Oh, what’s this? Paranormal phenomena plaguing a family, a child being targeted, a frantic mother, a skeptical father, and a paranormal expert showing up in the third act to offer some wisdom. It’s yet another Poltergeist clone! Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Dark Skies”
Tag: Thriller Flick
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: Hannibal Rising
Some movies just don’t need to be made. Did we really need a reboot of the Spider-Man franchise this past year? Or another Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake so soon after the last one? Do we need any of the reboots, remakes, sequels, rethinkings, reimaginings, spinoffs, etc., that we get every year? Of course not. But as long as we keep paying to see them, Hollywood will keep making them.
Case in point, Hannibal Rising, from 2007. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hannibal Rising”
October Horrorshow: Trollhunter, or, The Troll Hunter…Whatever
I have to admit, I’m getting pretty sick of found footage horror films. The technique was unique for only a small handful of films, but it crossed into gimmick very quickly. I don’t seek out these films. To prepare for the October Horrorshow, a lot of times I’ll just grab whatever is currently popular for rent or whatever has made a splash in the last few years. This has led me to watch Quarantine, Grave Encounters, The Last Exorcism, Paranormal Activity, Apollo 18, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, The Tunnel, REC, many, many others, and now, Trollhunter.
These days, watching so many found footage horror flicks is a bit like being a connoisseur of fast food burgers. Sure, there are some good ones out there, but you have to shove down a whole lot of big macs and junior whoppers in your quest to find one. Flashes of grilled perfection are found in too few breaks in the normal routine of noxious, artery-clogging, commodity fare that does naught more than fill both bellies and graves. Real love and care are not just offset, but dominated by the work of hucksters who would prefer a person not think too much about how they are feeding both mind and body. Why would a person subject themselves to this? Dear reader, I do it for you. I do it...for you. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Trollhunter, or, The Troll Hunter...Whatever”
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: Christine
A general rule: films that are adaptations of books are not as good as the book. Why should they be? A film removes all the grace of prose, and by necessity compresses the story. Sometimes, though, films are better than their source material, and the rule is reversed. Jaws, Wolfen, Die Hard (aka Nothing Lasts Forever), Full Metal Jacket (aka The Short-Timers)...a list like this could go on and on. It’s strangely satisfying to watch a film that’s better than the book. But also confusing. All those films I cited above come from mediocre books. Yet the mind of a filmmaker was able to read them and think, “Yeah, this would make a good movie.” Okay. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Christine”
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”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Orca
There are plenty of people to blame for this shitty movie. There’s director Michael Anderson, producers Dino De Laurentiis and Luciano Vincenzoni; maybe even star Richard Harris. While their culpability would hold up in a court of law, the person I hold the most accountable is Steven Spielberg. If he had not ushered in the era of the blockbuster with Jaws, there is no way in hell anyone, anywhere, at any time in cinematic history, would have made Orca. Well, maybe the guys over at Asylum would have...but not in 1977. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Orca”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Olympus Has Fallen
I’m heartened by the savviness shown by the audience members during a showing of Olympus Has Fallen this weekend. This was a crowd that was having none of director Antoine Fuqua’s shenanigans. It was clear from the moment the first commercials hit the airwaves that this film would be utter nonsense. It appeared that most of the people in the theater came with the knowledge they would be watching a total piece of shit, and they didn’t care. They were there for the shitty, for the schadenfreude, and for all the other reasons that bad movies entertain us. They were laughing and groaning in all the right places. It was my kind of crowd. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Olympus Has Fallen”
The Empty Balcony: Total Recall (2012)
It’s no secret. Hollywood loves remakes. They love squeezing new cash out of old ideas. And why not? We’re a country that embraces the familiar. We find comfort in it. It’s this tendency of the public to seek out what it already knows that makes Applebee’s and the Olive Garden successful properties in Times Square. Who the hell would come all the way to New York City only to eat the same food they can get in Boise? Americans, that’s who. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Total Recall (2012)”