see what all the noise is about.

Hansel wanders down a deserted corridor, which pretty much seals his fate. Sure enough, the screen goes red, which means that the she-beast can't be far behind. She leaps out at Hansel, and chews his throat apart. Pretty ironic, considering how little he's spoken in the movie. It'd be like being in a boxing match with Helen Keller, and hearing your trainer say, "Go for the eyes! The eyes!"

Oh, and I forgot, but in all the excitement, Anna was knocked out. When she wakes up, the others have her gagged and tied to a chair. They demand to know why she killed the fat guy, which is going to be pretty hard to explain with her mouth covered. Oh, and Black Johnson panics, claiming that the guy in charge of the bloodletting will probably come in and kill the rest of them because they broke his rules. Ummmm, yeah....I don't think that's going to be a problem at this point.

Black Johnson(with that name, he really should consider going into the porn film biz) and Cock Master take it upon themselves to find a way to escape the warehouse, while White Manson hears Anna's real background story. He then reveals that he also had a tale of revenge, and that it screwed him up in major ways.

Then the she-beast kills Gretel and Slutty Baby after the world's shortest lesbian sex scene, with the world's swiftest double murder. Freak starts laughing like the loon that he is, and jibber-jabbers at the monitors. Was this script written by a sane person? I'm having serious doubts about that.

Anna tries to loosen her wrists, but the actress is so bad at conveying this, she just jiggles her torso in the chair, more or less. Or, Hell, maybe that was what the script told her to do. She finally grows a brain and gives up on that concept, because her next idea is actually not bad: Anna leans over, cranes her neck a bit, and chews through her bindings. If I thought it would do any good, I'd yell at her to stop chewing when she hits flesh.

Oh, and before she moves on, Anna stops to kick Rubber Love's corpse. As dumb as I find this movie, I'll admit that this made me laugh.

Freak and his assistant, Sid, discuss how things are going, and Freak channels his inner Bond villain. Seriously, he even rubs his hands together while they talk about their evil plans. Then Freak gives Sid a syringe, and tells him to inject She-Beast with it. Yeah, riiiight...If Sid had half a brain, he'd tell Freakazoid where to shove that needle.

Once Sid has left the room, Freak turns his attention back to the security monitors. He watches Black Johnson and Cock Master(I hate you, movie...I hate you so much. New rule: no movies unless they have characters that have actual names!) as they keep attempting to escape. Black Johnson gets frustrated and starts to throw furniture and props aroiund, causing Freak to shout at the monitor. Heh, we finally have something in common.

Cock Master spots an open door fram that only has a flimsy plastic curtain over it, so he decides to check it out. As soon as he sticks his head through the doorway, She-Beast spots him. She leaps at him, and yanks him through the doorway, giving "fast food" a brand new definition. For a skinny, demonic cannibal woman, she sure does seem to eat a lot. She-beasts must have high metabolisms.

Black Johnson turns around to discover that his companion has vanished. We see that Cock Master isn't quite dead, but is being rolled down a hallway on a bed with wheels. As the young man sees a television on that same weird evangeical show as earlier in the film, She-Beast wraps his limbs in chains. Then she crawls over him, grabs a hollow metal rod, and shoves it through his abdomen. When he dies, she uses the pole like a straw, and drinks his blood. Yum.

White Manson(wait....Charles Manson WAS white! His nickname doesn't even make any freaking SENSE!!!) steps into the restroom, where he finds the bodies of Slutty Baby and her slave. Slutty Baby appears to be (barely) alive, until White Manson snaps her neck. Then Black Johnson joins him, and accuses him of murdering the women. White Manson shows Black Johnson that his hands are blood-free, and they agree to get the Hell out of Dodge, proverbially speaking.

As She-Beast starts to eat Cock Master's face, Freak yells into the microphone that she needs to hurry up and kill the remaining survivors. He plays a sound through the intercom that immobilizes her, then orders her once more to attack and kill anyone who's left.

As White and Black work together(in perfect harmony?) to check out more possible escape routes, Freak decides to finally address them directly. He tells them that, when he was younger, he had a sister who had been mutated by an experimental drug. He chained her up, but then decided to use her as an "instrument of God", having her kill degenerates that he lured to the abandoned factory over the internet, with a particular focus on druggies.

While he's ranting and raving over his grand scheme, we see She-Beast injecting herself with a glowing substance in different parts of her body. As Black and White(an awesome computer game...at least, the first one was...) agree to work together to escape, Anna is just wandering down one random corridor after another. She arms herself with a metal bar, then removes her shirt. Don't get too excited, fellas...she has a white t-shirt on underneath.

After a few more pointless shots of people wandering around and Freak shouting into his microphone at his sister(who I think might be named Alexa...I just noticed that the name is written on a piece of tape on the mike stand), Anna hears a noise and hides behind a wall for whatever's heading her way. Black and White attack her from behind, and accuse her of killing the others.

Anna tells them about Alexa, and they all head into the restroom together to plan their next move. Black and White argue over how to survive, and Black decides to head out alone. His plan is to use some propane he saw earlier to blow a hole out of one of the walls, and leave. Eh, it's better than no plan at all.

Oh, and Anna may or may not be psychic now. When she and the others were just in the bathroom together, she had "flashes" of the scenes earlier in the bathroom. She saw the lesbians get attacked, and also saw the neck-snapping occur. I guess. So now she's weirded out by White, even though he's been relatively "nice" to her.

Anyway, I explained all of that because now White wants to know where the ammunition for the gun is. See, Anna has the clip, but Black has the empty gun. So, even though she's acting frightened around White, she gives him the bullets(which were apparenty shoved into her vagina, in a sandwich baggy. Gotta love movie logic...). Wait until she tells Black where she kept the gun...

After he puts the ammunition back into the clip, White waits for Black to return, and gets the gun back. To the surprise of no one at all, White loads the clip into the gun, shoots Black to death, then threatens Anna. This movie is about as subtle as an ace bandage lined with broken glass shards.

Then we get a slight plot twist. White reveals that he was the person who killed Anna's daughter. After he gleefully studies her reaction, he shoots her in the gut and leaves her to die. Of course, he then encounters Alexa and shoots her as well. Where was this guy an hour ago?

He enters Freak's control room area, and aims the gun at the back of the mastermind's head. Then we get yet another twist: he, Sid and Freak(who I forgot is named "Denny", although I think "Freak" suits him better, so I'm sticking with it) were all in the plot to kill the group together. Although Sid  and White aren't into the religious aspect of it as much as Freak is, they're both still murder-loving nutjobs. Sheesh.

After White leaves the control room, Freak orders Sid to go give Alexa another injection. Sid wanders through the halls with the glowing syringe, but locates Anna instead of Alexa. He offers to save her life if she promises to punish White, Freak and "all bad men" for him. Yeah, sure he does. And I'm the Emperor of Ice Cream.

So he injects Anna--and by "Injects", I mean he squirts the green goop from the Re-Animator film series into a gaping hole in a fake prop stomach. Then we get a wide shot of Anna moaning and writhing around in pain as the chemical transforms her. She starts to cough up blood, and keels over. Wow. Great healing properties in that chemical.

Sid, while attempting to escape, runs into the not-quite-dead Alexa. She glares up at him from the floor, then cowers in pain as she hears that weird sound again. Sadly, Sid gets away before she recovers. On the plus side, she catches Anna's scent, and wanders away to find her. Instead of finishinbg her off, Alexa drags her away.

Back in the control room, it looks like our favorite maniacal douchebag is combing his beard. Yippee. Then we see Alexa rolling her bed down the hall, but with the still-unconscious Anna on the mattress. When Alexa stops wheeling it to sniff and nibble at some body parts on the ground, Anna opens her eyes. They now look white-grey like Alexa's eyes. Finally!

She calmly(?) feels her stomach, and discovers that the bullet wound has completely closed. Then she quietly grabs a sharp blade off of the floor and attacks Alexa with it. After a brief scuffle, Anna wins the fight and goes off in search of more victims.

She looks around, then remembers White. Anna decides to hunt him down next, unaware that Alexa is still alive. Anna goes past rows of stacked crates(isn't this building supposed to be abandoned and empty?), unaware that Alexa is now hot on her trail. Oh, and there's a brief glimpse of Sid wandering around too...why hasn't he left yet?

The 2 She-Beasts have another fight, and Anna stabs the other mutant several more times. she watches her foe have a few spasms, and only moves on after Alexa stops moving. Then, after Anna leaves, Alexa has a few more spasms. Uhhh, which part of "chemical healing properties" didn't Anna understand?

Anna climbs a ladder attached to what I'm guessing is a vat of the aforementioned methane, then she stops to watch Alexa tracking and following her. Instead of having another spat, Anna chooses to keep moving. Alexa climbs the ladder, then--Surprise!--Anna kicks her back down, where she gets impaled on a metal bar. Anna climbs down to admire her handiwork, then saws Alexa's head off to make sure she stays dead.

Driving home,White tells his wife that he'll be there soon. Oh wait, he's not driving....I guess the camera crew just can't manage to hold the equipment steadily, giving it the illusion that his van is moving. He's still parked at the factory/warehouse/whatever. As he wraps up the conversation, White hears movement on the roof of the van.

He hangs up, then decides to have a look. Anna leaps on him when he gets out and looks up. Then we see Freak trying to reach Sid on a walkie-talkie, to no avail. That's when Anna pops up behind him, and begins to squeeze the sides of his head together like a lemon. He attempts to cripple her with the sound frequency that drives his sister insane, but discovers that the device has been disabled. Whoops!

After Anna kills Freak, she chains White to the floor like Alexa was. He just laughs, and asks her why she hasn't killed him yet, and Anna replies that she plans to keep him around until she gets hungry. Then she pounces on him and begins biting chunks out of him until he either dies or passes out. My vote goes for "dies".

The movie ends with an assault on the building by a few guys that are the saddest-looking attack squad in the history of assault teams. They all fire on Anna, and we see one more shot of her videotaped confession, followed by a quick scene implying that the assault team botched her execution. THE END...?

Man, I hope so. This was just depressing to watch. Sure, on a technical level it was impressive...there was ample gore, many victims, a potentially interesting concept...but it had almost no plot, and incredibly shallow characters. And the worst part is, this is apparently a sequel! I'm almost tempted to rent the first one, just as an endurance test for my annoyance level. Almost. 1 out of 5 killer trees, with the single point awarded for the effects.

And what(ughhhh) did I learn from watching Death Factory: Bloodletting?

-Experimental drugs that glow in the dark are never good.

-Never trust a friendly Neo-Nazi.

-Being a mutant is great for your figure.

My next film will be Red Hook. It can't be as bad as this one, can it? Seriously...can it?