October 28th: The Haunt (2013, Netflix)

I had seen this one a while ago and forgot that I had.  From what I was aware of, it was actually a pretty good movie.  So, I let it play out.


The movie opens up with the awesome idea of a ghost box, which is a fascinating concept to me.  Communication through the ghost box quickly leads to the man's possession and demise.  It gets a little strange when an old woman starts a voice over about ghost stories and how she's going to tell hers and then cuts to a family moving into the same house as in the prologue.  I guess we know what's going to happen.


Haunt tells not only a pretty cool ghost story, but a sort of "coming of age story" of the protagonist.  It's a fairly tame ghost movie, as far as that goes, but it's pretty entertaining to watch a battered Samantha take solace in the home that our protagonists' family moves into.  Especially once the true haunting is exposed.


Teens do what teens do in this film an Anne Veal's mother and her husband are incredibly accepting parents of this, letting the two of them sneak in and out of the house and telling them it's just their imagination when they hear voices.  Little kids do what little kids do, as well: talk to the ghosts that no one else can see..... WOAH!


This film actually has a lot of really cool and powerful images and uses a lot of different horror movie tropes, but in really refreshing ways.  I wasn't once bored by this movie, nor did I ever predict anything aside from the occasional jump scare that takes place.


I think my favorite line from the movie comes from the little daughter in the family "if there's a ghost in Evan's room, why doesn't he just make friends with it?" or the ghost box warning that "she's coming" and suddenly saying "she's hear" and going silent.


I highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes the good old haunted house movies.  It is a beauty. 

October 27th: Entity (2012 Netflix)

Making a horror movie based around a ghost hunter team or paranormal TV show seems to be extremely popular in the 2010s.  It feels like you can't take a piss without it splashing back at you by the pile of movies that new genre makes.


This movie is no different, but it does a really good job of separating itself from the footage and TV show theme better than other movies of its contemporary.  The film is about a British television crew on the search for a supposed mass grave in the woods of Russia.  The crew finds the grave and it quickly becomes more about the ghosts than the crew trying to survive jump scares.


When the film moved on from the mass grave to the final location, it really got great.  The medium that was hired in by the film crew is a real deal medium and actually sees the Russian prisoners' ghosts and even witness the murder of those prisoners at the hands of Russian soldiers.


This movie actually is what I wished Chernobyl Diaries was.  It's all about Russian experimentation on people and what it does to their souls.  And it truly creeps out, unlike others like it.  It lets go of the idea that it's "found footage" pretty quickly, although the characters require their gear to see from time to time.


I highly suggest this film, it's a winner on most accounts and I even want to watch it a second time.

October 26th: Mockingbird (2014, Netflix)

This was a strange one.  Not Dead Girl strange, but strange.  The premise is that an unknown and unseen force sends cameras to three unsuspecting people and use the people by means of psycological torture, a scavenger hunt and threatening children.

It's a solid effort at a unique movie, but it ultimately left me unsatisfied.  I found a lot of points of the movie to be more confusion than anything and had no connection to any of the characters.  Tom & Emmy love their kids and are driven insane by the outside force.  Leonard is a loser who dresses up like a clown and is sent on a scavenger hunt.  The last character I can't even recall a name, but she was a sad and isolated college student.

Through a series of increasingly bizarre requests, demands and videos: all three groups meet up.  I honestly feel like that is the best I can describe the film.  I had fun with it, I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it.

October 25th: 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (2012, Netflix. Also known as Paranormal Activity 4: The Awakening)

Ah, The Asylum.  A studio known specifically for making B movies and Mockbusters.  One thing their movies don't have is subtlety.  Or good acting.  This movie doesn't wait too long to introduce strange noises or even the death of an unnamed extra by the ghost of a seriel killer.

This movie's got it all!  People being decapetated by serial killer ghosts, girls standing in the corner of a room facing the corner only to turn around screaming a random set of boobs for no reason and people being left alone in strange rooms to be ghost raped!  It's amazing.

This movie isn't a bad movie, but is is be no means a good movie.  Like most of the films from this studio, it's a good movie to watch mindlessly.  I enjoyed my time with it, but there's not much more to stay about it.

October 24th: The Vatican Tapes (2015, Redbox Rental)

This movie has been on my mind for a while.  I was expecting the film to be a found footage film, but it's more of a mixed medium.

I was expecting this film to be a bust, but I really enjoyed it.  The pacing is well done and the acting is actually really well done.  The film places a girl in a hospital and psych The portrayal of the mental institution is a little archaic and stereotypical.

The movie does  great job of holding your attention and does great at building up to what happens.  People in Angela's life are attributing the happenings around her as coincidences and medical issues, but when Angela begins appearing where she isn't and on two different security feeds at once.  She starts seeing people's secrets and being able to manipulat the environment around her into killing people, even manipulating others into hurting others.

This is when the church gets involved.  It gets very much like The Excorcist in act three, but it had been much more subtle up to this point.  Small framing mechanisms allude to some sort of Vatican conspiracy about possession, but doesn't really get addressed.

There's a couple of Checkov's guns in the film that you would take to be little more than a passing phrase that come up towards the end  The movie's ending is just... well, insane.  I can see why people gave this film such a poor rating, considering the ending.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.  It's different.  Thtat's for sure.

October 23rd: [Rec]2 (2009, rented from library)

So, earlier I reviewed Quarantine, which was the American remake of the original [Rec], this film can still act as a direct sequel if you can buy the characters suddenly switching to Spanish and the left over zombies being different than you remember.

This movie is told from the footage of three different groups/cameras.  A group of teenagers who break into the building with a handicam, a squad of police officers who have helmet cams and body cam and the original woman from the end of the first movie.

This movie goes into the explanation of what the virus actually is pretty deeply and does a great job with it.  The narrative is told via the film itself, rather than lengthy exposition and dialogue and it never slows down.

Four police officers escort a priest into the building to attempt to find a cure for the virus.  This is a far cry from Quarantine 2: The Terminal, which simply makes a fun little zombie movie in an airport.  The police officers quickly find out the demonic meaning behind the zombies that they find and that they are trapped in the building by the priest until he tells the government to let them out.

A group of three teens then decided they want to try to get camera footage that can make them rich and break into the building and attract the attention of a firefighter and a man looking for his daughter and become a second group that entered the building from the first time.

Eventually the two groups come together and start falling one by one.  But, it's when Angelica from the first film shows up that things get REALLY good.  They go from good to AMAZING!

The story telling in this film is fantastic, the atmosphere is great, the expendability of characters is amazing, the only thing I didn't like was the stretch towards to end, but I don't mind a little bit of magical realism, especially in Spanish works.

October 22nd: Blair Witch Project (1999, DVD bought at Savers)

I'm watching this one and doing this one for probably the hundreth time.  This film is often hailed as the first of the "found footage" films, but it is definitely not.  Cannibal Holocuast would have been the first.  This film in the the late 90's was the first that took the horror genre by storm.

I saw this movie when I was ten, taken by my older sister to see the movie,  And I was terrified.

The best part about this movie compared to many found footage films is that it it is consistantly and holitically presented from beginning to to end as the produt of a failed documentary.  To the point that people were actually amazed when the actors would make their appearances on late night shows to promote it.

I kow that while filming this, the directors and his hands messed with the actors while filming this, which is why the film is so honest.

So many found footage films have come up in the decaces following this film and so few have stay true to the form.  Paranormal Activity, [REC] and Lake Mungo do well to honor the Blair Witch's form while introducing new ideas and themes.

The film is definitely still worth watching, though it doesn't bring anything new to the table (16 years of ripoffs have made that sure).  This is a movie that I enjoy watching every single time.

October 21st: The Gallows (2015, Blu-Ray purchased at Best Buy)

The Gallows has a great set up.  The idea is that a school is putting on a play that in 1993 an actor was accidentally killed it.  It's an anniversary show, the type that tends to strike huge in horror movies.

The film is actually done via "found footage" from a handicam in front of a jock.  A fellow football player of his is lead actor in the play and he antagonizes him into tearing down the set.  This jock behind the camera also repeatedly berates and belittles the drama chicks and kids.  I know for a fact that drama chicks rock.

When they attempt to destroy the stage of the anniversary all the imaginable things go awry.  They start hearing things and run into another actress from the play and promptly get caught inside the school's studio.  The whole "jock verses nerd" thing isn't too knew to horror movies, but it's an odd play in this one, since they are now forced to work together.

The group finds themselves trapped by dead phone lines and cell phones with no reception, so I guess in this case: ghosts can make your AT&T signal go down, but let your Sony Handicam keep working.  

Checkov's gun goes off a couple of times during the film.  A little more than you see in many horror movies.  Except, instead of Checkov's gun, it's more like Checkov's slow burn.  It's a really interesting way for the film to push itself forward.  

Thinking about being trapped in my old highschool's stage makes me a little uneasy, beacuse there's a lot in there that I didn't know.  

This movie isn't the best found footage film I've seen by a long degree or the scariest horror film, either.  But it's not a bad effort.  I enjoyed it, and was honestly never bored.  I would recommend this movie to most horror fans.  It's not going to make any "best lists" or anything, but it is worth the time it takes to watch.

As with any recent horror movie, there's a twist.  The twist is actually pretty cool in this one.  You really don't see if coming.  I alwys ebrace those types of things.  This is one that looks like a pass to most, but I would say: go

October 20th: Quarantine (2008, DVD purchased at 2nd & Charles)

Now, I know a lot of people who prefer the original Spanish version of the film, and I really can't blame them.  Having just watched [REC], the original Spanish version last month I decided to do the American remake Quarantine.  Compared to the Spanish version, the American remake differs almost enitirely in just language, virus explination and the fact that the delicious Jennifer Carpenter is in it.  Not to say that Manuela Valesco isn't a dish, either.

This film is another one of those films that plays the zombie genre a little differently.  I've seen to been avoiding a lot of the more "normal" zombie films for this blog and I'm a little disapointed in not watching the classics.

The film opens with Jennifer Carpenter and a cameraman shooting in a fire department for a show that highlights what goes on in the city after the lights go out.  They're taken out on call to an apartment building where a woman was heard screaming.  We all know exactly what it is, but they don't.

The movie become far more about what happens to the people involved in the situation than it is the situation.  For the first two acts of the film it's people verses people.

After a short while, the group of people inside of the building are quarantined by the government, the tennants, police and firefighters are trapped inside of a powder keg.

I don't want to keep going with this one and spoil all of the awesomeness that ensues.  PLEASE watch this one or the original Spanish [REC].   They are both fantastic.
 

October 19th: Thirten Ghosts (2001, borrowed DVD from friend)

Everything about this film, including a young Shannon Elizabeth and Tony Shaloub, screams 90's film.  I guess a film released in 2001 would technically be a 90's film.  This was put on the list at the behest of the same friend who will voraciously claim that 28 Days Later is not a zombie film.

Like several 90's films, biracial families are depicted.  ut the way they are depicted is still strangely racist.  A family made up of Tony Shaloud, Shannon Elizabeth, a genius child and a stereotypical black woman inherit a house that murdered several people in the opening scene.

An electrical worker decides that the innerworkings of the house is the reason that several homes in the area are out of power, low and behold: A GHOST!  A Many ghost!  Oh Christ!  I don't know what to say!

I actually fell asleep long before this one was over and I don't think I'll be going back to watch it anytime soon.  I think I'll save this one for a rainy day.

October 18th: 28 Days Later (2001, Bought at Disc Replay)

I saw this movie once when I was 17.  It was one of the most terrifying zombie movies (and I say that with a friend who would kill me for calling it that) that I had ever seen.  At the time, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead was also popular and the idea of running zombies became regular.  Games like Resident Evil 4 replaced their slow paced mindless zombies with fast paced people who had a goal.  That singular goal was to kill.  In the films mentioned it seemed to be to feed.

I haven't seen this movie in years.  I forgot about so many of the humanizing moments in it.  The film stars Cillian Murphy and Naomi Harris, two fairly large names in British film.  It starts with animal activists releasing the virus, which seems like a very conservative idea, but the film moves on to make it clear that those convervative ideas are a lesser thought.  Our first experience with a zombie is that of a priest.  Our protagonist runs from the priest and is saves by his new found friends.

Those friends teach him that in order to survive in the apocolypse he survived simply by being ill that he needs to lose his attachment and learn to kill without regard.  This comes up later, a bit of a reference to Checkov's Gun.

There are several times throughout the film where in the characters seem very delighted with the idea of being human again, indicating that during the infection that they have lost thier humanity.  Finding an unlooted supermarket and camping out at ruins that are free of infected gives the travelling group the ability to be human again.

As with many zombie films, there is a "recorded message" that attracts survivors to its location.  It's at this location that we find that the true antognist is not the infected, but rather the people who are still there.  The leader of the military complex intends to use the two woman brought to them by the group as the beginning of a new humanity.

While trapped in a prison room, our protagonist hears about how England is a tiny island isolated by the rest of the world, this is definitely some foreshadowing to the sequel.  The climax of the film is absolutely unbelievable.  The infected become the weapon of the protagonist, not even by his hands only, but by those of his compatriots.  The Umbrella Corporation would be proud.

I went spoiler heavy on this one, because nobody should have not seen this one yet.  But, it is a much more humanizing film than I ever remember it being.  I remember watching this and Dawn of the Dead and thinking "Christ, if zombie could run...."  But, for real, this movie is much more about maintaining and being human in a crisis such as this.  What a wonderful film.

October 17th: Episode 50 (2011, purchased at Disc Replay)

It's another one of those movies about paranormal invenstigators that get more than they bargained for, s imilar to Grave Encounters and Death of a Ghost Hunter.  I enjoyed both of those films, one more than the other.  This movie present itself as the show itself, as though you are watching an episode of the show, for the first act.  I'm also a fan of shows like that, Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures.  So, this movie seems pretty much perfect for me.

The characters in this film don't really fit the cast of the shows it mimics.  Those shows often are white washed with the ocasional token female, this show has a very generic horror movie cast.

Our intrepid investigators are given the chance to investigate the most haunted place on Earth, something that any one of those shows would love to do.  This movie spends a little too uch time explaining ideas, though.  I guess in a means to set up the opposing research teams and initate those of us who are unaware of these shows.  This movie purports to show footage from any unaired episode.

What makes me laugh a little bit about it is the fact that the setup for their investigation mimic the way that that shows like Ghost Hunters open.  I was actually pretty impressed.  Tension is created by pittig a pious investigative team looking for proof of the after life with the initial skecpitcal team set up to investigate: classic macho horror movie chest bumping takes place.

The movie really starts the action pretty quickly once the team is on location, with unexplained noises and motions.  The team is clearly on edge about what they're seeing.

It takes the two teams into the asylum and the usual things takes place as per horror movies.  The ending is a little more forth coming than a lot of films of its type, but still fails to really make an impact.  It's clear while the 50th episod of this show was never aired and it's also apparent why this film was never really paid attention to.

I didn't dislike it, but I can't say that I whole heartedly liked the film.  It might be worth it in pinch, but the Silent Hill inspired nurses and the Tenacious D style demons really didn't do it for me.  I'll give this one a pass.

October 16th: Dead Girl (2009, DVD bought at Disc Replay)

I think I watched this one when I was in college and started getting into the weird indie horror films on Netflix.  Wierd this one is.  It's a zombie film, for sure, but it's not your average zombie movie.  It revolves around a small cast without the thousands of zombie extras.  Highschool burnouts evoke a classic 80's horror feel while the presence of an insane asylum evokes the feelings of a spiritual horror movie in the first act.



The movie changes fast.  It changes fast to fucked up.  This is single handedly the most fucked up horror movie I have ever seen (disclaimer: I have not seen The Human Centipede, and of the Saw films or Hostel.  Torture porn just ain't my thing).  This movie deals with a lot of different themes than what horror movies normally deal with.  The animinalistic nature of male sexuality, the reproductive rights of zombies.... just... this movie is fucked up.  And I'll take it.



Classic movie characters show up, like the drunk and low-life step father, the angry teen shooting guns in parking garages and the pushy friend.  But the story telling, the cinemetography and dialogue lend it to a bigger picture than a usual horror film.



As far as pacing goes, this move has it in spades.  Don't expect the first act to be like most zombie movies: the apololypse rising.  It's as much a coming of age story as it is a zombie movie,  the two protagonists grow up and find love and adulthood regarding a zombie.  It's just... a weird movie.

I'll give away the gist, but not the climax.  Two burners find a zombie girl in the basement of an insane asylum and fuck it.  Which has too many stranger implications.  I mean... what?  I can't put into words the many things I feel about this movie.  The climax is interesting, as zombies tend to decay, but still....



I love this movie.  If you ever have the chance to watch it, please do.  Even outside of the zombie used as a sex slave, the entire world in this film seems to reflect decay and loss and I find it interesting.  It's probably one of the best done films I've reviewed on this blog so far and one of the most messed up....  I definitely suggest this movie.

October 15th: The Visit (2015, In Theaters)

This was a film that was kind of hard for me to get to.  It's only in select theaters around the area, but I have to say that I see why.  This film is in fact a very strange movie.  It's a documentary of a girl and her brother going to stay with their mother's parents.  The grandparents have gone unheard of for years and the children have actually never met them before.  Chekov, would you please set the helm for over shadowing?

The Visit is the second film from M. Night Shyamalan that I'm reviewing this month and it's completely by accident.  This movie didn't really look, feel or pace like a Shyamalan movie, at all.  That is, until the very end.  And even that was very light Shyamalanianism.  It's always nice to see a film from a director that doesn't reek of their usual tricks.  (Here's looking at you, Joss Whedon![and John Favreau])

The characters, while being forgetable, work well.  The "too serious artistic teen documentarian," the "I'm the next big viral rapper 12 year old boy," the "party too hard single mother who pays too little attention" and the "goofy grand parents."  The characters seemed like they should belong in the tapestry of a more "by the numbers" movie, but they work well to create a believable family in this one.

While the movie was fairly predictable on a small level and lacked the gore that many people like to see, I think it did very well to work it's pacing and tension.  I have to commend Shyamalan for making this, it's a great film overall.  At one point, I was expecting demons, but was turned on my head.  I suggest this one for anyone looking for a good, tense horror movie that doesn't rely heavily on gore, jump scares or boobies.

I give this one a go.

September 14th & 1/2: American Horror Story: Hotel (2015, Xbox Movies & TV)

American Horror Story is a show that got more and more weird as time went on.  I can't figure out if the writers/show runners are running out of ideas or if they're just getting bolder.  The first season was pretty tame compared to what they're giving us these days (although that image of Dylan McDermot jacking off out the window to the maid from the very first episode is burned into my mind).  It went from a haunted house with ghosts to an insane asylum where there was a devil, but somehow aliens and Syler from Heroes made lampshapes.  Next we got a witches coven with a 200 year old woman who was a scar on Illinois history and then a woman gets raped by a minataur and the woman from Fleetwood Mac tells Lilly Rabe she's awesome.  Freakshow, by far my favorite, gave us an amazing story about outcasts with several antagonists who worked well into the story line.  The characters were compelling and the chemistry was great.  But Hotel.... jesus....

I am just confused and lost by this one.  I was expecting some HH Holmes style shit, but this thing is just weird... Kathy Bates cages up two german tourists who were eaten by the kids from the shining and Lady Gaga is a vampire, the little brother from Weeds is a junkie and Danny Baker made it big and is now buying a hotel from a vampire?  I mean.... what?!  Though, I gotta say.  I really wanna keep watching.

October 14th: World War Z (2013, Hulu Plus)

Like I said, I don't have an aversion towards zombie movies, I absolutely love a good undead flick.  What I don't like is when a zombie movie spends the first forty minutes just talking about pancakes.

It's when the pancakes show up thats when you really start to have fun.

All kidding aside about pancakes, I'd managed to never see this movie before tonight.  Don't ask me how, it's been on Netflix since the dawn of the internet and I LOVE zombie movies.  28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead are two of my most beloved films.  I just couldn't get into seeing this one because it seems more like a Brad Pitt epic than a zombie film.  Honestly, it's like both.

The film does a great job telling its story, setting it up and depicting the end of society.  It's been done in so many different films, but it's rarely shown with such subtlety or granduer.  Most movies tend to focus very narrowly, this is wide.  Once one Monsiour Pitt finds himself aboard a US aircraft carrier, we learn that he gave up work with the UN to make pancakes.  When asked to help the government try to stop the virus, he's all like "fuck that shit: pancakes."  And then he became a pancake chef in San Antonio.  No, I'm kidding.  He actually goes to Korea to try and find patient zero.

It's a globe trotting adventure of epic proportions with Brat Pitt's Gerry Lane almost seeming like the James Bond of zombie movies.  I think I just came up with Bond 25.

The zombies in this movie are unlike zombies in other movies, the closest fascimile would be 28 Days Later.  The zombies in this movie seem to be more intelligent and driven than any I've seen depicted in films before.  The first time I saw a zombie jump onto and hold onto the landing skid of a helicopter, I was like "holy shit!"

World War Z gives us a very different take on the zombie idea.  There's still zombies, it's still apocolyptic and head shots are the best way to kill them; but this movie is about trying to find a cure.  This movie is about how trying the outbreak is on the world, it's a refreshing take on the genre.  I actually really enjoyed this film for all of its pancakes, even though I'm more of a waffle person.  My one gripe, though, is that in mass, the zombies were wildly unreleastic and almost to the point of uncanny valley.

October 13th: Pernicious (2014, Netflix)

Pernicious is actually a very refreshing movie.  When I watch these I try to go in as clean as possible and when I saw two skinny blondes and a skinny brunnette on their way to a home that's not theirs it just screams classic slasher.

Pernicious is a slow burn.  It took turns I didn't expect and took longer than I expected to make those turns.  And I liked it.  Where I expected a teen slasher, I found a much more chilling asian style ghost story that was Americanized.

The story telling in the film was actually done fairly well, generally using action and dialogue.  The monologues used as exposition in the story did very well and the classic flashback sequence was actually one of the cooler ones I've seen in a while.

This was a huge trend in the late 1990's and early 2000's with films like The Ring and The Grudge and The Eye and then switched to Spain with Quarentine.... you can see where I'm going with this.

With its original screenplay and a twist on Kumari, the film actually leaves you second guessing what's going on for the first couple acts.  By the time the third act starts, you know the basic gist of how it's going to end but you're still thrilled to see exactly how it will end.

I found the film very tasteful about it's protrayal of Thailand, something that a lot of American horror films tend to do poorly regarding foreign cultures.

I'd suggest this one day in and day out.

PS: A quick wiki search shows that a power ranger is in this movie!

October 12th: The Last Exorcism (2010, Blu-Ray)

I love exorcism movies, especially when done right.  This is one of them.  A priest who performs phoney exorcisms is called upon by a southern family to help their daughter Nell, who has been mutilated cattle.

The thing I love about this one is that Reverend Cotton thinks nothing of this exorcism, performs his usually hoax and leaves, thinking everything is fine.  It's not.  The film crew are shocked to find that the girl is still "possessed."  Specifically when she tracks down the priest at the hotel.  

Incest, animal murder and general Southern stereotypes come up, which seemed a little pernicious on the filmmakers' fault.  

It is interesting to note that in the film, our dead reverend does refind his faith in order to help poor Nell.  The usual exorcism events take place with an amazing scene where the demon actually comes out.  It's the last 10 minutes that really make the movie shine.  Up until then it just seemed like a really well done excorcism movie, then it really takes a turn.

This movie is well worth watching and I definitely recomemend it.  But, please.... don't watch the sequel.  That one was.... just... no.

October 11th: Lake Mungo (2008, Google Play)

Lake Mungo is my absolute favorite horror movie I've ever seen.  I've stated on here that I'm a huge fan of found footage films, but this one is more of a mockumentary film.

The film is the story if the Palmers searching for answers about the death of their daughter Alice.  It is an Australian film and I've known people who have trouble getting back the accents.  I didn't, I love the accent.

In the film Alice has drowned in a quarry while her family was on vacation, after a severe search and rescue a body is found.  The family seeks to place blame for Alice's death, an interesting thing to consider if you've ever lost a loved one to something completely without reason.  The family is stuck on her and the documentary keeps showing them greiving.

Alice's brother Matthew is an avid photographer and given the film was made shortly before the big "digital boom" that made film useless for most, he takes his pictures in 35mm, medium format and even begins experimenting with cinema footage.  The documentary film shows evidence of Alice in the pictures.

A psychic gets involved and works closely with Matthew and his pictures and videos.  Those pictures and videos began to show more and more.

Without spoiling anything I want to tell you that there is a big twist where in underage sex, swinging and parents finding blame is found.

This movie contains one of the most terryfing things I've every seen in a movie and sticking around for the credits is worth it, as it changes the film completely.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE.  I recommend it to anyone who is into horror movies.

October 10th: Contracted (2013, Netflix/ Library Rental)

I watched this one on my little Lenovo laptop in the corner of a library in an attempt to distance myself from the goings on around me.  It was a nice little vacation.

This film is actually a very wonderful play on what we think of a zombie movie, making me realize that I have yet to review a zombie movie on this blog.  Let me start by saying that I am not against zombie movies in anyway, I love them.  There's just so many bad ones.  And this one is no one of them.

The film opens with a pretty brutal image to begin with, necrophilia, and quickly devolves into the trope that sex is bad for woman.  Given that the protagnonist is almost almost outright raped and then has to pay the price really messes with my feminist values and learnings.  I would have almost rather seen the protagnonist partake in concensual sex and be punished than to be punished for a crime against her.

Samantha was a character that I really liked and empathized with, I really wished that things would go better for her, but I knew that they wouldn't.  Character writing quite like this is rare in horror films that go through such minor releases.  Even the secondary characters were believeable, if unmemorable.

Throughout her illness she gets rashes, fevers, burst blood vessels in her eyes and starts to look like a zombie.  It was at this time I realized I was watching a zombie movie.  With so little run time I wasn't sure where it was going.  I'm not goin to spoil the film for you, but I am going to tell you that the movie is worth watching.

It's not the most shocking horror movie, but it is in fact a fantastic film to watch.  I'd give this one two great thumbs up, but I fear a zombie biting them off.

Sorry to miss a Day

I missed posting a film last night and I have a pretty good reason to not to.

A family member died a few days ago and his wake was yesterday and funeral was today.  He was a great man.   I grew up with a mother from Minooka and a Grandfather who was a Mayor of the town.  The cool thing about Minooka is that it was a small town full of great people.

John Brown was anything but.  He was a great man that I grew to love as a child.  He had a pool and taught me how to keep pools chilly enough to make them fun.  He helped to raised my nephew and kept my uncle company.

I still remember stories from my mom aboout her and Ricky and Bobby being scared of the snakes at the creek and her nont caring.

My Uncle Tom runs a Spook house every Holoween,  I'm hoping the lose of John won't stop him.

Great love out to the angel that is John Brown, and a great love to his children Dakota and Darcy,   I love them all.

October 7th: The Houses October Built (2014, Netflix Streaming)

This is one of my favorite films on Netflix for scares.  And I'm watching it for a second time in the company of two people watching it with me.

What I love about the film is how unlike other films it is.  It offers a perspective and a narrative that isn't like other scary movies.  A group of friends set out to find the ultimate haunted house and find a lot more than they bargain for.

The movie offers a lot more than a simple handy cam horror movie.  The characters are very realistic, their conversations are very real and it helps to cement the movie as a believable story.  That's one of the more chilling things about the movie.

It intersperces unrelated interviews with "spook house" workers and the characters while the protagonists try to find back country and hidden haunted houses.  They want to find the best haunted house they possibly can.

My companions in wathing this are watching it for the first time and are having a hell of a time with the movie.  Frequently stating "fuck that!" and "I'm not sleeping tonight."  Namely at the part where the porcelien woman walked onto the protagnonists' RV without a word.

Those fearing clowns should definitely avoid this movie, as they are a frequent and creepy occurance.  When one of our characters attempts to take a piss he is chased out by a rabbit with an ask.

I greatly enjoy this movie on the grounds that it tips the found footage genre on it's head.  You always excpect the found footage genre to be characters looking for the truth or to disprove something.  In this film, the people behind the cameras find exactly what they are looking for.

It was best described by one of my companions, both of whome were watching for the first time as "very creepy halfway in, kind of seriel killer boring for a while and then really creepy again.  I really didn't expect that."

The Houses October Built proves to be one of the most original and refreshing horror films that I have seen in a long time.  It also proves to be a beautiful use of found footage.  I would recommend this film to any horror movie fan.  Even if it weren't on Netflix, I would suggest buying it at its $10 price on Amazon or at Best Buy

October 6th: Insidious 3 (2015, Red Box Rental)

The movie opens up with a series of ads, one of the reasons that I feel like piracy is a more apt means

of getting a movie.  If I buy a DVD or rent a DVD, I don't want to have to see the ads over and over again.  If the ads were an optional thing to watch on a DVD, that would solve the problem, but... they're not touchioptional.  You have to skip chapters or fast forward until you can get to the main menu; if the move allows it.  Thanks to the fact that I use VLC player, I can skip them, but I know it many standalone players, you're stuck with them.  A pirated copy would not put you through that. This one may have out smarted me, as it keep repeating the first ad when I hit skip.  So, I just used VLC to skip to Chapter 1.

I'm typing this as I watch the movie, there may be huge spoilers, but I'll let you know if I think it's pivitol.  There are also tons of logos leading into this movie.  At the one minute mark, the logos give way to a jump scare music blast.  And tells me it's a few years before the Lambert Hauntings and suddenly making me wish that I had rewatched one and two.  Until I remembered how unbalanced both films were.

The same creepy medium shows up at the two minute mark and I know that its the same movie series.  It's touching when you learn why this girl is here to see our old psychic from the old movies.  She wants to talk to her deceased mother ad she's experiencing strange things in her life.  You can tell, bad things will happen soon!

It's just so sad that in the beginning of so many of these horror films that these characters have such innocent intentions.  I am starting to really cozy up to the idea of this movie being about a singular haunting instead of a group being knocked off one by one.  That is a hacknied move, but this movie is making me care about a single person.  They show off her semi broken home and the guy who is crushing on her from accross the hall.  She has the little brother and the "in love" neighbor.  Things are getting tropic.  And it turns out she lives in the City, which is very differant from previous entries in this series.

A few scenes in the city, we learn why the city sucks.  I'd have to disagree with that.  Now, I know that from this instance in the film she's gonna learn that same "fly through the cosmos in your dreams bullshit" from the other ones and I suddenly kind of want to check out.  It's not that the film is inherantly bad, but just how predictable the turns are.

Thing is where things will get really spoiler heavy, so I'm going to stop posting as the film goes on.  Our protaganonist is wounded by the city.  The best she is given to summon service rings without her agency.  There is a spirit in this building guiding her.

The scene cuts away to our old spiritualist from the first film.  And suddenly I realize that this is a prequel to the first move.  This old medium was dead at the end of the first.

Here's what I did between the time I stopped typing at just picked up: repainted the bottom of my SBD Dauntless model in flat white, painted the interior.  And had a cgiarette.  The movie has finally moved to a point worth paying attention.

But it still doesn't hold me.  I'm at the climax of this film and I can not pay any attention to it.  I wish I could.  And it was at this time that I simply walked away.  I couldn't keep going with this constant blog.  About this movie that tried to keep pushing my further and further into something I'm seen done by The Owl from the Watchmen.   I simply couldn't care less... for characters that mattered less to me than some of the thugs I've seen murdered in westerns.  And for that, I am ending this live review with less people worthy and less actually believed by real people.

Insidious 3 is just a movie to pander to those who believe in the other realm, that our dream and beliefs exist outside of our mortal coil.  But I posit that is not true.  In our modern coil we strive for things.  Things outside the grasp of many. Be it love, money, prosperity or happiness.  We as human beings live our lives attempting to reach those goals.  Many of us fail at so many ventures.  Too many of us fail to even find love.  Too many of us sacrifice ourselves to find someone to love us.

That becomes the first step we have.  Someone who loves us.  And from that step our kingdom evolves.  But if we sacrificed ourselves to find that kingdom, when it omes tumbling down.... we know.

I know once I had a kingdom built on all the same.  It's gone now.

October 6th: weird interim laptop issue.

It doesn't take long for over the top music to pop out of nowhere and try and give you the first jump scare, about 30 seconds.  Within another few, we're greeted with a character we know when from the old film.  woah.... woops.... I had a driver problem on my laptop that I watch DVDs on.

While I'm trying to fix this let me tell you a little bit about my media situation.  I am currently in a room that boasts an Xbox One hooked up to an HP 24" monitor, a Lenovo T60 (Core Duo 2400, 2.5gb DDR2, Radeon XT1300), a custom build desktop (Q6600 OC'd to 3ghz, 6GB DDR2, GTX550) tied to a 24" HP monitor and a 20" AOC Monitor, an HP Envy Laptop (A10 5750 with an HD 8650G) and a Nexus 7 2013 tablet.  All of them are viable means to watch a film, depending on the source.  And that's the thing... depending on the source.  I'm currently writing this on my HP, which lacks a disc drive and for some reason fails HDCP testing (all stock!).  So, My HP laptop is only capable of playing pirated HD films and SD films.  Which would be fine if it had a fucking disc drive.  But it doesn't.  It's my "fun" laptop.

So, I tend to watch DVDs on the laptop that I much prefer to do work on.  The HP keyboard is loosely set up and sloppy as all hell, unlike a Lenovo/IBM keyboard, which is perfectly  shaped, set up and laid out.  The Desktop is almost out of the question to do this type of stuff on because it a BUILT beast from its time.  Original build was in 2006.  An Intel Q6600 with 2 GB ram, 1TB HDD and the formidable 8800GT graphics, which regularly reached temperatures of 220 degrees Fahrenheit.  I used a series of customer air intake fans in my case to lower that by about 20 degrees into safe temperatures under load.  I loved that thing.  Since then I've taken up to a 600 watt PSU, more ram and a GTX550.  Which is now an old card again!

I recently upgraded the Lenovo (a 2008 build that originally came with Windows XP SP1) to Windows 10 against many people's suggestion.  I found it runs it great except for one thing: video play back is fucked by the fact it doesn't have the best drivers available on it.  And now I'm trying to five a laptop that's ancient instead of watching a horror movie.  Maybe this is the horror?  I'm just trying to Windows 10 to load the Windows 7 drivers properly.  Also, if you ever get an HP laptop, their multi gesture touch pads have a mind of their own.

And, I got the Windows 7 drivers to take.  Let's get back to watching Insidious 3 in a live post.

Film I hope to get my hands on to review and talk about for you all:

The Final Girls: Maebe Funke and the lonely girl from the first season of American Horror Story get put into a slasher film and must use what they know about the film to survive.  Sounds cool.  Oh, and Malin (I don't know how to make the dot in your name, sorry) Ackerman.  Loe it.  

Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension I am just drying to figure out what happens to a found footage film that cosses over.  

Seven: because I really want to see this movie.

If anyone reading this has any suggestions, post them in the momments below.

October 5th: Signs (2002, Thrift Store Purchase)

I feel like it would be a bit odd to talk about Signs and discuss it as though I were reviewing it for people who haven't seen it.  Instead I feel more inclined to examine it from a slightly different point of view that I was exposed to via Cracked.  They suggest that you view the movie from the gaze that it is not about Aliens invading earth, but rather Demons.  That is a very interesting way to view it.  If you think about the protagonist (Mel Gibson) and his faith it is an amazing way to view it.

It really changes how the film is viewed.  I loved this film when it came out and I was twelve.  I loved this film when I got into horror films in highschool.  I got luke warm on this film when I got into literature and films.  I got bored with it in my twenties after becoming jaded.  This new view of the film really changes the way that you look at it.  I greatly enjoyed viewing this film from this gaze and seeing it as a heart warming tale of a fallen priest regaining his faith and being protected by the spirit of his wife.

This was probably the best viewing of this movie I have ever had.  I really was more fixed in, the foreshadowing was far more poignant.  It was less about "his wife's dying breathes told them how to defeat aliens!" it was "god had a plan in place to restore this once greatly respected priest to his former mantle.  And all of the little things in the film hit so much harder!  The aliens were first defeated in the Middle East!  Why would the Middle East be the first who did this?!  Their Piousness.  And the Aliens being present, front and center, at a child's birthday in Central America makes perfect sense!  They make one of their first nation wide full body appearances in an area that is majority Catholic.

And let's look at how Mel Gibson is treated in the film.  His first born and only son is taken by a demon in his domain.  As though Lucifer has come to Earth to corrupt Jesus.  The demon attempts to corrupt his son, but the divine intervention of his song having an asthma attack and protected him from the poison, the brute force of the Metatron destroys the demon and the blessing of the Virgin Angel allows him to do it.... oh my god.... Signs is M. Night Shyamalan telling the second coming with Mel Gibson as The Father, Aliens as the Demons, Jaoquien Phoenix as the Metatron, Rory Culkin as the Son and Abigail Breslin as the Holy Ghost.  Jesus Christ!  I thought Apocolypto and The Passion of the Christ were heavy handed.  In this movie, Mel Gibson and company pout together a team about to fight back the demons in the Rapture.  OH.... MY..... GOD.....!!!!! I wan't that movie!

October 4th: Unfriended (2015, Redbox Rental)

I love the found footage genre.  Like... TO DEATH.  The Paranormal Activity series is a gem in my eyes, Blair Witch is a Bible by which to write horror and Troll Hunter is just swell.  However, I'm not sure that I would call this movie a found footage film.  It was sold to me as thus when I went into.  She was wrong.  I think this is part of a genre I would call "Pervert Hacker Footage."  It chronicles the 82 minute demise of five teens who bullied a girl to death.

Now, I've sat through some shit in my days, but this is just exceptionally bad.  It's like a product placements for Apple, Instagram, Youtube and Liveleak that says "if you use our products, you will die!"  The whole film is one continuous shot of a girls laptop screen capture where they all bicker, squabble and be shitty ass mother fucks to each other because their on a computer.  And then they start dying.  And none of them does the logical thing: GET OFF THE FUCKING MACBOOK MOMMY AND DADDY BOUGHT YOU AND FACE THE REAL WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's it.  That's the whole movie.  I wish I could say more about it, but I can't.  I really can't.  I rarely feel like I waste my time on a movie.  Even Megan is Missing changed from being a creepy view into the lives of a 13 and 14 year old talk about sex to a bonafide horror movie, complete with live burial (trust that spoiler doesn't ruin the movie, the movie ruins itself).  This movie had nothing.  Stay AWAY!!!!! Please!!!!

October 3rd: 7 Below (2012, Netflix Streaming)

Looking at the cast for this one I had fairly high hopes.  Val Kilmer and Ving Rhames are two very powerful actors who do a great job in their roles.  Let's not forget about Pulp Fiction  and The Ghost in the Darkness before we finish this film.  Seven Below is a really formulaic horror movie, but proves to pick the better parts of horror films.  The characters are all stock characters that we're comfortable and familiar with and the setup is something that is very homey.  It could be these reasons that it falls short of being as truly awesome as its cast should allow.

The very first scene is a classic horror movie preamble.  Within 5 seconds of opening logos we see tits.  Ten seconds later: spousal abuse. About 30 seconds later: matricide and rampant violence.  It fades out on the scream of the two young daughters, a move I found very tasteful.

(Fade to today) The setup is simple, with very little to fill us in on.  It's a chartered bus going up into the mountains with three groups of passengers; the marriage falling apart, the brothers on a lifetime journey after loosing a parent and a foreigner on vacation.  The film quickly uses a pit stop to establish the tone of all the characters and introduces a lowly gas station attendant that we think we will never see again.  Within 15 minutes of the film starting we know exactly who everybody is and how they got trapped in their situation.

I want to just come out and say that this is one of my favorite horror movie tropes.  It's a brave move that is a bit rehashed, but usually makes for some very tense situations with a lot of friction to spice up the goings on of the film.  Unfortunately, this one kind of plays out a little flat.  A lot of the previous friction seen at the rest stop doesn't take place once the characters are trapped and some of the only friction seen is between Val Kilmer and Ving Rhames.  Who both play their parts fantastically.

Spoiler alert!!!!! A storm traps them in a mountain mansion!  How original.  I guess you only have so many ways to make people trapped in the 21st century.

Long story short: the cashier at the gas station gets roped into everything when one of the "Broken Brother" characters ropes her into it and then the carnage ensues.  It's actually a pretty neat horror film from beginning to end, I just feel like it would have done a little better had it been released in 1992 or 2002 instead of 2012.  It doesn't quite have the edge that you seen in current films on any front.  It does fairly well with atmosphere, writing and dialogue, but it doesn't smolder in your mind like most of its contemporaries.  Ving Rhames does his best to evoke a Green Mile Micheal Clarke Duncan and Val Kilmer gives us one of his more tasteful performances in years.  The newcomers and lesser known actors actually hold their own fairly well.  All in all, I call this one a "win" as far as lesser known horror films go.

Also, the twist at the end is actually pretty weird and was foreshadowed very tastefully in the first half hour.  The writer and director did pretty well and I did enjoy my time with this one.  Not the best, but a good film.

October 2nd: Lunopolis (2010, Netflix Streaming)

What to say about this?  I just don't know.  I was expecting something more of an Alien meets Enemy of the State.  It was far from.

This film presents itself as a documentary made in 1990 out of footage found that was shot by the people who are in the film.  Anachronisms aside, I couldn't buy into it.

The film has a REALLY cool over arching concept that is very promising until you reach act two and everything starts becoming about a terribly named analogy of Scientology called "Lunarology."  And it gets even worse when they start talking about time travel and changed timelines.

All of the horror and scare that takes place in this film is in the first twenty minutes.  After that it's mostly "Men in Black" acting like thugs and two film makers filming everything they saw.  The downward spiral of the protagonists' psyches was very ineffective as far as story telling goes and the motivation they give early on is "it's just weird, we want to see what it is."

One of the biggest downfalls about this film is it's story telling technique.  It fails to tell a story through action and film and rather relies heavily on exposition.  Everything about the story in the movie is exposition.  I understand that telling story via a found footage movie is difficult, but Oren Pelli has been doing it for a decade now without the use of overly long exposition.  This movie is five years old, so the film makers had five years to learn.  The big ten or twenty minute exposition in the middle of the film that explained everything spelled EVERYTHING out in a monologue by an old man.  I lost interest about halfway through the monologue.

Overall, I call this one a pass.  And hard, at that.  It was was not worth the time and effort to watch it, which is a shame.  It had a REALLY great and original idea and just failed to deliver.  I don't regret watching it, but if I could have those two hours back, I would take them.  I chose the particular cover that I did because it gives the film a benefit on the doubt with all those accolades.  And, yes, that is a flying Dodge Charger covered by some of those accolades.  (The cover I previously posted had a series of accolade plastered all over it, but I had to pull it down due to copyright issues,  The new one is the original cover.)

October 1st: Exeter (2015, Netflix Streaming)

Exeter is one of those horror films that pops up on Netflix and Redbox that you've never heard of before.  I assumed it was because it was just so trashy that it escaped the annals of must see horror pretty vehemently.  I was wrong.  It was missing recognition because it has been called three different names in the few months it has been out, making it one of the hard films to pin down in the canon of horror.  I wouldn't necesarilly call it a bad movie, but I still would be pressed to call it a good movie.  Exeter's secret identities are Asylum (not to be confused with the studio) and Backmask (a name that makes no sense in the context of the story.

The film seems to solely exist to be an over the top teenage slasher with an asylum as the backdrop when you first start watching.  The pacing, the blatant sexuality and the heavy use of drugs and alcohol points squarely toward a classic slasher morality tale: "you do drugs, you die."  Interesting to point out: I had been anticipating the release of Asylum for months, because it looked like a fun ghost story.  When it popped up on Netflix as Exeter I didn't know it was the film I had actually been waiting for.

A party at an Asylum over night soon boils down to a handful of staple horror story characters.  The jock/tough guy; the prissy queen; the manic pixie; the sensitive guy; the stoner/burnout; the nerdy guy; the annoying little brother.  That's a pretty classic play right there.  Except, it wasn't.  While these characters were all represented pretty heavily, they were far from played straight.  On its surface, the movie looks cut and dry, but the dynamic between characters and the way events shake out don't quite fit your expectations.  They even throw in the old priest and grizzled groundskeeper.

Demon possession plots usually are accompanied by the same old chronology of events.  Innocent is possessed; innocent kills every body; purity rescues innocence; innocent sacrifices.  This movie does not adhere to that.  One of the most interesting things in this movie is how it plays out on teenage instinct, wants and needs.  One line struck me pretty amazingly: "All I wanted was a couple of beers and blowjob."  Or the means by which the characters are trapped: they don't want to get caught.  They have their phones and tablets, but they won't call the authorities for fear of getting in trouble.  They also won't leave because one of them is possessed and don't want to leave him alone and get caught.  Absolutely the best way I've ever seen a character trapped in a location in a LONG time: their motives.

In it's third act it becomes somewhat confusing if you don't dedicate your attention to it.  The twist at the end is even somewhat worthy of mid-career M. Night Shamylan.  The problem with this was that the movie felt like it would crescendo out to a level ending and just give encore after encore.  By the time I reached the end, I didn't really feel that invested anymore.

It is a film worth watching for any horror movie fan who wants something a little less than ordinary, but it's definitely not ground breaking or earth shattering.  It's worth a go.