October Horrorshow: Black Cab (2024)

Who doesn’t like Nick Frost? He’s a big, cuddly teddy bear. Which makes him an ideal antagonist in a horror flick like Black Cab, where Frost’s unnamed cab driver turns from being a part of society’s background, into a troubled couple’s torment.

From this past year, Black Cab comes to viewers via director Bruce Goodison, from a screenplay by David Michael Emerson. Frost and Virginia Gilbert are credited with additional dialogue.

Synnøve Karlsen plays Anne, a twenty-something urbanite who is engaged to Patrick (Luke Norris), a philandering shithead whom audiences will despise even before they pick up on the duo’s dynamic. After a dinner with another couple that runs well into the night, Anne and Patrick hail a cab and Nick Frost pulls up in his clanking, sputtering, stinking, diesel-powered UK black cab. The couple begin arguing in the car over whether or not they are still engaged, and whether or not Patrick is moving back in with Anne, when Frost mentions that he recognizes Anne from an earlier fare. He picked her up outside the maternity ward at a local hospital. Anne’s pregnancy is news to Patrick, who responds by being even more of a dick. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Black Cab (2024)”

October Horrorshow: Dead Mail

Is this a horror movie? Usually, if I ask that question, it means a movie is not a good choice for the October Horrorshow. Just because a movie has horror elements in it, does not make it a horror movie. A case in point, much disputed, is The Silence of the Lambs. I do not think of that as a horror movie. I think of it as a thriller, or a police procedural. Sure, when Hannibal Lecter rips someone’s face off and wears it, that’s horrific. The iconic character Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre wears someone’s face, and there’s no doubt that is a horror flick. But the use of horror in Silence is in service to the story, and not the purpose of the story. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Dead Mail”

October Horrorshow: In a Violent Nature

At some point, filmmaker Chris Nash had a revelation. Maybe it was in those moments right before sleep takes hold, when the head carnival, against all sense, is at its most raucous. Maybe it happened while watching another movie, or when his mind was drifting away from a banal or uncomfortable conversation. Whenever it was and whatever the situation, Nash must have thought, “What if a Friday the 13th movie were told from Jason’s perspective?”

That simple idea is what drives In a Violent Nature, from earlier this year. At its core it is a classic 1980s slasher flick, but it’s boiled down until there is nothing left but bright white bones. The movie follows Johnny (Ry Barrett), the Jason Voorhees analogue, as he stomps through the woods and kills people. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: In a Violent Nature”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Road House (2024)

Road House, the original from 1989, occupies hallowed ground here at Shitty Movie Sundays, in the top spot of the Watchability Index. It’s an unassailable movie, the embodiment of SMS’s informal slogan, “All bad movies are shitty, but not all shitty movies are bad.” From beginning to end, it’s an absurdist romp into the excesses of contemporary Hollywood action, the purest expression of the golden age of the genre that was the 1980s. There was little possibility that the 2024 remake would be better or more engaging, so I’m not going to hold it to the original’s standards.

Released just a couple of weeks ago after a decade of development hell, Road House comes to us from screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry, and was helmed by Doug Liman. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Road House (2024)”