One of my favorite Shudder offerings since the streamer launched was 2017's TERRIFIED, from Argentine writer/director Demián Rugna. This week, Bloody Disgusting broke the news that Warner Bros. has recruited Alien: Earth and Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley to remake the film for American audiences. It’s the tale of a small group of paranormal investigators who, with the help of the local police commander, look into a block of suburban homes that seem haunted by the same uncanny entity. Rugna still appears to be involved creatively, so I hope we get a killer adaptation.

That’s what we’ll all be asking in 2027 when indie studio Bleeker Street unleashes their new survival horror film, WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US, starring PONIES and Game of Thrones actress, Emilia Clarke. DEADLINE reports that the source material is a 1980s novella by author Elizabeth Engstrom that follows a young woman (Clarke) who, after surviving 15 years trapped in an underground cave system, returns to the surface to reclaim the family she believes is hers, no matter the monstrous cost. This triggers me on multiple levels, so I’m looking forward to digging in when we learn more.

Occasionally, I’ll need more than a paragraph to talk about my weekly flick pics, and this, friends, is one of those times. 1991’s CAMP FEAR (not to be confused with CAPE FEAR, which was released the same year) is a movie that wants to be many other movies. Initially, it was pitched as a sequel to CHEERLEADER CAMP (1988), hence why Betsy Russell was cast. Then the project morphed into a survival-horror story about college girls fighting off a biker gang. But its plot eventually encompasses mad druid priests, indigenous shamanic prophecies, and yes, a “Loch Ness Monster.” It’s kind of hack these days to say, “this movie has everything,” but rarely do you come across a film that genuinely tries to include everything within its sub-90-minute runtime. It’s both overstuffed and under-realized all at the same time.

The opening few minutes don’t promise much beyond the endlessly looping health spa hold music over the stretched-out credits, and multiple excuses for direct-to-video nudity. But it turns out, this cold open was in fact directed by Fred Olen Ray, the King of DTV cheese, and wow, does it show. CAMP FEAR feels like the production earned money by elongating every scene in the hopes they would still have enough painfully slow dialogue sans nudity edits to fill the late-night slot at USA’s Up All Night. This film has the languid quality of a pure tax dodge, hoping to wash the cash of a local sanitation union money laundering chiropractor.

I could write about the truly bonkers details of this film for 5000 words, but here are just a few of the highlights:

The Westhille College for Women is in a mini-mall (established 1900).

Vincent Van Patten plays a Cultural Anthropology professor whose closet appears to be a clone of Color Me Badd’s touring wardrobe.

The movie features an extended Lambada (the Forbidden Dance) sequence that’s interrupted by an earthquake.

Of course, they receive warnings not to go to Deep Lake and Mystic Mountain. First from Buck Flower, repeating his “Crazier Ralph” character from FRIDAY THE 13th 3D, and then from a culturally insensitive, loincloth-wearing shaman who tells the group that the End Times are near. They don’t consider leaving for a nanosecond.

No single performer can convincingly portray the ground shaking from multiple earthquakes. Every time the bikers arrive, it’s to the tinniest version of Motley Crue imaginable. Every fight feels dangerously improvised, every line of dialogue painfully over-rehearsed. And that’s all before the Eegah-like giant Druid arrives, who bears a passing resemblance to Handsome Squidward, to stave off a millennial apocalypse!

Magical laptops, laser-assisted knife fights, virgin sacrifices… Camp Fear is a grab bag of horror and fantasy tropes that never stops introducing ideas, so it can avoid explaining or paying off previously introduced ideas. They don’t make cheap junk like this anymore, but they do stream it on Tubi! Check it out.

Just one meme that made us laugh this week…