Toys of the Devil

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Could it be... Satan?

WITCHBOARD (2024)

I’m never thrilled when I hear there’s going to be a remake of one of my favorite films; an announcement I have heard many times over the last few decades. But when news broke that there was going to be a remake of Kevin S. Tenney’s awesome 1986 horror film Witchboard, this one came with a glimmer of hope because Chuck Russell was on board to write and direct. Now, Russell has made plenty of movies I was indifferent about, but back in the day, he not only brought the world A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (which had the same cinematographer as the original Witchboard), but he also made one of the best remakes ever produced, the 1988 version of The Blob. It’s been a long time, but if he could make a great Blob and one of the best Elm Street sequels, maybe he could make a great Witchboard, too.

I became even more open to the Witchboard remake when it became clear that this wasn’t going to be a direct retread of the events of the original film. The story Russell crafted with Greg McKay just shares the basic concept of a young woman falling under the spell of a witchboard – and they’re not even the same types of witchboards in the two movies. While the original film featured a mass-manufactured Ouija board, this one has a spirit board that’s hundreds of years old and communicates not through a planchette, but through a pendulum. It’s different enough, viewers could consider this to be a sequel, a Witchboard 4, rather than a remake. And that’s how I took it.

Madison Iseman stars as Emily, a recovering heroin addict who is working with her fiancé Christian (Aaron Dominguez) to open of a restaurant in New Orleans's French Quarter. When local occultist Alexander Babtiste (Jamie Campbell Bower) hires a couple of lackeys to steal a spirit board from a museum, the mission goes wrong and the spirit board ends up lost in the woods – where Emily soon comes across it and takes it home with her. Christian’s ex-girlfriend Brooke (Mel Jarnson), an academic and antiquities expert gives Emily the idea that the board could allow her to communicate with her own subconscious mind, so she starts using it. And while that leads to good things for her, like finding her lost engagement ring (an element that was lifted from the original film), it spells doom for some people around her, who start dying off under bizarre circumstances.

As it turns out, Emily and Alexander are both descendants of people who came in contact with this exact spirit board back in 1693 France – and he wants to resolve some lingering issues from those days in modern times. The past connection was one of my least favorite things about the film, as it felt like a needless complication, and it’s almost invariably cheesy when something like this includes flashbacks to a setting like 1693 France. Russell dropped plenty of 1693 flashbacks into the movie, even going so far as to work some time travel possession into the mix.

There are questionable ideas and cheesy executions in here, but the Witchboard remake actually turned out to be much better and more entertaining than I ever expected it to be. Even going into the movie with a fairly open mind, I was prepared to do more cringing than I actually did (although there was some cringing at the flashbacks and the time travel possession). In the end, I found it to be a decent addition to the Witchboard franchise. It doesn’t come anywhere near to being as good as the original film and I would also choose Witchboard 2 over this one, I did find it to be more enjoyable than Witchboard 3.

READY OR NOT: HERE I COME (2026)

Seven years ago, genre regular Samara Weaving teamed up with directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's for a fun little horror comedy bloodfest called Ready or Not. Written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, the film saw Weaving taking on the role of Grace, a young woman who was raised in foster homes and has always dreamed of being a long-term part of a family. So she was excited to be marrying into the Le Domas family – until she discovered that anyone who married into the family must play a game at midnight on their wedding night. They had to draw a card from a box, and play whatever game was listed on that card. Usually the game would something innocuous, like backgammon, croquet, checkers, chess, or Old Maid... but there is one bad card that no one ever wants to pull. Hide and seek. And that’s what Grace pulled.

As it turned out, the Le Domas family had made a deal with Satan to gain their wealth, and if someone pulled the “Hide and seek” card, they would be hunted with weapons and sacrificed to their dark lord.

Grace came out on top in that situation. The Le Domas family was destroyed. But now, the sequel Ready or Not: Here I Come, which had the same creative team behind it and brought Weaving back to the role of Weaving, has come along to let us know that Grace’s troubles weren’t over. The sequel begins at the exact moment the first movie ended on, with Grace being taken to the hospital. There, she’s reunited with the estranged sister we never heard about before, Kathryn Newton as Faith.

The reunion doesn’t go smoothly – and then it’s disrupted by the arrival of a homicidal maniac who’s out to sacrifice Grace to Satan. Seemingly drawing inspiration from the John Wick franchise, Busick and Murphy have come up with the idea that the Le Domas family was just one part of a larger Council of powerful devil worshippers. They failed, but the remaining families can still try to kill Grace, and if they do, a representative of the winning family will take over the High Seat of the Council.

So Grace and Faith are captured and taken a large estate, where members of the other families will have their chance to hunt them down. People who want to kill the sisters include Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy as the Danforth siblings; Néstor Carbonell, Juan Pablo Romero, and Maia Jae as the El Caido family; Dan Berine as Danforth cousin Kip; Kevin Durand as Bill Wilkinson; Olivia Cheng and Antony Hall as members of the Wan family; and Varun Saranga, Masa Lizdek, and Nadeem Umar-Khitab as the Rajan family. Elijah Wood oversees the whole thing as The Lawyer. David Cronenberg has a quick cameo as the Danforth patriarch.

If you liked Ready or Not, chances are that you’ll like Ready or Not 2, because it’s the same thing all over again. Although this is ostensibly a horror movie and features a cast of characters that’s dominated by Satan worshippers, it’s actually a collection of comedy-tinged action sequences as Grace and Faith fight to survive and most of their attackers prove to be spectacularly inept. I really enjoyed the first movie, so I had a good time with the second one, even though it didn’t have as much of an impact because, again, it’s just the same thing all over. But if you liked it once, you’ll like it twice.

THEY WILL KILL YOU (2026)

Released just one week after the horror comedy Ready or Not: Here I Come, the horror comedy They Will Kill You might have given movie-goers a bit of déjà vu if they watched the two movies in close proximity to each other because they are both, at their core, about the same idea: a pair of sisters trying to survive relentless attacks by a cult of Satan worshippers. That said, the two films have very different different styles, with They Will Kill You leaning harder into action, weirdness, and goofiness, while director Kirill Sokolov (who also wrote the script with Alex Litvak) bringing each scene to the screen with a vibe that’s reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

You have to be in a specific mood to enjoy this film, and it’s not a horror movie mood. You’ve got to be in a “Kill Bill-esque action movie” mood – and I know this because I attempted to watch the movie with my girlfriend, who was hoping to see a good, new horror movie, and she tuned out as soon as people started flipping around and flashing swords while arterial spray coated the screen.

As a weird action movie, it’s a lot of fun. Zazie Beetz stars as Asia Reaves, who’s fresh out of prison and infiltrates an exclusive high-rise building called The Virgil on a mission to find her long-lost sister Maria (Myha’la). It’s quickly revealed that The Virgil is a temple to Satan and the staff have gained immortality by sacrificing people to their dark lord. Asia is next up on the sacrifice list – but she entered the building knowing that the staff would be trouble, so she came armed. So just didn’t expect the staff to be immortal, and therefore able to regenerate after she hacks, slashes, and blasts her way through them.

There is some bizarre stuff in this film, including a cult member gradually regenerating their head after being decapitated, a detached eyeball following Asia around the building (an element that reminded me of the Re-Animator franchise), and a climactic battle that involves a severed talking pig head.

But it’s mainly action, with Asia laying waste to characters played by the likes of Patricia Arquette, Heather Graham, and Tom Felton. And it’s a good time, if you’re in the mood for a bloody Tarantino knock-off, and Zazie Beetz is awesome in the lead role.

PSYCHO KILLER (2026)

Psycho Killer is a project that spent several years in development hell. It first hit the news back in early 2009, when Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst was set to direct the film from a screenplay by Seven writer Andrew Kevin Walker. Durst had moved on by late 2010, by which time Eli Roth was planning to produce it with Eric Newman, his co-producer on The Last Exorcism. They eventually moved on as well. 

Gavin Polone, producer of Zombieland and the Walker-scripted 8MM, came on board during the Roth and Newman days, and – after more than a decade – finally managed to get the film into production. He cared so much about this project, he even chose to make his own feature directorial debut with it. But unfortunately, his passion for the material didn’t lead to great success. Made on a budget of $10 million, the movie only earned $2.5 million at the box office during its theatrical release and it was torn apart by critics. Only 9% of the critic reviews were positive... but I don’t think the movie is all the bad. It’s not great, as it feels like it’s falling short of its potential throughout, but it’s not terrible.

James Preston Rogers, wearing a gas mask for much of his screen time, stars as the titular character, a “Satanic Slasher” who is leaving a trail of bodies across the United States. One of his victims was Kansas Highway Patrol officer Mike Archer, whose widow Jane (Georgina Campbell) is also a police officer. Jane takes it upon herself to track the Psycho Killer / Satanic Slasher across the U.S. and bring his murder spree to an end.

While Jane follows him, the drugged-out killer is busy setting up a meeting with a wealthy devil worshipper played by Malcolm McDowell, who is assisted by a character played by Logan Miller, and plotting something bigger than his slashing massacres: he wants to revisit the site of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and “open the gates of Hell” by blowing the place apart and irradiating a large portion of the Eastern United States.

The concept is interesting, but the way it’s executed in the movie never manages to be as involving or as exciting as it could have been. The final moments are also a bit confusing, largely because Polone chose to leave out some information that Walker provided in the script, leaving the audience with more questions than answers.

Psycho Killer doesn’t make for an entirely satisfying viewing experience, but I felt that it had some cool sequences and I liked the basic idea, even if I didn’t always like how it played out on screen.