Trash 2023 — OCTHORROR

As a genre fan, one is often subjected to some of the worst offenses committed to celluloid. The horror genre is described as the cheapest and easiest for aspiring filmmakers to breakout from, thus every year the landscape is littered with woeful attempts. More egregious are the studio films with decent budgets, director, casts that yet commit to atrocious scripts and derivative tales, squandering possible potential into something worthless. Here is a quick roundup of some of the worst offenders 2023 has to offer:

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Children of the Corn (2023)

There are now nine of these films, with each entry more uninspired and insipid than the last. This is certainly the pinnacle of that trend, the weakest entry in a stagnant franchise. This is arguably the third ‘origin story’ they’ve attempted, adding cursory elements of current ecological fears and political commentary in an attempt to engage with new audiences, but I cannot imagine a success scenario for it. While some of the earlier films are objectively worse in terms of script, acting, effects, this movie has a quality director, a decent cast of hard-working actors, and a good budget that all get squandered by an atrocious script. This film makes a very strong argument for finally eradicating the fields and salting the earth of this franchise.

House of Inequity (2021)

This serves more of a showcase of gruesome makeup effects and depravity. Most scenes are borderline torture porn, with several crossing the border. These scenes are genuinely horrifying, and hard to watch the purposeful suffering inflicted, but even these scenes pale in comparison to the absolute mind-numbing plot, braindead characters and atrocious dialog.

Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)

The animated introduction to this film is the only element worthwhile in its unfortunate runtime. There is no reason or rationale this film should have been anything more than a 10 minute short. The filmmakers are admittedly motivated simply to make exploitive grindhouse takes of disney properties fallen into public domain. It is an easy and cheap cash-grab, made on a shoestring budget, but ensuring profitability by the audacity of the premise guaranteeing an element of morbid curiosity draws in viewers. It looks cheap, feels dirty, and ends abruptly, without resolution but with the cynical intention of simply churning out sequels to this grotesquerie, likely funding the illicit substances inspiring it.

Hex (2022)

I have witnessed a remarkable amount of sketchy pitches and dumb ideas, but this… Is exceptional. The plot centers around a cursed skydiving maneuver which plays out more incomprehensibly and far less cool than it sounds. Even when you think you might have a grasp on what the plot is, the film pulls out inane ‘twists’ which render all previous knowledge moot but equally unengaging. There’s little to recommend here. There are many many scenes of skydiving. If repetitive scenes of people falling from planes does anything for you, you might derive a modicum of pleasure from these moments. However the rest of the film is a nigh incomprehensible mess that thinks it is clever.

The King In Yellow (2023)

This is beyond amateur hour filmmaking. Student films carry higher production values, and supposedly the director spent years crafting this. What is kind of hilarious, is this is a fairly accurate adaptation of Robert Chamber’s sequence of stories, but without the budget to achieve much of its ambition. This would be better served as stage play (which unto itself would be fitting) which could excuse the overzealous acting, the bad effects, the poor audio, direction and lighting. As it stands, one would benefit far greater from reading Impossible Landscapes than committing to this film.

The Ones You Didn't Burn (2023)

In making female-empowerment torment fantasy, it should be advised maybe not to make the victim sympathetic and the enactors abrasive and abusive. Within moments of the running time the targeted character is characterized as tormented by his own demons, yet demonstrating an undercurrent of humanity, even enduring madness, affliction, and suffering. Whatever message the filmmakers might have hoped for gets quickly lost, and while the settings are gorgeous, the direction is far from it.

The Outwaters (2022)

This is like a more adult cousin of Skinamarink, after a hard life of meth and hallucinogens. This film possesses some of the most egregiously poor examples of the found footage gimmick, with an uncompromising adherence to telling an incomprehensible story. It is impossible to decypher and probably not worth the time. They are going for a similar ‘liminal nightmare’ feeling, possibly involving time loops, government experiments, acts of atrocity, otherworldly entities, but nothing really makes sense. There is copious scenes of gore and torture, but its almost impossible to tell exactly what’s going on both in terms of writing and visual. Most of it is dark and obscured, the rest: red and wet and nasty, and possibly full of worms.

Beyond the Gates of Hell (2023)

This movie is short, which is the best compliment I can pay. It is only 42 minutes long, but feels an eternity longer. It very much so wants to present as a Fulci homage/throwback, specifically aping ‘From Beyond,’ but with wretched effects, sketchy direction and even worse acting.