Jan 1, 2025

Monthly Media Recap - December 2024

Happy New Year!

I feel like I was a little "short" on movies this month. I usually try to cram in a few more holiday horrors but honestly, there's so many terrible ones out there I had a hard time bringing myself to try more than what I did. I've been playing a lot of Star Wars Outlaws (love it!) and watching a few series. I also found myself just not feeling like watching movies when I was looking for something to watch.


Series
The Creep Tapes (Shudder)
Did we need a prequel anthology series to 2014's wonderfully weird found footage, serial killer movie Creep? Not really but I'm glad we got it! Each of the short episodes give Mark Duplass another chance to show his talent as this socially awkward murderer. You don't need to see the movies prior to the series, but if you're a horror fan and haven't seen Creep, you're missing out.  
 
 
Hysteria (Peacock)
I don't usually do trailers for series but I really liked this and wanted to make sure more people are aware of it. As someone that enjoys heavy metal and was around during the 80s Satanic Panic, this was a must see. I was expecting it to be more poking fun at things but it surprised me by being low-key horror with an intriguing mystery. It seems like they left it open for a sequel which I wouldn't mind so they could explain a somewhat major thing that was just left out there.
 
Game Changers (Max)
An 8 part series looking at the history of popular video games like Minecraft, Madden, and Call of Duty and the companies like Nintendo, Sega, and Atari, that made them. I'm not the biggest fan of these franchises but from a gamer history angle, they were still interesting. There's also an episode about Monopoly, Operation, and Scrabble.
 
Movies



Not at all a movie. It's basically 40 minutes of clips from 11 Full Moon movies with a paper thin wraparound that feels like a marketing video for their line of blind box figures based on said movies. This one's on me for not watching a trailer first.
 
Rating: 2/10
 
I really enjoyed this! It's a solid family holiday fantasy. The cast was great all around. It might be kind of basic as the over all plot goes but it's got some holiday magic and the "curse" of having the 12 Days of Christmas come to life is a lot of fun.

Rating: 8/10
 
 
This could have been a lot more fun. It's a wacky idea yet the beast doesn't show up (or is even shown) enough. From the rubber mask look, I can understand why. The times it does pop in, either the hand-held camera jostles around or a comic book style narration box pops up to explain what you should be seeing. Despite the low budget, I think if they went harder on the comedy, it would be a good time.

Rating: 4/10



Another Asylum movie trying to cash in on a Hollywood success, this time it's 2017's Jumanji. It's not great, even by Asylum standards. I guess they're hoping you'll be more interested in watching the three girls than a standard beat em up video game story.

Rating: 4/10



Not only does it take place in the 80s but I feel like if you could slap a "worn out VHS" filter over it, you'd think you found a lost movie from the 80s. They do a lot of things right with making it feel like an 80s horror flick from the weird random things that happen to the bad plot (on purpose?) to the exposition scene explaining the origin of the big bad. Unfortunately, it's not as funny as the trailer wants you to think it is.

Rating: 6/10



"We have Zombieland at home." It's not terrible but it's also not great. I was more invested in the flashback stories than what was going on in the present day.

Rating: 5/10



This is an odd one. The majority (all?) of the comedy is audio based, from out of place animal noises in the woods to radio personalities providing meta-commentary on the movie. You could remove all that and have a fairly average slasher whodunit. Again, I was hoping for something more comedic based on a trailer.

Rating: 5/10
 
And here's all 113 movies I watched this year.
 

This Month
New: 7  Rewatch: 0
 
Year to Date
New: 107   Rewatch: 6

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