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Ava’s Possessions (2016)

07/05/2016 · by Joy

One of the new films that is circulation on Reddit.com’s horror subreddit is Ava’s Possessions (2016). When I saw that it was on Netflix, I jumped at the chance to watch it. I was excited even though I knew literally nothing about the film other than it was about Ava and probably her possessions.

My first impression (as in, within the first 5 minutes) was that the soundtrack was bomb. Not even the bomb, just bomb in general. It was so good, I enjoyed it thoroughly… and after those first 5 minutes, it only got better. So if nothing else, you can watch it simply for a great score composed by Sean Lennon (yes, as in John and Yoko’s son).

However, there are many other great reasons to watch it. These include, but are certainly not limited to, someone asking the main character, Ava (Louisa Krause), if being possessed by a demon was anything like being pregnant or the inclusion of Alysia Reiner (Natalie Figueroa/’Fig’ in Orange is the New Black).

Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect going in and what I got was different than anything I’ve personally ever seen before. It was basically the “after-story” of what happens when a movie character gets possessed by a demon. She’s picking up the pieces of her life after a major life crisis and trying to put together what actually happened that week that resulted in the state her life is in presently.

Honestly, I wasn’t enthralled with it and it wasn’t something I’d watch again and again. It’s definitely not on its way to becoming a classic horror film anytime soon, either. But it was fun, creative, and original, and that was enough for me to keep watching. The sideplots were just not that interesting and I can’t help but feel the film would have landed better if they didn’t exist.

If anything convinces you to watch this film, let it be the 12-step satire, “Spirit Possession Anonymous,” because no idea made me smile more in this entire film.

Sleeping Giant (2015)

23/04/2016 · by Joy

Today my friend Paula texted me at like 10:30 this morning and asked if I wanted to go see “that Thunder Bay movie” with her. So, naturally, I was like, “What Thunder Bay movie??” and she sent me the trailer. I went in with zero expectations and no idea what the film was actually about and to be honest, I’m still not 100% sure. We went to the 4:45 PM showing on a Saturday, hoping to beat the rush, but we didn’t quite succeed – the theatre was pretty packed!

Here in Thunder Bay, it’s definitely not an everyday occurrence to see our city’s landmarks on the big screen, so that’s an exciting thing for most of us. However, I feel like maybe the film focused too much on being THUNDER BAY and less on having an actual plot to follow. I get it, it’s supposed to be a coming-of-age story, which I guess it fulfills, but it just felt… a little bit too in-your-face about being local. I really wanted to like it and to come back and write about how this is THE best film to grace any film festival ever, but I can’t really do that.

I can write about how the lead actors, Jackson Martin, Nick Serino and Reece Moffett portrayed their characters really well. I was especially taken with Jackson Martin’s acting because his seemed the most authentic which makes sense as he’s been in other things before, this being his first feature film. Nick Serino’s character, Nate, is indisputibly an asshole and I found that really difficult to get around. By the end of the film, I was really rooting for something bad to happen to him because he was SUCH a huge douche. That’s terrible to say, because his character is a 14 year old adolescent boy, but it’s true.

The three boys worked really well together, which again makes a lot of sense, because Nick Serino and Reece Moffett are actually cousins in real life… and seeing as Jackson Martin’s character is supposed to be a little bit of an outcast in their trio, it really works. Another thing I really enjoyed was the camerawork – there were a lot of really fantastic shots of the landscapes, waterscapes, and different creatures in nature, including the horrifying and well-known (in Thunder Bay, anyway) spruce beetle.

Basically, to sum up, this film was a lot of teenage boys smoking weed and drinking stolen beer and showing off their masculinity… which is actually incredibly accurate when you’re shooting a movie about teenage boys in Thunder Bay. It really took a hard look at both the sensitive sides of adolescence and the crueler underbelly, I just think it was too “HEY LOOK IT’S THUNDER BAY” for it’s own good – it felt a tad gimmicky by the end of the film. It is definitely worth a watch, though, especially if you were born and raised in Thunder Bay, like I was.

Hush (2016)

10/04/2016 · by Joy

You know when you’re just scrolling through Netflix’s catalogue and you stumble upon something so intriguing, you can’t help but watch it? That’s what happened to me today when I found Hush. “She lives in isolation, a world of silence. It doesn’t mean she’s easy prey. One intruder finds that out the hard way.” The premise is certainly not a complicated one – a woman with hearing loss (Kate Siegel) finds herself being stalked by a killer (John Gallagher, Jr.) with a crossbow in her home in the country.

Both leads are fascinating characters. Siegel is both hard of hearing and mute, due to a bout of meningitis as a teenager. Gallagher is given very little backstory and despite his relatively small stature, he is terrifying and imposing. The cast is extremely small, consisting of the 2 leads, the main character’s neighbour and her husband and finally, the main character’s sister over FaceTime. In addition, the entire movie took place in and around her house.

The story was intriguing and the first half of the movie was spent building up a great deal of tension, which was really effective later on when the film comes to a climax. Despite a few bumps and plot holes along the way that I am having difficulty getting past, I really enjoyed watching this movie… however, the pacing was a bit scatterbrained. At times, it was slow and ambling and then the next scene would be frantic and hard to follow. That’s not necessarily a negative, it just throws you off upon watching.

The film is definitely carried by the two leads, though, as I mentioned before. Their fantastic acting ability created a sense of reality and, at times, panic. Some reviews have been hailing it “one of the best horror films in modern history” but I don’t feel that that is accurate. The only thing I find revolutionary about this film is the fact that it uses very little dialogue, especially from the main character who communicates solely in American Sign Language. Other than that, it was a pretty par-for-the-course thriller… but an entertaining one at that, worth a watch or two!

The Boy (2015)

03/04/2016 · by Joy

One of my favourite things to do is to flip through Netflix’s horror catalogue and pick either something that looks REALLY bad or something that looks like it might actually be good – of course, the good ones are the rarity.

The Boy caught my eye because, at first, I thought that it was the film that was just coming out this year which looks both hilarious and horrendous all at one time. But the description grabbed me and pulled me in ultimately. “Neglected by his heartbroken father and abandoned by his mother, a boy who is fascinated with death drifts toward becoming a future serial killer.” Anyone that knows me, or at least knows my reading habits, knows that I am very interested in serial killers and even now I’m currently 700 pages deep in “Fatal Vision,” the story of Captain Jeffrey MacDonald and his journey through the trials when he was accused and later convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two young daughters. Being a psychology major, abnormal psychology is a deep-seated interest of mine. Anyway, that’s what drew me to The Boy.

The first thing that needs to be said about this film is that it is a veeeeeryyyyy slow burn. I can definitely see where some critics are coming from (Devan Coggan, for example, from Entertainment Weekly) when they say that the film feels overly long and drags at certain points. It has a really great score, which is something I put a lot of stock into when I watch a film… especially horror films.

While I can’t say I was enthralled throughout the entire film, which is an hour and 45 minutes long and contains many, many, MANY landscape shots of mountains, I was interested. If you’re going into this one looking for a scare, you’re not going to find it. I hesitate to even call it a horror movie simply because it is just not scary. Nobody is going to watch this and go, “Yes, that 9-year-old boy scraping roadkill off the road IS frightening!” I’d label it as more of a thriller than anything. Rainn Wilson, however, I did find off-putting at least. I’ve never seen him in a serious role such as this one and it was an unexpectedly positive surprise.

The first two-thirds of the film are building up to something and the ending is pretty climactic. The last few minutes of the film are, by far, the most chilling in the entire film. All in all, it felt like an “artsy” sort of thriller and it failed to… well, thrill. I was just expecting more to happen the whole time, instead of watching idling silence for the first 70 minutes. I’d still recommend that anyone who considers themselves a fan of the genre give it a watch, but it’s not going to be hailed as a classic anytime soon, that’s for sure.

Contracted (2013)

28/03/2016 · by Joy

Contracted is a film I’ve been meaning to watch and review for quite some time now. It’s a body horror film about a girl who has casual, presumably unprotected sex with a stranger and begins to experience strange aftereffects, which she assumes are the results of a sexually transmitted disease. Her symptoms get stranger and stranger, starting with a headache and abdominal cramps and escalating quickly into more and more concerning ailments.

From the very beginning of the film, I found the acting very strange. It was not, by any means, believable. It was very stiff and altogether theatrical, and not in a pleasant way. That sad, it’s not a terrible film. It’s interesting (albeit disgusting) to watch the main character’s decline into paranoia and the deterioration of her body. It was more than a little ridiculous for Samantha to go to a doctor presenting with extreme bleeding, a strange rash on her abdomen, abdominal cramping, and a general feeling of malaise, have her tell her doctor that she had an unprotected casual sexual encounter 2 days prior, and have the doctor say “It’s a head cold and a rash” after checking her vitals without even doing an actual exam of any kind. That’s just not a believable situation. There were many situations that ended up similarly.

At many points throughout the film, I found myself severely grossed out and I mean, I’m not usually an easily disgusted person and I’m definitely not squeamish. I’m all for body horror, I’m all for being disgusted at a movie sometimes… but this was just over the top and unnecessary. I get it, the main character is not a nice person… to anyone at pretty much anytime during the movie. She spends the time she’s not looking in the mirror or sitting on or in front of the toilet telling people how much of a lesbian she is or being extremely rude and unpleasant to her mom. She’s turning into the person on the outside that she already has been on the inside – rotten and foul.

The special effects are impressive, though. They may be excessive and over-the-top, but they are cool-looking and they’re clearly where a big chunk of the budget, which I cannot find a number for.

I can’t say I enjoyed watching this movie, but I didn’t leave it saying, “That was an utter waste of my time” but at the same time, I wouldn’t watch it again. It definitely did something new with body horror, making the method of contraction sexual, but the slow decline of the character’s body was nothing new. It was old tricks made several times more disgusting, which isn’t necessarily a bonus – unless you’re into that sort of thing. It was incredibly difficult to sympathize with the main character because she’s not a likeable person in the first place.

The whole film feels like a part 1 and ends up feeling like an unfinished art project, while simultaneously feeling just a tad too long. This one might be worth a watch, but only if you don’t have a weak stomach and you can look past shoddy acting and unlikeable characters. So maybe… maybe this is one to skip.

The Den (2013)

25/03/2016 · by Joy

Recently I reviewed Unfriended and that’s how I learned about the existence of The Den. They are along the same vein in that they are both filmed through a computer screen/webcams, which is a type of found-footage film that I’ve found really intriguing lately.

The Den is about a young woman named Elizabeth who has just received a grant to study the webcam behaviours of people on a website much like Chatroulette, but instead it’s called The Den. She witnesses a murder of one of the users and everything just sort of snowballs from there. The actors involved were not well-known actors and that kind of added to the reality of the situation, I think. You’re not seeing an ACTOR interacting on a webcam site, you’re seeing a PERSON interacting on a webcam site.

I didn’t think it was phenomenal and the scares were a little cliche and expected. It starts off really strongly, building a very solid foundation, so I thought it was going to escalate into something more frightening than it ended up doing. It got kind of silly and took you out of the film in the end rather than shocking and horrifying as it probably intended to.

Luckily, my expectations were fairly low going into this movie, so when it was watched it could only exceed my expectations. There were just some silly plotholes and things that just didn’t add up – for instance, if your webcam was presumably being hacked, would you leave your laptop open at all times, even when asleep across the room? I highly doubt so. Anyway, it was okay for a fun watch you don’t think too much about. I’d probably rate it a 5 or 6 out of 10.

The Gallows (2015)

19/03/2016 · by Joy

A few months ago… actually, likely closer to a year ago, some friends and I had a movie night, as we have been inclined to do. We watched The Gallows (2015) and I came away thinking it wasn’t that bad – likely due to the screams coming from my friend Julie who was to my left and my other friend Brandi who was to my right (the rest of us don’t get so… involved in our horror films). However, my previous assessment of the film was trash – utterly falsified trash.

My boyfriend, David, and I rented it… from Movie Network (geez, they get a lot of advertising on here from me!) tonight to rewatch it for specific reviewing purposes.

So the premise of The Gallows… it’s based in a high school around our main character, Ryan, who is a bit of an asshole. His friend Reese is a football player who is also playing the lead in the school’s play which is so aptly named, The Gallows. 20 years previously, the school had attempted to put on the same play with horrific results – the character playing Reese’s character, August, accidentally got hung and tragically died. So anyway, Ryan discovers by happy accident that the stage door is broken and doesn’t lock. This discovery spawns Ryan’s bright idea to break into the school that night and trash the set, ruining opening night. Ryan and Reese, along with Ryan’s girlfriend, Cassidy enter the school and run into the other lead cast member, Pfeifer (yeah, that’s her FIRST name… I was appalled too, and not only that, but it’s the ACTRESS’ first name as well!) and find themselves locked in the dark, creepy school unable to escape.

The plot, I think, sounds pretty intriguing on paper, but the more I watched, the angrier I got at the plotholes, the shoddy camerawork, and the terrible acting. I am a huge fan of found-footage films – there are lots that are more worth your time than this one. It really did have potential, but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me. There are so many things wrong with the plot, I don’t even know where to begin. For instance, there is constant repetition of the fact that you cannot, under any circumstances, utter the name of the first victim (Charlie) on stage because it’s bad luck, but they never tell you WHY that’s considered bad luck… and it turns out later that the motives of the “ghost” are revenge-based, so why would saying his name be bad luck? It just doesn’t make much sense.

David and I noticed on many occasions very obvious cut and scene changes… it just seemed amateur in it’s execution. The ghastly figure that sometimes appears behind people in scenes is just sort of ridiculous and not that scary, honestly. The characters are unlikeable to begin with, the writing is awful, and the plot (as I’ve previously mentioned) is full of loopholes and sadness.

The saddest part is that it could have been good and it could have been scary, but it just fell flat due to flaws and technicalities (you know, like writing, acting, and camerawork – all the non-essentials for a film to succeed).

Save your money… save your time… watch something else.

Tusk (2014)

16/03/2016 · by Joy

I am a huge fan of Kevin Smith’s. I am also a fan of Justin Long’s, but more so Kevin Smith. From Clerks (1994) to Red State (2011), including his stand-up Q&A sessions and books, he is just awesome. He’s apathetic when he speaks about his films, but he cares about what goes into them. So it goes without saying that I’d be dying to see Tusk since the day it was released. I don’t think it was shown in my local theatre, I checked many times only to find it wasn’t there, which was really disappointing so I’ve been waiting and waiting, but I found it at Ye Olde Movie Network!

It’s hard to describe what Tusk is about without sounding like a lunatic, but that’s really not that different from any other Kevin Smith film. How do you describe Clerks without sounding like you’re talking about the most boring home movie ever? It’s really difficult. “So you have this guy, Dante, right? And he works at a convenience store… and he gets called in even though he’s not even supposed to WORK that day… and so he and his good friend Randall goof off pretty much all day and then his ex-girlfriend accidentally bangs a dead guy.” ………yeah.

To be perfectly honest, Tusk felt like it was way longer than it needed to be. There was a lot of pointless dialogue between Justin Long and… well, pretty much everyone.

I mean, because I know it’s Kevin Smith’s film, I expected what I received excluding the overdrawn length. I expected a horror comedy starring slightly awkward but very funny Justin Long, Michael Parks, child star Haley Joel Osment and of course, the fantastic Johnny Depp. And we can’t forget the stars of the show, a brief appearance by Kevin Smith’s daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, and Johnny Depp’s daughter, Lily-Rose Depp.

Michael Parks’ performance is actually pretty creepy at points. His character is sort of reminiscent of his character, Abin Cooper, in Red State (2011), except a little less religious. Other than that, I felt like the concept of Tusk was pretty ridiculous. I mean, it was like… The Human Centipede but with walrus and only one human. I found myself zoning out during many conversations and scenes…

I did really enjoy Johnny Depp’s character, Guy Lapointe, but only because he was so ridiculous, not in spite of it. The whole film was spent wanting to be creeped out and to really be immersed in the experience, but instead I had trouble even focusing on the story. It wasn’t realistic enough to be engaging. I mean, you expect it to be ridiculous, but at the very least it has to be just believable enough to be scary, right? The walrus suit Justin Long was wearing looked like a suit… it definitely didn’t look like his formerly human body was crafted into that of a walrus. It looked hokey.

This is the first time I’ve really been disappointed by a Kevin Smith film (and no, I have not seen Cop Out… yet) and it’s a really depressing experience. I will continue to watch Smith’s future films of course, but I don’t think I’ll rewatch this one. Sorry Kev, it feels like I wasted an hour and 42 minutes of my day…

Unfriended (2015)

13/03/2016 · by Joy

Yesterday I drove all the way down the street a ways to the Movie Network (which still exists!! I know, I’m excited too) to return the movies we had previously taken out (which were The Woman in Gold and The Equalizer and for which I had late fees, also… remember late fees?) I strolled around the store and when I got to the letter ‘U’, I saw it. I saw the film I’d laughed at so many times in trailers at the movie theatre or online… Unfriended, as directed by Levan Gabriadze. I felt something strange come over me and suddenly I was doing it, I was lifting it off of the shelf, I was holding it in my hand, I was paying to rent it for a week, I was taking it home. I put it into my Playstation 4. I pressed play.

I was really intrigued by the premise and the style – how they pulled the story off, really. The whole film is told from one girl’s computer screen. The other 5 characters are only seen via their “webcams” on Skype. I think that’s really innovative and it’s not something I would have come up with or been able to pull off!

Anyway, these 6 teenagers are all friends, I guess. The main character, Blaire (Shelley Hennig), is the innocent do-gooder who has never sinned and CERTAINLY never had sex. Her boyfriend, Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm), is the bad boy with a sensitive side. Then you have Mitch’s best friend, Adam (William Peltz), who’s just a bad boy (no sensitive side here). There’s Ken (Jacob Wysocki) who’s just there and really has no personality, except possibly he’s supposed to be the “tech geek.” There’s Jess (Renee Olstead) who is supposed to be the slutty one, but there’s also a second slutty one, Val (Courtney Halverson).

So they’re just Skyping like teenagers do on a weekend evening, when they notice an unauthorized presence in their group chat who introduces themselves as a girl who committed suicide a year to the day. As the film goes on, in true horror fashion, the characters get picked off and secrets come out.

I mean, it’s nothing that hasn’t been done or seen before plot-wise, but it was an entertaining watch at the very least. It was no Spielberg, but it genuinely kept me interested the whole time. There were a couple jump scares, but it wasn’t overly hokey either.

If you’re a horror junkie like I am, it’s worth a viewing… maybe with the lights off, some friends, and some popcorn. Happy viewing!

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

13/03/2016 · by Joy

So this year I’m doing a “reading challenge” which consists of basically just 40 categories of novels and you have to read them all in the span of 2016. One of those categories was “A YA bestseller,” so I chose Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews. I went in not expecting too much because I’m apparently one of those people who judges books by their cover and I figured since it was a young adult novel, it was probably an immature, poorly written story. But I didn’t really find it that way. I mean, it was definitely a novel geared towards young adults or even teenagers. But on the other hand, I thought it was very well written. It was written by a 30-year-old man, so it actually does say something good about the novel that it really felt like it was written by a(n extremely awkward) 17-year-old guy named Greg Gaines.

Anyway, this review is not of the novel… it’s of the film directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. To be 100% honest with you, my faithful reader(s) (but probably singular), I found the film to be better than the novel.

The story follows Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann), a high school senior at Schenley High School, who does everything he can not to befriend anyone in any clique and simultaneously make the acquaintance of everyone in every clique at school. Sound complicated? Good, because it is. He and his good friend/coworker, Earl Jackson (RJ Cyler) spend their time making parody films that aren’t very good to anyone except Greg’s parents. His mother comes into his room one day and informs him that his “friend” (read: they haven’t spoken since kindergarten) Rachel Kushner (Olivia Cooke) has been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia and then subsequently forces him to spend time with her. So basically the film is Greg and Earl spending time with a girl dying of leukemia as we learn about the chronicles of their films and they get to know Rachel, whose light is quickly fading.

The acting was really good (I wasn’t expecting it to be). The story is mostly intriguing even though it focuses on the least interesting of the three characters. Despite its flaws, it starts out as two people forced to spend their time together and by the end, turns into something much more profound. The camera work is fantastic and is really what made the film for me.

I mean, the characters could have been more fleshed out but the writing was good, the dialogue was witty and there was an honesty in the narration. It is no The Fault in Our Stars, but maybe that’s a good thing. It’s less melodrama and cigarette metaphors and more honesty and vulnerable than anyone probably expected of it.

All in all, it’s definitely worth a watch.

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