Horror Movie Talk

Insidious is the scary origin story of Darth Maul. Listen as Bryce and Max dissect this modern classic.

Synopsis

Insidious is a movie about the lambert family, Josh played by Patrick Wilson and his wife Renae played by Rose Byrne who i love, have just moved into a new home when their son Dalton played by some little boy slips into a mysterious coma. Unable to wake the boy the Lamberts feel defeated, and just when they think things cant get worse they start to experience INSIDIOUS activity in the house. After attempting to rid themselves of the apparitions the old fashioned way – moving – they realize that they are in way over their heads and seek help from a psychic medium. Wacky hijinks ensue. Eventually, they are able to learn more about the INSIDIOUS forces preying on their son, but are they focusing too much on the wrong thing? The movie is directed by James Wan, who you might recall directed little-known movies like Saw and the Conjuring and Aquaman. The writer Leigh Whannel who also plays a goofy ghost hunter is also the same guy who plays Adam in Saw. 

Review of insidious

Now onto my review of Insidious. Insidious is a chaotic movie that throws a lot at the wall hoping something will stick. Luckily for James Wan, some of it does and we are left with a movie that is imperfect, but enjoyable none the less. The movie attempts to scare the viewer in many different ways but mostly relies on being creepy and jump scaring you when you least expect it. It even has one of the most notable jump scares in horror movie history which Im sure we will cover in the spoilers section. While Im not usually a fan of super quiet scenes that end with a really loud noise meant to startle you, insidious does do this well a couple of times. The acting is sometimes a little over the top for me, but how could I be mad when I get to stare at Patrick and Roses beautiful faces for 1 hour and 43 minutes. In the end we are left with a classic for the 2010s era of horror and a personal favorite of mine because it reminds me of being a teenager. 

Score

7/10

Some would say it’s too early to remake, Willy’s Wonderland. But whenever I say that, 10 year-olds yell at me unintelligibly.

Synopsis

Many remakes end up outshining the original, like John Carpenter’s The Thing and Cronenberg’s The Fly. But it’s inevitable to still ask, do we really need a remake of Willy’s Wonderland? It’s only been two years since Willy’s Wonderland broke new ground with the concept of a haunted Chuck E Cheese whose animatronics attack a night time security guard. Well Here we are with Five Night’s At Freddy’s, Which tells the tale of a haunted Chuck E. Cheese who’s animatronics attack a night time security guard. Except this time, there is dialogue. Will this addition of character development and extra plot propel this remake into the lofty heights of The Thing and The Fly? Only time will tell.

Review of Five Nights at Freddy’s

In evaluating Five Nights at Freddy’s and determining what type of movie this is going to be, there is really only one piece of information that you need to know. It’s starring Josh Hutcherson. So you can expect to get a rather harmless horror movie that has a subtle moodiness. You can go in and rest assured that nothing truly awful is going to befall the guy that played Peeta in the Hunger Games movie. Much like when I saw that Brenden Frasier was starring in the 90s The Mummy, I knew that it was going to be a goofy harmless adventure movie.

This is a very confusing movie, and it took until the end before I had any semblance of understanding what was going on. Why were the animatronics haunted by murderous children, and why is sleeping on the job not a fireable offense for a nighttime security guard? These and other questions are half answered by a culminating reveal that will make you go, “Wait what? Ok whatever…”

I really don’t know what people expected from an adaptation of a spooky video game, and I have little to no knowledge of the source material, but this is a movie. It feels like a movie, and not just a factory of jump scares, which is what I would expect. But in the end, it’s not that interesting of a movie.

Most of the plot seems very tacked on and arbitrary. Like a wacky mad libs of character development. “Name a traumatic life experience that haunts a protagonist: Brother kidnapped when he was younger.” “Name a precocious attribute of the young sister: colors creepy and precinct drawings”. Nothing particularly feels real or connected throughout the plot, and it resulted in me being pretty disconnected from the characters or having any real interest in the resolution of the story. It mostly felt like waiting until a reveal, and that’s pretty much exactly what happened.

Score

4/10

Just a short “episode” to give some updates to my thinking and confirm that I am planning on coming back.

The Burbs is a great movie

Synopsis

Cool guy has chill day

Review

Dope AF

Score

9/10

David is stepping away from Horror Movie Talk, and we are going on an indefinite hiatus. Listen to our announcement special episode for more information.

James Cameron’s sci-fi time travel masterpiece is also an iconic monster movie for horror fans. Listen to us discuss the OG Terminator.

Synopsis

The Terminator is about a machine that terminates. But it’s not bugs like you’d think, it’s people. But not people now in the future from when the Terminator is from, but from the present in the past. It kills present day people from the past, by traveling from the future present. 

Also sent from the now future is Kyle Reece, who needs to save his bosses mom from the Terminator and also generally just be a bummer.

Review of The Terminator

The Terminator as a film is much like it’s titular monster. Slick, focused, and effective. The tone is bleak, and unlike other time travel movies, is stripped of all humor inherent the premise. The script is tight and communicates that the future is a nightmare, and needs to be stopped at all cost. 

Arnold Schwartzenegger gets the role that further pushes him into stardom with his iconic lines like “I’ll be back”,and “Hey, I’m Terminating here!”

James Cameron, in his second feature film, second only to Pirahna 2, creates a fully realized sci-fi masterpiece. The special effects of the Stan Winston Studio and the music of the Brad Fiedel augment what is really just a low budget slasher movie.

The Terminator operated off of a budget of only 6.5 mil. Compare that to The Ice Pirates that came out the same year, that had a budget of 9 million, which was also considered low. 

Score

10/10

Wes Anderson has made a new film, just like the old films, and you will probably chuckle at it and be delighted like the smug little shit that you are.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Synopsis

We follow the narrative of a writer who is writing a play in real time as though the play is happening in real life. If that sounds confusing, it is.

The characters in the play find themselves in a remote desert location called Asteroid city for a young scientists competition and stargazing event.

All of the characters are tragically human and simultaneously completely devoid of expressive human emotion.

An alien shows up and blows everyone’s mind, but not so much that it changes the trajectory of anyone but a single boy’s life or mind.

Life is weird and complicated.

Review

I can honestly say that Asteroid City is exactly as worthwhile, fun, and interesting as any of Wes Anderson’s catalog of films. 

Sometimes it’s nice to feel the wind in your hair, and that’s exactly what I get when I start any Wes Anderson movie except for The Darjeeling Limited, which I hate without reason.

Asteroid City is a bombshell full of A-List actors, incredibly lit scenes, and emotionless emotion. 

It has fun dialog and lots of interesting eye candy to keep you entertained. 

In-fact, Asteroid City understands the medium of film so well that it’s almost perfect in it’s execution. That is to say, a film is meant to be interesting to look at, with dialog and concepts to stir the mind, and with characters who evoke impressive emotion within the watcher. 

I will say that some of the dialog is delivered so quickly, and with so little difference in inflection that I often found myself not knowing what had just been said.

Also, it’s hard to care too much about some of the main characters for a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, it’s divulged that the story of Asteroid City is a play that is being written by another main character. This level of abstraction seemed overly complicated and unnecessary to the story. The same effect could be achieved with some inner monologue, in my opinion.

Second is the story is spread among so many characters that few receive enough screen time individually to make me care too much about any of them.

These are minor sins in an otherwise fun and funny exploration of the human condition by the world’s most symmetrical film director.

Score

9/10

Which Final Destination you ask? Don’t worry about it. Lets just say that it’s mostly about the first one.

Synopsis

Alex (don’t call him a psychic) Browning along with 40 other high school students board a plane to Paris for a school trip. While still boarding, Alex has a vision of the plane exploding and killing everyone on board. He causes a scene when he tries to warn others and as a result Alex, five other students, and one of their teachers are forced to leave the plane.

While arguing in the terminal, they all witness the plane explode upon taking flight.

They are all stunned that they cheated death, yet soon find out that death will not be cheated, because as the film posits… death a muhfucker.

Review

Final Destination, and the franchise that followed cracked the code of what horror fans really want: amusing deaths. We don’t really care if it’s a knife wielding psychopath, an ancient demon, or a possessed doll. As long as there are deaths that we can chuckle about and talk about afterwards, we’re game. 

Final Destination removes all the clutter, and just focuses on delivering elaborate and ridiculous deaths. Sure it throws in some explanation and rules for why it is happening, but that is all window dressing.

The result is a campy fun horror movie that is a fun watch.

Score

7/10

In A24’s newest horror movie, we get the expected mix of horror, dread, and emotion that you expect with the brand.

Synopsis

Talk to Me is about a young group of friends who get wrapped into the latest social media trend: demonic possession! An acquaintance came into possession of a creepy ceramic hand, and if they shake hands with it and say the magic words, they can see the dead, and even experience being possessed for a minute and a half. As you would expect, it’s a great time. That is until the Mia, played by Sophia Wilde, gets in contact with her dead mom, and can’t seem to shake of the visions of the dead, even when not using the hand.

In the end we learn two things:

1. Demons lie
2. Australians need more parental supervision

Review of Talk To Me

This is a really great movie. It is a rehashing of familiar demon possession tropes, but it has it’s own unique vibe. 

What hits hardest is the intense scenes of violence. I was squirming in my seat in a lot of scenes, and the movie holds on to those moments for a little longer than most. It’s like a more sadistic Evil Dead movie.

There is a juxtaposition of empathy and apathy throughout the movie that is really interesting. We have fleshed out characters that love and care for each other, however the teen group dynamic around these Seances are full of apathy in search of novelty. It’s the dynamic you see in internet videos that show people popping out cameras instead of helping someone in distress.

I would have liked a little more fleshing out of the father daughter relationship between Mia and her dad. This would have made their scenes more impactful and tragic. There was a lot unsaid, which isn’t a bad thing, but I think there should have been at least another scene or two showing their dynamic to explain why Mia wants to avoid him.

There are strong undertones of drug culture. The destructive yet addicting effects of the hand have parallels to casual hard drug use.

The ending is the perfect conclusion for the tone of the movie. It sticks with you as being dreadful, but still gives a strong resolution.

Score

9/10

Willy’s Wonderland can be found on Hulu right now, but who knows once this comes out.

Synopsis

Willy’s Wonderland follows a nameless cool guy in sunglasses played by Nic Cage as he stumbles into an intricate and deadly trap involving a defunct family restaurant. When he needs to pay for repairs to his bitchin Camero, he is offered an overnight janitor job at Willy’s Wonderland, an off-brand Chuck-e-cheese inhabited only by creepy animatronic puppets. In no time, these creepy animatronics attack Nic Cage, and he has to fight them off between soda breaks.

Review

Going into this movie, the consensus that I heard is that it is pretty much exactly what you expect. Dumb, with Nic Cage fighting animatronics. That is what it is.

The one thing that might be surprising is that Cage has zero dialogue. All of his acting is done through stoic hardened gazes and impromptu pinball celebration dances. Even without dialogue, Cage is really the only enjoyable part of this movie. Everything else feels like low effort filler.

The 1 hour 20 minute runtime feels like 4 hours at times. 

Watch Willy’s Wonderland

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It is very very very very repetitive. Once Cage is in the restaurant, it alternates between one one one attacks and soda breaks. The only change up comes when some teens appear to be fodder for the animatronics, and the backstory of the place is explained through the occasional expositional dialogue.

The most disappointing aspect of the movie is that the fight scenes seem so low effort, and they all seem to be nearly identical.

It’s not a great movie, but it is an interesting oddity. I just wish that the filmmakers went further than just the novelty of the premise.

Score

3/10