Four petty criminals who film their violent crimes are strapped for cash, so they find a job to break into a creepy old house to steal a mysterious VHS tape. Once they’re inside, they slowly realize that this excursion might not be worth the money, as there is a dead man waiting for them in front of a wall of TVs and about a hundred tapes to go through. As they watch them, we see the tapes from their point of view and get to see what scares are in store every step of the way. Review VHS is a 2012 film with nine directors, with the most notable being Ti West (of X and Pearl), David Bruckner (The Ritual, The Night House), Adam Wingard (You’re Next), https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sa=X&sca_esv=c55caad1bf05249f&rls=en&biw=1228&bih=727&sxsrf=ACQVn0-NKdFvIS1z2MO4yznY6I0KzEq6_g:1706922528512&q=Matt+Bettinelli-Olpin&si=AKbGX_oBDfquzodaRrfbb9img4kPQ4fCBZjeqAiaW1svvC8uXlKnlUMePh9gcp6kKzawcmDzvwMyDj5qQjD2PUpbxhAuxIF1yRBH4yx2mYurA2h0w1hmx-09ppvBLOh3KkS65C2ropU6hTh6vhtakIOtsela9GbY2Jg5Bzr5lRVtEsDXZjxQr0npfNh14ZFMeEj6Q2AQ9Tdn6VsOocmdbfCCMVp0VrUk60dts6hqpFtmdv6L4iapXAuFXV-oYtEtNfKmRVlZpitHhB1-BXUMyR5C7V-2_Pd45oH2Zdm0AJUzCFxnaV1Id_I%3D&ved=2ahUKEwicgeL3_Y2EAxUujIkEHQv3CrkQmxMoAHoECCUQAgn and Tyler Gillet (Ready or Not and Scream 2022). This gaggle of directors comes together to launch their careers through five different tapes plus the main backdrop storyline to create a classic anthology film that sparked a franchise. This movie is included in the mumble-gore movement of the late aughts and early 10s, and perhaps is the most famous to come out of the genre. I have seen this film no less than six times, and while I rewatched it for this episode I realized that I knew it so well that I probably didn’t have to watch it again to recount it beat by beat and give it a score. To me, this is a modern horror classic. I really enjoy this movie, how it switches from a slowburn creep out to a ghost story to a slasher and so on. I think it is a great movie to get you into horror, it is a great movie to revisit, it is a great movie period. I am thoroughly entertained through every part of it, and even though not every tape is my favorite, I think all of it is very effective as a scary movie and I love the ambiguous ending. To quote my boyfriend when I told him what movie we were reviewing, “Oh so it’s a true syd classic.” It might be nostalgia, it might be the genotype, but whatever it is, I really love this movie. Score 9/10

Directed by Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla Minus One follows the story of Koichi (played by Kamiki Ryunosuke), a kamikaze pilot at the end of WWII who didn’t wanna go full kamikaze so he says that his plane is faulty and lands on Odo Island for repairs. Once there, a baby Godzilla arrives and decimates everyone, except for Koichi and Tachibana, the head repairman. Koichi eventually makes it back to his home in Tokyo to find that his parents are dead and Tokyo has been almost flattened by the war. Koichi encounters a girl named Noriko (played by Minami Hamabe) and she latches onto him for support for her and the baby she is carrying, and they become a happy family. A couple years later, Godzilla comes back, bigger and better than ever. Will Koichi defeat the monster? You’ll have to wait and see! Review This movie has it all. It had me laughing, crying, shocked, upset, and enthralled. To bounce from hard hitting emotional scenes to incredibly jarring and crazy action scenes and have it effortlessly flow is extremely difficult, yet director Yamazaki did it seamlessly. It was a wonderful movie that depicts Japan’s ruin and rebuilding after WWII, and how the war never left anyone’s minds even for a second. Oh, and Godzilla was absolutely killer. I have never seen another Godzilla movie in full before, but I can tell that they went back to the basics and kept what worked from the original and newer films. From the score, to the visual effects, to the character building, it was absolutely flawless. The Japanese invented Godzilla, it’s only right that they are the best at making films about it. Score 10/10

- Synopsis - When Kurt Russell's son is forced into retirement from the MLB, he and his family move to a new house with a pool. The pool ends up being a death trap for his family and the neighborhood. But not in the normal way, this pool is extra scary because… that’s right there’s no gate! But actually it gets worse, the pool is also haunted or something. - Review - Night Swim is produced by Jason Blumhouse, and like most of his horror movies, this one stays in the shallow end of the pool. The main features of Night Swim are recycled tropes from much better horror movies. You’ll recognise borderline theft of the IT sewer scene, and the father descending into madness ala The Shining and Amityville Horror. - It is an interesting concept to set a horror movie around a haunted pool. It taps into some latent fears about pools and deep water in general, but this movie definitely doesn’t crack the code and come up with a convincing premise. The ideas all seem half baked and made up as they went along. Is it a ghost? Are there many ghosts haunting the pool? Is the water an entity in itself? Is it a monkey's paw? Sure yeah, whatever. - So really the main thing that the film suffers from is a lack of commitment. There are many interesting ways you could go with it. Personally, I would have made the pool be haunted by the ghost of Marco Polo, and gone full horror comedy. - The dialogue is also pretty on the nose at times, and feels like a paint by numbers script. - There aren’t really any standout performances, but Kerry Condon as the mother is probably the most compelling and believable out of the cast. - It’s not a terrible movie, but is very predictable and as MAx and Sydney would call it, “mid”. - Score - 5/10