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”
Tag: Supernatural Flick
October Horrorshow: The Babadook
There was a thread on r/horror back in December of last year. In it, OP was lamenting the fact that having seen so many horror films in their lifetime, they were having a hard time being frightened by horror films anymore. They, and other commenters, wished they could go back in time to younger days when the horror genre still held surprises, when they could still be scared by an apparition suddenly appearing in a bathroom mirror, or a slasher coming back from the dead to chase down and slaughter teenagers. Everyone seemed a little jaded. Here were people whose favorite genre of film is horror, and they felt that they had become desensitized to what drew them to the genre in the first place. What a shame. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Babadook”
October Horrorshow: As Above, So Below
It has begun! October is here. And with it comes the October Horrorshow here at Missile Test. All month long the site will be dedicated to horror film reviews. The good, the bad, the putrid — it doesn’t matter. As long as there’s blood, I’ll watch it. First up is some found footage.
Oh, no. Found footage? Again?! If I were emperor of the world, I would not ban found footage horror flicks outright, but I would require a special permit to make them. The only way to get such a permit would be through a personal interview with me. The only way to get a personal interview with me to discuss a found footage project would be to approach my palace as a supplicant...on hands and knees. From the moment prospective filmmakers land at the airport or arrive at the train station, or however they get into the city, they cannot be upright. They have to crawl all the way to my throne room. Then, as they grovel at my feet while addressing me using all my different names and titles, they must stretch out their left hand, so that my palace guard might lop off their pinky and present it to me as tribute. Then, and only then, will I even consider listening to a pitch for a found footage horror flick. But most important and most decisive, I think, for the filmmakers is this: if you make a found footage horror flick, I get gross points. I’m not Clooney. I’m not expecting 20 against 20, but there will be pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, fiduciary pain. These are the tolls I would exact from anyone looking to make a found footage horror flick. If they truly believe found footage is still the way to go after all that, then the filmmakers get my official imprimatur. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: As Above, So Below”
October Horrorshow: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
Woe be to the viewer when a film series becomes tired. At first there was innovation, followed by repetition. Afterwards comes mediocrity, before, finally, the series descends into total and utter garbage. Such is the case with the last film in this year’s Horrorshow, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. From the opening scene through denouement, the sixth entry in the Halloween franchise is a tedious affair. So tedious, in fact, that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pay enough attention to this movie to write about it. It was a close call. More than once while I was watching a text message would come in or I would want to look up a member of the cast or crew on the internet, and any deviation in my focus threatened to derail my comprehension of on screen events. How could I possibly write a review of this dog if I couldn’t remember what I just saw? I’ve stopped watching films after fifteen or twenty minutes and still written reviews, but the difference between those films and this one is that, although I only spent a short time with those films, I was able to keep my focus. Halloween 6 was a struggle from beginning to end. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers”
October Horrorshow: Hellraiser
Clive Barker has a sick little mind. There’s no other explanation. His idea of a dimension of pure pleasure becomes twisted into a place of unending pain, and thus are birthed the Cenobites, cinema’s most inventive sadomasochistic villains. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hellraiser”
October Horrorshow: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
I love it when a sequel plays around with its original idea...with caveats, of course. Tweaks are good. Wholesale re-imaginings can be taking things too far. Take The Highlander, for instance. That film lays out some neat ground rules for both protagonist and antagonist. For some supernatural reason, seemingly random people throughout history have been rendered immortal, their purpose in life to track each other down and cut each other’s heads off, all to earn a mysterious prize which will be given to the last man standing. The film spent a substantial amount of time on its hero’s origin story in the Scottish Highlands. The film wrapped up the story so completely that the filmmakers may as well have put a bow on it. But, when it was time to make a sequel, all that backstory was retconned, and the immortals turned into fricking aliens. ALIENS. Audiences hated it. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge”
October Horrorshow: Hatchet II
I judge sequels and remakes a bit more harshly than other films. I cannot help but compare further entries in film series to their predecessors. It would be ideal if I could judge something like Aliens or Jaws 2 on their own merits, but I find that impossible if I have seen the earlier film. The associations in my brain are just too strong to ignore. That’s not a problem today. I have not seen Hatchet, the first of writer/director Adam Green’s ongoing story of murderous freak Victor Crowley, but I did just watch Hatchet II, and now I think it is time...
Ahem!
Ladies and gentlemen, my Loyal Seven readers, I present to you Hatchet II, the official film of the 2014 Missile Test October Horrorshow. This flick represents just about everything I love in a slasher flick. There’s loads of gore and buckets of fake blood; all the killing is done in the woods; in Danielle Harris, it stars a legitimate scream queen; and it looked like it had a budget of about a nickel and a half. Oh, and best of all? It’s 85 minutes long. We love reasonable run times here at Missile Test. There’s nothing more interminable in a film than bloated length, so when I catch a movie that doesn’t hold me prisoner past the start of the eleven o’clock news, I’m thrilled. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hatchet II”
October Horrorshow: Odd Thomas
Odd Thomas is the anti-Cole Sear — he’s a youth untroubled by his ability to see dead people. Thomas (Anton Yelchin) is a psychic hero for the comic book age of American cinema. He rolls with the punches with endless optimism. Without flinching, he uses his gifts for the betterment of the fictional desert town in which he lives, Pico Mundo. Like any good comic book hero, he has a support network of people who are aware of his gift, and its import. Thomas is a flawed human being, capable of very weird behavior, yet he is universally liked by all those who meet him. Were it not for all the murder happening in town, what a utopia it would be. Thomas is indeed odd, yet never shunned or avoided. He even has a hot girlfriend. Thomas’s life is almost annoyingly good for someone so strange, but, this is fiction, after all. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Odd Thomas”
October Horrorshow: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II
This movie may have a hell of a title, but a title like Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II also betrays itself as 1980s schlock horror before a viewer sees a single frame. But, so what? The ’80s were a second golden age for horror, when it seemed every week brought something either new or outrageous. Prom Night II, from 1987, is a sequel to the Jamie Lee Curtis flick from 1980, but it owes allegiance in title only. None of the characters from the original appear, and this movie takes place at an entirely different high school. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II”
October Horrorshow: Lifeforce
Sometimes a movie tries to be an epic, but has a hard time shaking off its b-movie stink. Such is the case with Lifeforce, the 1985 sci-fi/horror film from director Tobe Hooper and writers Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby. The film opens with a bombastic score composed by Henry Mancini, in quite a departure from the type of music cinema buffs would associate with him. The camera flies over an endless asteroid that looks plucked from the long, dichromatic shots that Stanley Kubrick filmed for 2001. What follows is a quick introductory voiceover that takes care of all the backstory and character development. Viewers are told of the mission of the HMS Churchill, a joint American/British space shuttle mission tasked with exploring Halley’s Comet upon its dodranscentennial approach to the earth.
The shuttle, commanded by Colonel Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), approaches the comet and its radar detects an alien spacecraft shrouded in the comet’s coma. Carlsen leads a team aboard and discovers that the deceased crew of the derelict ship are man-sized creatures that resemble bats. Further in the ship, the team discovers three naked human figures in suspended animation. In a decision that sets the plot in motion, Carlsen has the three figures, one woman and two men, brought aboard the Churchill. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Lifeforce”