Posts Tagged ‘Alice Krige’
Friday, October 30th, 2026
For two decades, as a non-gamer, I have believed that Christophe Gans’s SILENT HILL is the best video game movie. I have a friend who likes the games and thinks it’s a good adaptation, but that was never a factor for me. I just thought that whatever they were doing as far as translation really worked to create a unique horror movie with a strong atmosphere, bizarre creature designs, excellent FX work and an admirable preference for dream logic over boring reality. Even the characters’ numerous illogical choices and what I deemed to be “terrible” dialogue according to my Ain’t It Cool News review at the time added to the surreal feeling, and reminded me of the dubbed Italian horror movies I enjoyed.
It really felt different from the mainstream horror movies of the time, which made me like it, but also helped make it unpopular. I remember seeing it at a preview screening with most of the crowd in open, loud revolt from early on. I went with my now wife and another couple, who were talking about how terrible it was as we left. When I admitted I liked it they all looked at me like I was insane. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Krige, Christophe Gans, Deborah Kara Unger, Jodelle Ferland, Kim Coates, Laurie Holden, Radha Mitchell, Roger Avary, Sean Bean, video games
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, October 1st, 2025
My recent revisit of THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005) pushed me to finally get around to seeing HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS (2013). I had wondered whether they were kind of in the same genre and yeah, turns out they’re more similar than I even guessed. Just like Gilliam’s movie this one starts out with a fairy tale inspired childhood flashback, then tells the story of a pair of traveling supernatural expert siblings hired to help a small town where the children have gone missing. Both movies even have Peter Stormare (GET THE GRINGO) as a cartoonish bad guy (this time he’s the sheriff who gets a chunk of his nose bit off by Gretel).
The major distinction is that they’re not con artists or skeptics – as the title suggests, Hansel (Jeremy Renner immediately following a run of THE TOWN, GHOST PROTOCOL, THE AVENGERS and THE BOURNE LEGACY) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton, CLASH OF THE TITANS) grew up to become witch hunters, and this being a twenty-teens studio movie that means they wear cool leather outfits, have fancy steam punk shotguns and crossbows, do lots of slo-mo spins and flips and what not. Yes, that kind of sounds like a parody movie-within-a-movie meant to satirize Hollywood excess (like something from LAST ACTION HERO, or the Max Landis action version of Huckleberry Finn from the pilot of Jean-Claude Van Johnson). Fortunately writer/director Tommy Wirkola (DEAD SNOW, VIOLENT NIGHT) takes the ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER route of keeping a straight face and trying to make it cool instead of giving in to the temptation to prove to the audience that he’s in on the joke. I was worried for a second because there’s a joke at the beginning about drawings of missing children on milk bottles, but that was a one time occurrence. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Krige, Brothers Grimm, David Leitch, Derek Mears, Famke Janssen, Fiona O'Shaugnessy, Gemma Arterton, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Jeremy Renner, Osgood Perkins, Peter Stormare, Robin Atkin Downes, Sam Hargrave, Samuel Leakey, Sophia Lillis, Thomas Mann, Tommy Wirkola, Zoe Bell
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Horror | 7 Comments »
Monday, February 21st, 2022
“He needs special care, he doesn’t do well outside, you understand.”
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022) – not to be confused with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003) – is the new TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE movie released on (but not made by) Netflix. Like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986), LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III (1990), TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION (1995) and TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D (2013) it’s a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece, seeming to ignore all the other installments.
As in the original film, we have a group of young people driving from Austin to a remote Texas town where they don’t fit in. But instead of a pretty casual day trip it’s for a business venture: chefs Dante (Jacob Latimore, SLEIGHT, DETROIT) and Melody (Sarah Yarkin, HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U) purchased a small ghost town at a bank auction, with plans to open a restaurant and turn the town into some kind of hipster enclave. Along for the ride are Melody’s younger sister Lila (Elsie Fisher, EIGHTH GRADE) and Dante’s girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Krige, Colin Stetson, David Blue Garcia, Elsie FisherNell Hudson, Fede Alvarez, Jacob Latimore, Kim Henkel, Mark Burnham, Moe Dunford, Olwen Fouere, Rodo Sayagues, Sarah Yarkin, slashers, William Hope
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 107 Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2020
A rare movie-watching phenomenon that I love: rewatching one I saw decades ago, and have always believed sucked, but discovering that I really like it now. It happened with THE MANGLER, Tobe Hooper’s crazy adaptation of a Stephen King short story, and it’s happened again with SLEEPWALKERS, the first movie written by King that’s not based on a previously published work. Maybe it’s something about King’s stories, but more likely it’s that my tastes in horror have evolved since I was a teenager and saw this in the theater.
The mythological premise is established with a little text at the beginning: there are these fuckers called sleepwalkers, they are nomadic shapeshifters who are like vampires but instead of blood they suck the lifeforce of “virginal females,” and instead of sun or garlic or whatever they’re susceptible to cat scratches.
It’s a Stephen King thing. Just go with it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Krige, Charles Brady, Cindy Pickett, Clive Barker, Dan Martin, Glenn Shadix, Lyman Ward, Madchen Amick, Mark Hamill, Stephen King, Tobe Hooper
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 19 Comments »
