Right. Playing catch-up:
Child's Play 3 - Quite possibly the worst of the franchise (though I remember Seed being hacky and overly meta). Andy goes to military school and Chucky, once again resurrected with little to no fanfare this time, goes to track him down before realizing he doesn't need Andy anymore and goes after another kid instead(?). The Chucky one-liners aren't as good, the sets are all bland buildings and the woods and there's fewer opportunities for good puppet work. The whole thing seems cheap and formulaic compared to the previous movies and the little kid is an annoying cliche. Waste of a small weird performance from Andrew Robinson (of Hellraiser fame) and most of the kids are boring and one-note. I guess I take back what I said about the Chucky franchise being the most consistently decent of the slasher movies.
When Evil Lurks - Terrific demonic possession movie from Argentina. Two brothers in a rural town stumble upon a family whose son is possessed by "the rotten", an evil presence that slowly corrupts everything around it and a series of mistakes leads to a lot of bad shit happening.
I don't want to give too much away but the movie is very well-written and is as much about the broken family dynamics of the two brothers as it is the well-fleshed-out but not overly explained demon lore. There is some truly disturbing stuff that happens as the influence of the rotten starts impacting the people (and animals) around the two brothers. It's smart, it has great practical fx gore and goo (but never gets overtaken by it to become silly) and it's not afraid to go to some dark, DARK places. Can't wait to see what else the director gets up to next.
Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell - Cheap Evil Dead knockoff from Japan filmed on VHS, written, directed, edited, produced and starring one dude. The titular bodybuilder, his girl and his friend (who claims to be a ghost whisperer of some kind) goes to his father's spooky abandoned house where his father buried his psycho ex in the floorboards. Psycho ex possesses his friend and they spend the next 45 minutes farting around, ripping off Evil Dead scenes and lines between doing generic Japanese ghost stuff. The story of the making of the movie is honestly more interesting and fun than anything in the movie itself (dude filmed the movie in the early 90s and took the better part of two decades trying to finish it and it's become a late-night cult movie... a very "little engine that could" story with a happy ending).
The movie itself is a slog. It's got some decent special fx shots and it wears its inspirations very much on its sleeve but it's amateurish and has very little of the energy or the creative spark of the things it's aping. It is always fun to see American entertainment through the lens of other cultures though and would make for prime fodder for movie YouTube channels.
