I can second Happy Death Day, it’s fun, sort of a more horror themed Groundhog Day.
+1 for Happy Death Day. It’s not a horror movie really but it is a rather adorable take on Groundhog Day
I watched XX.
I left XX feeling like the whole thing needed another 20 minutes in the oven. The least underdone was Birthday Party with Melanie Lynsky (although, what the hell was someone trying to do with the Nanny’s musical score). The most interesting short was Her Only Living Son altough I felt like it failed to deliver on it’s premise. Neither of the other shorts was bad. But I came away unfilfilled each time and with nothing appreciable to tie them together. There was no message whatsoever, neither individually nor as a whole.
The Box Classic horror short - adapted from a jack Ketchum short story I understand - I just didn’t feel a sense of dread or anxiousness over what was happening to the people in on the secret.
The Birthday Lynsky was fine, but this felt a bit flat. Not as funny as it needed to be, maybe?
Don’t Fall Why not? Neither falling, nor heights, were relevant to the story. Group accidentally treads where it’s not supposed to, one member gets possesed and becomes killier thingy and kills the rest. No stakes, no message, but the creature isn’t interesting enough to carry this. There’s also not enough time for any inter-group conflict to properly cook and boil over.
Her Only Living Son Interesting premise - “Rosemary” has a vague idea of something horrid having been done to her although she isn’t quite ready to believe the truth. So she flees and finds a doctor who improbably believes her and gives her th2e means to take her son and go on the lamb. They’ve been on the sun since, which naturally complicates her relationship with her son. With his Eighteenth birthday approaching, things take a sharp turn for the worse. Like the movie, this one is about motherhood. Unlike the movie, Christina Kirk’s mother isn’t content to just be a mother no matter what. She wants to protect her son at all costs, and for that matter she wants him to have the right to choose his path in life. No matter what anyone else’s agenda is. This all works, and Kirk is more than game as the mother. What doesn’t work is that there’s a suggestion that she did something in the wake of her pregnancy and that it might be relevant to the finale. But we don’t know what that was or why it was. I just know that she and her son hugged each other to death and daddy’s plans were apparently foiled?
I just watched a movie on Netflix, which I think Netflix made themselves, called “The Open House”.
The first half, maybe 3 quarters, is kind of meh… just, whatever… kind of boring beginning to a horror movie. Like, they are setting things up. Some mom and her kid recovering from a tragedy in some house. Whatever.
Last quarter of the movie, where you’d expect something to happen? Well… stuff happens. I guess? But it doesn’t make any sense. Like, literally just random stuff happens. No clue what the deal is. Then it just ends.
On some level, I feel like people should watch it to experience how bad it is. It’s bad on a crazy level. Not normal bad either. The movie doesn’t feel like a B movie or something. The production values are good. It’s like a real movie.
It just… has no ending.
Yeah, that was pretty dumb, wasn’t it? I was expecting some sort of twist, maybe relating to the contact lenses or whoever killed the dad or the lady with Alzheimer’s. But all we got was that abrupt inconclusive ending. Uh, thanks?
However, I’m glad I saw it, because I thought Piercey Dalton, who played the mother, was really good. On IMDB, it looks like she’s only done a bunch of shorts, but I’m guessing she’s got theater experience. I want to see more of her!
-Tom
I’d recommend Gerald’s Game for a good Netflix thriller flick. One of the better King adaptations in years besides IT.
1922 is ok but a little too slow, and relying too much on mood and atmosphere.
Yes, Gerald’s Game has a dedicated topic you might want to chime in there. Search in #movies to find it.
I know, right? The end just had no bearing on really anything that came before it. At the very end, with the kid lying on the bank, I’m thinking, “Huh. Is this just gonna be some kind of dream or something?” Then the credits roll, and I was like, “WTF was that?”
Yeah, the kid was pretty good too. The quality of the acting and the filming was all pretty good across the boad. The script was just so incredibly bad though.
In a lot of ways, it was similar to Bright (although I liked Bright). Netflix seemed to shell out the cash for good actors and good production values… but didn’t really bother picking a good script… or maybe just reviewing it once or twice? It seriously seemed like they just forgot to film the end or something.
Who was the killer dude? What was the deal with the kid’s visions of his dad dying? What was the deal with the basement and that hallway full of broken furntiture and stuff? What did the black guy want that was in the basement?
I was expecting some sort of cult or something… but nope?
Y’know, just because you think a movie’s bad, spoilers are still a thing.
Eh, I was trying pretty hard to not do any spoilers there. I mean, I guess there are spoilers in that you see stuff that is never talked about again in the entire movie.
Finally got a chance to watch Sadako vs Kayako, due to VRV premium including their Shudder channel. It’s obviously nowhere near as creepy as the original movies and it has some scenes where I was rolling my eyes at stupid character decisions. But it’s still pretty fun, occasionally creepy, and that ending. Boy.
Turns out it was not such a great plan. But then I’m really not sure what they were expecting…
Yah, I thought it was OK as well. As you say, not as scary (and the Grudge movies, originals and remakes, are on my list for scariest movies ever) and kind of a silly crossover premise, but still…could’ve been a lot worse.
I think my big issue is that both franchises, in their original and best forms, relied heavily on a creeping sense of dread and the implacable advance of the horror. Whereas here we get a lot of people suddenly being dragged into things or off camera, which is mildly shocking but not that scary. And the big money shot entrances of the ghosts are even broken up by the editing.
I finally watched The Vault since it’s been cluttering up my Netflix recommended row for weeks. It’s a bank heist mixed with a slasher and a ghost story starring James Franco and Francesca Eastwood. Terrible. Clumsily executed yarn with some sketchy effects and a plot twist you can see a mile away. Franco seems utterly bored, and is there anything worse than a bored James Franco in your movie? I think not.
One part really intrigued me and not in a good way. In the first act, Taryn Manning enters the titular secret bank vault while holding a flashlight and muttering “shiiiiiiit” presumably due to seeing a fellow robber’s body - the murder of which the audience was shown minutes earlier. We don’t see what she sees, and then the scene cuts to her acting like she saw nothing while handing a bag of money to Eastwood claiming to have found it in the vault. This discrepancy is never resolved. Did the ghost make her lie? Why?
To make matters worse, in the final act, Manning once again enters the vault and the movie reuses the “shiiiiit” shot. Oh, is this a flashback and we’re going to be shown what happens? Nope. The filmmakers just chose to reuse a shot because nothing comes of it. She mutters, then the next shot is her in the vault gathering her tools.
Ha ha, you watched The Vault. Now watch Francesca Eastwood in M.F.A. She’s godawful.
Actually, thinking about it now, there’s a half-way decent version of The Vault, but as a historical period piece, called Dead Birds. It’s not great, but it’s an interesting premise with a great cast.
-Tom
Watched Hell House LLC tonight and we enjoyed it a lot. Nice slow building tension with some genuinely creepy moments, quite a few made me bristle. Not overly long either. Thanks for the recommendation!
According to this: http://modernhorrors.com/exclusive-hell-house-llc-sequel-is-basically-finished/
…there’s apparently “Hell House LLC 2” coming soon. Made by all the same people.
The first one had a couple of really creepy moments. Not bad for found footage.
Yeah, it reminded us of Lights Out in that it’s not exactly a high brow horror with some big concept or metaphor at its core, but it’s paced well and does some interesting things with its scares. In fact, a lot of the creepier bits aren’t even noticed by the characters. It rewards a keen eye!
Hell House LLC does start to crack a little when the paranormal action ramps up and I feel like it would have been a more fun film had we seen more of those scenes where the characters watch some of their own footage back. I got a kick out of seeing them realise that some of the shit that was happening wasn’t normal and seeing how they processed that. I’m still not sure why some of the characters decided to stick around but, meh, effective scares nonetheless and certainly one of the better found footage flicks.
Finally got around to The Devi’s Candy. Understated for a satantic metal movie? Is it even really a satantic metal movie? I quite enjoyed that aspect. Good performances. I liked the way a lot of the “difficult” scenes were played, where we are left to fill in the blanks amid some terrific noise direction. It made it more visceral for me. The paintings were pretty creepy.
I finally watched A Cure for Wellness myself (it’s on HBO Go) and agree that it was pretty solid, elevated especially by Verbinski’s eye for visuals and the real world freakiness of a lot of the medical stuff (you wouldn’t see a lot of that happening in the modern day, but it’s almost all pulled from actual history. Absent the stuff that’s obviously not, of course.). I felt like the ending let it down a bit but still.
PS: I was certainly not expecting to hear Oomph! in an American movie soundtrack: