Reviews

Where to begin...this movie has all of the horror tropes onboard: college 'kids' (who are all clearly in their mid thirties), a group excursion to another country, weed, a camping trip, woods, mysterious people who aren't ever explained, blood-drenched knives, random gunshots being fired in the woods by nobody, floating shovels - ok those are a bit novel and one of the highlights of the hilarity, and just wait until you see the aftermath of the shovel victim - a creepy kid, a felled tree blocking the road, becoming lost in the woods, unseen hit and run motorists, the same reused shot of the moon in the sky, night after night, a lantern falling over and burning down a cabin, woods that even in the clear daytime have heavy smoke coming from and going in all directions, and possibly the worst thunder and lightning you've seen since a B-movie from the late 1920s - holy heck does this one run the gamut.

We weren't terrified, nor even scared, and the few weak attempts at a jump scare fell flat with us, but as a campy horror movie, there's a lot to laugh about in this one.

Armand Assante steals the few scenes he's in, and the hunter is the only other good actor here. Although English isn't his native language, the middle-eastern actor portraying the hunter has impeccable English and is more convincing an actor than anyone else present. You'll want Tommy to die early on, but tough luck - you will have to suffer his incessant whining about EVERY FREAKING THING until near the end. Odd too is how the dialogue almost seems dubbed in English over everyone speaking English, as if a lot of the dialogue was re-recorded in post. The scenery is sometimes great and other times seems like it was shot in the woods behind your aunt's home, and there are some out of focus shots and one VERY out if focus shot, the aforementioned overuse of smoke here there and everywhere, a pitiful script, and some C-movie special effects round out the rest of this turkey.

Oddly, there's a symphony orchestra playing music thru much of it, which seems very out of place at times. I think they blew the budget on Armand and the orchestra, and made do with what they found in the couch cushions and under the car seats for the rest of it.

This is one to have some friends over, pour the beer and wine, and laugh at the absurdity of this clown car of a movie, and really enjoy the few scenes that make you laugh so hard that it almost feels like this movie is what gave the Wayans inspiration to make Scary Movie.

Sitting here waiting for S2E3 to pop up on my Paramount+ and thought I would come here and chime in on my #1 favorite episode of the show, an ep that I've seen about 7x now I think. It's a laugh-out-loud ep for sure.

Utkarsh should get an Emmy for nailing the character of Hetty so effectively. The way he rolled in and out of the Jay and Hetty characters from one moment to the next was some top-shelf acting. He had Hetty down pat and so impressively that at times I have to remind myself that's NOT Hetty's voice speaking but Utkarsh portraying Jay possessed by Hetty. Give that man all of the awards.

Also - Enrico Colantoni (Elliot from Just Shoot Me) shows up as a fussy and hyper-critical wedding planner, and is soon quelled by Flower who gets him absolutely baked out of his gourd.

...but these 'zombies' wield weapons, are hell-bent on revenge, and kill indiscriminately and without motive. They do seemingly meander and silently putter around like brain-dead zombies a lot of the time, even crawling on the ground like zombies and staring with dead eyes, then other times they seem like they could keep pace with Usain Bolt.

This movie would've went a bit differently if made in the US; the mom could surprisingly handle a pistol with no problem, but in hand-to-hand she always gave up without much of a fight. Even the strapping, farm-working, manual-labor dad was far too passive, and also didn't have much fight in him. An 85 year-old man that weighed maybe a buck twenty took dad down with no problem and kept him there. And there are oddly lots of large shards of broken glass lying around, well, everywhere, and seems to be the weapon of choice for the blue-haired crowd - who themselves never seem to slice their bare hands while going mental and stabbing someone 87 times with said large glass shard.

That aside, there were some interesting twists and turns the movie takes along its journey but at the end it still felt unfinished. Perhaps there will be a 2nd one to continue the story further? Nonetheless, a somewhat enjoyable romp through the woods, creepy old houses, a dark, dank tunnel, and some dilapidated retirement homes.

A few jump scares, plenty of gore, and some too-drawn-out scenes that attempt to build suspense but didn't always succeed. And what was with the oldest woman who was here, there, and everywhere in the wedding dress? Her character never developed, nor brought anything to the table beyond soulless, menacing stares. The very many wheelchair-stricken oldsters didn't appear to join in on their apocalypse, so who knows what became of the dozens of them seen early on - maybe their wheelchairs got stuck in the mud in the woods.

I don't see how the elderly could bring on the apocalypse in real life, but if the non-geriatric German folk truly have that little fight in them, then it's certainly a great place for them to get started.

The final episode certainly felt rushed with the turbos kicked in, the previous three had a more palatable pacing and the whole storyline easily could've been worthy of its own entire season. The actors portraying Nixon, Kissinger, and especially Neal McDonough's Eisenhower were spot on.

I like how these 4 eps at times held up the mirror to the face of humanity - and allowed it to sit there so the viewer could process and digest it and, undeniably so, conclude what was being shown was true no matter how inconvenient it is - and also invited some various and often-cited conjecture into the fray, especially about Ike's purported factual involvement with aliens, and Marilyn's murder.

We're all entitled to our own opinions, and I earnestly respect that of those I don't agree with, but here I feel Death Valley was far and away superior to Red Tide which dragged on far too long and unnecessarily [I'd grown almost instantly tired of wanting that monstrous, wretched daughter of theirs to just die already to the point of distraction - so by the end I was quite disappointed that I never received the satiation I was craving], IMHO anyway.

However, YMMV. ✌🏻