It's October baby....Horror flick time!

[Coliseum1972]

Like H3 , OHMSS was for yrs rejected until the 90s.....Horror Express is also underrated , Deranged too

[DrNgor]

Okay, I'm starting early this year:

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) - A Blair Witch tour group spends the night in the ruins of the Parr house. After downing oodles of meth, weed and beer, the group blacks out and wakes up with all their video equipment destroyed and videotapes hidden beneath the ground. A member of the group, Tristen, also suffers a miscarriage over the course of the night. The group retreats to the abandoned factory house of the tour guide, Jeff, and start analyzing the tapes to discover what actually occurred that evening. At that point, reality starts to break down for everybody involved.

This is a film that I liked more in concept than in execution. It's not particularly scary, but I liked some of the imagery and the scene where they find out what was on the tape (that scene reminds me of a less-disturbing version of Event Horizon). The actress who plays Erica the Wiccan is also very cute with that late 90s long, wavy hair. I wonder what other movies present us with one reality and then ask us to believe that the way we (and the character) initially see events turns out to be incorrect. Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke would probably be another example, I guess.

Edited September 9, 2021 by DrNgor

[DrNgor]

Urban Legend (1998) - A bunch of college students are being in knocked off by a mysterious killer in ways that parallel popular urban legends. They all seem to center around a nice, virginal young lady, Nathalie (Alicia Witt), although nobody seems to believe her. The exception is the ethic-less college reporter in the making, Paul (Jared Leto). Who is committing the killings? The urban legends professor, played by Robert Englund? The rat-faced janitor?

Very much a product of its time, that being the late 90s post-Scream horror landscape. The film plays the premise straight, although the shadow of Scream still hangs over the proceedings (just replace "horror tropes" with "urban legends"). While the twists at the end are completely unearned, I was surprised to see one urban legend (that I learned about through a Dave Barry article) get attention. The jump scares are silly and the film adds nothing new to the genre, but it's a harmless addition to the genre on the whole.

[DrNgor]

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005) - Y'know, the first one was no great shakes, but it had a good cast (Alicia Witt, Jared Leto, Robert Englund, Loretta Devine, Tara Reid, and Danielle Harris) and good production values. The second sequel, which was released straight-to-video, has a pre-fame Kate Mara (whom you'll recognize from that ill-conceived Fantastic Four reboot) and is directed by Mary Lambert (the original Pet Cemetery; a bunch of Madonna videos).

Following a prank in which a bunch of a high school football players miraculously snuck into a girl's house, drugged her and her two friends, removed them silently from the premises, and hid them for a few days in an abandoned steel mill...a bunch of mysterious deaths occur that echo some urban legends (the woman licking the envelope with spider eggs in them; the guy who pees on the third rail; etc.). It turns out to be connected to a similar "prank" that occurred 30 years before.

Despite the title, the film doesn't really explore the Bloody Mary urban legend. It's more of a supernatural detective story, as Kate Mara and her twin brother try to figure out who's behind the murders. There's something about the filmmaking--the photography, the music mixing, etc.--that makes it feel like an extended (and gorier) episode of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" more than an actual film.

The story was penned by Michael Dougherty, best known today for Godzilla: King of the Monsters. This feels like a first-draft job: lots of characters are introduced and drift into the sidelines (or completely outside the narrative) after the halfway point. While the first film was definitely a post-Scream effort, this one comes across as a post-Ring movie. The introduction of a second killer in the last act was interesting, although had they done so earlier, the filmmakers could have set up a neat twist in which our protagonists are investigating murders without realizing that two different parties (with differing motivations) are involved. Instead, we get a lame climax with equally-lame CGI.

Edited September 13, 2021 by DrNgor

[DrNgor]

The Raven (2012) - This movie had the "novelty" of being a murder mystery in which the man on the case is none other than Edgar Allan Poe itself. I say "novelty" because the 1951 film The Man with the Cloak did the same thing. This film is basically a mixture of Se7en and Dario Argento's Tenebrae.

The film is set during the last days of Edgar A. Poe. He's a washed up drunk and drug addict, eking out a living reviewing other people's work for a Baltimore newspaper. Then, a series of brutal murders inspired by his works puts him in a partnership with a detective (Luke Evans, whose work I really like) to find out who the killer is.

Like Se7en, each murder has a cryptic clue left at the scene that aids the heroes in figuring out where the next victim will be. Like Tenebrae, we have a story in which the murders are inspired by the works of a horror author, and in which the author decides to take up the mantle of detective (although the motive here is much more personal than in Tenebrae).

While hiring a stark-raving mad actor like John Cusack to play a near-stark-raving mad author like Edgar Allan Poe is entirely appropriate, there is something missing from the performance (or the character's writing) to make it as compelling as it should. It's an interesting film, and Poe fans should enjoy all the references to his stories, but it could have been more.

[AlbertV]

Slaxx (2021): You have to love Canada for some of its novel concepts when it comes to their horror films. This one is get this...about killer jeans. Yes, you read that right. Killer jeans. A new line of jeans comes to a fashion boutique that conforms to any body shape. The problem is these jeans will kill you! The film conveys a message about the negative aspects of the fashion industry, including stuck up snobby designers and boutique owners, but more importantly sweatshops and child labor. They are all connected to the reasoning behind the jeans being "possessed" and killing people. Insane concept but gives a harrowing message.

[DrNgor]

The Tomb (2009) - This is a loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia", although it doesn't really start resembling the source material until the final act.

A literature professor (Wes Bentley, who looks so much like Tobey Maguire that it's distracting) falls under the spell of a Russian temptress. And yes, the professor is an expert in the works of Poe, although he never acknowledges the parallels between what happens in the film and the source material, which kinda makes him look a little dense. The young lady turns out to be a powerful sorceress, although there is a family curse in the form of a genetic illness that claims its victims in early adulthood. She has found a way to use the souls of others to strengthen her own, but needs a sucker to help her finance her experiments.

Not much happens in the movie. It starts off as a relationship drama, and then becomes a sort-of cracked marriage drama. It kinda gets interesting in the third act, but it's never very scary or creepy. It's not really violent. It wants to be sexy, but is too Maxim in its presentation to accomplish that. It's just kinda there. Now I need to rewatch the Roger Corman adaptation of the same story to see how they compare.

[DrNgor]

The Resident (2011) - Hillary Swank plays an ER doctor who moves into a quaint little building in NYC owned by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The two become friends, and then lovers, and then Hillary Swank decides to attempt reconciliation with her ex-husband. We learn early on that the landlord is actually a stalking creeper (it's no surprise), so we watch his obsession grow over the course of the second act until it explodes into violence in the third act. I'm not a huge fan of these stalker/obsessed creeper films, and there's a lot of icky abuse to sit through. But I'm glad that Hammer is still making movies and that the late Venerated Horror Film Icon Sir Christopher Lee got a paycheck for this film.

The House at the End of the Street (2012) - A doctor (Elizabeth Shue) and her teenage daughter (Jennifer Lawrence) move to a small town to start over after the death of former's ex-husband/latter's father. The house next door was the site of a grisly double murder: the parents were brutally slaughtered by their daughter, Carrie Ann. The place is now inhabited by the couple's son, Ryan, who had been living out of state with an aunt when the murders occurred. The daughter finds herself drawn to Ryan, who has quite a few secrets. There was a surprising plot development in the second act that made me wonder what the movie would do for the rest of the running time. 

Spoiler

That said, it's hard to get behind a movie in which the take-home message is that socially-awkward people should be isolated and that maybe the teenage bullies and rich douchebag parents were right. Also, the psychosexual twist at the end kinda makes this movie the Psycho or Sleepaway Camp of the new generation.

 

[DrNgor]

School-Live! (2019) - Based on a manga, which was also adapted as an anime series in 2015. A handful of girls and their teacher survive the zombie apocalypse and set up shop at the school. They form the School Living Club as a way of dealing with the psychological fallout of the situation. One of them, the child-like Yuki Takeya, kinda enters her own world and imagines that the apocalypse never happened and becomes a source of unending cheer for her colleagues. They are joined by another student, Miki Naoko, who is a little more hardened by her experiences.

While the set up comes across as Dawn of the Dead, but at a school, the film is a lot deeper than that. The film is a coming-of-age tale, with the girls having to learn lessons about optimism, team work, leadership, allowing their differences to complement each other, and how to deal with tragedy and crisis. The focus is always on the girls, even when the zombies step into the foreground at the climax. We really do care what happens to them, even the more dour member of the trope. There are some twists and reveals at the end that are handled senstivitely, too. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, it could have been an exercise in fan service: full of gore and faux-lesbianism. But this is a really good little movie full of likable, vulnerable characters.

[DrNgor]

The Sacrifice Dilemma Part 1 (2013) - Original title: Ikenie no dilemma - Directed by Shusuke Kaneko (the Heisei Gamera films; Godzilla - Mothra - King Ghidora: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack). The third year students of a Japanese high school--divided into four classes/homerooms--are called into school one morning shortly before their graduation. They receive strange wristwatches from one of the students, who had been informed to distribute them as part of a health code solicitation. Then, a TV screen in each of the rooms comes on and a creepy rabbit marionette informs them that they're all going to die, unless they make a sacrifice of one student. The sacrificial victim has to be thrown into an ominous hole on the schoolyard. Any attempt to leave the premises will be met with death. Any attempt to remove the wristwatch will be met with death. Let the games begin.

This feels like a precursor to The Belko Experiment, analyzing how people would react in a horrible scenario where their very humanity is placed to the test: any attempt to save your own life will inevitably make you a monster. Once it becomes clear that the game is not a hoax, the students all have to wrestle with what to do. The film is apparently the first in a trilogy, and the film ends on a cliffhanger with nothing explained. That would be all well and good, if not for the fact that the film's resolution goes against the established rules--or the rules weren't clear enough for me to make sense of what happens. Not bad, but not great.

[AlbertV]

Aquaslash (2019): More Canadian madness, this one revolves around a killer at a local water park where over 30 years ago, someone was killed. A group of high school seniors are spending their last weekend before graduation at the park. The group includes a young man, Josh, whose father is planning to make a deal to buy the park and demolish it for housing. However, the park owner is refusing to sell and on top of that, he's sleeping with the school valedictorian, who resembles Riverdale's Cheryl Blossom. Josh reunites with a former girlfriend, an employee at the park who has a more controlling boyfriend. However, as the killer slowly begins to strike, they leave the piece de resistance for the last day, when the kids are set for a race down the water slides. One of the slides has been rigged with X-style blades!

The film has a very slow pace with the first few kills being sporadic amidst the teen angst and drama. At the 50-minute of its 75-minute running time, that's when horror fans will want to watch! Use of practical effects take over here and they are gory and amazing to watch as one victim is cut into four pieces because of the blades and there are decapitations, loads of blood and as if that's not enough, the big reveal in the final moments was a major shocker. The reveals is reminiscent of one of the best Canadian horror films of the 1980s and this, along with the blood-soaked finale, makes up for the slow pace of most of the film. 

[AlbertV]

Death Drop Gorgeous (2021): Now here is something very intriguing and it was really good and gory. A young man returns home and gets his old job back as a bartender at a drag club. However, there is a killer who is picking off various LGBTQ men and drag queens and draining them of their blood, leaving detectives baffled. This was a big surprise of a film as this for me is the first full LGBTQ serial killer film I've seen. There is a completely shocking death scene that will never ever make me look at a meat grinder ever again...it still makes me cringe just thinking about it! The big reveal comes after an hour into the film and it is pretty predictable in a way, but the reasoning offers a nice twist to things.

Devil's Five (2021): Five stories with the core story about police interrogating a suspect who killed four cops. The suspect has a flash drive that signifies the end of the world via a computer virus. Meanwhile, the four additional tales are a mixed bag. The best two involve a found footage video of three friends who come across a book of the Devil and a woman going on a scavenger hunt so she can get money for her church and comes across something more sinister once she gets the items for the hunt. The other two stories (a photo shoot in an abandoned and apparently haunted area and a revenge plot involving a filmmaker and his cheating wife) seemed to be more "meh" IMO. 

[DrNgor]

Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (2002) - Fifth entry in the long-running film series based on Junji Ito's popular manga. The gist of the story is that there's a pretty young girl named Tomie. She is a self-centered, manipulative narcissist who is apparently irresistible to men. She ultimately drives them to insanity and ultimately murder. However, Tomie is also immortal, so she always comes back to life to terrorize other families while her murderers usually end up in asylums, prison or killing themselves.

In this film, a young girl named Tomie (Aoi Miyazaki) is a loner who is bullied at school, whose dad (Jun Kunimura, of Godzilla Final Wars and Shin Godzilla) is emotionally distant and whose mother is dead. Tomie befriends another girl named Tomie (Nozomi Andoh), who may be the same young girl that her dad carried a torch for as an adolescent, before his friend dismembered her and hung himself. Tomie #2 starts coming onto to dad, promising him that they may be together forever...but only if he kills his daughter first.

The film is more a drama with some horrific touches. I kinda liked the scenes of the two Tomie girls interacting, even though evil Tomie's narcissism is evident from the start. The film loses its footing in act two. The whole bit about Tomie #1 taking care of Tomie #2's head as it grows back into a body, reminds me of a blackly comic version of Deadpool played completely seriously. The climax is not as exciting as it should be, save a brief scene where the crazed dad unwittingly solves Tomie #1's bully problems. The ending is kind of happy, in that it implies that all characters get what they want without it having to be at the expense of the other's life.

Edited September 24, 2021 by DrNgor

[AlbertV]

Leatherface (2017): A "prequel" to the 1974 Texas Chain Saw Massacre that is part of the Millennium timeline of the franchise (the sequel was 2013's Texas Chainsaw). First set in 1955, we see the Sawyer family and an 8-year old Jed Sawyer celebrating his birthday with his mother Verna (Lili Taylor) giving him the gift of a chainsaw, which he is supposed to use on a supposed farm thief but doesn't go as planned. However, when Betty Hartman is killed when Jed lures her to the family barn, her father, Sheriff Hal Hartman (Stephen Dorff) takes Jed and sends him to Gorman House, a mental facility for endangered children.

Flash forward to 1965. Elizabeth (Vanessa Grasse) is the new nurse at the facility and she meets three boys. One is the hulking and very quiet Bud (Sam Coleman), who bludgeoned someone to a coma when he was made fun of. Then there's the sweet natured Jackson (Sam Strike), who looks out for Bud and sees him as family. Then there's loose cannon Ike (James Bloor), whose volatile nature makes him very dangerous. When Verna demands to see the now 17-year old (soon to be 18) Jed, she is denied and she starts a riot within the facility. Ike finds his crazy girlfriend Clarice (Jessica Madsen) and they kidnap Jackson and Elizabeth while Ike, who had bee with Bud, becomes grateful towards him and asks him to join on a road trip to Mexico. Sheriff Hartman finds out and goes after them, knowing that one of these three boys is actually Jed Sawyer, who will soon find his destiny as the menacing killer known as "Leatherface".

I know lots of people didn't like this film, but I actually did. It brought something fresh to the franchise and in a way far from The Next Generation. It becomes The Usual Suspects meets Natural Born Killers with this wacky car ride. I was actually sort of shocked when it was revealed who would become Leatherface and how it happened. I have to say I think James Bloor has a bit of a Nicolas Cage resemblance and goes OTT like Cage would. Stephen Dorff and Lili Taylor are both evil in their own ways as Sheriff Hartman (whose son would be the antagonist of Texas Chainsaw) and Verna Sawyer-Carson (who the late Marilyn Burns played in Texas Chainsaw). Sam Strike and Sam Coleman are great as Jackson and Bud as they have different traits and still look out for each other. The violence is brutal, bloody, and insane especially during the final act, where we find out who Leatherface is and we get some chainsaw action!

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

Anyone caught the Elvira 40th anniversary special on Shudder? Apparently I can't get shudder since them fools charge me twice on a free trial, never to use their service again. Let me know how the show went for those who saw it. She is still sexy as all hell and she is ageless. 

 

[AlbertV]

14 minutes ago, OpiumKungFuCracker said:

Anyone caught the Elvira 40th anniversary special on Shudder? Apparently I can't get shudder since them fools charge me twice on a free trial, never to use their service again. Let me know how the show went for those who saw it. She is still sexy as all hell and she is ageless. 

 

I will be checking it out this week. She just turned 70 and she recently admitted she's been in a relationship with another woman for the last 19 years. Good for her! I am proud she can be herself now with no issues! 

[DrNgor]

1 hour ago, AlbertV said:

Leatherface (2017): A "prequel" to the 1974 Texas Chain Saw Massacre that is part of the Millennium timeline of the franchise (the sequel was 2013's Texas Chainsaw)...the franchise and in a way far from The Next Generation. It becomes The Usual Suspects meets Natural Born Killers with this wacky car ride.

Plus a sex scene that would make Jörg Buttgereit proud!

[Koravec]

For some reason I may wrongly have thought the point of this thread was to watch and review a different movie for every day of the month of October. Either way I think I may attempt that challenge myself, with no promises made as I very well may fizzle out midway... Ill see how this goes. 🍿 🎃 

happy halloween to all! 😖👍 

[DrNgor]

10 hours ago, Koravec said:

For some reason I may wrongly have thought the point of this thread was to watch and review a different movie for every day of the month of October.

It probably was, but now is a place for all us to post horror film reviews in October.

[Koravec]

4 hours ago, DrNgor said:

It probably was, but now is a place for all us to post horror film reviews in October.

I mean a movie everyday can be harder than it sounds for some. I remember saying to a coworker years ago that I was failing at my goal of watching a film everyday in the summertime by a long shot and he looked more surprised (‘wanna be’ screenwriter/director lol) and said “idk movies are like 2 hours long” and I thought about that for a moment and realized yea hes right, that actually can be a significant amount of time.   My schedule is super demanding with work, and I rarely even feel like watching movies these days, let alone writing reviews, so Ive also been stockpiling viewings in the month of September to be honest, and still may fall short, Ill see.

[Drunken Monk]

I've technically managed 31 horror films in 31 days the last two years but I definitely don't watch one a day. I usually cram in four or five when the weekends hit.

I'm looking forward to start my third year tomorrow. I'm not sure what to watch first.

[DrNgor]

33 minutes ago, Drunken Monk said:

I'm looking forward to start my third year tomorrow. I'm not sure what to watch first.

If you want to be extra crazy, you can do A-Z, plus a few extras at the end.

[Drunken Monk]

4 hours ago, DrNgor said:

If you want to be extra crazy, you can do A-Z, plus a few extras at the end.

I think the horror genre is one of the few genres that has good movies beginning with every letter of the alphabet.

[Koravec]

7 hours ago, Drunken Monk said:

I think the horror genre is one of the few genres that has good movies beginning with every letter of the alphabet.

Speaking of which I think Id appriciate the Abc’s of death anthology movies more now lol. Found them to be junk years ago. 

[Koravec]

Hereditary-Had to rewatch this one. Caught it just half a year ago by now and it scared my socks off. Possibly one of the scariest movies ever? Maybe well have to make a thread about that if there isnt one. This movie really chills you to the bone in its eeriness, pacing and atmosphere. Though I must say most of the initial horror from the first viewing was lost to me on the rewatch after knowing what to expect, even the creepiest scenes didnt look as much just by remembrance. 

The big thing making this movie lack that of a true classic or great film is how it uses such similar tropes and setups as other modern day horror movies of the past 20 years, you wouldnt even think of it as an ‘artistic’ indie film of sorts with A24 studios behind it. 

The thing is though, it seems to do all the typical stuff better than all the movies that have come before. This movie delves into familial relations in a way that torments you unlike Ive ever seen before.