Free epix 7 day trial so I can watch trashy horror movies you say? Yeah sure.
The Rift - I had never seen this and wanted to so I did. Somewhere I read a blurb to this effect:
Yep.
Creature - god I haven’t seen this since like '86 or so. This movie both sucks and blows. I remembered it being cheesy, even though when I saw it I was still sort of in the “put any sci fi/horror/monster movie in front of me and I will eagerly watch it” phase of my childhood. So I was at least excited when I watched.
I like to imagine Klaus Kinski rampaging through movie sets, and well his life, and just being unbearable and Werner Herzog just popping up and screaming at him to chill the fuck out. Until it inevitably happens again. Over and over.
Creature would be a top 10 movie OF ALL TIME if when Klaus was take over by the Creature and then finally attacked the crew Werner Herzog had just appeared and said “KLAUS, I SAID STOP IT” and then spin kicked him into the sun. Just that one change would basically have changed the course of cinematic, nay world, history.
I guess it was okay. Nothing special. Actually a bit slow and tedious, stagnant even. Passable weaksauce “Lovecraft” but not really recommended. It’s somewhere in the D+ / C- range.
Matriarch (2018) - A pregnant couple end up stranded at a farmhouse with religious kooks that want to kill them and steal their baby. The twist is that this takes place in Scotland instead of the US, so you get beautiful shots of Scottish vistas between the violence. It’s pretty standard pregnant-woman-in-peril stuff otherwise. I guess the big story here is that it was filmed for about $45K, but appears to have a significantly higher budget, so kudos to the producers and director, Scott Vickers, for that feat. The best bit in the movie is the appearance of a pair of befuddled druggies that unfortunately come and go from the movie in a few minutes.
The Curse of Buckout Road (2017) - What’s the deal with Danny Glover? I remember when he popped up in Saw back in '04 and I thought that was weird, but I dismissed it because Cary Elwes was in that flick too. But then, Glover kept popping up in low budget garbage, but he also continued to have parts in better (at least higher-profile) stuff like Dreamgirls and 2012. Looking at his IMDB, he may be one of those actors that just doesn’t say no to anything, but not in a Nic Cage way, more like a Bruce Dern way. Oh, Buckout Road? Terrible. PG-13 weakness. Avoid.
I watched The Empty Man the other night, the first feature film by the director of the unforgettable cosmic horror short AM1200. Like the titular entity, I can’t stop thinking about it.
Featuring a shockingly good cast, including an unforgettable Stephen Root as the deranged-but-intellectually-charismatic leader of a nihilistic doomsday cult, The Empty Man sort of defies easy characterization. The first thirty minutes play something like The Ritual meets the derelict scene from Alien. Then it becomes a detective procedural somewhere between Seven and It Follows, before segueing into a mash-up of The Blair Witch Project and The Master. Finally, the end of the movie is the full-throttle theosophic weirdness of Twin Peaks: The Return. All with some Snowcrash thrown in for good measure.
Does The Empty Man pull its ambitions off? No… but it almost does, and that in itself makes it one of the most interesting and original horror movies I’ve seen in recent memory. It may be a case of the movie collapsing under the weight of its own weirdness, but I suspect that the studios simply had no idea what to do with it: it was originally filmed in 2017, sat on the shelf for years after poor test screenings, and then pushed out the door during the pandemic without giving the director say on the final cut.
After initial poor word of mouth, it sounds like The Empty Man is on the way towards becoming a bit of a cult classic, which is deserved. I could easily see a director’s cut coming out at some point that shaves twenty minutes off the runtime and delivers it into true classic territory. In the meantime, I definitely think this is worth a watch for any weird horror fan who wants to see a smart little picture make a few huge swings and almost hit them all.
Oh, I’ve seen it! I watched this because of AM1200 and James Badge Dale. Sadly, I don’t think Prior or JBD quite pulled it off.
Ah, that explains a lot!
Meanwhile, my favorite recent “Man” movie would have to be The Man in the Woods, which is definitely, uh, heavy on style and not for everyone. But arguably a horror movie, so not off-topic for this thread. It helps that I adore a little indie noir the director made about ten years ago called The Missing Person.
A curse follows an immgrant couple to the UK fleeing violence from some African country for a “reason” (spoilers). I found the relationship between the couple to be very strange. The women knows what is going on / seems 100% in the know and is completely non-pulsed by the curse and the things that is spawns, while the the man be trippin and in complete denial. There are many scenes were they are seperated and never together, even though they are living in the same house.
Huh, I didn’t find the relationship particularly weird. They just had different responses to what happened and what they had done, which isn’t all that unusual. As for…
I also watched His House over the weekend, and enjoyed it. Thought the couples relationship was well done in that he was interested in making a clean break and starting over in England, while she was more interested in being true to her origins.
Has no one else watched Fear Street part 1: 1994 yet? I thought it was ok, starts with a Scream homage but gets more supernatural in the back half. It’s a bit aggressive early on too with the 90s soundtrack to the point of being a little distracting (at one point they transition between 3 songs in like 90 seconds). I also thought some of the 90s fashion was a bit off.
Yup. Agreed to all of the above. It felt like a CW show had suddenly been given a couple extra million for gore and soundtrack licensing. It cribbed from Scream so hard in that initial scene that I thought I was going nuts. Still, I’ll give it props for the gonzo supermarket kill towards the end.
I only watched the first murder scene, but from stuff I’ve read it seems like cribbing from the horrors of each era is intentional. Everything will apparently be explained in Pt. 3.
