Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Tuesday, March 19th, 2024
When I first saw the trailer for LOVE LIES BLEEDING I thought “I need to see SAINT MAUD, don’t I?” It’s the first movie from writer/director Rose Glass, which was heavily hyped after playing TIFF and Fantastic Fest, and was picked up by A24, who of course gave it an intriguing trailer that was playing on all the horror movies. But that was in 2020, so the pandemic happened, it got delayed for a while, and ultimately only received a limited release in January of 2021, which was a no-go for me because it was well before vaccines were available.
So the hype train grinded to a halt, and personally I needed it to push me over the small hill of it looking like religious horror. You know, you put “Saint” in the title, you show her in some kind of robe on the poster, you show her levitating, I’m gonna assume it has something to do with possession or some shit. I can watch a movie like that if it’s a really good one, but I need some encouragement. Glass’s follow-up looking amazing gave me that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A24, Jennifer Ehle, Lily Frazer, Lily Knight, Marcus Hutton, Morfydd Clark, Rose Glass
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Thriller | 7 Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2024
Seeing LISA FRANKENSTEIN pushed me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for years – rewatch JENNIFER’S BODY (2009). Uncharacteristically, I came right home from the theater and put it on. It made a good double feature.
In a way it doesn’t seem like that long ago, but in other ways it seems like ancient history. It was Diablo Cody’s second movie, coming two years after JUNO, which won her the best original screenplay Oscar. Director Karyn Kusama was on her third movie, trying to make a comeback after AEON FLUX (2005), her one studio project after the indie smash GIRLFIGHT (2000). Since then she’s done THE INVITATION (2015) and DESTROYER (2018) and lots of acclaimed television. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Brody, Amanda Seyfried, Diablo Cody, Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger, J.K. Simmons, Johnny Simmons, Karyn Kusama, Kyle Gallner, Megan Fox
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, February 21st, 2024
I’m a fan of the Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. I enjoyed JUNO and TULLY and her directorial debut PARADISE, but it was YOUNG ADULT and its more friendly cousin RICKI AND THE FLASH that made me a die hard. Two movies about women who are assholes. My life is so different from either of theirs, but somehow Mavis Gary and Ricki Rendazzo are two characters I relate to deeply.
Of course she’s also got a foot in horror world – she wrote JENNIFER’S BODY for Karyn Kusama and even did some script revisions on the EVIL DEAD remake. She’s said she didn’t have to do much on that, but I still wonder if she was the one who named the dog Grandpa. Now she’s returned to the genre, sort of, with LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a teen movie with a zombie and some murders, directed by Zelda Williams (KAPPA KAPPA DIE). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: '80s nostalgia, Bryce Romero, Carla Gugino, Cole Sprouse, Diablo Cody, Frankenstein, goth, Henry Eikenberry, horror comedies, Kathryn Newton, Liza Soberano, Zelda Williams, zombies
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 10 Comments »
Monday, February 12th, 2024
SUITABLE FLESH is the latest from Joe Lynch, a director who has a certain credibility in my book because his debut was a DTV sequel. I was mixed-positive on WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END (2007) and wrote some things in the review that I now consider out of line, but I definitely respect its joyful spirit toward sequelizing and in many ways outdoing a studio movie I really wasn’t that into. Since then Lynch has directed a comedy that got taken away from him, the Salma Hayek action vehicle EVERLY, the gory outbreak-in-an-office-building movie MAYHEM (which I liked but apparently didn’t review) and the Frank Grillo/Anthony Mackie car chase buddy movie POINT BLANK. But now he’s returned to horror with a sacred task: to manifest an unfinished project of the late great Stuart Gordon.
I didn’t realize it from the name, but it’s one of those unfulfilled ambitions we read about for years – here’s an example of Gordon talking it up while promoting STUCK in 2008, but using the title of the H.P. Lovecraft story it’s based on, “The Thing on the Doorstep.” The script is by Gordon’s regular collaborator Dennis Paoli (RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, CASTLE FREAK, DAGON) and it’s produced by RE-ANIMATOR/FROM BEYOND/CASTLE FREAK star Barbara Crampton. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Winter, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Davison, Charles A. Pieper, Chris McKenna, Christian Calloway, DeMorge Brown, Dennis Paoli, Digital Native Dance, Gabriel Bartalos, H.P. Lovecraft, Heather Graham, Jared Logan, Joe Lynch, Johnathon Schaech, Jonah Ray, Josh Forbes, Judah Lewis, Kiran Deol, Kumail Nanjiani, Mike Benner, Pete Ploszek, Randee Heller, Ryan Kattner, Steve Moore, Stuart Gordon, Thomas Lennon
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 9 Comments »
Thursday, December 21st, 2023
In the interest of jolliness, as well as continuing the Stream Warriors (formerly Slasher Search) project of scouring for unknown slasher gems, I spent last night searching for watchable holiday horror obscurities on Tubi.
For my tastes this can be rough going. There’s a whole cottage industry of boring, off-brand Krampus movies and shit, but that’s not even the biggest threat. Their library is also a bottomless well of no budget, non-professional movies of the current digital video era, and so far in my experience not many of those have the same appeal as the regional horror movies shot on film in the ‘80s with hopes of a drive-in or VHS release.
Film had a magical power not just because of how it looked, but because of the difficulty of acquiring and properly using it. If a movie was made by some weird dude and his friends from work but he was able to pass the test of shooting it on 8mm or whatever, then that was a weird dude and his friends from work worth respecting. They were true dreamers, if not artists then at least romantics reaching from something outside of their small town, day job existence. So even their worst movies might be interesting, maybe even fascinating. I don’t think that’s the case with many of these. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Annette Wozniak, Beatrice Fletcher, Becca Hirani, Brent Baird, Christmas, Christmas horror, Julie Stevens, May Kelly, Mike McMurran, Patrick Bergin, Stephen Staley, Stream Warriors
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, December 19th, 2023
It’s here – that special time of year when I drink eggnog, watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, and try to find some new Christmas horror or crime movies that hit the spot. This year I watched one that’s a distant cousin of the killer doll movie.
In fact, the kind of doll that’s a Christmas present. POOKA! (2018) fulfills the important holiday horror movie duty of having lots of seasonal content. It centers around this Christmas season fad toy. Multiple scenes take place at a Christmas tree lot. The protagonist practices a monologue from A Christmas Carol for an acting audition, and the story includes a supernaturally-looking-back-at-your-life aspect vaguely similar to that or IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. There’s a (weirdly birthday-like) Christmas party. And lots of red and green lights. So it does the trick. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alejandro Brugues, Blumhouse, Christmas horror, Dale Dickey, Felicia Day, Gerald Olson, Into the Dark, Jon Daly, Jonah Ray, Jonny Berryman, Latarsha Rose, Lyndia Greenwood, Malcolm Barrett, Motoki Maxted, Nacho Vigalondo, Nyasha Hatendi, Rachel Bloom, Ryan Copple, Wil Wheaton
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, December 13th, 2023
As long as I rewatched URBAN LEGEND and URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT I figured I should complete the trilogy. Maybe you weren’t aware that there was a DTV part 3 called URBAN LEGENDS: BLOODY MARY. Or maybe you were a reader of The Ain’t It Cool News in May of 2005 and read my review of it back then. While the other two came from new directors, the DTV sequel comes from a veteran: Mary Lambert (PET SEMATARY 1 & 2). I wonder if any dudes ever accused her of “stealing my genre” like happened to the young director heroine of URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT? At the time I made a bigger deal about screenwriters Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris, because they’d written the then-upcoming SUPERMAN RETURNS, and in those days the internet seemed to attract people who were very opinionated about Superman movies. Hard to imagine it ever happening again.
While BLOODY MARY does briefly make reference to the events of the other films – murders on college campuses based on different urban legends – they mix up the premise quite a bit. It’s about high school kids in Salt Lake City who accidentally summon an evil spirit by saying “Bloody Mary” five times, and then (oddly) she kills people in methods based on urban legends. When they discuss the idea of saying “Bloody Mary” into a mirror somebody points out that it’s like CANDYMAN so that another character can point out that CANDYMAN got the idea from the urban legend. Actually kinda smart to address that right away just so people not familiar with the legend don’t think this is a rip-off a way better movie about urban legends than any in this series. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Audra Lea Keener, Dan Harris, Don Shanks, DTV sequels, Ed Marinaro, Kate Mara, Mary Lambert, Michael Dougherty, Nancy Everhard, Robert Vito, Rooney Mara, Tina Lifford
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, December 12th, 2023
The title URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT sounds like an escalation, because the legend has suddenly become plural, but I seem to remember this sequel coming out with a whimper. I thought I remembered respecting it a little more than others at the time, but in my review back then I seem to have thought it was pretty bad.
It starts on an airplane during a storm, which seems crazy enough for the series that you can probly guess it’s the ol’ “actually we’re watching a movie-within-a-movie” cold open fake out. The reveal is kind of cool, though: suddenly the pilot sees a Tom-Cruise-looking asshole in sunglasses staring into the cockpit from the outside – he’s the director of this student film (filmed on a set from PUSHING TIN). In an even more aggressive “you kids liked SCREAM, right? Check this out!” move than the first URBAN LEGEND, the story has moved to Alpine University Film School, where aspiring directors are in a cutthroat competition to win “the prestigious Hitchcock Award,” which they all talk about it like it’s a guaranteed Hollywood career because it has been a “springboard” for successful filmmakers in the past. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anson Mount, Anthony Anderson, Eva Mendes, Gina Matthews, Hart Bochner, Jacinda Barrett, Jennifer Morrison, Jessica Cauffiel, Joey Lawrence, John Ottman, Loretta Devine, Marco Hofschneider, Matthew Davis, meta-slashers, Michael Bacall, Paul Harris Boardman, Rebecca Gayheart, Scott Derrickson, Silvio Horta, slashers, whodunit slashers
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 6 Comments »
Monday, December 11th, 2023
URBAN LEGEND (1998) is, to my mind, one of the most “obviously we’re making this because of the success of SCREAM” horror movies that exists. It’s another young-people-whodunit-slasher, with a similarly constituted cast of pretty young movie and TV stars, but instead of killings inspired by horror movie tropes, these ones are based on popular urban myths. At the time I think I took it as dumb but pretty enjoyable, which is also how I feel about it now, and about many non-classic slasher movies. Like most of them it benefits from age – it’s a time capsule now rather than the latest the genre has to offer, so we have different expectations for it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alicia Witt, Brad Dourif, Christopher Young, Danielle Harris, Jamie Blanks, Jared Leto, John Neville, Joshua Jackson, Loretta Devine, Michael Rosenbaum, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Rebecca Gayheart, Robert Englund, Silvio Horta, slashers, Tara Reid, whodunit slashers
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 24 Comments »
Thursday, November 30th, 2023
The day after I saw THANKSGIVING I decided to sit down and watch the whole GRINDHOUSE double feature for the first time in many years. I saw it twice during its short theatrical run in 2007, saw the longer separate version of DEATH PROOF on DVD (can’t remember if I ever did the same for PLANET TERROR), at some point I bought a Canadian import blu-ray just to have the full double feature when it wasn’t available here yet. Turns out it was still unopened.
DEATH PROOF definitely stands up as a separate movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed having that full experience again. I know online movie people talk too much about runtimes, sort of a dumb topic usually, but I want to point out that this full double feature is only 15 minutes longer than THE BATMAN, 10 minutes longer than OPPENHEIMER, and 15 minutes shorter than KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. But it offers two very different movies, plus short subjects in the form of fake trailers and bumpers, that play off each other kind of like an anthology. For those times when you’re in more of a splattering blood and smashing cars mood than a creation of the atom bomb one it’s a joyful and enriching way to spend an afternoon or evening. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce Willis, Carlos Gallardo, Freddy Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Marley Shelton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Biehn, Michael Parks, Monica Staggs, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Rosario Dawson, Rose McGowan, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tom Savini, Tracie Thoms, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoe Bell
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror | 50 Comments »
