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.
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!)
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.
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