Film Review - Succubus (2024 - The One With Ron Perlman)

In this case "Title [Year]" is not enough as two films called Succubus came out in 2024.  This is the RJ Daniel Hanna one with Ron Perlman in it.  I thought it looked interesting from the trailer.  There seemed to be hints the main character might end up getting trapped in their own mind and other mind-fuckery going on.

Most of the first third of the film plays out on computer monitors as the main character, Chris (Brendan Bradley), a struggling dad with a bunch of debt and failing marriage is talked into setting up a profile on a dating app by his best friend, the more outgoing Eddie (Derek Smith).  He matches with the mysterious Adra (Rachel Cook) and chaos ensues.

I was initially worried the see-everything-on-monitors gimmick would wear out its welcome, but the film wisely knows when to break from that.  Rachel Cook's Adra makes for an alluring succubus and the prosthetics for her demon form look pretty good.  In a nice variation from the usual succubus playbook, Adra makes good use of vulnerability to get both Chris and Eddie on the hook.

Ron Perlman is the mysterious doctor trying to warn Chris and later a threat as he's fully willing to embrace more drastic solutions to fix things.  He's not given a lot to work with here in what is a fairly stock horror role.

The succubus entity appears to be eldritch rather than biblical in nature.  In a nice variation of the usual succubus-to-incubus myth, she appears to be looking for a man so she can hijack their sperm and use them to impregnate women with demon babies.  The mechanics of this seem fairly confused.  She wants to seduce men into visiting her, but also seems to be able to possess them remotely through a computer, which seems to make visiting her or not irrelevant.  I think this might be case of the filmmaker having a really cool death scene – Eddie's death is one of the standout moments – and wanting to keep it in even if it doesn't quite fit.

Overall I thought it had a lot of interesting ideas and enjoyed watching it, but felt it lacked a spark to move it from merely okay to good/great.  The film does make sex an integral part of what's going on, which is what I want to see in a succubus movie, but did feel a little tame about it.  A little bit more steam and salaciousness might have given the erotic aspects more punch and made for a more memorable film.  This might be more down to the cultural mores of our current times.  Until a new Verhoeven/Sharon Stone combo comes along to push the boundaries, I suspect Western filmmakers are a little afraid of going too far lest they be dumped in with those 'low-brow' movies that flash a bit of nipple to hide the fact they haven't got anything else going on.

The horror aspects do make up somewhat.  Eddie's death is delightfully gross and gruesome, and Chris... poor Chris.  If you think I'm mean to my protagonists...

Not a bad little succubus horror.

* * * *

As someone who's written an awful lot of succubus fiction, what I like to do after watching these films is think about how I'd have done things (without hopefully dragging the film into territories even riskier filmmakers dare not tread!).

I like the story.  It's fairly similar to some of the stories I've written, with maybe "Arachne's Web" from my A Succubus for Christmas collection being the closest, despite that story featuring an arachne monster girl rather than a succubus.  I don't think I'd change much and I think the horror of Chris's predicament is superb with a really nice bleak ending.  I'd have been quite satisfied to write that, so hats off to the writing team there.

The one minor quibble I did have is with what the succubus needs to achieve her ends.  At first she wants to lure them to her house (and achieves this with Eddie), but later it seems that it's not necessary as what she does to Chris remotely also seems to work as well.  I think this might be a case of having two really strong ideas and not wanting to give up either, which I can understand.  My approach in those circumstances would be to make two stories showcasing each, but that's far easier to do for a short story than a full film production!

The elephant in the room is nudity.  This film really needed some tits.  It has the sizzle, but the flame never gets high enough to... I'm not sure this metaphor works, but fuck it... cook the meat.  When I think of the erotic horror films that have made an impact on me they usually have that scene or moment that burns itself onto the memory.  The spider girl and soapland girl in Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Wicked City, Dracula's wives rising up out of the bed in Coppola's Dracula, Sharon Stone before she gets busy with the icicle pick in Basic Instinct, the many many heaving bosoms of old Hammer Horror vampire movies, and so on.  To be fair, nudity isn't always required.  Salma Hayek certainly didn't need to flash anything to set the screen on fire in From Dusk till Dawn.  I think a good erotic horror needs a that scene, and that felt lacking from this movie and part of the reason it's just okay rather than great.

Eddie's death scene is fairly close, and might even be there for normal people that haven't written thousands and thousands of words of weird succubus smut and possibly have faulty calibration.

What I would like to see from an erotic horror movie is a scene that blurs the horny into horror, rather than using the horny as just a means to get to the horror.  In an era where Pornhub, and endless boobs and vags, are just a click away on anyone's phone, I think creators need to get a little extra creative in order to create that scene.

One thing Toro Toro Resistance makes great use of in his Monmusu Quest series and something I also like to use a lot in my fiction is:

"I really shouldn't stick my dick in that... but."

You shouldn't stick your dick in a succubus because she'll suck out your life and soul... but she looks gorgeous and sex with her looks and sounds awesome.  I really shouldn't want that... but.

It's the "... but" that makes it interesting, as you're hitting the reader/viewer with competing emotions.

Eddie's scene is deliciously gross.  He lifts up the bedsheet and the succubus's true from is revealed as a trailing mass of oozing meat and gristle.  If you've played Elden Ring, it looks like one of the slime monsters from that game.  There is no "... but", you as the audience definitely Do Not want to stick your dick in that.

Eddie does, but he's entranced by the succubus and she even makes him think he's enjoying it.

I wonder if that scene could be more potent if the audience is also thinking "I really shouldn't stick my dick in that... but".

Instead of icky bone'n'gristle slime, maybe have something alien – a different type of slime, or maybe something soft and grublike.  I'm not a special fx guy, but I wonder if you could take something like a Venus 2000 (a high-end sex toy that uses a rubber tube within a vacuum diaphragm to 'milk' a penis) and build a horror prop around it.  Viewed end on, you'd have this prop that would outwardly look alien and wrong, but would have this rhythmically contracting rubber opening in the middle that would stir up... other thoughts.

That's to make the audience, who isn't under the control of the succubus, think "I really shouldn't stick my dick in that... but" as well.

Obviously you don't have the actor stick their dick in the sex toy.  That probably would count as porn, or be close enough to get people into trouble.  You could play it out similar to how it's done in this movie.  Cut to the actor simulating humping the bottom of the bed.  Then cut to a separate sideways shot of a special fx prop of some horribly organic grub/tentacle thing pulsating and working away.

The actor acts like he's having the best sex ever.  The audience starts to think that maybe it isn't that bad after all, then... bang... his skin gets torn off, he shrivels up as his insides are sucked out, or whatever icky gore effect you want to use for his end.

That way you're hitting everything at once at the same time, which should make for a fairly memorable scene with all the mental dissonance it's causing.

Could work, maybe.  Hopefully an idea for any budding horror filmmakers out there.

Horror Movie Review: SiREN

I don't normally review movies, but I saw this one a couple of nights ago and thought it might be of interest to succubus/monster girl fans.

Four dudes on a hedonistic stag night get redirected to Ye Mysterious Strip Club Out In The Middle Of Nowhere, do some ill-advised and foolish things, horror hijinks ensue...  Okay, so it's not the most original of setups - think Vamp or From Dusk Till Dawn - but this trope has always been a good starting point for liberal splatterings of blood and tits.  Groom-to-be Jonah's (Chase Williamson) act of foolishness is to bust what he thinks is a sex-trafficked girl out of the basement.  However, Lily (Hannah Fierman) is a little more exotic than she first appears and what follows is a whole heap o' sex 'n' carnage (but mostly carnage).

The film can be seen as a prequel/sequel to the "Amateur Night" segment of anthology horror film V/H/S with Fierman reprising the succubus/demon character of Lily.  Although, given what we learn about Lily's race in this film and what happens, I suspect it's more likely we're seeing a different 'Lily' here.

I was pleasantly surprised with how the film played out.  The quartet of stags were refreshingly normal rather than teeth-grindingly douchey and there was a noticeable lack of characters being evil just for the sake of being evil.  Lily wants her chosen "mate" (an unwilling Jonah) and the mysterious club proprietor, Mr. Nyx (Justin Welborn having a lot of fun in the role), wants his property back.  It's a sign of good storytelling when the writer sets up a bunch of characters, lets them go, and the story plays out naturally as a consequence of the characters' competing goals bouncing off each other.

I also liked some of the other horror fantasy touches, such as the memory-extracting leeches, that hinted of more weirdness going on in the world than just a demon in the basement.  Everything seemed to fit together for a reason rather than things happening for the sake of having cool fx on screen.

On the negative side, this type of film is best when playing to the baser emotions and SiREN is maybe lacking in power here.  It has the sex and strippers you'd expect of an erotic horror, but it doesn't quite have the raw heat of something like Basic Instinct.  The same is true for the horror - not enough gore and shocks for your hardened gorehound.  And as much as I like seeing main characters not be the usual one-dimensional jerks, it does mean you lose that vicarious pleasure of watching jerks meet horrible ends that other films of this type rely on.

Overall I enjoyed the film mostly for how the plot played out.  I didn't find it massively erotic, but Lily is adorable for a blood-splattered, bollock-ripping waif from hell.

Isn't she just adorable...

"I like you."

Hentai Video Review - MR Sakubasu

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Film Review: The Cabin in the Woods

I finally got around to watching The Cabin in the Woods a few nights ago. It’s a hard film to talk about without spoiling things, so if you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to wait until you have before reading the rest of this.

Let’s start with the first obvious thing: The Cabin in the Woods is not a horror film.

Yes, there’s plenty of ketchup splattering the walls (especially near the end) and people die, but it’s a film that’s more likely to set the audience laughing than gripping the armrests in white-knuckle terror.

And the second obvious thing: The Cabin in the Woods is bloody brilliant.

I really liked the film. It’s inventive and highly entertaining. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud lines. It also has perhaps one of the finest Oh Crap moments ever set to film (If you’ve seen it, you’ll know the one I mean). As entertainment, it’s perfect.

And the final obvious thing: Entertainment is not what most people will talk about when discussing The Cabin in the Woods.

Yep, it’s the meta, baby. It’s all about the subverting, deconstructing and bending of common horror tropes while tipping a knowing wink to the audience. It’s not a new concept for horror. Scream revitalised the jaded slasher sub-genre by including self-aware characters and playing around with the obvious clichés. Feast replaced Twenty Minutes With Jerks with freeze-frame captions and then plays merry hell with the usual horror death tropes. Michael Haneke’s original Funny Games (a deliberately uncomfortable film to watch) makes the audience complicit in the carnage.

Cabin is a lighter, fluffier version of Funny Games in that the entities behind everything can be seen as proxies for the audience. The main characters start off as relatively normal human beings, and are then manipulated into becoming the tired stereotypes of the films Cabin is lampooning. Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard do a good job of introducing the slasher bait and making them seem like likable human beings. This is a vast improvement over Goddard’s last film, Cloverfield, where the vacuous obnoxiousness of the leads dragged down an interesting concept.

There was potential here for Whedon and Goddard to take the film down a much more visceral, nastier path by juxtaposing the early humour with the grim realities of the character’s fates, but by rejecting the torture porn ethos of recent horror they also reject the chance of taking the film out of the other horror ghetto of Played for Laughs. Horror doesn’t need more smirking, self-aware films; it needs films that sock the viewer in the guts. In that respect Cabin isn’t a game-changer. For me, a game-changer would be a film that delivers genuine scares, has well-rounded characters worth giving a damn about, and just about stays within the line of entertainment. Sounds so simple, but I can’t see Hollywood making it until they remember how to make horror films for adults, rather than fifteen-year-old boys.

In summary, The Cabin in the Woods is great fun to watch, but if you’re expecting to be shocked out of your socks, you’re going to go home disappointed. I wanted to see a sexy witch...

It’s also given me an idea for a little writing project (as if I haven’t got enough of those on the go already!). More on that later…maybe…