Originally created as a recap blog for my friends too busy to watch t.v., I've branched out to movies, books, food, life in general. No politics tho', don't worry.
Here we are, gentle readers, the final movie of this years Scarelicious October Movie Series! I had hoped to get to twenty but nineteen scary movies watched in a month still beats the previous record of seventeen, so I'm not going to pout about it. I could probably squeeze one more in but there's the TWD recap to go up on Halloween proper. At any rate, the final movie of the month is the very Halloween-y but not very scary Trick R Treat.
I'm feeling particularly lazy so here's IMBD's plot synopsis. Five interwoven stories that occur on Halloween: an everyday high school
principal has a secret life as a serial killer; a college virgin might
have just met the guy for her; a group of teenagers pull a mean prank; a
woman who loathes the night has to contend with her holiday-obsessed
husband; and a mean old man meets his match with a demonic, supernatural
trick-or-treater.
This isn't an anthology; rather the stories brush up against each other on one Halloween night in a small town that goes all-out to
celebrate Halloween and making the punishment of those who violate the
rules of the holiday the focus of several of its vignettes. All over the internet, horror movie aficionados praise this flick as one of the best of the season and I will agree that it is absolutely one of the most Halloween-centric movies ever, Personally, I'm more of a horror fan than a Halloween fan, and Trick R Treat is just not scary, so while I appreciate the sentiment, I was a bit meh about the execution. Still, for those who looooooove Halloween, I can see Trick R Treat becoming a yearly re-watch.
As a rule, I am not a big fan of the slasher genre of horror movies. Other than the classics that started the whole thing (the original Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, Nightmare on Elm Street and Black Christmas), I don't find them to be that good: group of kids, largely unlikable, get together for shenanigans; killer, whose past drove him to kill, starts picking them off one by one; I don't care because I don't care about any of these characters. Cold Prey, a 2006 Norwegian slasher (a/k/a Fritt vilt), takes all the well-worn slasher tropes and does right by them.
A group of five sporty, young, attractive Norwegians - Jannicke and Eirik, Ingunn and Mikal, and fifth-wheel Morten - head off into the back country for some crowd-free snowboarding. It is all going swimmingly until Morten takes a hard fall and breaks his leg badly. Jannicke proves quite capable and resets his leg; the group then takes shelter in an abandoned ski resort. The place looks to have closed in the mid 1970s and a closer look at the hotel guest book shows that someone's child was lost, leading to the closure. After Jannicke disinfects Morten's wound and seals it shut with crazy-glue, the kids build a fire, manage to get the generator running again and make the best of it. As night falls, Ingunn and Mikal find an empty hotel room (Room 237, in a shout-out to The Shining) and that's when things start to go bad. The killer starts picking them off, one by one. It is bloody but not horrifically so. The killer is brutal but not inhumanly so. And the kids act like normal human beings would when placed in this terrifying position.
I thought Cold Prey was fantastic. The "slutty girl" was not, in fact, slutty. The "annoying sidekick guy" was neither annoying nor treated like a sidekick. Although there wasn't deep characterization for anyone, I actually liked these kids and so cared when the killer was after them - Jannicke, the kickass Final Girl, is smart, kind, thoughtful and believable. There is a sequel, Cold Prey 2, which apparently picks right up where this one leaves off and, by expert accounts, is even better than this first one. I'm going to have to re-think my stance on slashers if this keeps up.
When I first started John Carpenter's 1995 remake (of 1960's) Village of the Damned, I was super-excited: John Carpenter! Christopher Reeve! Mark Hamill! Kristie Alley! And then there was some mid-90s/rudimentary CGI fog and sinister whispering sweeping across a northern California coastal town - it was going to be awesome!
Plot in a nutshell: the tiny town of Midwich, California (population: 2,000; elevation: 33 feet above sea level (although those cliffs are certainly higher than 33 feet)) is a happy place until a weird wave of sinister whispering flows over the town, during its school fair no less. Everyone in town - people, dogs, cows, parakeets - pass out where they are; one dude has the misfortune to faint onto his gas grill, rendering him as crispy as his hot dogs. Concerned law enforcement and scientific types hover outside the town line until six hours later when everyone wakes up. Most are none the worst for wear, other than the grill guy and the few who died in car crashes when they passed out whilst driving. However, ten women mysteriously catch pregnant (including one high school "virgin" and one lady whose husband has been out of town for the last year). The babies are all born on the same day (the virgin's baby is stillborn and Kirstie Alley's epidemiologist spirits the tiny corpse away before anyone can see it). Also, the babies' DNA indicate that they are genetic siblings and as the years pass, these nine platinum blond kids get eviller and eviller. They use mind control to force people to do things - harm themselves, commit suicide - until the townsfolk are cowed. One of them, David (a baby Thomas Dekker who has the longest eyelashes ever) is not as mean as the rest, exhibiting some empathy for the scared and sad adults around him. The government at first studies the evil children to see if they can perhaps be weaponized, but these tiny terrors cannot be controlled.
I give this version of Village of the Damned a solid meh. It just doesn't feel like a John Carpenter movie: the Halloweens, The Fog, The Thing (omg I love The Thing), Escape from New York, They Live, Christine ... all far and away better than this flick. Reviews I read unequivocally prefer the original version. The acting is decent, Christopher Reeve is very heroic and the idea is great. It just doesn't seem to be Carpenter's strongest work.
When Adam, an arborist/forester/biologist/science-y type, is assigned to identify part of an ancient Irish forest can be cut down, he and his young family (wife Clare, baby Finn and good-dog Iggy) are met immediately with a cold reception. The local townspeople believe that the forest belongs to The Hallow - faeries, banshees, etc. - and that anyone trespassing in the forest will have to answer to those fey folk. And cutting down the trees is the worst kind of trespassing, obviously. As Clare busies herself with settling into their amazing old stone farmhouse, including removing all the pesky iron bars that crisscross the windows, Adam, accompanied by baby in backpack and dog, identifies trees to come down. He finds some weird, oozing black fungus covering a dead deer, organic spikes protruding from the carcass's throat. Because he's a scientist, he takes a sample home and finds that it is aggressively parasitic, like that zombie ant fungus (Ophiocordyceps). Well, that doesn't bode well.
Indeed, it doesn't take long before the Hallow come calling, breaking windows, disabling the family car, oozing through ceilings and floors and poking Adam's eye out. Note to viewers squeamish about eye trauma: this may not be your favorite movie. Adam becomes infected/connected to the Hallow (iron burns him, light makes him flinch, he grows spikes, etc.), baby Finn is endangered and there is much yelling and screaming whilst running through the woods once the monsters make themselves known.
I feel more positively about The Hallow than negatively but I didn't love it. I loved the setting, the practical creature effects (skittering, oozing, very yucky), the body-horror make-up was strong, the cinematography effective. But at only 1:36, the movie still felt long, especially since I didn't much care about Adam, Clare or the baby (I did care about Iggy the dog), and once the flaming scythe came into play, I was over it. Seriously: there is no way that scythe stayed burning for that long. I think part of my disconnect was also that the film couldn't decide what the monsters were. Were the monsters really faeries? If so, what was the point of the sentient fungus? Was it the fungus (a la Splinter) that turned humans into the Hallow monsters? If so, how did the changeling baby happen? Either one - faeries or fungus - would have worked but both just seemed a little undecided to me.
Holy shit - season 8? How is it possible that I have been watching this ridiculous show for that long? I can't believe I've stuck with it - I'm really only in it for Daryl, Carol, Morgan and Shiva the CGI tiger. Sometimes Maggie, now that she's become a badass. Unfortunately, there's not quite enough of any of them in this S8 opener. Anyway, the three communities - Alexandria, Hilltop and the Kingdom - have banded together and are going to war with Negan.
First scene: Rick outside somewhere, sweaty, beaten-looking, dazed. Next: a well-put together house with Weird Al's "Another One Rides the Bus" playing faintly in the background for some reason, and Old Man Rick, with grey hair and a truly HORRIFIC beard, opening his eyes in bed, fresh flowers on the bedside table. It appears we will be having flash-forwards this season. Sigh.
In the now, there are lots of preparations going on for this here upcoming war. Blacksmithing and welding; Carol and Tara up on a building or overpass, timing a herd of walkers; Daryl and Dwight exchanging sneaky messages via arrow ("TOMORROW"); Rick (and later King Ezekiel and Maggie) making awful speeches. Seriously: the writers cannot do an uplifting speech to save their lives. Blah blah blah "We start tomorrow right now ..." UGH. Just start shooting some shit already, would you?
Really, that's what most of this episode is: everyone gearing up. There's a scene with Carl out searching for gasoline and getting spooked by an unseen person who sounds slightly unhinged but harmless, until Rick pops up, shooting into the air and chasing that person off. Carl gives his dad an exasperated look and Rick's all, what? I shot over his head - I hope he'll be okay. Carl: Hope isn't enough anymore, dad.
Part of the preparations are picking off Negan's various lookouts and I now remember that Morgan is killing again (after that Kingdom kid from the end of last season), as he stabs a Savior in the back with the sharpened end of his staff. Father Gabriel and Rick have a brief heart-to-heart. Rick says goodbye to Judith - who has grown from a baby to a toddler seemingly overnight - and then kisses Michonne (and honest to God that was one of the most chemistry-free smooches I've ever seen). Michonne and Carl are staying behind in Alexandria, to defend the town should it come to that. Maggie, on the other hand, is on the front line with Rick and Ezekiel, leading her Hilltoppers. She thanks Rick for showing her how to lead and he smiles, saying that's good because after this, he's following her.
Finally, it's time. Carol, Tara, Daryl and Morgan start to lead a massive herd of walkers down the highway towards the Saviors' Sanctuary. They blow shit up from time to time, the explosions drawing the herd, keeping them moving in the right direction. Then they rig an explosive boobytrap on a route they know (from Dwight's intel) the Saviors will take to investigate the explosions. A stray walker almost sets it off but Morgan scampers down and drops it, just before the Saviors drive through. The trap goes off, obliterating those Savior cars.
Another couple of flash-forwards: sweaty/sad Rick; and happy Old Man Rick, living in peace and happiness with Michonne and Carl.
Meanwhile, the main rebel contingent has driven their armor-plated cars right up to the Sanctuary, then getting out and into place, guns a-ready. They fire enough shots to draw out Negan and his upper cadre (Dwight, Simon, Gavin, Regina, Eugene) And there's a shitload of talking. Ugh. Negan talks and talks and OMIGOD WHY DOESN'T SOMEONE WITH A RIFLE JUST PICK HIM OFF? He's right there in the open, just fucking shoot him and end this shit. The Saviors would fall apart without him. But no, it's Rick's turn to start talking and he offers sanctuary to anyone - other than Negan - who surrenders.
More talking. More talking. Negan isn't even scary anymore. He's just annoying as shit, then he does something atrocious, then he's annoying. Repeat ad nauseam. Also, he drags out that asshole Gregory who proclaims that any Hilltopper who fights against Negan will be tossed out. To which Jesus snarkily shouts, "The Hilltop stands with Maggie." And Simon gets annoyed with Gregory and pushes him down a flight of stairs. Heh.
Finally, the time for talking is over and the rebels open fire. And WTF is this? They shoot out all the windows in the warehouse. Like using thousands of rounds of semiautomatic ammunition. How is this part of the plan? Does no one remember that no one is making bullets anymore? So wasteful.
Tara, Morgan and Carol split off and Daryl leads the walker herd through the streets to the Sanctuary, setting off explosions as he goes. When the walkers are about to reach the gates, Father Gabriel sets the armored RV to moving; it rolls into the fence and explodes, opening the Sanctuary up to invasion. The rebels get in their cars and drive off, except for Rick and Gabriel. Rick has Negan pinned down behind some wreckage and is wasting bullets shooting straight into the metal. Gabriel grabs him and is all, the plan is we leave now. Amazingly, Rick hears him, jumps in his armored car and drives off. Gabriel is about to follow him when he sees Gregory wailing helplessly. Abandoning the plan, Gabriel stops to pick him up. But they get pinned down and then Gregory panics, jumping in Gabriel's car and driving off, leaving the preacher stranded and alone. And here comes that herd of walkers.
At the rendezvous, Rick and Daryl are all, I don't think Gabriel's going to make it. They stick to the plan and everyone moves off, heading to the next stage. Which is taking out Savior outposts; Morgan and Tara lead one team, Rick and Daryl another, Carol and Ezekiel a third. The good guys may start taking some casualties in this phase but we'll have to wait until next week to find out.
Back at the Sanctuary, walkers flood in. Gabriel manages to hide in a storage trailer but unluckily for him, that's where Negan has taken refuge too. I'm guessing something atrocious may happen soon.
Flash-forwards: Alexandria is getting ready for a festival and Judith drags her dad outside. He has a limp, uses a cane and is wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. And then it's sweaty, dazed Rick, sitting under a tree with a framed piece of stained glass above him, muttering about mercy.
We close with now-Rick, speechifying: "If we start tomorrow right now, no matter what comes next, we've won. We've already won!" What the fuck does that even mean? It's borderline incoherent. This show ...
Maggie, a 2015 horror/drama starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin, is a kinder, gentler zombie movie. In this post-apocalyptic scenario, the Necroambulist (literally, "walking dead") virus affects both crops and people in America's heartland. While farmers are able to burn their crops, dealing with people is not so easy. The virus takes from 2-8 weeks to fully develop in people and the infected are supposed to be turned over to quarantine centers after a certain point. Authorities insist that the infected are taken care of there, treated with compassion until their final moments, but reports circulate of people being indiscriminately tossed into huge warehouses, regardless of their infection level, and just left there to rot, the more advanced cases often eating the less sick folks.
When Maggie (Breslin) runs away from her small town farming community, her father Wade (Schwarzenegger) searches for her for two weeks, finally finding her in a city hospital, having suffered a zombie bite on her arm. A local doctor pulls some strings for him and Wade is allowed to bring Maggie home, with strict instructions to get regular check-ups and to turn her in before it goes too far. Although Maggie's stepmom sends the two younger children off to live with their aunt, life at the family farmhouse goes as well as can be expected. As the infection infiltrates Maggie's body more with each passing day, the stepmom grows a little nervous; but Maggie's high school friends support and comfort her and her father is her staunchest ally, even as he knows the inevitable is coming.
A low key character study, Maggie is a horror film in name only - the biggest horror is watching a beloved family member rot before your eyes. There are a couple of zombie moments and the makeup work, as the infection advances on Maggie, is cool. Schwarzenegger is fantastic here, shaken and sorrowful and fiercely protective; many reviews I've read wish the filmmakers hadn't wimped out on the ending because he clearly could have handled it. A nice little movie for people who like their zombie movies with more brains than braineaters.
The Girl with all the Gifts was another suggestion by my friend Heidi B. and I'm awfully glad she pointed me to it. This is a good entry into the subgenre of British zombie movies and while I think it's perhaps a little too long, I absolutely enjoyed it.
Melanie is about ten years old and has a tough existence. Like a number of her peers, she is kept in a solitary cell, fed live mealworms and only allowed out to go to school, during which she is bound by her wrists, ankles and head to a wheelchair. Melanie (and her peers) are zombie children, you see, and unlike the regular adult "hungries" that have overrun Britain, they are capable of conscious thought and able to control their flesh-eating ways. At least a little. Melanie is especially special, exhibiting politeness, empathy, loyalty and capacity for complex thinking. These zombie children are being held in a military facility with research being done by Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close), who is sure she can develop a cure for the zombie fungus. When the facility gets overrun by zombies - which, of course it does - Melanie, Dr. Caldwell, Melanie's favorite teacher (Miss Justineau, played by Gemma Arterton) and a couple of soldiers are the only ones who make it out alive. As they make their way into London, trying to rejoin the remaining humans, the resourceful Melanie becomes very helpful.
The Girl with all the Giftswears its influences on its sleeve: an empty, zombie-ravaged London a la 28 Days Later; the cross-country trekking a la The Walking Dead; the military a la Romero's Day of the Dead - but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. The cast is particularly strong with Close (pretty sure I never expected to see Glenn Close in a zombie movie), Arterton and Paddy Considine as the gruff Sergeant Parks, and Sennia Nanua is very, very good as Melanie. If you like zombie movies with a little bit of soul, check this one out.
And here's the third crowd-sourced recommendation: Dark Signal, proffered by Jamie G., whom I have known since kindergarten (or possibly nursery school). Once again, I was psyched before the opening credits stopped rolling: set in Wales (I love Welsh accents!), executive-produced by Neil Marshall (I love The Descent and Dog Soldiers!) and starring Gareth David-Lloyd (the most Welsh name ever!) (who played Ianto Jones on Torchwood!)
In gorgeous Snowdonia, Wales, where the sheep seem to outnumber the people, a serial killer is raging, attacking young women and cutting off their ring fingers, earning himself the "Wedlock Killer" moniker from the press. Also, a cranky DJ and her sound technician are on the air for the final time before their radio station sells out to a corporate owner and goes digital. Also, Kate, a single mom with a wheelchair-bound, non-verbal little boy, is coerced into being a wheelman for her overbearing boyfriend, ostensibly for the cash she'll be paid which might keep the debt collectors off her back for a while. The heist takes place at an isolated farmhouse, where the Wedlock Killer has recently claimed a victim named Sarah. While Kate waits for her boyfriend to finish ripping off the farmhouse, she is visited by the understandably unhappy specter of Sarah; unnerved, Kate heads into the farmhouse armed only with glowsticks and a tire iron. Meanwhile, the sound engineer has invited a local psychic to the final radio show and despite the cranky DJ's skepticism, they start to pick up transmissions from Ghost Sarah. Events start to converge, the identity of the Wedlock Killer is revealed and Kate becomes a very resourceful Final Girl. Dark Signal seems to have gotten terrible reviews, largely stemming from lack of logic and focus (one reviewer didn't like that there are so many accents: Welsh, Scottish, English, Polish and Italian). It may be that it can't really decide what it wants to be - ghost story or serial killer flick - but I liked it quite well.
Here's another crowd-sourced scary movie recommendation, this time from my college friend Meredith T: 10 Cloverfield Lane. (To be honest, I had already had it on my list but after she said that it freaked her out, I moved it to the head of the line.) Only tangentially related to Cloverfield, this flick is tense, well-acted and claustrophobic and really solid until the last fifteen minutes or so when we see how it connects to the first movie.
After a car accident, runaway bride Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) awakens in an underground bunker, chained to the wall. Her rescuer (and jailor) is Howard, a hardcore conspiracy theorist/survivalist played wonderfully - and by "wonderfully" I mean "terrifyingly" - by the awesome John Goodman. There's a third guy in the bunker too, a local kid who used to work for Howard and who lends enough credence to Howard's story that Michelle finally listens to it, after quite a lot of terror and trying to escape first. During her first escape attempt, Michelle sees something outside that makes her believe. You see, Howard's story is that something has gone very very wrong in the world above: something happened and a horrific blast (possibly atomic, possibly chemical warfare, possibly extra-terrestrial) has contaminated and killed most of the humans. The three of them settle into a fairly peaceable domestic routine until an air scrubber breaks down. Michelle, as the smallest person in the bunker, has to crawl through the air ducts and fix the machinery. While in the mechanical room, she sees something else that makes her determined to escape, contaminated world or not.
As I mentioned above, the acting is fantastic here. For most of 10 Cloverfield Lane, things are very tense indeed. My claustrophobia kicked into high gear while Michelle was in the air ducts and later, when things go badly, they go very badly. It's only at the very end, when things shift from tense character study to more predictable fare that I felt let down. For the most part, however, this flick holds up.
OMG you guys - where has The Howling been all my life? How can I not have watched it until now? It has everything that I love: werewolves, practical effects/make-up, the 1980s (just barely) and it's only eighty minutes long! A movie can scarcely get better than that, amirite? Spoilers ahead!
It stars Dee Wallace (who would just a couple years later kick major ass in Cujo), as news anchor Karen, who is being stalked by a sketchy dude the press has nicknamed "Eddie the Mangler." After a terrifying encounter with Eddie in a porn shop, Karen and hunky husband Bill head to a retreat called The Colony, operated by Karen's shrink. There are all sorts of weirdos there at The Colony, plus some werewolves slinking around the place. The trouble first starts with cattle mutilations, then escalates when Bill is bitten by a werewolf. Things really kick into gear when Bill totally wolfs out whilst banging The Colony's resident hootchie-mama - herself a werewolf. Karen freaks out and calls her producer/reporter/BFF Terry to come keep her company. Terry is pretty quick on the uptake and starts putting things together and then everything just totally falls apart for poor Karen and her cohorts.
The werewolf transformations are outstanding, nearly on a par with American Werewolf in London's, only a bit grosser. There are a couple of boob and butt shots, some hacking off of limbs and a reasonable amount of gore. Super-awesome flick for those of us who love new classic monster movies with practical effects - I'll take a werewolf flick over a slasher any day!
I did some crowd-sourcing for movie suggestions and my friend Heidi B came up with 2003's Freddy vs Jason. I am a big Nightmare on Elm Street fan and the earliest Friday the Thirteenth movies are not without their charms. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to bring Freddy Kreuger and Jason Voorhees together to duke it out but the results aren't half bad, especially for those of us who like the older movies.
As far as plot goes, no one remembers Freddy anymore so he doesn't have any power over people's dreams. Somehow he is able to resurrect Jason and bring him back to Springwood (the town's name in the first Nightmare movies. The plan is, when Jason starts killing, people will start talking about and being afraid of Freddy Kreuger again, thus giving him enough power to start killing himself. Um, okay. The trouble really starts when Jason won't stop killing people and Freddy is unable to control him. There's the usual bunch of teenagers who figure all this out and have to battle not only Freddy and Jason but also the adults in town, who are convinced that keeping their heads in the sand will keep them alive. The action returns to Camp Crystal Lake for the third act and while there are a couple of survivors, it's tough to say who really wins in the FvJ cage match.
For a lot of this flick, they hewed to the slasher classics. The Final Girl is a virgin with big boobs. The first kid killed off is an asshole who Jason slices and dices right after the poor kid has sex. There were clips of lots of the classic Nightmare dreams (Johnny Depp in a blender - still my favorite!). The Final Girl lives in Nancy's house from the original Nightmare. The parents are all in on it. There's a sexually-active tomboy in a baseball hat (oh, wait, that's a Halloween and/or Carrie shoutout, isn't it?). All of that is excellent. But once things devolved into a slugfest between Freddy and Jason, I got bored. Slashers are just - to me - less interesting when the bad guys are implacable, indefatigable and nigh indestructible, even when fighting each other.
Still, Freddy vs Jason is OODLES better than Zoombies, so there's that.
I don't know what possessed me to pull Zoombies up on Netflix the other night. My very first note reads: "There is NO WAY this is any good. I predict lots of bad CGI." And holy shit, was I right. This may be theworst"movie" I have ever watched in my life. The introduction feels like a TV movie from the 1990s. The acting is terrible, especially by the one child actor. The story, as it were, is this: for some unknown reason, the animals at an endangered species sanctuary*/zoo become infected with a virus (maybe) that turns them all into zombies on the day before the zoo opens, and all the people working there - including some truly insipid "college students" there on internships - try to get out alive. On the plus side, the virus is not transferable to humans; on the negative side, if it had been, this whole thing would have been over much faster.
Here's a list of the completely awful CGI Zoombies inflicts upon its viewers:
zombie capuchin monkeys
eyeballs getting plucked out of a veterinarian's face by said zombie capuchins
zombie giraffes (I actually kind of loved that)
non-zombie elephants (later possibly zombified but that wasn't clear)
zombie lions
humans riding on CGI non-zombie elephants
zombie gorilla (also sometimes an actual dude in a gorilla suit, so points for practical effects)
zombie lemurs
CGI skull-crushing/blood spurtings
zombie lions chasing the jeep
truly appalling CGI zip-lining by remaining humans
zombie macaws pecking their way through glass
zombie eagle on fire
Other items to be duly noted. Most of the zombie attacks/killings happened off-screen - WTF is the point of that? This apparently took place in Canada because a rescue helicopter had ONTARIO written on its side. When something got infected, a zookeeper said, "I have some ointments" which were obviously just a giant tub of Vaseline. Here's one of the really good lines some guy said: "I don't see any animals. Then again, they could be in hiding." OSCAR-WORTHY SCREENPLAY RIGHT THERE.
I could go on, I guess, but I won't. Here, unequivocally; DO NOT WATCH ZOOMBIES. Unless you're planning a drinking game around it, in which case go nuts. (I do kind of like the poster, though.)
Ooh! Starry Eyes (2014) is fun and totally horror-y! What a bleak, nifty Satanic flick about just how far some people will go to make it in Hollywood.
The plot is pretty straightforward: it follows Sarah, an aspiring actress, as she navigates her currently listless existence, waiting tables at a crappy Hooters knockoff and hanging out with vapid friends, most of whom are also trying to get their break into the movie business. Sarah is relentless, however, and while she at first seems like a milquetoast, when she finally lands an audition, her madness starts to surface. It's fun and also brutal to watch: Sarah is our protagonist but she is also a monster, helped along by this production company whose head tells her, "Dreams require sacrifice - and so do we."
A character study at first, the tension ratchets up as does the gory and body horror - all makeup and practical effects done quite well. Starry Eyes is a grim look at Hollywood and what some people are willing to do to achieve their dreams there - according to this movie, some people are willing to do quite a lot. (Other positive reviews here: at Final Girl and at Roger Ebert, no less!)
HERE BE SPOILERS.The Shrine is a 2010 steamer. This guy's review is spot-on - especially when he lists all the better movies this flick steals from and also A FENCE FOR CHRISSAKES - but he liked it better than I did. Read it if you would like some coherence.
But here, this is what you get. (1) Briefly sketched plot summary: an American student goes missing whilst travelling in Poland; two female journalists and a male photographer go in search of the story; it ends badly for most involved. And (2) to change it up here, I'm just going to give you the notes I jotted down as I watched:
Aaron Ashmore is the only decent actor - dialogue is pretty stilted
OMG WANDERING AROUND IN THE FOG FOREVER (demon statue/shrine)
So far, like a SyFy original
Do not follow the creepy little girl! Listen to Aaron Ashmore!
Do not open the coffins! Do not take the murder masks off the corpses!
These three are IDIOTS (only AA has any sense at all). I very much dislike Carmen and Sara = non-entity
Crossbow!
Is that really Polish they're speaking?
While the women are getting prepped for sacrifice, AA gets to dig his own grave
There goes Sara - oooooo the masks have spikes. Meanwhile, AA still digging
Escape! Carmen is good at running barefoot through the forest
Carmen is hallucinating - must have been something in the fog
Demon wants her ... NOPE she's turning into a demon.
NEW THEORY: the fog infects people who go into it so the priests have to kill all the infected people before the demon is unleashed. Priests = good guys!
A lot of people really hated the first of this anthology series, V/H/S - apparently I didn't but found it tiresome and a little shallow. This second installment (V/H/S 2) was also tiresome and I'm going to shout here but WHO THE FUCK USES VHS TAPES IN 2013? It is entirely possible to do actual stories with short movies so why can't these horror directors? While there are some decent moments in these four shorts, the dialogue is largely terrible and the characters uninteresting. Whee!
Framework story:Tape 49. A couple of private investigators break into an apartment looking for a missing college student. They find a bunch of televisions and hundreds of VHS tapes. One investigator sits down to watch the tapes.
Phase I Clinical Trials. An asshole gets an experimental prosthetic eye after losing his own in an accident. There are side effects: the eye sees ghosts/malevolent spirits. It ends badly. My notes say: "Shit. Fake found footage films always make me queasy."
Framework. The PIs are not alone in the apartment. So they watch another tape.
A Ride in the Park. A kid Go-Pros his ride on the BORINGEST mountainbike trail on the planet. Seriously, until the zombies show up, who would ever want to watch that footage? Oh. Zombies show up, the MTBer gets bitten, he turns and bites other people, including the attendees at a child's birthday party - all of which is captured on the Go-Pro. This one was pretty gory (intestines!) but also kind of fun.
Framework. The PIs are not alone in the apartment and the girl one has a migraine and bloody nose. So they watch another tape.
Safe Haven. A clueless (and somewhat douchebaggy) documentary crew films a death/doomsday cult in Indonesia right at the end of days. This one I actually liked for a while: it was very creepy with all the cult members. Then things just went batshit crazy with lots of heads getting blown off by shotguns and skittering ceiling walkers and zombies and exploding cult leaders and demons bursting out of women's wombs. There was a lot of yelling and squishy blood and the goat-demon is the awesomest low budget puppet ever. So there's that.
Framework. The girl PI is unconscious or dead so the other one watches another tape.
Slumber Party Alien Abduction. The title of this short tells you EXACTLY what happens. There's a dog-cam, all the teenagers are completely unlikable assholes and it's very loud.
Framework. Everybody (or possibly nobody, it's tough to tell) dies.
Tobe Hooper's 1985 Lifeforce. With a portentous voiceover to start, I was in love before the opening credits finished: with both naked space vampires and PATRICK STEWART, how could this movie not be amazing? Lifeforce is ridiculous and waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long, but it takes itself seriously and is all kinds of mid-80s awesome. For a horror movie about space vampires.
A joint British/American space mission on board the shuttle Churchill are exploring Halley's Comet. They find a huge (150 miles long) alien craft that is possibly organic and of course think it's smart to send people inside to check it out. They find a bunch of dried up space bat corpses and three beautiful naked humanoids encased in crystal boxes. The mission commander Carlsen decides to bring the box set and one desiccated space bat back to the Churchill. When the shuttle Columbia rendezvouses with the Churchill, there has been a fire: all the crew are dead, the escape pod is missing but the box set and the dead space bat are okay. So the crew brings them back to London. As it turns out, the three naked humanoids are not dead. They wake up and go on a rampage (if one can call disappearing from the screen for long periods of time a "rampage") wherein the gorgeous Space Girl (who has really great boobs) sucks the lifeforce out of all the humans she meets. In short time, London has devolved into a madhouse as the space vampires' victims become zombies (?). Carlsen - who escaped the Churchill in the escape pod, did I forget to mention that? - and another dude chase the space vampires across London, including to a mental hospital where PATRICK STEWART is the head doctor. There is a lot of fuzzy space/horror "science," vampiric victims exploding into dust, a corpse made entirely out of blood pulled from PATRICK STEWART's head and an ambiguous ending with a lot of blue lightning.
Lifeforce is much too long (PATRICK STEWART doesn't even show up until 1 hour 5 minutes and 22 seconds in (I wrote it down)) and is completely nutso. But the animatronic desiccated victim effects are outstanding - I love that stuff. And, really, if you can't embrace a 1980s movie about naked space vampires, you should probably just go watch Beaches again, because that's probably more your thing.
The way this country is going, I thought it behooved me to watch a Purge movie or two, you know, for research, just in case. I like to start at the beginning so I cued up the first one, which seems like it has been out forever but really just came out in 2013. Filmed for only $3 million (!) and starring actual actors (!!) Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey, The Purge is really more thriller than horror but does offer some social commentary.
In a dystopian near-future, the U.S. has "solved" its crime problem: one night a year, "Purge Night," any crime is allowed with no repercussions. People get all that violence out of their systems during those twelve hours, thus behaving themselves for the rest of the year. Of course, the wealthy are able to barricade themselves inside fortified houses, leaving the nation's poor to bear the brunt of the beatings and bloody murder. Hawke and Headey are one such wealthy couple - Hawke sells Purge Night security systems - whose night does not go as planned when (a) their sulky teenaged daughter's sulky boyfriend, who has snuck into their house before lockdown, brings a gun to convince Hawke to let him date the sulky daughter and (b) their angsty/geeky son opens the barricade to provide sanctuary to a homeless vet. Their house becomes beseiged by a group of mask-wearing entitled rich kids who are pissed off that their quarry (the homeless vet) has been taken from them and, as it turns out, Hawke's vaunted security system is a whole lot less secure than they might have hoped.
Hawke and Headey do a good job with what they're given but the teen actors are boring stereotypes at best. The homeless vet is barely onscreen enough to become a character; the masked Purgers provide some over-the-top menace. It's violent but not particularly gruesome or scary - from what I hear, the later movies kick it up a notch. I guess I'll find out.
I was too lazy to open up my computer to pull up Netflix (and we still haven't cut the cord on cable) so I thought I'd check out what free, on-demand horror movies were on offer. I found a classic: 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon. An archaeologist in South America finds a webbed and clawed paw petrified in a river bank which is enough incentive to get a scientific expedition together to go up the Amazon. A group of about eight, including white scientists and doctors, one woman, the ship's captain and some monster fodder, head upriver until the stream is too narrow to pass. In their explorations, they manage to provoke the Creature - who had been living a peaceful existence in its lagoon until then. The Creature picks them off one by one and carries off the lovely woman scientist until the remaining men rescue her, kill the poor Creature and head back downriver to civilization. It's the classic King Kong scenario in which the humans are the true monsters.
This is a beautifully-shot, black and white B-movie. At 87 minutes, it's still a little tedious: hang out on the boat; someone gets picked off by the monster; hang out on the boat; someone gets picked off by the monster; hang out on the boat; someone gets picked off by the monster. But the underwater scenes are truly gorgeous, especially when the Creature is swimming around underneath the unsuspecting woman. There is at least one jump scare that startled me and it's pretty well acted, all things considered. The rubber suit of the monster, while obviously being a rubber suit, still manages to be at least a little convincing. The whole movie is put together to elicit sympathy for the Creature who was just living its life before these dang people came and ruined everything.
In addition to being a fan of foreign/sub-titled horror films, I am also a fan of horror anthologies. I like the intense bursts that come from short films, much like I love Stephen King's short stories. XX is funky in that it is a collection of four horror shorts all directed by women, bookended with gothic stop motion interludes that, while they don't quite fit with the themes of the movies, are very charming.
"The Box" is the first vignette, about the disintegration of a family when a young boy stops eating after a mysterious stranger on the subway shows him what's in a gift-wrapped box. Nothing his parents do will convince him to eat and when he tells his big sister what he saw, things get even worse. There is some great makeup work here but I was left wanting more with the story. Creepy and horror-tinged but not at all scary.
The second installment is "The Birthday Party," which is more of a dark comedy starring Melanie Lynskey as a tightly-wound suburban housewife determined to hide her husband's dead body (heart attack or maybe a suicide) on the date of her daughter's birthday party. It's very stylish and nervous, and Lynskey's antics entertaining as she drags the body from room to room, trying to hide in a house with interior glass walls, but you really do wonder why she wouldn't just call the cops/paramedics upon finding him. Not horror in the slightest.
"Don't Fall" is the most classic horror of the four - and, oddly, the one I was bored with: four hipster/stoner/city types head to the desert for a weekend of RV camping. They find some pictographs and manage to awaken a monster, which rips its way through the four friends. I thought the monster was pretty great but I didn't connect at all with the annoying campers.
The last short is "Her Only Living Son," a Rosemary's Baby/The Omen riff. When Cora's son turns 18, she is dismayed to find him turning angry and violent. She is even more dismayed when the high school principal refuses to punish Cora's son after he rips off a classmate's fingernails (yikes!), instead brushing off the incident because he's a "special, special boy." Again, horror-tinged but not scary. And look, motherhood can be scary: see The Babadook.
Welcome back to the Eighth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series! We're going start things off all sophisticated-like with a Spanish/English-subtitled vampire movie by none other than the fantastic Guillermo del Toro. Cronos was Guillermo del Toro's first feature film and while it doesn't pack the punch of some of his later works, many of his hallmarks are there: clockworks, insect imagery, preternaturally calm children and practical special effects. In this elegant but not particularly scary vampire movie, an elderly antiquities dealer, Senor Jesus Gris (played by frequent del Toro collaborator Federico Luppi), discovers a strange gadget - the "Cronos device" - hidden in the base of a sculpture. The Cronos gadget pierces his skin, filtering his blood, and although it is very painful, it rejuvenates him, de-aging and putting some spring back into his step - to the delight of his previously bored wife. Unfortunately, a dying millionaire has sent his thuggish nephew (played by frequent collaborator Ron Perlman, looking so young here) to find this gadget. The millionaire has the manuscript explaining how to use the Cronos device and is convinced that it will save his life. Senor Gris and the nephew clash; the millionaire explains to Gris that he needs to drink human blood to replenish his own so the Cronos device doesn't kill him; Senor Gris is unwilling to go full-monster and dies a noble death, surrounded by his beloved granddaughter and wife.
The pace of this movie is, to say the least, languid and I will confess that I dozed off briefly at one point - and then woke up wondering why Senor Gris was wearing his suit backwards after he escaped from the morgue. (Still don't know.) And it isn't scary at all, with just a little blood and practical ick effects. But the characters are engaging and anyone who has seen del Toro's later works can see his themes developing here. Fun stuff.
I read, ski, drink good beer, go to matinees by myself, honestly believe that the DVR is the world's greatest invention, burn dinner for Mr. Mouse on a semi-regular basis and watch more horror films than I think I do. I like puppies and kittens and baby bunnies and bacon and sunshine and the mountains of Utah and chocolate banana malted milkshakes and puppies and chick flicks (no, not chick flicks) and surprises and classic Mustangs and did I say puppies already? I like sarcasm and snark and tend to have a glass-half-empty view of life because when things turn out, I'm pleasantly surprised. I also like puppies.
But since I'm supposed to say something: "We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information you’ve provided to them or they’ve collected from your use of their services." EXCEPT I DON'T: I don't use ads, I don't analyze traffic, I don't have third party/advertising/analytics/social media partners. Enjoy your time here.
Posts
