Keep It Closed: Skeletons in the Closet (2024) Review

Director: Asif Akbar

Notable Cast: Terrence Howard, Valery M. Ortiz, Cuba Gooding Jr, Udo Kier, Appy Pratt, Louis Mandylor, Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez, Clifton Powell, Ariana Deppe, Michelle Wang, Sally Kirkland

 

Niche entertainment services will always have content that wouldn’t make it anywhere else. Hallmark often weaves a tale of the city girl who finds herself (and a new love interest) in a small town, usually with a dog and hot chocolate, and she will inevitably fall into every predictable trap on her way to rediscovering her traditional values. Crunchyroll has some anime that might make even the most seasoned anime lover roll their eyes, and the NBA has the modern slam dunk contest. All these specialty services offer audiences the opportunity to find hidden gems, a pursuit that sometimes pans out and sometimes not.

Shudder is no different, except that the horror community is particularly divisive, potentially even more than diehard NBA fans, which makes finding gold a subjective and challenging task. I wish I could say that I was writing today about a story of finding gold, but alas, I am not. Skeletons in the Closet has every signature failing of a Hallmark movie but as a horror feature. Let me say that I REALLY wanted to like this. I tried very hard to give it time, if only for its star-laden cast, but it never materialized into anything worth watching.

Debt Collectors (2020)

Director: Jesse V. Johnson

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Louis Mandylor, Ski Carr, Vladimir Kulich, Charity Collins, Mayling Ng

As both a huge fan of director Jesse V. Johnson and action icon Scott Adkins, I’m always down to partake when either of them release a new film. Put them together and I’m throwing my wallet into their hands. However, when it was announced the two would be re-teaming up for a sequel to The Debt Collector, called Debt Collectors, I was a bit perplexed. You see, if you’ve seen the first film, you know that it definitively ends the story of our two makeshift anti-heroes, French and Sue. There wasn’t a lot of room for a sequel. Yet, here we are with the bickering banter of our two favorite collection agents in this – and I only assume – first sequel to the surprise action hit. While Debt Collectors isn’t quite the pleasantly humorous surprise of the first, it’s still a rock ‘em, sock ‘em slab of entertainment that delivers on all of the expected elements of the first film. It’s impeccably charming, loaded with the usual action awesomeness from the directing and star duo, and gives the fans what they want from a sequel.

Seven months after the events of The Debt Collector, Sue – once again played with the charming trashiness of Louis Mandylor, finds French bouncing at the local bar. A bar that was, more or less, used as a comedic set piece in the first film. French, played by my pick for Batman Scott Adkins (how many letters do I have to write to Warner Bros. to get that to happen?,) is having a rough go of it and Sue gives him the opportunity to get back into the debt collecting game for one last round. Three collections. Two days. $70,000.