Horror Movie Talk

We watched 13 Ghosts on HBOMAX and it was exactly what I thought it would be, which is Ghost Ship meets Event Horizon with a side order of Wrong Turn.

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Synopsis

13 Ghosts is a movie about a ghost collector who leaves his massive house to his distant relative family, who think they are getting a sweet deal. 

What they end up getting is royally fucked by a house that is full of a bunch of ghosts. 

The house is made to trap them and do some sick twisted stuff, but luckily Matthew Lillard is here to shed some light on this quandary. Matthew explains that he is a ghost feeler, and regularly touches ghosts. He helped their uncle collect all these ghosts, and he feels bad or something and wants to help them. 

The house has other plans and wacky hijinks ensue.

Review

13 Ghosts is no doubt remembered fondly by a bunch of old zoomers and young millennials who were impressionable whilst watching this but let me assure you, it’s fucked. 

This was directed by Steve Beck, who directed Ghost Ship in 2002, one year after this film. Interestingly, before directing 13 Ghosts, Steve had only directed commercials, and after he directed Ghost Ship which is basically a reskinning of 13 Ghosts he never directed again. This is a good thing.

13 Ghosts is jumpcuts and loud noises mixed with edgy, barely explained lore mixed with dog shit. All of this could be excusable if it was fun or interesting or funny, but it’s none of those things.

It takes a 42 million dollar budget and wastes it on the dumbest set-pieces you can possibly imagine. As a result, it feels expensive but not in a good way – in an animal print on furniture way.

The acting is hammy, the actors are bad, the premise is shockingly thin, and the scares are undermined by jump cuts and ghost vision glasses.

I’m sorry if you love 13 Ghosts but everyone has different tastes, and this just is not for me. If you love this, please keep loving it.

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Score

3/10

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The Silence of the Lambs is known and memed today, over 30 years after it’s release. There is a reason for that, it’s one of the best movies ever made.

Synopsis

The Silence of the Lambs stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee tasked with interviewing a psychopathic serial killer and psychologist Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to try to elicit his help in finding a serial killer at large named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Clarice is warned about Hannibal and is told to not disclose any personal information, but as Hannibal’s position of power becomes plain, Clarice finds herself stepping over the line to extract more information from him.

Review of The Silence of the Lambs

This film is one of those that you can come back to year after year and appreciate something new. It’s perfectly cast, and the performances are all fantastic. This film served to launch Anthony Hopkins into A-list Hollywood status, and his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter stands as one of the best onscreen villains of all time. Jodie Foster’s excellent portrayal of Clarice communicates her determination, intelligence, and weakness as a character. Levine’s Buffalo Bill has very little screen time, but is a truly menacing character that establishes the stakes of the film.

Director Jonathan Demme created a truly artful film that stands apart from all the other films in the “Thriller” genre. The extreme closeups and leering gazes create an uncomfortable intimacy that puts you in the shoes of the protagonist. The script and the direction are so efficient in moving the complicated story and character arcs along, that there is rarely a dull moment.

This film is probably the best example of the crossover between the Drama/Thriller genre and the Horror genre. The scenes with Buffalo Bill are viscerally horrific, but the psychological horror of Lecter’s interrogations of Clarice are just as disturbing.

Score

10/10

The Silence of the Lambs

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We went and saw Scream and it was pretty much exactly what I figured it would be.

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

Synopsis

Scream is a story about a movie about a movie. A young girl get’s called on the phone and brutally attacked by a masked murderer known as Ghostface. As the teen and her friends try to figure out who would perpetuate this crime, other victims begin to die. 

Suddenly everyone is a suspect. Fortunately we have a couple of horror movie experts who managed to surmise that this is similar to a horror movie known as Stab.

If you know how slasher movies work, you may be able to stay alive.

Oh yea, and Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, and Skeet Ulrich are in it.

Review

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Scream painted itself into a corner with the first movie and has been digging away at hallowed ground ever since.

Meta horror has been the thing everyone does for nearly 30 years now, and if Scream doesn’t do it, it’s basically sacreligious.

Scream isn’t going to blow your mind. It sticks to the exact same format and rules of all the previous movies. In fact, it’s pretty much devolved fully into Clue at this point. Characters are all constantly pointing at eachother and asking, “Are you the killer?” the same way tweens do as they exit the movie theater. 

There are tons of callbacks and easter eggs to keep fans coming back to catch every last morsel of slasher goodness. 

I’d even say that this has some of the most clever meta commentary zingers placed in the script since the original Scream. 

It’s a fine movie, and pretty violent, although the violence in Halloween (2018) and especially Halloween Kills puts this in the kiddy pool in that regard.

I guess I’m just a little tired of the same old story told with a wink and a nod by some gen Z kids, no matter how much they are asking for it.

Score

7/10

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This hostel is so… hostile! This week we review Hostel, Eli Roth’s torture-porn masterpiece.

Synopsis

College school student Josh is a good student and nice guy – albeit a little predictable. He is unceremoniously dumped by his whorish girlfriend. Among the people he turns to in his hour of despair is his Icelandic pal, Oli and American buddy Paxton. Josh, impulsively for a change, decides to backpack through Europe with his friends. As the four try to make their way to Bratislava, they run into a few obstacles and few adventures. 

The previous description was based off a synopsis of Eurotrip (2004)

This movie along with the previous year’s Saw, ushered in a renaissance of torture porn horror movies that dominated the mid 2000’s and 20teens.

Review of Hostel

While there is a lot of just awful and cliche prone movies that came after, Hostel stands as a unique premise and genre mixing film that still holds up today. This is a slow burn horror movie that doesn’t put all it’s cards on the table till halfway into the film. It feels like a buddy road trip comedy for the entire first half, and then abruptly goes into brutal and graphic gore in the last half.

It’s definitely exploitative. From the generous heaping of bare tits, to the sinkfuls of mangled limbs, it’s not purporting to be high art. However, in this lane of horror films, it does take extra care into providing a framework for these exploitative elements to exist believably. 

I love this movie, because it goes all the way with every idea it approaches. Seeing this as a young single male is probably the best way to view it, because it really preys on your basest desires and fears. 

Score

10/10

Hostel

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We watched Dawn of the Dead (2004) on Amazon because our Patrons told us to and I was not disappointed in the least.

Synopsis

A nurse, policeman, young married couple, and a salesman walks into a mall… 

Following the downfall of humanity, they do their best to survive and return to some form of normalcy while in the mall, but are constantly reminded of the scourge just outside the mall entrance – teenagers! Er, I mean zombies!

At first a gang of angry mall cops subdue our group, but eventually good triumphs over mall cops, and the cinnabon is opened for freeloaders.

The gang befriends a gun store owner across the street named Andy, and eventually a van full of new survivors shows up, which complicates things.

In the end everyone gets more Zombeavers than they bargained for.

Review

If you have seen the original Dawn of the Dead you would rightly ask, “why would you need to remake this masterpiece?” But, if you’ve seen the 2004 remake directed by Zack Snyder and written by James Gunn and George A. Romero, you will definitely understand that it’s not always a bad thing to remake classics.

This isn’t just a sprucing up of the original, it’s got a huge budget ($26m), tons of clout, and a way tighter script than the original. It’s like Romero wanted to do it again, but with hindsight being 20/20, and boy does it work.

You’ve got the same message, with an updated veneer and way edgier content. Not only that, these zombies run!

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The action in this one feels way more tense, and the stakes feel a lot higher too.

As with many Snyder movies, this one has a goofy filter on it, but it’s much less abrasive than some of his other efforts.

This may be one of the best zombie movies ever made, and I think that has a lot to do with all these spectacularly talented people that come together on this Dawn of the Dead. The cast, the direction, the writing they are all proven talent, and the end result is pretty great.

Score

10/10

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Babadook…dook…dook!

Synopsis

The Babadook is writer/director Jennifer Kent’s film debut, and she comes out of the gate strong. The film is about a single mother Amelia Vanek (Essie Davis) and her 6 year old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) struggling with grief, childhood, parenthood, and the supernatural. 

Samuel, who is obsessed and terrified by monsters, discovers an odd children’s book in their house. The book, titled Mister Babadook is a popup book that contains strikingly scary illustrations and tells the story about a being that arrives after knocking thrice, and haunts people until they wish they were dead. 

As Amelia tries to reassure her son that the Babadook isn’t real, she begins living out the experience described in the book. The more she tries to explain the coincidences away, the more powerful and undeniable her experiences become.

Review of The Babadook

I love everything about The Babadook. For me, it stands as one of the three pillars of “elevated horror” of the last decade. The other two being The Witch and Hereditary. All three are from freshman feature film writer/directors.

This film is an obvious homage to the German expressionist silent films of the 20s that established the earliest foundations of the horror film genre. It is also a deeply modern exploration of grief, the stresses of parenthood, and mental health crises. 

Kent adeptly interweaves all of these themes in a way that makes you question whether Amelia is actually experiencing a haunting, a psychotic break, or both.

There aren’t any cheap shots pulled. The relationships and emotions portrayed in the movie feel real and well worn. The characters are easy for the audience to empathize with and care about. When The Babadook attacks this poor family, it feels like there are real stakes.

The dread and suspense is well developed and steadily delivered over the hour and a half run time. Even after the ending, you are left with a sense of unsureness about whether or not what happened was real or imagined. It works on a lot of different levels for me and I’m excited to talk about it. This is one that I feel is as near to perfection as I can expect a horror film to be.

Score

10/10

The Babadook

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This week we are having a different kind of show. This show we are looking back at the delightsome year that was 2021, and awarding the best and worst of Horror Movie Talk.

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

Best new drop

• Ew David
• MacGruber
• Goat Boy (LAmb)
• Cows don’t look like cows (H4)
• Ouja Board (Paranormal Activity 3)

Best Guest

• David’s Mom (The Bad Seed)
• Bryce’s Mom (The Bad Seed)
• Baby-face Billy (Old)
• Bug-Z (H4)
• Justin (The Thing)
• Kate (10 Cloverfield Lane)
• Emma (Anna and the apocalypse)
• Caspar (Creep)

Worst Movie We Watched this year

• The Number 23
• The Gingerdead Man
• Leprechaun in the Hood Review
• Pieces Review
• The Forever Purge
• Malignant

Best Movie We Watched this year

• Jaws Review
• The Thing Review
• Creep (2014)
• The Night House
• The Mist

Worst New Movie of 2020

• The Forever Purge
• Malignant
• The Unholy
• Spiral (2021) Review
• Don’t Breathe 2
• Halloween Kills

Best New Movie of 2020

• The Night House
• Lamb
• Saint Maud Review
• In the Earth Review
• Antlers
• A Quiet Place Part 2 Review
• Last Night in Soho

Perfect 10s

• Jaws Review
• The Thing Review
• Creep (2014)
• The Night House
• The Mist

Lowest Scored

• The Number 23 (1.5)
• The Gingerdead Man (1.5)
• Leprechaun in the Hood Review (2.5)

Biggest Discrepancies in Scores

• A Christmas Horror Story (D=2, B=8)
• Don’t Breathe 2 (D=8 , B=3)
• Anna and the Apocalypse (Emma-1, B=5)
• The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (D=6, B=10)

Something in The Mist! This week our patrons picked The Mist for us to review. It was my first viewing, and even having had the ending spoiled, this one still holds up after over a decade.

Synopsis

Thomas Jane plays husband and father MISTer David Drayton, who after a storm, heads into town for supplies to repair damages to his house. He takes his son and his neighbor along with him, and soon they are trapped in the grocery store  by a MYSTerious mist that contains untold terrors. 

Many of the townsfolk don’t heed warnings and mistakenly decide to venture out. The remaining occupants increasingly mistreat each other and the social order begins to break down. When one religious fanatic begins to mistteach others that this is all caused by an angry god, many make the misstep to become followers.

This film has one of the most shocking endings in horror, sure to leave you … Misty-eyed. 

Review of The Mist

This was my first viewing of The Mist, and I wish that I could have gone in completely blind, but 14 years is a long time to expect an ending not to be spoiled.

Even knowing the ending, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging the film was from the outset.

Frank Darabont, the director, wastes no time in establishing strong characters and relationships that are familiar and believable. 

This is a pretty simple concept for such a long movie, but it is highly engaging because there are several times where the story shifts gears and presents new problems other than “don’t go outside”.

There is the obvious threat of what lies in the mist, but the story delves into several different sources of dread, such as fear itself, superstition, mistrust, and helplessness. The zombie genre has evolved into a mechanism to hold a mirror up to society, and this movie does that, but with more interesting and mysterious monsters.

The special effects don’t quite hold up, but aren’t so bad as to distract from the high quality of the writing, directing, and acting.

I really enjoyed this film, and I think that it is not to be missed.

Score

10/10

The Mist

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This was a really interesting movie that Bryce loved and David had strange feelings about.

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The Gingerdead Man is just one of Charles Band’s 69 directed films and 342 produced films. You’d be hard pressed to call The Gingerdead Man a good movie, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a real fun time. You get to enjoy Gary Busey’s unhinged performance and a hilarious gingerbread man puppet commit homicide. What’s not to love?

We also have the special treat to interview the legend himself, Charles Band, about his new memoire and about what it was like to work with Gary Busey (not great).

Synopsis

I think the best person to explain the Gingerdead Man is the director himself, Charles Band.

[The Gingerdead Man is a] tale of a deranged murderer who gets executed and is brought back to life when his witchy
mother mails enchanted dough to a bakery where—
—oh, you get it. A psychotic cookie comes to life and rampages. Okay?

Charles Band – Confessions of a Puppetmaster

Well I guess that’s close enough. In the spoilers section we’ll talk about how wrong that actually is.

Review of The Gingerdead Man

The Gingerdead Man is representative of the highs and lows of exploitation horror films. If you’ve seen any Full Moon Feature, your expectations should be tempered, but if you are new to super low budget, straight to video horror films like this one, you might feel surprised at how shitty it is. If you are comparing it to anything that touches the theater, this movie is not going to compete on quality of writing, production quality, acting, directing, special effects, or anything related to the making of movies. However, what this movie and other Full Moon Features have is, every once in a while, there are some truly entertaining absurd, and even charming moments.

The Bad

Ok, so lets discuss the bad first. The writing and direction is borderline incomprehensible. Some of the very important plot points that seem like table stakes to show on camera, are just not there. It’s never quite explained that the killer’s mother exists other than being mentioned and seeing a witchy figure running away. We know that the mysterious figure dropped off gingerbread seasoning, and then we see them pouring in some gingerbread seasoning into a large container marked gingerbread seasoning and in the process bleed into it. By the ominous music, we are to understand that this is bad. 

Now first of all, this displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how gingerbread dough is made, but also begs the question… what if the guy didn’t accidentally, and recklessness bleed into the dough?

The answer is, shut up, do you want to see a Gingerdead Man or not?

The acting quality varies wildly among the cast, which makes sense when you are only paying scale. There are some standouts, like Ryan Locke as Amos, which had some genuinely good delivery and timing on his lines, Larry Cedar as the nemesis restaurateur, and of course Gary Busey hamming it up. Unfortunately the film mostly dwells on the lead actress Robin Sydney, whos only direction was probably, “Be mopey”.

The Good

Now the good. 

Gary Busey is great as the unhinged killer and as the voice of Gingerdead Man.

Any time the Gingerdead Man is on screen is gold. Like genuinely enjoyably absurd. There is something about an evil, gross, super fake looking, foam latex puppet delivering menacing dialogue that is really entertaining. Just imagine if Triumph the insult comic dog starred in a slasher. That’s what we’re working with here.

Overall, if you are looking for a low budget film to watch with friends to make fun of, this movie can be really enjoyable to experience.  

Score

2/10

Confessions of a Puppetmaster

Read Charles Band’s amazing, inspirational, and hilarious memoir

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The Gingerdead Man

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