Horror Movie Talk

This movie is a lot of things. It’s hard to label it with genres without going into a run on sentence. You could call it a meta socially conscious zombie dark comedy horror film. Read below or listen to our review.

Trailer

The Dead Don’t Die can be found in theaters now.

Plot Synopsis for The Dead Don’t Die

The film is set in Centerville USA, “A Real Nice Place” and follows two police officers, Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver). Their sleepy routine of handling minor misdemeanors is disturbed when a grizzly double homicide at the towns one and only cafe. Since Centerville is such a nice place, the first assumption is that it was some animal…or several animals that did it, but Ronnie Peterson correctly guesses that it’s “zombies, you know, the undead…ghouls”. Apparently the “polar fracking” that they have been hearing on the news has inadvertently caused the earth to go off axis and…the dead to rise from their graves.

Is The Dead Don’t Die Worth Seeing?

What follows is a great mix of fourth wall breaking, social commentary, and sardonic comedy horror. This movie has a definite indy feel, which isn’t too surprising, since writer/director Jim Jarmusch has made a whole career staying on the edges of mainstream. This is actually his first film that opened in more than 300 theaters. Regardless, you have likely seen or heard of some of his other films, such as Broken Flowers, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Dead Man, and Only Lovers Left Alive. This film actually features 8 actors that have worked in previous Jarmusch films, which has resulted in an embarrassment of riches, including Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Chloë Sevigny, Rosie Perez, and RZA. The dialogue is as dry as a Mormon wedding, but the world and characters that Jim Jarmusch has created are as charming as the prototypical little american town that Centerville represents. It is a precisely written, directed, and acted. There is very little fat in this movie, but the story and dialogue is given plenty of room to breath.

The Predator! What a Fun Movie! Check Out Our Review!

I’d hesitate to say that general audiences will enjoy this movie as much as Avengers Endgame, but I think there is truly something for everyone. There were many moments throughout that delighted me, and I found myself laughing out loud as well as feeling intense existential dread. While watching it, my score kept going up and up. I highly recommend it.

Our Score for The Dead Don’t Die

9/10

The Dead Don’t Die Spoilers

Expand for Spoilers

The film opens on a graveyard with Officers Robertson and Peterson responding to a call that Hermit Bob stole one of Farmer Miller’s chickens. Already I’m on board. Any movie with a character name Hermit Bob is a movie that I’m on board with.

As they drive back and have small talk about how much of an asshole Farmer Miller is, they begin noticing that “something’s weird”. They notice that it’s still daylight when it’s well into the evening hours, and that their watches and some of the electronics have stopped working.

Officer Peterson comments: “This isn’t going to end well”.

It should be noted that this film starts off very meta, very early on. After the opening scene, the credits role to Sturgil Simpson’s “The Dead Don’t Die”.

https://youtu.be/xiukuoSjDj0

After the credits play and the song finishes, we return to the cab of the police car. Officer Peterson turns on “civilian radio” and once again Simpson’s song starts playing. Officer Robertson mentions how familiar the song is that is playing on the radio. to which Roberson points out that “it’s the theme song”.

Polar Fracking

News reports are caught in glimpses in the opening scenes that describe that there is a environmental disaster happening because of “polar fracking”. The “industry experts” are quoted as saying there is nothing to be alarmed about, but shots of tsunamis and burning forests tell a differnt story. Apparently, the polar fracking has caused the earth to go off it’s axis.

This leads to the underlying thesis of the movie that ignoring global warming is essentially as dumb as zombie movie logic.

Want To Know How The New Child’s Play 2019 Was? Check Out Our Review!

https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2019/06/26/childs-play-2019-review/

Zombi Iggy Pop

Eventually the dead rise from their graves, starting with a couple of dead roadies played by Iggy Pop and Sara Driver. They invade the sleepy coffee shop and brutally kill and eat the two women working there.

When the police come to investigate, Officer Peterson has the theory that it’s zombies.

They then go about warning the townspeople and start preparing for the zombie apocalypse. The zombie trope of “kill the head” is underlined in the dialogue throughout the rest of the movie.

Zombies as Consumers

One of the unique aspects of the zombies in The Dead Don’t Die is that they all moan about what they craved in their former lives. The first couple zombies groaned “coffee!” Others seek after “toooools”, “candy”, or in Carol Kane‘s case, “Chardonnay”.

By the end of the movie, Hermit Bob opines that “all them ghost people lost their souls, just hungry for more stuff,” and that they are “the remnants of the materialistic people, Guess they’ve been zombies all along.”

Tilda Swinton as Zelda Winston

This was the role that Tilda Swinton was born to play. She stars as a weird, new to town mortician that ends up being an alien. She is the most adept at handling the situation and is basically this film’s version of Michonne from The Walking Dead. However, the rest of the town is left in a lurch when her people come and take her away in a UFO ala Poochie.

https://youtu.be/4tvAjX5ACPo

The Ending of The Dead Don’t Die

Officer Peterson alludes throughout the movie that, “this isn’t going to end well,” and it doesn’t. One of the best moments of fourth wall breaking was when Officer Robertson asks “Why do you keep saying it’s not going to end well, how do you know?” To which Adam Driver responds “I’ve read the script.”

In the end everyone dies except Hermit Bob, who we see walking off to continue living in the woods.

Who Would Like The Dead Don’t Die?

If you like dry dark comedies like those done by the Coen Brothers, you would likely appreciate this movie. I think it has something for everyone, but if you don’t like slower paced films, then you should probably move on.

Horror Movie News

Steven Spielberg is creating a horror show you can only watch at night

Doctor Sleep Trailer Came out. The Shining Sequel starring Ewan Macgregor, directed by Mike Flanagan is coming out Nov 9th

Jordan Peele on Midsommar:

• “I think you’ve made the most idyllic horror film of all time.” – texted to Ari Aster
• “This hasn’t existed yet, and anything after Midsommar is going to have to contend with it. I mean, this usurps The Wicker Man as the most iconic pagan movie to be referenced.”

Blumhouse Announces Black Christmas Remake, Sets 2019 Release Date

Other Videos

For this week’s episode of Horror Movie Talk, we watched The Perfection on Netflix, and it is what I would consider goodbad. It had some nice visual flares, and definitely some unexpected twists. However, it’s major failing is not committing to the underlying schlock of the plot.

Synopsis for The Perfection

Netflix wants their own Get Out, so they hired Allison Williams from Get Out to star in The Perfection. Williams plays a former cello prodigy named Charlotte that was sidelined because she had to take care of her dying mother. When her mother dies, Charlotte calls up her former Dean at the prestigious Bachoff Academy of Music to try to re-enter the world of world class cellists.

She meets the latest prodigy, Lizzie played by Logan Browning and the become close very quickly…suspiciously quickly. When Charlotte and Lizzie take a trip to China, Lizzie becomes extremely sick, and Charlotte might have something to do with it!

The rest of the movie swings back and forth in time and perspective to eventually reveal Charlotte’s true motives and the audience may or may not experience whiplash.

The Nun was a pretty big 2018 hit – Here is our Review

The Perfection is Not Quite My Tempo

The perfection is not a great movie, but to me it is on the precipice of greatness. I wish they had committed more to some of the more ridiculous and/or tasteless elements. Parts of this even reminded of my wistful favorite, The Human Centipede. Mainly the ridiculous reveals and the mustache twirling level villain. Stephen Weber does a great job of playing the pretentious dean of the Bachoff School of Music.

In an age where no one is surprised by Shyamalan-esque twists, instead of upping the ante on the world building or character development, writer/director Richard Shepard ups the ante on the number of twists!

Score for The Perfection

I’m giving it a 6/10

The Perfection Movie Spoilers

Expand for Spoilers

First of all, lets talk about the elephant in the room. The Trailer gives way too much information about the plot away. It basically undercuts the first half of the film, since you know Charlotte has nefarious motives for Lizzie from the beginning.

Not to worry though, there are plenty of twists throughout!

Twist #1: Charlotte Poisoned Lizzie

This is the least surprising since they pretty much give it away in the trailer. The whole bugs in vomit, and bugs under the skin was a red herring. Charlotte used some of her dead mothers’ medication to make Lizzie suggestible, purposely drove her to temporary insanity, and getting her to cut off her own hand.

Remember The Ruins? You Should Read Our Review!

https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2019/05/08/the-ruins-movie-review/

Charlotte accomplishes her purpose, because once Lizzie returns to Bachoff, she is unceremoniously kicked out of the school. Because… who has need of a one handed cellist?

I guess since, the wound was self inflicted, Lizzie couldn’t prosecute Charlotte, but that doesn’t keep her from kicking her ass!

Lizzie brings Charlotte to Anton, and soon after, the next twist is revealed.

Twist #2: Bachoff is a Sex Dungeon Conservatory

The namesake of the film is a certain room where Anton (Weber) touts as being accoustically perfect. As such, he demands that only perfection of anyone that plays in that room. If you make a mistake, the punishment is rape.

This is the moment that the movie really goes off the rails and makes you wonder what type of movie that they were really trying to make. I posit that the reveal of the rape aspect of the school, would have been an opportune time to dive headfirst into schlock. This could have been the modern Human Centipede. However, they went the safe route and blurred out Weber’s junk. What a shame.

The Most Disgusting Movie Ever Made? Check Out Kuso!

https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2019/05/15/kuso-review/

Anton again demands that Charlotte play “The Perfection” and instead of threatening her with rape, he says he will rape the blissfully ignorant new young student.

Charlotte apparently makes a mistake, but Anton reveals that raping the young girl was just a bluff, and that they were actually going to rape Charlotte after all.

Two men and Lizzie approach, and Lizzie begins the motions to rape Charlotte with her stump arm.

I know!

This is when another twist occurs…

Twist #3: Lizzie and Charlotte are in Cahoots!

Apparently Lizzie had been working with Charlotte ever since she attacked her in her home. Apparently Charlotte explained that getting Lizzie to cut off her own arm was the only way to get Lizzie to escape Anton’s grasp.

I dunno… maybe just start with a pinky?

Anyway, after that reveal we return to the scene of the stump rape (which I guess is actually consensual?), there is a cringe inducing hip hop song in the soundtrack that signals they are about to kick ass.

Also signaling they are about to kick ass…

Twist #4: Charlotte actually has short hair!!!!!!

I honestly don’t know why they made a big deal out of this reveal. It is up there with Anton’s wife Paloma as being completely unnecessary, but strangely featured throughout.

The Ending of The Perfection

They attack Anton, who uses a knife to completely destroy one of Charlotte’s arms. However, the girls come out on top and the final scene is of Anton sitting in a chair without arms and legs while Lizzie and Charlotte play the cello together, each using their one good arm.

It was obvious that all the twists and turns were leading us to this visual, but it still seemed unearned.

Who would like The Perfection?

If you want a dumb campy horror movie with a much larger budget than it deserves, watch The Perfection.

Special Thanks

Thanks to our newest Patron, Garrett D. You can find him along with all the other Horror Movie Talk Founding Members on our supporters page

Thanks again to Greg from We Shouldn’t Be Here for coming on the show.

Thanks to The King of All Badgers for graciously creating our awesome Kill Count Theme.

We went and saw Meh, er, I mean Ma, in theaters and it it was nothing new or exciting. If you take the stalker subgenre of horror or thrillers, add an academy award winner and a cast of pretty teens, you have Ma. It’s very by-the-books. Ma is an interesting enough movie that features darn good acting and solid direction. My problem with Ma is that it’s not notable enough to spend your money on it. It feels like many of the straight to streaming entries that Netflix provides us with, solid but forgettable.

Ma Synopsis

Ma follows Maggie (Diana Silvers), who is new in town, just having moved from the West coast to this town in the midwest where her mother, Erica (Juliette Lewis) is from. Maggie quickly befriends a group of gorgeous teens, and they begin their quest to party. The most important part of any party quest is finding an adult to buy you booze, and Ma (Octavia Spencer) fills that niche nicely.

As the group continues in their quest, they realize that they need a safe place to party, another niche that Ma is happy to fill. Finally, their quest to party leads them back to Ma’s house over and over, but now it’s the teens who must fill a niche – Ma’s need for acceptance and control. As the group becomes less enthusiastic about Ma’s parties, Ma becomes more and more overbearing until she has a full break with reality and becomes unhinged.

Ma Movie Trailer

Ma Movie Review

I don’t know what I thought movie reviewing was going to be about when I started doing it. However, it’s not a terribly glamorous thing because of movies like Ma. This movie didn’t commit any mortal sins, and frankly, it was pretty well done. It’s just forgettable and uninteresting, which adds to the tedium of much of life.

Score for Ma

6/10

Ma Spoilers

Here’s the lowdown on Ma, you’ve seen it. Remember Greta? Yea, same movie essentially. Have you seen The Gift? If not, you should watch that instead of Ma, because it’s actually scary and keeps the audience on their toes. Here is a list of movies that do a much better job of accomplishing essentially the same story as Ma, but did give you a more interesting product:

• Cape Fear
• One Hour Photo
• Red Eye
• Fear
• Misery
• Fatal Attraction
• Scream
• Hush

The Gift is Really Good

The Good

That being said, I think Ma is a well put together movie that has a lot of good things going for it. Here is the good about Ma.

The direction is solid. At no point in Ma did I feel like I was watching a poorly put together movie. All of the actors were on point; all the camera work made sense and accomplished what it set out to do. There wasn’t much artistry to the direction in Ma, except for staying out of the way of the story, which helped to make this watchable.

Wanna Watch a Similar Stalker Horror Movie? Check Out Greta!

The acting was very good. All of the characters were acted well, of course, it helps to have probably one of the most notable Academy Award winners in recent memory, Octavia Spencer, as your star role. Octavia stole the show in terms of believability, and in this kind of stalker genre movie, that’s probably the most important part – having a believable stalker with a solid motivation. All of the other actors and actresses did a great job as well.

Ma also has a fabulously solid soundtrack of disco and club hits from the ’70s and early ’80s. The party vibes feel simultaneously fun and foreboding, which is a plus.

Check Out Our Review of Brightburn!

The Bad

There was no way to make the stakes very high. The vast majority of this movie was Ma trying to get the kids to party with her. When the kids started pulling away, she resorted to lame high school level attempts to raise the stakes. Things like stealing your boyfriend, your jewelry, and show up at your house to talk to your mom – these aren’t scary. They don’t raise the stakes in Ma until the very end, at which point it’s almost like they realized that nothing had happened the whole movie and decided to throw the kitchen sink at it.

This movie didn’t rely on jump scares; I think it had one or two. Mostly it relied on building tension, which it didn’t do well.

Mostly the premise is pretty flimsy.

How Ma Ends

It is revealed midway through the movie that Ma has pent up shame and anger about how she was treated by her peers back when she was in high school. She begins to hatch the plan to get back at all of her old classmates by ruining the lives of their kids.

There is a particularly disturbing flashback that Ma has about her high school crush asking her for a blowjob in the school janitorial closet. She obliges him, which I can only assume a girl would regret a bit, especially considering the janitor closet. To add insult to injury, he has the whole student body waiting outside of the closet to find out, “how she was.”

Dig Blumhouse Flicks? Check out Happy Death Day 2U!

As it turns out, Ma has a daughter whom she keeps locked up upstairs and convinced that she is sick, very similar to the real-life tale of Dee Dee Blanchard and Gypsy, which has recently been made into a miniseries called The Act.

At the very end, she comes completely unhinged and traps the kids in her basement and subjects them to weird punishments before the house catches fire. She decides to burn to death with the father of one of the kids who subsequently was the guy who shamed her in high school for giving him a blowjob.

Final Recommendations for Ma

If you are looking for the movie equivalent of Mild Taco Bell sauce, this is it. Not offensive, not much to say, not very memorable, but good on anything.

We went and saw Brightburn, and it was as advertised, but even more gory than I expected. It’s not a perfect film, there isn’t a lot of character development past the perfunctory set up, and there are some plot threads are fully dropped without explanation, but overall it delivers a very good horror film riffing on the superhero genre.

Brightburn Plot Synopsis

The synopsis for Brightburn is very simple. It’s the superman origin story, but instead of him being good, he’s bad. The Breyers are a young couple in Sma… Brightburn, Kansas, that desperately want a baby, but can’t have one of their own. One night, a meteor crashes into the woods near their house. Inside is a little baby that they name Brandon and raise as their own.

You can find Brightburn in theaters now.

When Brandon reaches puberty he is awoken and summoned by voices in his head that lead him to the spacecraft he arrived in hidden in the Breyers’ barn. Brandon soon discovers he is completely impervious to harm, has super strength, and can, get this… fly. Brandon does what every good middle american farm boy would do with these new found super powers… He kills and maims anyone that gets in his way towards world domination, including those closest to him.

Brightburn Critique

David is going to complain that this story has been done dozens of times with Superman in the comics. But if you like me aren’t a FUCKING NERD, then this is probably the first depiction of a truly evil superman origin story, at least on film. I think this film accomplished exactly what it set out to do, and was very enjoyable to me. While it is exactly what I expected in terms of plot, it exceeded my expectations with how dark, and especially how gory they went with it.

Brightburn is directed by a relative newcomer David Yarovesky, but produced by James Gunn, who is the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies as well as Super, another anti-superhero movie. It is well cast with Elizabeth Banks as Tori, the mother in denial, and David Denman as Kyle, the father that immediately is suspicious. Brandon Breyers, the anti-superman, is played by Jackson A. Dunn which does a great job of maintaining a steely enigmatic gaze. The script doesn’t delve too deeply into character development, but the characters are three dimensional, and react to the events of the film in natural ways.

Super

Buy or Rent James Gunn’s first Anti-Superhero film.

Buy/Rent on Amazon

They keep the intentions and internal motivations of Brandon intentionally mysterious up until the time that he starts wreaking havok. Although it didn’t explore as many facets of the anti-superman story as they could have, it delivered on the promise of a really dark story in an effective and efficient manner. I really enjoyed it.

Score for Brightburn

7/10

Brightburn Spoilers

Who Would Like Brightburn?

Anyone that is a fan/tired of the superhero genre might get a kick out of this film. Horror fans will like the surprising amount of gore.

We watched Tetsuo, The Iron Man (鉄男　ＴＥＴＳＵＯ) on Shudder and jesus christ; I don’t have any words.

Tetsuo is a David Lynchian / Cronenberg-esque film that aims to disturb with intensity and extreme imagery. Everything about this movie is turned up to the max. It’s full of intense mutilation, body horror, and sexually provocative fetishization and imagery. I wouldn’t go so far as to call Tetsuo, The Iron Man a good movie, as I would call it an important movie.

With that being said, I found this unpleasant to watch in just about every way. There isn’t much dialog, the story is paper thin, and the intent is unclear. It is clear that there is a decent amount of symbolism here, or at least that people will reason that this movie is symbolistic. For me, it’s hard to tell whether writer/director Shin’ya Tsukamoto intended for the obvious symbolism, or whether he was banking on you wanting to read too far into it. It seems equally plausible to me that Mr. Tsukamoto has some crazy kinks, and needed to work them out on screen.

Tetsuo, The Iron Man Trailer

Tetsuo, The Iron Man Synopsis

Tetsuo is not an easily understood or interpreted movie, and it’s not supposed to be. The synopsis of Tetsuo seems to be that a man known as the “metal fetishist” (Shin’ya Tsukamoto) is obsessed with pushing pieces of metal into his body, which gives him some sort of high. At the start of the movie, he is getting off while pushing scrap metal into his legs and ends up running into the road in some metal obsessed stupor. At this point, a man credited as “salaryman” (Tomorô Taguchi) hits the fetishist while driving in his car with his wife or girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara).

The story
transitions to following the salaryman, who begins to notice metal objects
quickly taking over his body, which is alarming to him – shocking, I know. From
here it spins out of control, and the salaryman begins his rage and sex-fueled
journey into metal oblivion.

Tetsuo, The Iron Man Score

4/10

I feel that it is important to say that this is an important film.

For More Boundary Pushing, Check Out Our Review of The House That Jack Built!

Tetsuo, The Iron Man Spoilers

Inspiration for Tetsuo

Tetsuo felt heavily inspired by Eraserhead and also, meth. That is to say, I vividly remember the feeling I got when I saw David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and Tetsuo gave me many of the same feelings. It was also frantic from beginning to end, feeling almost like an hour long music video, constantly moving and changing frame – always moving to the next strange medium.

This was shot in black
and white on 16mm film with tremendous amount of intense lighting and with lots
of stop motion animation and special effects.

Troubles Shooting

Interestingly, this film
was just as hard to shoot as it was to watch – most of it was shot in Kei
Fukiwara’s (cast as “woman”) apartment. By the end of the production most of
the crew had quit or been replaced because the conditions were so atrocious.

Taguchi, who played salaryman, was one of the only crew members who didn’t live on set and he was quoted as saying:

“It was very tough so I quickly sensed that if you would stay with them all the time, you would inevitably get the urge to escape. So I figured that if I could keep some distance, I would be able to last much longer and keep a good relationship with them. It’s true that almost every day I went there another crew member would have left. One day I arrived at the house and the lighting crew had gone, so I had to do the lighting for Tsukamoto’s scenes myself. Toward the end, only the actors were still around. Nearly the entire crew had given up and left by then.”

-Tomorô Taguchi

Director Tsukamoto said years after shooting that he had contemplated burning the negatives of the film because it has been such a bad experience.

Like Disturbing? We Got You Covered With Our Review of Susperia(2018)!

Soundtrack and Audio Elements

This movie feels a lot like a music video partially because of the extremely grating soundtrack of industrial and metallic clanging that is constantly being piped into your ears. Strangely, near the start and end of Tetsuo, The Iron Man, there is a chill sort of jazzy number that is laid over some strange imagery. The jazzy number, ironically, is the one that’s totally out of place, and the industrial seems to fit right in with the theme.

Themes in Tetsuo The Iron Man

Rage and sexual frustration seem to be the mainstays and the feeling behind Tetsuo. Rage as a transformative force in the human body, and the desire to self destruct while watching the world burn with you is something that, I think, many can relate to.

One of the core components of Tetsuo, The Iron Man is the symbolism with technology taking us over. As we give ourselves to to technology we begin to lose control and morph with it into something wholly disgusting and non-human. Technology takes away the human aspects of us, like love and compassion and leaves only rage and sexual desire mixed with frustration. Pretty spot on for 1989.

Ultimately, Tetsuo, The Iron Man is a part of film history and a cult classic. While it didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before, the energy behind it is undeniable and intense. Everyone will have an opinion about this movie, and they will want to talk about it. For that reason, I enjoy the idea of Tetsuo and not so much the experience.

Like Sci-Fi? Here is Our Review of The Predator

Final Recommendations

This is not a movie that anyone I know will enjoy because it’s enjoyable. It’s good because it’s important, it’s good because of what it allowed to come after it. If that sounds like a checkbox that you are looking to fill, give this movie a go, if not, maybe watch something more breezy.

For Something More Breezy, Check Out Our Review of Happy Death Day 2 U!

Tetsuo on Youtube

Since there aren’t any new releases out this week, this week we are covering another listener suggestion. This one comes from Anthony F. in San Antonio, TX.

“I have listened to almost every episode. I dig what you guys are doing. keep up the good work.I would love to hear your take on Kuso, it’s available on shudder.

It is one of the most fucked up films I have ever seen.”

Anthony K.

We watched Kuso, and as advertised, it is the most fucked up movie I have ever seen. And I’ve seen The Peanut Butter Solution!

It is a Shudder exclusive. So if you are interested in seeing it after hearing our review, feel free to subscribe to shudder using the code HMT at checkout to get a 30 day free trial.

I found it surprisingly hard to give a summary of this film. Even on IMDB, it only has the following plot summary:

Events unfold after a devastating earthquake in Los Angeles.

IMDB

Kuso is a film directed by Flying Lotus, which is the stage name for Steven Ellison. It consists of 4 of what I hesitate to call, “Storylines” that are written by Steven, Zack Fox, and creator of salad fingers, David Firth. The plots of these vignettes are secondary to the surreal and disturbing imagery and production design of the whole affair. There is only one piece of trivia listed in IMDB for this movie:

Received a large number of walkouts at Sundance and was deemed in an article written for Verge as “The grossest movie ever made.

IMDB

The Four Story Lines in Kuso

• Royal: a young couple with some interesting Kinks
• Mr. Quiggle: an Up-and-coming female rapper “B” goes to an alternative medicine doctor
• Smear: a young man has digestive issues
• Sock: a woman in search of her lost child

But really replace all those story lines with poop and that’s probably a better description. I provide a more in-depth description of these story lines in the spoiler section further below.

The First Movie We Ever Reviewed – The Devils’ Doorway

Review of Kuso

This is a type of movie that is almost impossible to review. If you say it’s terrible, you aren’t hip enough, if you say it’s great, you’re a pretentious douche bag. It’s the type of film that you would find playing on a loop in a modern art museum. alternatively, it’s like a David Lynch student film project, but weaponized.

I’ll just say that I didn’t enjoy it, but I think that is kind of the point. This film is truly one of the most consistently, visceral disgusting films I have ever seen. Most of the film just wallows in its own filth, but there are some moments that stand out. First being the Mr. Quiggle story line featuring Zack Fox playing Manuel who is treated by Doctor Clinton, played by George Clinton. The second being the finale, which somehow ups the ante of grossness after an hour and a half of pure grossness.

Score for Kuso

2/10

Kuso Spoilers

Final Recommendations, “who would like this”

If you like looking at bathrooms featured in the show hoarders. If you like Harmony Korine’s films but wish they weren’t so “mainstream”.

Special Thanks for This Episode

• Brad K for becoming our first Patron
• “We shouldn’t be here” podcast for having me on as a guest and also supporting us on Patreon
• Anthony F for Suggesting that we watched Kuso.
• Dana C for giving us many suggestions for new games.
• Quin Mason for the Live Free or Die Hard intro music.

Bonus Videos Referenced in This Episode:

The Ruins is the ultimate 2000’s horror movie – way more budget than it’s worth, and interesting enough premise, and tons of schlock. It also stars the most notable nobody of any film ever, Jena Malone, whom you have definitely seen in something but probably can’t remember what. This is the most notable movie by director Carter Smith. I went into The Ruins movie remembering people calling it ‘distasteful,’ and I came out of it rather delighted.

The Ruins Movie Synopsis

The Ruins focuses on a group of five spring breakers in Mexico who wander off the beaten path and find more than they bargained for. The group gets wind of a hidden and archeological site where some Mayan ruins have recently been uncovered. They hitch a ride to a remote section of the forest and do everything in their power to find what was supposed to be kept hidden.

A group of locals has gone to considerable effort to keep
the path to the ruins hidden, but our bumbling crew of 20 somethings managed to
stumble their way onto a giant Mayan ruin, WAY out in the open, which is
covered intermittently with vines. Upon finding the ruins, the group is
confronted by a band of locals with guns who chase the group onto the pyramid
after one of them touches some of the plants that are growing on it.

The group tries to find the previous party whom they came to
unite with, and are met with a mystery along with a few human remains. As time
goes on, they start to realize that their GROWING desire to LEAF may not be as
FRUITFUL as the new ROOTS that they have laid down on their pyramid DIGS.

If that series of puns seemed stupid to you, good, that
should prepare you for this hokey thrillfest.

The Ruins Trailer

The Ruins Score

5/10

The Ruins

Watch it now or add it to your collection

Rent/Buy on Amazon

The Ruins Spoilers and Discussion

The premise behind The Ruins is as 2000’s era as you can get. Good looking party kids meet up with a foreigner from Munich, Mathias, (Joe Anderson) and decide to head way off the resort they are partying at to see if they can find Mathias’ brother. His brother is doing archaeology work and has found previously undiscovered Mayan ruins in the jungle.

Another Movie that Features Plants – Creepshow!

How Did The Ruins Stay Hidden?

I don’t understand how this site has remained undiscovered
because it’s not covered up by the jungle at all. Given the fact that Google had
maps in full swing by 2008, and government agencies had satellites capable of
seeing such ruins from space for many years before this movie, it’s unlikely
that this site would remain hidden from anyone. I guess that’s beside the
point.

The locals understand and respect the site and how dangerous
it is, because they guard it at all times, trying to keep the dangers of the
site from infecting the rest of the world.

When our party of kids, lead by the most prolific actress
you’ve never heard of Jena Malone (who plays Amy) runs into the ruins, they
also have a run-in with the locals.

The locals are extremely agitated and armed with bows, and guns, which they use to imprison the group of kids on the temple. They shoot the throwaway sixth member of the party Dimitri (Dimitri Baveas) after he touches the plants that surround the temple.

A key feature of the temple is at the top there is what
amounts to a hole to the center of the structure. On this hole, there is a
makeshift pulley system to drop people and gear down into the structure.
Presumably, this pulley system was set up and left by Mathias’ brother.

From within the temple the party, now trapped atop the
structure can hear a cell phone of the previous party ringing. This is
intriguing to the party because, of course, their cell phones don’t have
service out here.

One by one, the party succumbs to injuries and accidents
while trying to either escape the temple outright or retrieve the phone within.

Mathias Is injured while heading down into the temple, and
he ends up breaking his back.

Check Out Our Review of Greta

Stacy (Laura Ramsey) is sent down into the temple to try and help Mathias and ends up getting a pretty severe cut on her leg from a sharp object. Amy follows her to help try to get Mathias onto the makeshift gurney and hears the cell phone ring while she is down there.

At some point, the group tries to reason with the locals who are guarding them on the temple, and our main hunk, Jonathan Tucker (mah name Jeff) throws a chunk of vine at a local child. The vine hits the child in the chest and the locals quickly execute the boy. This does a great job at ramping up the stakes.

After dilly-dallying forever, they head back down into the
temple to find the cell phone, and Amy ends up in a small room covered in
vines. She is looking at the flowers all over the place, and suddenly, the
flowers scream at her in a way that, if flowers could scream, they would scream
like this. Turns out, the vines can mimic sounds they hear to lure people into
them.

The Ruins culminates with the party being encroached upon by these carnivorous mindfuck vines, and Laura (Laura Ramsey) has some interesting interactions with the vines growing inside her.

Ultimately, Amy ends up being the only one to survive and
get away.

While it’s not the best movie, The Ruins is fun enough, and it’s not bad, making it a totally average horror movie in my book.

Final Recommendations, “Who Would Like This Movie?”

If you are in the mood for some interesting body horror and
some laughs at a movie that takes itself way too seriously, this is it. It’s
not great, but it’s not terrible, and boy, it’s ironically funny.

In our Evil Dead (2013) Review we talk about how it is a great example of a horror remake done right. The bones of the original are still there, but Fede Alvarez creates something unique with this new film. While the original The Evil Dead is essentially a student film with a subversive streak, the 2013 Evil Dead is a high budget mainstream Hollywood horror movie with the gore turned up to 11.

Evil Dead 2013 Synopsis

The film is about a group of five friends that unwittingly summon ancient demons to a remote cabin in the woods that possess them one by one. Mia, a heroin addict played by Jane Levy, is the reason for the five of them being at her parents’ cabin in the woods. With the help of her brother David (
Shiloh Fernandez), his hotty girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), the brainy Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), and Nurse Olivia (Jessica Lucas), Mia is attempting to quit drugs cold turkey. This comes after a series of failed attempts and a particularly bad overdose where she actually died and had to be revived.

What none of them realized is that while the cabin was abandoned by David and Mia’s parents, it was broken into and used for a demonic exorcism. Left behind was an ancient Book of the Dead that has been wrapped in a garbage bag and barbed wire. Despite the safeguards and very obvious warnings written in blood, Eric, opens the book and proceeds to read an incantation that releases a powerful force of evil.

This evil first attacks and possesses Mia in the woods, and then one by one infects the other cabin dwellers, until only one remains…

Evil Dead Remake Review

Evil Dead is a remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 The Evil Dead. It keeps some of the building blocks from the original, like the Necronomicon, the cabin in the woods, and the five friends,  but this is definitely its own movie. The tone is dramatically different. While The Evil Dead is essentially a student film with a subversive streak, the 2013 Evil Dead is a high budget mainstream Hollywood horror movie with torture porn influences.

This movie, to me is an example of a remake done right. This isn’t just an attempt to rehash a script with a higher budget. This remake really does create something different from the same ingredients of the original. The story and visual elements that are taken from the original are respectfully handled and well integrated into the new version. I found the storyline of Mia attempting to quit heroin to add another dimension to the plot. It helps to define the characters through their relationship to Mia, and give the whole party a motive for being there.

The violence and blood is turned up to 11 in this movie and veers more towards the torture porn of the early 2000s. While there were some moments that were very disturbing, I thought it was artfully done and didn’t ever cross the line into tasteless or exploitative.

Overall, I really liked this movie, and I think it stands alone as a great horror movie

Evil Dead (2013) Score

8/10

Evil Dead (2013)

Watch it now, or add it to your collection.

Buy/Rent on Amazon

Evil Dead (2013) Spoilers and Discussion

Expand for Spoilers

The film opens strong with what we assume is a “final girl” being chased through the woods by hillbillies. They capture her and take her to a basement full of hanging dead cats.

We find out that among her captors is her father that reveals that she has killed her own mother. An old woman reads out of a ancient tome that the only way to save the young girls’ soul is to burn her alive right there. So they do.

It’s dark early in this film.

We are then introduced to the main characters, which are as follows:

• David (Dudebro)
• Eric (Nerd)
• Natalie (Hottie)
• Olivia (Nurse)
• Mia (Junkie/David’s sister)

The reason that they all go to the cabin is to help Mia quit opiates cold turkey. Mia’s drug addiction serves several purposes in this movie:

1. It allows for quick character development by showing each of their relationships and attitudes towards Mia and each other
2. It gives a good reason for them to all be in a super secluded cabin all together.
3. It gives Mia’s friends an excuse to themselves why Mia would be acting crazy.

When they arrive at the cabin, Mia notices a rank smell in the cabin, but the others don’t seem to notice or care. Soon they do investigate and find the scene of the burning at the beginning of the movie. Dead cats and all.

There among the swinging dead cats, they find a book wrapped in a garbage bag and barbed wire. Erik, curious about the obviously dangerous item, unwraps the barbed wire and bag to reveal a book bound with human skin. The Necronomicon.

Despite many obvious and ominous warnings from the text and notes in the book (writen in blood), Erik proceeds to read from the text and unwittingly releases an evil power into the world.

The evil presence attacks Mia in the woods by binding her limbs with vines and tree branches and raping her, it’s easier to show than describe:

https://youtu.be/s6lrBldtwVk

Mia comes back to the cabin and proceeds to vomit an obscene amount of blood onto Olivia.

This in effect infects Olivia who goes on to attack Eric after mutilating herself.

Natalie is attacked by Mia who has been shoved down into the cellar to protect the others. During the attack, Mia shows how crazy she is with this scene:

https://youtu.be/FHXzsBsOVjY

Each Cabin occupant is brutally attacked and infected in turn until only David is left. He saves his sister by burying her alive and then reviving her.

The reunion is short-lived because they are both attacked by Erik and Natalie.

The final scenes end in a blood bath. A literal rain shower of blood.

In the end, Mia gets away by wielding a chainsaw and cutting Natalie down the middle.

Listen to the podcast for more commentary.

Who would like Evil Dead

This film isn’t necesarily for all the fans of the original. This one is notably less goofy fun than the original trilogy. But if you are a fan of Modern Gore that has an actual story line with characters, you should enjoy this movie.

If you like horror movies set in the woods, check out our review on The Ritual available on Netflix.

Bonus Videos

David’s Metal Corner Suggestions

This week we saw The Curse of La Llorona and wow, what a disappointment. This is the only ghost who is 100% kept out by shutting the door or window. This movie could have been so much more than it ended up being, which is just another low effort, jumpscare factory. Even the jumpscares were boring and predictable. The Curse of La Llorona just wants to take your money and give you next to nothing for entertainment value. I don’t know a lot about Mexican folklore, but I don’t think that this does the actual story any justice at all.

The Curse of La Llorona Synopsis

The Curse
of La Llorona is directed by Michael Chaves and follows a family of three who recently lost their father, who
was a cop. Anna (Linda Cardellini) is the mom of Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen). Anna is also a social worker who works for CPS
in LA, and at some point, early in the movie, she receives a tip that one of
her cases is being handed over to her co-worker because she is too overburdened
by single-motherhood. She fights her boss for the right to check on Patricia
Alvarez (Patricia Velasquez) and ends up with more than she bargained for.

The Curse of La Llorona Trailer

Through a
series of boring events, Anna releases Patricia’s kids from a closet that was
protecting them and the kids are gobbled up by a deadish bride called La
Llorona.

Patricia
seeks vengeance on her caseworker, Anna, and prays to La Llorona that she take
Anna’s kids and return her own.

What
follows is a predictable and slow jumpscare movie that failed to make me care
about anyone at all. I would have been just as happy had La Llorona eaten the
whole family.

The Curse
of La Llorona Score

4/10

The Curse of La Llarona

Pre-order the Blu-Ray for your collection

Pre-Order on Amazon

The Curse of La Llorona Legend Facts

After doing some reading and checking out the Wikipedia article, I have
compiled the basics of the La Llorona Legend.

The Curse of La Llorona starts in 1673. The folklore for the
real story begins with a beautiful but poor woman named Maria. Maria catches
the eye of a wealthy man who decides to marry her, much to her chagrin, and
they build a life together, complete with two kids. As the man works in many
faraway lands, he frequently leaves for work, and each time that he does, he
becomes less interested in Maria.

Finally, one day he returns with a new wife and Maria is so
distraught that she takes her kids down to the river and drowns them to spite
her husband. She realizes what she did, and drowns herself. Upon trying to get
into heaven, she is told that she can’t get in until she finds her children and
brings them with her.

Check Out Our Review of a Legit Movie, Terrified

La Llorona is the ghost or spirit of this sad, crying woman,
who hangs out near rivers looking for her kids. She frequently mistakes other
kids for her own and drowns them upon realizing that they aren’t the right
ones, which seems extreme.

This is a pretty compelling folk tale that has been passed
down through many generations of Mexicans, to the point that I have found lots
of interesting comments about how people’s grandmothers would warn them about
going near the water for fear of being caught by La Llorona.

The Second Trailer

This is a great way to get your kids to respect the power of
rivers and bodies of water, by scaring the shit out of them.

Among her wails, she is noted as crying “¡Ay, mi
hijos!” which translates to “Oh, my children!” or “Oh, my
sons!” If you hear her crying, you are probably marked for death.

The Curse of La Llorona Spoilers

The movie starts in earnest in the 1970s in LA.

Anna is a caseworker and takes it upon herself to visit
Patricia Alvarez, who has her kid’s locked in a closet with a bunch of eyes
drawn on the door. She has Patricia’s kids taken into protective custody, and
Patricia is fit-to-be-tied.

While the kids are in some sort of CPS prison for kids, they
are haunted by La Llorona and are low-speed-chased down a series of corridors
by the ghost. This was a fairly effective spook within the movie.

Once Patricia’s kids are killed, Anna is called to the
“scene of the crime,” which is where the bodies were found, under an overpass
in the middle of the night. Because she is a single mother, Anna brings her
kids and does the most 70’s thing in this movie – leaves them in the car alone
with the doors locked.

Chris, Anna’s son, doesn’t follow instructions well, and
ventures out into the night to view the dead bodies. Of course, he meets La
Llorona, and she puts hands on him. The car scene, where the kids are holed up
in the car with the ghost trying to get in really works well.

The rest of the movie is a big mash-up of slow pacing and
predictable jumpscares that culminates in a showdown between a local shaman and
La Llorona in the families house.

Part of The Conjuring Universe

The Curse of La Llorona is part of the conjuring universe to
the extent that:

 Let’s say we are
watching a movie about the world’s greatest detective who solves street level
crime cases and whose parents were brutally murdered in front of him when he
was a child in a back alley after a show. The whole movie is about this
detective who likes to fight crime. We see him build a case; we watch him fight
with thugs.

For More Conjuring Check Out Our Review of The Nun

Then, about 66% of the way through the movie his butler comes into the room where he is reading a newspaper and tells him he needs to remember to eat while handing him a sandwich. As the detective puts down the newspaper to accept the sandwich, the audience gets to see a headline in the newspaper, which reads, “Superman saves Metropolis once again!”

Then our detective goes on to save the day, and we never see
or hear about Superman again. That’s the extent that The Curse of La Llorona is
in the Conjuring universe. They mention an evil doll who haunts people one
time.

Final Recommendations, “who would like this”

If you want to make out with someone in a darkened theater
and not care about what’s happening, The Curse of La Llorona is a great movie
for you. If you love the Conjuring universe so much that one, single mention of
Annabelle is enough to get you to sploosh in your pants, this is 100% your
movie.

The Work of Anthony Fountain – HMT Fan

In the podcast we talked a bit about Anthony Fountain and his insane talent with horror makeup. I’m always impressed anytime someone is able to make a living doing what they love – and how could you not love turning people into zombies at a theme park and working on movies/music videos?

Check out some of Anthony’s work with my assumed captions below!

Here is his music showcase on Youtube.

The Wind is a Western Horror movie that is a spiritual successor to The Witch. The harsh landscape and interpersonal paranoia are in the forefront of this tense thriller. We review the film and attempt to unravel the non-linear narrative to make sense of what actually happened to the four main characters.

The Wind Synopsis

The Wind is the first feature film for both the writer Teresa Sutherland, and the director Emma Tammi. It is a Western Horror film that tells the story of two young families living on harsh untamed Western frontier of the US in the 1800’s. Caitlin Gerard plays Lizzy Macklin, who with her husband Isaac (Ashley Zukerman) own a homestead on the windy, dusty plains. They are soon joined by a newlywed couple, Emma and Gideon Harper played by Julia Goldani Telles and Dylan McTee. The Harpers are out of their depth trying to survive in the unforgiving environment. Emma soon starts to show cracks in her psyche, and is driven mad by the pressure. When Lizzy starts to also experience some of the visions and unexplained phenomena described by Emma, she starts to question whether she is also going mad, or is it an actual evil presence seeking to destroy them?

Review of The Wind

Comparisons to the Witch are inevitable and apt with this movie. The harsh environment and the pressures of surviving off the land are basically a main character in both films. The trailer also makes comparisons to The Babadook. Being two of my favorite horror movies of the last decade, those comparisons made me set my expectations fairly high. The good news is that this film, for the most part, met my expectations.

It is a simple story injected with convincing human drama and told artfully through a non-linear narrative that keeps you engaged and on the edge. Coming from a first time feature film screenwriter and director, it’s actually really impressive how all the moving parts worked so well. You’re fed bits of information piece by piece, which lets you assemble the puzzle of the story’s timeline. Just enough information is withheld throughout to make you question whether the cause of all the trouble is simply paranoia and madness, or if it is an actual demon. The tone is set early with the first scene featuring a dead baby, and the menace is maintained throughout the whole movie.

The score and sound design are excellent, and scared me as much as the visuals did.

The film relies on inter-relationship drama, and psychological horror more than jump scares, but those are represented as well. It never quite reaches the greatness of The Witch, but the same thematic elements are represented very similarly here.

Score for The Wind Movie

Score 8/10

The Wind Horror Movie Spoilers

Click to Expand for Spoilers

Chronology of The Wind

Unraveling the timeline of the film is one of the engaging aspects of the film. Below I have to the best of my abilities tried to lay out the chronology of events in The Wind.

The first scene chronologically would actually be Lizzy being “haunted” alone in her own cabin. The wind knocks at door, blows out the candles, and generally terrifies Lizzy. All the while she is pregnant.

Next, Lizzy is comforted by Isaac and she gives the creepy eye to the camera.

Isaac sees that Lizzy has been reading the demons of the prairie book and burns it.

Isaac gives a shotgun to Lizzy to shoot demons

Macklins lose baby Samuel and bury him with the Bible.

The Harpers move in and the four of them all have dinner together. It is readily apparent that Emma and Gideon Harper do not get along well as newlyweds.

Read Our Review of The Meg

https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2018/08/24/the-meg/

Isaac makes good on his offer to lend Gideon some help and a plow. Emma has the hots for Isaac and seductively serves him some water.

Emma comes over in the rain and commiserates with Lizzy about how useless Gideon is as a homesteader.

Emma starts going crazy, hides under a bed and reveals to Lizzy that she’s pregnant. Lizzy drugs Emma and tells Gideon to tie her up.

Emma still tied to the bed recites demons to Lizzy, who then in turn tells Emma to calm down

Lizzy shoots Emma with the shotgun (in rain)

Lizzy goes home and sleeps, wakes up, throws up (in rain), takes medicine, falls asleep on some kind of bags.

Isaac and Gideon wake her on bags, and ask her to operate on Emma. Lizzy cuts out baby. This is actually the opening scene of the movie.

Lizzy is in the bath scrubbing to get Emma’s blood off her. Isaac comes in and lays down the shotgun and there is definitely tension in the air.

They bury Emma with her baby.

Read Our Review of The Little Stranger

https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2018/09/05/the-little-stranger-review/

Isaac and Gideon leave, Lizzy forgets that she shot Emma. Isaac off to get supplies and Gideon is going to sell and mve back home

As Lizzy is doing laundry alone, there is a wolf attack. When she comes out from the house, she finds a dead goat.

The next morning, Lizzy finds the goat alive and promptly shoots the goat. This kills the goat.

Lizzy goes over to Harpers, and a bunch of paranormal stuff happens. She reads Emma’s diary that says that Emma’s baby is Isaac’s. Lizzy immediately burns the pages and drugs herself to sleep with ether.

The Reverend arrives, and stays at the Harper’s empty house at Lizzy’s behest. The Reverend returns that night distraught, but is revealed to be a demon reverend. Lizzy is thrown around and haunted by the reverend and Emma.

Read Our Review of Spiral

https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2018/10/10/spiral-review-and-interview-with-robin-block-from-in-search-of-darkness/

The next morning, she finds the dead reverend and her bible that she buried with Isaac is waiting for her at her door.

Lizzy goes outside, puts the shotgun in her mouth, but then Isaac returns before she commits suicide.

That night, Lizzy is tormented again as she is tied to the bed by Isaac. She unties herself and is thrown around the room and accidentally stabs herself with some scissors.

Lizzy stabs Isaac.

Is Lizzy Insane or Is She Actually Tormented by Demons?

From the interviews with the writer, it is obvious that the reason that she wrote the script was because of the stories that she was told about women going crazy from seclusion out on the plains in the old west.

https://youtu.be/udLaE35CyDA

The actress that plays Lizzy also mentions that she plays a woman that goes insane.

So it is relatively safe to say that the hauntings and demons that we see are merely hallucinations.

Final Recommendations for The Wind (2019)

I highly recommend this film. It’s a very well constructed film with a unique setting and plot. The acting is really good, and the sound design is exceptional. If you like psychological horror and crave more films like The Witch, this is worth a watch.

Horror Movie Talk Episode 39: The Wind Review

Extras