Horror Flick – Page 42

October Horrorshow: Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead Here it is, the first zombie flick of this year’s Horrorshow, and it’s a good one.

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is an Australian film from 2014, written by Kiah Roache-Turner and Tristan Roache-Turner, and directed by Kiah. Taking place mostly in the middle of nowhere, Roache-Turner used a tried and true method — isolation — to stay within the bounds of a very small budget. But one of the great things about film in the 21^st century is that budgetary constraints mean a whole lot less than they used to. Wyrmwood had a budget, as reported on the internet, of only $160,000. That’s extraordinarily small for a feature film, akin to films such as Clerks and Paranormal Activity.

In rural Australia, something is amiss. After a spectacular late night meteor shower, people begin to turn into flesh-eating zombies. But not everyone, of course, otherwise there would be no movie.

The opening scene stakes this flick’s place in the zombie subgenre of horror. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead”

October Horrorshow: Dead Silence

I like James Wan. I like Leigh Whannell. I like them both when they work together, even though the duo is responsible for the execrable Saw franchise. But after seeing what they are capable of in the ghost subgenre of horror, I can write that it is good for horror when they collaborate. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Dead Silence”

October Horrorshow: Intruders

Holy crap! This flick is so obscure that as of this writing (March 2016 — I like to get a head start on the Horrorshow) it has no Wikipedia page. It also has a common title. A quick search in the tubes turned up no less than three films titled Intruders produced from 2014-2016, not including this one. Some more digging has revealed that this Intruders was originally titled Shut In, and under that title there is a Wikipedia page. So all is well with the universe. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Intruders”

October Horrorshow: Indigenous

The Darién Gap is one of the more interesting natural locations on earth. It’s an area of forbidding jungle and swampland straddling the border of Panama and Colombia. The terrain of the gap is so treacherous that its expanse marks the only break in the Pan-American Highway’s 19,000-mile length. It’s a land of native tribes and Marxist guerillas (truly a land outside of time — who still wants to be communist?). The Darién Gap is also the setting of today’s film, Indigenous. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Indigenous”

The Empty Balcony: 10 Cloverfield Lane

10 Cloverfield Lane, from director Dan Trachtenberg, was billed as the spiritual successor to Cloverfield, from 2008. The filmmakers, including producer JJ Abrams, have been coy about exactly how this newest film relates to Cloverfield, and this ties in well with the general air of mystery that has surrounded the films’ promotional campaigns. But in actuality, how the two films are related is an impossible question to answer, so the people involved have to be cagey. 10 Cloverfield Lane was developed independently of Cloverfield, and other than the title, has no relation. Linking the two films together was a bit of smoke and mirrors on Bad Robot’s part to give the new film a leg up at the box office. It’s disingenuous, sure, but luckily it doesn’t matter. There are plenty of genuine sequels out there that are terrible films. If a good one wants to latch on to a successful film like a remora, that’s fine with me. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: 10 Cloverfield Lane”

October Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

Halloween H20 movie poster What a clumsy title. H20. Does it relate to water? Not at all. That’s a zero on the end, not the letter ‘O’. H20, then, is the shortened version of what this movie should have been called — Halloween: 20 Years Later — only shoved right in the middle of the title. Beware films that can’t even get their titles right. As it turns out, though, this flick is redemption for a franchise that had been foundering for the entire 1980s and ’90s.

Halloween III is the stepchild no one talks about, while Halloweens 4 through 6 are little better than straight to video cash grabs, relying on brand strength over competence. The plot threads in 4-6 were so tangled and messy that for this film, all that nonsense was retconned. No more Jamie Lloyd, no more Undertaker impersonator, no more missing baby. The series went back to the core elements that made it such a success in the first two films — Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Once upon a time, horror flicks couldn’t get enough Jamie Lee Curtis. She starred in five horror flicks from 1978 through 1981. Her piercing scream became instantly recognizable to horror fans. In fact, her first line in this film is a vintage scream, as her character, Laurie Strode, awakes from a nightmare. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”

October Horrorshow: We Are Still Here

I love a good anonymous horror flick. How anonymous is We Are Still Here, the movie from writer/director Ted Geoghegan? The plot summary on Wikipedia currently sits at 152 words as I write this. That’s it. In this day and age, a film really has to fly under the radar to get such a sparse entry on a site whose editors can be quite verbose.

We Are Still Here takes place in snow-covered New England in the year 1979. Husband and wife Paul and Anne Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig and Barbara Crampton) have relocated from the city following the death of their college-aged son in a car accident. They have chosen to move into a century-old house on the outskirts of Aylesbury, one of those insular New England towns that populate fiction. It’s full of people who have known each other since birth, and is very mistrusting of outsiders.

Like all small towns in a horror film, this one has a dark secret. Long ago, the house the Sacchettis purchased was home to the Dagmar family, who were accused by the townsfolk of selling human bodies to medical schools and Chinese restaurants in Boston. After facing some small town retribution, a curse was placed on the house and any poor souls who occupy it. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: We Are Still Here”

October Horrorshow: The Relic

I love a good monster flick. Hell, I love a mediocre monster flick. Which is good for The Relic, because, while it’s a passable diversion, it’s not the second coming of Alien.

From way back in 1997, The Relic, from director Peter Hyams, features one of the more complicated beasties I’ve encountered in my decades of watching horror flicks. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Relic”

October Horrorshow: Trick ‘r Treat, or, Charlie Brown’s an Asshole!

Despite its association with horror, few horror movies are Halloween themed. This might be a good thing, or it might be a missed opportunity. I don’t know. What I do know is that in seven years of doing the Horrorshow, comprising over 150 reviews, only the six movies from the Halloween franchise that I’ve reviewed so far have taken place during the annual celebration of all things morbid. So, today’s film is a nice change of pace, and an acknowledgment of a time of year that so many of us enjoy. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Trick ‘r Treat, or, Charlie Brown’s an Asshole!”

October Horrorshow: The Innocents

The Innocents, the 1961 film from director Jack Clayton and screenwriters William Archibald, John Mortimer, and Truman Capote, is an adaptation of Archibald’s stage play, which itself is an adaptation of Henry James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Innocents”