Filmmaker James Wan has, in the last decade, become horror cinema royalty. He was behind the creation of the Saw franchise, the two Insidious movies, and, from just this past summer, The Conjuring. His bona fides as a horror auteur are unassailable...which must be why he’s currently helming Fast & Furious 7. After directing three straight ghost stories, maybe a change in direction was inevitable. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Conjuring”
Tag: Ghost Flick
October Horrorshow: The Haunting (1999), or, Think of the Children!
When I imagine Purgatory, I have a fairly concrete vision in mind. I’m standing on a New York City subway platform during the morning rush hour. It’s August. The heat is stifling, and I had a twenty-minute walk just to reach the station. By the time I find myself standing in the stagnant air, waiting for the next train, I’m pouring sweat. During the night, some bum defecated on the platform and its ripe smell has been added to the unique bouquet of rot and brake dust that gives the New York subway an odor all its own — truly something unique the world over. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Haunting (1999), or, Think of the Children!”
October Horrorshow: Insidious
According to the IMDb page for Insidious, Leigh Whannell kept a list of horror movie clichés handy while he was writing the screenplay. He didn’t want his project to slip into the same predictable traps that mar so much horror cinema. With that list staring him in the face day in and day out, presumably, Insidious would turn out to be a film that was totally fresh, one that even audience members with hundreds of hours invested in the genre would find enjoyable. That is a very laudable goal, and a bit of a risk. Just because a film is formulaic does not mean it is a bad film. In its most basic sense, it just means the film will feel familiar to many people watching it. And as we all know, people like the familiar. As much as we like to pretend humanity is a collection of adventurous people, the opposite is in fact true. That’s why tourists eat at the same restaurants they have back home. It’s why popular music at times can sound like the same song done over and over again by a hundred different groups. And that’s why sequels, remakes, and carbon copies of previous successes make money at the box office. It’s just the way things are. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Insidious”
October Horrorshow: The Skeptic
Hey, Hollywood. Cut Netflix some slack. The other day I was on Netflix’s streaming service looking for a horror flick about a haunting to watch, and the best I could come up with was The Skeptic, a movie I had no idea even existed. In fact, most of the movies in Netflix’s streaming horror queue are a complete mystery to me. This particular flick was just about the highest-rated there was for what I was looking for, and it barely cracked two stars. I did a little more research, and found that it raked in a grand total of six thousand bucks at the box office. That is just pathetic. Someone, somewhere, please sit down in a room and don’t leave until you figure out how to deliver me more than Hollywood leftovers in on demand service. I’ll pay a few more bucks a month, I swear. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Skeptic”
October Horrorshow: V/H/S
Oh, no! Found footage?! Why?! Whyyyyyyyyy??!!!!!
All histrionics aside, do filmmakers still make horror flicks that don’t use the found footage method? Because it feels like it’s been awhile since I’ve seen one. Is it really too much to ask that filmmakers show skill as storytellers rather than resort to gimmicks? It may be. But what happens when gimmick is combined with good storytelling? That’s just crazy talk, right? Continue reading “October Horrorshow: V/H/S”
October Horrorshow: The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia
If someone were to guess where this movie takes place, there’d be a fifty-fifty chance they’d get it right. Is it Connecticut or Georgia? Well, let’s analyze. The film is called The Haunting in Connecticut 2, subtitled Ghosts of Georgia. Going in, knowing nothing about the film, I inferred that it takes place in Connecticut, but the characters, or possibly whatever ghosts are causing the haunting, have roots in Georgia. Maybe there’s a plot that has something to do with the Civil War or the Underground Railroad. Not exactly original, but logical.
But another, cynical way of thinking is that the film takes place in Georgia, and has absolutely nothing to do with Connecticut; that this sequel is attempting to cash in on a brand. The original Haunting in Connecticut wasn’t a blockbuster, but it was profitable. And Hollywood loves profit. Lionsgate had this successful property on their hands, and they were looking to squeeze it dry. Rather than put any time and effort into a serious sequel, they chose to slap the Haunting in Connecticut title on some low-rent production they had set to run, in the hopes of making some cash. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia”
October Horrorshow: The Awakening
The Awakening, from 2011, is better than most horror films I’ve seen. It’s also one of those films featuring the supernatural that doesn’t quite fit all that well into the surprisingly rigid definitions of the genre. Films like The Shining, The Sixth Sense, and others, are horror films by default, when in actuality, they rise above such rote classifications. The Awakening is not in the class of the two films cited above, but it has the same aspirations to break away from the bonds of genre.
Directed by Nick Murphy, and written by Stephen Volk and Mr. Murphy, The Awakening follows Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall), a young woman in England a few years after the end of World War I. She’s Cambridge-educated and has fiercely-held beliefs. Among these are the equal status of women and the ridiculousness of belief in the supernatural, including belief in God. She’s the author of a widely-read book that purports to debunk the supernatural, and the viewer’s first experience with Florence is her doing just that. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Awakening”
October Horrorshow: Paranormal Activity 3
The only way to kill a movie franchise is to look away. The business model of the film industry necessarily requires that films display a certain amount of histrionic personality disorder (after all, if it ain’t worth looking at, it ain’t gonna make money), but eventually all franchises end up wearing out their welcomes. Narcissism, egocentricity, etc.; a person could have a field day going through the DSM looking up conditions that apply to the film industry, but it all gets back to money.
The Paranormal Activity franchise is a cash machine of unheard of proportions in Hollywood. To date, budgetary expenditures of around thirteen million bucks have resulted in three-quarters of a billion dollars in box office receipts. Holy shit. That’s actually quite amazing. And as long as people keep showing a willingness to go see the same movie over and over again, Oren Peli and company would be fools to stop satisfying the desires of the moviegoing public.
None of this means the movies have to be any good, of course.
Paranormal Activity 3 is the most recent of the series that I’ve seen, and truth be told, there is little different about this film than the first two, and probably the fourth, as well, which I have not seen. Writing a review for this film is a bit of an exercise in futility. Like the film, it would be mostly interchangeable with any review of the earlier films. I could write a brief summary of characters and plot, but in considering doing so, I’m being confronted by a strange feeling of hopelessness. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Paranormal Activity 3″
October Horrorshow: Mama
The last horror flick I saw with Guillermo del Toro serving as executive producer was The Orphanage, from 2007. I reviewed it in last year’s Horrorshow, and while I did like it, I lambasted it for its derivative nature. This time around, the film del Toro chose to attach his name to is Mama, from writer/director Andres Muschietti. It’s also a fairly derivative horror flick, in that there’s not much happening on screen that will be all that unfamiliar to horror fans, but unlike The Orphanage, I couldn’t find any quotes online where the director is being a pretentious ass, so there’s that.
Mama tells the story of two lost little girls and the ghost that loves them. Beginning during the financial crisis in 2008, a businessman played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau goes on a murderous killing spree (thankfully off camera). He kidnaps his two young daughters and flees the city for the countryside. After a car accident, the trio are lucky to survive, and they seek shelter in an abandoned cabin in the woods. There, Nikolaj is about to finish off his bad day by killing his daughters, but a spectral apparition inhabiting the cabin gets to him first, saving the girls’ lives. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Mama”
October Horrorshow: Poltergeist
So, who really directed Poltergeist? Part of the Hollywood mythos the last few decades treats this as an open question. Was it Tobe Hooper, the man at the top of the credits? Or was it producer Steven Spielberg? It was such a serious concern among the Directors Guild that they launched an investigation into whether or not Spielberg had tried to snatch credit away from Hooper. Honestly, no one involved is saying definitively one way or the other, but Hooper is a competent storyteller with fine directorial vision, and I can’t see him having a film taken away from him. That being said, it’s also hard to picture Spielberg letting a director that was not him have total creative control over a flick he was very much involved in as producer. So did Spielberg direct Poltergeist? Who knows, and who cares? Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Poltergeist”