el7 Reviews

Scream of the Banshee (2011 TV Movie)

Bad for an After Dark film, but good for a SyFy picture.

[5/10 · 28 May 2024]

You could really do worse than including this in your St Patrick's Day horror lineup. The production value is relatively low, but you've got Lauren Holly and Lance Henriksen who clearly knew what the assignment was. The assignment was to give us a campy holiday themed movie, and at least those two delivered.

The movie starts with the death of the titular banshee, whose head is sealed in a magic puzzle box during the Middle Ages and then somehow eventually winds up in the basement of a liberal arts college that is being catalogued by Lauren Holly's professor character, Isla Whelan, and her two longsuffering TAs. The TA's, whose names I don't remember but the guy is kind of a horndog and the girl is kind of a sad sack, are actually quite convincing as two young people who just wanted to get this job out of the way so they can go on Spring Break without worrying about their grant money. Less convincing: Whelan's college student daughter who is obsessed with her boyfriend and resents her mom for always being at work. The movie was constantly demanding that I care what happens to these two doofuses and I just could not. Anyway, the group finds the box with the head and somebody bleeds and opens it by accident. The head screams and it's not long after that before everybody starts experiencing supernatural shenanigans. Some of them are spooky, like what happens with poor sad sack. Some are unintentionally hilarious, like what happens to horndog. Some of them are neither, but dang does Lauren Holly do her best to sell it anyway. Then there's daughter and boyfriend who I still did not care about until the scene where she started turning into a hag in the middle if a make out session and tried to eat his face in a more literal fashion. That part was funny. Then I stopped caring about her again until the end.

Eventually, but not nearly soon enough, they realize they need the help of an expert and that's when they decide to seek out Henriksen's character, who is the sort of expert who has lost his ever-loving mind and whom the characters already know better than to trust, but he's their last! Option! OMG!!! Henriksen hams it up accordingly.

If you're compiling a list of goofy movies for a themed drinking contest, this might be a good one to consider.

Trinil (2024)

Beautiful filmography, whiplash plot.

[6/10 · 27 May 2024]

Trinil is the childhood nickname of one of the main characters in the movie. I won't spoil that for you, since you'll find out soon enough in the runtime. The film starts with a newspaper montage of the passage of Pancasila in Indonesia, which serves as both a scene setter and a metaphor for what you're about to watch. Then we cut to a night scene on a plantation in which three watchmen scare the crap out of each other with a ghost story. Very soon afterward, we find out the ghost story is true. The lighting, scenery, costuming, special effects, shot setups, just everything really, is extremely well done.

Then we start meeting the main cast. Truthfully, it's also well acted, the players doing the best they can with a script that asks you to just go with it when they make decisions that make no sense whatsoever given what we've already been shown about them. This was adapted from a radio play, which perhaps lent itself better to sudden plot twists that can coax the audience to stay with it even when a character just did a 180 degree about face on what you believed they were capable of. The writing should have been adapted better to the film medium, which is less elastic when balancing character motivation against a juicy plot. But the movie is still quite watchable, even though halfway through you realize you can't trust any of them so you might as well not get too attached.

The first act of the movie sets up the situation with the haunted plantation and the young couple (the heiress and her new husband) who have moved in and seem to be the focus of the haunt. The husband, Sutan, finds out that his old school buddy Yusof is a psychiatrist/exorcist (yes really) and hires him to help rid them of their ghost. In the process of uncovering what the ghost wants, Yusof stumbles upon a mystery involving the heiress Rara's mother, who disappeared under shady circumstances.

The second act of the movie gives us that backstory about Rara's mother Rahayu, and it's heavily inspired by Snow White. It also tries to set up a paradigm of righteousness versus cravenness through the behaviors of the secondary cast, but with the main cast behaving so inconsistently it's not very successful.

The final act turns quite gory as it tries to wrap up all the loose ends and give a sense of closure. Again, it's not very successful largely due to inconsistent characterizations. But then it gave us that gotcha final frame and kind of won me over again. I'd say give it a watch if you like good cinematography and can tolerate a horror movie in which you're fine with not getting too invested in any of the main characters.

Indigo (II) (2023)

Great start and end, slows down a lot in the middle.

[6/10 · 27 May 2024]

If you're familiar with Rocky Soraya's work, then you've already got a good idea of what to expect here. Two orphaned sisters learn they have an inheritance a lot more mysterious than they originally thought, and they must hold tight to their bond to prevent supernatural mishap. They get a lot of help from a friendly psychic and also from the older sister's boyfriend. All the familiar tropes are here, but this movie is neither as fast-moving as a 3rd Eye picture nor as campy as a Doll picture, and it suffers for trying to meet both styles in the middle.

The beginning is fantastic, though. It starts with a cold open that gives you just a little taste of the stakes, then moves on to the rest of the story, laying out clues just slowly enough to keep you invested. The most suspenseful scenes are the ones in the first act, with some well developed jump scares. The best part of a Rocky Soraya picture, where a neophyte psychic gets a sudden and unwelcome crash course in seeing dead people, is also included here and it's great. There are a number of twists that keep the plot from ever growing stale, and one humdinger of an ending. However, a lot of runtime could have been shaved off the middle act. Some of the confrontations later in the movie ran way longer than they needed to for suspense or character developing purposes.

Other than being about twenty minutes too long, this is a pretty decent 'in for the night' flick to scratch your goofy horror movie itch.

A Night in Heaven (1983)

Oddly paced film.

[5/10 · 26 May 2024]

This movie about a frustrated wife (Lesley Anne Warren) her stoic-to-the-point-of-tinderbox husband (Robert Logan) and the stripper who briefly comes between them (Christopher Atkins) begins leading you to think this story is going to focus on Logan's character of Whitney. It isn't. The star billing leads you to think that maybe this is a vehicle for Atkins's character of Rick Monroe, AKA Ricky Rocket. It... kind of is, but he's still not the main character. The central character of this story is actually Warren, as community college speech teacher Faye. She's the one trying to find a work life balance while her husband confides in every woman in town except her, and her stripper student pursues her with focus he should have applied to his speech class. The movie does give us time with each of these three characters to give us reasons to be sympathetic to them. Ricky tries to be a good son and brother but he has trouble keeping his private life and his public persona separate. Faye is just trying to be a good teacher and a good wife but she feels more and more alone, and this is reflected quite well in the blocking choices every time she's in a group scene. Whitney is one of those guys who is so uncomfortable making himself vulnerable that he compartmentalizes to an excessive degree. This comes to a head at the end, which despite all the foreshadowing is still very abrupt. Even with Bryan Adams warbling about Heaven over the end credits you still come away with the sense that nobody really had a truly happy ending, it just segued into another day of bottling things up.

Anna (II) (2019)

Thriller Diller Mashup

[5/10 · 17 April 2024]

Anna is Luc Besson returning to the well, with a story that introduces us to a girl in trouble who is recruited into spy games and then wants to get out. It's a lot like La Femme Nikita in certain respects, from the vulnerable heroine who unleashes her inner badass, to the deadly job test, to the love triangle, to the lengths she'll go to in order to get free of her bosses. Given who made this picture, the similarities are no surprise.

However, there are differences as well and it's fun to spot the pop culture references. There are knock-down drag-out bloody-faced fights a ala Atomic Blonde, coldblooded fatalism a la Black Widow, and a fame narrative that has echoes of Sleeping With the Enemy. Anna herself starts out rather muted, the familiar story beats carrying her along with much more interesting actors, including an intense Luke Evans, a suave Cillian Murphy, and Helen Mirren picking the scenery out of her teeth. However, as Anna realizes that she is once more trapped in a box, her own intensity starts to ramp up and she gradually becomes much more intriguing on the screen. That metaphor, used in the film, is interesting in itself as an early scene gives us a graphic example of the stakes for Anna if she can't outwit the people using her.

I agree with some other reviewers that the anachronisms can be difficult to ignore. The kind of cell phones they're carrying around are the right shape for the era, but the wrong size. In the late 80s using a cell phone was like holding a loaf of bread up beside your face. The smaller walkie-style phones like they were using in this movie became more prevalent in the mid to late 90s. There's also the social factor involved in the characters using cell phones in public. The era depicted is well before the time when people started politely ignoring the use of cell phones in public places. You could handwave the smaller cell phones as spies having early gen tech, but civilians would still be staring at them for having strange tech, if not dressing them down for being rude for using it in an improper venue to carry on a phone conversation. There's also the prevalence of Wi-Fi that characters seem to be able to use anywhere they go, even in a place that's supposed to be a dump. Wi-Fi was NOT commonplace in that era. Most internet connections were still dialup back then.

If you can ignore the 'oh well' attitude toward continuity, this is a rather enjoyable spy actioner, though not a top tier example of the genre.

The Haunted Hotel (2023)

Quite watchable.

[6/10 · 16 April 2024]

Haunted Hotel is kind of like if The Ring was crossed with the legend of Samudra Beach Hotel and then crossed back over with The Ring again. It's not beat for beat The Ring, but you are going to recognize quite a few set pieces.

The setting is a Javanese beach community in the 1980s. Two lovely young women have inherited a mysterious hotel from their father. Their grandparents have begun managing it, but the sisters have been having a rough year, so they decide to move in to help out and be near their remaining family. That was probably a mistake.

Grandma tells them not to visit the third floor, and gives an excuse about renovations which does not pass the sniff test. Elder daughter Raina disobeys that missive on the first dang day, and meets the evil spirit which will haunt the rest of the movie. The phantom delivers a cryptic deadline to which Raina responds by leaving her to her creepy privacy, as you do; but it's not long before Raina discovers that the spooky looking lady was actually quite serious with the threat making.

The rest of the movie is mostly a Ring style countdown in which Raina and her ex-boyfriend Arno try to find out who the ghost is and what she wants in order to save both Raina and her younger sister Fey from an untimely death. What they discover is a tragic love story featuring the most hilariously convenient case of amnesia I have ever seen in a horror movie. Wait 'til you hear what Raina's dad was up to in Jakarta. That part was supposed to be sad, but it made me laugh out loud in places.

The special effects in this movie are pretty decent, and the actors do a good job with some pretty schlocky material. There is a Ring style fake-out. I don't think I'm spoiling too much with that, you'll notice it yourself when they wrap up the mystery and you realize there's more than fifteen minutes of runtime still to go. All in all, I can say I'm not sorry I watched it, while also feeling no particular need to go watch it again.

Madman (1981)

This is by far not the worst 80s slasher that was ever made...

[5/10 · 14 April 2024]

...but Lord, it ain't great. This is a campfire tale story, literally and figuratively, in which a legendary local killer can supposedly be called back to action by unwisely saying his name in the wrong place. So naturally, a camp director decides to tell his story at a campfire in the worst possible place. But first, we are regaled with a mood setting song by the unfortunately named TP while flash forwards give us glimpses of what is to come.

There are plenty of ingredients in this flick that would make it a good gamble for a remake or reimagining. The central figure, Madman Marz, is left ambiguous as to whether he is really a supernatural incarnation or just a crazy old hillbilly who stopped taking care of himself. His decrepit house is suitably creepy, and most of the camp counselor canon fodder are nice enough to make you feel bad if they bite it. Even the Final Girl situation has some interesting surprises in store.

But this movie also has its oddball moments typical of homebrew slashers. First you get the camp director, who tells this horrifying tale and then exclaims that it's his way of wishing the campers and counselors good luck with their futures. LOL, wut? You've got the obnoxious camper Ritchie who calls down the murder hobo upon them all and proceeds to behave in ways that make you wish you could hit him over the head with a 2x4 long before Madman Marz ever gets the chance to hit him with anything. You get two guys grunting and moaning extravagantly while trying to pull on a long piece of wood, and I really don't know why the director felt the need to film the axe raising attempt like that. And Lordy Lord, you have the hot tub scene, in which Betsy and TP perform some kind of water ballet to a yacht rock song before they get down to it. Then there's Betsy not hearing her friend hollering her head off in the mess hall, shooting said friend in the face by accident (did nobody else catch that?) and the blond psycho boyfriend whom none of his friends noticed was a Red Flag when he was waving his knife around while talking about the evils of human nature.

You can see why this is a cult classic, but it's not a CLASSIC classic, you feel me? I do think some enterprising filmmaker could take the bones of this feature and make something more intriguing out of it. Or it would be a really good Rifftrax.

Meg 2: The Trench (2023)

They *almost* went all in on the camp.

[5/10 · 15 January 2024]

But unfortunately, they didn't quite commit. Meg 2: The Trench starts with a delirious prehistoric CGI sequence that looks straight out of a Scifi Original picture, so you kind of get a sense of what you're in for. Then it reintroduces us to Jason Statham's characterJonas, and it's the most over the top fun heroic entrance scene I believe I've seen since Canon Films was still releasing movies. From there, we move on to the ensemble introductions as well as the 'oooh science' pr0n, but don't get too cozy with that, because it's not going to last for very long. The movie made one of its first mistakes during this sequence, as it introduces us to a new major character by showing us how blasé the rest of the characters are at the prospect of his untimely death. This majorly undercuts any expectation that the audience should be concerned when any character in this movie is in danger later on.

When we do finally get back to the Trench of the title, a lot of the technicolor effects from the first film are replaced by darkness interspersed with washes of red and orange from the undersea vehicles' lights. So, don't waste your money on IMAX or a 3D ticket, this film is determined to be a B movie in every sense of the term.

For the most part, it does succeed at this. When we get into the 'criminals and conspiracies' part of the plot (a shark movie sequel classic, I don't fault the writers for dipping into that well) we meet a new villain, Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) and he, too, feels like he stepped right out of a Canon Film, in all of the best ways. In fact, I don't think we got nearly enough of Montes in this movie. I didn't mind Sienna Guillory chewing the scenery, and Jess's involvement was needed for the joke they were setting up, but I feel like there were way more henchmen getting screen time than were strictly necessary.

On that note, this movie definitely could have shaved off about twenty minutes and been a leaner, more fun machine. I liked that they added a giant octopus to the mix, and the subtle sendups of other sea monster movies worked for me, but other than the completely necessary red shirts from the first horror sequence (Lance, we hardly knew ye) there were way too many people with dialogue in this movie. I feel like the buddy cop energy the script tried to engage between Jonas and Jiuming, and Mac and DJ respectively, would have worked a lot better if they didn't have to compete with so many extras for talk time. The kid stays in the picture, though; I was glad to see the sassy return of a now teenaged Meiying.

I can recommend this movie to anyone who misses the B movies of yore, but as a rental or stream, not a 3D splurge.

Werewolf by Night (2022 TV Movie)

It's a vibe.

[8/10 · 6 November 2023]

Werewolf by Night pays homage to Universal Pictures monster movies, with its marvelous use of chiaroscuro and its camera sweeping entries into ornate sets while ominous orchestral stingers play on the soundtrack. It also surprised me by reminding me strongly of Teen Wolf season two. I don't know why it never occurred to me before much of a debt TW owes to the Werewolf by Night comics. Maybe it was the different medium, but more probably it was that Jack Russell is rarely paired with Elsa Bloodstone in the comics the way that he is here, and their back and forth in this movie feels very much like Scallison circa TW season two. If you were hoping for that vibe in the TW movie only to be disappointed by more season 6 style odd behavior, try Werewolf by Night instead.

Disco Inferno (2023)

Loved it, but...

[8/10 · 22 October 2023]

...where is the rest of it? Netflix has been marketing this as if it were a feature film. It's not, it's a short. Seventeen minutes, plus about two minutes of credits. It's beautifully made, and economically told, with a good soundtrack and spot-on set dressing choices to sell the period settings. I don't think anyone would have difficulty following the plot, unless you got up to get another beer during its short runtime. We get a cold open in the 1950s with a deranged woman giving her confession, then we move to the 1970s in which the church has been renovated into the titular disco club. The club's opening night features a dance contest and that's where we meet the couple referenced in the description. Contrary to the description, they do NOT actually conjure the evil spirit; however, there IS an evil spirit, and they DO have a connection, which is explained during a ghostly confrontation with some eerie color grade effects. Then it ends. No, seriously, there is an emotionally satisfying moment which I guess is meant to serve as the resolution, and I suppose it does echo the uncertainty of life and how even when everyone is on the same page there are no guarantees, just hang on to each other because hope floats, etc, but I can't help but wish this movie was longer. There was definitely more story that could have been told. What they do have was excellent, but it will leave you wanting more.

The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)

Flanagan delivers again.

[9/10 · 16 October 2023]

It's becoming somewhat of a Halloween tradition to enjoy a good spook-fest of a miniseries courtesy of Mike Flanagan. It's nearly always a saga of family dysfunction told through the lens of a classic piece of horror literature. This time the literary genius is Edgar Allan Poe, and the dysfunction is built around the idea of dynastic legacies, particularly in regards to inherited material wealth and the practice of nepotism. The story is built on a frame narrative in which Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood who is absolutely fantastic in this role) is offering a confession to highly skeptical fraud investigator Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly acting as the audience's touchstone) and the story proceeds through flashbacks in mostly two separate timelines: the late 1970s through early 1980s, and then 2023. We find out very quickly that the Usher family presides over a pharmaceutical empire under investigation for bad business practices. Of course there is more to it than that, and each episode of the show gives us another brick in the wall. Literally, at one point. A fine cast of actors chews the scenery with impressive brio, with special consideration due to Mark Hamill as the family's Svengali-like lawyer. Somebody nominate that man for an Emmy. I've heard some folks comparing this show to Succession, and the family who influenced that show is certainly referenced here as well, but so are many other rich families from various industries. Close attention will reward the viewer with many sly winks. The script has a lot to say about the futility of hoping to pass down a legacy of personal glory versus the quieter but longer-reaching legacy of personal care. This miniseries has a lot of great performances, richly colorful set pieces, and a wonderful soundtrack, but it isn't as scary as some of Flanagan's other works, though there are a few jump scares to be had. The dread comes and goes with a bit more gleeful anticipation than perhaps originally intended. A lot of these characters simply have it coming, despite Flanagan's trademark effort at giving them depth and development. Overall though, the show is immensely watchable and well worth putting in the queue for spooky season.

The Boogeyman (I) (2023)

A very watchable spookfest.

[7/10 · 9 October 2023]

This film adaptation is nowhere near as scary as the Stephen King short story it's based on, but it is a nice piece of film making with good character arcs. The story utilizes a lot of the base material from the short story - namely, the psychiatrist who doesn't believe in what his patient is telling him until it starts happening to his own child - but it fills in time with plot threads borrowed from Smile, Lights Out, and the legend of the Jangsan Tiger which was used for the 2017 K-horror The Mimic. So, a lot of story beats feel too familiar to ramp up the tension very much. I'll agree with other reviewers that the pacing is much better than the 2005 Boogeyman, however. There are no scenes where you're staring at the back of someone's head yelling at the screen for them to open the dang door already jeez. When the characters are frustrating it's due to their believable reactions to the incredible. Who wouldn't take a beat too long to realize they're involved in a situation that far outside of their experience, and who wouldn't at first resist any hint that it's due to a supernatural entity? If you're yelling at the screen it's because you know more than the characters could possibly know and you're worried for them. That's good pacing and solid character work. All in all, neither the best nor the scariest horror flick I've seen this year, but I'm not at all sorry I watched it.

Mako (2021)

I'm not really sure why it was called 'Mako.'

[5/10 · 20 September 2023]

Because the shark serves as more of a psychopomp figure than the actual villain of this piece. 'Trapped In The Bad Vibes Shipwreck' would have been a more apt title if they wanted to name this after the antagonist of the movie. The movie's premise does come from the haunting true story of the sinking of the Salem Express, and the persistent rumors that the shipwreck site is cursed. The beginning of the film introduces us to Rana, a documentary filmmaker who is up for a major award. It seems as if she won, but if you watched the 2017 Oscars you have a bad feeling what's coming when you see the emcee stumble over her name. She's in the middle of her acceptance speech when they take it back and reveal the real winner is... drumroll... Sharif, who also happens to be Rana's husband. I call shenanigans on that one, but this film glosses past it because the male characters in this movie are all either sacrificial saviors or irredeemable caricatures, no in-between, and Sharif is slated to become the former before the movie ends. So, spoiler I guess. Anyway, Rana becomes driven to win the next awards season and is willing to try any crazy idea to get the attention of the panel of judges, and in the interest of that she welcomes a crazy idea from a new member of her team, a mysterious woman named Gharam. You get the sense that Gharam has an ulterior motive throughout the vetting process to visit this shipwreck, and you'd be right. She has a tragic backstory directly connected to the shipwreck. The day the team sets sail to dive the wreck, a fishing boat is nearby chumming the water for sport fish and they attract sharks. Specifically, they attract the large, fast species called the Mako, and these are the sharks that begin to harass the divers as soon as they get near the wreck, which they subsequently have to hide within. The shark effects are quite good, and the claustrophobic underwater set is also well utilized, but unfortunately the members of the documentary dive team are all dressed nearly identically with masks that reveal only half of their faces, so it's hard to tell them apart from one another to keep track of what is happening to whom. Only Gharam is easily recognizable due to her tattooed fingers. Up on the boat, drama is also happening between one team member left behind due to sudden illness, and a criminal shipmate ready to use up his second chance. The film ends with a survivor lamenting the cost of getting the story and the award. As far as shark movies go, this is definitely not the worst I've ever seen, the shark just wasn't in enough of it.

Blood and Black Lace (1964)

Stylish who-dun-it.

[8/10 · 11 September 2023]

Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace is a giallo classic and had a visible influence on a number of films which came after it. This movie about fashion models being stalked by a masked killer features stunningly colorful visuals and lots of pretty people in peril. The plot starts when one model is murdered on a dark and stormy night, and the suspense kicks in when it's discovered this model kept a salacious diary which a number of characters now want to get their hands on. This commences a hunt for the diary, as well as certain doom for whichever character manages to lay hands on it. The police are hot on the case, but there's something important about the masked killer they haven't guessed at yet. When the viewer finds out, it's kind of a 'say what' moment, but in the meantime there are sumptuous sets and suspenseful set pieces to visually devour. One in particular, set in a dark antiques store, is a real nail biter. This is definitely worth a watch, not only for fans of the genre but for any movie fan who likes tracing the history of certain tropes.

Alligator (1980)

B movie holds up surprisingly well.

[7/10 · 4 September 2023]

Alligator is at its heart a retelling of Jaws, only with a reptile instead of a shark, and the setting is the big city instead of a tourist town. We still have a jaded but ultimately well-meaning police officer trying to stop a monster animal from chomping on the citizens he's sworn to protect with the help of an animal expert, while also fighting corruption at city hall, but he's a single guy with some trauma in his past, not a family man trying to be there for his kids. Some extra wrinkles are added to the plot, which are a help in this case since the cast is not quite as charismatic and the suspense scenes are effective enough but not quite up to the example set by the inspiration. First we have a blink and you'll miss it reference that the little girl who brought home the ill-fated baby alligator in the opener and the herpetologist who helps the hero a decade later are the same person. It's not super important to the plot so they don't hammer the connection home, but it does add a layer to the character of Marisa that is not added by the actress or the script. Next, we have culpability in the form of a criminally negligent pharmaceutical company who create the conditions which allow the baby alligator to survive and grow in the sewers of Chicago. There is a monster hunter in this flick, but instead of an anti-hero he's more like the gross and ridiculous guys from all the Jaws parodies that came out later. And finally, the last act veers away from the sense of tragic inevitability that happened in Jaws to instead deliver a comeuppance on the plot's instigators. The special effects hold up really well, and overall the movie is solidly watchable. Definitely worth a watch for creature feature fans.

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Stylish 70's thriller.

[7/10 · 31 August 2023]

This giallo-inspired movie written by John Carpenter and then rewritten by several other collaborators brings plenty of production value to the table. The cast is outstanding, the sound design is top notch, and the visuals are as glossy as you would expect out of a movie that's about a New York City based art photographer who discovers she has a psychic link to a killer. However, you are also going to see that killer coming, from the first moment he shows up on screen. The suspense comes not from trying to discover who the killer is, but in how he is revealed, and what his connection is to Laura Mars. It's not surprising in the least, but it is mostly satisfying, even with a few unanswered questions.

Re/Member (2022)

Stick around for the post-credits stinger.

[6/10 · 14 August 2023]

This movie is kind of like if The Breakfast Club was combined with Happy Death Day and an onryo story. The movie starts with a cold open of little Miko meeting a grisly end. Don't bother wondering who the axe man is, by the way, the movie never definitively tells you, though the end heavily implies it was a demon responsible for the entire thing all along.

Anyway, fast forward to high school girl Asuka, who leads a lonely life of isolation while she nurses a massive crush on basketball hero Takahiro, who has noticed her in return but is too preoccupied by his estranged friendship with Atsushi to make a move. It turns out much later that Asuka and Takahiro have a plot-based reason for feeling drawn to each other, and Asuka has a plot-based reason for being virtually forgotten, but those revelations occur so late in the runtime that they hardly register as important plot points. The pacing of this movie is kind of odd. We meet several more high school students, each of them with their own reason for feeling isolated from others, even if they happen to be popular by the standards of their peers. These lonely kids are all coerced into joining a body search time loop ritual, in which they have to locate the dismembered body parts of Miko and put them all in a coffin like a macabre puzzle, all the while avoiding the murderous intent of the Red Person, who it turns out is actually Miko's vengeful ghost. Each night at midnight they gather to search the school grounds hoping to locate at least one body part to put in the coffin. Each night, they get bloodily murdered by the onryo. Each morning they wake up to repeat the day again.

The days are spent with the tone of a high school dramedy, getting to know each other, while the nights are spent with the tone of a more straightforward teen scream movie, which is tonally a bit jarring, but ultimately the fact that this movie takes these characters' high school travails as dead serious as their nightly fights for their lives become part of the movie's goofy charm. Eventually they discover the identity of the body they're trying to find, and locate the murder site, which escalates their situation as the onryo morphs into a yokai by combining the girl's ghost with her beloved doll. Up til this point the teens have been treating their nightly deaths as an adventure, but it turns out that if the yokai eats them, then they will not return in the time loop, so their situation becomes more urgent. This is also about the time that Asuka and Takahiro find out their past connection to each other, which doesn't actually become important until that stinger.

The movie succeeds at capturing that ephemeral angst unique to the high school experience, and fulfills the puns made in its title. They repair a dismembered body, rearrange membership in their respective friend groups, and succeed in remembering things they'd forgotten. This is the kind of movie that might satisfy an itch for a movie that's spooky but also kind of heartwarming. It's still got pacing problems that hamper the viewer's ability to follow the twists in the plot, and this is definitely one of those movies where you'll find yourself yelling at the characters to put the lead out. Overall, it's a 'not sorry I saw it, but probably won't rewatch' for me.

The Meg (2018)

As it turns out, the dog was fine.

[5/10 · 31 July 2023]

I might be rating this slightly higher than it deserves because it was better than rumors had me expecting it to be. I'd file this one under 'enjoyably stupid' but not super high on the re-watchable value. This was clearly meant to be viewed in IMAX theaters, as the underwater scenes have great swathes of blue with colorful fish, you can tell the cinematographer was hoping to please the audience members who shelled out for the big price theater tickets. If you have a very large screen hi-definition TV you'll probably like that part, too. Otherwise, this is a cookie cutter pastiche of Hollywood and Chinese blockbusters. On the one side you've got your haunted action hero lead, your supporting characters from Central Casting, and your ludicrous explosions for no apparent reason. On the other side, you've got your stoic self-sacrificing paterfamilias, your preternaturally wise child character, and your hilariously over the top CGI. All the tropes are here, and even the less sympathetic characters are still fun to see on the screen, more because they're being played by actors who have good comedic timing than anything you can credit to the writers. The shark scenes are more tense than expected because the direction leans heavily into the inherent anxiety associated with deep, murky water, but when you actually see the shark, it succeeds in breaking the suspension of disbelief so that you remember you're fully safe watching a movie. In other words, this is like a fun fair ride, not something you want to watch if you want to be truly terrified. For that, Jaws remains the benchmark.

Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Watchable

[6/10 · 24 June 2023]

Not quite up to the hype, though. As Evil Dead titles go, this isn't the best one you could stream. As demonic zombie movies in general go, this is by FAR not the worst one out there. This film starts with a cold open at a lakeside cabin to make you wonder if this is going to be another re-imagining of the first movie's plot, but it's not. The action rewinds to one day earlier, where we're introduced to an apartment-dwelling family who puts the 'fun' in dysfunctional. Wild child sister Beth finds out she's pregnant and decides to drop in on her older sister Ellie for comfort and commiseration, only to discover that Ellie is dealing with a husband who ran out on her and their three kids a couple of months earlier, and a demolition order that's going to put the family out of their apartment in another month. The script does a bit of a slapdash job of introducing us to this family - I think shoving the characters quirk-first into the action is generally a mistake, it doesn't really let you get to know them, it's actually distancing - but it does a good job of sprinkling in details that will be important later. Like the fact that the apartment building is very old and used to be a bank. An earthquake opens up a hole where the adventurous son decides to explore and finds some familiar artefacts buried there, and once again the script does a nice job of letting the audience know that this is one of three necromonicons in existence, and therefore potentially a different one than the one from the original movies. It allows for a standalone plot that could still be viewed as within either canonical continuity. Long story short, soon there are deadites rambling through the old decrepit building and Beth and the kids are in a hell of a situation trying to escape their floor. The movie makes good use of its budget with a small cast in a cramped setting, and while a number of set pieces are not imaginatively framed, they are at least competently executed. There is an excellent homage to The Shining. I was less impressed with the homage to The Thing. The ending manages to be satisfying while still explaining how the cold open happened. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I'm glad I waited for it to come on a streaming service.

Smile (V) (2022)

Tough one to grade.

[7/10 · 6 December 2022]

I'm actually feeling like this is a 6.5 stars, but if I have to pick between 6 and 7, it edges over to 7. It has one of the uneasiest opening sequences of any horror movie I've seen recently, and that uneasiness carries through as the film comes back to that sequence repeatedly throughout. However, it's hard to ignore that the story beats are pretty much beat for beat The Ring. If you're going to crib from a horror movie, crib from the masters, and this one is very well produced and acted. Sosie Bacon is great as Dr. Rose Cotter, the psychiatrist who slowly unravels as a supernatural creature picks apart her PTSD for its own sustenance. The special effects are very convincing and so is Rose's escalating panic as she realizes that nobody is going to believe her any more than she believed Laura Weaver when she stumbled into her office. This has a lot of tense scenes and well crafted jump scares, and yet I'm not sure if I want to watch it again because there are no real surprises in the plot. I can definitely recommend watching it at least once though.

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)

Something for everyone.

[9/10 · 9 November 2022]

This is a genuine anthology series, in which each episode is a complete story and does not rely on the other episodes for context. Del Toro introduces each episode with a curio to represent it, and each episode is directed by an auteur with a unique perspective. The stories, and the perspectives used to tell them, are different each time out, so at least one of these is bound to up your alley. Mileage may vary as to which ones they are. I'll give a little of my own perspective on each episode and try not to spoil too much.

Episode 1: Lot 36 is directed by Guillermo Navarro, the award winning cinematographer of Pan's Labrynth. This story is about a bitter man who makes money flipping the contents of abandoned storage lockers, and what happens when he buys a locker that nobody should ever open. Tim Blake Nelson is adept in a role that would have been written for Miguel Ferrer if this story had been shot in the decade in which it is set. The final set piece has the sort of WTF visuals you'd expect from a cinematographer of Navarro's caliber, but the setup is perhaps just a bit too slow, not giving us enough time to fully appreciate that ending.

Episode 2: Graveyard Rats is directed by Vincenzo Natali (Splice) and is set in 19th century Salem. It has a wonderful turn by David Hewlitt as a financially embarrassed undertaker turned grave-robber, and it has an out there ending that was a chef's kiss delight.

Episode 3: The Autopsy was one of my favorite two episodes. Directed by David Prior (The Empty Man) this story relies on a plot that any science fiction TV fan will instantly recognize but he makes it so fresh and terrifying that you won't even mind. This piece is anchored by fully realized characters wonderfully acted, some perfectly done body horror and a desaturated color palette that makes the whole fantastical thing feel hyper real. Stunning work.

Episode 4: The Outside is directed by Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night) and has instantly engaging sound design and awesomely fun camera angles. Kate Micucci stars as a married bank teller who wishes she could fit in with the beautiful ladies at her job, and the story follows the lengths to which she will go to achieve that goal. This is a meta narrative about alienation within manufactured lifestyles, and it is enthralling.

Episode 5: Pickman's Model is one of two Lovecraft adaptations in this series, and this one is directed by Keith Thomas (The Vigil). Crispin Glover is nearly unrecognizable as Pickman, a painter whose work has the power to disturb the minds of its viewers to the point of insanity. This is a slow burner of a story, but it contains some of the most shocking scenes of graphic violence in the entire season.

Episode 6: Dreams in the Witch House is the other Lovecraft adaptation, and while this one also touches on haunted histories and the mind of an artist, a more tragicomic tone is achieved in the opening scene and maintained throughout. Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) directs a story about a young man played by Rupert Grint who witnesses his twin sister's ghost leave her body when they are children and grows up obsessed with the thought of bringing her back. In the service of this quest, he gets entangled with a wicked witch and her foulmouthed rat.

Episode 7: The Viewing is the other of my two favorite episodes in what is overall a stellar first season of this anthology series. Directed by Panos Cosmatos (Mandy) this is one of those stories where you don't need to know a whole lot going in to enjoy it. I'll tell you that it involves the classic setup of a group of strangers brought together in a singular location for reasons they don't know but are too curious to turn down. These are all characters that draw you in immediately, hold you throughout the story, and the payoff is the gooey fantastic stuff of your favorite video nasties from the era in which this one is set. The color grading and synth soundtrack are also top notch.

Episode 8: The Murmurring is directed by Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) and stars Essie Davis and Andrew Lincoln is a grieving pair of ornithologists who go on a bird watching holiday in hopes of reviving their ailing marriage. They are put up in a house which turns out to be haunted. This is more of a character study than a plot oriented tale, and the acting is lovingly understated for intimate scope.

All in all, a great showing for the first of what I hope will be multiple seasons of this anthology series. The Autopsy and The Viewing stand out as my favorites, with Graveyard Rats and The Outside rounding out my top four, but the rest are also good and your own favorites may be different from mine. Highly recommended, watch for yourself and see which ones you enjoy the most.

Barbarian (2022)

House of WTF horrors.

[8/10 · 1 November 2022]

I've heard that the best way to go into this movie is not knowing anything about it, so if that's what you intend to do, maybe don't read this review all the way to the end. It's definitely a twisted nesting box of a horror movie, with three distinct narratives that twine together into one whole. The title is a play on the name of the street where this takes place, but it's also a reference to the criminal negligence that so many characters in this film are guilty of, as well as the lengths to which many of them will go to defend themselves. In addition to that, it's a pointed and direct reference to the character whose actions set up the entire sequence of events. The initial setup of the film's runtime finds a young woman arriving at her airbnb rental on a literal dark and stormy night, only to discover that the place has been double booked. What proceeds looks like it might be the setup to a survival horror, and the casting of Peter Skaarsgard goes a long way to cementing that idea, and his behavior throughout does not dissuade it. Eventually our heroine, Tess, discovers literal hidden depths to the house (which may also be haunted though this is never directly confirmed) and before we finish her story, we're switching abruptly to Justin Long's character AJ, who is the house's owner. Through a downward spiral that was his own fault, we find out that AJ has been using the most irresponsible realtor in the known universe (or could she be in on it?) and then his story and Tess's dovetail before we get the narrative of Frank back in 1980. Then we flash-forward back to Tess and AJ again. I won't spoil all the biggest surprises, but I will say that a vagrant who helps Tess out warns her that there's worse than what she's already seen, and the possibilities encompassed by that covers a multitude of plot-holes in my mind. There are a lot of good creepy moments and jump scares, but what I appreciate most about this film, and might be influencing me to grade it an extra point higher than I would have for just the plot alone, is that this movie knows what the audience wants in a Final Girl. Tess makes some classic horror movie heroine bad decisions, but she makes them out of good intentions and that makes her worth rooting for. That determined walk into the sunrise was everything I could've hoped for out of a horror movie ending.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Stylish but not particularly scary ghost story.

[7/10 · 9 October 2022]

This movie has a lot going for it. It's got some great subtle touches letting us know early in the runtime, without overdoing exposition, that our heroine is a fashion nerd with a fixation on the 1960s and also that she just might be a spirit medium who can see her late mother. Eloise, the aptly named heroine played by Thomasin McKenzie, travels from Cornwall to London to attend fashion school and the movie does a great job showing us her unease with the sudden onslaught of male attention she's getting but it drags while explaining why she would leave the dorms to rent a bedsit. It's obvious in their first meeting that Jocasta is the worst sort of roommate, we really didn't need the night out from hell to hammer that home, although it did set up the neighborhood and the bar, but some minutes still could have been shaved off that whole segment. When she does rent the bedsit, it's immediately apparent why she would want it. The room is decorated straight out of the 1960s and the landlady has a strict rule of no male visitors. Of course Eloise would want it. Once she's finally in this room is when the magic starts to happen. Every night when she goes to sleep, she is transported back in time into the body and nightlife of a young would-be singer named Sandie, played magnificently by Anya Taylor-Joy. The color palette is a love letter to mid-century horror like Hammer films and Argento's oeuvre, and the visual tricks to show the viewer how surprised Eloise is to find herself in as a ride-along in this situation are stunning to behold. A lot of these scenes were in the trailer, in fact, and they're a great example of how the film shows, not tells. Eloise is first enchanted with Sandie's life, and it inspires her fashion designs at school, as well as her decision to change her look. That decision also has an elderly man the neighbors call 'Mr. Handsy' following her around. The movie engages in some delightful misdirection as to who exactly Mr. Handsy is and what happens to Sandie. When Sandie's life turns into a nightmare, so does Eloise's. A lot of these sequences are gorgeously shot. My real quibble with this film is that it is in fact a ghost story, but the ghosts are not really all that scary. The CGI is meh for the ghosts, and the scenes in which they appear are shot more for stylistic flourish than for suspense. It's definitely worth a watch for the cinematography, the storytelling, the acting and the sound design. I would recommend it for that hour of the Halloween party when you still have guests in attendance who are scaredy cats, because it's on point for an appropriate genre, but not really terrifying.

Rogue (2007)

Well made 'Man Against Nature' style monster movie.

[7/10 · 26 September 2022]

There is some beautiful principal photography in this picture, it's got a cast full of people you've heard of before, some of them appearing before they became well known from other projects. The plot is simple and makes sense. A group of tourists gets on a crocodile tour, and when their tour spots a flare they are duty bound to investigate, only to discover they're too late and now they're in trouble from the unusually large crocodile who views them as interlopers on his territory. Not only that, they're trapped on a tide island that's going to disappear and they have to get off it before they're all in the water. You see the usual rogue's gallery of reactions both noble and panicky out of this crew as some of them start to get picked off. You also get redemption arcs for not one but two of the hot dudes in this cast. A cute dog is endangered, prepare yourself if you hate it when the dog dies. The special effects are well done, not just for the era it was made in either, they hold up. The score is moving. This is altogether a well-made example of this specific type of genre film, with maybe just a few too many tourists on the boat to get to know them well in the runtime provided. The writers seem to have realized this as well, as they make a point of separating the leads from the rest of the group at one point, and that lasts through to the triumphant end of the flick, but it's suspenseful as I could have asked for. Definitely recommend.

Don't Kill Me (2021)

Very stylish, decent ending.

[6/10 · 12 September 2022]

Terrible boyfriend, though. He does the exact thing his girlfriend asked him not to do, and still the movie presents him as a romantic figure throughout the runtime, even up to the point when Mirta chooses her own destiny. We're supposed to believe that choosing herself over him was a decision fraught with loss. Girl, please.

Okay, so imagine the setup of Bella and Edward if Edward was a drug addict instead of a vampire. One of these two knows how to become a vampire type creature but is massively conflicted about it. I'll stop messing around, you already know it's the Edwardesqe one just by that sentence. Anyway, this movie follows the Bellaesque character as she learns how to be undead while being pursued by humans who hunt her kind. It's very stylishly shot, with a great soundtrack, and the acting is good, but man oh man, that central relationship. You can tell it's wrong right from the start, and the resolution is not unsatisfying (to me, YMMV) but it is rather fast when everything up to that point was about how much she lurved him. Definitely worth a look if you wished the Twilight Saga ended differently though.