Blumhouse of Horrors: 10 Movie Collection (2020)
Blum Puddings
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Just in time for Halloween, this ominously fun collection includes
ten high-quality Blu-rays for a spine-tingling binge-watch. Producer
Jason Blum has made a name for himself by creating low-budget,
high-concept horror hits, and this box contains a very good cross
section of them. Starting at the very bottom, we have Rob Cohen's The Boy Next
Door (2015), a truly awful film with Jennifer Lopez terrorized by a
psychopath, as well as Stiles White's Ouija (2014), a very poor movie
whose only real positive is character actor Lin Shaye. (I would have
swapped it for the much better sequel.) I haven't yet seen Jeff Wadlow's
Truth or Dare (2018), though I hope to sit down with it soon. Then
there's James DeMonaco's The Purge (2013), a strong idea that never
fully comes together, but was still one of Blum's biggest hits (and was
followed by 3 sequels and a TV series). Rounding out the bottom five is
Tate Taylor's Ma (2019), which doesn't entirely work, but does have a
strong performance by the great Octavia Spencer as a lonely sociopath.
Moving towards the top, Christopher Landon's clever, fun Happy Death
Day (2017) is a lightly comic spin on Groundhog Day with a serial killer
and a terrific Jessica Rothe as the perpetually exasperated hero. Levan
Gabriadze's very scary Unfriended (2015) is another "found-footage"
horror, taking place entirely on a computer screen. Then we have two M.
Night Shyamalan "comeback" movies, the found-footage The Visit (2015)
and the creepy Split (2017), with a showcase James McAvoy performance as
a man with dissociative identity disorder. Finally, there's Jordan
Peele's masterpiece Get Out (2017), a must-own title. It's too bad the
box couldn't have made room for one of the Paranormal Activity movies or
the Creep movies, or even Barry Levinson's underrated The Bay. But
otherwise, this set is definitely recommended. It includes digital
copies for all ten films.
