As Into the Forest began, I knew little about the film. Was the feature from writer/director Patricia Rozema, adapting the novel by Jean Hegland, a YA film? Sci-fi? Horror? Chick flick? Post-apocalyptic? Dystopian? All signs pointed to it being a little bit of all these genres, and more. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Into the Forest”
Tag: Thriller Flick
October Horrorshow: Hush
A film doesn’t have to have a boatload of jump scares or shocking moments to be frightening. I’ve found that jump scares in particular, when overused, to be detrimental to the quality of a horror film. But Hush, the 2016 film co-written and directed by Mike Flanagan, and starring fellow co-writer Kate Siegel, does not rely on quick instances of surprise to juice up its fright with adrenaline. Rather, Flanagan and Siegel place their protagonist in a situation that is naturally horrifying, and use the tension that creates to settle a viewer into deep, feature-length unease. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hush”
October Horrorshow: Jaws 3-D
What a putrid mess. Jaws 3-D has about all the care one would expect from a film that was originally pitched as Jaws 3, People 0. That’s right. This movie, the second sequel to a great film that redefined the industry’s business model, was planned as a spoof flick. Had that film been made, it would probably have been no better than Airplane II: The Sequel, but could not have been much worse than what actually came to be made.
Jaws 3-D, released in 1983, follows Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid), Sherriff Martin Brody’s oldest son from the first two films. There’s a little trickery when it comes to Mike’s age in this film, as with his younger brother, Sean (John Putch). Eagle-eyed viewers will wonder how Mike is in his late twenties and Sean is in college, when, only eight years earlier, when the original Jaws was released, Mike was around twelve years old and Sean looked like he was just about ready to start elementary school. This far away from both films’ releases, it barely registers as an issue, but I remember this bugging the hell out me when I saw this movie as a kid. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Jaws 3-D”
October Horrorshow: Jaws
I couldn’t say how many times I’ve seen Jaws. It’s been so many times that the film feels like a familiar presence in my life. My first viewing was so long ago that it’s mostly faded back into the ether, consisting of little snippets that have been distorted by time. I remember that I was young, maybe five or six years old, and that my old man was there to make sure I covered my eyes during the gory bits. Was it irresponsible to let someone so young watch a movie featuring such gruesome scenes of death as Jaws? Well, it was rated PG, for Parental Guidance, and that’s just what I got. I was too young for the gore, but there were about 120 minutes of really good movie that wouldn’t cause nightmares, and that I got to see until I was old enough for the rest. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Jaws”
October Horrorshow: Lake Placid
Giant animal flicks have had a resurgence of late, thanks to the adventurous executives over at SyFy. Every week seems to see the introduction of a new Asylum or Roger Corman b-movie with gruel-thin plots and awful CGI. These movies fill a niche, sure, but while some viewers find these movies’ intentional cheapness a main draw, endearing even, most are such amateurish productions that they are unwatchable. That’s a shame. Flicks such as Dinoshark or Mega Python vs. Gatoroid share a pedigree with Them! and The Beginning of the End, but while Bert I. Gordon could never be accused of being a great filmmaker, his silly movies are still watchable 60 years later. These newest monster flicks are just putrid, marring what can be a very dynamic subgenre of sci-fi/horror. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Lake Placid”
October Horrorshow: The Shining
Every single scene in The Shining, the classic horror film from Stanley Kubrick, is unsettling, sometimes deeply. From the opening montage, a series of beautiful helicopter shots of the Rockies, rendered menacing by the music of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind, to the final slow zoom before the end credits, there’s not a single moment’s respite from the tension of this film. That makes The Shining somewhat unique in comparison to other horror films. There is no lighter side of the Torrance family’s lives that is upended by the goings on at the Overlook Hotel. They were doomed regardless. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Shining”
October Horrorshow: The Hallow
The woods can be a scary place for some people. The strange noises, the closeness, the environment being the antithesis of cities or suburbia — being in the woods can be weird. Maybe that’s what makes the woods a great setting for horror films. That, or the woods is just a convenient setting when budget dictates plot and cast have to be small. Either way, the forest primeval is an oft-used setting in the horror genre, in both good and bad films. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Hallow”
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”