Matty snuggles up to the latest Full Moon romp.

Though a particularly irksome breed of ‘fan’ will continue to believe they’ve not made anything of worth since the early ‘90s (nostalgia is a dangerous drug), and though my own heart belongs to the much maligned Tempe era (a dangerous drug indeed), Full Moon’s output post COVID is the closest Charles Band has come to capturing the magic of his shingle’s fabled Paramount-backed ‘golden age’ in years. Operating at a roughly identical batting average — after all, even the ropey Scream of the Blind Dead (2021) is essentially a mirror of the equally tepid and equally homage-driven Seedpeople (1992) — Full Moon’s modern success rests upon Band’s return to harnessing talent.

While the mogul himself remains the company’s puppet master (wink), and auteur’s such as J.R. Bookwalter and the mighty David DeCoteau deserve a tremendous amount of credit for keeping Band’s production line going in trying circumstances, Full Moon’s most recent incarnation is defined by a directorial roster as impressive as that of old. The Paramount days had David Schmoeller, Stuart Gordon, J.S. Cardone, Peter Manoogian, and Albert Pyun. Now we have B-movie legends Jim Wynorski, Fred Olen Ray and Brinke Stevens; the welcome presence of Full Moon stalwarts Ted Nicolaou and Danny Draven; visionary mavericks John Lechago and William Butler; and imaginative upstarts a la Brooks Davis 

A department hopping multihyphenate (once was a time his name would be signed at the bottom of Full Moon’s customer service correspondence), Davis’ latest picture, nifty frightener BRING HER TO ME, ranks among the jumpiest work in Band’s entire oeuvre. Those with an aversion to cattle prod style shocks will likely find them overdone and a bit too reliant on cheat-y ‘it was only a dream’ punchlines by the third or fourth blast; but if high octane jolts are your bag, Bring Her to Me’s first fifteen minutes alone present Davis as a heartstopper of James Wan proportions.           

Given the film is ostensibly a cheap and cheerful riff on Insidious (2010) and its sequels — the newest of course, Insidious: The Red Door (2023), fresh from a summer theatrical run — it’s a fitting comparison. However, the richest pleasures of Bring Her to Me are the weirder and wilder flutters. Davis’ use of the central apartment set is fantastic. The helmer demonstrates an innate understanding of how space can conjure a nightmarish mood and look, and how essential rhythm and tone are when it comes to fostering a swooning sense of reality being stripped away piece by piece. Aiding him is a waltzing score by Jonathan Walter and the sumptuous photography of Howard Wexler, a keen-eyed lenser no stranger to oneiric flights of fancy (cf. trippy DeCoteau epics Dreamaniac (1986), Totem (1999), and Voodoo Academy (2000)).

Part of Full Moon’s surprisingly weighty dynasty of sexy supernatural hair-raisers, Bring Her to Me falls short of form standout Deathbed (2002) but trounces slack ‘golden age’ staple Meridian (1990) and emerges as a solid closing chapter to a loose, thematically tethered trilogy that also includes Don’t Let Her In (2021) and The Seduction of Rose Parrish (2021). The plot sees gorgeous twenty-something Mara (Bec Doyle) attracting the amorous advances of a hunky demonic entity (Emerson Niemchick) during her increasingly terrifying sleep sessions before Davis and co-scripter Kent Roudebush unleash a wicked Tales From the Crypt-esque sting. It’s nicely written and convincingly played, with Ros Gentle submitting an especially excellent performance as Abigail. Initially coming across as the film’s Lin Shaye analogue, the duplicitous mystic/dream doctor quickly reveals her true colours and, in turn, allows the mesmeric Gentle to morph into a nastier version of Frances Bay’s character from Full Moon classic The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), right down to her being the only other person in the studio’s history to use the word “cunt” on screen.

USA ● 2023 ● Horror ● 56mins

Bec Doyle, Ros Gentle, Kalond Irlanda, Emerson Niemchick ● Dir. Brooks Davis ● Scr. Kent Roudebush and Brooks Davis