Review #259: Strangeland (1998)
This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #13 - Strangeland (1998) Strangeland follows a detective, Mike, whose daughter gets abducted, raped, and tortured by CaptHowdy (played by Snider), a local sadist with an obsession for body modification (tribal tattoos, extensive piercings, and even self-torture used to achieve enlightenment) who uses 90s chat rooms to find and lure victims. After getting a lead when someone discovers and recognizes CaptHowdy's septum jewelry at a crime scene, we're treated to the most absurd cat-and-mouse game I've ever seen between Mike and the kidnapper: Mike finds CaptHowdy in a chat room while posing as his niece, and CaptHowdy looks at Mike's fake profile. Mike changes his profile to include one of CaptHowdy's interests, and CaptHowdy immediately notices the change and somehow automatically recognizes it as an indicator that Mike is actually a cop conducting a sting operation. When the st...