October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

As is tradition, this gets some traction from some and little from others but I try to do it every year and this one shall be no different.

I'll be posting in here, feel free to join if ya want. Now that I have Prime maybe I'll find a few hidden gems somewhere.


Day 1: The Void
Day 2: Climax
Day 3: Hell Baby
Day 4: In The Tall Grass
Day 5: Overlord
Day 6: Await Further Instructions
Day 7: Black Christmas (1974)
Day 8: Black Christmas (2006)

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Just 31?

Well I go back to work in October, so I'll be lucky if I get to 31.

Not of all us are in beast mode. :p

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

I might be able to meet the 1 part of the number. :D

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Looks like a good challenge. I'm up for some horror this month and will try to watch the films below, but it won't be 31 I don't think.

Martyrs
Kidnapped
The autopsy of Jane Doe
Alleluia
Starry Eyes
Carrie
Ravenous
November
Threads

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

In, as usual!

LIST TO FOLLOW BELOW.

1. Annabelle Comes Home
2. The Conjuring
3. Midsommar
4 Prince of Darkness
5. In the Mouth of Madness
6. The Last Exorcism
7. It (2017)
8. The Hole in the Ground
9. Encounter with the Unknown
10. April Fool's Day
11. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
12. Hell House LLC
13. The Borderlands
14. Haunt
15. Hocus Pocus
16. Hell Fest
17. Child's Play (2019)
18. Harpoon
19. Children of the Corn
20. Wolfen
21. Brightburn
22. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
23. Sinister
24. Salem's Lot
25. The Thing (1982)
26. The Cabin in the Woods
27. The Blair Witch (2016)
28. Friday the 13th Part III
29. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part IV: The Dream Master
30. The Fog (1980)
31. Halloween III: The Season of the Witch
32. Trick r Treat

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Using this post to track my progress.

DAY 1:
Ginger Snaps

DAY 2:
Bug

DAY 3:
Mother of Tears

DAY 4:
Howling III: The Marsupials

In the honor of the Slasher Hall of Fame...which is still open for nominations BTW I will be doing 31 Slasher films.


And I will keep my progress with this post.


October 1st - Final Exam (1981)
October 2nd - Hellraiser (1987)
October 3rd - Terror Train(1980)
October 4th - Offerings (1989)
October 5th - Black Christmas (1974)
October 6th - Funhouse(1981)
October 7th - You Better Watch Out (1980)
October 8th - Hellraiser II(1988)
October 9th - Night School (1981)
October 10th - Pieces(1982)
October 11th - Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer(1986)
October 12th - Slaughter High(1986)
October 13th - Friday the 13th Part IV(1984)
October 14th - A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child(1989)
October 15th - Halloween III:Season of the Witch(1982)
October 16th - Sleepaway Camp II (1988)
October 17th - Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
October 18th - Blood Moon (1989)
October 19th - Welcome to Spring Break (1988)
October 20th - Prowler (1981)
October 21st - My Bloody Valentine (1981)
October 22nd -Friday the 13th V A New Beginning(1985)
October 23rd - Friday the 13th VI Jason Lives(1986)
October 24rd - The First Deadly Sin (1980)
October 25th - Believers (1987)
October 26th - Texas Chainsaw Massacre II (1986)
October 27th - Night Visitor (1989)
October 28th - Psycho II (1983)

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Let's see how I do. If I get halfway, I'll consider it a success.


1. Inside (2007; Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury)
2. Terrifier (2016; Damien Leone)

Two teenage sisters find their relationship tested when one of them is cursed to turn into a werewolf.

Every time I watch a werewolf film, I wonder to myself why exactly the sub-genre doesn't seem to boast much in the way of classics. You've got An American Werewolf in London, sure, but after that it seems like quite the drop-off. Ginger Snaps is arguably one of the classics (it cracked the MoFo top horrors list, after all) and it takes clear inspiration from Landis's film in that it's effectively a buddy comedy that just so happens to involve one of the buddies becoming a werewolf, but its attempts to mix up the proceedings don't quite work for me. Balancing comedy and horror is always a tough act but I question how much comedy there really is in the first place - the ostensible set-up of the protagonists as disaffected weirdos who snark at popular kids and teachers isn't backed up by the writing nor does it mesh particularly well with the horror (and it's effectively forgotten by the time the second half rolls around, though comically outsized gestures such as frantic Raimi-style camerawork remain). At least it's better when trying to build a straight horror - though it's not particularly subtle about its subtext and it runs a little long to be truly effective, you can definitely appreciate the various werewolf effects. What really carries Ginger Snaps is its relatively decent sense of character - while they're not given that much to do, the lead duo manage to carry the film just fine and there's enough complication to these two initially indistinguishable girls that the story never totally lost me. Though I'm not necessarily inclined to consider it a classic myself, I don't think I can deny that it deserves its cult reputation.

The Void is a film that has a lot of potential and some talented people bringing a visually interesting film to life. The issues persistent throughout the film involve story and performances, both lacking to engage the viewer beyond the bare minimum and severely hurting the overall experience the film wants you to have.

Imagine if John Carpenter's The Thing went full on Lovecraft, then you might get something like The Void. A group of people shelter themselves inside a hospital after a cult like group surround the building. Things go from bad to worse when someone soon becomes "infected" with God knows what and transforms into some other worldly creature that does indeed look straight out of Carpenter's The Thing.

With all that going on, the film feels like it is being pulled in one too many directions. Everything accumulating to a somewhat pretentious ending that made me feel like the filmmakers were patting themselves on the back for a job well done. The Void wants to be artistic, while continuing to give horror audiences the blood and gore elements they sometimes crave. The end result is a mixed bag with nice visuals, but a weak narrative.

The two directors come from an art department and make-up background. Their first feature was a low budget exploitation flick Father's Day. With The Void, they elevate the visuals, but forgot to elevate the story. I'd be interested in seeing where their careers go because The Void does show a lot of promise and craft.

While hiding out from her ex, a woman meets a man who seems to be harbouring one very strange secret.

Here's a question for you - where exactly is the line between a psychological thriller and a psychological horror? This case of sub-genre semantics was on my mind all throughout Bug, a stage-play adaptation that takes place almost entirely within the confines of a single motel room with a handful of characters bouncing off one another. It starts off as a bizarre love triangle where Ashley Judd's jaded burnout is caught between her abusive ex (Harry Connick Jr.) and the off-kilter new guy (Michael Shannon) - and then the bugs start showing up. Or do they? It doesn't matter since the question of whether or not the bugs are real or just part of the leads' fevered imagination isn't particularly ambiguous - where else would the "psychological" part kick in? - and the real horror comes from watching Judd and Shannon spiral downwards in increasingly insane and self-destructive ways. I tend to have a problem with horror movies that build so much of their stakes on inevitable (if not predictable) outcomes as it runs the risk of deflating any sense of investment in the proceedings but Bug is at least somewhat by saved Judd and Shannon committing to the material (the former might as well be anticipating Toni Collette in Hereditary during the third act while the latter is always good at playing crazy bastards), to say nothing of how Friedkin is able to shoot around the cramped location for maximum discomfort (and, much like the scariest parts of The Exorcist, forgoes the use of music entirely). These elements are what make me think that Bug deserves to be categorised more as a horror than a thriller - a thriller involves tension and excitement, but Bug swaps that out for creeping dread to admittedly middling but nevertheless intriguing effect.

October 1st


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Final Exam(1981)


Halloween on a college campus is the best way to describe this film. A group of tangentially aligned college students are sliced and diced by an unmasked killer.

Lisa the amoral slut is easily the best character of the students, the character is treated with a sense of charm and idealism you almost wish that the film would have been through her perspective rather than the somewhat bland final girl.

The film also has some early strong points, the opening kill is well done and the prank gone wrong is a wonderful fake terrorist attack. While the setting is the star of the film it's biggest drawback is the FX we don't get the gore or makeup work that is called for in the story, often times the camera merely pans away.

Still decent enough watch.

October 2nd


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Hellraiser (1987)


I'm not sure what subgenre you would classify Hellraiser as, it picks and chooses from a litany of different subgenres. It's not really a Satanic film, Satan is a part of it I suppose but it's really more about the cenobites who are more of a feature than the lead antagonists. Perhaps you could call it a haunted house film as the location of the story is 90% in the family home. But at the end of the day I'll call it a slasher just more of a post-modern slasher. After-all A Nightmare on Elm Street is considered a slasher and this was clearly inspired.

Frank is a pervert who opens a gate to hell, Julia is an unfaithful wife of Frank's brother Larry and Larry has a grown daughter Kristy. Julia decided to lure men to Frank where she kills them so he can receive their blood and reform his body. The film has great special effects everything is practical puppets are used to great effect you see the entire body come together over each step. You've also got maggot's rats dirty sex and lots of murder. I understand that the film has an X-rated version and I would like to have seen that because I felt like the film has more plot than we ended up getting in the final result.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Starting tonight with the original Nosferatu 🙂
It’s been several years since I first saw it

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

I already know I will lose, since that simply sounds too exhausting. But I'll definitely watch quite a few of them. I'll write a full review whenever I feel I can put the effort into it, other times just write a short comment, just so you know what I'm watching.

Gaspar Noé....why do I keep going into your films expecting some form of normalcy? Both Enter The Void and Love are interesting art pieces that challenge the viewer and Climax is no different. The film is a constant movement piece that never seems to let up, only dive into deeper chaos. While I applaud the efforts put forth to engulf your senses, I couldn't help but wonder what is the point by the end of it.

A lot of the film is done in one shot, with obvious hidden cuts scattered throughout, this leads to the conflicted feeling of the film dragging because there are very little cuts. Yet the sound and visuals combat that because it seems to be hyperactive with movement and colour. We have sequences bathed in reds and the camera literally turned upside down, making it hard to decipher what is being depicted on the screen. You'll have one person bleeding out in one corner, two people having sex in another and a lone person dancing in the middle, all in one shot.

Climax is a lot to take in and if you were unfamiliar with Gaspar Noé and his work, I'd tell you to start elsewhere. You have to be ready to watch his movies, you have to be ready to watch this one. I'd be willing to give this another shot when I'm not dead tired.

I imagine fans of his will get a good experience from Climax.

Day 3


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Terror Train(1980)


It could be argued that Terror Train is the weakest of Jamie Lee Curtis' scream queen era horror films. Though ironically it did have the biggest budget Curtis is merely the "girl" in the story. Terror Train is a slasher that's more focused on the kill, the scenes are more focused on the how because we already know the who and most of the kills are fairly ho hum.



The joy of Terror Train is all the different costumes and set pieces during this evening of murder. These are a bit more human of the characters typically ripped to shreds and that's cool. You've also got a nice little kill during a David Copperfield set that begs you for a rewatch.



Still it's a good watch and worthy for this countdown.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

@TheUsualSuspect - Agree on The Void. This one was hyped up to me by a friend of mine, and while it started out strong, I found myself checking my watch by the end. I liked some aspects of it, but overall, found it fairly lacking.

When an unearthed chest of relics results in an ancient witch coming back to power, an art student must figure out how to defeat her once and for all.

Making a direct sequel to Suspiria - arguably the best Italian horror movie and by extension one of the best ever made - was always going to be a tough ask, and while Inferno did a generally solid job, belated threequel Mother of Tears is most definitely the weakest of the "Three Mothers" trilogy. It has a novel enough hook - the protagonist has to harness her own latent magic powers to survive as the Mother of Tears' power starts to infect Rome and elsewhere with violent derangement - but this is stuck within a decidedly standard giallo framework and the horror is almost entirely evoked by Argento going for broke in terms of violence (enough so that the "unrated" on my DVD copy seems thoroughly merited). Despite being all-in on blood-drenched nastiness, the film suffers by not being able to maintain a particularly tight pace or engrossing atmosphere - so much of it is shot so flatly and scored so forgettably that it does become a tiresome watch when you're not being actively repulsed by some especially cursed acts of brutality.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

I won't be aiming to any goals but I've already watched two horrors this month (and will most likely watch few others) so why not.

#1 Satan's Slave (1976)

Cheap and sleazy cult horror (about a cult, I don't think this one has any cult following). Quite a bit nudity and (badly made) violence that often doesn't progress the story. Acting isn't too good either. The idea itself isn't too bad but the execution is both amateurish and unambitious. There are few nice scenes and the topic interests me but that's barely enough to keep it from being real stinker.


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#2 Draug (2018)

A Swedish horror set in 11th century. It's rather low budget and unfortunately it shows (some of the action is poorly shot and dark scenes are often really grainy). Other than the cheap looks it's pretty decent representative of its particular brand of horror so nothing very innovative but quite watchable. I guess I can recommend this to people who liked Finnish horror Sauna (I think that includes @MovieGal).

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

The only guaranteed horror film that I will be watching this month is a tradition of watching "Crimson Peak" on Halloween.

A generic horror comedy plot with generic jokes is saved from being terrible by a funny cast. Horror comedy is a hard mixed genre, lean to far one way or the other and you may lose either side of the audience. I tend to love most of the horror comedies that come my way and Hell Baby looked to be at the very least, one of the enjoyable ones.

A couple are expecting their first child and they move into a haunted house. During the pregnancy, their mother starts exhibiting possession like symptoms and a team of exorcists show up to expel their demon baby.

I never watched Reno 911, so I'm not familiar with the comedy style, but Hell Baby is full of potential jokes to land and most of them falling short. One sequence involving tossing an infant around a room goes on for way too long that the jokes becomes irritatingly annoying. Rob Croddry and Leslie Bibb are the expecting couple and they fail to have any chemistry together. It's the classic one actor being a comedian and the other trying their best to be funny. It doesn't work.

The film feels like the creators don't know much about horror and paint a comedy with some surface level things they think work in the genre. It never tries to be clever or dedicated to its own story. Hell Baby is a misfire with few laughs.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

#3 In the Tall Grass (2019)

I read the novella some time ago after hearing about the forthcoming film and found it rather mediocre. Unfortunately the movie is even worse and for some reason it (again) rewrites the plot almost completely (or the novella was way more forgettable than I thought). It's repetitive and fails to create anything out of the environment (all grass makes Jack a dull boy). There are couple of nice scenes and I only checked the clock two or three times so it's not the worst but quite hard to recommend.

A woman who belongs to a clan of werewolves runs away to the big city where she meets and falls in love with a film production assistant.

Joe Dante's The Howling was a decidedly so-so entry into the werewolf genre that saw him indulge his love of black comedy and B-movies with the tale of a commune of werewolves. While technically a worse movie, Howling II: Your SIster is a Werewolf (or Werewolf II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch if you're nasty) manages to distinguish itself by delving even further into B-movie territory with its low-grade production values and wonderfully slumming Christopher Lee. Howling II director Mora returns for the third part, which he brings to Australia and crafts what may well be the most insane piece of Ozploitation I've seen yet. It moves at a breakneck pace in setting up a whole bunch of subplots (it made oddly perfect sense that editor Lee Smith would go on to work on multiple Christopher Nolan films and even win an Oscar for Dunkirk) that smash together again and again, to say nothing of how it speeds through plots (first it's about academics trying to study werewolves, then about making a horror movie with an actual werewolf, then a small-town horror "escalating" into a war movie...and so on and so forth), which manifests in weird ways such as an incredibly unlikely romance and the way in which it attempts to play the grotesque aftermath for both gross-out horror and weirdly genuine sentimentality (look no further than one scene where a werewolf gives birth). However, this ultimately means that the non-stop craziness just grows numbing after a while and makes it hard to maintain a hold on anything - whether it's the various human/werewolf couples that develop or the ways that they are preyed upon by various antagonists. I think it might merit a watch if you're in the market for something absolutely bizarre (where else are you going to see a kangaroo-like werewolf carrying mutated offspring in her pouch?), but otherwise you're not going to get much - if anything - out of its down-under derangement.




After surviving a car crash that results in the death of his wife, an office worker finds himself experiencing constant hallucinations

After watching a bunch of Hellraiser sequels last year, I figured I'd use this October to watch the ones I hadn't gotten around to yet - but to what end, really? Like many a long-in-the-tooth horror franchise, Hellraiser gets by mainly on the basis of its classic original and the relative goodwill of its first few sequels (which I can more or less defend to varying degrees), but Hellseeker - the sixth installment in the franchise - is where the quality really goes to hell. As if they'd exhausted the good plots already, Hellseeker is content to recycle immediate predecessor Inferno with a tale of a guy being plagued by weird visions of murder and demons who just wants to figure out what's happened to his wife, who may or may not be dead - and incidentally happens to be original Hellraiser protagonist Kirsty Cotton (her presence may well be the film's sole redeeming feature and even then one can contest whether or not she is actually utilised well or treated shabbily). In trying to create a constantly unsettling atmosphere, the editing is extremely choppy so as to simulate the protagonist's disorientation and even facilitate relentless jump scares, but it ultimately proves too obtrusive to be effective. The anemic camerawork certainly doesn't help matters and makes the film's inevitable descent into Cenobite-based torture (plus the much-needed arrival of Pinhead, who once again delivers his trademark brand of sinister gravitas that readily overcomes limited screentime) look underwhelming, thus adding to the generally atrocious quality of the film..

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

#4 Midsommar (2019)

I suppose I need to accept that I'm not compatible with Ari Aster's films. A 2.5 hours long parody of paganism that fails to be funny, scary or entertaining. What it doesn't fail are things like predictability, boredom and theatricality (which for some reason seems to automatically mean artistic to some people). It's probably slightly worse than Hereditary which at least had somewhat amusing over-the-top ending.

October 4th
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Offerings(1989)


To me Offerings felt like a student film, it tells the time as old story of a an accident with a group of kids who are then picked off one by one ten years later. If you think hey that sounds like Prom Night...yup also the killer is a mute shape. The only value I found with this one is how the fashion and time changes. This has that early 90's feel to it, and we get less gratuitous sex in exchange for more atmosphere. Though at the end of the day this just wasn't any good.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Was little bored with WoW Classic today so I watched another horror film.

#5 The Killer of Dolls (1975)

With a lack of better word I call this a Spanish slasher. It's like Psycho, Maniac and Excision were put in an Euro Trash blender. It lacks the visual prowess of Italian giallo and as a whole it's technically somewhat inadequate but it does have personality (even two) and crude charm. Lots of potential and quite passable even with all its flaws.

A journalist heads to Romania to investigate a mysterious suicide cult that has the power to bring its members back to life.

Curiosity is the main factor that drives the Hellraiser films, with each one being spurred by one character's desire to experience more (whether it's hedonistic pleasure or answering supernatural mysteries or both) that ultimately drives them to seek out the Cenobites and the hellish dimension from which they hail only to get more than they bargained for. This often manifests in the films setting for making their protagonists into investigators of some kind, whether detectives or wronged men or journalists. Deader chooses the latter route and ends up proving readily comparable to the franchise's third entry, Hell on Earth, by having its journalist heroine dive into a scuzzy urban underbelly where subway trains house bacchanalian raves and suicide cults hold twisted reanimation ceremonies in dank catacombs. Though it arguably smacks of more effort than the tiresome mind games of Hellseeker, Deader is very much a film where its reach exceeds its grasp and its attempts to try to ground the usual Hellraiser blood-letting into something Serious (namely, the lingering effects of psychological trauma, most notably at the hands of a parental figure) but Bota depicts said trauma with the same heavy hand that he uses to show dismembered corpses or blood-soaked bathrooms so it comes across as especially mean-spirited and insensitive even for a franchise that thrives on torturing its characters.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Wow not a lot of good ratings on this thread.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

It wouldn't be much of a challenge if we only watched good movies.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

A couple quality ones couldn’t hurt though :)

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Sorry, forgot to update. I saw Ring 2 (1999) yesterday. I give it a respectable , might review it later on if I feel like it.

You need to remember that from me is definitely a positive thing :D

Very true. I'll get around to them soon enough, but in the meantime...

A group of friends all win invitations to a mansion party based on their favourite computer game only to find that something more sinister is going on.

How little respect did Dimension have for Hellraiser that they allowed Rick Bota to direct not one but three consecutive installments in the franchise? Not only that, but it squanders a relatively novel variation on the core Hellraiser premise by creating a world where Hellraiser itself is the basis for a popular computer game (the eponymous "Hellworld", which you sadly do not get to see in action) and characters even wear shirts with Pinhead's face on them. While the prospect of Hellraiser going meta in a big way would not automatically make for a better movie (it could well have ended up being this franchise's version of Halloween Resurrection), it would at least make for something different. Unfortunately, here it's just an arbitrary plot point designed to get our characters to go through a rather standard slasher plot that just happens to feature the occasional appearance of a Cenobite or the Lament Configuration. Even the "curiosity" angle that has defined Hellraiser from the beginning is completely abandoned here - nobody particularly seems to care that their favourite computer game is a horrifying reality (much less have their knowledge of the game factor into the proceedings at all), nor is the inciting incident of one friend committing suicide over his addiction to the game ever truly explored. Instead, expect more of the hacky tricks that Bota pulled in his previous entries as constant fake-outs, leery depictions of sexuality, and a plot that relies more on supposedly clever twists than on having anything to say. It's still not as bad as subsequent entry Revelations (which is not only the worst Hellraiser but easily one of the worst movies I've ever seen), but it's not for a lack of trying. Even Pinhead himself isn't fun to watch when he does show up.

Ah, yes, I remember the 18th HoF :p

After randomly finding an invitation to a "murder party" on Halloween, a loner attends only to find that the hosts really do plan to murder him.

Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room was one of my favourite films of 2016 as it took a bare-bones premise - punk band has to escape from a club owned by murderous neo-Nazis - and built a supremely tense and captivating thriller out of it. Murder Party covers similar ground - it also concerns a protagonist being trapped in a single location by a group that wants to murder them - but it goes for comedy more so than straight-up terror. By making its antagonists a group of art students who are willing to murder a person if it means earning grant money, it plays as a dark little satire of New York's art scene that builds suspense by rubbing its characters' egos up against one another as unrequited crushes, simmering resentments, and various other insecurities come to the surface. It definitely leans more towards the comedy side of things than horror - you're almost likely to forget that the frightened hero spends half the film's running time tied up and gagged while it focuses on the artists' interplay - but the moments in which it does switch gears are executed reasonably well as Saulnier shows the same capacity for tight plotting around tiny details and causality that has defined his works for the better (to say nothing of how easily human shortcomings and backfiring plans can work as both comedy and horror). Murder Party proves a decent enough zero-budget watch that doesn't exhaust its welcome at a brisk 79 minutes, though it's also easy to see why Saulnier gradually phased comedy out of his subsequent features.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Couple more today.

#6 Deathwatch (2002)

A rewatch of this WWI horror. A really mixed bag for me. Settings are superb and the wet, dirty trenches look better (or should I worse) than any other film. Acting's pretty decent too. But there are big issues as well. I hate that majority of war based horrors use practically the same story with slight variations (it's not terrible in itself but it got old years ago) and Deathwatch is no exception. Also despite solid acting the characters are weak and cliched. And the mandatory Twilight Zonenish ending is a turn off too.


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#7 Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

This was recently added to Netflix and I hadn't seen it before so why not. To be honest it was a lot better than I expected. Cinematography was pretty good, soundtrack was mostly fine and Michael felt intimidating. It gets gradually worse towards the end but first half is almost good and the whole is way better than last year's "true" sequel. Story is really campy and stupid (that's the main reason why the film gets weaker). Still above average slasher with couple of nice kills and Carpenter-like camera work.

This is a perfect film for Netflix. It's not something one needs to see in the theatres and it's worth your attention for a night in. Based on Stephen King and Joe Hill's novella, In the Tall Grass sends its characters literally into a field of tall grass that they can never seem to get out of.

Director Vincenzo Natali has a few films under his belt but he is best known for the low budget indie sic/fi horror flick Cube and the should have gotten more attention sic/fi monster flick Splice. Both films are good in my opinion, with Cube having a special place in my heart. In The Tall Grass leans away from sic/fi and more towards horror, even if the film lacks any genuine scares or feeling of dread.

Some beautiful shots, specifically overhead shots of the grass moving in the wind, giving the earth a life-force. Each sway feels like a breath being taken. Our characters are lost in endless green, hearing voices that aren't there, people that are displaced from time. Anything weird you think might happen, tends to happen. This helps stretch the film to an unnecessary length. This story could be told in an hour and 30 flat. The extra 15 or so minutes feels like padding and the more generic use of one character as the antagonist feels out of place.

Our of the three Netflix - King adaptations, this one feels less accomplished and more for the masses. I'm actually liking this Netflix - King relationship. We get to see stories of his that wouldn't normally hit the big screen and he has a lot of stories to dig through.

A b-level movie with A-level production values. Overlord hits the horror a little too late in the story to really engage with me, but the overall experience was a fun one.

After a really well put together opening sequence, Overlord would have you think it's simply a WWII flick and nothing more. It's not until we get inside a house and hear the whispering moans of an elderly woman hidden away in her room do we suspect something more is up.

Once Overlord does dive into horror, it feels conflicted. I loved the bit where we get a fallen soldier given life again with the medical serum. In the confusion of being alive again he whips his head back and break his neck. The body horror in this scene is almost Cronenberg level of grotesque and unique. On the other end, the film doesn't do enough with the zombie aspect to make the film interesting.

Towards the climax the horror becomes a little more reliant an action. Our antagonist is part zombie and instead of killing people, he likes to throw them around. This is a common theme in films where the fight can be over relatively quickly, but our bad guy tends to simply throw our hero around the room. Had Overlord leaned a bit more into the horror element a bit earlier, it could have been more inline with From Dusk Till Dawn.

I enjoyed the film, it has some nice gore elements, but wanted the film to do more with the zombie plot. It just seems like it's there with no added weight. Our heroes barely fight the dead and we have zero connection to out heroes. Props to the make-up department though, they hit it out of the park.

October 5th

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Black Christmas(1974) is one of the early not Italian slashers...some might even call it the first slasher. The film has a few things going for it that other slashers don't have. The big thing is the film plays out over the course of a night you get a passage of time that helps distinguish this from other films. It also has a very nice color pallet and even though to borrows heavily from Argento it still has that American grind-house look to it.

A couple things I didn't care for was the obscene caller thing has been done better. The gutteral sounds are okay but I prefer Scream and When a Stranger Calls to what they did with Black Christmas. I also wish we would have gotten more from the mystery aspect of the film the killer fairly obvious and we're never really given other options so that hurts the overall impact of the film.

October 6th


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Funhouse (1981) one of the things that separates Funhouse from other slashers of the era is we get the final girl nude in the shower in the first act. This is also one of those films that really enjoys itself for the first half as the carnival stuff plays out very well. As a fan of HBO's Carnivale I especially enjoyed the stripper tent as I feel like it's something unseemly and adds another dimension to the film. I thought this was a bit stronger than some of the other slashers I revisited, to start off with the killers are well defined we get masks and makeup and that's important. The reason for the killing and the third act left a bit to be desired and kept it from being a classic but still if you like the genre with was watchable.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

#8 Belzebuth (2017)

A Mexican film that's like The Exorcist III with a hint of Terminator and heavy Bible references. First half of the film is good and the intro sets the bleak mood quite well. The second half is quite a bit worse and feels too long. There are couple of visually great scenes (like the crucifix one) while others look rather bad (especially the tunnel shots look terrible). With minor modifications this could have been good but now it barely misses the mark. Still definitely worth a watch.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

@pahaK - I liked Midsommar for what it was, but there were at least 2-3 times where I looked at my wife and said "wtf are we watching?" It was well-made, and the cinematography was above average for a horror flick, but all in all, it seemed fairly pointless when all was said and done.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

I'm not exactly sure if I should post the next one on this thread but both IMDb and wiki list it as horror so who am I to argue...

#9 Demons (1971)

A Japanese samurai film about honor, love, betrayal and guilt. It's mainly a tragedy but like Onibaba it has many horroresque visual elements and its depiction of madness kinda leans towards that same direction. It's brutal and hopeless even for a tragedy (this is amplified by good characters - while none of them are especially likable they all have more or less respectable motives which makes you pity them all to a degree).

Demons looks awesome and its b&w cinematography captures the all enveloping darkness mentioned in the film. First half of the film could have benefited from little editing but for the most part the 134 minutes goes by rather quickly. Very good film to spoil a beautiful day.

A young man brings his new girlfriend from Indian descent home to his racially insensitive British family for Christmas. Deciding it was a mistake to come, they opt to leave early the next morning, but mysterious metallic like wires cover the house, making it impossible to escape. Things get even weirder when messages appear on the television telling them to throw out their food, clean themselves with bleach and await further instructions.

Right from the start I had my hesitations about the film as the dynamic between the family and the new girlfriend felt forced and unnecessary. It was at the point where hypodermic needles dropped from the chimney for the family to inject themselves with that I was checked out. The new girlfriend is suppose to be the voice of reason and points out that the needles are used and they have no idea what is inside them. Yet these characters inject themselves anyways because the mysterious television tells them to. Even after one of the characters dies from injecting themselves, they somehow rationalize it away and continue to follow the text on the screen.

The film Compliance made me rethink what a normal person would do in a dumb situation. This film tries to go down the same path of compliancy. Their last name is Milgram, which refers to the Milgram on obedience to authority figures. Also that they live on Stanford street, referencing the Stanford prison experiment. Simply mentioning these things makes the filmmakers think they can get away with dumb character decisions, but at the end of the day it's just a frustrating endeavour. Stupid decisions are made to advance conflict when there should be no conflict. It's literally an other worldly event happening and turning on each other is the last resort.

With the exception of one or two characters, all of them change their dynamics at will, with the son in law being the worst offender. There is a bit of social commentary on how television rots the minds of people and the third act goes in some weird directions, but the overall experience of Await for Further Instructions is an experiment in testing my patience.

A Canadian horror classic that helped set the stage for numerous imitators.

Black Christmas is the little indie slasher flick that few know about, but those who do usually tend to appreciate it. I remember people talking about this movie on old horror boards and asked it for Christmas, my aunt bought it for me and I was really taken back by how low key everything about it was. Upon a re-watch (one of numerous re-watches) the film still maintains a sense of dread, holiday cheer and all around intelligence that most slasher movies fail to achieve.

It really did a number on me when the credits rolled and we never got a good idea of who "Billy" was. I remember thinking I must have misheard the character's name because I don't remember a Billy anywhere in this movie. How could a movie have a killer's identity never really revealed? Even by today's standards, this is rarely done, if at all.

Black Christmas was in my opinion, ahead of its time.

Here is a film I didn't like when I first saw it. I still don't like it, but I appreciate the effort a bit more now. Do we really need a Black Christmas remake? No. Do we really need another one in 2019? Double No. But after seeing what the newest remake is doing, I think back to this one and wonder why I disliked it so much. It has blood, it has the classic scream queens and some suspenseful scenes.

The film actually decides to go into the killer's background and Billy gets to become a fully fleshed out character with this remake. This is the most debate issue with this remake I think, as the charm of the original was having no idea who Billy was. Well, let's try and make things a tad different, let's give this guy some character. Do I think the original idea of not knowing be a lot scarier? Yes, does it work better than whatever half baked idea this film attempts? Yes. But this remake tries something, which is more than I can say about most remakes.

The trailer for this movie is one of the most misleading trailers in the history of cinema, with countless scenes in the trailer never appearing in the film. I'm not just talking about deleted scenes, I'm talking about entirely different sequences. Check out the trailer when you get a chance and then watch the movie, you'll think you missed half of it.

Glenn Morgan has two directing credits. Willard and Black Christmas. Both films bombed and received a critical thrashing. He hasn't directed a movie since, which is a shame because this film looks great. It's bathed in the christmas glows of red and green and is littered with unique close ups tilted *just* right to give off an uneasy feeling. Black Christmas is well directed, plain and simple.

It's a shame that the second climax of the film ruins the ending, the entire sequence is misguided and disposable. Get rid of it and the film becomes a lot tighter and focused.

When a team of documentary filmmakers go missing in the South American jungle, an anthropologist sets out to discover what really happened to them.

The question I always find myself asking in regards to horror movies is whether or not visceral repulsion is an adequate source of (or even substitute for) terror, to say nothing of how much substance a film has to have in order to justify its more apparent exercises in transgression. Cannibal Holocaust definitely trades on repulsion as it sets up a shamelessly exploitative narrative involving tribesmen who carry out brutal rituals and the "civilised" folks who disrespect them in a variety of increasingly horrid ways - the real question is whether or not it's worth going to the lengths that the makers of this movie did (which extends from real-life endangerment of its cast to graphic depictions of rape, dismemberment, and - perhaps most notoriously - multiple scenes of actual animal death). An attempt to rationalise the carnage is made through the framing device where the ethically-minded protagonist argues with television executives who want to air the crew's footage, thus lending an air of media-critical commentary to what is otherwise liable to come across as (relatively) conventional exploitation. Whether this discussion of such graphically offensive material has actual merit (especially when it comes across as a means of metatextually discussing whether Cannibal Holocaust itself has merit) or is just an excuse for Deodato and co. to present their ethically-dubious cannibal horror as more meaningful than it actually is can definitely be debated - even now I find myself unsure as to whether or not this deserves some degree of grudging respect or if it should be condemned extra-hard for this kind of have-your-cake-and-eat-it approach to extreme violence. I might give it the edge for never truly feeling like it's meant to be "enjoyed" even by those who would seek out low-grade cannibal movies for fun - everything from the minimalist synths to the grimy cinematography to the deranged performances builds towards an unforgettable experience, but one that cannot (and really should not) be described as enjoyable.

October 7th


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You Better Watch Out (1980)


I actually liked this one a bit better than Black Christmas, you've got some realism here. A young boy is traumatized by his mother engaging in some weird sex with Santa Claus (the boys father) the situation permanently traumatizes. 30 years later the boy grows up and decides to become Santa and stalks the town planing on killing the naughty.


This is a bit different from the other slashers, the cinematography is pretty good. We get a nice more realistic version of a killer on the loose script than the typical slasher film. It's watchable to me.

Guess I better start posting some thoughts on each film, so I am not just filling in a list.

Day 8


Cronin, 2019



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Well made, if derivative stuff. A single mother takes her son to live out in the sticks, where things quickly take a turn for the worse. While out exploring together, the duo happen across a massive sinkhole in the forest. Not long after, her son begins acting strangely. To give anymore away would be a spoiler, so I won't comment further. I will say it is probably worth a watch.

As an aside...while I watched, the sinkhole scenes reminded me of an old flick I saw when I was around 5 years old. I had no idea what is was called, only remembering that it was an anthology, and that one of the stories featured a hole in the ground that was a gate to hell or something along those lines. We live in remarkable times. After typing a few key words into google, I had the film's title up in about 30 seconds, whcih was Encounter with the Unknown. I quickly entered that into a streaming TV search engine, found the title on Tubi TV, and had the film up and playing on my Roku 30 seconds after that. I watched a few minutes before going to bed, with its warbling soundtrack and grainy 70s picture. Looks like that will be my selection for tonight.

October 8th
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Hellraiser 2:Hellbound(1988) y'know I debated covering the Hellraiser's but after the second one they just felt silly. This one strips away the creepy factor that the original had and goes for more of a Nightmare on Elm Street vibe, it attempts quips and humor and it all falls flat. Also some of the practical effects seem worse. The film starts off in an insane asylum and had the film just stayed in the asylum they might have been able to do something good with that but then they go to "hell" and once again if they stuck with "hell" they might have been able to do something with that but when it was all said and done they just left me cold with both parts.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

#10 The Enemy (2011)

A Serbian film set shortly after the war that tore Yugoslavia apart. Small group of soldiers removing the mines find a man from the sealed basement of an abandoned factory. From there... well, you remember what I said earlier about Deathwatch? This isn't an exact replica of that same plot but it's definitely a similar movie. Visually it's not as good as Deathwatch but I like the script a bit more. Where are all the innovative war horrors?

A group of friends sneak into a shopping mall after-hours to party only for the mall's robotic security guards to start attacking them.

It almost feels like cheating to watch ostensible horror movies that lean too hard into the idea of being fun little cinematic rides, especially in the wake of a cinematic gut-punch like Cannibal Holocaust. As the ultimately inaccurate pun of the title implies, Chopping Mall sets its modest sights on providing a quick 77-minute burst of killer-robot antics in the middle of one of cinema's most iconic shopping malls, the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The catch is that the resulting movie is a little too perfunctory for its own good. I know better than to expect anything particularly deep from a movie called Chopping Mall but it has some issues filling out its already-short running time with some extremely flat characters (with the bonus that, much like Alien: Covenant, most of them are paired off in couples) and only so many ways that it utilises the contents of the mall for the sake of human-versus-robot shenanigans. The Corman vibe is appreciable to an extent (you even get cameos from the likes of Dick Miller and Mary Woronov), but it also means that there's little to really hold onto not just in terms of substance (which I obviously accept as par forthe course) but in terms of thrills (which are a little too sporadic for a movie this short). Still, at least various aspects - the clunky-looking robots, their varied methods of pursuit and murder, the humans' inventive ways of fighting and escaping, the '80s camp of it all - make it a mildly enjoyable experience.

Thomasen, 1972



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As promised, we sat down to watch this little-known flick, with mostly my hazy, childhood nostalgia as the driving force. Sadly, the film mostly didn't deliver. A couple of creepy moments, combined with an overall unsettling vibe due to the grainy picture and jittery soundtrack, kept this from being a total dud, but for the most part, it's just plain bad.

The film features three stories. The first story, which my wife liked the best, is about a hex that is placed on 3 college students after a prank they play results in the death of a fellow student. The second, and arguably strongest story, is about a hole in the ground, from which demonic growls and wailing can be heard. After a farm boy's dog vanishes near (or into) the hole, a collection of yahoos and local yokels, who as a collective are as dumb as a sack full of hammers, decide to investigate. While the premise is perhaps the strongest of the three stories, all the actors are so bad, you never get pulled into the proceedings. The final story is the old urban legend about the hitchhiker on the bridge. The weakest of the three, leaving the film to go out with a whimper. A silly narration at the end that basically recaps everything you had just seen rubs salt in the wound. As if I didn't just waste 90 minutes watching all this trash, and I now need some jack wagon going over each detail in an interminable monotone. Apparently, Serling wouldn't do the final narration, so he vanishes after introducing the final story. Not a good movie!

I am so disappointed there is no chopping in this movie.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

It is my understanding that it was originally called Killbots but that's nowhere near as good a title.

Two teenage sisters wake up the night after a comet passes near Earth only to find that it has caused most of the population to either die or become zombies.

Despite my mixed opinion about Chopping Mall, I figured I'd continue in the shamelessly '80s horror-comedy vein with Night of the Comet. There's certainly a fair bit of promise to it - that image above gives a pretty good idea as to what the aesthetic of the movie is going to be like as post-comet Earth is shrouded in a thick reddish haze, clothes laid out with only piles of red dust where their occupants used to be. Even having the protagonists be a pair of Valley Girl archetypes seems like it could make a novel twist on the usual last-man-on-Earth narrative. Unfortunately, Night of the Comet never truly does anything to pay off as either a horror or a comedy. The writing does little to back up the leads' sarcastic performances and often manifests in numbingly broad ways, such as when the duo's post-apocalyptic shopping montage plays out to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". It's extremely tame on the horror front as well, promising everything from intelligent ghouls (which are so few and far between that they might as well not exist) to scientists with mysterious agendas (who barely matter until the last third) but with little in the way of tension or terror. As such, I have to write it off as largely wasted potential that's not completely terrible to watch but just sort of exists without making much in the way of a positive impression.

This is a film I always wanted to check out but for some reason haven't.

This month might change that.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

^ You should.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Just noticed that since the starts of this month a new streaming service started here in Finland that's free of use with a library card. There's some films in there I need to check and I started with one that I've tried to find for some time...

#11 Here Comes the Devil (2012)

A Mexican film where two kids disappear in the desert for several hours. When they come back there's something wrong with them. I don't exactly remember how this ended up on my radar but for some reason I had moderately high expectations for it. While it wasn't bad per se it was still a disappointment.

For starters it looks really ugly; cinematography is like Spanish soap opera plus some weird zooms. This is an example of low budget hurting the film. Script has some unnecessary and out of place sex scenes that just feel odd. Acting isn't too strong either (the police dude is especially bad). Story itself is OK and there's potential for much better movie. It's bleak and brutal (there's only one really violent scene but it's quite nasty) and I wanted to like it more than I did. A very tentative recommendation for horror fans who don't mind pointless female nudity.

^ A very tentative recommendation for horror fans who don't mind pointless female nudity.
I thought that was most everybody.

Just like Ouija: Origin of Evil, we have a sequel that is actually a prequel and way better than the series deserves or needs to be.

The original Annabelle was the first of many spin-offs from The Conjuring and it was a generic horror fright that lacked tension, scares or an interesting story and ended up on my worst of the year list. So of course I had little to no interest in Creation. That's mostly the reason why it has taken me 2 years to watch it. I kept hearing that it was actually good and after seeing David F. Sandberg's youtube channel where he talks about how to make movies on the cheap, I decided to give it a go.

The film is pretty good. It's actually a lot better than I thought it would be and I'm glad I gave it a chance. Sandberg directed a short 3 minute flick that went viral. It was called Lights Out. He was then approached by a studio to turn that 3 minute flick into a feature and we got the 2016 horror flick with the same name. It was shot next to The Conjuring 2 and James Wan took notice of this new director's efforts and offered him Creation. After the success of those two movies he went on to direct Shazam, so I'd say he's has a pretty good start to his career.

The difference between a film like this and a film like Annabelle is that Sandberg understands and respects the genre. He is more keen on using subtle scares than something in your face. Look at what John R. Leonetti, the director of the original film, has done in his career; Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, The Butterfly Effect 2, Wolves at the Door, Wish Upon and The Silence. The latter two are the better films of the bunch, but they are still not that great. Since Sandberg's previous film was basically a 'how to scare people with the use of lights', he was able to use those talents again with Creation. We see better use of the frame and the creativity with darkness. A little girl moving backwards into the dark, all you can see are her reflective eyes, which jerk and crack in obtuse ways until she appears 7 feet all. Together with ear tingling sound effects of bones cracking and got knows what stretching, you have a simple and effect scare scene that involves....almost nothing.

Some of the rules in the film are a little odd, I don't remember much about Annabelle as I try to forget that experience in general, but we get a lot more interactive scares here without the doll. A scarecrow comes to life in one sequence and possession is on the table. The doll itself is scarcely used and we have the obligatory ending that has to line up to the opening sequence of the original.

Creation is a film that might surprise you. It's not a run of the mill Hollywood horror film and that is mostly due to the creativity behind the camera. Give it a go.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

I also thought Annabelle Creation was a lot better than I thought it would be going in. Agree on the excellent use of actual suspense, something that continues to a certain extent in Annabelle come Home, btw. I didn't like the third film quite as much as Creation, but it's still quite a bit better than the first flick in the series. Meanwhile, that scarecrow scene in Creation is aces!

Glad you liked the film!

Next up for me...


Walton, 1986



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My rating reflects mostly nostalgia for this one. I used to watch this a lot back in the 80s. It's probably terrible, but I like it anyway! Whenever I watch it, it like getting together with a group of old friends. My wife hates it, just like pretty much everyone else.

A suburban family's newly-installed satellite television dish receives a signal from outer space that results in an alien mutant taking up residence in their house.

i was going through the Top 100 Horrors Countdown thread and stumbled across a post by The Rodent where he had recommended me this little number and I figured I'd use that to continue my '80s horror-comedy streak (and hey, this also makes three movies in a row to feature Mary Woronov!). Unfortunately, however underwhelming Chopping Mall and Night of the Comet may have been, they are downright masterpieces next to this grotesque excuse for a satirical creature feature. It's hard to gauge who this movie is for as it boasts a thoroughly hideous monster (think the giant head from Evil Dead II only much wetter and with more appendages) who nevertheless consumes various characters in comparatively bloodless and unimaginative ways, whereas its idea of biting satire is to create a bunch of loudly dysfunctional archetypes (swinger parents, survivalist grandpa, punk daughter, etc.) and have them rub up against one another (sometimes literally in the case of the parents and their fellow swingers) again and again as their numbers dwindle (and beyond). It soon becomes clear that the movie has no idea where to go once its monster shows up and starts killing people....and even less idea once it's killed most of them and has to struggle to come up with third-act twists in order to beef it up to the 80-minute mark. TerrorVision just ends up being a gaudy mess that has nothing to say through its already- blunt metaphor for how television destroys people's lives and even the odd remarkable choice (such as shielding the young son's eyes from the porn channel in the middle of a house full of wall-to-wall erotic paintings) does nothing to save what is already a contender for the worst movie I've seen this month - and I say this as someone who's already watched three DTV Hellraiser movies. Rodent, you owe me for this.

P.S. I still have the theme song stuck in my head and I f*cking hate it.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Can I participate but watch 31 days of happy-go-lucky movies? ;)

What about Halloweentown? Does that count as horror? :D

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

#12 Dark Touch (2013)

In small Irish town a little girl's family is murdered. She ends up in the custody of the neighboring family and things don't go too well.

Dark Touch is pretty much built on the idea of "evil begets evil" with pretty heavy Carrie influences thrown into the mix. Like many films I've watched lately it's not a happy one but I guess the topic doesn't really instill happiness. It's technically solid for low budget film and especially early on manages to build good atmosphere. It loses some steam along the way and the ending is little awkward. Not exactly good but not that far either really (and definitely better than Boyzone's music).

October 9t

Night School (1981)

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October 10th

Pieces (1982)

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Pieces and Night School are a pair of college slashers they both take different approaches to the story. Night School is much more about the eroticism, and suspense. A motorcycle riding maniac is focused on cutting off women's heads (nice). In Pieces a chainsaw welding serial killer is chopping up women on campus.


One is more of a whodunit while Night School is more of a mystery. Pieces has this nice weird quality to it where you'll have a kung fu guy show up and you think he's the killer but he's not. Night School on the other hand will have a prolonged shower sex scene.


They both have value but I was turned on by Night School and Pieces I just found watchable.


Night School
Pieces

October 11th


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Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer(1986) unfortunately I saw this one after Silence of the Lambs and Seven when I was a teenager so I didn't appreciate it. I enjoyed it much more on second viewing, this is an attempt at mixing genres and it works well. Henry is a cypher you never really get to the heart of whats true and false in him. Otis is a very different style of killer more impulsive and Becky is the poor sister of Otis who has her own issues. The film is a bit of a slow burn, the horror is graphic but not exploitative. You understand why Henry does what he does but Michael Rooker always keeps Henry grounded.

The put-upon employee of a cut-rate florist acquires a strange new plant for the shop and soon learns that it feeds on the flesh and blood of human beings.

Considering what I've learned about Roger Corman, it's perhaps not surprising that even the most famous of his directorial efforts effectively recycles the same narrative beats and character types as one of his other movies - in this case, the previous year's A Bucket of Blood. Sad-sack protagonist with overbearing boss and out-of-his-league love interest has the luck of discovering something that helps him improve his station in life but it involves death and murder so things naturally escalate from there until the film crashes to a halt within the hour. The film trades on a similar aesthetic with small sets being shot rather imaginatively and a tight-knit cast of outsized characters where even the bit parts have quirk to spare (Dick Miller shows up as a guy whose entire personality consists of eating flowers, to say nothing of Jack Nicholson's infamous early role as a dentistry-obsessed masochist). Though I'm still inclined to view it as a lesser version of A Bucket of Blood (swapping out the satire of beatnik culture and the modern art scene in favour of talking about flowers is definitely a strike against it) and I definitely don't consider it scary, it's still got its fair share of amusing moments and doesn't exhaust its short running time.

#13 [REC] 2 (2009)

This Spanish zombie/possession horror starts right where the first film ended. Despite the franchise being very different these two films remind me of Alien and Aliens; in their own ways both series take very similar approach to sequels by (mostly) replacing civilians with soldiers and putting more emphasis on action.

Writing isn't as tight as it was in the first one and new characters have very little personality. It's not nearly as intense and while some of the action is good the found footage style doesn't in general lend itself to faster pace that well (especially when the style is often used to hide the action or, I guess, hide the budget limitations). Maybe making it more different (i.e. normal movie instead of found footage) would have been better solution. It's still above average horror sequel but it's not the Aliens of this series.



Will watch rest of the sequels soon.

A group of teenage girls plan on having a slumber party but are preyed upon by a recently-escaped murderer.

You think it's going to be different, and maybe it is, but not enough. The Slumber Party Massacre seems like it is going to distinguish itself in an ostensibly male-dominated genre through its behind-the-camera talent as it is written, produced, and directed by women. However, this does end up inviting extra scrutiny as to what tangible difference they really make to a movie that comes across as largely indistinguishable from other works of its ilk. Sure, you can definitely discern some more overtly feminist subtext from its imagery; the killer's weapon of choice is an electric drill, a weapon that's somehow even more phallic than a knife or chainsaw. The killer himself isn't some supernatural freak in a mask either - he's just a guy who wants to kill people and his boring appearance is ostensibly a feature more so than a bug as he represents the kind of everyday predators that walk around like normal people. In fact, I kind of have to wonder if this boring-by-design approach to the killer was also meant to be applied to the movie itself as it goes so smoothly through the slasher motions, but there seems to be little else in the way of subversion (it certainly packs a lot of male-gaze nudity into its 76 minutes, for instance) and even the characterisation of a friend group being mostly bitchy to their awkward neighbour isn't interesting enough one way or the other to make the wait for the real third-act excitement particularly worthwhile. What's really wild is that this made the Top 100 Films Directed By Women countdown. I know it was short on votes and I was taking whatever I could get to stretch it to a full 100, but man, I was hoping it would be better than this.




A team of American scientists stationed in Antarctica are threatened by the appearance of a shapeshifting alien.

Not going to bother writing anything too detailed. It's The Thing, if you're the kind of person who's reading a "horror challenge" thread then you know what the deal is (though I do have a review on here somewhere). Seeing as I watched this last October as well, I think I might make this an annual revisit. I will say that I watched it with the commentary and now I think I just want to watch every Carpenter movie with a commentary now.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

#14 [REC] 3: Genesis (2012)

Third installment of the series is quite different from the earlier films. It has some comedic elements and is in general quite a bit lighter. It also does the unthinkable and ditches the found footage style along the way (something that's angered many fans, it seems, but I liked that decision). Being so unlike its predecessors it's actually quite surprising that it still feels more or less like a [REC] movie.

In a way [REC] 3 is a film I'm supposed to hate but it manages to do the tributes and parody in an entertaining way. There is some genuinely funny stuff (like SpongeJohn), some good horror scenes and pretty decent gore. After three films the series continues to be well above average horror franchise.

October 12th
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Slaughter High(1986) Marty is a classmate who on his birthday is horrificly bullied and scarred for life by a gang of bullies. Years later the bullies return to the High School for a reunion where Marty goes on to pick them off one by one.


I love this movie, the accents are horrible the kids are all in their 30's and the film is incredibly disjointed. But the film has a great atmosphere, the kills are creative the FX work is really well done for the era and several of the scenes are classic.

Ovredal, 2019



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I head heard good things about this one, and it did not disappoint. Although I am an avid reader, I somehow had not only never read these books, but had never even heard of them. So, I can;t comment on the film's faithfulness to the books, but whether or not they did justice to the books, the film is pretty darned good. Great creatures, and a fun anthology format combined with well done atmosphere throughout. Will probably add this to the short list of every-year must watches around Halloween, along side Trick-r-Treat and Carpenter's Halloween.



Cognetti, 2015



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Another in the somewhat overpopulated found footage genre, this fall in the slightly above-average range when compared to other films of its ilk. Not much else to say about it, except that I may have it rated a tad too high...perhaps 2.75 boxes is about right?



Goldner, 2013



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More found footage. Again, probably a bit above average in the genre. This one is perhaps a stronger 3, as it had a couple of really gripping scenes, and due to the overtly religious nature, definitely got under my wife's skin more than Hellhouse LLC. A slow burner, this one is also worth a watch if you don't mind the obligatory shaky cam that always tends to emerge in the genre.

A nerdy teenager buys an old car that secretly harbours a malevolent supernatural force.

After having watched both Carpenter's The Thing and Tobe Hooper's adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot (which I didn't include here on account of it being a miniseries, but if it were to count I would probably give it a ), I figured I'd revisit Carpenter's own adaptation of a King novel. I initially regarded Christine as the sole dud in the middle of Carpenter's peak period (which I'd argue runs from Assault on Precinct 13 through to They Live) and a second viewing hasn't done too much to dissuade me from thinking that it really is a step or two below every other film from that period. It certainly has one very slow build-up that made me question if this revisit was worth it, but it's only once Christine really starts coming alive and causing problems (I'd say around the time that the football game ends) that the film really kicks into high gear and it starts being a Carpenter film, throwing out enough escalating developments and distinctive moments to push this up to a positive rating. I'd never quite clocked how Carpenter's score on this one is at once so low-key yet so effective (echoing his work on Halloween III in the process) with its tinny insistence adding much-needed atmosphere to the proceedings, to say nothing of the myriad ways in which he shoots the eponymous car (whether it's rebuilding itself through remarkable effects work or driving around on fire). The whole thing is anchored by Keith Gordon's layered performance as he goes from put-upon dork to increasingly deranged obsessive, managing to carry the film when most of the cast (Harry Dean Stanton obviously excepted) cannot. As such, while I still remain convinced that Christine is Carpenter's most mid-tier work and not particularly scary, I cannot call it bad either and have to admit that it has its good qualities (albeit not enough to make it a favourite).

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

After watching The original Nosferatu last week, I’m on a Dracula kick.
Dracula (1931) Bela Lugosi classic followed by Coppolas Bram Stokers Dracula
May even squeeze in the Mexican version of Dracula from 1931 using the same sets as the original

Eccentric, crazy, rape / revenge, horror flick set in the streets of New York with a smooth Jazz soundtrack.

2019, Beck/Woods



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A fairly tired trope these days, the "Killers in the Haunted House" idea. This played a bit like a film from the Saw series, but without the over-the-top gore, with the exception of two or three quick shots of some pretty brutal stuff. Entertaining for what it was, and it looked and sounded good. Worth a watch.

Dracula is one of my all time favorite movies. Bela Lugosi is amazing in it.

A group of friends attend a horror-themed amusement park on Halloween only to be stalked by an actual masked killer.

I'm not sure how many horror movies I've seen that take place on the grounds of amusement parks (whether of the "haunted house" variety or not), but I don't think it was enough that I expected any clichés specifically related to the setting. However, for all the lurid colours and grotesque setpieces that the eponymous festival foists upon its customers, Hell Fest can't help but play like a decidedly standard excuse for a slasher. The ambiguity of being unsure what's a real threat or just part of the show is fairly constant, though maybe too constant as the park's staff seem to jump out at our lead characters every few seconds. The same goes for the linear progression through the festival as they are made to descend further into increasingly hellish mazes and rides, though even those struggle to come up with much variation after a while (but hey, gotta dig that funky lighting). Actual moments of horror tend to be few and far between as there's the odd moment of tension but only two truly noteworthy kills, so it's fairly disappointing on that front. There's not much else to be said for the killer's prospective targets either with seemingly all of their characterisation being centred around how horned-up they are for a) each other and b) setting up the final girl with a date. However many amusement park horrors I have (or haven't) seen doesn't seem to make much difference to how much I enjoyed (or didn't enjoy) Hell Fest, which wastes a significant amount of its potential and just proves a vaguely enjoyable slasher throwback that at least gives you a nice-looking haunted house vibe even without any of the associated fear.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

He’s so amazing in it, that certain scenes suffer when he’s not in it. He makes the movie whenever his creepy presence is present. That and the eerie atmosphere that permeates the film

#15 [REC] 4: Apocalypse (2014)

After little lighter third part the Spanish zombie/possession series returns to more serious approach of the first films. Remember how I said that the relation of the first two films reminded me of Alien and Aliens? Well, [REC] 4 does loan quite a bit from that other franchise and there are elements that make me want to call it Resurrection of the [REC] series.

With previous film ditching the found footage style [REC] 4 is a proper movie from the start. Despite the claustrophobic setting of a ship at sea it doesn't reach the intensity of the first film but then again very few films do. As a whole it's again above average horror film that's perhaps a bit more "Hollywood" than the previous parts but still manages to end (for now at least) the series without major drop in quality (parts 2 to 4 are very close together in that regard).

October 13th
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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter marked the return of Tom Savini. The film keeps in simple choosing to tell an almost Haunted House feel to the film. Savini's effects are especially well made as the gore is upped quite a bit. The film features Crispen Glover (who we think is supposed to be the last male standing) and Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis.



As the start of the Jarvis verse this is okay, I could have done with a bit more character development with the teens. This film also features 13 kills from Jason (he's the 14th) which is a neat twist but takes away a bit from the end product.

Watching the follow up The Night Strangler next.

I don't want to write too much about this movie because I feel like I've covered it quite a few times. My original review gave it a lower rating, why I don't remember. This film is boss. It deserves the iconic status it has within the horror community.

It made my top 50 horror films. Top 5 to be exact and next to Evil Dead, it's probably the one horror film I've seen the most times.

If you want to read my thoughts on it and the series as a whole, CLICK HERE.

A mysterious drifter is brought into a small-town police station where he demonstrates a supernatural awareness of other people's darkest secrets.

"The Devil knows the Bible like the back of his hand." - Tom Waits

I was given a free DVD of this movie after a screening of Suspiria a couple of years back, which doesn't exactly instill the most confidence in the final product's overall quality. Even so, I thought I'd give it a shot, if only to see what kind of horror shenanigans Liam Cunningham of Dog Soldiers fame could get up to this time. However, his taciturn hit-and-run victim rarely exudes any actual sense of depth beneath him lurching between Hannibal-style monologues and mumbling about the Bible, which does play into how the film talks about the various sins of its characters (which start off with a hit-and-run and only get much worse from there) and ultimately opts to punish them for it. As such, Let Us Prey doesn't prove a particularly deep piece of work as it grounds its horror in a rather simplistic morality play about inner demons that occasionally gives way to an absurd jump scare or a splash of gore. There is a valiant attempt to actually throw in some twists and suspenseful setpieces throughout the back half, but it's too little too late and even some admittedly decent cinematography does nothing to truly distinguish this - you could even have Cunningham turn into Pinhead at the end and it wouldn't surprise me.

I got a little behind, so had to cram two in last night, Since the wee lass was still up in the early part of the evening, we had to go with something tame and bit goofy in the first slot...


Ortega, 1993



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My wife just loves this movie. Me, not so much, I must say though, for what it is, it is done pretty well. I would never put it on if the choice were all mine, but alas, such is married life.


Next up, since Iro gave this such a glowing review... ;)


Plotkin, 2018



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I won't argue with Iro on this one. Predictable and dumb, with a fairly annoying cast overall. A couple of tense sequences weren't enough to salvage this one. I will say that I would definitely go to a massive haunt park like this, just one without the masked maniac running around killing people. The haunt itself was the best part of the film.

An anthropologist travels to Haiti in search of a powder that is used in voodoo rituals.

I do feel kind of bad that I've never really been able to get into Wes Craven, having filed him under "respect but don't enjoy" after seeing a handful of his films. However, The Serpent and the Rainbow is good enough to convince me to try giving him more chances (especially since this film's emphasis on mind-bending horror has enough echoes of A Nightmare on Elm Street that I now feel like watching it again). It helps that it's different to the other films of his that I've seen as it leaves behind slashers and hicks to indulge in voodoo zombie shenanigans, coming up with a novel 1980s update to the concept's inherent anti-colonial subtext by having its protagonist be searching for voodoo secrets on behalf of Big Pharma looking for a new breakthrough (though the flip-side is that the voodoo is mainly being utilised by a power-hungry paramilitary captain). Of course, things are not as they seem and everything from psychological freakouts to physical torture is on the table as the protagonist digs further and further into a world he might be better off not knowing. Craven certainly goes all-out in conjuring the right atmosphere with elaborate production design and knowing how to build decent horror scenes here and there, making for something that does take a while to get going but keeps up a hell of a momentum once it does.

October 14th


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A Nightmare on Elm Street: A Dream Child(1989) Funny how almost all the images are of the food scene because for me this was the weakest of the dream kills. I'm not even sure I know how she died from that...though there is a good jump scare near the end of it. I enjoyed this one, Freddy is a fairly minor character in this film rather the focus is on the horrific dream sequences. They live, die and fight back in several fairly well constructed scenes. I thought the film kinda loses it's way in the end, the FX feels somewhat dated at that point but it was still a good watch.

October 15th

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Halloween III: Season of the Witch(1982) is something a little different a film that attempts to take aspects of the Slasher film and deconstruct it. You still get the killer masks, the shapes, and it's still shot very well but it's not really a slasher. The irony is the film lifts quite a bit from Carpenters end of the world trilogy which it basically predates so that's just one of lifes twists.


Tom Atkins is the lead and he's very good in this as the doctor searching for answers. Once we get the answers the film falls flat on it's face some scenes at the end in a warehouse are downright comical straight out of scooby doo.

October 16th


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Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, the first Sleepaway Camp is basically a slasher mystery and played straight up the followups on the other hand are where the story really shines. In the future Angela is back fully grown up and now a camp counselor who has to now deal with an unfortunate group of teenagers who generally suck as people.


The acting is terrible...some might call it campy and the story doesn't track but this is one of those slashers that I love. Partly for the gratuitous nudity, partly because the film is creative and feels like it's saying something about genre, but mostly for the humor. This is almost like the Deadpool of slashers I enjoy that.

I dislike the original and am a fan of this over the top winking at the audience sequel.

Klevberg, 2019



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Another unnecessary remake? Probably. I didn't expect the fairly clever social commentary about the dangers of smart tech as well as dumping **** tons of information into impressionable kids. Was this version of Chucky actually evil or is this what you get when you put a introduce an impressionable youngster into today's world? A bit more thought provoking than expected, but pretty much falls short in every other regard. Hamill is good as the doll, but the rest of the cast are dime a dozen D Listers. Aubrey Plaza continues to be much more entertaining to watch in real life than in films, delivering a performance just slightly less wooden than the doll. The gore is over-the-top, the killings are all too familiar, and the attempts at comedy all fell flat. I will throw this one en extra half box of popcorn for at least attempting a cautionary tale.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

#16 Eli (2019)

In my reviews I often like to name films that came to mind while watching. This time I can't do it because I'd consider it spoiler. Anyways the plot begins with a boy whose immunity system is failing due to disease and his parents take him to a progressive doctor for special treatment.

At first the films is rather stupid and the whole sickness theme feels like an attempt to bypass character writing. At that point I was preparing myself for another bad Netflix film. But Eli is actually a rarity - a film that improves with each act. It does hide its true nature quite well (though in my opinion it does cheat) and it's actually somewhat surprising. Dull first act still drags the whole a bit but it's not far from being good. Definitely one of the best Netflix movies.

Re: October Horror Movie Challenge: 31 in 31.
 

Encouraged by @John-Connor 's review...

#17 The Night Stalker (1972)

In general I like stories where reporters, private investigators, etc. investigate events that end up being supernatural. It's one premise that never gets old. So there's some genuine goodwill on my part towards The Night Stalker.

Unfortunately it shows that back in the seventies TV was a second-rate media. Movie looks plain ugly for the most part, there's no suspense in any scene and police is incompetent on Smokey and the Bandit level. Kolchak is only even somewhat OK character but he too suffers from the blandness of others. But in a film like this I usually manage to look past quite a few faults so it was still mildly entertaining watch.