Horror Movie Talk

I had a lot of fun watching Creepshow (1982). It’s presented in an entertaining way, has a ton of big names, and if you aren’t into the story, you can wait 20 minutes and see a new one because it’s a compilation of five horror stories. This was the only George A. Romero film to open at number one in the weekend box-office. It was a sleeper hit in theaters, and its charm is mostly to blame.

Creepshow Trailer

Creepshow is a cult classic that has remained low on horror fan’s collective radar since it was released. It was directed by the great and powerful George Romero and written by Stephen King, so it already has a huge amount going for it. Add to it a cast that includes Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, Ed Harris, Adrienne Barbeau, and Stephen King himself, and you have a horror gem.

Creepshow is comprised of five short horror stories that are each compelling and envelope-pushing and memorable. The acting is hammy, the actors are having fun, the stories are spooky but not hard to handle for the easily spooked horror fan. This movie is like a trip down to nostalgia town. Creepshow is a fun, funny, and scary movie that I had not seen before this, and will now revisit year after year.

My Rating

8/10

While Creepshow is an excellent example of a cult classic, it’s too light and breezy to be much higher than an 8/10.

Spoilers

Creepshow is presented in a comic book format. They do some interesting paneling shots where the video is shown in the same way that a comic book panel would be presented. The motif is made to look eerily similar to the classic comic titles, Eerie and Creepy did, almost down to the T. It’s clear that these comics made a big difference in Stephen King’s childhood, and probably Romero’s as well.

This was Stephen King’s screenwriting debut, and it’s pulled off without all the confusing bullshit that is known to accompany much of his writing.

Father’s Day

The first of the stories that Creepshow has to offer is titled, “Father’s Day” and is the story of a well-to-do family who is reprehensible human beings whom each get their comeuppance.

The dead father was killed by his daughter, Bedelia, on Father’s day while being a real jerk to her. The rest of the family is rich and living off of daddy’s fortune. On this Father’s day, dad comes back from the grave to exact revenge on his ungrateful and equally terrible kids.

Father’s Day presents a bit of a lesson to the audience, which I took to be, you get what you give. Alternatively, don’t be a dick, especially when family is involved.

Check Out Our Review of Gremlins!

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill

The second story is titled, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”, which is based on the short story “Weeds.” This is a one-man-play starring the King himself as a goofy hillbilly who finds a meteorite that crashes to earth on his property. He touches it, which is enough to spell his doom. King, bumbles and stumbles around as his luck grows worse and worse until he finally is overcome by the plants that the meteorite brought to earth.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill was reminiscent of pulp mags and stories from the ’50s and ’60s. I enjoyed the special effects on this story quite a bit – tons of plants!

Something to Tide You Over

“Something to Tide You Over” is the third story in Creepshow, and it’s one of my favorites. This one stars Ted Danson as Harry, who is the victim to Leslie Nielsen’s wealthy psychopathic killer. Leslie’s wife has been cheating on him with Ted, and he exacts his revenge in an extremely creative, ocean-themed way. What he doesn’t bargain on is his revenge coming back to bite him.

Check Out Our Review of Bird Box!

The Crate

“The Crate” is probably the longest and most notable story in Creepshow, and features a college janitor who drops a quarter underneath an old, forgotten stairwell. Upon closer inspection, he finds an old, forgotten crate under the stairs that dated back to the 19th century. He notifies Dexter Stanley, a college professor. They open the box to find one of the craziest movie monsters I can recall.

Of all the great practical effects, this monster, coined Fluffy, is the best. Fluffy has an incredible appetite and seems happy to live solely within the box that it’s been locked in for over a hundred years. I can’t believe how much room Fluffy has in his belly, because he ate, three, maybe four people.

The Crate had a great story about Northrup, whose old lady was a real bitch. The amount of revenge and comeuppance in The Crate works well.

This short left me with the same feeling that Raiders of the Lost Ark left me with – some treasures are sitting in some vault somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered.

Check Out Our Review Of Escape Room!

They’re Creeping Up on You

“They’re Creeping Up on You” is the final installment in the short story horror powerhouse, Creepshow. They’re Creeping Up on You is short, effective and fun. It stars, E.G. Marshall as Upson Pratt who is a cruel and ruthless businessman who lives like Howard Hughes did, in a hermetically sealed apartment. He is a major dick and comes under attack from cockroaches.

Final Recommendations

Creepshow is such an interesting and fun crowd pleaser; I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for something “spooky” and fun. It’s a great palate cleanser and made me so interested in the series that I watched the sequel, Creepshow 2 (1987) which is somewhat less impressive.

Have you ever lit your worst enemy on fire, decapitate them, and use their still burning severed head to light your cigarette? Better yet, have you seen Nicolas Cage do it? Mandy is an exercise in world bending drug trips, fantasy novels, 70’s & 80’s horror movie tropes, and insane revenge. It starts in the woods in 1983 and ends up in some crazy fantasy land that I don’t understand, but I love it nonetheless.

There is this trend in shows and movies right now that seeks to capitalize on the nostalgia of the 80’s. Some things do it quite well; others just make me feel like I’m being taken advantage of – Mandy is the former. Mandy is like a strange amalgamation of Turbo Kid, The Amityville Horror, Raising Arizona, and Stranger Things. The whole production is slow, methodical, and feels quite unhinged.

Mandy Trailer

Synopsis of Mandy

The story starts with Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough (Mandy) living their best life in a nice little cabin in the forest. There is something slightly supernatural about Mandy, and she infatuates Cage. A van full of “Jesus Freaks” see Mandy walking down the road one day and the cult leader decides he can’t live without her. After that, this movie descends into some of the strangest territory that I can recall.

Watch Mandy

Mandy Full Movie

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Written and directed by Panos Cosmatos with additional writing credits Aaron Stewart-Ahn, Mandy makes sure to pay homage to its roots. There are tons of callbacks and references to old-school horror, fantasy novels, music, and tropes. It’s mostly a mood piece, and the mood is drug-fueled.

Check Our Our Review of The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The music drones loudly and angrily, the setting morphs into a dark fantasy land, Cage turns into a bad ass narco messiah, it’s nuts.

My Rating

8/10

Mandy is insane. It features Cage in quite possibly the best way you can feature Cage, the same way Raising Arizona features him, as a normal, everyday lunatic.

Mandy Spoilers

Once the aforementioned Jesus freaks catch sight of Mandy and decide they need her in their cult, they make use of an artifact whistle that summons the four quad-men of the apocalypse. They are a motorcycle gang who has been turned into something eternal and perverse by some sort of trucker crank. This drug has altered the biker gang into super mutants who can be controlled by anyone who gives them more insane drugs.

The Jesus freaks give the quad-men some drugs and demand that they help kidnap Mandy, which they do while Cage and his girlfriend are asleep in their bed.

Check Out Our Review of Gremlins 2: The New Batch

The Jesus freaks give Mandy some heinous psychedelics from a giant wasp, and the cult leader, Jeremiah (Linus Roache), tries to convince Mandy to sleep with him in front of his followers. Mandy openly laughs at an mocks Jeremiah, so he decides to sacrifice her in front of a bound and gagged Cage by lighting her on fire.

As it turns out, that was a mistake on Jeremiah’s part. Enter the rage Cage.

Cage becomes a man with a purpose – to kill anyone who was involved with the kidnapping and murder of Mandy. The movie morphs into a dark fantasy-horror landscape that was inspired by 70’s and 80’s fantasy novel covers.

Is Mandy Worth Watching?

To answer the question of, “Is Mandy worth watching?” please refer to the following list. Do you enjoy:

• Revenge
• Cults
• Destroying cults
• The 70’s
• The 80’s
• Fantasy novels
• Psychedelic vibes
• Bad ass weapons
• Insane drug trips
• Revenge
• Apocalyptic themes and tropes
• Burning religious imagery
• Dark and sinister characters
• Lude sexual acts
• Horror movies
• Tigers
• Nicolas Cage in his element
• Revenge

If you answered yes to some of these things, it’s probably worth a watch. Mandy is clearly on it’s way to becoming a cult classic of sorts, so watch it now on Amazon or in a limited release theater so that you can say you saw it on release.

This episode we review the cult classic Sleepaway Camp. This campy slasher combines the most horrifying elements of the eighties: over-the-top teen bullies, and casual pedophilia. Listen to Horror Movie Talk’s take on this fun thriller.

Sleepaway Camp is a 1983 teenage slasher that has become a bit of a cult classic. The film follows Angela Baker (played by Felissa Rose), a painfully shy girl recovering from the psychological trauma of a tragic boating accident as she attends a Summer Camp filled with 80’s teen movie villains. She is accompanied to camp with her cousin Ricky (played by Jonathan Tiersten) who at times is very protective towards her.

Pretty soon after camp starts, there are a series of murders. The camp owner Mel (played by Mike Kellin) does his best to keep the murders under wraps and becomes increasingly suspicious of Ricky as the victims seem to be people that have bullied Angela.

Sleepaway Camp Trailer

This movie is a lot of fun and maintains a great balance of passable quality, campiness, and tastelessness that is essential for being granted cult status. The film gets most of its cred from its surprising conclusion, but it isn’t defined by it. This is a great time capsule of eighties teen movies that have that “Should I be watching this” vibe. Too mature for young viewers, and too much teenage sexuality for adults to feel comfortable watching. It’s that elusive 80’s vibe that Stranger Things, IT, and other shows that attempt to exploit.

Check Out Our Review of Child’s Play (1988)

The special effects sequences range from 50’s workplace safety videos to straight up graphic, gooey 80’s horror. The real charm of the movie comes from it’s non sequitur writing and acting. I found myself saying “What?!” or laughing out loud at unintentionally ridiculous moments.

My Rating

7/10

Sleepaway Camp

Watch it now or add it to your collection.

Rent/Buy on Amazon

What works well about this movie

This is a very campy movie, and as such, is tonally all over the place in a good way. Angela’s mother seems picked straight out of a 1930’s talkie. The teen villains are the kind only found in 80’s teen movies. Finally, Artie, the openly casual pedophile could only exist on film in the 80’s.

I particularly enjoyed the score of the film. It was repetative, but featured a full orchestral sound, with real orchestra stings to emphasize the horror. I wish more modern horror movies wouldn’t rely so much on ambient spooky soundscapes, and go back to full orchestras.

Check Out Our Review of The Dead Don’t Die

What really steals the show is the abundance of cock outlines. If you can remember that one scene in Juno where she is ogling the cross country team in their runner shorts, imagine that stretching for about 80 minutes. It’s distracting, and dare I say… Immodest.

Most of all, what makes this movie great is it’s charm.

What doesn’t work

This mustache:

Spoilers for Sleepaway Camp

This is the rare occurrence where naming the killer is the least relevant spoiler in the movie. If you don’t know the “twist” at the end, I won’t spoil it here. But just look at Angela’s face. You know she’s hiding something.

That being said, Angela was definitely the killer even though they heavily alluded to her brother being guilty. The filmmakers went as far as to have the actor playing her brother appear as a silhouette wearing a wig during one killing.

Final Recommendation

I highly recommend Sleepaway Camp. It proves that in many very important ways, you can’t recreate 80’s horror. This movie might not be for everyone, but if you are a fan of campy horror, or even just cult classics in general, you should enjoy this one as much as I did.

Sleepaway Camp as of the publish date of this episode is available on Shudder. Use “HMT” at checkout to get a 30 day free trial.

Escape Room is a movie best described as tense, fun, and bad in a good way. It has a solid premise and uses it in creative ways to up the tension and suspense for the audience. At times is goes over the top, but mostly in fun ways.

Escape Room is a thriller about a group of strangers who are brought together by an unknown presence that sends out a puzzle to each of them. When they complete the puzzle, it gives them an invitation to compete in a new, premier escape room in their area. The invitation claims that if they beat the escape room they can win $10,000! What they don’t know is that they are playing for their lives!

Watch Escape Room

Escape Room Full Movie

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It’s is fun, funny, and terribly written. The dialog is laughable and made up of constant exposition about what is happening at any given moment is what makes this movie laughable. The bones of this movie are decent, and it’s pretty much exactly what I expected. Mostly I had such a fun time watching it with Bryce and being exasperated at the silly dialog that Escape Room ended being more fun than I expected it would be.

Watch the trailer here:

My Rating

5/10

Spoilers for Escape Room

Escape Room starts out by introducing us to the six narrators of the movie. I say narrators because every single action taken by every character in Escape Room is narrated with gusto by at least one of these six main characters.

Of the actors in Escape Room the two that you will probably notice the most from other projects are Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll) who you might remember as the redhead from True Blood, and Mike (Tyler Labine) who is Dale from Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. Tyler is also a producer on Dale and Tucker. One of the main character’s is Zoey (Taylor Russell) who I recognized from the recent Netflix show Lost in Space. Everyone else is an up-and-comer.

So, everyone gets the invitation and shows up to what they believe to be the lobby of the escape room. Turns out the lobby is the first room they have to escape, and quickly turns into an oven.

They make their way through six successive escape rooms as their numbers are thinned.

The one constant throughout all of the movie is that they are being watched by cameras that are set up throughout every escape room. The creators of the escape room use these cameras to monitor the subjects and broadcast the feed of human misery to nameless viewers on the web.

The different escape rooms include (in order):

• Oven (hot)
• Ice cabin (cold)
• Upside down bar
• Medical treatment facility
• Trippy drug room
• Squish you flat study
• Several final levels/false endings

The Good and The Bad

The biggest problem I have with Escape Room is actually a bit of a strength for the movie – the laughably bad dialog and exposition. Everything in this movie is narrated by the characters; every action, every thought, every single part of this movie is narrated. It was bothersome at first, but then became so ridiculous and so dependable, it became a companion of sorts for me throughout the movie. I was able to look over at Bryce and see him roll his eyes and laugh every 10-15 seconds, and that was terrible and great at the same time.

This movie is not disjointed and hard to follow like Slenderman, it’s the opposite. It’s so easy to follow and so heavily narrated that it becomes a joke in and of itself.

Actual problems that stood out to me in this movie were some of the puzzles that the participants had to solve to beat the rooms. These puzzles were (sometimes) so specific to a single character’s personal trauma that only that character could solve the puzzle. So, it was movie kismet that happened to allow the participant who won the escape room to actually get through the whole thing.

The plot premise on Escape Room reminded me quite a bit of the plot premise of Unfriended: Dark Web. A shady dark web group is paying to see fucked up things happen to unwilling participants on the internet. Many have said that it’s similar to Saw – sure, that works too.

Check Out Our Review of Unfriended: Dark Web

Overall, Escape Room was a tense, goofy thriller that had a few uncomfortable moments, but never anything bordering on “scary”. Going into this movie I was expecting the worst but ended up having a good time because of the way it was written and some fun acting.

Final Recommendation

Escape Room is a fun enough movie, but it’s nothing special. Watch it with friends and you will have a good time. Watch it alone at your peril.

Horror Movie News

The Prodigy Trailer

The director of The Prodigy is reworking some scenes because they were supposedly too scary. I just hope they leave enough scares in!

What Qualifies as “Horror”?

Check out this article written by Emily Von Seele for Bloody Disgusting about how everyone keeps trying to call horror movies anything other than “horror”. Listen to the podcast to hear our take.

Also, check out what Bryce thinks about the question.

This episode we review Bird Box, which is available to stream only on Netflix. It’s probably one of the best horror movies of 2018. Even though it was released the Friday before Christmas, it has already been watched over 45 million times according to Netflix.

Bird Box tells the story of Mallorie (played by Sandra Bullock) as she experiences the fallout of a worldwide invasion of monsters that cause people to commit suicide if you look at them. The survivors of the invasion figure out that they must block their view with blindfolds or window coverings to resist the influence of the unseen creatures.

Read Bird Box

Bird Box Full Book

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The non-linear narrative jumps between the onset of the global disaster where Mallorie finds herself holed up with a motley crew of survivors, and five years after the fact when Mallorie is floating down a river with two small children trying to get to safety. Will they make it? Is it a happy ending? …You’ll just have to …SEE it.

Watch the trailer here:

There is a star studded cast that
give great performances. Notably Sarah Paulson in her small role as Mallorie’s Sister, and Trevante Rhodes
(Moonlight), the love interest. John Malkovich is also in it. It’s directed by Susanne Bier which
has mostly just directed dramas and romances, but she has shown her skill with
this movie.

This is a really high quality movie
that I’m kind of shocked wasn’t released in theaters. It would have done great,
as evidenced by it’s record breaking first week on Netflix. It’s very tonally
similar to A Quiet Place, and that’s only helps it. There is a lot of creative
problem solving on display in this movie, but most notably, this movie is a
great example of how to not show the monster. Another great compliment I
can pay to this movie is that all of the characters’ actions made sense. Any
time that I was yelling at the screen, it was from dramatic irony, not because
of a stupid character decision. The writing was very good at building the world
and communicating the situation in a very short period of time. Lots or really
tense moments and great payoffs throughout.

My
Rating

9/10

Spoilers
for Bird Box

First, let me say, that this movie
has some of the best scared faces of the year. If there was an Oscar for best
scared face, I think Sarah Paulson and Lil Rey Howery would get nominated.

Second, every time I see John Malcovich, I think of this interview of Matt Damon talking about working with him the first time on Rounders:

Alright, lets get to the rest of the movie. There are some great moments of tension in this movie that don’t rely on characters making stupid decisions. This is difficult for some horror movies for some reason. Two moments in particular are very effective and had me clutching the air.

First, the scene where it is revealed that Gary, played by Tom Hollander, is an acolyte for the monster. Some people may think it’s cheap that this reveal happens as the births were happening, but to me, it just made it more effective. It served as a prime moment of distraction for Gary to make his move.

Check Out Our Review of Creepshow

The next part that I was clawing at the armrests was towards the end of the movie when Mallorie is separated from the children, and the monster is trying to trick the children to take off their masks in the voice of Mallorie. It was the penultimate scene of the movie and was so effective because at this point, you understand that the detachment that Bullock’s character is displaying towards the children throughout the movie is just a facade.

She cares deeply and has masked her attachment to protect the children in case something happens to her. During the scene where they are separated, it is nerve-wracking because all of her effort could be for naught.

Well, if you’re reading this spoiler
section, you might want to know what happens in the end. Like my wife, who is a
horror lightweight asked me: “is it a happy, or a sad ending?”. Well,
it’s a happy ending. It might seem like an obvious choice, but throughout the
movie, it truly felt like it could go either way. They killed Sarah Paulson’s
character within the first 15 minutes, so they weren’t going to shy away from a
super depressing ending if they wanted to.

Check Out Our Review of Hereditary

To say that it is a happy ending,
isn’t to say that it is cheap. The ending most of all just feels satisfying. It
has a slight reveal that makes sense, but mostly it is satisfyingly because it
ties up the thematic material so well. Mainly surviving vs living, and human
connection.

Final
Recommendation

If you liked A Quiet Place,
then you should like this movie. It’s not as derivative of it as you might
think, it is just very tonally similar. The acting is excellent throughout, as
well as the direction. The story and thematic material are handled adeptly
while maintaining a steady pace of tension and release. You should definitely
see it.

If you don’t know what Gremlins is about, what the fuck are you doing? This is a movie about a Mogwai, and the sleepy little town of Kingston Falls, that wakes up to a very unusual Christmas day!

If you want to watch Gremlins use this link to rent it on Amazon and you will do your part to help support this podcast.

Watch Gremlins

Gremlins Full Movie

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It’s single-handedly responsible for a HUGE section of horror, now basically known as Gremlins knock-offs. The list of Gremlin knock-offs is long and includes:

• Troll
• Critters
• Leprechaun
• Cat’s Eye
• The Gate
• Munchies
• Hobgoblins
• Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowlarama
• Beasties
• Elves

My Rating

8/10

Gremlins Spoilers

Gremlins is an iconic movie in many ways. It’s got Steven Spielberg’s stink all over it despite being directed by Joe Dante. An interesting thing about Bryce, he loves Steven Spielberg, and because he was the Executive producer on this, I bet Bryce has a worthwhile take on Gremlins. Listen to the podcast to find out more on Bryce’s takes on Steven Spielberg.

Check Out Our Review of Gremlins!

Gremlins starts in my favorite way, in a bustling set of Chinatown, where a young boy leads Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) down into his grandfather’s shop of Asian artifacts. Randall Peltzer has an interesting through line in this movie, in that he is a shitty inventor unless you count creating inventions that kill Gremlins well.

Anyway, the old Chinese grandfather/curator of the shop, Mr. Wing (Keye Luke), warns Mr. Peltzer that the cute Mogwai isn’t for sale but the grandkid can’t turn down the money, and Mr. Peltzer walks away with Gizmo. But not before being given very specific rules for dealing with the Mogwai.

The rules for keeping Mogwai are simple:

• Keep them out of the light.
• No water.
• Don’t feed after midnight.

So Gizmo goes home and eventually all the rules are broken, and we are given Gremlins. Gremlins are sadistic and mean, and they mean nothing but trouble for the town of Kingston Falls.

How Gremlins Die

Gremlins is a movie that holds nothing sacred, except maybe movie tropes. Watch Gremlins to see all the interesting ways that you can kill the Gremlins in your life.

We get to see Gremlins killed with:

• A knife
• Food processor
• Microwave
• Sword
• Sword/fireplace combo
• Light
• Car
• And more!

Tropes in Gremlins

Gremlins is a movie about tropes. Here are some of the most impressive tropes that Gremlins sticks to:

• Black man is first to die.
• Rules are made to be broken.
• School as a place of horror.
• Alien blood, I.E. blood that is colored differently to make it appear strange.
• Damsel in distress.
• Mythical creatures.
• Action mom.
• Asshole victim.
• Bad people abuse animals
• Bungling inventor.
• Crazy cat lady.
• Police are useless.

The Dad in The Chimney Subplot

The dad in the chimney subplot is one of my very favorite parts of this movie for a few different reasons. Kate Beringer (Pheobe Cates) is finally convinced to share the story of why Christmas is her least favorite holiday. She tells the tale of Christmas Eve, the night her father went missing. Days went by, and there was no sign of her father.

Finally, it became cold in the house, so she went to light the fire, where she noticed a foul smell. Turns out, Her dad tripped and fell while trying to surprise her for Christmas and wedged himself in the chimney, where he died. So many things are wrong with this:

• What are you doing on the roof when trying to surprise your child?
• Why go down the chimney, have you seen a chimney?
• Why did it take so long to find him? Didn’t he yell and scream?
• How long does the house go cold for before you light a fire?
• How much do you hate your father for being a blithering idiot?

I love this story. I love this movie. If you haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it in a while, it’s a fabulous time.

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

Click here to Watch

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

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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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.