Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023
From 2005-2007, Showtime aired 26 episodes of the anthology Masters of Horror, created by SLEEPWALKERS director Mick Garris. Well known directors including Stuart Gordon, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, John Landis, and Takashi Miike were given an hour running time and a TV crew and budget, but few other limitations, to make little mini horror movies. The results were mixed, but there were some good ones (my favorites were by Lucky McKee, Don Coscarelli and John Carpenter) and it was an opportunity to get new material from great directors who for the most part weren’t getting as many opportunities as they should’ve in those days.
When Showtime opted not to renew Masters of Horror for a third season, Garris took basically the same premise to NBC, under the new title Fear Itself. This was kinda different not only because it had a new theme song by Serj Tankian of System of a Down, but because it had commercials and was censored for network TV. So if you haven’t heard of it, that’s why. They made 13 episodes, but NBC only aired five. Along with official Masters of Horror Landis and Gordon were more directors from a younger generation including Breck Eisner (THE CRAZIES), Brad Anderson (THE MACHINIST), and Mary Harron (AMERICAN PSYCHO), plus – you guessed it – the master of such horrors as THE TRAIL, THE OCCUPANT, BLESS THIS HOUSE, BRIDE OF CHUCKY and FREDDY VS. JASON, Ronny Yu. That’s right – his followup to FEARLESS was the opposite, Fear Itself.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: body switch, Clifton Collins Jr., Colin Ferguson, Josie Davis, Mick Garris, Ronny Yu, TV shows
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 8 Comments »
Thursday, April 27th, 2023
EVIL DEAD RISE is a new installment in the EVIL DEAD saga. We weren’t necessarily expecting there ever to be another one, but here it is. I’ve seen it called EVIL DEAD 5, meaning the 2013 Fede Alvarez EVIL DEAD is a sequel, not a remake, and I can dig that. But the numbering is irrelevant – it’s a new standalone Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror produced by Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert, written and directed by the Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin. I watched his previous movie THE HOLE IN THE GROUND (2019), a totally different type of horror, and I thought it was decent, but I didn’t write about it. I did write a little bit about his episodes of the Raimi-produced Quibi series 50 States of Fright.
But he’s officially a guy to keep a (flying, swallowed) eye on after this one. It follows the basic template of the original THE EVIL DEAD: people find a Book of the Dead and some recordings of chants, they accidentally unleash demons that possess them one at a time, make them smile and cackle and puke and kill and climb on the ceiling and other weird shit. The novel twists are 1) instead of another group of young people on vacation it’s a single mother, her three kids, her visiting sister, and some neighbors. Different dynamic. And 2) instead of a cabin in the woods it’s an apartment in Los Angeles. (Filmed in New Zealand.) That’s a different dynamic too because instead of being stuck in an alien place yearning to get home, this is their home they need to flee from. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alyssa Sutherland, Billy Reynolds-McCarthy, Bruce Campbell, Gabrielle Echols, Jayden Daniels, Lee Cronin, Lily Sullivan, Mark Mitchinson, Morgan Davies, Nell Fishur, Sam Raimi, Tai Wano
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 23 Comments »
Wednesday, April 26th, 2023
Now we come not to the end of this Ronny Yu series, or to its peak, but at least to a watershed moment. If you read this whole series, or at least the BRIDE OF CHUCKY review, you don’t need to ask the question “how the hell does the guy who made THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR end up making FREDDY VS. JASON?”
But at the risk of reptitition, let’s run through it again real quick. For starters, Yu had been making horror movies for 20 years (THE TRAIL, THE OCCUPANT, MUMMY DEAREST, BLESS THIS HOUSE), so that part wasn’t out of the blue. Then in the ‘90s two things happened: the new wave of Hong Kong cinema became popular around the world, and many Hong Kong filmmakers began to worry about what would happen to artistic freedom once colonial rule ended in 1997. That combination of circumstances led filmmakers like John Woo, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark, as well actors like Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, to start finding opportunities in Hollywood. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brendan Fletcher, Chris Marquette, Chuck Jeffreys, Damian Shannon, David Kopp, David S. Goyer, Garry Chalk, Jason Ritter, Jess Hutch, Katharine Isabelle, Kelly Rowland, Ken Kirzinger, Kyle Labine, Lochlyn Munro, Mark Swift, Monica Keena, Paula Shaw, Robert Englund, Ronny Yu, slashers, Tom Butler, vs.
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror | 16 Comments »
Monday, April 24th, 2023
Now, at last, we come to perhaps the key moment in this entire Ronny Yu retrospective. After years in the trenches of the Hong Kong film industry, having gained acclaim worldwide for painterly, operatic martial arts fantasies, and having made his American debut earnestly combining that style with a goofy children’s movie, Yu got a high profile Hollywood gig that seemed to many at the time like it was completely random. How the fuck does the director of THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR end up helming part 4 in an American slasher series, reviving it after seven dormant years, and taking it on an intentionally eyebrow-raising tonal swerve into oddball comedy? Did they just think of him because the word “Bride” was in the title?
As the entry that first turned the CHILD’S PLAY series into more of a comedy, BRIDE OF CHUCKY (1998) is a cult favorite in its own right, and therefore became arguably Yu’s most widely known film in the West, even if many don’t necessarily know or remember that he directed it. But I’m here to argue that even though this isn’t Yu’s most representative film it does have his stamp on it, and very much fits into his filmography. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexis Arquette, Brad Dourif, David Wu, Debbie Lee Carrington, Ed Gale, Gordon Michael Woolvett, Jennifer Tilly, John Ritter, Katherine Heigl, Kathy Najimy, Lawrence Dane, Nick Stabile, puppets, Vince Corazza
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, April 4th, 2023
Another Ronny Yu haunted house comedy, but without Chow Yun Fat? I don’t know, guys. In 1988, four years after THE OCCUPANT, Yu returned to his old haunt (that’s a pun) with BLESS THIS HOUSE. Fortunately by this time, when there were seven FRIDAY THE 13THs, four ELM STREETs and the first CHILD’S PLAY in existence, Yu had had a little more experience under his belt and was able to make something a little more accomplished than before, a little more stylish.
This one is about an architect named Bill (Bill Tung, reuniting with Yu after MUMMY DEAREST) who gets a promotion that allows him to move his family into a fancy house owned by the boss. He doesn’t catch on that it’s actually a punishment – the fuckin place is haunted as shit!
Of course the movie makes a point of Bill not being superstitious before he goes through this experience. He gets into trouble for disagreeing with his firm considering feng shui in their designs. His daughter Jane (Loletta Lee, THE DRAGON FROM RUSSIA, SEX & ZEN II) is more open to it and wonders if she should believe the “madman” from the nearby temple who keeps giving them the friendly advice that they should get the fuck out of there. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Tung, ghosts, Leung Shi Lung, Loletta Lee, Ronny Yu, Stephen Ho, Yan Chan Cheuk
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 23rd, 2023
THE TRAIL was far from Ronny Yu’s only attempt at mixing sincere supernatural horror with silly comedy. THE OCCUPANT (1984) is a ghost tale that takes its tragic backstory seriously, but the movie centers on a goofy love triangle, and one of the three leads is a broadly comedic nerd character named Hansom Wong (Bak-Ming Wong, MAD MISSION, LETHAL PANTHER, also a writer, producer and director).
Like Yu himself, Angie (Sally Yeh, PEKING OPERA BLUES, THE KILLER) is a world traveler – she’s from Vancouver, visiting Hong Kong for three weeks to work on her thesis about Chinese superstition. Hansom is a… used car salesman/property manager/random weirdo?… who sees her trying to find an apartment, latches onto her and “helps” her in exaggeratedly-sexual-harassy ways. He invites himself in, makes excuses not to leave, asks if he can take a shower, suggests that he should run around the apartment naked to scare away potential ghosts. I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing or a Hansom Wong thing. (He also claims to be an expert on the supernatural.)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bak-Ming Wong, Chow Yun Fat, ghosts, Ren Hao, Ronny Yu, Sally Yeh
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023
One of the main reasons to do a Ronny Yu career retrospective is to see how the hell this great Hong Kong director ended up in another part of the world making (SPOILER FOR THIS REVIEW SERIES) BRIDE OF CHUCKY and FREDDY VS. JASON, so it’s relevant that as early as 1983 (at which point there were only three Jason movies, zero Freddys, and zero Chuckys) he was already doing horror movies. Funny ones, too. THE TRAIL is Ronny Yu’s fourth film, never available in the U.S. as far as I can tell, so at first I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it. But I discovered I could order a Region 3 DVD that Fortune Star released in 2010, and there’s also a blu-ray out there. That’s good news, because I really enjoyed this one.
Horror comedies will end up being a big chunk of Yu’s career, but he’ll mostly set them in the present. This one takes place in 1922, in what seems to be a transitional period between old traditions and the modern world. (I guess that describes most period pieces, in a way.) It’s the story of Ying (Ricky Hui, MR. VAMPIRE) and Captain (Kent Cheng, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, IP MAN 2 and 3), two conmen impersonating Taoist priests transporting corpses. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chan Hau-Ming, Chung Fat, Ennio Morricone, Hong Kong, John Carpenter, Kent Cheng, Mars, Miao Tian, Ricky Hui, Ronny Yu, Tso Tat-Wah, Tsui Siu-Ling, vampires
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 3 Comments »
Friday, March 17th, 2023
As I mentioned in my SCREAM VI review and elsewhere, I consider Wes Craven’s SCREAM (1996) to be one of the great horror films of the ‘90s, and since then I have dutifully watched each of the sequels as they were released and enjoyed at least parts of them. SCREAM 2 seemed quite good in 1997, but my attachment to it has faded over the years. SCREAM 3 was disappointing in 2000, and hasn’t much grown on me. That seemed to be the end of it, and it seemed questionable when a SCREAM 4 came along 11 years later.
I remember I saw it at a preview screening. After the debacle of CURSED and the (enjoyable) mess of MY SOUL TO TAKE, I didn’t necessarily believe that Craven would be able to pull off the difficult task of a decade-plus-later part 4 that few had asked for. I also remember there was a guy sitting near the front talking to himself and the screen throughout the movie, being pretty annoying, but when it was over and he was leaving he made direct eye contact with me and said, “That was great!” with so much more enthusiasm than I had for the movie that I forgave him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Brody, Aimee Teegarden, Alison Brie, Anna Paquin, Anthony Anderson, Britt Robertson, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Ehren Krueger, Emma Roberts, Erik Knudsen, Hayden Panettiere, Kevin Williamson, Kristen Bell, Marielle Jaffe, Mary McDonnell, meta-slashers, Neve Campbell, Paul Harris Boardman, Roger L. Jackson, Rory Culkin, slashers, Wes Craven
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 15th, 2023
Nobody else seems to see it this way, but I still think SCREAM was the perfect name for the sequel to SCREAM (1996) that came out in 2022. It revived the seemingly concluded series after 11 years, and for the first time without Wes Craven, so naturally it took today’s legacy sequels – where a set of new, younger characters teams up with returning characters from the old series in a story loosely structured like the first film – as its format and subject. The movies it’s based on never have a number in their title; it only made sense to follow the naming convention of such modern horror franchise entries as HALLOWEEN (2018), HELLBOY (2019), THE GRUDGE (2020), CANDYMAN (2021), WRONG TURN (2021), TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022), HELLRAISER (2022) and the upcoming THE EXORCIST (2023).
A year later here we are with another one from the same directors (Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, READY OR NOT) and writers (Guy Busick [READY OR NOT] & James Vanderbilt [ZODIAC]) and this time it does have a number in the title – the historic first Roman numeral of the series. SCREAM VI is a good title mainly because the trailer showed the M in SCREAM get slashed and split into a bleeding VI, and secondarily because it’s admitting that yeah, we can’t lie, this is the sixth movie in the SCREAM series. It stars mostly our new set of characters introduced in the last one, but makes reference to characters and events from all five previous SCREAMs. I gotta admit, I’ve been there since the beginning, I’ve watched SCREAM many times, SCREAM 2 several times, SCREAM 3 maybe three times, the other two one each, but they drop so many names so fast I had trouble remembering what they were talking about. Not that it matters.
(Note: There were two guys behind me and one of them had apparently never seen any SCREAM movie before so the other guy tried to explain who each character was as they appeared. Not ideal.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Courteney Cox, Dermot Mulroney, Devyn Nekoda, Guy Busick, Halloween, Hayden Panettiere, Jack Champion, James Vanderbilt, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Jenna Ortega, Josh Segarra, Liana Liberato, Mason Gooding, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Melissa Barrera, meta-slashers, Roger L. Jackson, Samara Weaving, Skeet Ulrich, slashers, Tony Revolori, Tyler Gillett
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 43 Comments »
Tuesday, February 28th, 2023
COCAINE BEAR is a kind of funny new horror comedy written by Jimmy Warden (THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN) and directed by Elizabeth Banks (Rita Repulsa in the POWER RANGERS movie). I kind of enjoyed it and I’m certainly on board for this type of movie – pretty gory, not serious about anything, spending $35 million of Universal Pictures’ money to get very good bear animation FX in what is otherwise kind of on the level of a PIRANHA or ALLIGATOR sequel.
It’s just a silly goof with a simple nature-gone-amuck premise: a drug smuggling plane dumps its payload in the Chattahoochee National Forest, a black bear finds and eats some of the cocaine, now she’s angrily rampaging around eating tourists and the people searching for the other bags. And she’ll do anything to get more of that stuff. Fiending for it like a bear to honey. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, bear attack, Brooklynn Prince, Christian Convery, Digital Native Dance, Elizabeth Banks, Hanna Hoekstra, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jimmy Warden, Keri Russell, Kristofer Hivju, Margo Martindale, Mark Mothersbaugh, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ray Liotta
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 17 Comments »
