Month: October 2016

31 Days of Horror – ‘Sleepy Hollow’

sleepy-hollow

Sleepy Hollow

Directed by: Tim Burton

Starring: Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci

Review by Eric Scot Lemons

The moment Tim Burton busted on the scene with Frankenweenie in 1980-something, we all should have foreseen that he would eventually adapt Sleepy Hollow, the macabre tale of a man with a horse but without a head who beheads people cause why not? The film has two colors; grey and black. Sometimes blood is played for comical effect, but inexplicably so. Like during an autopsy (kinda, I guess) or cutting into tree roots (tha fuck?). It just isn’t interesting to look at. And I know that Burton is obsessed with German Expressionism and angular fucking lines and silhouettes, but those should not be the entire selling point of a film.

And this is yet another Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team-up. Usually these play along the lines of Johnny playing some weirdo forced to hang with normals, but it turns out this weirdo is wisest among them. Sleepy Hollow, however, is about a normal dude going to a place where everyone has weird beliefs, and then he turns out to be also weird, but in other ways. It really doesn’t gel. There are some jokes throughout playing on police procedurals and how much of the forensic philosophies that exist now were thought of as bunk in the late 1700’s. Also, there are some cool scenes involving decapitation and horses and men, but mostly the film is just boring. And after years of seeing the same shit from the duo, everything felt played out and numb, which is weird to say about a film that centers of cutting fops’ heads off.

Christopher Walken is the headless horseman and doesn’t have one line. An actor known primarily for his voice and he is a silent horseman who looks like young Rick Sanchez with a xenomorph’s grill. You know what else is stupid and makes no sense? The plot. It was witches all along. Fucking witches.

I just would not watch this. There are some flourishes that are fun, but overall, it feels half-hearted at best.

31 Days of Horror – ‘The Witches’

The Witches

Directed by: Nicolas Roeg

Starring: Anjelica Huston and Rowan Atkinson

Review by Eric Scot Lemons

Holy hell, this is such a good flick. Oh, you mean a movie directed by Nicolas Roeg with the help of Jim Henson based on a novel by Roald Dahl is good? You don’t say. But it really fucking is. I hadn’t seen this movie since I was a young child of 7 or 8 and it scared the crapola out of me then. It had always been a film I regarded as one for kids that probably shouldn’t be for kids. So, now my oldest is 7, so I fired it up for him, fully forgetting the monstrosity that Anjelica Huston becomes early in the second act as she confronts a large coven in a hotel convention hall. If you don’t remember, it is a Jim Henson creation that looks like a human condor in gaudy-fab makeup. It is startling because it is frightening enough to stand up to long takes, but human enough to be comical.

The film is set up perfectly for kids. While the first act is almost entirely exposition, it is fun and prepare you for the rest of the film. It sets in motion a mythology surrounding witches that makes the film a sort of guessing game; stating witches have purple eyes and no toes, left my children interrogating every person in the film for these hidden features. We are told growing up that strangers are possibly dangerous, but never fully understand why. This film is a super fun and interesting display of actual physical attributes to make one suspicious of their fellow humans. Now, I don’t know if creating monsters out of people is beneficial for children in the long run, but the film is fun.

My kids love spooky shit. They loved this. This is the type of horror that is much more difficult to classify cause it relies on real terror, instead of cheap camera tricks. You see the monsters throughout. You know the danger. Whether you succumb to it is up to you

31 Days of Horror – ‘Dreamcatcher’

Dreamcatcher 

Directed by: Lawrence Kasdan

Starring: Damian Lewis and Morgan Freeman

Review by Eric Scot Lemons

Dudes and dudettes, you have to see this movie. It is fucking weird. It is so fucking weird, I was convinced that English was the second or third language for the entire production team. And this was after discovering that it was directed and co-written by Lawrence Kasdan. I love a couple movies written by Kasdan. The ones about Empires and Jedis striking back and returning, but this movie is nothing like those films. This movie features a cast of mostly likeable actors; Damian Lewis, people seem to have a thing for him. Jason Lee and Thomas Jane and Timothy Olyphant, then add Morgan Freeman and you have a cast of characters that I can get behind.

Until they start talking. I love Stephen King as a person. He seems cool and down to earth, but he also loves to write about children friends who grow up to be adult friends that still talk like children. IT suffers heavily from this. Let’s just say, the acting and dialogue choices in this film are strange. It features wise-cracking that takes away from tension and plotting. 

When shit goes to hell in this film, I thought the principal actors were in on it, just because they are laughing at fart jokes instead of showing concern for the man who is clearly dying out his butt. Then Morgan Freeman shows up as a general in charge of killing whatever the fuck is attacking these people, and he lives, speaks in monologues, and dies at the end without contributing one iota of a shit cell to the plot.

But it is entertaining in that way that a bad magician is interesting. Yeah, he just cut off his finger, but attempting to figure out what the trick was supposed to be is the most fun part. Did Lawrence Kasdan just shit the bed at every turn or was this all intentional and meant to redefine the alien invasion genre? Oh yeah, there’s aliens in this movie. Surprise! Enjoy!

31 Days of Horror – ‘Krampus’

krampus

Krampus 

Directed by: Michael Dougherty

Starring: Adam Scott and Toni Collette

Review by Eric Scot Lemons

First things first, Krampus makes no fucking sense. I don’t really know what happened in that film. I am not going to say it was bad, but it was utterly confusing on a level usually reserved for avant-garde flicks, not holiday B-spoofs.

Here is the first confusing thing about Krampus: the casting ages. The child in it (Max), is played by like a 12 year old, yet is fully devoted to the concept of Santa Claus. Now, I am not saying Santa Claus isn’t real. I am just saying that this kid is a little old to be believing it. I honestly spent one-third of the film trying to figure out if he was mentally handicapped. Also, Adam Scott is his dad. Adam Scott is like, in his late thirties. Adam Scott’s mother in this film looks to be in her eighties. This film makes no fucking sense.

The next confusing element; what was the transgression that this family committed in order to get the wrath of Krampus? People not having Christmas spirit? Don’t get it. The pacing was all off. I couldn’t tell you if this film took place over the course of one day or a week. There is a huge blizzard and people seem to be dying in it, but I can’t tell if anyone exists in their world other than the family in this film. Do you realize how much you have to fuck up as a filmmaker so that this is unclear? The deaths were laughable and presented no consequence other than lessening the amount of people in the room. People’s children are being eaten in front of them and they don’t seem to care.

I legitimately love the cast (for the most part) and was not expecting a straightforward horror movie, but this was just too nonsensical. And I love nonsensical. I spent the entire film thinking outside of it in order to figure it out. I would not recommend this even for a fun, bad flick.

 

31 Days of Horror – ‘The Canal’

thecanal

The Canal  

Directed by: Ivan Kavanagh

Starring: Rupert Evans and Antonia Campbell-Hughes

Review by CinemAbysmal

This is a genuinely mean and frightening film. You look at the picture above, and you’ll probably think it’s a typical ghost flick where the submerged body comes floating to the surface to haunt the living. Truth is though, this movie is a straight ripper. Rather than relying on jump scares and things that go bump in the night, The Canal presents a story floating face down in a murky puddle of grief and infidelity.

I am not saying that there are no horrific parts in this. There are some absolutely chilling scenes brought on by ghosts haunting a house. There is a disgusting public bathroom that is repeatedly revisited causing a great amount of discomfort as a Shiningesque score wobbles and whines in the background. There is a tale of a family that was killed by their patriarch in 1902 in the house in which the main character now lives. The director, Kavanagh knows what he is doing to make the viewer as uneasy as possible.

Back to what makes The Canal brutally scary though, is the weaving story of the main character and his wife. The movie begins with them looking at a house, deeply in love and childless, their whole lives together ahead of them. Several years later the film jumps ahead and we are led to believe that the main character’s wife is cheating on him, leaving him with their son. His reaction is genuine and awful and heartbreaking, and I feel this is where the horrible fright of this film lies: everyone’s worst fears coming to life causing an unrelenting descent into madness in the face of infidelity.

For those into haunted house movies, this movie should be quite enough for you. But if you’re looking for a really depressing film that will most likely just absolutely devastate you while some ghosts tease the living, this one is definitely for you. Check out this bad boy on Netflix now. I promise it will affect you in some way.

 

31 Days of Horror – ‘The Amityville Horror (2005)’

amity

The Amityville Horror (2005)  

Directed by: Andrew Douglas

Starring: Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George

Review by Eric Scot Lemons

Ah, Amityville Horror. What do you say about a film that has nothing to say? I have never seen the original but this one, starring Ryan Reynolds before he was likable, talented Ryan Reynolds, and was still trying to wash himself of the fetor heaped upon him by Two Guys and a Girl and a fucking Pizza Place.

Ryan Reynolds is a step-father in the 70’s, married to Melissa George. That is pretty much all we know. The set up is pretty cliche, for which I won’t really fault it considering this is a remake of the original “family moves into house and is terrorized by ghosts” story. But it definitely doesn’t expand or redefine the genre in any interesting way, instead opting to fester in its own mediocrity while borrowing heavily from films that did it much better; most notably Poltergeist and The Shining.

Speaking of The Shining, I had heard King disliked Kubrick’s casting of Jack Nicholson because he felt it wasn’t a stretch to see him going crazy. This is how I feel about the choice to make Ryan Reynolds a stepdad. When shit starts going crazy, and he starts being physically and verbally abusive toward his family, I didn’t suspect a supernatural force was behind it, because I just think that’s how stepdads are.

Ultimately, the film is the type of film you have seen a million times if you watch horror flicks. Family moves into house, things get wacky, child speaks to ghost, there is some demon that gets stronger, family tries exorcism or intervention which doesn’t work, then they have to fight for their lives, and they leave the house. It isn’t interesting and they show the ghosts far too often and with comically long takes. The key to a good horror flick, especially one dependent on jump-scares, is to keep shots of the monster very short, so that our brains can register the danger, yet not unravel its flaws. And this film had many, many flaws.

31 Days of Horror – ‘Evil Dead (2013)’

evildead

Evil Dead (2013)  

Directed by: Fede Alvarez

Starring: Jane Levy and Shiloh Fernandez

Review by CinemAbysmal

I’m going to begin with a disclaimer: I love the Evil Dead universe. It’s immensely influential upon many things that I really dig, whether it’s music, movies or TV. And it’s based on Lovecraftian ideas which really gets me going. So when I first learned that The Evil Dead was being remade, I was naturally very skeptical. Then I saw the red-band trailer and I knew everything would be OK.

When marketing began for this movie, it was being advertised as “The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience.” While it definitely was not that for me, this is an incredibly gruesome movie that does not let up AT ALL. The sky honestly rains blood, there’s close-up eye mutilation, a tree literally rapes a woman, and don’t worry, there’s some ridiculous chainsaw scenes. It took a lot of what worked in the original films and turned it up to 11, with more cringeworthy scenes than a lot of people are willing to handle.

One natural problem I had with the movie, is there isn’t an Ash Williams. While I don’t really mean “Ash should have been in this movie,” I really think the film would have benefited from a more badass and likable character. Jane Levy does a great job as the character that was written (a recovering heroin addict), but you don’t really cheer for her like you would with Ash in the original trilogy and Ash vs Evil Dead. And I get it, this is a balls-to-the-wall horror film, but I still felt like I needed a laugh or two by the time this grueling monster was done.

If you can handle it, this is a great movie for multiple viewings. I catch more with every new watch (I’ve only seen it three times), but there are clever, loving nods to the original films which will make any Deadite happy. However, I’m warning you again: this is a relentlessly fucked up film that is sure to satiate the most brutal gorehounds.

31 Days of Horror – “Trick ‘r Treat”

trickrtreat1

Trick ‘r Treat (2007)  

Directed by: Michael Dougherty

Starring: Anna Paquin and Brian Cox

Review by Eric Scot Lemons

Trick ‘r Treat is a horror anthology based entirely on Halloween by director, Michael Dougherty. He also directed Krampus and Krampus sucked a lot of dick for various reasons, but I still decided to watch Trick ‘r Treat because I love Halloween and like horror anthologies. As far as horror anthologies go, this is a good one. Each short film is fun and plays well on the traditions generally associated with the holiday. I will now review each film within the film.

The opening was a nice short set-piece that really sets up in gory fantasm what can be expected from the film. While Trick ‘r Treat in general is pretty preachy about either respect for the dead or respect for the holiday, this one is probably the most blatant, seeing a young woman who despises the holiday killed in a fashion befitting the holiday.

The Principal features Dylan Baker doing what he does best, being a creepy as fuck paternal figure. This story, I felt, was too long to really sell the eventual pitch and the comedy, though dark, is pretty one note.

The School Bus Massacre Revisited had the most potential and fell flat. I could rarely understand the setting and the story doesn’t evolve enough for one to care about characters. The monsters are cool and the frights are fun though.

Surprise Party features a play on the Little Red Riding Hood story in which we see Anna Paquin being hunted by a black figure, but surprise, she is the werewolf and he is Dylan Baker being a creep again. The werewolf transformation is cool as shit.

Meet Sam features the little pumpkin-headed motherfucker trying to kill Brian Cox in his house and though the story isn’t that interesting, the sequence is super funny and playful in a gory horror way. The reveal of Sam’s true self is well-done and visually awesome.

Overall, the acting was great and the plot development solid. A great viewing for any October 31st celebration.