Horrorthon
First rule of Horrorthon is: watch horror movies. Second rule of Horrorthon is: write about it. Warn us. Tempt us. The one who watches the most movies in 31 days wins. There is no prize.
Friday, October 11, 2024
Frankie Freako
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Pearl
The pieces come apart faster and faster as the story goes on, as we know they must. And the whole thing culminates in one of the most fascinating monologues I've ever watched in my life, and *the* most fascinating mid-credit scene I think I will ever see. I've spoken in other reviews of movies I've loved about the feeling of dread at having to review them, not wanting to undersell their brilliance, and I've never felt that more strongly than I do about Pearl. I'm in thrall with this film, and I'm relieved to finally finish a few meager lines of text explaining why. Ti West and Mia Goth each already boast an impressive body of work, and I believe when all is said and done, Pearl will rank among the best things either of them ever do. This is a clever, gorgeous, heartbreaking, and brutal piece of work.
Monday, October 07, 2024
Poltergeist III
Saturday, October 05, 2024
I Saw The TV Glow
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Malevolent
2018 ***1/2
It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. But they're liars! We see them "cleanse" a home to help a grieving widower and his little girl, making sure to let him know who to give the check to.
Black Widow's little sister Florence Pugh is the star of the show as the team psychic; she minces around the house and "feels" things. But she's a liar too! And she doesn't even know it! Right at the end of the scam job she sees something... off, and it's a standout scene because of what isn't there -- there's no keyboard mashing music cue. ARE YOU LISTENING JAMES WAN
It's a great moment, and soon there's another vision that is quiet, out of the corner of the eye, and never spoken of. Teen Black Widow is in a weird spot: she's too scared to pretend to see ghosts because she's actually seeing ghosts. I'm already a fan of "we're scamming people into believing in the supernatural AH IT'S REAL" plots, and even more a fan of "Oh gosh no, my so-called 'powers' are all fake, ha ha ha AH IT'S REAL" plots.
In the prologue of the graphic novel From Hell, two old, well-dressed duffers are walking on the English seaside, reminiscing. It's revealed one of the old men got rich as an amazingly popular stage act in which he had fits and fell down and uttered garbled visions of the future. This comes up because he's admitting to his friend that it was all a complete act -- he faked the whole thing and just said whatever random stuff occurred to him at the time. "But," says the friend, "Everything you predicted, all of it -- it all came true."
So cool, right? Or remember when Illeana Douglas hypnotizes Kevin Bacon at that party in (warning crap title) Stir of Echoes? Later he's all "hey man you unlocked psychic powers" and she's all "yeah I read half a book" or something. Sometimes these accidental, home-grown brushes with The Beyond really work for me.
Back in the movie I'm supposed to be talking about, the gang gets a gig out in the boondocks, and I don't really need to get into the plot further but a bad time is had by all. Things aren't what they seem, yadda yadda, eek watch out, badda bing, we gotta get out of here, bomp ba domp ba doo. If I sound a little disappointed it's because those hints of originality at the beginning didn't really play out like I hoped.
The unspooling story isn't flawed per se; it doesn't drag, and the cast does a great job of making you care about them, but some of you more experienced viewers might find this a bit paint-by-numbers. I thought it was giving it a good honest try, like when Teen Widow's jerk older brother, who runs the scam and is in too deep with loan sharks to refuse work, keeps listening to motivational tapes on his Walkman. You hate him but you like him.
So to the connoisseurs, I recommend watching Malevolent just for these few standout touches. It's exactly for this reason I gave it the half star over base average. But in the larger scheme of things it lands squarely in the populous land of known as You'll Be Okay Throwing 90 Minutes At This But It Won't Change Your Life.
Monday, October 04, 2021
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
Sunday, October 03, 2021
The Mummy
The timing of the release of The Mummy could hardly have been better. The previous decade had witnessed the excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun, and interest in Egyptology (which even now, in my mid-40s, I still can't believe is an actual word) was sky-high. It was two years before Hollywood really started cracking down on Hays Code violations, and it was late enough in the timeline of commercial filmmaking that the tech had gotten really good. It was also the threshold moment when Boris Karloff became a colossal film star, just a year removed from his breakout role in Frankenstein. I spent much of the film imagining what it must have been like to be a child in the 30s, awestruck watching Imhotep's mighty frame projected onto the 40 foot screen at Grauman's Egyptian Theater. He towers over his co-stars both literally and figuratively, his eyes mesmerizing with phantom electricity, controlling the action with quiet menace even in scenes he's not present. It's hard not to find a little distracting the rather canned romance forced into the movie. Co-star David Manners, who plays main protagonist Frank Whemple (and who also played Jonathan Harker in Dracula), sparkles with insubstantial white-savior energy, and watching him ladle himself all over damsel Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), one rather hopes that Imhotep gets the girl in the end. Mere days after meeting her, he's gushing, "I love you so," to the woman. Seriously, I'm as careful as they come about dropping L bombs on my girlfriends too soon. The idea of throwing it on the table before like date 3 is major eye-roll stuff.
And while I'm on the subject of weird airspace violations, oh my god, EVERYBODY in this movie stands way too close to each other. I understand you gotta lean in close if you're telling someone a dirty secret, but the standard conversational stance in this movie is like 6 inches from the other guy. It's weird as fuck. And like, I don't care what kind of secret you got to tell me; if you're putting your hand on my lapel like this it better be because we're about to make out. Otherwise, you better be ready to swallow some of your own teeth. Of course, these are all idle observations, none of which ruined the movie for me in any way. I approached The Mummy the way I approach any of these classic Universal pics: with nostalgia not just for the ancient story it's telling, but for an age of filmmaking in which the films and the performances were gigantic.
The Taking Of Deborah Logan
Even if not a single supernatural thing took place in the movie The Taking Of Deborah Logan, it would remain a chilling look at the decline of a woman as her brain is slowly eaten by Alzheimer's. I'm reminded a little of the opening scenes in The Descent, in which we spend enough time getting to know our characters to identify with their pain as things start to go bad for them, and to be appalled along with them when things go from bad to grotesque. The Taking Of Deborah Logan is presented in documentary form from beginning to end; the "original" footage (as opposed to graphics and newscast clippings) is shot by a PhD film crew live-reporting on the experiences of Deborah and her daughter Sarah. It's good enough as a movie; it'd be an astoundingly good documentary. The editing is very trim, so there's barely a wasted moment, and the videography provides us with a lot of savorable shots of our characters' face as things happen to them. The two leads are excellent. Anne Ramsay (Sarah), I've been aware of since her small, but notable role in A League Of Their Own. She has a lovely face and a smile that shines through resting features that I would nonetheless describe as "hardened". Her face evokes a lifetime of challenging emotions. We see a lot of Jill Larson (Deborah) in torment, and her face does torment really well. And because of the Alzheimer's, we see her go through a torrent of emotions, often shifting rapidly within the space of a moment: politesse, confusion, fury, shame. Things eventually do get very weird, and about that I'll say very little. In fact, all of my screenshots are from the first half of the movie. I will say that if I'm withholding that half-star extra that Crystal Math included in her review, it may merely be an example of what Stephen King described in Danse Macabre as an innate challenge in horror filmmaking: impressing the audience with the real scare. He wrote, "the protagonist [throws open the door], and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. 'A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible', the audience thinks, 'but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall.'" I will also say that I don't believe my "relief" is due to any weakness in the presentation of what happens or how we get there. The special effects include seamlessly some rather gross things, and the transition from unease, to anguish, to horror is seamless as well. This is a good and creepy movie.
Friday, October 01, 2021
Come True
So Sarah goes veering off for various misadventures with this Harry Potter-lookin' dude who's on the research team, and she keeps having weird visions of the shadow guy and it's cool. But this ends with her sleepwalking out of the hospital and refusing to wake up. Harry Potter follows her and gets his Hermione to show up with some gear so they can watch what she's dreaming.
Halloween III: Season Of The Witch
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Color Out Of Space
In the Arkham Woods
Deep in private land
The Gardner family home
Lavinia, Benny, Jack
Nathan and Theresa
Who's short a boob
Then one quiet night
The 'rents about to bang
An object falls
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
Pink malignant race
The color out of space (space, space, space...) Hydro-expert, Ward
In his Miskatonic shirt
Senses something wrong
Sounds beneath the shack
Of the squatter in the woods
Who's played by Tommy Chong
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
Pink malignant race
The color out of space (space, space, space...)
[Hard rock riff] The meteor zapped by lightning bolts
News crew story shows a smoky hole
Theresa chops off two of her fingers
Dactylectomy cool
Benny wanders off, forgets to bring the alpacs in
'Vinia bloody dishes, now's she's in the john yakkin'
Barfin it out, ohhhhh The fruit in the garden tastes of rotten mutation
The wifi sucks, Theresa losing her patience
Now the parents fighting, and Lavinia gets scared, so
Wiccan prayers
Wiccan prayers
Wiccan prayers
[psychedelic guitar solo] Alpaca mass of heads
Like Carpenter's The Thing
It's fuckin gross
Jack and mother fuse
Into a beast with spider legs
You wish you'd never seen
The landscape grows
Into something that it knows
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
(Couleur de l'espace)
Color out of space
Pink malignant race
Color out of space
The light behind your face
The color out of space (space, space, space...) The water here is cursed
Frankie Freako
(2024) ***1/2 Is a movie that's *trying* to be Stupid And Annoying, and succeeds at being both, therefore a good movie? It really depend...
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(2007) * First of all let me say that as far as I could tell there are absolutely no dead teenagers in this entire film. Every year just ...