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”
Tag: Supernatural Flick
October Horrorshow: Poltergeist (2015)
I remember being a child in the 1980s, and movies from the 1950s looked old. The people in them wore weird clothes, had strange haircuts, and drove ridiculous-looking cars. Everything was in black and white, too, making me think, probably up until I was in kindergarten, that the world used to be black and white, and sometime during my parents’ childhoods, all of a sudden it snapped into color. I vaguely remember asking them about that. Oh, the conclusions a child’s mind will come to absent any other information. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Poltergeist (2015)”
October Horrorshow: Exeter
It is a film like Exeter that makes me question this little film criticism hobby of mine. This movie is a bottom-feeding piece of shit, and no one should need any Johnny Come Lately critic to tell them so. It was released direct-to-video and has a Rotten Tomatoes rating below 30%. What more can I add? Not much, to be frank. But this film has done something meaningful when it comes to the Horrorshow. This will be the last low-budget shitfest that I found on Netflix that I will be reviewing. Netflix is a fine service...for television. But when it comes to film, Netflix is a showcase for the worst films Hollywood and elsewhere has to offer. It’s in Netflix’s interest to keep licensing fees for the movies it carries as low as possible. Producers of top-grossing films, which are still making money in direct sales, have no incentive to move their films onto something like Netflix or Amazon Prime until the money stream slows. That means that quality is subjugated to affordability, and we viewers get shit like Exeter. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Exeter”
October Horrorshow: It Follows, or, The Venereal Demon
Umm...is this film mumblegore? No, it’s not. It Follows is the second feature film from David Robert Mitchell. He’s not one of the crew of filmmakers (Ti West, Adam Wingard, etc.) that have steered much of horror back to a 1970s sense of place, setting, and look and feel, but Mitchell’s film does feel like kin in many ways. I think this has a lot to do with the wider aesthetic that has come to dominate still photography in recent years. Every one of us with a smartphone has participated in it at some point. We’ve had Instagram accounts or the Hipstamatic app or any number of other apps that apply retro filters to our pics. And since everyone in this country seems to have a smartphone, the typical smartphone pics are everywhere, not just on our phones. The aesthetic is so popular that it has invaded advertising — the final indicator of cultural pervasiveness. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: It Follows, or, The Venereal Demon”
October Horrorshow: Hatchet III
I had high hopes for this flick. Admittedly, those hopes were unrealistic. But, Hatchet II was last year’s official film of the Horrorshow, one I had a lot of fun watching, and I was looking forward to more cartoonish gore and general silliness. All the ingredients were there. Same writer/director, same stars, what looks to be the exact same sets, but this time around, the results are not the same. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hatchet III”
October Horrorshow: The Canal
The problem with watching so many horror films is that competent, little films like The Canal can come along and I’m not impressed or repulsed either way. That is, until I saw the ending of this one. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Canal”
October Horrorshow: Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
Deciding to write about a particular movie has some unexpected difficulties (pardon me while I moan). I don’t get paid for writing about movies. I do this only because I feel like it. That is why there is little rhyme or reason when it comes to the reviews. I go where the mood takes me. But sometimes I get the urge to write a series of reviews, and make the decision to write a review before I watch a movie, rather than after. The distinction is important. If a film really grabs me, for whatever reason, I am more likely to write a review than not. But if a film is anonymous, leaving me troubling to recall what I saw mere hours after the credits rolled, then I probably will not bother with a review. How, then, to treat Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth? I decided to write this review as a follow-up to Hellraiser II, a film that was better than I expected. But this... Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth”
October Horrorshow: Hellbound: Hellraiser II
It’s not a good sign for a sequel when there is not one, but two recaps of the previous film within the first twenty minutes. The Friday the 13th franchise used to have recaps at the beginning of every movie, but that was to pad runtime. In essence, recaps, sometimes in the form of extended flashbacks, are lazy filmmaking, entrusting big chunks of storytelling to a predecessor’s efforts. But, Hellbound’s director Tony Randel must have learned the technique as producer on Godzilla 1985, a film that was a recut bastardization of the Toho release, Return of Godzilla. Godzilla flicks are fun but they are stupid. They are stupid fun, I guess. Randel was part of a team that found a way to make a Godzilla flick even more stupid. Hopes were not high for this film. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hellbound: Hellraiser II”
October Horrorshow: The Taking of Deborah Logan
The Taking of Deborah Logan, the horror film directed by Adam Robitel and written by Robitel and Gavin Heffernan, starts out very strong. It’s found footage, which, my Loyal Seven readers will know, I think is an overused technique in the horror genre. But, I was able to get past that.
The film tells the story of the eponymous title character as she is ravaged by the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. A film crew is shooting a documentary on the disease with Deborah Logan (Jill Larson) as its subject. She is being cared for almost exclusively by her daughter, Sarah (Anne Ramsay), and we also get to see the toll the disease is taking on her. Early on, the film is a disturbing look into a disease of which far too many people have knowledge and experience. It’s not easy watching Deborah lose her lucidity, nor is it easy to see her shame when she comes out of the depths and learns what she did. It’s disturbing, but also a sanitized version crafted for filmgoers. The reality is far worse. But, it is a fantastic jumping off point for the story. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Taking of Deborah Logan”
October Horrorshow: Annabelle
The Conjuring was a horror movie that exceeded expectations. With a budget of around 20 million bucks, a combination of good script, good direction, good acting, and good scares pushed what could have been a boilerplate horror experience into something memorable that brought in over a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office. With such a return on investment, it was a certainty that there would a follow-up. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Annabelle”