Shudder Crud: Cool Kids and Creepy Crawlies

Check it out now, It's your Shudder Soul Brudder with anudder mudder fuggin Blug. This one's got bugs, slugs, and adolescent thugs. I'm talking about movies, ya mugs.

Phenomena

I can not review Phenomena as a critic, I can only review it as a real human boy. I love this fucking movie. Every frame of it. I don’t know if it’s my favorite movie, but every time I watch it I feel certain that it’s the greatest film ever made. 

First of all, you’ve got a young Jennifer Connelly, easily one of the top 5 babes of all time, and she’s in this little dorm room that looks incredibly comfy and somehow nostalgic. There’s so much great scenery in this film, it’s an Argento flick so of course it looks and sounds amazing. The soundtrack is completely fucking mental and unhinged. There’s great atmospheric synth music, but it also explodes into pointless heavy metal at totally random moments that don’t even seem to fit, but that just adds to the charm. 

Jen (I can call her Jen because in my mind we’re old friends with a deep bond) has a special power in this movie. She can talk to bugs, and she uses this power to solve a mystery and catch a very scary killer. Also, there’s a razor wielding ape, and a hideous mutant child, and the most disgusting scene you will ever see in your entire life when Jen falls into a yucky cesspool of maggoty rotting hell. No other film has ever been simultaneously so lovely and so vile. 

Someday i will marry Jennifer Connelly, and if i can’t, then i will have to settle for marrying this movie. None of you are invited to the wedding. It will just be me and her, and her 10,000 bugs.

Hellbender

Very cool and unique flick about an isolated teen living in the woods and playing in a 2 piece metal band with her mom, and eventually discovering that she is in fact a supernatural monster. It’s one of those “turning into a monster as a metaphor for adolescence” movies, which isn’t that unique, but something about the tone here stands out, and the story goes in some unexpected directions. 

I like that instead of just making them something generic like witches, some effort was made to come up with a new kind of monster. The movie describes them as a cross between “a witch, a demon, and an apex predator”. So there’s an animalistic werewolf kind of element to it. A “Hellbender” is basically a were-witch who eats worms. The little hints of lore are interesting and i wish there were more. 

She gains power from eating living things, so the mom keeps her vegan to hide all of this from her, because eventually a Hellbender eats its mother. So the movie becomes this weird series of bonding moments between them where the mom is teaching her all this stuff but also trying to keep things from her as long as possible, cause she doesn’t want to get eaten. It’s an interesting little conflict, and the way it ends is disturbingly memorable.

Children of The Corn

A classic of Stephen King’s B material. It might not be a Shining or Stand level masterpiece, but something about this one is just iconic and cool. The setting of a cornfield containing something evil is conceptual perfection, the music is great, and the kids are effectively creepy. Especially that lanky ginger freak who yells "OUTLANDER! " like it's a Skyrim dragon shout. He's awesome.

This kid scares the fuck out of me and i fully believe he'd kick my ass.

Is this flick a little bit corny? Sure, but if anything earns the right to be corny, it’s the goddamn Children of The motherfucking Corn.