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The best genre – scary movies

Halloween (2018)

21/10/2018 · by Joy

WARNING: Not a spoiler-free review.

This was an unexpected, long-awaited occurrence which surprised me in many ways and swooped in like a miracle and fixed and erased everything I hated about the Halloween saga. I had pretty high expectations but not too high, because after all, it’s still a slasher and it’s still Halloween and the concept is… pretty easy to capture.

He’s back – Michael. She’s back – Laurie. She has a daughter who is annoying and doesn’t understand how trauma influences its victims and that when your friends are murdered by who is called the ’embodiment of pure evil,’ and you are pursued by said ’embodiment of pure evil,’ you don’t just get over it. She also has a granddaughter who conveniently loses her cell phone to a bowl of either slush or polenta, I’m not entirely sure. But really, the only two people that matter are Michael and Laurie, so it’s all good.

I was impressed with most things and there were things I was less than impressed with. For instance, the beginning scenes with the investigative journalists seemed pretty irrelevant and I mostly forgot about it by the time they left my screen. They never appeared again. It seemed like a hokey way to reintroduce Laurie Strode and to clear up “misconceptions” about the backstory (i.e., plot points that were created by the pre-existing sequels). It also seemed like a hokey way to demonstrate Michael’s existence in the asylum with the “New Loomis” (which is basically what he was). I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either.

We meet Laurie Strode once again and we find out that she has spent the last 40 years creating a home where she can feel safe – multiple locks on her front door and a kitchen island that is a powered secret entrance to her basement where she keeps an impressive collection of guns and weapons presumably for her protection. Bafflingly enough though, her house has a great number of large windows with little to no protection. Seems strange that when you’ve fought with Michael, you don’t think that one of his favourite things to do is smash through windows and grab you from behind… but okay, I’ll suspend my disbelief.

It’s evident throughout the whole film that this movie was created by a group of passionate individuals. Jamie Lee Curtis slips back into her role as seamlessly as one can. Judy Greer seemed entirely out of place and I wasn’t thrilled with anything her character did. Yes, I get it, her character is supposed to be resentful that her mother spent her entire childhood training her to protect herself against the serial killer that murdered several of her friends in 1978 – that sucks, but it’s also understandable. That’s a traumatic event, lady. The constant repetition coming out of Judy Greer’s mouth – “Get over it” – just makes her play as a callous, insensitive and unlikeable individual.

So anyway, when Laurie’s granddaughter’s graduation or whatever it was supposed to be takes place and Laurie meets them for dinner on October 30th after watching the bus depart from the cushy existence Michael has known to transfer him to a maximum security facility (why they chose to transfer him on this particular date is so beyond me…), and Laurie is understandably upset and distraught, it really grinds my gears to see her treated the way she is – with disdain and “I told you so”‘s. I mean, come on, (a) in the original Halloween, Michael is being transported to court and MICHAEL LITERALLY ESCAPES on the same date 40 years earlier in the exact same manner, thus being the incident that started it all, (b) Michael is obsessed with Laurie and will most definitely track her down if he escapes again, (c) this woman clearly has PTSD from coming face to face with a ruthless killer!!!

Anyway, so Michael escapes from the bus (obviously) and Laurie gets the cops to escort her to her daughter’s house to pick up her daughter and her family, but lo and behold, her granddaughter is not there and is totally unreachable because COINCIDENTALLY her weird, drunk, cheating boyfriend threw her phone into a strange substance and it is no longer working and she didn’t even seem to try to fish it out and save it??? But anyway, that’s a convenient plot point.

At this same time in the story, we see Michael steal his Shatner mask back from the stupid journalists, kill them, and move on to start a killing spree, sparing no one but the children. He kills Laurie’s granddaughter’s best friend and her boyfriend, he kills numerous other people – I lost count at 15 – and eventually faces off with Laurie. I won’t spoil the ending (not that this has been a spoiler-free review at all), but it’s pretty satisfying.

All in all, I had a lot of fun watching this one. There was comic relief, there were brutal murders, there was a slow-moving Michael, there were fun lighting effects, there was Jamie Lee Curtis who is obviously the highlight of the film. I really enjoyed it. I think it was a solid sequel and I think it was effective. Slashers aren’t meant to be scary, they’re meant to be fun and with that, Halloween accomplishes just that.

The Open House (2018)

21/01/2018 · by Joy

First and foremost, I feel like I should apologize for the hiatus. I know I have literally zero regular readers, and I’ve never had a very consistent posting schedule, but I still feel guilty since my last post was in October!

A new year means a new, fresh spreadsheet of movies. I failed at keeping track of the films I watched last year in about April, so I’m hoping to keep a full list this year. But anyway, enough rambling and on with the show… the show that ultimately leads… nowhere?

I wasn’t necessarily excited nor did I have high hopes for The Open House. It’s a Netflix original that just aired and it stars Dylan Minnette of 13 Reasons Why fame. To be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed with his performance in 13 Reasons Why either. I found him to be a pretty flat stage presence and I think that carried over to The Open House as well, which isn’t really boding well for his career (although, I will say he was okay in Don’t Breathe).

The film started out okay, if not a little cliche – with a jolting death and a quick change of scenery. Our two main characters, a teenager and his mother, relocate to their relative’s mountain home which is a gorgeous, if not creepy, abode. Pretty basic plot, creepy things happen until suddenly *spoiler* things aren’t happening anymore. That pretty much sums up the entire film, actually. It was a whole lot of slow, ambling, “ooh, spooky” moments that feel like they’re leading up to something big, something earth-shattering, and then… nothing. I was let down! I was ready, I was prepared for some kind of justice, and justice I did not get.

It was just uninspired and unoriginal. It was nothing that we haven’t seen before, that’s for sure. There was no character development and there was no basis upon which to build a connection with any of the characters either. It was confusing, it was stale, it was unimaginative. I definitely would not watch this again or recommend it to anyone. I didn’t hate it, I just… was so disappointed.

Gerald’s Game (2017)

03/10/2017 · by Joy

2017 is the year of the King – Stephen King, that is. This is great news for me because as far back as I can remember, he’s been my absolute #1 favourite author. I won’t claim to be his biggest fan but I do own many of his books and movies and he’s one of the very few celebrities I follow on Twitter, so there’s that. He probably gave me the first nudge into the world of horror when I was, like, 10 years old.

Some of the critics are hailing Gerald’s Game as the best King adaptation of the year. I’m not sure I would go that far, especially in the last few minutes. For a vast majority of the movie, I was pretty well captivated. It’s a slow burn, that’s for sure, it doesn’t have a lot of “action” to it, but if you’ve read the book, you’d see that’s pretty much how it goes. Some people have called the premise absurd, but I don’t think it’s all that absurd. I think the scariest thing about it is how it could happen… I mean, if you’re into kinky handcuff games and your husband (or wife, I ain’t judgin’!) is pretty old, anyway. I was really really REALLY hoping they’d go a different route altogether with the ending. Cut out Joubert and just call it a day. The Moonlight Man/Space Cowboy was just… a figment of Jessie’s imagination. Or was he? Maybe he was a supernatural entity! I don’t care, but at least don’t go the Joubert route. Gerald’s Game is one of my favourite King novels… sans the last 70-ish pages. But I’m just not so sure it would have worked better that way anyway. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I get what Mr. King was trying to do… show how truly un-scary Joubert is in the light of day as opposed to when you’re sequestered in the nighttime fighting off hungry dogs and moonlight… I just don’t know if I love it.

Beyond that, though, disregarding those last few minutes, I thought it was done really well. It’s a difficult thing to film, since, of course, the vast majority of the film is just the character of Jessie alone… in solitude… no one but the “angels on her shoulders” to converse with. That’s a tough scene to film. But Carla Gugino plays her role extraordinarily well. Both Bruce Greenwood (Gerald) and Henry Thomas (Jessie’s father) make you pretty uncomfortable – granted, more Henry than Bruce; he was chilling.

I really liked it a lot, but I don’t know if I can say I loved it. It definitely had flaws, but not in casting, acting, or writing, that’s for sure. It was disturbing and parts were gruesome, but I also thought it was well done. I’d recommend it… to certain people.

It (2017)

10/09/2017 · by Joy

It is easily my most anticipated movie of the year. Easily. I don’t do opening weekends (especially not opening NIGHTS), but I went on Saturday evening. I booked the tickets and reserved our seats on Wednesday night. That’s how excited I was for this particular film.

Since I was a kid, my favourite author has always been Stephen King. I don’t have all of his books, but I have a pretty significant collection including the Bachman Books (printed with the short story Rage that has been pulled out of print due to school shootings, but is nonetheless one of my favourite works of King’s). I read It when I was probably 11 or 12 for the first time. That’s the only time I got all the way through the book because, let’s be real, it’s 1,100 pages long. It is easily one of the most hard-hitting and well-written horror novels of all time. There’s so much involved and you get so invested in all of the characters, it’s hard not to get attached to the story, once you get into the thick of things. So naturally, my hopes were high… but not too high, because it is still a film adaptation of a King novel. The track record there has never been fantastic. Sure, you have some that hit it out of the park – The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, and Carrie (the 1976 De Palma version, of course) – but you also have the stinkers… like Maximum Overdrive, Children of the Corn, Dreamcatcher, and, more recently, The Dark Tower. I would say there are 3 bad Stephen King movies/shows/mini-series’ for every 1 good one, and that’s with a pretty lenient definition of “good.”

Luckily, I was blown away by this adaptation of It. Taking place in the late 80s rather than the late 50s, I think, was a welcome revision. And as for the monster himself, whereas Tim Curry played a very creepy Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Bill Skarsgard was much more menacing. Two Pennywises (what is the plural of Pennywise anyway?) that were both very good, but both vastly different. Skarsgard embodied the fear I felt as a child reading about “it” perfectly. I have a really hard time being physically scared by movies, so judging scares is a difficult thing for me to do, but there were a few that genuinely made me jump. One of those didn’t even involve Pennywise but a room full of clown dolls. I admit it, I’m afraid of clowns – they’re creepy and I don’t care what our local “Clown Club” says.

Since this movie, part 1 in a 2(?)-parter, focuses entirely on the characters as children, it was almost entirely children cast. This made me nervous because I don’t have good experience with child actors. Somehow they managed to find a great number of good child actors: Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough, Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh, Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier, and Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie Kaspbrak, and even Nicholas Hamilton as Henry Bowers. I had a harder time with Chosen Jacobs who played Mike Hanlon… but then again, they basically cut his character down to nothing, which really kind of sticks out as a major failure of the movie. Mike is a big player in the story and I’m really hoping they bring him back to the limelight in part 2. Wyatt Oleff as Stanley didn’t really do much for me either. He kind of seemed unaware of what he was doing. There were multiple scenes where the other characters would be talking or hugging or something and he would just be standing awkwardly behind them, hovering, almost creepily.

One of my favourite aspects was the dichotomy between the adults and the children. The adults are the real monsters. Every adult shown – Eddie’s mom, Beverly’s dad, the pharmacist, Henry’s dad – they’re all foul human beings. It really emphasizes the children’s innocence and what a downright shit town Derry, Maine is (and Stephen King would be proud because he so obviously hates Derry).

There were tons of jump scares, and by the end of the film, you’re almost numb to them, but that’s okay I think. I mean, I hope it was intentional, because by the end of the film, the Losers aren’t afraid of Pennywise anymore, so why should we be? I just thought the entire atmosphere of the film was fantastic. The CGI was a bit much, and there were some unnecessary and downright bizarre story changes, but at the same time, there were some positive story changes (like no sex in the sewers, thank god).

All in all, I was impressed. My boyfriend, less so, but he’s never read the book and has never been a huge fan of Stephen King’s works in the first place (although is currently reading 11/22/63). It was a wonderful adaptation of a book that is pretty dear to me and it was relatively faithful to the story. I can’t wait to see what part 2 holds!

Split (2016)

08/06/2017 · by Joy

I tried really hard to reserve judgment about Split until I had a chance to see it. On the one hand, it looked very intriguing based on the trailers. It obviously had to do with Dissociative Identity Disorder which, me being a psych major, was of great interest to me and is a vastly unexplored avenue when it comes to horror films (for reasons far beyond my comprehension, because what a fascinating ‘diagnosis.’) On the other hand, it was directed by Shyamalan, which isn’t always a bad thing. He’s made some great films, including The Sixth Sense and Signs and… well, that’s pretty much it. He’s also made some also films, such as The Village and The Happening. I can’t take full credit for this idea, because it was David (my boyfriend) who said it to begin with, but it really seems that if you put M. Night in a box with clearly defined borders, he can do some wonderful things in the film world. But… if you let him run free, you end up with the cacophony that is The Village.

The movie gods must have been watching over and mentoring Shyamalan during the production of Split because I really found it to be a solid film. It’s nowhere near perfection, but it is satisfying. James McAvoy is truly an acting force to be reckoned with, playing 23 personalities, however we only “meet” 7 of them. You have Kevin, who is the main personality, Barry, a flamboyant fashionista who was previously the dominant personality, Dennis, a man with both OCD and voyeuristic tendencies, Patricia, a sinister British lady, Hedwig, a child who just wants to belong, Orwell, a scholar we meet only briefly through video (within the film), and Jade, who is apparently a type 1 diabetic teenage girl. Let’s put aside the fact that the type 1 diabetes thing really rubs me the wrong way: if it’s possible to offset your non-functioning pancreas by partitioning your mind, why don’t we have a cure for diabetes? Oh yeah, because it’s just simply not possible. I really appreciate the way that James McAvoy distinguishes each personality. He portrays them perfectly and you can tell before he even speaks as each persona that he has changed just from his facial expressions and his mannerisms.

I felt that the rest of the acting was pretty lackluster, honestly. Betty Buckley as the psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher, was extremely wooden and very to-the-script. It was almost amateur and managed to take me out of the film more than once. It makes me super sad because Betty Buckley actually played Miss Collins in one of my favourite horror films of all time: Carrie (1976). The kidnapped girls, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Jessica Sula, and Haley Lu Richardson, were just… okay. Nothing to write home about.

Though there’s some controversy over stigmatizing DID with this film, I really enjoyed it. If mental illnesses are off-limits for making films about or portraying villains who have them is off the table, we lose a lot of really great films. I’m talking Fight Club (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), American Psycho (2000), The Machinist (2004) – all films powered by mental illness and all spectacular movies. I can understand, however, why DID patients are upset. There are no films (that I know of or can recall) which portray DID in a positive light. Maybe something for Shyamalan’s next project?

Willow Creek (2013)

26/05/2017 · by Joy

I will be the first to admit it: I love found footage. Well. I mean. I love found footage that’s done well. Well, I love found footage that’s done at least decently (or better). The Blair Witch Project, the Paranormal Activity series, [REC], Trolljegeren, Cloverfield, The V/H/S series… need I go on?

Willow Creek follows two main characters, boyfriend & girlfriend, Jim and Kelly, as they drive down to Willow Creek, California, to hunt for Bigfoot in Bigfoot country itself. Jim very much believes in the Bigfoot, but Kelly is a skeptic, so of course, one of them has to be wrong (spoiler alert: It’s Kelly).

Willow Creek did a great job of showing little and creating a ton of suspense and tension. There is a scene that has to be around 20 minutes long with no cuts where both characters are literally just sitting in their tent in the dark with only the camera’s light and each other for comfort, listening to the sounds happening around them. After a lot of build-up, tree-knocking, and whooping, everything reaches a climax very rapidly, and to be honest, I love the pacing of this movie. It’s a slow-burn, but it’s a slow-burn that was done really well and it’s not SO slow that you get bored in the middle. I read a review by Scott Weinberg, I believe, that said it’s the best Bigfoot film out there, and I’d have to agree, although truthfully, I haven’t seen any other Bigfoot films… ever.

After the film was over (I watched it for my second viewing experience with my boyfriend, David, and my dad while we visited him in his hometown which is a pretty… woodsy area, so we were a little bit freaked out), we ended up Youtube-ing Bigfoot sightings and finding this gem which I now feel I need to share with everyone I know… so with that, watch Willow Creek and enjoy:

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

18/04/2017 · by Joy

After hearing nothing but good things about The Autopsy of Jane Doe, my interest was pretty well piqued and I couldn’t resist anymore. I had to watch it. So I rented it digitally on the Google Play store and settled in to enjoy a movie that has been hailed on RottenTomatoes as “nearly flawless” and “chilling,” expecting what everyone’s been describing. I don’t know if I was watching a different film or… maybe I saw, like, the director’s cut or something? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it was anything but chilling and definitely no masterpiece.

They had a really good premise – a woman is found in a basement of a house where a horrific crime has taken place, buried in the dirt (but surprisingly unsoiled and sans decomposition, like at all). Everyone else in the house is covered in blood and viscera and this woman is there, dead, in the dirt in pristine condition. So what do they do? Take her to the local funeral home where a man and his son perform autopsies for the Sheriff’s office. Everything is going fine until they start to uncover disturbing findings and supernatural happenings are about, including, of course, the death of their cat, Stanley. Let me tell you, the whole “killing the family pet because they don’t want to kill a main character but we need to do something that will unsettle and disturb you” thing is getting reaaaaaaaally old. It doesn’t make me scared, it just makes me feel less sympathy for the owners of these pets because, you know, they leave them outside overnight or they let them wander or something stupid like that. Poor Stanley… we hardly knew ye.

Anywho. I found nearly all of the characters in this film dull and incessantly annoying, especially the son played by Emile Hirsch. Every 2 seconds, he had a question for which the answer was entirely too obvious. This kid has no critical thinking skills, whatsoever. I swear to god, at one point I was like, if he says, “Is that what killed her?” ONE MORE TIME, I will throw the remote at the TV. The father, the actual coroner, was slightly more clued in, but only slightly. These two together, underground, in a coroner’s office that is truly not up to code (I mean, come on, it has one entrance that is a cellar door and an elevator, that’s just ridiculous!)

The reason behind the “haunting” is silly. The acting was poor except for the body of Jane Doe because she literally just laid there and did a damn fine job of it. The effects were super-cool, but that’s really all that kept me going. I didn’t want to keep watching because it just seemed to get dumber and dumber and I felt myself losing IQ points watching this father-son duo bumble around, not entirely sure what they’re supposed to be doing. I was truly disappointed and having read numerous positive reviews for the film, I don’t see what they’re seeing. It was average and lackluster at its best moments and horrendous at its worst moments. I think I’ll pass on owning this one on Bluray, that’s for sure.

As Above, So Below (2014)

13/11/2016 · by Joy

I took a while to work up the courage to watch this one. I have a bad habit of looking up the reviews for films before I watch them and sometimes basing whether I watch them or not ON those reviews. This one currently has 25% on RottenTomatoes, but the premise seemed super-interesting to me, so David and I took a risk… took the plunge… and we did it! We watched it! And we survived!

Honestly, 25% to me is heinously low. We started it when I was supposed to leave at 11:30. 11:30 rolled around and there was still 30 minutes left and I couldn’t drag myself away! I was totally sucked in. Absorbed, even.

I mean, the story is a little bit lackluster, sure. But what story do you really need when your setting is the catacombs beneath Paris? Does anyone really care what the set up is for the film? It’s pretty dumb and it leaves a lot to be desired, but anyway, our main character Scarlett (2 PhDs and a Master’s and also looks like she’s like, 28) wants to enter the Paris catacombs to find the Philosopher’s Stone. She drags along her cameraman, Benji and her friend, George, and they find some locals who know their way around the catacombs like the backs of their hands. I definitely felt like I was watching a spin-off of The DaVinci Code combined with the claustrophobic setting of The Descent. I’m a super claustrophobic person and yet, I really didn’t find the claustrophobia scenes all that disturbing.

What I found really effective was the isolation. They basically go through a small hole to get to this area of the catacombs that tourists don’t normally get to see, their entryway collapses, and they’re pretty much trapped. That horrifies me.

The film is fueled by stupid characters who blatantly disregard warning after warning, dying off one by one, but rest assured, this is no pessimistic ending. It really takes advantage of the setting it has to work with and the villains are mostly hidden, which is a breath of fresh air for the found footage genre, I feel.

I really liked it and would have given it at least a 70%. I will likely buy this one to watch next Nanasween!

The Loved Ones (2009)

26/10/2016 · by Joy

I have anticipated watching this film for a really long time, but trying to get David to watch it has been quite the task. Trying to describe it to him has only furthered his reluctance to sit down with me and actually watch it. When you hear “this is a movie about prom night gone awry” you don’t immediately think “fantastic horror,” those two phrases don’t normally go hand-in-hand. I went into watching The Loved Ones with high expectations. Rotten Tomatoes has given it a certified fresh rating of 98% with an audience score of 74% – those are steep numbers to live up to. I’d have to say, though, it definitely succeeded! I am genuinely and thoroughly impressed!

To be fair, it’s riding a very, verrryyy thin line between gory shock killings and torture porn… I mean very thin. Think more hardcore than Saw but less hardcore than Tokyo Gore Police. …maybe that’s a little broad. Either way, it is not for the faint of heart or the squeamish, there’s a looot of blood spewed and shed. And it’s not without it’s minor issues – the pacing is all over the place and there is some ultra-cheesy dialogue – but the acting is surprisingly wonderful, the main character (Lola) played by Robin McLeavy is surprisingly terrifying in her insanity, and it’s relentlessly brutal.

It is Sean Byrne’s directorial debut and that shocked me when I learned it because it’s very well done technically and it’s well-written and it’s unsettling. I was invested in the “victim” and I was rooting for a safe outcome, which usually I’m pretty against because happy endings are boring and overdone!

All-in-all, this is one that I want to add to my collection pretty much immediately and will probably go on the October movie marathon roster next year.

Lights Out (2016)

09/10/2016 · by Joy

Lights Out was the perfect embodiment of a mediocre horror film. It used all the typical horror movie tropes (creepy basements, anyone?) and hit all the right notes for a semi-plausible and wholly horrifying creature. At times, the acting was corny, especially from our main character, Becca, who I couldn’t help but compare to a blonde Kristen Stewart (who maybe, sort of, almost emotes more).

It’s a decent enough film with plenty of jump scares to get those easily gotten, but it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Everybody’s scared, to some degree, of the dark… the foreboding… the unknown. There’s so many places that Sandberg could have gone with that, but in the end, he basically just made a film that said that people with depression should totally kill themselves. Good… job? I can only assume that’s the reason that he’s gone about making a sequel that was announced the same month that this film hit box offices – because he done fucked up.

You could call Lights Out a ghost story, but really, our antagonist is no ghost. She’s something far creepier, something that only comes about in the dark. I found that impressive, actually, that they actually explained why the creature could only approach in the dark – they actually gave a somewhat logical reason behind it. That’s a nice change, instead of just saying, “oh ghosts only happen at night time” – WHY do ghosts only happen at night time?

Diana is one of the scariest paranormal entities in a long while, I think… on par with Valak, who was a pretty darn spooky nun. I think Lights Out is indeed worth a watch (or two, in my case) and I’m intrigued to see the sequel, especially since they seemed to wrap up the loose ends pretty damn well at the end of it all. Where can they go from here? We’ll see…

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