Movies
Barracude/Island Fury (V)
“Another entry in the recent blue crush of “Drive In Double Features” released on DVD, Dark Sky’s one-two punch of BARRACUDA and ISLAND FURY isn’t necessarily high-grade turbo-A-plus level entertainment, but it does provide a strangely soothing, mildly nostalgic vibe, akin to the feeling one experiences when catching a Rudy Ray Moore movie on cable at 1 a.m.”
Another entry in the recent blue crush of “Drive In Double Features” released on DVD, Dark Sky’s one-two punch of BARRACUDA and ISLAND FURY isn’t necessarily high-grade turbo-A-plus level entertainment, but it does provide a strangely soothing, mildly nostalgic vibe, akin to the feeling one experiences when catching a Rudy Ray Moore movie on cable at 1 a.m.
BARRACUDA (1978), a poorly paced JAWS rip-off, begins with a single tame barracuda attack before settling into a long-winded narrative chastising polluters of the environment. The pernicious Papa Jack is the owner of Jack Chemical Company, a pesticide-crankin’ factory that loves to drop its excrement into the local waterways of Palm Cove. When the local barracuda grow overly aggressive and start killing townsfolk, Sheriff Williams joins forces with Speedo-wearing environmentalist Mike to solve the case and bring down the evil Papa Jack before the entire water-guzzling town goes mad with barracuda juice fever. The barracuda attacks go like this: shot of a dude swimming, POV shot of an approaching barracuda, shot of said dude thrashing around in the water, shot of dude holding rubber barracuda against his shoulder and screaming bubbles, vague shot of blood spreading through the water, finally capped by a shot of a flesh-stripped body part, i.e., a femur, drifting across the frame through the clouds of pink water. Unfortunately, the fish attacks take a back seat to bad guy wrangling in the final third, as the evil mastermind is finally revealed over the course of several highly-melodramatic confession scenes.
Meanwhile, over at ISLAND FURY (1989), a pair of completely average-looking 80s club girls are captured by a fistful of sleazy, pock-marked foreign guys who coerce them into revealing a whole shitload of flashbacks. Turns out that back when Bobbylee and Sugar (seriously) were 10-years-old and vacationing with friends, they were trapped on a remote island by Jebediah and his batshit family, and treasure is somehow involved, although only peripherally. Moving back and forth between the present day narrative (which features the pock-marked bad guys, forcing the girls to return to island to search for treasure) and the flashbacks (which feature Old Man Jebediah, who stalks the bikini-clad 10-year-olds with a homemade and unwieldy shotgun/flashlight combo), ISLAND FURY is an awkward piece of filmmaking. Neither timeline is interesting, the acting is amateurish, and the whole “crazy inbred island family” angle was a lot more effective in the superior AMERICAN GOTHIC (1988).
Neither movie is really any good, but packaged with old-school drive-in concession ads and movie previews (My Favorite: the bizarre and disturbing trailer for BONNIE’S KIDS…..The Tagline: “Thank God She Only Had Two!”), this Drive In Double Feature does provide a queasy sense of lowest-common-denominator contentment. Recommended for inebriated viewers with low expectations.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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