I.

I had nothing planned for I. There is a significant gap on both my horror shelf and my foreign shelf for the letter I. Which is fine, it means I get to explore. I love exploring horror movies. It does slow me down though because I have to find and watch things. Luckily for me, I haven’t faltered yet in this project, so I am still way ahead of the schedule (It’s my illusion, don’t burst it.) There was one movie I wanted to do.

I did not have time to do the choose your own adventure method before writing this up. Time has not been my friend.

And to be honest, this movie feels just as low budget as it is. The setup for why the house is haunted felt forced and the characters were not super interesting. Only the birthday girl had any sort of back story. Oddly, the most impressive moment for me was the twine unspooling and wrapping the package on its own. Nice stop motion work. A little herky jerky, but that made it better. The practical F/X were all pretty good, but to be expected from someone who went to the Tom Savini makeup school.

If you enjoy dipping into a low budget splatter sort of movie, you could do worse than this. I do want to follow up and see what Tony has done in the 15+ years since this was made.

Yeah. Weird. I agree. Anyway, he suggest a game where they all are randomly swapped and then try to guess who is in which body. You will notice that there is no gender swapping, the guys don’t get to jump into a girl’s body. That would have certainly led to some sexual depravity. Oh wait, there is sexual depravity. Because in the first round of body swaps, there is a guy who takes advantage of not being in his own body to try and hook up with the body of the girl he has lusted after for a long time, so much so that he can’t have a normal relationship with his girlfriend.

This brings up some wild questions about all sorts of things. Because two people could have sex in the bodies of other people, leaving those bodies to have potential repercussions of those acts.

Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself to round two. Because the guy who is about to get married still lusts after one of the college girls. He figures out which body she is in and they do start having sex. So it isn’t the bodies of the other people they are wanting sexually, but the consciousness inside that body. I love you for your mind has never been more true than in this moment. And yes, I was wondering if we were going to see (experience?) a gender swap consciousness leading to sex with the wow factor of how that would work. But I may be getting ahead of myself with that. Not really, because the only sex is these two, and they are doing it on a balcony. Precariously. Until the balcony collapses and there is less doing it and more plummeting to ones death. Well to twos death.

But now what? So two people just died inside the bodies of two other people. Leaving six people still swapped and rather shocked. As two of them literally just saw their bodies die. And now the question is what next. Well naturally they should all return to their bodies with the two “odd man out” people being in the bodies of the ones who died. sorta. It makes sense if you think hard. But the guy who saw his body die is adamant that he doesn’t want to swap back. Wait? What? Why? It makes sense dude. Yeah, you are out your proper body, but there are six of you. Two are gonna have to adjust, but the other four should be allowed to go back.

And then things get really crazy and out of hand. For the first 45 minutes of this movie, you could easily be watching while only partially paying attention. But then you have to fully engage, and even then you aren’t going to be knowing what the hell is going on. Because the nature of people not being who they look like is wild.

Watch this. It is intriguing. And just the sort of messing with your mind movie that I love.

The setup for this is a fairly routine one. A family (mom, dad, daughter) return to the mom’s family home. Her mom is comatose and in need of special care and attention. Her sister can only do so much, so collectively they need to be there for their mother. But their mother wasn’t a very good person. And has mystical abilities. Even comatose, the grandmother is able to influence the young daughter and begins corrupting her.

How much should I reveal here? Let’s go with lots. Because there is a moment I wish had played out differently. The daughter is not just being influenced by the comatose grandmother, she is being possessed by her. And things get crazy as she becomes more and more under her influence.

When the mom realizes what is happening to her daughter, she tries to stop it, but the grandmother (as the child) threatens to kill the husband if she tries to tell him what is going on. She does anyway, and it turns into open conflict.

And here is where I wanted a different path. There aren’t enough movies made where the bad guy gets to win. And this movie I think would have been better to let the bad comatose grandma win. There is a moment where the dad is potentially dead and the grandma has control of the young girl, getting ready to kill the mom.

And I want this to be the end. No happy ending. Evil comatose grandma fully swaps into the body of the young girl leaving her trapped in the dying body after having been instrumental in killing her dad and mom. Brutal story telling moment. But alas, the filmmakers didn’t opt for the tough decision. Dad isn’t dead and comes to moms rescue. But possessed daughter attacks dad and winds up getting thrown out the third floor window! What’s this? Do we have a traumatic feel bad ending after all? No, she survives the fall. And then with everyone in the hospital, the young girl brings the spirit of her grandfather in to escort grandma to the afterlife. Happy endings all around. Well, except for the sister who was killed and buried by the young girl (and an accomplice who may or may not exist.)

I realize that I may be in the minority with wanting this to have had a much darker ending. But sometimes the bad guy should win. The idea of the good guys having to win every time, but the bad guys only have to win once. And yet in most stories, the bad guys don’t prevail. I mean, they may kill a bunch of people. So for those people I guess the bad guy did prevail. I may need to evaluate this concept in more depth.

So that’s it for this installment of Alphabetical Horrors and the letter I. Tune in tomorrow for a special installment where we jump ahead to the letter J. (Ok, that is just doing the next one. Whatever. Just come back and see what movies make the cut.)