Review: Monsters in the Closet

 Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2022
Images from the Internet

Monsters in the Closet
Directed by The Snygg Brothers (aka John Bacchus aka Zachary Winston Brown)
Purgatory Blues LLC; Gravitas Ventures
89 minutes, 2022
www.facebook.com/MonstersInTheCloset

Man, I have not seen a genre film shot in my home town of New York City in a really long time (though I do believe some parts were done in Pennsylvania). I would rather see it in a horror than something like “Blue Bloods,” to see the city streets and lights. You know there are going to be overview city “placement” shots of b-roll footage. And sure enough, one minute in…

This is actually an anthology film that is shot for this release, not cobbled together (I like both formats equally, FYI). It is kinda cool that the wraparound story itself has a prologue. Actually, calling it a wraparound is kind of inadequate, as it is also one of the anthology stories and is the key connector between the pieces. I love when they do that.

Jasmin Flores

Raymond Castle (Tom C. Niksson, aka Tom Cikoski), an annoying writer of horror short stories and collector of things macabre. I am sure other viewers than myself will be looking at the merchandise in the background and saying “I want that,” or “I have that.” The posters on the wall are for sexploitation obscurities like Rock ‘n’ Roll Frankenstein (1999) and An Erotic Werewolf in London (2006, starring Erin Brown, aka Misty Mundae.

The premise of the film is that Castle has used black magic to make his stories come to life if they are read aloud (a well-used and beloved trope, such as “Beetlejuice!” “Bloody Mary!” “Candyman!”). This results in his estranged daughter, Jasmin Castle (Jasmin Flores, who co wrote the wraparound with “Snygg”) coming into the picture as she tries to figure out just what is going on. Playing an audio file version Raymond created of his stories on his computer (titled – you guessed it – Monsters in the Closet), we start off with the short films.

For example, the opening salvo is a humorous and gory partial first-person POV zombie apocalypse, as we see a woman becoming a zombie from the perspective of said flesh-eater. We hear her thoughts in clarity as others see her as a creature. This was done, albeit in a different effect, in Wasting Away (aka Ah! Zombies!!; 2007). While this idea has been done before (e.g., the short “2 Hours” in 2012, sans humor), but this is smartly written and designed. As promised, this brings you-know-whats storming the Castle house.

Now, under – er – normal circumstances, one would stop with the stories right there, and Jasmin is too occupied to listen to more, so an unexplained disembodies hand (borrowed Thing from “The Addams Family” perhaps?) climbs the keyboard to start the stories going again while Jasmin has her space continuingly clustered by creatures of various sorts and the tale telling is on autopilot.

Other stories include an annoying couple (Carmilla Crawford, Luke Couzens) buying their first fixer-upper house and the slow build-up of tension and violence turning into a bit of body horror/torture porn as they try to bring it up to snuff with limited experience (“Well, I did have shop in High School…” he states). In another, a rich, out of touch and racist father (Phillip Green) and spoiled daughter, Tiffany (Jordan Flippo) – obviously modeled after Donald and Ivanka – who argue about a camping trip; she talks about mistakes she will make in the future, such as eating pizza with the wrong fork, a line that made me stop the film and laugh, having grown up in Italian Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, home of the best pizza, where slices are folded when eaten, with no utensils needed…but I digress… She is not the sharpest stick in the woods because of the stick up her jealous ass, leading to some dire actions in a version of Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” (1924) – shades of Don Jr. and Eric. While no one gets shot on 5th Avenue, the philosophy remains the same.

Of course, they save the best and funniest for last. Seems Dr. Frankenstein (John Paul Fidele) and the Mrs. (a hysterical Valerie Bittner) – note that the film calls her “Mrs.” rather than “Ms.,” not me – live in…well, I won’t spoil the best joke in the film. After an accident, the “mad” doc does his Frankenstein magic and viola, etc., et. al, and so on, ad nauseum. It nicely uses purposefully cliché classical tunes like Edward Grieg’s “Hall of the Mountain King” and Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” to give it a Universal Pictures oeuvre.

It is smart that the film casts a wide net in genres, with many classical monsters in one form or another, but in completely different contexts and sprinkled in witty writing. Raymond’s between-story ramblings sound a bit ad-libbed and peculiar, even here, but I’ll swim with the fishes (or elephant sized chickens…see the film).

While there is no nudity in the film, there is a bizarre sex scene and a whole lot of cleavage. The gore and blood are plentiful. The practical SFX runs from really gross and dripping, to cartoonish and, well, mannequin limbs. There is also some digital blood spurts added as well, "splashing" the camera lens. But that’s the thing about having a foundation of comedy, which hear varies from the dark to the whoopies!, and that is that it gives room for the cheese to ferment, and becomes more accessible and acceptable. If they used, say, a mannequin arm in a Saw film, for example, that would not fly, but in something like The Mask (1994), it makes room for drawing outside the lines.

Tom C. Niksson

The film looks pretty good. I was a bit concerned about the opening, honestly, with it’s use of primary lighting (red, blue, cyan), thinking it may be leaning heavily towards a Creepshow (1982) vibe, because this starts actually looking a bit like that, being an anthology and all, but as we move along, that type of dated lighting is curtailed and it is easier to focus on the stories rather than it trying to be “art.” That being said, there are some lovely shots here, that are atmospheric and artistic, but it doesn’t bludgeon you over the head (pun not intended) with it, but it is used sparingly throughout.

The previous film by “The Snygg Brothers” was Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottenhell (2014), which I honestly have not seen, but I am going to at some point as it is on Tubi (the image of Peter Cottenhell is Raymond’s screen saver). Two things about the “Snygg Brothers.” The first is the “Snygg” collective is like the Ramones, where in the credits there is a bunch of first names followed by the other, such as Vincent Snygg. The Swedish word snygg means “handsome,” but I’m guessing in this case it may also be an acronym, like [??] New York [??] Group. As for the director, it is a pseudonym for a man who is basically known for directing adult fare, both soft and hard, but obviously has enough talent to give us, at this point two horror films that are nicely offbeat.

[Added later: I finally saw Beaster Day on Tubi, and while it is as stupid and silly as can be in a fun way, some of the writing is actually quite hysterical, and Fidele, who plays Dr. Frankenstein in Monsters, steals the film with his role as a mayor who is prescient in Trumpian political spin.]

IMDB is HERE