Horror Movie Talk

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is available to stream on Amazon and is probably the weakest movie in the Paranormal Activity franchise. This is a Christmas horror movie as the whole thing involves a house with a Christmas tree in it. Let’s face it, that’s as close to Christmas horror as you should want to get. It does do that satisfying thing that all the Paranormal Activities do which is tie back into the others nicely.

If you want to watch Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

Remember Toby? The demon from the Paranormals is back in this movie, where he focuses on an entirely new family who bought a house that was built on the same site as the house from the third movie. The house from the third movie burned down, and this is what’s there now. This family has a child who becomes the focus of the demon Toby.

Watch Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension Full Movie

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Ghost Dimension was released in 2015, and it was the scariest thing of all…a 3D movie. They took a good premise and fucked it out, pretty hard.

My Rating

5/10

Quick Summary of Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension

Ghost Dimension stars a family of three: the dad Ryan (Chris J. Murray), mom Emily (Brit Shaw), five-year-old daughter Leila (Ivy George).

It starts light and ends heavy, like most Paranormal Activities. The family who lives in this palatial house is being visited by a super sexy family friend, Skylar, who parades her jubblies around like everyone’s business. Skylar is played by the stunning Olivia Taylor Dudley.

Check Out Our Review Of A Truly Scary Movie, Terrified!

Mike, Ryan’s brother who is fresh out of a long-term relationship, is also visiting the family during Christmas. Dan Gill plays Mike.

Ryan and his brother, Mike find a box outside while putting up Christmas lights. The box contains a bunch of VHS tapes and a souped-up video recorder that would make Doc from Back to the Future jealous. The camera allows the user to view the Ghost Dimension.

These tapes reveal a good portion of footage from the ’80s where the original sisters Katie and Kristi were used by the cult present in the third and fourth movie to foretell the future and communicate with Toby.

The Problems With Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

One of the many problems with this movie is that it focuses too much on boring 3D visual effects. There is a soupy 3D fog that the viewing audience is constantly forced into by whoever is piloting the ultra-camcorder. It’s supposed to be spooky but ends up being boring.

There are quite a few visual effects in this movie that are cool to look at, but not as effective as a real person standing over their significant other for three hours or more while they sleep at night. There is some goop that shoots from floor to ceiling, and some demon figures that zoom around so fast you can’t make out more than a blur of movement. Overall these effects don’t do a lot for Ghost Dimension.

Another issue that Ghost Dimension suffers from is showing the spook. The reason the Paranormal Activity series work is partially because you don’t get to see the spook, you just get the aching feeling that it’s there. The Ghost Dimension replaces the effective nothing, with a shitty something, and ruins the whole thing that made the series work in the first place.

Check Out Our Review Of Summer Of 84

As far as found footage goes, this is a pretty weak entry to the genre. They don’t use the stationary cams that made Paranormal Activity stand out as a series. Instead, they decided to go with, not a shaky cam, but a handheld camcorder. The dreadful feeling of being forced to look at a still frame for 15 seconds at a time is done away with and replaced with a format that tells you where to look instead of forcing your eye to find the action.

What Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension Does Right

Ghost Dimension does a good job of capitalizing on the story of the Paranormal movies. It’s eerie to see how the VHS tapes refer to the family in real time. Having a little girl in a pre-recorded VHS do live commentary on me watching TV would be enough for me to shit my pants, so I give Ghost Dimension credit for that.

It’s also part of one of my very favorite movie franchises of all time, so while I am able to really focus on the bad, overall it’s a solid “C” of a movie. It had a good budget and some decent acting.

If you are a sucker for found footage movies, The Ghost Dimension will be right up your alley. If you have friends who are very satisfying jumpers during jump scares, it will be fun.

If you want to watch Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

This week, we rented Silent Night, Deadly Night and to be honest, it might be one of my new favorite horror movies.

Silent Night, Deadly Night can be found for rent on Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, and VUDU. If you want to own the recently release Blu-ray edition, click through to Amazon.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is about a young man named Billy who witnessed the murder of his parents at the hands of a criminal in a santa suit. Since then, Billy grew up in a catholic orphanage where his traumatic childhood has been stringently repressed by the Mother Superior and has been imbued with a strict and black and white morality. Billy is still terrified by Santa even as an adult, but one fateful Christmas Eve, he is asked to be Santa Claus for the store he works at. That experience along with a series of events brings Billy to the point of a psychotic break, and he begins a killing spree dressed as Santa.

It’s awesome.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is the best version of this movie that I can imagine. The script is way tighter than it needs to be in terms of setting up and executing the major moving pieces of the plot. This is a exploitative slasher, that doesn’t have any delusions of grandeur, but is more enjoyable than most slasher movies I have ever seen.

Check Out Our Review of the New Black Christmas!

Billy’s character is terrifying as well as pitiable. Some of the killings have real weight to them, though most are as cheap as any slasher death. There is a lot of creativity is the methods of killing, and since you actually kind of care about the main character, there is a constant tension on how it will play out for him in the end. I highly recommend you watch it this Christmas Season.

My Rating

9/10

Watch Silent Night, Deadly Night

Silent Night Deadly Night Full Movie

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What works in Silent Night, Deadly Night

A lot of things work about this movie. As I stated before, the writing in this was way better than it needed to be. I expected a movie about a killer Santa to much lower effort and production value than this movie delivered. The motivations of Billy as he turns into a killer are logical and presented in a compelling way.

After getting scared by his grandpa about Santa and then having his fears confirmed by witnessing his parents’ death at the hands of Kris Kringle, he undertandable has some baggage about Santa. Not satisfied with that set up alone, the screenwriters augment Billy’s mental issues with Santa with a strict Catholic upbringing, including sexual shame. So needless to say, Billy is a ticking time bomb by the time he is an adult.

Another indication that the writing in this movie is of higher quality is that I actually cared about the characters. I cared about Billy and his fate because he was a three dimensional character. I also cared about some of his victims, especially Pamela, whose death seemed tragic in the moment.

The other thing I love about this movie is the original music. This is another example of demonstrated artistic care given to a movie that no one on the surface would take seriously. The original Christmas carols in particular are fantastic, and really add to the slightly off feeling throughout the movie. These Christmas carols sound deceptively cheery, but have weirdly ominous lyrics. Here is one that I’ve had stuck in my head ever since watching the movie:

I’m not a big fan of slashers, but I must say that I enjoyed the creativity of some of the deaths. I don’t think that Billy killed anyone the same way twice. We had:

• Christmas light strangulation
• Box cutter disemboweling
• Claw hammer to the head
• Arrow to the spine
• Stabbed with antlers
• Defenestration
• Axe beheading
• Axe to the Chest

Sometimes these deaths came from out of the blue, and were super effective.

What Didn’t Work

To be honest, there wasn’t really anything I didn’t like about this movie. I’m sure that others will point out bad acting, and exploitative nudity, but we’re talking about a slasher here. There are always some flaws that come with the territory with slashers. This isn’t high art, but it is entertaining, and Silent Night, Deadly Night is a higher quality slasher compared to most.

If you loved the story of Ralphie and his red ryder b-b gun in A Christmas Story, then you’ll love this other Christmas classic by Bob Clark. In Black Christmas, the Pi Kappa Sigma Sorority receives a strange and obscene phone calls during their Christmas party right before Christmas break. The reactions to the phone call range from disgust and offence to amusement. Barb played by Margo Kidder fires back her own obscenities in return, to which the phone call ends with a sobering “I’m going to kill you”.

Watch Black Christmas

Black Christmas Full Movie

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The faceless killer, which can be described most accurately as a maniac, then stalks and kills several inhabitants of Pi Kappa Sigma. The sorority tries to get the police to take them seriously when they can’t find a missing sister, but the police don’t take any action until a dead body shows up in the park.

There’s also a relationship storyline that you won’t care about.

Black Christmas Review

Black Christmas was an interesting movie, but not the most entertaining. There were a lot of firsts in this movie, and much better horror movies have stolen from it to greater effect:

• I believe it’s the first movie with the “The call’s coming from inside the house”, but is outdone by When A Stranger Calls
• It’s not technically the first first-person perspective for the killer, but definitely influenced the much better Halloween
• It was definitely the first “holiday” horror movie though.

With all these interesting first’s you would think that this would be great movie, but the sum is lesser than it’s parts and it ends up being rather dull. It’s not gory enough to satisfy the slasher connoisseur, and it’s not dreadful enough to be a great psychological horror; it’s just…ok at both. It’s dark and has a cinema verite feel to it, but it undercuts itself with clumsy attempts at humor. There are some things that work, mainly the phone calls and the cinematic treatment of the killer, but the main plot and the characters are just meh.

Check Out Our Review of Silent Night, Deadly Night!

Black Christmas can be found streaming on Shudder right now. If you don’t have a shudder account, use promo code HMT at checkout to get a 30 day free trial. You can also find it on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon. Be sure to click through the link on our website to support the show.

My Rating

4/10

Spoilers

You would expect a spoiler to be who the killer was, but in this movie, that is never revealed. The killer is presented as pretty much a crazy person that wandered into their attic off the street. In fact the killer’s face is never shown. It is easy to see how Halloween was originally written as a sequel to Black Christmas.

I guess one spoiler is that the killer is calling from inside the house, but given that you are shown that the killer is lying in wait in the attic the whole time, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Overall this was a pretty straightforward film. A killer kills off sorority girls, and more!

Is Black Christmas Worth Seeing?

Your mileage may vary, full disclosure, I was pretty tired when watching this one, so the 70’s pacing probably wore on me more than normal. The best part of the movie is the killer’s phone calls, but those may be best experienced in clip form so you don’t have to sit through the melodrama of the story line. However, if you are a horror academic and want to see an influential movie, this is a good choice for the holiday season.

The House that Jack Built isn’t getting a wide release until December 14th, but we went to a one night only showing of the director’s cut a month early at the Cinema 21 in Portland. So this is a rare instance where we can provide a review well in advance of a wide release.

The film tells the story of an unassuming, yet prolific serial killer named Jack. It’s told through a series of 5 short vignettes of some of his notable kills. It’s told over the course of 12 years from the mid-late 70’s to the mid-late 80s and takes place in the rural Pacific NorthWest of the United States. Jack’s nom de guerre is Mr. Sophistication, which he writes on the grisly photos he takes of his victims.

Watch The House That Jack Built

The House That Jack Built Full Movie

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Throughout the film Jack’s descriptions of his personal condition, problems and thoughts are told through a recurring conversation with the unknown “Verge”. Jack views himself as a sophisticated man and the story is told through his own mixture of arrogant and narcissistic sophistry.

The House That Jack Built Review

If that sounds like a pretty pretentious serial killer movie, well, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. The film is directed by Lars Von Trier, who also directed all of those art house movies you meant to see but never got around to. Jack is played by Matt Dillon, which is probably the best part of the movie. I thought he did a fantastic job portraying a psychopath pantomiming normal human facial expressions and when required had great comedic timing.

Jack acts as the films unreliable narrator, and tells the story of his failings and mental illness from his elevated perspective of himself and his “art”. Jack’s victims include the likes of Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan (that lady from MIB), and Riley Keough among others. The death scenes where genuinely disturbing, and acted as punctuation for Jack’s ruminations.

Check Out Our Review of The Dead Don’t Die!

I appreciated that they didn’t dwell on the fetishization of the killings themselves, they were handled more or less matter-of-factly which to me, makes them more impactful. It definitely delves into the distasteful and absurd with his storage and… use of the bodies.

I could see how this film could be viewed as too pretentious for it’s own good, but somehow it worked for me. We saw the director’s cut, so there was definitely some fat that could be cut to improve pacing and make it slightly less art-housey, but I found myself laughing and cringing at the right moments.

My Rating

7/10

Spoilers

This is a serial killer movie that definitely pushes the envelope. Many of the killing scenes seem a little too real, and feel a little like watching a sudden snuff film. Uma Thurman’s character all but dares Jack to murder her and he obliges. It’s almost expected. The other murders are expected, but what is surprising is their brutality and grotesqueness.

The point at which the film really changes tone is when Jack murders a small family on a supposed hunting picnic. Little does the woman and her children know that they are the ones hunted. The set up sounds like a generic 90’s thriller, but in this movie, it is a cold and brutal sequence where you get to experience the murder of children in the first person.

Then to double down on the tastelessness, Jack taxidermy’s one of the young boys to greet him for when he enters his body storage fridge.

If you’re like me and can compartmentalize this type of violence and can appreciate the absurdity and gallows humor of the likes of The Human Centipede, then this movie might be of interest to you. The eponymous house of this film is proof enough that Lars Von Trier isn’t as interested in high art as Jack “Mr. Sophistication” is.

Check Out Our Review of The Killing of a Sacred Deer!

The real spoiler to share is that the voice that we hear throughout the movie that accompanies Jack’s voiceover is none other than Virgil, the author of the Aeneid who reprises his role from Dante’s Inferno by leading Jack through the depths of hell. This is portrayed very literally in the epilogue, and is one of the most striking sequences in the film.

At times indulgent, the epilogue is a uniquely cinematic portrayal of a very mythic style of storytelling. It concludes with Jack faced with the choice of accepting his fate and living eternity in a slightly better hell, or tempting fate and falling into the deepest depths of hell. Given what we are told about Jack and his innate desire for self destruction and wanting to be caught, the choice is obvious, but also an effective moral bow to tie up the movie.

Is The House That Jack Built Worth Seeing?

I would say yes with the caveat that it isn’t for everyone. If you like your horror movies quickly paced, then move on. This one takes its time, but to sometimes excellent effect. If you have an art-house taste, this is right up your alley. In general it’s not great, but definitely better than average. Dillon’s performance is worth the price of admission, and the storytelling is unique and interesting given that the serial killer sub-genre can often be so stale and bland in its execution.

ALL HAIL NETFLIX! Now that we have that out of the way let’s talk about The Ritual, a Netflix original movie that was released on the streaming platform in February of 2018. I can’t believe that movies of this caliber, that is to say, theatrical release worthy movies, are created in the quiet depths of a streaming platform. I didn’t hear much about the production of this movie. Instead, it just showed up on my Netflix suggestion bar, and I watched it. There must be a better way to hype these things, right? Anyway, The Ritual is a well-done horror movie that capitalizes on the natural spookiness of camping and the woods.

The Ritual Trailer

I don’t know if you are a camper, but I am. For years I worked a job that had me camping for a good portion of the year as I maintained trails in a National Forest. I got quite used to camping in the backcountry, but the thought never left some primordial part of my brain, “What if something was out there?”

Read the Book The Ritual is Based on

The Ritual Full Book

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The Ritual is very good at capitalizing on this fear of the dark, quiet, forest primeval. It’s the best thing that this movie has going for it – it’s also what makes me a little angry at The Ritual. I enjoy camping – I don’t want potential campers to be too scared to miss the greatness of the outdoors.

Before I launch into the review, I want to use The Ritual as an example of a trend I’ve come to expect in horror movies – predictable titling. Horror movie titles have devolved a bit from something interesting like Friday The 13th, or A Nightmare on Elm Street to something extremely cookie-cutter-ish:

• The Ritual
• The Strangers
• The Conjuring
• The Wailing
• The Ring
• The Grudge

Do you see a through-line here? Just something that has been niggling at me. Bring back the interesting titles. The one-word titles and the “The” titles are effective but played out.

Back to The Ritual review!

Quick Summary of The Ritual

The Ritual starts off with some old college friends who are having a night out on the town in England (their home). As they leave the bar, two of the five head into a liquor store to grab something to make night-caps with and find themselves in the midst of a robbery. Our protagonist, Luke (Rafe Spall) hides while his friend is beaten brutally and killed for not producing his wedding ring.

Fast forward a year. The four remaining friends, Luke, Phil (Arsher Ali), Hutch (Robert James-Collier), and Dom (Sam Troughton) decide to go on the hike that their dead pal would have wanted to go on with them – the Kings Trail in Sweden. As they head down the trail, Dom sprains his leg in a frighteningly realistic portrayal of the kind of dumb movement it takes to sprain your leg.

Another Great Netflix Horror Movie – Birdbox!

The group argues and squabbles until they decide that going off-trail and cutting through the forest would be faster than, you know, being smart and staying on the trail.

Once they enter the forest, things break down. It’s a scary forest. It’s got plenty of shots over overly-dense trees with something moving ever so slightly in the distance. It’s got abandoned cabins and all sorts of effective tropes.

Throughout The Ritual, Luke is plagued by vivid waking dreams where he is forced to relive the fearful night where his friend was killed, and he stood by doing nothing.

My Rating for The Ritual

7/10

This is on the low side of the seven spectra. It is a serviceable horror movie and has a lot going for it regarding production and acting. The script and character development are a bit clunky at times. The four friends argue so much that it prevents any real introspection or interesting character developments from taking place. However, I give The Ritual some leeway in this script and character development department because the panic that would be present in the circumstances that it places these four guys in could easily produce these, somewhat bothersome yelling matches.

Spoilers for The Ritual

This movie will totally cut it for a fun night of terror. If you are looking to sit down and have something suck you in, tumble you around and spit you out, this is it. In the long-run, this isn’t a game changer. I do expect it to age well and be added to the list of perfectly acceptable and effective horror movies.

If you prefer the monster to stay hidden, as I do, you will be disappointed by The Ritual. It has a big, scary, moose monster with a roast turkey for a head. When the remaining two guys stumble upon a village within the forest, they learn that the village is held captive by the moose monster, which is described to them as being a god. Everyone who lives in the village bears the mark of this beast and is expected to worship this moose monster.

Check Out Our Review of Mandy!

The vibe I got was that this was a metaphor for fear. The monster chose people who had very intense fear and regret to worship him. The metaphor being, fear can rule your life. Eventually Luke faces his fears, stands up to the monster and finds his way out of the woods.

Is The Ritual Worth Seeing?

Yep, you should watch it. Solid horror movie that leaves you with a little bit of something extra to think about at the end. How does fear affect your day-to-day life? Does fear control you, make you worship it? It’s part of what I like about horror movies, I get to stand up to something scary and see how I fare against it.

You might not want to camp after this.

What Do You Think? Leave A Comment Below

How do you think The Ritual Stacks up? Leave a comment below and let us know!

If you want to watch Hereditary, please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

If you haven’t seen Hereditary, and you are reading this, STOP! Watch the movie. It’s available to stream on Amazon.

I don’t want to argue about this, go now, watch it. Here is the trailer:

You should go into this movie knowing nothing about it. I say this with certainty because I went in to see Hereditary without knowing a darn thing about it, and it was a transcendent experience. I didn’t know it was a horror movie; I didn’t know it was about interpersonal relationships, I didn’t know anything. That’s a slight lie; I knew that the movie had a very disturbing scene that polarized viewers and made many walk out of movie theaters.

Ari Aster, the director, has made a masterpiece.

I go into most movies knowing almost nothing about them. I don’t seek out trailers. I don’t look for release dates, which has had to change a little bit given the launch of this site and the podcast. I went into this movie knowing nothing, and it made for the wildest ride I could have possibly imagined. The build in tension, the crumbling family relationships, the fact that you can see and understand every major character’s point of view even though they are wildly conflicting – this movie is a high water mark in horror and for cinema in general.

My Rating

10/10

Hereditary will be so uncomfortable for some that they will generally find it distasteful. This is not a jump scare horror movie. This is an Exorcist, a Rosemary’s Baby, a Psycho.

Spoilers

There is so much to this movie that one watching isn’t enough. Everything about Hereditary is intentional and of the highest quality. The writing, the characters, the acting, the sets, the tension – it’s all great. The more I watch it, the more I realize how rich the world that they have crafted is and how it turns Hereditary into an experience instead of just another movie.

I’m not going to go in-depth with the spoilers here because it just wouldn’t do the movie justice. There is a version of this story that I think would make a powerful novel, but so much of the integral parts of this movie are based on visual keys and clues that I think that film is where this story was meant to be. If you want spoilers on this movie, listen to our podcast, we will be diving deep on this one.

The story is centered around Annie (Toni Collette), her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), son Peter (Alex Wolff), and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro). It starts following the death of Annie’s mother, who as it turns out was controlling and terrible to her family.

Toni Collette is a tour de force in this movie. Her acting is so impressive, her emotions so raw that you really can’t help but empathize with her even when she is clearly circling the drain and moving toward a mental break.

There are two reasons Hereditary is so effective the first of which is it primarily focuses on a normal family unit, who thanks to circumstances beyond there control, is thrown into extreme strife. Everyone has faced familial issues, but the ones in this movie are your worst nightmare – the things you hope never to have to experience.

The second reason Hereditary is so effective is that despite that fact that each family member is essentially pitted against the others, you can see all of their points of view very clearly. As a viewer, you understand and empathize with every family member in this movie. You have experienced every niggling bit of anger, guilt, love, and miscommunication that Hereditary throws at you.

You’ve been the guilty son or daughter, you’ve worried about your kids or family members, you’ve hated them at times and felt the guilt that hatred brings.

As a horror movie, Hereditary starts out as a single note of dread in an echo chamber – slowly, the note builds in volume and is joined by more notes until you are overwhelmed. If the title weren’t “Hereditary,” it could have easily been “Dread.” There are no real jump scares. Instead, it relies on tension, time, and toying with your emotions to achieve something far more effective – something that sticks with you for weeks after watching.

Most modern cinematography has ditched the long, well-crafted panning shots in favor of cuts and close-ups. In this movie, you see a bit of a return to the well-crafted scenes and long panning shots that made movies like Psycho great.

Is Hereditary Worth Seeing?

Let’s put it this way. A large part of the reason this podcast exists is that of the energy that Hereditary gave to Bryce and me. We saw it with Bryce’s friend Kevin whom I had met minutes before the movie started. After the movie, which was the late showing, we saw fit to sit down at a bar and have drink so we could discuss this movie. Every time I saw Bryce after that, we couldn’t help but gush over how it was still in our heads.

At this point, I’ve hyped it too much, which is what I tend to do. I’ve shown this movie to a few people, and not everyone agrees with me on it. As always, let us know what you think about Hereditary in the comments section, or on social media!

If you want to watch Hereditary, please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Simon Morkvenas for editing this episode out of the kindness of his heart.

If you want to watch Overlord, please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon linkto help us support the podcast.

Overlord was fun, very loud, and not to be taken too seriously.

Overlord is a fun action-horror movie with intense emphasis on disturbing body horror and super stereotypical Nazi bad guys.

It’s got everything you need for an action movie – incredible sound, crazy intense physical fights, gun battles, chase scenes, you name it. It also has plenty of disturbing imagery that works well and makes you say, “Boy, those Germans sure were mean dudes!”

All the elements to make this a “fun horror movie,” are present. Overlord provided me with all my favorite things – WWII, Nazi killing, fun horror, drugs, and a decently tight script.

Overlord is a movie about a few American paratroopers in WWII dropped behind enemy lines in France. Their mission is to destroy a radio tower in a church that has been occupied by the Germans and converted into a radio tower, and much more.

The main character is named Boyce, played by Jovan Adepo, who is English. His superior is named Ford; I’m sorry I don’t remember the rank. Ford is played by the dreamy Wyatt Russell. They are joined by the most stereotypical set of WWII companions that you can imagine, including Tibbet – the most NY Italian American I’ve ever seen. Tibbet is played by John Magaro.

Eventually, they bump into the sexiest French girl I’ve ever seen, Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) who helps them in their journeys to kill Nazi’s and do drugs.

Overlord is Produced by J.J. Abrams, and it feels like it. It was directed by Julius Avery, who is relatively unknown.

Rating

7/10

Spoilers

This movie starts with one of the most intense action sequences I’ve ever seen. The plane trip to the drop zone the night before D-Day, which quickly turns into a fight for life. I can honestly say that I haven’t seen such an intense action sequence in movie theaters since Saving Private Ryan.

Overlord is a great movie to see in theaters because of how incredibly loud and violent it is. Everything about this film screams, “great theater experience.” Head to a theater with a confirmed great sound system to get the full experience.

The good portion of the movie is spent inside Chloe’s house where her suspiciously sick aunt and cute little brother live. In this house, we learn of Chloe’s rape relationship with a Nazi SS leader, Wafner (Pilou Asbaek). We also learn about how deep the evil of Nazis run when the little boy rolls his baseball to a Nazi soldier. The soldier picks up the ball, sneers, and hocks a big loogy on it before throwing it back to the kid. What an inhuman monster!

This brings up an interesting observation – we all hate Nazis. They are bad. Overlord gives us a look, although maybe a slightly exaggerated one, at the thing we should hate. Intolerance and hatred incarnate. Maybe Overlord gives us something to unite under, a vision of what we should strive not to be. Plus, Overlord slaughter’s Nazis and zombie Nazis in massive quantities, so there’s that.

As our American protagonists fight their way to the church, they learn about fiendish experiments that the Nazis have been conducting on the dead, bringing them back to life with some sort of drug they have been extracting from underneath the hallowed ground of the church.

Eventually, they get their hands on the drug, run some experiments of their own, and find out that it brings the dead back to life and makes a living into superhumans.

Is Overlord Worth Seeing?

If you enjoyed Wolfenstein in any capacity, you would like this movie. If you love action, this is a great movie. If you are looking for lots of body horror, this is your thing. If you are looking for a deep, think piece, this isn’t your deal. If you want historical accuracy, this probably should be avoided.

If you have a killer sound setup at home, you must test it out with Overlord.

Horror Movie News

Check out the silliest Vogue article ever, where Taylor Antrim suggests that 2018 was tame on horror. More importantly check out Brad Miska’s Bloody Disgusting article that slams Taylor for such ignorance.

Finally, get excited for the most fucked up holiday movie trailer I’ve ever seen, Hanukkah.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4dNdUGbhjY8

If you want to watch Overlord, please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

If you want to watch Suspiria (2018), please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

We went and saw Suspiria, and there is a lot to unpack with this one…

Suspiria takes place in the politically tumultuous 1977’s Berlin and follows a young woman, Susie Bannion, played by Dakota Johnson, seeking out her dream to dance in the famed Tanz Dance Academy under her idol Madame Blanc, played by Tilda Swinton.

Not everything is right in the dance academy. The movie opens with a frantic and distressed dancer Patricia, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, visiting her psychiatrist, Dr. Josef Klemperer, played by…Lutz Ebersdorf (We’ll get to him later).

Patricia’s frantic and panicked statements about the academy come off as schizophrenic and delusional to Dr. Klemperer, but are an omen of things to come. We find out that the dance studio is undergoing a crisis of leadership as the company is split between having the unseen founder, Helena Markos, continue as the president (?) or Madame Blanc, the artistic director.

As Susie gets integrated into the dance studio and quickly ascends to the principal dancer, Dr. Klemperer and another dancer named Sara, played by Mia Goth investigate what is going on at Tanz Dance Academy.

This is undeniably a good movie, but depending on your tastes and comfort level, it might not be worth seeing. David was HIGHLY disturbed by this movie.

The film deals with many different concepts at once, and features many concurrent protagonists, so there is a lot going on at the same time. At 2 hours and 32 minutes, there is plenty of time to explore the characters and themes, but I still came away with questions about what exactly I just witnessed.

While trying to navigate the labyrinthian plot, the viewer is exposed to some of the most disturbing body horror in recent memory. The film is very dark, paranoid, and nihilistic.

The acting is superb, and fills in the gaps of the script, that really doesn’t do you a lot of favors in spelling out what is going on. It is a very effective film and should stick with you and give you plenty to talk about with your friends.

The production design and music are very strong in this movie, even though they may disappoint fans of the original 1977 Suspiria. The production design reminded me of the “Cheer up Charlie” part of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The music is sparse but matches wonderfully with the movie. The score is the first by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, who now joins bandmates Johnny Greenwood and Phil Selway as film composers. I may be biased because Radiohead is my favorite band, but I think the music is a great match for the visuals.

Rating

8/10

Spoilers

One of the first things to call out, and this isn’t really a spoiler about the movie, but more a spoiler about the production: Tilda Swinton Plays 3 roles in this movie.

Dr. Klemperer is credited as being played by Lutz Ebersdorf. Ebersdorf roughly translates into “swine town” which is a play on Swinton. Swinton in interviews has stated that she did not play Dr Klemperer, but when questioned about whether she played Lutz Ebersdorf, she confirmed that she in fact did.

The allusion to witchcraft in the first scene of the movie doesn’t take very long to be confirmed in the movie. We see that there are supernatural forces at play in the Tanz Dance Academy, and from appearances, Susie Bannion is all on board.

Like I said before, the body horror in this film is intense. Early on in the film, as Susie is volunteering to dance the lead in the company, the dancer that she is replacing is meanwhile trapped in a mirrored dance room and tossed about by an unseen force.

Tossed about is putting it lightly. I’ve seen McDonalds wrappers treated with more respect than this poor girl. I don’t want to completely spoil it, but here is a reaction video to give you an idea of how you might react.

The finale of the film comes right after the performance of the dance that has been rehearsed throughout that we find is more of a grooming ritual for Susie. After the performance, everyone is led down to an underground lair to perform a Black Sabbath ritual to revive/reincarnate Mother Suspiriorum.

It is assumed that Helena Markos will be revived from her degraded state (read zombie Frankenstein state) and be the Mother of sighs herself. What we see instead is a virtual bloodbath. Susie takes her place as Mother Suspiriorum and the movie ends with the only witness’ memory wiped.

If you want to watch Suspiria (2018), please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

You wanted to know a bit more about your Horror Movie Talk hosts, David Day and Bryce Hanson, so here it is. First of all, we love horror movies – but why we love them is important. In this episode, we delve into what drove us to our horror movie addictions, share some of our horror tastes, and our top five favorite horror movies. Happy Halloween 2018, be safe and have fun!

What Got David Into Horror Movies?

As a kid, I lead a fairly sheltered life, especially when it came to what I got to watch. I remember begging my mother to let me see Jurassic Park in the 2nd grade because I always loved dinosaurs. I saw it in theaters, on opening night with a friend and it blew my mind. I was instantly hooked. The terror in that movie for a sheltered 2nd grader was high, and I loved it.

I remember waking up early quite a bit when I was very young and catching some messed up movies at 4 am on some subscription channel. One of those movies was Frankenhooker, which did a number on me. Frankenhooker had sex, violence, nudity, profanity, drug use, lewd and lascivious acts, you name it. I still carry the scars that Frankenhooker gave me. Watching it now, it’s mostly a shocking comedy, but the damage has been done.

I found myself bored quite often and things like horror movies, sci-fi, and fantasy made life a little less common.

Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, along with The Muppets were always in high demand in my house as a kid, and gave me a strong love for practical effects, as well as puppetry.

David’s Horror Movie Taste

I love tension and suspense. I like movies that build tension and dread steadily throughout the movie. The more dread, the better. Psychological horror and supernatural horror work well for me.

I don’t usually love slashers. Something about knowing the cadence of the movie before I start makes it markedly less enjoyable for me.

David’s Top 5 Horror Movies

In no particular order, my top five favorite horror movies are:

The Witch: A family in 1630’s America is cast out of their community and left to fend for themselves on the outskirts of the forest primeval with only their belief in God to protect them. As it happens, God does not have the power to save them, and it’s dreadfully horrifying. This is a perfect horror movie in every way. The suspense, the acting, casting, concept, execution – flawless.

Hereditary: It just doesn’t get much more intense than this. I’ve never been nailed to my seat like I was during this movie. Prepare to care deeply about a family that is put to the ultimate test. Don’t learn anything about this movie, just watch it. This has replaced There Will Be Blood as my favorite movie of all time. Greif, terror, disbelief, tension, perversion – it’s all here. *click*

Alien: This movie could have been made yesterday, that’s how well it works and how good it looks. Alien is a quintessential horror classic that deserves every bit of praise that it gets. It’s isolating, quiet, loud, completely alien in every way. This movie never gets old and will always be effective. If you ever find yourself in an argument where someone suggests that CGI is better than practical effects, show them, Alien.

John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) plays on human psychology in a way that few movies do. Pair that with the most impressive practical effects ever, and you have a long-standing classic movie. Kurt Russell, playing a man’s man in Antarctica pouring whiskey on a chess computer? Hell yeah!

Paranormal Activity (the whole franchise): This works so well for me that I had to include it. I dare you to watch that trailer and not get chills! This franchise is great because it does so much with so little. There is nothing scarier than having a demon attach itself to you and follow you wherever you go. Don’t believe me? Watch Paranormal Activity!

What Got Bryce Into Horror Movies?

I also grew up in a relatively sheltered situation. I grew up Mormon, and for the most part Mormon kids and even adults made it a point to avoid Rated R movies. However, my parents were rebels and allowed us to watch Rated R movies after we got to a reasonable age. I’m pretty sure my first Rated R movie in the theater was Red Heat, which would have made me six years old at the time. That actually sounds kind of crazy to me now.

Anyway, my parents were pretty lenient up to a point. As long as it was Rated R for violence and not sex, it was usually fine.

My entry into horror movies came through the IT tv movie in the early 90’s. I think I caught bits of it when it aired, but it always greeted me at the video rental store and made me think of scary clowns. I didn’t watch a lot of horror movies, but I would always be curious about the scary VHS covers that I walked by at the store. The cover of Ghoulies in particular scarred me mentally and was the cause of many a hurried flushings.

The biggest influence on my taste in horror movies early on, came from television. I was a big fan of the show Sightings, which aired on Fox on Friday nights. It was a show about the paranormal, UFOs, ghosts, and other spoops that went creak in the night. I ate that stuff up. Me and my group of friends would have sleepovers and kick it off with an episode of Sightings. I remember when they canceled it, I was mad that they were going to replace it with some procedural FBI show. But boy was I wrong, because the replacement was The X-Files, became one of my favorite shows ever. Also, honorable mention goes to Unsolved Mysteries, as another show that delved into the paranormal and mysterious.

When I got into my pre-teen to teen years, that same group of friends would make it a ritual to rent one blockbuster movie, and one shitty movie to make fun of. Most of those shitty movies ended up being Full Moon productions. We ended up having a lot more fun making fun of the crappy horror movies than watching the latest Hollywood action movie, so that quickly transitioned into renting two shitty horror movies.

Around that same time, we watched a lot of zombie movies and some of the classics.

Bryce’s Horror Movie Taste

My preferences in horror movies are more towards relatable and story/character driven films. I like movies that revolve around family based hauntings, like Paranormal Activity, or Poltergeist. I like movies that deal with religious or devil stuff like The Exorcist and The Witch. I prefer a slow pace that builds up suspense like Get Out or Rosemary’s Baby. On the other side of the spectrum, I also like horror movies that feature over the top tastelessness like Hostel or The Human Centipede. I think that’s a hold over from my Full Moon days. Finally, I like horror comedies that are genre commentaries like Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil and The Cabin in the Woods.

Bryce’s Top 5 Horror Movies

So with that being stated, lets delve into my top five horror movies. I don’t have a particular order, but I can say which one is my favorite. That would be…

The Exorcist

A young girl is possessed by an evil pressence, and the priests sent to perform the exorcism find themselves out of their league.

This one pretty much checks all the boxes. Family based. Religious. Slow burning. Over the top tastelessness. I fell in love at first viewing.

Hereditary

A family mourns the loss of their grandmother, and then all hell breaks loose.

This is the one that both me and David agree on, and is the reason why I knew we could talk about horror movies for hours on end in a podcast. Again, family, devil shit, slow burning, it hits all the boxes. This one is definitely a modern masterpiece. I have confidence that this isn’t just recency bias. It has an amazing script, superb acting, and great directing. This one blew me away, and I’m glad I dragged David to it. You can Watch the trailer above in David’s top five section.

The Blair Witch Project

Three young independent documentary filmmakers go into the woods, and never return…

This movie is the most influential found footage horror movie, and truly group breaking at the time. The real genius of this film was the marketing around it which really blurred the lines about whether it was a true story or not. Nothing can match the experience of seeing it in the theater with a group of people, and repeated viewings are all but a waste of time, but this one definitely sticks with me.

The Human Centipede

An evil scientist traps unwitting victims for his insane science experiment…

This movie, to me, is the pinnacle of glorious tastelessness. I can’t get enough of the evil scientist in this movie. It is like a 1950’s B-movie that you would find being roasted on MST3K was sewed onto a modern torture porn against it’s will. The best thing about it, is it is played completely straight.

The Haunted (1991 TV Movie)

A family and grandparents move into a duplex together and slowly find out they aren’t the only ones living there…

Ok, this is my hipster pick, but I genuinely love this movie and think about it as a touchstone for all other family hauntings I have seen since. It really is great despite the budget and 90’s feel. I stumbled upon this on the Sci-Fi channel back in the day, and loved how relatable the family was. I also loved how the unexplained phenomena began as innocuous and confusing, then quickly ramped up to nefarious and frightening. Yes, there are other more famous family haunting movies, but this one was the first that I came across that really felt really believable. The special effects are not great, but they do force your imagination to fill in the gaps, and sometimes it ends up being more effective than big budget movies like Poltergeist.

As my gift to you, here is the whole movie in potato quality on YouTube:

If you want to watch Halloween (1978), please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

John Carpenter’s original Halloween released in 1978 is a pillar of the horror movie genre. Halloween helped to pave the way for slashers and created tropes and techniques that are still used to this day to great effect. When it comes to fun, seasonal horror movies, you can’t do much better than this. Today Halloween still stands up on its own but benefits greatly from a form of nostalgia that I have a great deal of respect for.

Halloween focuses on three main characters – Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) who is the virgin teen in distress, Loomis (Donald Pleasence) who is The Shape’s head doctor, and of course, Mike Meyers AKA The Shape (played by seven different actors). By today’s standards this movie is quite slow-paced, but if you feel like you can trade in the pacing for nostalgia and sleepy Midwest towns with old-fashioned values, you probably won’t regret it.

I had not seen this movie in ages, so when I learned that The Kiggins Theater in Vancouver, WA was having a showing of it the Friday before halloween, I knew we had to go. Seeing this on the big screen with a bunch of horror movie fans was the best part of this movie for me so that I may be a little drunk on the ambiance, but I will try not to let it taint my review.

My Rating

8/10

If you haven’t seen Halloween (1978), you really should. It’s just good, old-fashioned, stabbing the way your mom use to serve it up.

This is the movie that created the stamp that we commonly refer to today as slashers. If you have seen a slasher, it was influenced by this, and the spoilers section probably won’t be too much of a spoiler after all.

I like to think about the audience in 1978 who paid to see this at the theater and consider what kind of experience they probably had. Were there movies like this previously? Yes, kind of – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) were similar in style but not nearly so successful as Halloween.

The musical score is iconic and created a style unique to horror movies where the audio track truly became part of the scares.

Other Halloween Movies We’ve Watched

• Halloween II (1981)
• Halloween III Season of the Witch
• Halloween (2018)

Spoilers

The movie starts with the camera in the perspective of a young (six years old?) Mike Meyers stalking around the outside of his own house, peeping on his sister and her boyfriend as they make out on the couch. As things get hot an heavy, the couple decides to take things upstairs, and Mike heads into the house, grabbing a gigantic kitchen knife on his way.

A laughably short amount of time passes before the boyfriend, now done with his romantic endeavors, decides to head home, walking by a hiding Michael on his way out the front door. Michael heads upstairs, dons a mask, and proceeds to stab his sister to death brutally. The intro ends with Michael in the front yard holding the knife as his parents come home to find him with a cold look of bewilderment.

The Movie skips forward in time 15 years to October 30th, 1978 when Dr. Loomis is driving to the mental hospital to visit his pet project, Michael. It’s a dark and stormy night, and upon arriving at the hospital gates, Loomis and his passenger realize that the mental patients have flown the coop. Mental patients are wandering through the stormy night, and as Loomis gets out of the car to check the gate, Michael attacks his female companion, steals the car and drives off into the night.

At this point, we join Laurie in her hometown or Haddonfield, which just-so-happens to be the town where Michael grew up. Laurie is a high school aged girl who doesn’t do very well with the boys but babysit quite a bit. She does all the things teenagers tend to do with her girlfriends, smoke pot, drink and carve pumpkins on Halloween.

Michael enters sleepy little Haddonfield with Loomis hot on his trail and proceeds with his killing spree. Most of the victims are nude, near nude, and female. He is unstoppable, slow, and very hard to get a read on as he never speaks.

Is Halloween Worth Seeing?

Halloween has enough fun and funny moments to make this movie charming in a lot of great ways. The feel of Haddonfield is perfect, the characters are fun and believable, and if you enjoy peeping at the house across the street, this is simply a hole in one. The acting in this is very good, and the characters are enduring.

Halloween does a great job of setting the stage for the genre and giving everyone who follows it something to shoot for. Panic, jump-scares, the lone virgin, it all starts here. Watching Halloween during the fall is a must. Watching Halloween any other time of the year is similar to Christmas addicts listening to jingle bells out of season – it brings you back to where you want to be.

If you want to watch Halloween (1978), please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.