Horror+Struck's Tastes of Terror

Horror+Struck's Tastes of Terror

Destroy All Neighbors (2024) - There's something so special when you can mix rock n' roll and horror. Sitting amongst the greats like Trick or Treat, Black Roses, and Deathgasm, the two genres go hand in hand. Blood, gore, and tasty riffs can make for a frenetic combination. Destroy All Neighbors sits on that throne of rock n' roll legends and makes a suitable name for itself.

I'm a huge Jonah Ray Rodrigues fan. From his stint on MST3K, he quickly became a favorite of mine. He just knew the assignment from the beginning and made it his own. He took the awkwardness of Joel and the energy of Mike and made a new character separate of his own.

Rodrigues plays William Brown, an out of work prog rock artist struggling to write his magnum opus becomes victim to his irritating noisy neighbor, Vlad, played by an unrecognizable Alex Winter (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure).

As Williams frustration with his obnoxious neighbor grows, so do the inner demons of his own psyche and that leads William to desperation.

As the trailer suggests, we can see where this is headed, so I suggest maybe skipping the trailer so you can indulge in the fun as it unfolds. I don't mind saying you can see the ending a mile away but the antics and absolutely fantastic special effects make this a film worth watching. I think that Jonah's style of acting isn't for everyone, especially folks who aren't familiar with him, but if you know him well from MST3K and some of his other work like Hidden America, you've come to appreciate him as this awkward dork living his dream of acting and comedy.

As the film comes to it's gigantic climax, you get a sense of the amount of love, dedication and heart that was put into a film like this. I'll admit it, the ending did remind me a bit of Tenacious D's Pick of Destiny, but I found Destroy all Neighbors to have a much more satisfying finale. The rubber, the music and the frantic energy as it comes to a close has you cheering for William till the end.

On one last note, the final track, William's masterpiece, is an epic rock opera of monstrous proportions and if I'm gonna plug one last thing, if you dig the end song, check out Coheed and Cambria's closing track to their latest album Vaxis - Act II: A Window of a Waking Mind, track titled of the same name. 

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