Horror Movies

31 Days of Horror – ‘Scanners’

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Scanners

Directed by: David Cronenberg

Starring: Stephen Lack and Michael Ironside

Review by CinemAbysmal

OK, so maybe this is not technically a horror movie in the classic sense. However, it is a David Cronenberg film so it’s unsettling enough at every turn that it feels like a horror movie. There are certainly parts that are horrifying; the infamous head explosion, for instance. Really though, this is just an intense movie all around. There isn’t a whole lot of dialogue, but Cronenberg lets the film breathe, not really punching everything up until the very end.

This is my first time seeing this movie. I know a lot of people reading this probably already have, but I just never got around to it. I really enjoy a lot of Cronenberg films, (Existenz, A History of Violence, Naked Lunch, the list goes on and on), so I’m not sure why it took so long to watch it. After finishing, I really wish I watched it sooner. The effects (for 1981) are absolutely amazing and disgusting, the pacing is strange but in a way, beautiful and god dammit, Howard Shore’s score is haunting and perfect for the movie.

One complaint I must lodge, is the main character, Cameron’s (Stephen Lack) acting. It’s so unbearable to hear him speak, that you can’t help but feel disconnected from the story for a good portion of the film. His lines are hamfisted and even his most general of reactions are not even convincingly human. That’s alright though, because the fantastically vicious Michael Ironside is there to balance out the awfulness with his creepy villain, Darryl Revok. Ironside is incredible in this and really carries the movie all the way to the end.

Cronenberg is a weird dude. Maybe it’s because he’s deeply Canadian, but that’s alright with me. I dig the hell out of the Canadians. From The Kids in the Hall to Denis Villenueve to Ivan Reitman, some of my favorite works come out of that wonderfully beautiful country. And after watching Scanners, I’ll just have to add another one to that ever-growing list.

31 Days of Horror – ‘2001 Maniacs’

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2001 Maniacs

Directed by: Tim Sullivan

Starring: Robert Englund and Lin Shaye

Review by Carson Labish

There’s a reason you’ve never heard of this movie. If slasher movie tropes, lighthearted southern racism, or 5 minute sex montages are your thing, I would still not recommend this movie. The only reason I watched it in the first place, was because Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) is in it. This wasn’t enough to save anything about it. The whole thing is really a mish-mash of nods to original and better horror films, except done poorly and for no other reason than to try and fool the watcher into thinking “it’s like that good movie, so I guess this is good too”.

The whole movie is basically broken down to a bunch of college students on their way to X spring break destination, turned down the wrong road and ended up where they don’t belong. That’s literally the entire thing. The thing with slasher movies, of course, is that you never really root for the victims, you root for the villain. There’s nobody to root for here. The characters are all bland and hard to tell apart, and every single one of the female characters talks almost exclusively in sexual innuendos and puns…..about sex. Really, all you are watching for are creative kills and gruesome deaths. I can’t really say there is much of either with this movie. Each of the characters killed is almost done in a formula. They are led off by one of the townsfolk, and end up in some kind of complex trap that kills them. That sounds kind of cool, but it isn’t.

Did you say you wanted awkward racism spread throughout the 86 drudging minutes of the movie? You got it! There are several shoehorned scenes of Robert Englund rambling on about how the south would rise again, and how they would “teach them Yankees.” I lost count of confederate flags flapping around the entire time. I guess they really wanted you to know this town was full of civil war buffs.

If you want to recreate the experience without watching the movie, watch Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and listen to Larry The Cable Guy stand up at the same time.

Fun Facts about 2001 Maniacs:

There were only like 40 people that played the 2001 townsfolk, and the other 1961 were chroma-keyed in occasionally.
Eli Roth has a cameo as a hitchhiker with his dog, Doctor Mombo, so technically this movie is a semi prequel to Cabin Fever.
Kane Hodder (Jason Vorhees) is in a single scene playing one of the townsfolk during the climax of the movie. His character’s name is “Jason”.

31 Days of Horror – ‘At the Devil’s Door’

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At the Devil’s Door

Directed by: Nicholas McCarthy

Starring: Ashley Rickards and Naya Rivera

Review by CinemAbysmal

This a strange fucking movie. Not exactly in the good way, either. The acting is pretty underwhelming, the dialogue is laughable and it seems to be pieced together by a drunk person. However, there almost seems to be an underlying intent to all of this as the movie stumbles along.

What we have with At the Devil’s Door is a good enough horror film. It plays on concepts from other movies such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, while mixing in some haunted house jumps. There’s even a mysterious girl donning a red rain jacket, which immediately reminded me of the creeptacular Don’t Look Now. There are some genuine frights in this and the Satanic storyline is actually pretty damn unsettling. It’s also really pretty. A lot of the shots are bathed in a greyed out palette and McCarthy is particular with his use of bright colors to surprise the eyes. He’s also very careful about his use of the devil in this. He is shown many times, a tall man with horns, but he is always blurry and it’s creepy as all hell.

The timeline in this film is probably the most distracting part. It begins with a teenage girl in the 1980’s and jumps around between then and now, but it feels forced and does not really come natural at all. I already mentioned the acting, but I think it’s worth talking about again. Most of it is pretty god-awful, and I can’t really tell if McCarthy meant for the hamfisted presentation of it all. I really think this would be a legitimately good movie if the dialogue was more carefully written and he grabbed some better actors.

At the Devil’s Door is currently streaming on Netflix. If you are into jump scares and some pretty damn good satan-soaked evil, this will probably satisfy you. It tends to move at a snail’s pace sometimes, but it really is a pretty vicious horror film. It’s just not that good of a movie-movie.

‘CinemAbysmal: The Podcast’ Episode 2

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The new episode of CinemAbysmal: The Podcast is out for all your aural pleasure! Holly, Eric and Nick get spooky just in time for Halloween and discuss The Wicker Man with Nicolas Cage, Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, and are relentlessly interrupted by everything that the world could possibly throw at them. Check it out in the link below!

CinemAbysmal: The Podcast Episode 2 – The Wicker Man and Hemlock Grove

31 Days of Horror – ‘Sleepy Hollow’

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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 – ‘Krampus’

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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’

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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)’

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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)’

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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.