Halloween 2014 Day 12: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

This film does an excellent job at making you feel lost and hopeless in the woods. If Blair Witch pioneered found footage, [rec] perfected it.

Halloween 2014 Day 11: The Den (2013)

A fresh take on the whole first person handicam thing. Kind of the opposite of V/H/S's premise re: approach to technology. I kept anticipating a twist that was gonna make the whole film come together but one never came. Lackluster.

Halloween 2014 Day 10: In Their Sleep (2010)

French horror. That's really all that needs to be said. Its just a French horror movie.

Halloween 2014 Day 9: Dark Water (2005)

What a terrible movie. John C. Reilly is the only brightness in this horrible slog of a film. Yet another mid-00s Americanization that completely fails in every respect. Was The Ring the only one of those to nail it?

Halloween 2014 Day 8: Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988)

Destroys the mystique of Hellraiser. Cool makeup and stuff but that doesn't redeem it.

Halloween 2014 Day 7: Hellraiser (1987)

Just about perfect in every way. Jesus wept.

Halloween 2014 Day 6: House of Wax (2005)

A schizophrenic film.  Really not bad for a slasher. Paris Hilton owns so much. This movie felt like there were scenes missing.

Halloween 2014 Day 5: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

I don't know how I managed to avoid watching this classic for so long, but its an absolutely incredible film. Completely blown away.

Halloween 2014 Day 4: Alien Abduction (2014)

This movie gave me motion sickness.

Halloween 2014 Day 3: Dead End (2003)

Not as funny as I remember it being, though I've certainly lost a good deal of sense of humor since i last saw it

Halloween 2014 Day 2: Candyman (1992)

Not nearly as racist as I anticipated.

Halloween 2014 Day 1: House of the Devil (2009)

Revisiting some movies this Halloween and posting some brief thoughts.
House of the Devil is not nearly as good as I remember it being. It takes AGES to get to the point.

Halloween Day 5: The Ring (2002)

After her niece mysteriously dies, a reporter sets out to find the cause. On her way, she discovers a tape that, when watched, gives you seven days to live.
It makes a lot of sense that this film was directed by Gore Verbinski. As Japanese horror remake, it serves its purpose well. Its a pretty good film, markedly free of jump scares like other, more recent, remakes. The atmosphere is heavy and the dialog is worthwhile, even if it outstays its welcome. A pretty good movie.

Halloween Day 4: The Evil Dead (1981)

A few friends drive into the woods, to a cabin for a weekend. When one of them finds some old relics in the basement, including a book bound in flesh and a tape recording, they unleash something old and something dead.
The Evil Dead is an amazing film. Beginning to end, some of the finest horror you'll ever experience. Sam Raimi, at least during this era, can do no wrong. Evil Dead is a certifiable classic, as are its comedy successors. Every bit as exciting and scary as it should be. A great romp.

Halloween Day 3: Resolution (2012)

In resolution we find ourselves transported into a world where a man has chained his best friend to a pipe in the wall of an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. As the friend detoxes from meth, the man begins to lose himself in his own story.
The meta-narrative is kind of played and the ambiguity of the film, which admittedly is its high-point in a great climax, feels kind of forced. Otherwise this is a fantastic, superbly acted, tightly written, high-tension, full intrigue, spectacular film.
In a meta way, as so eloquently portrayed by the film, I'm starting to lose my edge with regard to horror films. Maybe its getting older, maybe its something worse, but I'm continuing to find myself more anxious about what's going to happen to the characters than I am about "monsters" or whatever. More anxious, less scared. It works pretty well in this film, where everything is chekhov's gun, and the constant worry of when its all going to fall in place adds to the movie but overall, tension has got my stomach in pits lately. Maybe I'm losing my edge. This movie made me think about these things, and any horror movie that leaves you thinking is a good one. Any movie that leaves you thinking is a good one, in my opinion.
This isn't really much of a review. Consider it an Op-Ed.

Halloween 2013 Day 2: Silent House (2012)

A young woman with her father and uncle begin to overhaul an old family home for sale. The family soon, as in like immediately, begins to experience all the symptoms of a home invasion. After her father and uncle disappear, Sarah is forced to navigate the dark house alone.

First of all, this is a bad movie. Anything that sounds positive about it, let me assure you, its a bad movie. The majority of the movie is made to look like its one continuous take, which it clearly isn't. The scares, while legitimate at the beginning, begin to wane very quickly. The story is essentially non-existent until the final act, where you'll start to wish the story was still non-existent. With an ending as uninspired, hacky, and offensive as the one supplied with Silent House, its no small wonder it tanked.

A lot of genre films get away with a lot as far as offensive stuff goes, and god knows this blog has made those concessions as well. The final act of Silent House is so beyond the pale with ham-fisted, unneeded, explicit, and tactless use of child abuse and rape, the directors should be ashamed of themselves for creating it. Ugh. And it thinks its so mature and forward-thinking to address heady problems like this in film and maybe there is a place for it, Martha Marcy May Marlene, another Elizabeth Olsen film, addresses some similar themes in an adult manner, but in my opinion, if you don't have the chops required to do something sensitive in an appropriate manner, maybe don't try. You're going to make a bad movie and alienate people, at best.

Why is it so hard to deliver a satisfactory ending to a horror film?

Halloween 2013 Day 1: Carrie (1976)

In the 1976 film Carrie, we're introduced to our protagonist as a reserved, isolated, mocked, and, most importantly, pure girl. When that purity is put into question, she begins to exhibit supernatural powers, specifically telekinesis, and her mother, abusive from the get go, begins to escalate her physical and emotional attacks on Carrie. As Carrie grows stronger and stronger, her high school peers begin to plot against her while her mother prays for her salvation.

Brian De Palma is a director who understands cinema better than most, and he guides what would be a rather uninspired script to a fantastic film. The editing in this film is superb, making great use of split screen and other, less traditional, tools in the cinematic arsenal. There's much more praise I could lay at the feet of De Palma. The soundtrack comes off as cheesy at times and the film might not have aged as well as some of its campier peers, but Carrie serves as an excellent piece of film.

V/H/S/2 (2013)

They crammed out a sequel to V/H/S already. Halloween 2012 is long gone by now, but V/H/S remains as one of the best horror anthologies of all time. Even with its weakness and extremely problematic content, its a high quality piece of work. Sequels generally aren't. V/H/S 2 stands up.

Once again we have a horror anthology set in this bleak universe. The collector is gone, the rapists are gone, all that's left is the house and the tapes. A man/woman private eye team break into the collector's house looking for a missing person. They find the person's laptop in the TV room. As the man begins to search the house for the kid, the woman puts in a tape. and another tape, and another. On each tape is another visage of horror: an eye transplant goes wrong, a man goes for a bike ride he'll never forget, a group of people investigate a cult, and a bunch of kids have a slumber party.

V/H/S/2 suffers from one major problem: most of the shorts run overlong. In the first, we get a full-blown explanation of how the terror mechanics work, which is never a good sign (see: friday the 13th part 2). The second and third go well past their welcome. Some of the shorts stretch the gimmick a little far. There's a lot of editing involved in the second and third that loses some of the suspension of disbelief. The last one, however, is almost flawless in its execution. It shows off some basic effects and makes what are clearly dudes in poorly made costumes blasting air horns absolutely terrifying.

Overall, V/H/S/2 is unnecessary but fun. Its nice seeing a short with an all non-white cast, there's no short that involves rape this time around, and the only homophobia I could see came from one throwaway line that probably should have been edited out. All in all, V/H/S/2 is worth a watch if you liked the first one. Also, they should have kept the S-VHS title, that one's way better than V/H/S/2.

Mama (2013)

Feral girl stories are the worst. They're lazy, insipid, and offensive. Nell? More like Hell (No, I Wont Watch This Film). It is by sidestepping the tropes in the feral girl "genre" that allows Mama its ability to scare.

At the outset, a man murders his wife and business partners, and runs with his daughters in hand. They, of course, crash into the woods. The father is quickly murdered by unseen forces in a spooky cabin and the girls are left alone to go feral in the wilderness. They are found five years later and taken in by their uncle, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and his romantic partner, Jessica Chastain. Sooner or later the couple finds out they brought back more than just two girls from the woods.

Just from the names of the leads you should know on what level the performances are. The rare horror movie with an A-list cast, it excels in basically every area. The scares are effective, the humor is effective, the cgi even works, and I imagine it'll stand up for a while at least. Mama is genuine scary as well as being an actual good film. A rare mix but a powerful one.

The Strangers (2008)

Honest to goodness, home invasions scare the living daylights out of me. Its like, you're in a place where you're supposed to be safe all the time except that space is threatened. Not only threatened but violated. I don't like the idea of it and I guess its my privilege that makes that specific scenario the scariest thing to me. What I am saying is, stay out of my house.

In The Strangers, we are set in an isolated house, strange to leading lady Liv Tyler, with her would-be fiance. After he leaves, Tyler's character begins to hear strange knocks at the door and windows. Then, quickly, things placed in her house, like her phone and piano, start moving when she's not looking. She and her quickly reunited boyfriend find themselves being terrorized by three masked people.

The Strangers is an excellent movie in conveying that sense of helplessness and lack of safety. It is legitimately scary with some excellent performances by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman. The film quickly falls apart in the second act, and leaves at the end with a "just another horror movie" moment. Fun, and scary, while it lasted.