The 6th Friend

 

A Friend In Bleed

The 6th Friend
USA 2016
Directed by Letia Clouston

Okay, so I started watching The 6th Friend as a recommendation from the Shockwaves podcast, which I’ve been listening to for a little while now.* I walked into this one thinking that it was going to be a horror movie but it’s not actually. What it is really is one of those slasher/thrillers which the Americans seem to do so much worse at than the Italians and, frankly, the genre is not one of my favourites (give me a giallo any day) but, having said that, this one plays really well. Of course, the title of the movie somewhat gives the obvious ‘twist reveal’ something of a shout out from the get go but, it’s not a film about surprises... it’s just a nicely, competently put together genre entry which has a certain charm about it compared to many.

So the film starts off with six friends... Joey (played by Jamie Bernadette), Chantelle (Melissa White), Heather (Dominique Swain), Katie (Jessica Morris), Sahara (Tania Nolan) and Becca (Monique Rosario). The girls are having a girly party night in and doing all the drinks etc. Then Becca’s ‘drug connection’ guy brings them all some drugs (I think it’s probably acid? I don’t know about this stuff) and the seven of them party. And then something happens which you don’t see on camera (until it’s revealed much later in the movie) but, you know the girls have got bloody and suffered through some kind of traumatic episode. 

Cut to five years later and one of girls brings the estranged Joey to a borrowed cabin in the woods, where the friends will try and patch things up, hopefully regain their old friendships and heal old wounds. Things don’t go as smoothly as planned though, as there are arguments and the girls all admit to seeing a certain dead person from that night when they are off guard. Then, one of the girls leaves and gets stabbed up by a psycho, who then starts to try and pick the girls off one by one in an affair that seems like a supernatural revenge killing at first. However, like I said, it’s not a horror film and only flirts with those genre tropes. I’m not going to describe the plot line anymore but that’s the set up.

There are a number of good things which make the film stand out though. One of which is the six actresses playing the friends, who seem to have good chemistry and, bearing in mind I’m male and not really privy to what goes on at a girly night out, the dialogue sounded pretty authentic to my ears.

Some of the lighting and shot designs are kinda cool too. There’s a lovely bit of set dressing on one of the bedrooms in the cabin which has unusual angles made by the sloping roof over it and they’ve dressed it so the wallpaper has vertical stripes, which of course accentuates these off kilter angles and makes the room, when filmed from certain positions, look like something out of The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari. So that was nice.

Oh, and the last thing I want to mention as a huge positive on what is turning out to be a very short review is the music composed by Holly Amber Church. It’s actually very much like the lower key moments of John Carpenter’s score for his own movie The Fog at various points and I felt really connected to this one. It raises the bar for this film because, often so many of these smaller films don’t have a good score to support and highlight the atmosphere but this one is pretty good (and it’s a shame there’s no CD release of it). 

There are also some slight negatives to the movie, such as how quickly the girls are scattered into individuals to allow themselves to get picked off rather than going for the whole safety in numbers bit but, it’s a means to an end to keep the movie going, I guess... so I can’t complain. The end twist also seemed a little unsatisfying because, like I said earlier, you can kind of see it coming and the little epilogue to the conclusion of the movie is nice but doesn’t really say a heck of a lot.

All that being said, though, I found The Sixth Friend to be a very entertaining watch and mostly had a good time with it. If you are into slasher type films then this would probably satisfy on ticking most of your slasher boxes and, like I said, the actresses are all pretty good and certainly easy on the eye. Definitely worth checking out one rainy evening when you’ve got nothing else on. 

*At time of writing, during the pandemic lockdown. It’s now been replaced by Colors Of The Dark (sic) podcast, which is also really great.

Crabs!

Crustacean
Extreme

Crabs!
USA 2021
Directed by Pierce Berolzheimer
Young Gunner Films

Warning: Spoilers scuttling up the shore...

Right then... Crabs! This is not, as you might be expecting, a movie adaptation of one of Guy N. Smith’s many novels focusing on the misadventures of giant crustaceans. Instead, this movie depicts the menace as being the humble horse shoe crab, which is incidentally a very important crab used for various medical purposes due to the properties of its blue, coppery blood. A lot of that blood will be spilled throughout the movie, contrasting nicely with the huge amounts of the usual red variety as various people’s faces (and other things) are devoured by the little beach dwellers.

Set in the small, coastal town of Mendocino, the film focuses on the wheelchair bound, boy genius Philip (Dylan Riley Snyder), his equally smart girlfriend Maddy (Allie Jennings), Phil’s policeman brother Hunter (Bryce Durfee), Maddy’s school teacher mother Annalise (Jessica Morris) and their odd, foreign stereotype of a friend Radu (played by Chase Padgett in a movie stealing turn as he gives one of the most politically incorrect but absolutely hilarious performances you just don’t see actors getting away with today... heck, he even sings the ludicrous “It’s Crabs” song on the end titles).

After a bizarre scene with huge chimney stacks blowing up, showing just how cheap and nasty the CGI effects of the movie are, we switch back to the practical effects work which comprises most of the movie, as a young couple who are having noisy sex on the beach are attacked by a horseshoe crab... losing most of their faces in the process. Even this moment is comically timed as, when the girl grabs a rock to bash the crab mauling away at her boyfriend’s face, the crab jumps off just as she brings the rock down, pulping her lovers head even more. It’s all about timing folks and I can only imagine how this moment must have brought the house down with laughter when it screened at FrightFest a couple of years ago.

And, yeah, it’s a really great little movie, as various horseshoe crabs go on the rampage at the local high school’s prom night, some of them metamorphosising into giant versions of themselves, while our tireless heroes try and concoct a remedy for the menace, plus the new ‘super giant’ crab monster heading their way (I’m not sure why... I suspect the science was less than credible by this point in the film but, who cares, just go with it) as the film suddenly drifts into kaiju territory and the young tyke Phil constructs a giant exoskeleton in his garage to get all Pacific Rim on their ass... or whatever a crab’s ass is called.

It’s a very funny movie too... the smaller crabs (not the giant ones, which are much less of an impressive practical effect... man in suit, folks!) have their own personalities and it does get a bit like Gremlins in tone in some scenes, such as when the crabs are seen living it up in a local bar and even playing with the crane grabber machine. Not to mention the moment when a crab doesn’t like the DJ’s choice of music at the high school dance... so it eat’s the DJs face off, dons his hat, works the turntables and starts hitting the crowd with some ‘fresher’ tunes!

It’s true some of the effects are not really up to it (demonstrating the low budget nature of the affair) and there are some moments which are perhaps, a little on the bad taste side (if you believe in bad taste) but, ultimately, the film delivers a mix of outrageously over-the-top comedy coupled with, what everyone wants in their film, a warm beating heart at the centre of the movie.

My one criticism of the film was that, in a few scenes, composer Mike Trebilcock’s score does tend to overplay the comedy element musically when, the movie is funny enough in that those scenes might have played better supported by a straighter score, rather than a series of musical cues that are trying to score the humour. It’s just a little too ‘on the nose’ in certain scenes but, yeah, at other times it’s just right so, like any movie where the fast and furious stream of comedy gags can be hit and miss, the same can be said of the score here on some occasions.

And I have nothing much more ot say here about Crabs!, I think, other than the film doesn’t quite outstay its welcome and it kept me entertained throughout. Definitely one which will please the legion of fans who like comedy horror movies done right. It’s not exactly subtle but, yeah, how subtle could a movie called Crabs! truly be, in all honesty? I had a good time with this one.