Horror Movie Talk

We have been told that we needed to see The Dark and the Wicked by several of our friends and listeners, and I can see why. This is a scary movie if paranormal subject matter is your thing.

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Synopsis

The Dark and the Wicked is the story of a family of grown, adult children Louise (Marin Ireland) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.), and their aging parents. 

Their mother (Julie Oliver-Touchstone) has been taking care of their father (Michael Zagst) whose health is failing leaving him non-responsive and bedridden. Mom has also been doing her best to take care of the family farm, in an unmentioned American rural area somewhere in the heartland.

The kids are back at home trying to help their mother with the care of their ailing father.

Mom seems to be haunted by something that creeps onto the property at night, and begs her children to leave.

As the story progresses we begin to learn about the family’s lack of faith and everyone gets more dark and wicked shit than they bargained for.

Review

This movie was Directed by Bryan Bertino, who was the writer and director for The Strangers and Producer for The Blackcoat’s Daughter, this is similar and ambiance to those movies. It was released in November of 2020.

The Dark and the Wicked is a serious movie that doesn’t offer a lot in the way of light moments or levity of any kind. It starts serious and spooky, and does a good job of keeping that ramp going until the end. It felt a lot like The Lodge from 2020, in it’s super serious tone.

The settings are bleak and run-down, and the characters are sad and in a state of mourning almost constantly. Add to that, there is something that seems to be preying on this family and trying to tear them apart, and you have a movie that might not be for everyone.

With that being said, we here at HMT are pretty jaded but this set my spook detector off more than a few times. 

The imagery is disturbing. The scares are not always easy to feel coming, and there are a few scenes that made me distinctly uncomfortable.

The Dark and the Wicked is a strong entry into the paranormal horror sub-genre and is a must-see for anyone who really needs to be subjected to unpleasantness. 

Score

8/10

Final Recommendations

This is a paranormal fan’s dream come true. It’s also pretty great for anyone who enjoys possession movies.

Jaws is the archetypal monster movie blockbuster, and for good reason, It’s great! Spielberg and the principle actors do a fantastic job of capturing the dread and dangers of the sea and the eponymous shark.

Patrons voted, and we rewatched Jaws, and if you don’t like this movie, you don’t like movies.

Jaws can be found on HBO Max as of this recording, and any where else you rent movies.

Jaws Synopsis

Jaws is about the origins of one of the most popular James Bond Henchmen. We learn about how he gained his signature steel teeth and brute strength in this emotional coming of age tale.

That’s not the Jaws YOU watched?

OH JAWS. The shark film by that up and comer Stevie Spielberg? OK, I’ve seen that, we can talk about that instead.

That movie is based on the Peter Benchley novel of the same name about a huge killer Great White Shark terrorizing the island community of Amity.

Review of Jaws

Jaws is Jaws. It’s pretty much the shark movie, every other shark movie is compared to, and for good reason, it’s the best one! There are many imitators, but none live up to its example. This film is great at portraying a known, but not fully respected actual killing machine. But what makes the movie great is the skill of the direction, and the great acting of the principle cast.

Score

10/10

Jaws

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Our patrons decided that it was time for us to review Hellhouse LLC, and frankly, I’m not even mad. This is a found footage movie about a Halloween spookhouse from 2015 and it does a pretty great job at unnerving me late at night.

Watch Hellhouse LLC

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Synopsis

Five years after a disaster at a local spookhouse known as Hellhouse LLC where 15 people lost their lives, a documentary crew goes back to the scene to try and determine what really happened.

What they learn is that a group of young but somewhat experienced spookhouse creators bought the abandoned Abaddon hotel, which they planned to make into a spookhouse for the Halloween season.

Good news for the documentary crew – the Hellhouse LLC crew decided to take video footage of their whole project from beginning to end. 

The premise at the start is that it’s a documentary, which draws my attention quite well. At some point it seems to shift into a first-person perspective of the Hellhouse Crew. and then it remains that way for almost the entire rest of the movie.

This includes buying the Abaddon hotel, and trying to make it safe enough, clean enough, and scary enough to be a Halloween destination.

As the group fix up the hotel, they also live there, because otherwise the cost-benefit-analysis doesn’t add up, and as you might imagine, it gets weird. 

This prop clown keeps showing up all over the house and it seems like there might be someone else living there. 

As Halloween draws nearer, they start to lose it, and end up with more Hellhouse than they bargained for.

Review

Hellhouse LLC and both sequels, were written and directed by the same guy, Stephen Cognetti.

I immediately was hooked because it was a better-than-average found footage movie from the outset of the movie. The thing that struck me immediately was how they kept talking about “the incident” as though it was this astonishingly terrifying occurrence, and it sucked me in from there.

Almost the entire movie is set within this already spooky place that they are fixing up to be even spookier, so the set almost always includes weird imagery and backdrops.

The characters are jaded enough to be believable in their ability to live in such a place, which makes the premise solid enough to be believable.

Really, Hellhouse LLC boils down to a solid premise with a very scary setting and a lot of hype. 

Ultimately the payout at the end is pretty intense, but I can see how some might be underwhelmed when it’s been built up so much by the documentary portion of this film.

In terms of scary movies, this is one to me, and that’s something of an accomplishment in itself.

Score

8/10

Final Recommendations

If you enjoy found footage horror, Hellhouse LLC is one of the good ones. I would also recommend this to anyone who digs on clown related horror – blech!

This week we are having a different kind of show. This show we are looking back at the delightsome year that was 2020, and awarding the best and worst of Horror Movie Talk.

Best ad

• Ju-on (The Grudge)
• Gators ade (Crawl)
• Blumhouses The Brady Bunch (Fantasy Island)
• Donald Deadly Doll Emporium (Brahms: The Boy 2)
• Paganism (The Wicker Man)
• Virginity Incorporated (It Follows)
• The Company (Alien)
• Wormhole to go (Event Horizon)
• Sincorporated: Hedonism (Seven)
• Jigsaw’s Seesaws (Saw)
• Anti-Santa Home Defense (Better Watch Out)

Best new drop

• Chompa Chompa (Crawl)
• Bye Bye Man (Bye Bye Man)
• Oh Hey Ho, a Squirrel (Wrong Turn)
• Tits, Boobs, Boobies…Machines (Wrong Turn)
• Paganism (The Wicker Man)
• Drain Addict slew
• Candy Man Song (The Candy Man)
• It’s thick (Around Scream)
• Can I see one Titty? (Ghost Ship)
• Ew David (Friday the 13th part 2?)

Best new Bit

• FNict or Fcagetion
• Don’t Blank on The Blank (CAndyman)
• BAconator (Tremors) 
• Horror Movie or Frankie MacDonald
• Guess That Death (The Exorcist)
• Horror Movie Whoooores (Event Horizon)
• Christmas Wishlist by Country Living (Krampus)

Best Guest

• Garrett (Event Horizon)
• Erin (Trick R Treat)
• Brad (Rats)
• David’s Mom (Rosemary’s Baby)
• Magnus (Bye Bye Man (Bryce))
• Marc (Alien)
• Dustin (Possessor)

Best Interview

• JJ Villard (Friday the 13th)
• Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street)
• Cat Solen (It Follows)
• Derek Carl and Hank Huffman (The Brain that Wouldn’t Die)
• Tara Westwood (Color Out of Space)

Thirstiest Moment

• Tara Westwood interview (Color Out of Space)
• Cop in Invisible Man
• Micah Monrow (It Follows)
• Drew Barrymore
• Riley Keough
• Booty Shorts
• Janelle Monet
• Ass shot

Best Tagline

• The Platform: The Hunger Games part 2
• Gretel & Hansel: and that was the last time the German’s used ovens for evil
• Wrong Turn: Looks like their Genes took a wrong turn
• Wrong Turn: its as if cable made a movie for itself
• Never Trust a Swede
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The what not to do part of to do portion of the chainsaw safety course
• The Brain That Wouldn’t die: Could you fuck a head? Asking for a friend.
• Antebellum: The Village, Woke Edition
• Antebellum: If ye ain’t fer bellum, you’re anti bellum
• Terror Train: Trapped on a train with the true terror, illusionists
• Terror Train: We run a train on your terror

Worst Horror Movie We Watched this year

• Bats
• The Turning
• The Bye Bye Man
• Event Horizon
• Terror Train
• Rats

Best Horror Movie We Watched this year

• Alien
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• The Exorcist
• Seven
• Possessor Uncut
• Rosemary’s Baby
• The Blair Witch Project

Worst New Horror Movie of 2020

• Gretel & Hansel
• The Lodge
• Antebellum
• Fantasy Island
• Underwater
• The Turning

Best New Movie of 2020

• Possessor Uncut
• Invisible Man
• His House
• Color Out of Space
• The Platform
• The Brain that Wouldn’t Die

Interesting Scoring Stats

Looking through the scores we’ve given for all the movies we’ve reviewed, it was interesting to see where we agreed and disagreed.

Perfect 10s

All of these films received a perfect 10/10 score from both Bryce and David.

• Alien
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• The Exorcist
• Seven
• Possessor Uncut
• Rosemary’s Baby
• The Blair Witch Project

Lowest Scored

These were the lowest scoring movies, including our first movie to receive a 1/10 from both of us (Rats).

• The Bye Bye Man
• Event Horizon
• Terror Train
• Rats

Biggest Discrepancies in Scores

• The Lodge (David=9, Bryce=4)
• Host (2020) (David=4, Bryce=9)

Best Co-Host

• David Day
• Bryce Hanson

Terror Train is slasher set on a train during New Years Eve. That’s pretty much all you need to know. 

Synopsis

It’s set in an alternate universe where people celebrate new years, by chartering a train for an eyes wide shut style costume party fuck fest, people never disclose pertinent life and death information, and David Copperfield is sexy. 

At the opening of the film, we are introduced to a group of friends including the ring leader Doc (Hart Bochner), and a sorority sister, and final girl expert Jamie Lee Curtis playing Alana. By the way, this was shot only a year after the release of Jamie’s breakout role in Halloween.

The beginning of the movie is set 3 years prior, on a fateful new years celebration where this group of friends punk-ed a fraternity pledge student so hard that he spun himself into an insane asylum.

3 Years later, during the train ride, the students start getting murdered by a mysterious… almost magical killer.

Review or Terror Train

I picked Terror Train because I was trying to find a horror movie set during New Year’s, and apparently the picking is very slim, because this is considered “the good one”. It isn’t.

The plot, like most slashers, is incidental, and is held together by a thread composed of awful dialogue and terrible direction.

I was honestly confused about what happened in the opening scene, because I didn’t know if I was supposed to understand that the dead body featured was a murder victim, or a medical school cadaver. I guess all we need to know is that the victim of the prank was pranked TOO HARD.

The dialogue is truly laughably bad, it feels like the adlibbed lines in the fast forwarded parts of pornos.

I was bored throughout the whole film, and not because I was tired, but because it was boring and dumb. 

The most dread filled moment of the movie was when I checked the time code, and I had half of the movie left to watch.

There were two things that almost saved the movie for me though.

1. David Copperfield as the magician reminding me that only a magician can be as creepy as a magician.
2. The ending was so dumb I laughed out loud.

Score

2/10

Terror Train

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We watched Krampus because it’s one of the biggest blockbuster releases in recent memory that is Christmas themed and for a PG-13 movie, it wraps a nice little present.

Watch Krampus

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Synopsis

Krampus is the story of Max, a young boy who still believes in Santa, and his family who are visited by some bummer relatives. 

As the relatives whittle on Max’s last nerve, he loses the Christmas spirit, which is the straw that breaks this town’s back in terms of being on Krampus’ good side. Or maybe a better way to explain it is to say, Max’s village loses their Krampus protection plan when he loses faith in Christmas.

Krampus comes, bringing a slew of “helpers” and a devastating blizzard that seems to gut the entire town. 

As Max and his family fight to survive, we learn the importance of family, and keeping the spirit of Christmas alive.

Review

Director Michael Dougherty, who brought us holiday themed cult classic Trick ‘r Treat has deigned to bestow this holiday themed treat upon us.

Krampus is kind of like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation if it included the fictional anti-santa myth, Krampus. It’s based around a “perfect family” and their super trashy relatives who show up and turn everything wrong.

If that isn’t enough for you there is also a jack-in-the-box that resembles a massive worm that’s capable of eating people and a Krampus that looks like Satan and eats whole villages raw.

While this is not the most impressive movie I’ve seen, it’s damn solid and very full of Christmas feels. It’s got lots of fun characters, and enough creepy imagery and tension to keep you on your toes while sippin’ on some nog.

I can remember watching this in theaters and being somewhat surprised at how well it held my attention, but on second viewing I did lose interest around the ¾’s mark.

 It does a decent job of not being too long and is a great movie to watch with kids who can handle really scary imagery, because it’s not terribly violent.

Overall, if you are in need of a Christmas horror movie, I would say this, and Gremlins are the best choices when you have to keep your family entertained.

Score

6/10

Final Recommendations

If you have family over and want to watch something very Christmassy but also horrorish, Krampus is your jam. Keep your Christmas spirits up to keep him out of your face!

Better Watch Out is one of the strongest christmas themed horror movies of recent memory. It’s a unique viewing experience and worth your time this holiday season.

Better Watch Out is available on Shudder and various streaming platforms for free if you don’t mind ads.

Synopsis

Better Watch Out starts out as a home invasion thriller, and turns into something completely different. Young Lucas (Levi Miller) is a twelve year old that has the hots for his only five years older babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge). He’s got a whole night planned out to seduce Ashley with horror movies and his mid-pubescent body. 

As they are hanging out having pizza, someone starts terrorizing them. You won’t believe who it is. Click through to horrormovietalk.com to find out!

Review of Better Watch Out

This is a pleasant surprise of a home invasion movie. It stays on the well laid trope tracks until about third of the way through the film, then it goes off the tracks and then onto essentially the same tracks again.

The concept was interesting, and they did do a lot with it. I think it could have gone farther with the set up and delay the twist a little longer. Another gripe was that the villain was way too broad a lot of the time.

Score

7/10

Better Watch Out

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Dead End aims to finally answer the questions “are we there yet?” This is a tight package of a movie and the simplicity really sells it for me.

Watch Dead End

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Synopsis

Dead End is the story of a family who are on their way to their grandma’s house during Christmas Eve. Husband Frank (Ray Wise), Wife Laura (Lin Shaye), son Richard (Mick Cain), daughter Marion (Alexandra Holden) and her boyfriend William (William Rosenfeld) are pretty much the only characters throughout the majority of the movie.

As they make their way down the road, things become strange when they pick up a women in white holding a baby. 

Slowly, the passengers start to realize that this road doesn’t seem to end, and they are haunted by a terrible car that occasionally drives by.

Review

Dead End is a French movie by Directors Jean-Baptiste Andrea, and Fabrice Canepa and like so many French horror movies, it packs a punch.

It remains off most people’s radar for reasons that elude me, because this is a special gem.

Our blogger, Keith, reminded me of this vaguely Christmassy movie, and I knew I had to review it. 

Dead End takes a car ride and slowly builds it from something mildly disconcerting to something so horrifying and perverse that I knew it was something special many years ago after I first watched it. 

The dry comedy and believable characters add a charming element that make this something special. 

When you add in the seemingly supernatural goings on around this road that they are driving on and the interesting twist at the end, I think you have a solid horror movie that is sure to make you laugh, and will stick with you in the grossest way possible.

Score

8/10

Final Recommendations

I really enjoy this movie because of how it handles comedy and the characters who are believable but kooky. While it’s not a well-known movie, I think it’s worth a watch because you probably won’t forget it, and that’s what we all love about horror movies.

Where did Remi Weekes come from, and why is he out of the gate, such an amazing horror director? That is the first question I have for this film. His House has instantly become one of my favorite horror movies. That may seem like hyperbole, but I have legit not seen anything like this film, and have rarely felt the same amount of emotion while watching a horror movie.

His House can be found only on Netflix.

Synopsis

Two Sudanese refugees Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (Sope Dirisu) arrive in the UK after a perilous journey. After a stay in a detention center, they are granted asylum and a new place to live, which they are assured isn’t just a shit hole, it’s a palatial shithole.

They are given a set of rules that all refugees are given to maintain their status, that being, they are only to live off the meager wage the gov’t provides and not seek employment, and to definitely not move away from their apartment.

The couple who have definitely seen some shit… start seeing shit in the apartment. Soon it is apparent that there is an evil force preying on them.

Review of His House

Without hyperbole, this is one of the best horror movies I have ever seen. I’m reminded of my experience with Hereditary, where I asked myself, “How is this director so good on his first film and where did he come from?”.

The main difference between Hereditary and this film, is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horror movie like His House before. Sure, at its core, it is a haunted house movie, but the aesthetic and subject material are uniquely new to me.

The best horror movies in my opinion are those that have a human core, that focus on character and relationships while drawing a line to real horrors that people experience every day. Rosemary’s Baby uses the fear of the unknown and social pressure during pregnancy.

The Exorcist uses the terror of having an undiagnosable, severely sick child. The Shining uses Jack Nicolson. In this film, it uses the lived experiences of refugees of war torn countries and the trauma associated with it.

This is exactly the type of storytelling that the horror genre excels at. It amplifies real human emotions and fears to the level of overload, resulting in a uniquely empathetic experience.

I’m very excited to talk about this movie, and also excited to see what Remi Weekes, the director will do next. 

Score

10/10

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In episode six, Two Storms we get to witness the most impressive technical achievement of the series, the long-shot cinematic cuts of this episode.

We also get to see two storms, one in the present day and one set in Hill House. These storms did a great deal to shape the characters, and this episode does a great job of showing that this series is more than just stellar writing and character development.