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A bunch of new movies were released on streaming yesterday, so it’s going to be a marathon to finish out the month of August. I got one movie in last night, and it was a decent start. Read my quick review below, and keep reading for some daily news and trivia!
Movie of the Day: A Game in the Woods
In the tradition of the genre established by The Most Dangerous Game (the short story and the 1932 film), A Game in the Woods is about humans hunting humans.
Ash, her girlfriend Sam, and her cousin Ted take a trip to the land formerly owned by Ash and Ted’s recently deceased grandfather. Isolated in a remote part of the Texas countryside, they soon stumble upon a dark secret their grandfather was keeping: he rented out his land to a man who runs a “game” in which people can pay large sums of money to hunt and kill people. They walk into the middle of one of these games, unwillingly becoming new targets for the many owl-masked hunters roaming the land.
The movie was made on a micro budget, but the filmmakers managed to do a lot of good with what they had. There is a decent amount of practical gore (and a small amount of CGI) in the many kills shown throughout the movie. Some of the effects look a little goofy, but it’s all good fun.
The main characters can be kind of annoying at first. Ash and Sam seem like they’re exactly wrong for each other, and Ted is just a big dummy. As the first few scenes played out I was wondering how much I was going to care for these three, but that wasn’t an issue once the action really began. I got invested enough in the surviving characters to get into the story.
Really though, A Game in the Woods is more about plot than character. The pacing of the plot works quite well in the first half of the movie, though it does feel like it slows down too much in spots during the second half.
Also, the final few sequences feel very strange. The geography of where characters should be (based on where we see them headed) feels way off. It’s a case of characters running away from each other in opposite directions, but somehow ending up just a few feet away from each other. There are also a few bizarre decisions made during this time that started taking me out of the movie. It didn’t sour the whole experience, but it lessened my enjoyment slightly.
Star Rating: 3 out of 5
The first half of A Game in the Woods is a lot of fun. The second half declines, but it’s still a pretty good film overall. I’d definitely recommend it to fans of micro-budget survival thrillers who enjoy a bit of gore. You can rent A Game in the Woods on VOD platforms including Amazon Prime Video.
In the News
- Netflix and Sony are in early talks for a sequel to KPop Demon Hunters. It is now the most-watched movie ever on Netflix. (Variety)
- Damien Leone recently said Terrifier 4 will contain “a lot of answers… maybe to a fault” about Art the Clown’s origins. He understands that Art’s “mystique” is one of the main reasons why the character works so well, and he’ll try to protect what works while still giving us certain answers. (Collider)
- Trailers released yesterday:
Birthdays
Peter Stormare was born on August 27th, 1953. Peter is a prolific character whom you’ve definitely seen in lots of movies. He might be most well-known for his role as Gaear Grumsrud in Fargo (1996). In horror, he was recently in Until Dawn (2025), reprising a role he first played in the 2015 video game of the same title. He was also in Constantine (2005), 2001 Maniacs (2005), Clown (2014), Horror Noire (2021), Day Shift (2022), and tons more movies.
Also born on this day, in 1950, is Charles Fleischer. Fleischer is best known for being the voice of Roger Rabbit (and other characters) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), but he’s also appeared in a few horror movies. He was the doctor overseeing Nancy’s sleep study in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and he was Wally in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995). Charles also had roles in The Backlot Murders (2002), Bad Dreams (1988), Deadly Friend (1986), and more.
More birthdays on August 27th:
- Beverly Bonner (1943) – Frankenhooker (1990), Basket Case (1982), Brain Damage (1988)
- Peter Mensah (1959) – Jason X (2001), The Devil Conspiracy (2022)
- Kanji Tsuda (1965) – Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), Mutant Girls Squad (2010), Dead Sushi (2012)
- Lisa Marie Newmyer (1968) – Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)
- Aaron Paul (1979) – Ash (2025), The Last House on the Left (2009)
Events on This Day
Candyman was released in theaters on August 27th, 2021. It was originally scheduled for release in June of 2020, but the pandemic kept pushing it back, causing the movie to eventually come out more than a year later. The film serves as a sequel to the original Candyman from 1992. You can stream Candyman on Peacock.
The underrated found footage movie The Last Exorcism was released in theaters on August 27th, 2010. For me, this movie is fantastic. I even wrote about how much I love it. It’s about a priest who has lost his faith and documents his attempt to prove that there is nothing supernatural or spiritual about exorcisms. It doesn’t go well for him or his small film crew. Stream The Last Exorcism on Prime Video.
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death premiered in New York City on August 27th, 1971. For me, the best part of this excellent psychological thriller is its ambiguity. The movie is told mostly in a flashback from Jessica’s point of view, and she might not be the most reliable of narrators. I wrote about this movie last year as well, and you can rent Let’s Scare Jessica to Death on Prime Video.
Thank you as always for reading!
