A new, twenty-film watch-a-thon, this time looking at horror films from around the world. The rules are the same — they must be films I haven’t seen before, and they must be free to stream.

With a bit of luck, this new watch project will feature a lot more quality films as I unearth horror from around the globe. With that said…

Sick Nurses – Thailand – (2007)

Hey there, you. Fancy watching a film about six sexy nurses who sell body parts on the side getting offed by a vengeful ghost? Would you like your story with a side of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, in an unspecified setting save a remarkably under-populated hospital? Would you like this tale to be at once hilarious and downright ghastly, with lashings of gore and death by handbag?

How about some frenetic filmmaking with surreal set-pieces, bizarre lighting, and a scary, long-haired spirit who looks like she’s doing a Vogue spread?

Well, have I got the film for you!

My expectations weren’t super high going into this one, but by thunder they were exceeded. Cheesy, brutal, ridiculous, and featuring more inappropriate nurse uniforms than should legally be permitted, Sick Nurses is a blast. I bloody loved it.

Totally recommended — find it on Tubi!

9/10

GonJiam: Haunted Asylum – Korea – (2018)

Following the recent news that this film was getting a remake, and its enthusiastic following on various found-footage boards, I figured I’d take a look at this one, despite having been burned already by The Entity, which tells a similar story.

I’m happy to report that, far from being the confused snooze-fest that was the previous film, GonJiam does everything so much better, with some genuine scares along the way.

A bunch of ghosthunters with an online show decide to investigate GonJiam Asylum (a real place) to look for the supposed ghosts and other supernatural entities said to inhabit its crumbling corridors.

The four dudes bring along a trio of women who are fans of the show, and who don’t know that they are only there to be the unwilling victims of the group’s staged happenings.

Naturally, it all goes to hell.

I’ve said it before, a found-footage film has to be bloody good to win me over; I can count the number of them I actually like on one hand, but this one does it really well. It helps that the group brings a load of high-tech audio and video gear, plus plenty of lights, so that when we are subjected to 90 mins of grainy shaky-cam we can at least figure out what’s going on. It’s a slow build-up, but when it all pops off it does so with tremendous ferocity and a couple of skin-crawling set-pieces.

Pretty decent effort all round, and some great acting.

You can find it on Tubi or Prime.

8/10

Vamps (Ghouls) – Russia – (2017)

Underworld via 18th Century Russia might be one way to describe this bit of fluff, but that would be a disservice to Underworld, which at least tried to give us a bit of lore and character backstory. Instead, we are fed a breakneck tale (88 mins) that plays a little like a Russian version of Captain Kronos, but with none of the charm.

Comparisons aside, this story is about a peasant village (cleanest peasants EVER) that is occasionally pestered by the undead. A vampire prince by the name of Biscoff or Biscotti or something has been recently resurrected, and he wants to turn the world into bloodsuckers. Unfortunately, the sun means he has to work half days. Fortunately, there is a girl in the village who is a day walker, and if he drinks her blood, he will be able to put in some overtime.

Into this thin plot is thrust Andrej, a dashing yet terminally dull swashbuckler, and his trusty sidekick, Paramon. They become embroiled in this bloody kerfuffle as soon as Andrej sets eyes on Milena, the half-vampire beauty who looks like she has just stepped off a Maybelline advert. Bats and swordfights ensue.

It’s all very slight, and could have benefitted from a bit of script beefing-up (although I suspect the lackluster dubbing didn’t help). Also, a few interesting ideas go nowhere; some ancient vampires are brought to life to do nothing, and Milena’s character had the potential to be interesting, until she was relegated to damsel.

Ho hum.

5/10

The Coffee Table – Spain – (2022)

One of those films that gets mentioned only for its shock value, but it’s much more than that.

Remember that Hitchcock quote? The one about creating tension by placing a bomb under a cafe table, and having the viewer be the only one privy to its existence? This is a prime example of ‘privileged position,’ and The Coffee Table exploits this to the nth degree.

The film opens with new parents, Jesus and Maria, bickering in a furniture store over a coffee table that Jesus wants to buy. From this opening exchange, we can see that their marriage is in trouble, and perhaps their new baby will bring them closer together. Jesus gets his way, and brings the table home to assemble while Maria goes shopping for lunch items, as Jesus’ brother and his teen girlfriend will be stopping by later.

THEN THE MOST HORRENDOUS THING HAPPENS.

Not saying what — but let me assure you that every single line of dialogue that is uttered from then on, every glance from Jesus, hits like a blunt steak mallet to your skull. Compounding this is an infatuated 13-yr-old in the same building, who threatens to implicate Jesus in a fictional affair. It’s a tortuous watch, yet it’s billed as a horror comedy, and I can see why. Sometimes you are confronted by something so horrific, so unthinkable, that laughter is the only outcome (as your mind snaps).

It’s a brilliant bit of manipulative filmmaking, and I’m excited to see what director Caye Casas does next.

I do recommend it, but I advise caution. (PM me if you are curious).

You can find it on Tubi.

10/10

Draug – Sweden – (2018)

I do love a good Viking horror tale, and this one almost hits the spot, despite a few drawbacks.

It’s a simple story. During the last years of the Viking age, Christianity has slowly seeped into Scandinavia, and while some pagan communities still hold out, missionaries are on the rise. Enter Hokor and his young ‘fosterling,’ Nanna. They have been charged with finding out what happened to a missionary and his group who were headed North toward Norway.

They join forces with Kettil, one of Hokor’s old pillaging buddies, and together they set off with a band of tough buggers to track down the missing folk. It isn’t long before their journey takes them into the darkest of forests, rife with tales of the undead (the Draugr), and it all goes horribly wrong. There’s a good reason why Nanna is on this mission too — her first — and one that will lead them back to her birthplace.

On the plus side, everything about the production and costume design is spot on. The actors all embody their characters, and the dialogue is fantastic. Unfortunately, the directors, Klas Persson and Karin Engman, really didn’t have the budget for the epic they wanted to film, and it shows. The fight scenes are lackluster, and the spooky parts, shot mainly using day for night, are muddled and hard to follow. Still, it’s a decent effort, and recommended for fans of grizzled warriors.

Find it on Tubi.

7/10

Red Rooms – Canada (Quebec) – (2023)

Maybe not as foreign as some of the entries on my list, but they do speak a strange and incomprehensible language, so as far as I’m concerned, it counts.

Juliette Gariépy plays Kelley-Anne, a part-time model and e-poker player, who lives most of her life online in Montreal, and is tech-savvy enough to reach the parts of the internet most of us have only heard of. We meet her waking up having slept on the street in order to be first in line to get into the court gallery for the trial of the century. A man called Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), is on trial for the kidnapping and murder of three teenage girls, whom he has allegedly killed during livestreams for paying customers in the cruelest corners of the dark web, the ‘Red Rooms.’

Kelley-Anne seems fascinated with Chevalier, and makes up part of a small contingency of groupies that is intent on spending every day of the 8-week trial in the same room as the grieving families. She befriends a fellow fan, Clementine (played brilliantly by Laurie Babin), who believes Chevalier is innocent, and may actually be besotted with him. Together they learn much about themselves and each other, as daily revelations reveal the true extent of the terrible crime.

The first half of the film takes place almost exclusively in the court room, and what could have been boring legal procedure is made engrossing by excellent directing choices from Pascal Plante. As the second half of the film descends into a murkier world, and the emotional effect on the characters, the two main actors really shine, and can see why they both received a lot of praise last year.

It’s a harrowing watch, especially when we are made to be spectators as the families are shown video of their daughters’ last moments — thankfully we are spared images, but the sounds and reactions are horrifying. It’s a two-hour film, and as I started watching late, I figured I would do it in a couple of one-hour chunks.

Not to be.

I was mesmerized by the story unfolding, and Juliette Gariépy’s dead-eyed stare. She actually reminded me a lot of Patrick Bateman (not a spoiler BTW), and her scenes with the polar-opposite Laurie Babin were extraordinary.

Recommended, if only for one watch. I saw it on Crave (MAX).

8/10

I reach the end of this current film watch-a-thon with the original version of a successful remake last year.

This collection of 20 films has had the best ratings (from me) of any of the previous lists, which speaks volumes about the quality of the films, and reminds me to watch more international cinema.

Speak No Evil – Denmark – (2022)

“There are only two things I can’t stand in this world: People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.” — Nigel Powers.

In this original version of the recent muscley McAvoy remake, Bjørn and Louise, a Danish couple along with their daughter, Agnes, hit it off immediately while on holiday in Italy with a Dutch family, Patrick and Karin and their young son, Abel. They get on so famously in fact, that Patrick and Karin invite them to stay for a weekend at their remote home in the Dutch countryside.

“Why not?”, they say, and so begins a slow descent into hell, concluding in true horror. The atmosphere throughout is dripping with uncomfortable moments, at first attributed to cultural differences, but later confirmed to be the result of unhinged minds.

For many viewers there is an obvious reason for the film’s title, but it’s the impotence of Bjørn, utterly afraid to say anything that might offend his hosts despite his wife’s discomfort, that is the central theme.

It’s a story about power and the people who wield it, and the others that accept it. Really well made, and a shocking ending — definitely worth a look or a comparison with the remake.

If another great film, Spoorloos (1988), taught me anything, it’s never trust a friendly Dutchman.

You can find the original Speak No Evil on Prime.

9/10

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Foreign Bodies, Part I
Foreign Bodies, Part II
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?
Fan of the Cave Bear
There, Wolves
What a Croc
Prehistrionics
Jumping the Shark

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Neil Baker’s last article for us was Part II of Foreign Bodies. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits. (AprilMoonBooks.com).