Horror Movie Talk

The Blair Witch Project is one of the most iconic films of the 90’s, and it’s even credited with starting the found footage genre, but I wasn’t looking forward to re-watching it. I saw this when it came out and figured it wouldn’t age well. I WAS WRONG!

Synopsis

The Blair Witch Project has the stunningly simple premise of, “let’s shoot a documentary about a spooky place/thing in the woods” and as we all know, nothing good ever happens in the woods.

Three young adults, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams play themselves as a film crew that is headed into the woods of Maryland to document the “myth” of the Blair Witch. 

Before heading into the woods they stop at the closest town and interview the locals about the likelihood of such a myth, and received varying stories of belief and terror mixed with skeptics.

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As they venture into the woods things start to grow alarming and they start to wonder if they are lost. 

Things take a turn for the worst as they realize that they got more witch than they bargained for.

Review

The Blair Witch Project is widely held to be the movie that kicked off the found footage genre. There are plenty of examples of found footage before this film, such as:

• Cannibal Holocaust
• Cannibal Ferox
• The Faces of Death Series
• The Connection
• The Last Broadcast
• 84 Charlie MoPic
• Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood

While these movies ranged in release date all the way back to the late 60’s the genre never gathered significant steam or public interest until the release of Blair Witch. 

Many of these movies, including Blair Witch, capitalized on the mistaken assumption that the movie was actual footage of real-life events that just happened to be caught on tape.

The hype train that surrounded the release of this movie was a sight to behold. This is one of, or maybe the first movie ever to rely primarily on an internet marketing campaign.

Check out our review of Paranormal Activity 2

The movie itself is something of an anomaly, not quite a film, and not quite a home video. It is hard to place it squarely in a genre. With the added suggestion that the footage was real, it made this a real freak show. 

The Blair Witch Project relies heavily on audience buy-in and it is able to accomplish it by being very believable by nature. This is how young twenty-somethings would act, and something they would do, and the scenario they find themselves in is pretty easily a universal nightmare to any viewer.

I saw this in theaters upon release, and never again since. I was not looking forward to a rewatch because I thought I had this movie pegged from the first viewing. I did not. It still works! It’s still scary as shit, believable, and a crazy-fun ride from beginning to end.

The poor footage quality, total amateur filming style and distant audio sound coupled with the setting of the New England woods, holds up well.

While it lacks the polish and delivery that a true filmmaker’s film would deliver, it’s supposed to. 

If you enjoy this movie you should also check out The Curse of the Blair Witch, a Sci-Fi Channel documentary that accompanied the theatrical release of the movie.

Score

10/10

In this series of ten plus Aftershows we will be talking about the events of each episode of The second season of The Haunting of Hill House titled, The Haunting of Bly Manor.

This season is also written and directed by Mike Flanagan, the man who brought you The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep, Geralds Game, Hush and many more huge horror hits. 

I have to say this show has really surpassed my expectations, especially in the realm of storytelling and character building. Netflix seems to have allowed Flanagan the creative license that he needed to get this twist on the classic novella The Turn of the Screw. 

We had a great time watching this show and normally we only review horror movies, but im glad we were given the opportunity to review this show because it’s going to be a big one. 

There’s a tremendous mystery at the core of this somber slash scary tale. It’s also a surprisingly touching show that focuses on personal relationships and loss. 

Remember, The Haunting of Bly Manor premieres on Netflix on October 9th, so make sure you catch the shows and watch them in full before you dive into our Aftershows. You won’t be disappointed!

Antebellum is a fantastic concept with mediocre execution. It’s not bad, it’s just lackluster when compared to recent, more nuanced horror films about race from Jordan Peele. That being said, it is worth a watch if only to see historical African slavery through a new lens.

Synopsis

It’s pretty hard to give a synopsis of Antebellum without giving spoilers, but I’ll give it a shot.

Janelle Monae stars as Veronica Henley a famous author and speaker on inclusion living in modern society, who finds herself suddenly living as Eden, an African American slave on a southern plantation.

Veronica is forced to deal with living as a powerless slave while having the mind of a strong independent 21st century black woman.

Veronica bides her time and submits to some of history’s greatest horrors to pick the right time to make her escape and find her way back to her life.

Review of Antebellum

This one is really tough for me. The premise is really solid. Set the everyday occurrences of Antebellum south in the US as a horror movie. I genuinely don’t think this has been done before, and is a fantastic way to address this historical atrocity.

The trailer is pretty misleading though, and I feel really undercut the film by suggesting a much more interesting plot device than is actually used in the film. This is intentional, I think, because it is also suggested by the narrative structure of the first act. I could see how audiences would feel a bit of bait and switch and that there might be audible groans from some of the reveals.

The writing doesn’t have any nuance, and many of the characters, especially the white characters are more caricatures than anything. The cast is very good, and does what it can for the film, but overall it squanders the opportunity to explore the horrific premise. 

For these reasons, I think the film will be a huge disappointment for those expecting a film of the caliber of Get Out or US. Reviews have not been kind, it is in the low 30s on Rotten Tomatoes right now.

What I can say is that it’s not that bad. While this is not the film that I expected, it’s still a very intriguing concept that is told in a passable way even if it’s not the route I would have chosen. It genuinely does portray the horrors of the antebellum south in a genre fashion, and that is really what is holding together the movie. 

Score

5/5

Antebellum

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1BR is one of the most interesting movies that I’ve watched in 2020 as I feel like it fooled me at the start and made me love it at the end. I worry that the somewhat goofy beginning of this movie will make people jump ship in the first act, but I really hope they watch it to the end, because it’s got some interesting tricks up it’s sleeve.

Synopsis

1BR is the story of Sarah, a young woman who moves to LA in order to start a new life away from her troubling family.

She finds a great apartment complex that seems strangely kind and welcoming. 

Sarah sneaks a cat into her new apartment and soon realizes that’s too much pussy for a one bedroom apartment. 

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Review

1BR is written and directed by David Marmor and stars Nicole Brydon Bloom as Sarah. This is a somewhat unique movie as it’s a bit of a bait and switch and I fear that will hurt it on a streaming platform like Netflix where people can switch to watching The Office at a moment’s notice.

Strange Start

1BR starts out as a kind of silly, jumpscare-laden spookfest – and a lot of the themes early in the movie left me laughing at what I thought to be a pitiable attempt at a story. The characters felt fake, the scenarios felt unbelievable, and I kept asking, “Yeah, but why would anyone care?”

Solid End

At ⅔’s through, 1BR threw me for a real loop as I realized the movie had played me the same way the characters had played Sarah. The start of this movie felt like a facade to me, and the end left me with a lot of respect for it.

This is really, at its core, a social commentary, or a warning tale meant to alert people to complacently accepting social movements at face value and believing it’s the right thing not to fight back. 

Parts of this movie are very similar to one of my favorite thrillers of all-time, The Invitation.

That Gas Lighting Feel

I’ve said this before, I’m a big fan of movies gaslighting me, and this one did exactly that, it played me like an instrument. I thought it was a silly little thriller and it ended up smacking me in the face with cold-hard truth. 

This is a particularly timely movie to watch right now, and one that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys a solid thriller. 

My biggest fear with 1BR is that people will turn it off before it heats up, the start seems intentionally goofy to me, and at the end I think the viewer will appreciate it.

Score

8/10

Final Recommendations

If you enjoy thrillers, or the feeling of being gaslit, this is a wonderfully strong movie for that. 1BR will age very well with time. I just hope people will make it through the somewhat silly feeling start of this movie.

Saw may have dulled over time, but it is still a good horror movie and was definitely influential during the 2000s. The simple premise of catch-22 torture traps is an effective hook, but sometimes the twisty turny plot is a bit forced.

Synopsis

Saw is mainly about two strangers trapped in a High School boys bathroom with a mysterious dead body. They are both chained to pipes just out of reach of each other and the dead body in the middle of the room.

They find that they are being toyed with by a villain named Jigsaw, who set up a trap to pit them against each other in a race against time.

They are both left with the tool to escape, a saw blade too dull to saw through metal chains/pipes, but just the right sharpness to saw through an ankle. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Review of Saw

Saw has dulled over time, but it’s still a good horror movie. It was the first film of the now well established horror director/writers James Wan and Leigh Whannel. It feels like a short film stretched to fill a feature length film, and Wan and Whannel did make a short before this movie, but it was originally written as a feature length script and the short was an excerpt from it.

It’s undeniable that this movie and it’s sequels have made a mark in the pantheon of horror movies based off of the simple concept of catch-22 torture traps.

The problem that the franchise faces and has from the beginning is the need to stretch out the simple premise with overly complicated labyrinthian plots and character motives.

The original Saw is well constructed and has an engaging plot that unravels nicely, but it’s still at its heart, a cheap exploitational premise.

Score

7/10

Saw

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Se7en is one of the most enthralling and horrific crime thrillers ever made, right up there with Silence of the Lambs. With an all-star cast all delivering incredible performances and some of the most depraved imagery and ideas ever to make it into a big budget box office movie, Se7en is a work of art.

Synopsis

Se7en is the darkest buddy cop story you will ever find. It is directed by David Fincher, and is one of his best movies, which is saying something. 

It’s the story of detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a disillusioned PI at the end of his career, and Mills (Brad Pitt), a baby-faced newbie who has something to prove. 

They arrive on the scene of a grizzly and totally strange murder of a man who was tied up and force fed until death. As they find more murder scenes they begin to realize that there is a pattern emerging – the seven deadly sins:

• Lust 
• Gluttony
• Greed
• Sloth
• Wrath
• Envy
• Pride

We are taken through the lives of these detectives and learn how they cope with the total depravity that they see on a daily basis. We are given a look into the incredibly perverted and seamy underbelly of a big city with huge crime problems.

Mills and Somerset end up getting more serial murder than they bargained for.

Review

Se7en stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey and all of them give career topping performances.

The storytelling in Se7en is beyond compare and the twist is one that will leave you gasping for air. The idea that a human could do these things to others in the name of God is simultaneously vile and extremely true to life. The story isn’t exactly a detective story, even though it involves detectives. It’s very formulaic, while holding the audience’s interest through the sheer depravity of the murders and backdrops.

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Se7en is, at its core, a character study of a young man who wants to be a real detective and his older counterpart who helps guide him through the most insane settings that any city could offer.

I’m going to quote Roger Ebert who I think explained this movie best:

“What’s being used here is the same sort of approach William Friedkin employed in “The Exorcist” and Jonathan Demme in “The Silence of the Lambs.” What could become a routine cop movie is elevated by the evocation of dread mythology and symbolism. “Seven” is not really a very deep or profound film, but it provides the convincing illusion of one. Almost all mainstream thrillers seek first to provide entertainment; this one intends to fascinate and appall.”

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-seven-1995

Spacey’s performance is one only he and very few other actors I can think of could pull off. He is the embodiment of evil, almost the devil in the flesh.

The end of this movie could have gone a few different ways, and I think the way it went was, by far, the best version that could have possibly been told. It’s shocking, and cruel, and the perfect end to one of the most twisted mainstream movies you will ever see. 

Se7en contains some of the darkest subject matter that I can think of and it has stuck with me since I saw it as a young teen. This is storytelling at it’s finest.

Score

10/10

Final Recommendation

Everyone who can handle some serious imagery should see this. It’s a fabulous and dark story that will leave a mark on you for as long as you live.

This week we review the 2012 horror hot, Sinister. A film with properly disturbing imagery, but improperly matched script. Later on we check our voicemail and answer questions from listeners.

Synopsis

Sinister is the story of author Ellison Oswalt moving to a new town to research for his next true crime novel. His wife, son, and daughter make up the most passive aggressively unsupportive family in the world. Unbeknownst to Ellison’s family, they have moved into the house of that family whose deaths his book will be based on.

Review of Sinister

Sinister is a serviceable, average horror movie. It heavily forecasts it’s twists from the very beginning in a “whatever you do, do not push that button” sort of way.

I can see why people like this movie and keep bringing it up to us. It’s got a distinctive dark tone while still being very approachable for mainstream audiences.

It’s like if The Crow had a baby with The Nun from The Conjuring.

There were a couple effective jump scares and attempts to create believable relationships and stakes, but never has any moment that will keep this movie from melding with countless other horror movies in your head. That being said, Ethan Hawke offers up an excellent performance, and the ending was slightly better than expected.

Score

6/10

Sinister

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We watched Host on Shudder because everyone has been talking about it and found out that you can make a pretty effective movie that impresses everyone as long as theaters are closed and there is a global pandemic. Host doesn’t do anything new, but it doesn’t waste your time and it delivers fairly well compared to many found footage movies.

Synopsis

Six friends decide to cure their Corona-19 blues by hiring a medium to hold a seance over a Zoom conference call.

One of the friends doesn’t take the whole thing seriously and decides to make a joke at the expense of the seance – this angers the spirits who are also probably pretty bored of being on lockdown. 

The friends get more evil spirits than they bargained for

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Review

Host brings literally nothing new to the table at all. Everything I saw during my watching of this movie is stolen whole cloth from another found footage movie of varying title. 

The most obvious borrowing is the  movie’s format from titles like Unfriended, but I caught stuff from the Paranormal Activity series, Blair Witch, and about twenty other very common scares and tropes.

That doesn’t make Host bad, it just makes it pretty common. The thing that I really appreciated from this movie was that it was less than an hour in length. 

Nothing about this movie will stick with me for very long, mostly because I didn’t feel empathy for any of the characters. With these computer screen found footage formats the characters need to be really strong in order for them the break through to the audience and build empathy. Instead what you have with Host is a bunch of Friday the 13th camp counselors who you barely know and don’t care about. 

The scares work to a middling extent and I wasn’t upset with this movie in any way. I will say that I had heard a lot of positive reviews and opinions of this movie before watching it and it just didn’t have enough substance for me to recommend

Score

4/10

Final Recommendation

Bryce seems to love this movie if you listen to the podcast attached to this episode but for me it falls pretty flat. I think those who love the found footage genre will appreciate this, but mostly it’s a bunch of used up tropes and scares.

Event Horizon is the best movie that Paul Anderson ever made and ever will make. It’s one of the most late 90’s movies you will ever see and has very Hellraiser aesthetic. Actually, now that I think of it, this movie is a mashup of Hellraiser and Alien mixed with a gimmicky action movie. It’s beloved by many, which makes it hard for me to do what I’m about to do.

Synopsis

Event Horizon starts with a very strong intro describing the far-flung future of 2015 and beyond! By 2015 we have already set up a colony on the moon. By present-day in the movie (2047), we have launched and lost a spaceship called Event Horizon that was meant to explore the boundaries of the solar system.

The Event Horizon was lost around Neptune in order to avoid jokes about your butthole, and our ill-fated crew has been sent to determine what happened to the missing ship.

Onboard the rescue vessel is Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill), who was the creator of the Event Horizon ship. Apart from them, you have a crew of stereotypical, disposable clods.

Everyone is soon told by Dr. Weir that the Event Horizon vessel that he created was not a vessel made to explore the outer regions of the solar system, but a faster-than-light vessel meant to catapult humans around the universe.

Everyone ends up with more existential terror than they bargained for…

Event Horizon Review

This is the first time that I’ve sat down and watched this movie from beginning to end, and I must say, I am not impressed. Granted, this movie is talked about lovingly by only the people who love it, and is almost never talked about at all by anyone who doesn’t like it. It seems to fly under the radar of movie hatred that other, more controversial movies are stuck with.

I’m not saying that Event Horizon is bad – it’s not. It’s just that I heard so much praise for it from so many people that it probably inflated my expectations a bit.

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The main thing that this movie does well is borrow from other films that are quite successful at what they do, like Alien and Hellraiser. The aesthetic and setting of this are like a Warhammer 40k gothic sci-fi meets real-world futuristic scenario. The visuals are graphic and disturbing. The story is of a man gone mad by the invention he created, almost like Frankenstein.

Everything else is not for me. The action is very run-of-the-mill fast cut bologna. The disturbing imagery, while disturbing, does absolutely nothing to amp up the tension or frighten. The concept is cool enough, but without great execution, it just falls flat.

I want to like Event Horizon; it just doesn’t do a damn thing for me except remind me of a bunch of actually good things that were probably going through Paul Anderson’s dull head while he was creating this.

Score

4/10

Paul Anderson’s Horrible Career

Even though he married Mila Jovovich, I think Paul should be a little embarrassed about the life he leads. It’s based on the shoddiest of work on the most braindead of all projects. Event Horizon is his best work.

Here are his biggest ventures to date.

Directing:

• Mortal Kombat
• Soldier
• Resident Evil
• Alien vs. Predator
• Drift
• Death Race
• Resident Evil: Afterlife
• Resident Evil: Retribution
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Writing:

• Resident Evil
• Alien vs Predator
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse
• Resident Evil: Extinction
• Death Race
• Resident Evil: Afterlife
• Death Race 2
• Resident Evil: Retribution
• Death Race: Inferno
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
• Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy

Kids – follow your dreams. This is America; if Paul Anderson can be a multimillionaire married to Mila Jovovich for writing and directing all these gigantic steaming piles of zombie shit and Hotwheels wet dreams, you can make it doing anything!

Final Recommendation

If you remember this movie fondly, by all means, love it. I just can’t recommend seeing this to anyone who doesn’t get off on sci-fi and horror combos. It’s not great at what it does.

Patrons voted last month, and now we’re reviewing Ghost Ship, and it’s… from the early 2000’s. If you are in the mood for some modern schlock, then maybe it’s worth the $3 to watch the whole movie. But really, this movie’s opening scene sets expectations way too high for itself.

Synopsis

Ghost Ship is about a Ghost Ship filled with Ship Ghosts that’s discovered by a salvage crew that eventually become Ship Ghosts on the Ghost Ship.

The salvage crew aboard the tugboat HMS Whogivesafuck, are given a lead on an abandoned ship in the Bering Strait. The information is brought to them by Jack Ferriman, a Canadian Air Force pilot who insists on coming along with them on their salvage operation because he looks too handsome to be in just one scene.

The crew sails out to the ship and discovers it’s a missing 1960’s Italian ocean liner called the Antonia Graza, which suffered a tragic boating accident that bifurcated most of it’s passengers. 

As they lazily wander around the corridors talking about working, they find out that this SHIP has more GHOST than they bargained for.

Review of Ghost Ship (2002)

Ghost Ship is described by Roger Ebert as “It’s better than you expect but not as good as you hope.” Which is pretty accurate, but still pretty generous considering expectations going in are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

The movie starts out with one of the best schlocky gory sequences in all of horror. Really, If you watched the opening scene and just walked away, you wouldn’t be missing much.

The rest of the film is a pretty standard slow burn haunted house story set on a boat. The problem with that set up is that it requires the supposed professional salvage workers to do exactly zero work for an hour and 4 minutes of the 91 minute runtime. There is a little bit of mystery unraveling going on during that first hour, but most of the action happens in the last 20 minutes.

It’s not a good movie, but it has a good cast, and it is salvaged by the bookends of it’s ridiculous beginning and ending.

If you would like to watch something better from the same time, check out Dead End, which could easily have been called ghost car.

Score

3/10

Ghost Ship

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