Horror Movie Talk

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.

Halloween is the direct sequel to the original Halloween released in 1978 that ignores the story lines and continuity of the 9 other sequels and/or reboots. There have been so many Halloweens, that this is the third one called, just, Halloween. This round is helmed by David Gordon Green who wrote it with Danny McBride. Yes, that Danny McBride.

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

Halloween (2018) maintains its place as the archetypal slasher movie. Here is the trailer:

Review of Halloween 2018

This film does the franchise proud and plays to all the strengths of the original. If you haven’t seen any of the Halloween movies, like me, you don’t have to worry about catching up.

This is the simplest form of the slasher: A dude in a mask that just wants to kill people. The dude is Michael Myers who is treated with the utmost morbid reverence by two journalists (podcasters ala Serial) in the opening sequence seeking out answers to the killing spree that Myers went on 40 years ago. Several times i throughout the movie it is underlined that we have no clue as to what Michael Myers motivation for killing is, and that is what makes him truly terrifying. Jamie Lee Curtis of course reprises her role as Laurie Strode, this time 40 years older and ready to brandish a stockpile of guns to kill Michael before he kills her. Along for the ride are her daughter Karen played by Judy Greer and her Granddaughter Allyson played by the newcomer Andy Matichak.

This was a high quality slasher that lives up to the spirit of the original. There is no gimmickry, nothing is too over the top. It’s just the slow pursuit of a psychopath with a knife. You truly feel that no one is safe. As with most other slashers, it is pretty easy to predict killings before they happen if you are inoculated to slashers. However, there are some great sequences that toy with your expectations, and some genuinely great gore. It’s not all surface level, there is tasteful and believable character development of Laurie Strode in regards to the fallout from her trauma and PTSD. In short, the writers and director, understand what works about the Halloween franchise, and use it to the maximum effect.

Rating

9/10

This is a great movie. Probably one of the best slashers that I have seen. I highly recommend seeing it this Halloween season.

Check out our review of the original Halloween

Spoilers

David and I agree that it was a relief that this film didn’t go “full torture porn”. There was death and gore, but it didn’t go for the cheep shock value. There was a scene early on after Myers has escaped jail, that there is a baby crying in the house. The movie plays with your dread as Michael goes towards the sound, but ultimately ignores and passes the crib, leaving the house.

This is not to say that there is no gore in the movie. There is a head stomping scene, which is tantamount to a head explosion. Also, Michael creates, what I can only describe as Cop-O-Lanterns. For the most part it’s just straight up stabbing/impalement/and beating deaths throughout the movie.

One of the tensest moments is when Laurie’s granddaughter is stuck in the backseat of a police truck with a knocked out Michael Myers. It is a very effective moment, since we all know that Michael Myers isn’t going to be asleep for long.

The film ends with Michael trapped in a burning house with no escape. But looking at the box office numbers, makes me think that Michael Myers might have survived…

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

If you want to watch Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich please consider renting or purchasing the movie through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

Synopsis of Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich is a reboot of one of the most popular cult classic horror franchises in the past 30 years, and it’s fun for all the right reasons. It is irreverent, funny, fun, completely gratuitous and extremely violent. If you are new to the series, it doesn’t do a fabulous job of introducing you to the puppets, but it does a great job of explaining the premise of the puppet master, Andre Toulon, played by Udo Kier.

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich has enough familiar faces to make you feel at home, and the cast you (probably) don’t recognize do a wonderful job of giving admirable performances.

Thomas Lennon (Lt. Dangle from Reno 911) plays Edgar, the main antagonist who is a recent divorcee and comic book creator who has fallen on tough times and is living with his parents until he can sort his life out. Nelson Franklin plays Markowitz, Edgar’s buddy and employer at a local comic shop, provides most of the comedic relief throughout the movie. Jenny Pellicer plays Ashley, Edgar’s new girlfriend.

Edgar finds a puppet in his parent’s house and quickly realizes that it was created by the infamous Andre Toulon, a Nazi who also happened to be a skilled puppet maker. He finds out that there is going to be an auction of Andre’s puppets and decides he could use the money, so he takes a trip to the hotel where the auction is taking place. Coincidentally this hotel is near to the puppet master’s residence, and the gathering of puppet collectors in this hotel is the perfect place for the second Holocaust.

Horror movie veteran Barbara Crampton, who also starred in Dead Night, is a retired cop who introduces us to the history behind the puppet master, you will also probably recognize Charlyne Yi, who plays Nerissa, a hotel restaurant employee who has a decent role.

My Rating

7/10

Spoilers

I saw seven boobs in Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich.

That sentence tells you more than you need to know to evaluate whether or not this movie is for you. It is completely inappropriate, and that’s what makes it fun. Nazi puppets who are bent on killing Jews, blacks and homosexuals are the antagonists who provide extremely creative and gory deaths to anyone who gets in their way.

Here is a list of completely insane deaths that took place in Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich:

• A Jewish couple was burned to death while mocking their puppet, calling it a Nazi souvenir that was meant to remind them of Hitler’s failed Reich.
• A pregnant woman suffered, what I will call, an abortion with extreme prejudice.
• A dude was decapitated while taking a leak and ended up urinating on his head in the toilet bowl.
• One young man was completely disemboweled while chatting with his mom on the phone.
• One guy had his back torn open, a tiny “Junior Fuhrer” climbed into him and controlled him as one would control a puppet. This puppet looks like a baby Adolf Hitler.

This movie reminded me of something Mel Brooks said during an interview.

“I said: Listen, get on a soapbox with Hitler, you’re gonna lose — he was a great orator. However, if you can make fun of him, if you can have people laugh at him, you win.”

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich takes everything sacred and rips it to shreds. If you are offended by anything, this will do a damn good job of finding what it is and trying to bother you, if not make you quite upset. If you can sit back and stop taking everything so seriously, suddenly all those things have no power over you anymore. I don’t want to get too far into a life lesson while writing a review about the 13th Puppet Master installment, but it’s as good a time as any to say, chill out and have fun.

To be fair, this movie knew me way too well and might have scored a few extra points by having comic books featured prominently, as well as a nod to black metal, grindcore, death metal, and a few other extreme subgenres of metal that I like quite a bit.

If you would like to learn more about the series, the Puppet Master Wikipedia page is amazing and offers an in-depth look at every movie, every puppet, and every cast member. It’s actually very interesting.

Is Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich Worth Seeing?

There is a part of me that loves a horror series that has more than a dozen installments, the fifth of which is titled, “The Final Chapter” or something close to it. There is also a part of me that wishes, “the final last one” was indeed what it claimed to be. In this case, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich does a good job of making me happy that it exists.

To be completely honest with you, this is the first of the series that I’ve seen, and now I want to watch them all. I know from experience that I will probably deeply regret watching 12 killer puppet slasher flicks, but this is a labor of love, and love means being there through the bad times and the good.

If you want to laugh and have your jaw hit the floor a few times with friends, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich will scratch your itch.

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

Special Thanks to G.Thomas Craig, who edited this episode for us. Check him out at gthomascraig.com/

Spiral is an independent horror film that we got an advance screener for. The filmmaker for Spiral reached out to us on Facebook and invited us to review the movie. This made us feel like hotshots, so of course we’re going to do it. It was… interesting.

If you want to watch Spiral, you should be able to watch it on Amazon Prome Video. If you want to watch a better movie, please consider renting or purchasing through this amazon link to help us support the podcast.

Here’s the Trailer.

Spiral is being released through iTunes and Amazon on October 16th. They are also holding a premiere at Arclight Hollywood on that same day.

Synopsis of Spiral

A group of college friends reunite in small town Iowa for a wild bachelor party that goes off the rails and results in a missing Groom. This film is made completely outside of the studio system by writer/director Joe Clarke. The film stars a bunch of young unknown actors, some of which are much much prettier than I would expect in an independent movie. I’m talking about the men mostly. Ellis, played by Anthony Stratton arrives at a bachelor party, still reeling from the loss of a girlfriend. His comedian friend Corey, played by Tyler Thirnbeck, is getting married and all the old college buddies are invited. This includes Will, played by Hays McEachern, who was the bro that stole Ellis’ girl.

They have a rager of a bachelor party, and Ellis quickly realizes that these friends are nothing like they were in college. As always one morning at the strip club turns into chasing a legless man through a cornfield in Iowa…and before you know it night has fallen along with that impending sense of existential dread…THEN you know what happens next…right….you see Abraham Lincoln lit by an oil lamp in the woods…and you know its just downhill from there.

Spiral is a very ambitious movie, that while beautifully shot, is a hot hot mess. First half of the movie is great and sets up the characters and the situation very well. The last half drags on and made me ask “can we get to the point?” It’s an avant garde film that really doesn’t give you enough to go off of to understand what the point/statement actually is. It ends up being too ambitious for the writer and, unfortunately, it isn’t very enjoyable. It’s like The Hangover 3 mixed with Donnie Darko 2, and not in a good way.

My Rating of Spiral

2/10

Spoilers: The Rundown

Spiral begins with some trippy scene with some people talking backwards in gas masks, and then quickly turns into a conventional Bachelor party movie, before finally turning back into a trippy multi-dimensional time-warp that just devolves into anarchy. It’s hard to give any spoilers for this movie, because, honestly, I’m not sure what really happened in the movie after the night of the party.

What I could tell was that the villain (one of the villains?) turns out to be an older version of Will, and that there was some kind of multi-dimensional time-warp in a corn field.

Is Spiral Worth Watching?

I would suggest you be heavily intoxicated on any viewing of this film. Outside a some very curious film students or film professors, I can’t imagine enjoying this sober.

For a more enjoyable and interesting independent film, check out The Evil Within.

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

Interview with Robin Block, Executive Producer of In Search of Darkness

Robin Block has been working in media and content creation for his entire career. Before founding CreatorVC, He ran an award-winning production company and a thriving thought-leadership business. He’s also produced long-form documentaries for major broadcasters including BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, as well as having his own DVD label. Robin started CreatorVC because he saw an opportunity to serve special interest audiences and bring together the right people to make great ideas happen.”

We chatted with Robin over Skype about his latest project: In Search of Darkness. This documentary will bring together 80’s horror icons, modern horror greats, and popular horror influencers to create the most complete retrospective documentary of the genre ever made.

Together, they will bring their unique perspectives as we take a nostalgic journey back to revisit the unforgettable heroes, monsters, and movies that thrilled and chilled us.

Go to 80shorrordoc.com to see more details on their Kickstarter.

Horror Movie News

• New Line Horror Pics Will Own The Post-Labor Day Space Through 2022
• Michael Chaves Directing ‘The Conjuring 3’ for New Line Cinema
• ‘Friday the 13th’ Screenwriter Wins Rights Battle Against Producer
• R.I.P. Scott Wilson, Who Played Hershel On “The Walking Dead”

Horror Movie Talk Episode 10: Spiral Review and Robin Block Interview Outline

Links and Plugs

I Like Comics Website and their Ebay Store
Scariest Things
Spiral Website
In Search of Darkness Kickstarter page
Thanks to @stevecourtney79 and @12nighthorror for the Twitter Mentions!

Hellfest is a traveling horror night that rolls into town and a group of friends get VIP passes to go and enjoy the spooks. Think of it as a haunted house that covers an entire theme park. Little do they know that hidden among the park employees is a masked killer that picks off visitors that aren’t scared.

Hellfest is Directed by Gregory Plotkin, and I feel he took a huge Plotkin on the slasher genre. Plotkin has spent most of his career as an editor, most notably Second assistant editor on Weekend at Bernies 2, as well as Get Out, and Paranormal Activities 2-5. His only other feature length film directing credit is Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. It stars Amy Forsyth as Natalie, the protagonist returning home from school to visit her grade school BFF Brooke played by the distractingly beautiful Reign Edwards. Along for the ride and generally being an annoying presence is Taylor played by Bex Taylor-Klaus. Each one has an arbitrary boyfriend to accompany them to the park that might as well be nameless for all the character development that they get.

Want to Watch Hellfest? Click This Text to Watch it on Amazon!

Check Out Our Review of Evil Dead (2013)

https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2019/05/01/evil-dead-2013-review/

The film suffers from terrible dialogue and annoyingly vapid characters. The cast overacts like they are in a Disney channel show, to the point where I actually welcomed their deaths. The setups for the murders are unbelievable even for horror standards, and waste opportunities to take advantage of the unique premise.

There are a few good death scenes, but on the whole it falls flat.

My Rating

4/10

I originally gave it a 3, but because it had a head explosion, it gets an extra point.

Spoilers: The Rundown

My main gripe with Hellfest is that there is an inherent flaw in some of the death scenes. The park is stuffed to the gills with visitors and employees. The characters even need a VIP pass to skip the massive lines. Even with the VIP pass, there are lines. EXCEPT when the killer is chasing them!

Check Out Our Review Of The Ruins!

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

At one point they are running away from the killer, but get distracted by the spoopy scares from the maze. They take a leisurely 10 seconds to pause and look at the room. There is no animatronic that can compete with the actual possibility of murder. Even when they get to a room with a bunch of reaching out hands, they freak out instead of, you know…asking for help from the people attached to those reaching hands.

There could have been several ways that the writers or director could have addressed these chase scenes creatively. Just a few off of the top of my head:

• The park is in cahoots, and is an accomplice to the murderer
• The park employees hear the screams, but decide among themselves that it is just a normal patron being scared
• The killer could have killed any employee trying to help them
• One of the park employees reaches out to help the girls, but it ends up being the killer without the mask.

The capper to the movie is a lame and predictable epilogue that for some reason tries for one last scare the second after it undercuts the premise. The killer goes home to a generic suburban home and hangs up his mask before going inside and hugging his daughter. For some reason the director was trying to make it seem like the girl was in danger, but… we are already shown that he lives there.

Is Hellfest Worth Watching?

I can’t recommend seeing Hell Fest in theaters, but it might be worth watching at home when it gets to Netflix. Even then, you will probably enjoy making fun of it with friends more than actually watching it for scares.

Tell us what you think about Hellfest

Did you see Hell Fest? What did you think? Have you ever seen a movie that had a distractingly implausible premise for getting trapped by a killer? Leave your comments below. Also, don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Horror Movie Talk Episode 9: Hellfest Review Outline

• Intro/Trailer
• Synopsis 6:06
• Score 9:06
• Thoughts on the film 11:32
  • First “Bryce Called It” 15:30
  • Spoilers 26:26
• Taglines 40:49
• Second “Bryce Called It” 43:15
• Horror Movie News 45:01
• Game: Lifetime Movie or Horror Movie 52:30
• Outro 59:02