Suspect's October Horror Movie Thread

When I first saw the trailer for this film, I thought to myself; "Wow, now that seems like it could be a tense film, she's stuck in a wheel chair the whole time". I stand by that comment; any horror film with the main character being terrorized or haunted and they are stuck, immobile, will lead to greater stakes. That individual can't run away, they can't really hide, they're stuck. I was game to see this flick.

Jessabelle tells the tale of a young beautiful woman who has her dreams cut short by an accident, which leaves her unable to walk. Confined to a wheel chair, she calls her absentee father to come and pick her up. She moves in with him and finds these old VHS tapes around the house with messages from her mother, whose dead, about Jessabelle's fate. You guessed it, her fate isn't looking to good. Her mother see's death, torture and ghosts in poor Jessabelle's future and her future lurks behind every corner.

Okay, so now we have a main character, physically confined to her chair. The threat isn't really tangible, it's a ghost, so that can come out of nowhere. You're not safe in any room, any corner, or under any sheets. Great, this is good news, the tension will come....the tension will come....I'm sure the tension will eventually come....the tension never came.

Jessabelle disappoints me so much in that area. Not once did I ever really fear for her character. Sure things get a little creepy, but those scare tactics are cliched and tired out. Even the added bonus of our disabled character, couldn't save the film from that. This film only works, barely, due to the performance from Sarah Snook. Snook was nominated in last years Mofo Film Awards for her role in Predestination. She failed to win, but did indeed turn some heads. She does so again, for me at least, with her honest performance here. She's beautiful, but that doesn't define her character, as so many horror movie characters go that route. Here, Snook gives Jessabelle some depth and some empathy, something a lot of horror flicks lack. So Jessabelle earns some points there.

The final reveals fail to live up to the moderate build up. So the end result is a poor result all around. The film lacks a lot of much needed scares and more importantly, tension and fear for the well being of our main character here. If Jessabelle looks like an interesting film to you, don't be fooled, it's not.

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Suspect's Reviews

After being caught cooking meth, a teen is sent to rehab. It is here that he meets a young beautiful girl who offers him a job. They go to a remote cabin with her boyfriend and third partner in their little drug scheme. Things go a little wrong for them when they begin to turn on each other. Things go from bad to worse when they find themselves caught in an old Native American curse. Now they must find a way to break free, or forever be dammed.

I was given this little indie flick by my uncle, who surprisingly sang its praises. So I went in with modest expectations and came out with a smile on my face, a sense of disappointment and a feeling of "I've seen this done better before".

Blood Punch has one aspect about the film that I would love to talk about, but feel that it would ruin the surprise. So I'm at odds here because this happens in the first act and the rest of the movie is wrapped around this plot device. It's nothing new or original, in fact it's been done to 'death'. Yet it's the inspired direction from Paxson that really gives Blood Punch a sense of accomplishment. The drama in the beginning takes a turn to black comedy once we arrive at the cabin. The film tries a balancing act and works for the most part, it's just that I didn't really find it too funny.

The genres this film mixes a fast and furious. There is even a action heavy shoot-out for crying out loud. This might make it seem like the film doesn't know what it wants to be, but I believe Paxson and crew knew exactly what they were doing here. An ode to some crazy Raimi/Coen Brothers hybrid of a film.

While interesting enough to keep my attention. Bizarre enough for me to want to find out more. This is a film that I can't really see myself watching again anytime soon. I can't place my finger on it. The acting is serviceable to the story. The direction above what one can expect from a low-budget indie black comedy flick and the blood effects will make the horror fan smile. It simply feels like a precursor to something more, something bigger, something better down the road for the career of Paxson, if anything.

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Daniel Radcliffe is trying desperately to distance himself from the role that made him famous. What better genre to work in than horror? The total opposite of a kids fantasy series. He starred in The Woman in Black, to tepid reviews, but the film made enough money and had enough of a fan base to warrant a sequel. Don’t worry, I’m not reviewing that flick; instead were looking at a film adaptation from a book penned by Stephen King’s son, Joe Hill.

Horns is a murder-mystery / almost horror hybrid. Radcliffe plays Ig, yes that is his name. His girlfriend turns up dead and he is the prime suspect. Yet, he didn’t do it. How is he supposed to find the real killer? Well, one day out of nowhere a set of horns appear on his head and gives him the ability to see people speak the truth. He finds out some horrible things from his friends, family and complete strangers. With this new ‘power’ of his, he’s on the war path to find out the true killer of his girlfriend.

Hill is a weird guy; he has to be, growing up with King as your father. His own foray into the world of writing is just as weird, if not weirder than his father. Horns is just a peek into the mind of Hill and Alexandre Ajatries his hand at adapting Hill’s work for the screen. Aja is known for his brutal take on violence, just look at High Tension or The Hill Have Eyes remake. Both gritty films with blood and violence filled to the brim. Horns isn’t as violent per say, but does have some grisly images here and there. Aja was a good choice for this piece of work, even if he does seem more focused on those horrific images of blood than he is in the mystery element.

Radcliffe is someone I’m not particularly a fan of. He seems to be trying way too hard to speak like a normal person. There is something off-putting by the way he pronounces most of his words that it bleeds into his performance, making it seem almost wooden at times. Horns is his best performance to date, for me at least, but he is still a weak actor by far. How much of a career will he have now that Potter is done, well, we’ll have to wait and see. I wouldn’t mind seeing him in more pieces like Horns and less like The December Boys, that’s for sure.

To say Horns is ordinary is a big disservice to the material. The film is weird in a unique way mainly due to Hill, but Aja manages to bring it to the screen with some flair. Check out Horns for something oddly fun.

Never heard of Horns or Blood Punch before. I added both to my watchlist. Nice going!

It Follows is one of the more difficult films to review as it has so much going for it, yet disappointingly doesn't reach its full potential. Jay, a young woman has sex for the first time with her boyfriend, afterwards he chloroforms her and she wakes up tied to a wheelchair. He explains to her that he has passed the curse onto her and that 'it' will follow her. It won't stop, it's won't die, it follows.

The film opens with a great sequence where we have no idea what is going on. We don't see it yet, but we know that some bad is about to happen.The premise behind It Follows is genius for the horror genre. It takes a generic horror trope and turns it into a suspenseful genre flick with great visual flair. Mitchell does an excellent job behind the camera and shows real talent. The film is shot extremely well, which is one of the high points.

Where the film excels, it excels very well. I was constantly looking in the background of the frame. Is that person it, or not? I kept running scenarios through my head of how I would try to get rid of the supernatural being. Scenarios they never really tried, which is where the film falters a little bit. It doesn't follow some of the rules it sets up for itself.

In the end, I wanted to like this film a lot more than I did, but suffice to say it is still a good horror flick and easily recommended.

In my review, I also noted the whole thing about how "it" never seemed to follow its established rules, but that's apparently justified by the fact that the very nature of the monster is so unpredictable and unknowable that the "rules" (which are only learned off humans who have survived encounters with "it" and are more like educated guesses than concrete guidelines) serve as seemingly deliberate misdirection. Of course, this backfires by making them seem like mere plot holes instead.

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In that case, the deliberate misdirection was a mistake. The characters speak of it as fact, so we take it as so. It should have been more ambiguous on their part with what it is (the characters, not the filmmakers). So we can be at a loss with them.


The unreliable narrator is a great device when done right (Gone Girl, Fight Club) but when done poorly it shows lack of focus, imo.


still, VERY interesting film though and I'm glad that it got as much attention as it did. If I had never heard of it, maybe it would be a bit higher, but that damn hype machine does evil things.

Yeah, it does sound like a cop-out more so than an adequate justification, but it makes enough sense to me. Some of the rules seem set up to be deliberately broken such as the one about "it" appearing as one of the victim's loved ones in order to get close to them (which it almost never does) and often doesn't seem concerned with trying to catch "its" victims at all. Arguably, that's a gambit where "it" takes "its" time so as to ratchet up the fear in "its" victims because it...feeds on their fear when it kills them, I guess. As a result, I think that if it were any more vague then that might actually cause its own problems.

Wes Craven delivered some of the best horror films the genre has ever seen. One of his first entries into the genre was the gritty and shocking, The Hills Have Eyes. In honour of this great horror director, let's take a look at his take on brutality.

Here we have a family on vacation in the desert, little do they know a family of mutants is out there looking for their next meal. What follows next is sheer terror from a master craftsman who is still learning his trade. Hills is usually spoken highly of and thought to be one of his better films and watching it today, I would concur.

Craven takes a simple idea. Family stuck in desert, and delivers the terrors first rate. Minimal make-up used for the mutants, the real life actors have just the right amount of weirdness to them to make them scary. It also makes them more realistic.

The film enjoys a large cult following and was popular enough to warrant a sequel and eventually a remake. The remake does a decent job and extends the terror a bit, but the original is something on a whole different level. The film is relentless and the low budget style (it was all they had) only adds to the atmosphere here. Craven knows how to stage a frightening sequence and the one that stands out is when one of the mutants attacks the trailer, stealing the baby.

I saw the remake first and yet that sequence still had me on the edge of my seat. As intense as the remake is, it simply doesn't hold a candle to Craven's vision. They simply don't make them like they use to my friends.

We go from classic Wes Craven, to is he still relevant Wes Craven. After the success of the Scream franchise, Craven was looking for another teen flick that could possibly get a series going. Written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, this horror comedy stars Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson and a pre famous Jesse Eisenberg.

What makes this film interesting is the "what If" scenario that comes with it. Cursed was pitched as an R-rated horror comedy, a murder mystery with werewolves. This is apparently, what Wes Craven delivered. The studio decided to cut the film into what we have today; a PG-13 flick with an almost different storyline. One of the main characters was cut out of the film for crying out loud. Skeet Ulrich, Mandy Moore, Omar Epps, and Corey Feldman are just a few of the actors who had to drop out, were cut out, or had their roles recast during the extremely long process.

Alas, we only have the film before our eyes to judge and boy is it a mess. The special effects are cringe worthy, the brother-sister relationship between Ricci and Eisenberg is weak and the reveal of who the werewolves are is laughably predictable. Watching the film you get the sense that they are trying hard to recapture that lightning in a bottle that made Scream such a hit. It sounds the same, looks the same but is nowhere near the same level of awesomeness.

The comedy aspects are awkward and don't work, weird subplots emerge and leave with little effect to the story. Why do we care that the one character is a homosexual? It's forced and disingenuous. Cursed is a black eye on the tail end of a successful film career for Craven. I'm glad he managed to finish off on a higher note than this though.

I've only seen Cursed once, and I struggled through it. I'd have to watch it again, but I think it's at least as poor as TUS does.

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What did you like about it? I found the comedic elements to be few and far between. They seemed so out of place and didn't really gel with the rest of the film. The wolf flipping people off at the end almost turns it into full on parody. If that is the intention, they don't keep that tone throughout the film at all.

Ricci didn't really seem to care much in her role, the only person who did seem to be interested in their character was Eisenberg.


I'd like to hear your thoughts on why it deserves a higher rating because even Craven himself said it's garbage.

I am interested in seeing the original The Hills Have Eyes again, though. I've not seen it in forever and, both as a kid and a teenager, I thought it was pretty rubbish. I saw the remake and really liked it, so maybe it is time to give it another go.

Always add a popcorn to Iro's ratings. If you still disagree, then you're probably seeing things a little more differently.

For the love of... Sorry. I had both threads open and got confused.

Maybe we could watch it and do a commentary. Maybe invite Swan or somebody to join. I have it, but I have never watched it. I have seen -- and liked -- the remake.

That sounds like a plan. I don't know if I have it or not, but I'm sure I can get it pretty easily/cheaply.

Hey, I have great respect for someone who is willing to defend a film that is generally hated. Glad to see that you found something of value in it.

And my reviews are being confused with Iro's now? Oh God....

Mike Flanagan has another film on this list. He did the underwhelming Absentia. Here he finally shows some promise with a creepy horror flick that involves mirrors.

Told from to different perspectives in two different timelines. A brother and sister set out to destroy a mirror that holds supernatural abilities and is responsible for a horrible event from their past. I kept passing on this film because it's about a creepy mirror. We already got creepy mirrors in the horror flick, Mirror. That film was a big letdown because it was from Alexandre Aja, who knows how to stage a good horror film. So when I decided to sit down to watch another attempt at making mirrors creepy, from a less talented filmmaker, well...you get the idea.

But boy was I wrong. This film is refreshingly creepy. Throughout the movie, you're never 100 percent sure what you are seeing. The mirror is able to manipulate people into thinking they are doing one thing, or seeing one thing, while they are somewhere else doing something completely different. This puts certain characters in grave danger because they don't even realize they are in a life or death situation. This film constantly questions reality and so does the viewer.

This adds a level of suspense to the terror. Flanagan flips from past to present multiple times and despite already knowing the outcome of the story from the past, he still manages to build tension. Things take a turn for the even more supernatural when the past and present start to blend together.

The brother and sister know that this mirror is the cause of their problems and they want to document that. By the end of it, they hope to destroy the thing, but that damn mirror has other plans. Just when you think you want to destroy it, it somehow manipulates you into doing something different. Thus saving its own reflection.

A small and quick history lesson about the mirror opens up a world of possibilities and possible sequel / prequels. A thing that surprisingly, doesn't leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm open to more stories with this thing. Very few horror films make inanimate objects scary, so congratulations Oculus, you did it!!!