Horror Movie Talk

If you have been wondering to yourself what the turkey baster rapist from Don’t Breathe is up to nowadays, I have good news for you. The sequel to Don’t Breathe, Don’t Breathe 2 has come out and boy is it a doozy.

Synopsis

Don’t Breathe 2 is a wholesome coming of age tale of a blind father teaching his young daughter how to survive in the world. This sequel to Don’t Breathe takes the elderly kidnapper/rapist and casts him as the good guy. When a band of home invaders come to kidnap little girl:

• Old man not like this.
• He listen good.
• Bangy bangy, choppy choppy.

Review of Don’t Breathe 2

This movie is bonkers. It makes so many absurd choices and switcheroos, that I asked myself about every ten minutes “What am I supposed to be thinking right now?” The world in which this movie inhabits is so depraved and insane that I started rooting for the little girl to die, just because that seems like the only way she could escape this hell.

There are so many times where my suspension of disbelief was completely shattered, that it was almost impossible to watch this as a movie, and I ended up looking at it like performance art. The ideas of character, theme, and morality are thrown out the window to give way to pure depraved spectacle. 

If you are looking for gore and kills, this movie has them. If you want to have a story that is consistent where things happen for a reason, this ain’t the movie for you. The plot is a series of events that just happen sequentially, and the only thing that almost holds it together is that there is a constant stream of surprise reveals and switcheroos in the second and third act, that it captures your attention like a car wreck might.

Score

3/10

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This week we went and saw Old by M. Night Shyamalan and I was reminded of super-obvious dialog from 50’s monster movies in the most charming way possible.

Synopsis

Old is a film about a group of strangers who meet on a resort trip to a special beach. Our main characters are the family of father Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal), mother Prisca (Vicky Krieps), daughter Maddox, and son Trent.

Our protagonist couple are experiencing marital strife, but are taking this vacation nonetheless. 

As our band of beach-goers spends their day, they find a woman’s body in the waves and things take a turn for the unpleasant. They also start to notice that they seem to be showing signs of mysterious aging…

At the end of the day, everyone gets older than they bargained for.

Review

Old is, at it’s core, a fun movie. It has some disturbing concepts, impressive stakes, interesting characters, and that trademark M. Night twist that we’ve all come to expect. We expect the twist so much that it might be more of a twist if he left the twist off, but whatever.

I found myself giddy with laughter at points in Old, and oddly disturbed at other points. Mostly I had a wonderful time in the theater giggling like a school-girl with my buddy Bryce, tittering over little jokes we made or quotes we thought of.

Old is not a serious movie, it’s like going to see Batman Forever with friends in the theater, but good. 

Is it Scary?

If you are looking for something to terrify you, let’s face it, M. Night isn’t your guy. He’s your guy for stuff that makes you think about all the weird possibilities in this world he dreamt up.

How do we get out of this trap? Why is this happening to us? Who is in charge? How old do I have to get before I accidentally shit my pants?

There are lots of panning shots that cleverly make use of space and time, but some of the panning was distractingly stuttery. This stutter may be because of the theater we were in which is quite old, I’m not sure.

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So much of Old felt like an homage to thrillers and monster movies from the fifties because the script is utterly expositional. It’s cheesy, yes, but it’s not remotely offensive in the way it’s pulled off. I cared about and was interested by all the characters and their sometimes insane actions. 

Old was way more fun than I thought it would be, and thanks to the beautiful sunny locations, it’s this year’s must-see summer thriller.

Score

7/10

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Sam Raimi‘s cabin in the woods film par excellence The Evil Dead stands as the paragon of independent, cult, and horror films since it’s release in 1981. It’s influence is felt in the films of the Coen brothers, Peter Jackson, and Edgar Wright. It’s dynamic direction and camera work declared a new and bold style for the 80s and 90s, but it’s real influence for independent filmmakers is in it’s success story as a bootstrapped production.

Childhood Friends

The Evil Dead launched the careers of childhood friends director Sam Raimi, and lead actor Bruce Campbell, which you probably recognize as Brisco County Jr. from Fox’s 90s television hit The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. During and after high school they collaborated shooting short films on super 8 film. This film began shooting right after Sam Raimi turned 20, and he considers it a right of passage in his life.

As first time filmmakers, Raimi, Campbell and producer Robert Tapert sought financing by shooting a “proof of concept” short film titled Within the Woods. The strategy worked, and as the result of many rounds of private investment, they were able to cobble together a budget of $375,000. Even Bruce Campbell’s family’s property in Northern Michigan was leveraged to finish the film and blow it up to the industry standard of 35 mm to be shown in theaters.

Production

Initial photography was shot over the course of 12 weeks from the end of 1979 to the beginning of 1980. It was a grueling experience for all involved. The production was shot on location in an actual cabin in the remote woods of Morristown Tennessee. The cabin had no running water, and actors would go days without showering. Campbell described being doused with fake blood so much that he could only ride in the back of a truck to get home. While filming, the cast and crew of 13 actually slept in the cabin.

The conditions were so cold that Campbell said that after drying a blood soaked shirt outside, it cracked in half when he tried to put it on again. The ironic part is that Raimi and crew decided to shoot in Tennessee instead of their home state of Michigan to avoid extreme conditions in the winter. As it turned out, Michigan has an unusually tame winter, and Tennessee had one of the coldest winters in 1979.

Ingenuity with a small budget

The makeup and effects were accomplished by Tom Sullivan completely without CGI, relying on foam latex, corn syrup blood, and stop motion photography.

The low budget production was creative in its use of makeshift camera riggings such as the “vas-o-cam” which slid the camera down wooden ramps. One of the most influential techniques was the “shaky-cam” which was accomplished by mounting the camera to a 2×4 and having two operators at each end to roughly simulate a steady-cam. This technique was used for the POV shots of the demons running through the woods, along with the final shot that was accomplished with a tripod mounted to a motorcycle driven by Raimi. The Coen brothers used the shaky-cam technique in Blood Simple after Ethan Coen was inspired as an assistant editor for The Evil Dead.

Reception of The Evil Dead

The film is so gory that it was unrated, and banned in many countries upon its release.

The grueling and plucky production resulted in a unique and shocking film that has since become a cult icon in the horror community.

Synopsis

It tells the story of five Michigan State students vacationing to a remote cabin in the Tennessee country. During their playful and drug fueled exploration of the cabin, they stumble upon an ancient Samarian tome that is a translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and a curious recording. Upon Ash (Bruce Campbell) playing the tape that contained incantations from the book, the friends are beset by evil demons that possess one of them, turning them into an undead “deadite”.

They eventually learn that the only way to kill the entity is to dismember a possessed host. As the demon turns the friends against each other, the remaining living fight to save themselves torment, death, and vine rape.

Review of The Evil Dead (1981)

The Evil Dead is the film that all other cabin in the woods movies are compared to, and for good reason. It spawned an entire subgenre of horror that was so prevalent in the decades following, that the meta-comedy-horror film Cabin in the Woods had plenty to draw on in 2011.

Even with the jaded eyes of someone that grew up on the films influenced by Raimi’s directorial debut, it still is impressively violent, visceral, and darkly funny.

What it lacks in character development, it makes up for in over the top violence that always keeps you on your toes.

Special Effects

The special effects aren’t amazing, and are obviously operating on a budget, but it still works. Like a lot of 80s special effects, the grittiness of the practical effects still holds up today, because it feels so real. Many of the effects in this film look real because they are real. They used live ammunition in the shotgun and a real chainsaw in the chainsaw scene.

Acting

The acting is great, mostly because like Tobe Hooper did with the actors in TCM, Raimi was torturing the cast during shooting with highly uncomfortable conditions on set. Actors endured being accidentally stabbed, scraped, thrown at objects, and more on set. The discomfort seems to have elicited believable performances of people being tortured.

Sam Raimi

The real hero is Raimi. His directing style is what really makes the movie. The Dutch angles and dynamic POV shots throw the audience off kilter and make the experience almost like an amusement park ride. His artistic integrity and vision shine through with uncompromising violent and offensive scenes that have delighted horror fans for decades. Though Raimi has expressed regret for the violent sexual content, it stands as a testament to how far this young director would go to push the limits of the genre.

The Evil Dead Franchise

While the sequels became increasingly slapstick and absurd, this film still has some really good dark humor. There is something about the Midwest’s matter of fact sensibilities that create the uniquely dry and dark humor in directors that call it home such as Raimi and the Coen brothers. I love it, because this type of humor is the Da to my Norwegian heritage’s Uuf..

While I haven’t seen all of the films and television episodes of the Evil dead franchise, of those that I have watched, they are all stellar. This film is no exception.

Score

8/10

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Spooky Origins of the Cabin Used in The Evil Dead

The cabin that they used in production, has it’s own spooky story. Three generations of women, a grandmother, mother, and daughter lived at the cabin when one night, the daughter discovered that her mother was dead when she tried to crawl into her bed to snuggle with her for comfort in the night. When horrified, she ran to tell her grandmother, she discovered that she too had died in the night.

That girl as an elderly senile woman would wander the same woods at night. She actually lived close to the cabin in her old age. Raimi said that they learned of this story when the neighbor was out looking for the woman that had again wandered off. No one knows if she was ever found again.

Stephen King’s relationship with The Evil Dead

After viewing the film at the Cannes film festival in 1982, Stephen King declared The Evil Dead as one of his favorite horror films. A quote from his rave review is included in the film’s poster.

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Sputnik is a Russian movie released in July of 2020. It follows the lone survivor of a spaceship incident and is set in the 1980’s to give it that cold war feel.

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Synopsis

Sputnik is the story of Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov), who was the lone survivor of a russian spaceship crash. His partner was inexplicably killed after the crash but on the crash site. 

Konstantin is being detained at a Soviet research facility in the great land of Kazakhstan for study as things don’t seem to be quite right with him.

The man in charge of this research facility, Colonel Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk) goes in search of a neuroscientist to help him determine what is going on with Konstantin.

He finds Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) and enlists her help because she seems to care deeply about the well-being of her patients, even to the point of risking her career.

As the movie progresses we learn that Konstantin isn’t alone in his return to earth, and everyone gets more Sputnik than they bargained for. 

Review

Having seen a few teasers for Sputnik, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I did not.

This movie looks like a creature feature, and it is, but it’s a drama too, and a convincing one.

As Sputnik unwound itself, I kept having to rejigger my expectations to fit what was happening. I kept asking, why is all this morality and guilty being touted around instead of a bloodthirsty monster. 

Don’t get me wrong, there was some bloodthirsty monster in there, but with a hefty helping of personal drama and good old-fashioned Russian guilt.

This is not a movie for the traditional horror fan looking for a good scare, this is more of a tale of heroism, personal responsibility, and standing up to your fears for what is right. 

Is it a creature feature? It is in a similar way to Monsters (2010). There is a monster, and it’s weird, but it’s one of several focal points of the movie.

Subtitle Issues

I had a technical critique of the version of Sputnik that I watched, which was that the subtitles are sometimes blisteringly fast. I had to back up the movie many times to get to see what was happening and see what was said. I am not a fast reader, so one could chalk this up to my shortcomings, but I feel it’s worth mentioning.

I enjoyed a lot of what Sputnik had to offer, and I particularly liked the way it handled personal relationships and dialog.

What I didn’t love about it was it’s slow pacing and lack of a satisfying finale to the incredible action at the end of the film. 

A tremendous amount of time is devoted to the will they won’t they aspect of this, which makes for a boring middle of the film.

Score

7/10

Final Recommendation

If you enjoy horror that doesn’t try too hard to scare you, instead focusing on intriguing you, this is for you. It’s a thriller with a monster, and the morality play makes it an interesting discussion piece, especially in the context of it’s Russian roots.

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Anna and the Apocalypse is a mix of Shaun of the Dead and High School Musical, except less funny and with worse music.

Synopsis

Anna and the Apocalypse takes place in a little town in England during Christmas. Anna and her friends are finishing up their last year at high school, or as the English call it, Chumbumbly School. During the Christmas show, a zombie apocalypse breaks out and the next morning, all the people have to go from one place to another, and they sing about it. 

Review of Anna and the Apocalypse

This film is touted as “Shaun of the Dead meets La La Land”, but it’s really Shaun of the Dead meets high school musical, except not as funny and with less memorable songs. It takes almost a third of the runtime to get to the actual zombie apocalypse, which is way too long. I was expecting more, because it had a relatively high rotten tomatoes score, but for me, it fell flat. It has super generic characters along with super generic songs executing a super generic zombie apocalypse plot. 

It wasn’t all bad. They don’t skimp on the gore and dread, even though the latter is kind of undermined by the cast singing poppy songs after losing loved ones. There are some stand out songs that did work “soldier at war”, that sounded like an eighties pump up song, and  “the fish wrap”, a throwaway song from the Christmas show.

The petty and ruthless headmaster was a fun villain, but he was relegated to the B story line of the film.

I wish that they had gone all in on the humor and the music. The music is only 38 mins of the 1:33:00 runtime. This is comparable to a lot of recent musicals, but feels sparse here. The humor was even more sparse, but mostly because they painted themselves into a corner by killing off a lot of characters in tragic ways.

Overall, it’s ok, but I’m not going to watch it again.

Score

5/10

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We watched Creep on Netflix for the tenth time, and I have to say, this movie is just pure genius. Mark Duplass turns into the most playfully nefarious creep you’ve ever seen, and it’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen anyone achieve.

Synopsis

Creep is a found footage film where Aaron answers a classified ad to film Josef for one day. The money being offered seems incredible, but not over-the-top unbelievable.

Aaron arrives and is immediately put-off by the insane, jump-scare greeting that Josef gives him. Josef shares that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and only has a few months to live. He wants Aaron to film this day so that his unborn son, Buddy, will have something to know his father by.

Josef starts the day of filming off with Aaron filming him in the tub while pretending to bathe his son – the day gets infinitely more weird from there.

As we follow Aaron and Josef, we keep learning that Josef is not above lying to Aaron, and is very into making him feel uneasy and upset, without ever crossing the line of outright mania.

What becomes very apparent is Josef is a total creep, and it’s more unsettling and hilarious than anything I’ve seen since.

Review

Creep is low-key one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It’s directed by Patrick Brice who also plays Aaron, and written by both Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass. It’s clear that Creep is based on a series of conversations around a creepy guy that Mark and Patrick dreamed up and the way Mark brings him to life is unforgettable. 

The movie lacks a formal script, instead they wrote a barebones outline and improvised most of the scenes and dialog. 

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The result is something akin to meeting a far-too-kind stranger on the street. They welcome you and are so excited to meet you, but you can’t help but wonder, what are they after? Why are they so excited about this exchange? What are they hiding?

Mark Duplass keeps the character of Josef playful and fun, with an undercurrent of danger and seriousness just below the surface. Aaron and his actions are very easy to empathize with, which makes it very disturbing when thing go wrong.

Ultimately Creep is a provocative and hilarious character study that I love to death. 

Score

10/10

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What can I say about The Forever Purge that hasn’t already been said by its title?

Synopsis of The Forever Purge

Like the previous movies in The Purge franchise, the government of the United States has set aside each year, 12 hours where all its citizens struggle with bulimia. No wait that’s wrong, for 12 hours, all crime is legal, including murder. In this movie the citizens can’t overcome their urge to purge, and continue on their killing spree in a clumsy analogy of Trump’s America.

It follows a group of recent Mexican immigrants and several of their white employers as they try to escape the murderous hordes of racists.

Review of The Forever Purge

This movie wasn’t good. From the other purge movies that I have seen, it feels like the franchise came up with the concept of the film, and then proceeded to have no creativity after that point. This film is no exception.

The Forever Purge handles social commentary like The Family Guy handles jokes. It points out that racism, xenophobia, and classism are things. See how clever we are!?

The writing is bad, to the point where I wonder if there was more than one draft. Every character is there to deliver lines that state what they are going to do next, just so the audience is prepared for what the character is going to do next.

The action is probably the only good thing about the movie. There was a big enough budget to have plenty of splosions and shootouts.

Overall, the impression you get from the movie is that it was written by 17 year old drama students attempting their first script inspired by the Handmaid’s Tale.

Score

3/10

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10 Cloverfield Lane is a reminder that horror doesn’t have to be stilted and boring with a total lack of good acting. Sometimes it can feel like a tremendous whodunit, that has layer upon layer of intrigue and terror.

On today’s episode we are joined by Kate from Nightlight Horror Movie Club Podcast. She’s a delightful person and runs my favorite horror movie podcast, so check them out!

Synopsis

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is the victim of a car accident, and wakes up to find herself stuck like a prisoner in a bomb shelter.

Henry (John Goodman) says he saved Michelle from the accident and explains that some kind of global nuclear event has occurred, forcing them to take shelter in his bomb shelter.

Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), is also in the shelter and soon explains that he helped Henry build it. 

The shelter is almost as impressive as Henry’s temper and paranoia. In the end everyone gets more John Goodman than they bargained for.

Review

10 Cloverfield Lane is a freshman masterpiece for director Dan Trachtenberg, who has only this film to his name but has started production on the new Predator movie.

We follow Michelle’s point of view and are given a glimpse into what it would be like to live through a global disaster of epic magnitudes. 

The script unfolds in layers of mystery and discovery, always leaving the next question around a corner, or outside the doors of the bomb shelter we inhabit with our lonesome trio.

Henry is a profoundly interesting character, and is John Goodman makes him come to life the same way Ted Levine and Anthony Hopkins brought Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter to life in The Silence of the Lambs.

I love the way the Cloverfield series switches between storytelling mechanics, genres, and scripts. 10 Cloverfield Lane is, by far, the best of the trilogy which includes Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and The Cloverfield Paradox.

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The way this movie deals with relationships, the terror of the unknown, and the incredibly thin veneer of society in a way that is so real that you just feel it in your bones. 

The problems that arise and the resolutions to them are practical, well thought out, and relatable. Everytime Michelle sees a way out, she sees the dreadful terror of the consequences for her actions, and the audience is right there with her for the ride.

I am blown away that 10 Cloverfield Lane didn’t receive any award nominations, especially considering the strength of Goodman’s performance.

Score

10/10

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In honor of pride month, we watched Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, and it brings a whole new meaning to scream queen. Freddy’s back for revenge, and he doesn’t give a fuck if you’re dreaming or not.

Synopsis

A totally straight young man named Jessie, with the scream of Ned Flanders, is haunted by nightmares of a scarred and razor clawed monster-man named Freddy Krueger. He finds out from his gym bro that the house he lives in was once inhabited by a young girl named Nancy driven crazy by the death of her boyfriend across the street. Jess discovers Nancy’s journal while cleaning his room and finds out that she was tormented by the same nightmares.

Freddy Krueger in this film isn’t out to kill the protagonist, he seeks to possess his body and carry out his murders in reality

Review of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2

This film has a reputation as a huge disappointment to fans of the original, and has a long history of getting shit on. I don’t see the drop in quality as being that big. The reason for the dislike of this film is probably because it strays so far from the premise of the first movie. Freddy’s unique selling point is that he can kill you in your dreams and that sleep is unavoidable. In this film, that is barely touched on. The terror in this film is very personal to the protagonist, as he witnesses Freddy take over his body in harm his friends around him.

Homosexual Subtext

The homoerotic subtext might have been lost on a majority of general audiences in the 80’s. Many of the scenes must have felt random if you didn’t understand that Jessie’s experience was an allegory for being a closetted gay teen. Now 40 years later, it adds a new layer of interest, especially when you view it in the context that it was released right at the beginning of the AIDs epidemic.

Special Effects and Acting

All of that aside, this movie has some great special effects. The scene with Jessie’s were-Freddy transformation is going to stick in my mind.

It’s definitely not as tight as the original. At some points it looks like Freddy runs out of ideas of how to supernaturally and psychologically torture his victims, and just resorts to chasing them around.

The acting ranges from kind of bad to very good. Mark Patton does a really convincing job at conveying his torment and his performance keeps getting better and better throughout the film.

I think it deserves more love. It’s not fantastic, but is a very good followup to the first film in my opinion.

Score

7/10

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What a great time we had bashing this train wreck of a Zack Snyder movie. We go on and on with this one, head on over to our patreon and consider supporting us to gain access to the full review!