A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I’ve had this in my queue for a long, long time and just decided to finally get it out.
The experience, in real time, was not that inspiring but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. Maybe not enough to recommend but enough that I might even watch this again some day.
Two couples go away for a relaxing weekend to a house on an island to help their artist friend chill the hell out. She was a rising star, but when she started painting pictures from her dreams they became too dark for audiences and now she's at risk of losing her career. The group is warned that there’s something bad on the island but, of course, they stay anyway. The main character, the artist, dreams sinister things since she was a child and now maybe they are coming true or something. Anyway, they’re trapped on the island with something bad that is stalking them. It takes them a while to actually get very excited about it. And then it's pretty much too late.
The story isn’t particularly inspiring, the dialogue is generally weak, there’s not a likable character in the film (not that that’s a requirement but when not much else is going for you, it helps), the acting is barely passable, the music is really cliche and at times just really obnoxious... but at times there are things to like as well. Some of the suspense actually works pretty well even if everything else is just like exactly made-for-TV quality just with more gore and unnecessary shower nudity (not that I mind nudity either but if you’re gonna show a woman naked in the shower, at least can we pretend it’s to set up the sense of isolation and vulnerability and not just a woman taking a shower because she just got outta bed and it’s time to take a shower?).
I've talked about this problem I’ve run into, this thing with my close Horror-watching friends where they don’t really care for my penchant to recommend vintage low-budget Horror and I am forced to defend WHY I like a lot of movies like Lemora or Spider-Baby or Carnival Of Souls or Messiah Of Evil or Malatesta’s Carnival Of Blood or Let’s Scare Jessica To Death or whatever. And I always can. I can always tell them specific things that the movie does well that you can enjoy and hang your hat on even if the acting is bad or the effects are cheap or whatever.
This movie actually doesn’t really give me much in particular to defend. No aspect, really that I can say, well, this makes it stand out. I mean, the kills or the kill-effects anyway are better than I would have expected for sure, particularly a pitchfork stabbing that’s really well done and the body later found with little crabs crawling all over it (while the actress manages to NOT blink), that's a good kill.


And I see that said effects got this one a “Video Nasty” banning in the UK. The scene of a wife making out with her husband before discovering it’s just his severed head might have done it. But that’s not enough to work with. And that's why I'm a little confused that this movie is growing on me. I think maybe it got just batty enough in the third act that, even though it doesn't even really end satisfyingly, I found myself kinda feeling like I liked it a little bit anyway.
I wrote a review right after I finished this movie and it was pretty harsh. I re-wrote it here because I have really softened on it over the course of the week. The dream business, the grisly murders, the odd little twist at the end, I dunno, it just grew on me and I actually may revisit this thing some time and see what it was that pulled me back in.
Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age.

I think Rock recommended The Slayer to me some time ago but I haven't watched it yet. The trailer makes it seem fun. Looking forward to it.

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Prince of Darkness. Trying to clear up a couple of Carpenter blindspots (I am not looking forward to the Chevy Chase invisible man movie). I don’t think I need to put the synopsis but the one Peacock offers is too funny to pass up: “A priest summons a professor to an old church to see a canister of liquid Satan.” The movie is a lot of philosophizing on the nature of reality and quantum physics. It takes a bit too long to kick into gear but there’s still some decent horror in the second half. I’m always delighted to see Victor Wong, and Alice Cooper is a fun addition to the cast as the King of the homeless people(?)

I have a message for you and you're not going to like it: pray for death.

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Tomato Necromancy - now with Vitamin R!
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I actually just rewatched that not too long ago.

I've seen Memoirs of an Invisible Man back when I thought Chevy Chase was a decent guy. It's not worth wasting your time over.

In this found-footage VOD film, a group of documentarians interview the only surviving member of a Haunted House crew that were otherwise all killed on opening night as they attempt to make a film uncovering what really happened. "They" (the infamous They) have either suppressed or had no explanation for what happened so the documentary, ostensibly, will reveal the truth that has been covered up by authorities or whoever. The surviving crew member provides them with all the footage taken during the assemblage of the Haunted House which includes many obviously haunted shenanigans.
Sighhhh... A contemporary, VOD, found-footage movie is really not my cup of tea and I have been putting this off for a while but watched it to be fair to my friends who endured several much better movies that they didn't like and asked me to watch this. I almost didn't make it 20 minutes. But I powered through out of love and loyalty for my friends and ultimately I guess I've seen worse. I am learning to be as forgiving to contemporary no-budget Horror as I am to vintage (70s and back) no-budget Horror.
On the positive side, the movie does have a number of spooky moments and is even a bit scary toward the end. Though most of it is just of the "if we put dimly lit creepy-pasta on the screen, throw in some jump-scares, and have the people filming freak out and run, audiences will be scared" variety. Heavy on the creepy-pasta.


On the negative side, some of the acting is really poor which just tanks found-footage. If you can't creat a credible illusion that the person on camera is a real person telling a real story then the whole thing is shot. In this one, the very first guy on camera is probably the worst actor in the film and makes it impossible to take the movie seriously. The second guy is just as bad. Made the whole enterprise seem really silly and amateurish to me. I actually had to do a manual reset of my brain after he was gone so I could press forward or I would have just turned it off.
The second thing that you have to create in a found-footage is a reason for the camera to always be on. In this case they just hand-wave the fact that a guy who is supposed to be working on the haunted house films everything the entire time... including filming himself sleep. Ya know, so we can see the haunted shenanigans that happen while everybody's sleeping too. Nobody films themselves sleep all night. It's ridiculous.
The third major shortcoming is that not only are none of the characters likable, only the creepy ******* is even memorable so I actually really didn't know who was who until the third act. So I didn't care about anybody at all and often wasn't sure who was talking or getting spooked or if it even mattered. There's some bit maybe halfway through the movie about a mysterious photo that seems to show one of the characters' ghost or something and I actually didn't know who they were talking about. Turned out he was the main dude.
Anyway.
It has high scores from a number of sources so maybe I'm just not the audience. I would probably give this like a 5/10. But I would say this to try to be as positive as I can be: if you're forgiving, and I mean, to me, you have to go in with a forgiving attitude and be ready to accept all the marks they miss, and you're good with found-footage movies and their shortcomings, and you're willing to suspend a good bit of disbelief to keep things going , and you don't really mind that you can't tell the characters apart... well, if you like Halloween haunted-houses, you might actually like this. I mean, it does have a cute little twist at the end (even if it's fairly obvious at least 5 minutes if not much longer before it happens).


PS - I watched The Director's Cut which is 8 minutes longer and actually has one very significant tweak that, without seeing it the other way I can't know for sure, but to me definitely seems like it's an improvement.

The Dyatlov Pass incident is worse than I remembered. I must have been half asleep to have a desire to watch it again, because it's real rough. Nothing happens for the longest time, and then they take it all the way to space without a warning, and with some of the worst found footage CGI this side of the Rio Grande. Mindless, pointless trash with absolutely nothing to offer.

@Wooley, I just watched Fright Night and you'll be pleased to know there was a love connection.
I'll post some thoughts later.


"I believe in vampires."

Yay!

Kill, Baby...Kill! -

This movie checks off everything I could want from a Gothic ghost story. Set in early 20th century Germany in the spookiest town imaginable, it kicks off with a woman committing suicide by jumping onto an iron-spiked fence...or was she murdered? That's what visiting coroner Dr. Eswai (Stuart) hopes to discover. The locals are suspicious of him, but he at least has allies in Burgomeister Karl (Catenacci) and student Monica (Blanc) even though their talk of a curse makes the man of science skeptical. After finding a coin lodged in the corpse's heart, he takes his investigation to the epicenter of the town's superstitions: Villa Graps. Oh, and if you think the woman in the opening is the only victim, think again.

This is the seventh Mario Bava movie I've seen and he still hasn't let me down, particularly in terms of how good the movie looks. Literally every shot made me want to pause, take in its beauty and wonder, "how did they get hat?" Having such a lived-in place to film like Viterbo, Italy doesn't hurt, nor does the copious use of fog. The movie also demonstrates that few things are unsettling in horror than visions of creepy children, which is what the victims see before meeting their increasingly bloody deaths. On top of that, Eswai's sense of unease and loss of touch with reality increases at the same rate, peaking with a scene where he repeatedly runs through the same door several times until he bumps into...who? I won't say. I will say, though, that it's a moment I want to think about and not think about at the same time if you know what I mean. It also has the most memorable spiral staircase in this genre or at least the most beautifully presented one. It ends up being another strong entry in Bava's filmography bound to satisy ghost story and mystery/thriller lover in equal measure. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to taking screenshots of every single shot of this movie so I'll be set for Halloween season desktop wallpaper for life.

Kill, Baby…Kill! Is pretty great.

Is Kill Baby . . .Kill! the one where at one point If so, I love that sequence.

And the title reminds me: Django Kill . . . If you live, shoot! is on Tubi and VuduFree and I strongly urge you all to seek it out. Not horror exactly, but definitely horror adjacent.

That's the one. It blew my mind. Like, in a "Biff after Marty McFly jumped off the top of the building" kind of way.

That's also good to know about the Django sequel and that it's free since I love the first one. Speaking of, Kanopy has delivered this Halloween season. Many good selections in addition to Kill.

This pleases me greatly. I am anticipating joy-joy feelings.

I was about to ask if you loved the repeating room scene. Or the stairwell shot. Thanks for saving me the trouble.


It's the only movie I know that features a witch versus a ghost.


Which is actually kind of a shame.

I'm not gonna get to any Universal Horror this year it looks like so I'm just dropping this here in memorium.

Trespassers. Two couples on vacation become targeted by killers looking for something in the house they’re renting. This was a solid little home invasion movie. It does a good job with the lighting and music to keep things going. And even before the home invasion starts the four main characters escalate tensions on their own to raise the stakes.


10 Cloverfield Lane. Last time I saw this was when it first came out and it holds up, the only Cloverfield movie really worth a damn. It’s a movie that lives or dies by the performances. MEW and John Gallagher Jr. do a great job but John Goodman is such a national treasure. Whatever his range, from threatening in movies like this to more comedic performances like Righteous Gemstones or Big Lebowski, he always takes his roles so seriously and it helps make the characters he’s playing feel much more real.

"Honestly, considering all the movies I've actually liked that were worse than this, it's pretty obvious that, if the first two movies in this series never existed, I might actually think this is some kind of low-budget cult-classic."
Those are the words I apparently spoke into my voice-memos as I was in the bathroom of The Broad Theater after seeing this movie there last week. And I'm quite amused to hear myself say that. I have fxcking hated this movie for decades. I was so enamored with the first film when I was young, I saw it 22 times on cable or VHS before I stopped counting; and, while the sequel is an odd and somewhat disappointing film by comparison, it is still mean as Hell and keeps Freddy as evil and grimy and cruel as ever. Whereas this fxcking movie is the introduction of wise-cracking, kill-quipping, over-the-top fantastical killing Freddy, which I hated with a visceral passion.
However, this film, taken with the right perspective and a sense of humor, is actually quite enjoyable. Had the same film been made by a better director and with a little less mid-to-late 80s cutesiness, it could have been the sequel to the original that it deserved. My god, if Wes Craven had made this script with everything else being the same... sigh.
Alas, the quippy, cutesy 80s-bullshlt is there and so the film must be taken on its own terms. Which I was actually fine with until some disappointing turns late in the film; killing two of the main characters off in quick set-pieces within moments of each other was kind of a waste and the whole part in the junkyard was just terribly ill-conceived from start to finish.
But, ultimately, I was able to set my mind right for the silly fun that this film has along with some genuinely very good ideas. The opening is quite good though it should have looked a little grittier. Kristen is a good character and would have been a lovely protagonist to replace Nancy going forward. Taryn is my favorite character in this film and probably all the films but the original.


I love the performance, she's so sad and kinda hopeless in the real world, it's fun to see her smile and almost laugh at herself in this scene. I actually wouldn't have minded her becoming the new protagonist with her (ultimately) fatal flaw. A shame her big scene wasn't longer and more fleshed out. Her total screen time with Freddy is 1 minute and 2 seconds. And her big duel with him was still, in my opinion, the most interesting scene in the film.


Yes, I actually ended up kind of liking this movie and having some genuine affection for what it was instead of so much disappointment over what it wasn't.
But I'd still have preferred this same script (with some tweaks) made by Craven with a little more gritty, mean, "You are all my children now" Freddy, rather than this version who is not far from wearing Wayfarers on the beach.