Welcome to another daily horror digest from Creepy Catalog. There’s no news to catch up on, but I have a lot to say about today’s movie of the day! So much that I did a full, separate review in addition to the abbreviated version you see below. Plus, there are a couple of iconic birthdays to celebrate today, so enough with the preamble!
Movie of the Day
Today’s movie is Forgive Us All. Starring Lily Sullivan, this post-apocalyptic Neo-Western looks great and has some good ideas, but it isn’t as emotionally powerful as it clearly wants to be.
The story follows Rory (Sullivan), a woman surviving alongside a man named Otto (Richard Roxburgh) deep in the wilds of New Zealand. They’re living in a world where a virus has turned most people into vicious, mindless cannibals. That makes the movie vaguely zombie-ish, but the infected people don’t play a huge role in the bulk of the story. What’s focused on most is Rory and her emotional journey as she struggles with a traumatic past.
Without spoiling too much, Rory and Otto both have a lot of death in their backstories. Otto seems to be keeping himself together, but Rory is on the verge of ending it all for herself. One day Rory discovers the unconscious body of Noah (Lance Giles). He’s recently escaped from what is effectively a prison camp, but the injuries he suffered in his journey are severe. Rory helps Noah, and his story gives her hope that she might actually find redemption for the actions she was forced to take that still haunt her to this day.
Forgive Us All isn’t great at building genuine emotion in its characters, and that stems from an odd choice to withhold the most pivotal moments in their backstories from our view. There are flashbacks in the movie, but events that Rory talks about are only shown up to right before the most emotional action occurs. Or we see the aftermath of what was obviously a life-changing event, but we don’t see the actual event happen. As a person, Rory keeps her emotions bottled up, so that, combined with not showing us the most vital moments for generating empathy, lead to an emotional distance between the viewer and the main character of the film. Since the entire point of the movie is a dramatic character arc, those choices make the movie feel flat overall.
There are good things in Forgive Us All though. You can read more about them in the review I posted a little while ago. And if you want to watch Forgive Us All, it is currently streaming as a transactional VOD on platforms including Amazon Prime Video.
Related Movie Recommendation
Herd is a relationship drama set in a zombie apocalypse. The trailers make it seem like a Walking Dead type of story where the main characters are caught in a situation where the zombies are bad, but the feuding groups of survivors are worse. That’s sort of what Herd is, but it’s not the main focus. The movie is really about two women who are going through a breakup when one of them is seriously injured. There’s a zombie outbreak going on, and they’re taken in by a group that is hostile towards their lifestyle. So, the main focus of the movie is on their relationship as they try to survive in one tense situation after another. It’s a smaller indie film, and it’s really quite good. You can stream Herd on AMC+.
Birthdays
The legend Sid Haig was born on July 14th, 1939. He’s best known to many people as Captain Spaulding in the House of 1000 Corpses trilogy, but his roles in horror and exploitation films date back to the 1960s. A sampling of his movies include Blood Bath (1966), Spider Baby (1967), Galaxy of Terror (1981), House of the Dead 2 (2005), and Death House (2017). Sid Haig sadly passed away in 2019, the same year 3 From Hell was released.
Also legendary in my eyes is Geretta Geretta, born July 14, 1958. She played Rosemary in Demons (1985), the woman who cut herself with the chrome mask and became the first demon in the theater. I most recently saw Geretta Geretta in Mouse of Horrors released earlier this year.
Other instantly recognizable actors born on July 14th include Zita Johann (1904) who played Helen Grosvenor in The Mummy (1932), Harry Dean Stanton (1926) who was Brett in Alien (1979), and Jackie Earle Haley (1961) whose biggest horror role was as Freddy Krueger in the 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
Filmmakers born on this day include Kevin Connor (1937) who directed Motel Hell (1980), Jane Espenson (1964) who was a writer and producer on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, and Ingmar Bergman (1918) who directed many classic films including The Virgin Spring (1960).
Events on This Day
On July 14, 2022, Netflix’s Resident Evil series was released to… mixed reviews.
Also on this day, in 1988, Rick Sloane’s Hobgoblins was released. The movie is silly, but it made for a classic episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was also used in a live riffing performed by Rifftrax in 2021.
Other movies released on July 14th include Human Lanterns (1982, Hong Kong), The Swarm (1978), The Final Terror (1983), and Supergator (2007).
That wraps up today’s horror digest. I imagine news will start to pick up again by tomorrow, so it’ll be back to business as usual here.
