Horror-tober 6: Black Night (Hak yae)

An international horror anthology with stories from three different countries. First was Next Door, a ghost story from China. A young girl returns to her former lover during the "ghost festival". The couple are haunted by something and discover that their neighbor, which the girl's lover was dating, drowned in her tub. A decent ghost story with some good hair-raising moments and jump scares.

After that tale came, Dark Hole, a monster/psychological thriller from Japan. Yuki has been suffering from nightmares which seem to be the ghosts of her past. She begins seeing a psychiatrist and tells the story of her "pet", some unknown creature, that she describes was responsible for some horrific accidents and deaths when she was a child. Her psychiatrist believes she has created this "pet" as a way to lock up the truth that she is a murderer. Will her fiance believe her or the psychiatrist? This one was a fun guessing game. Is she really a killer or not? Will she kill again since the psychiatrist has unlocked her secrets? Will her fiance confront her? Is the creature real? Definitely a bit of a roller coaster of a tale but slow build with a so-so plot.

Lastly was The Lost Memory, a ghost story from Thailand. A single mother is being followed by a shadowy figure.She appears to have amnesia or something and continues to get phone calls from a friend, telling her to remember the accident, to not blame herself, and asks for forgiveness. She begins to remember her friendship with this person and her supposedly ex-husband. But the memories become clearer and she is reminded that her son died in a car accident. She is haunted by her suppressed memories of the accident and the events leading up to it, but her ghostly son is not just a haunting memory. He wants to be with his mommy. I felt this one was a bit confusing early on but once it clicked what was happening, nobody acknowledged her son, the rest of it was predictable and forgettable.

All in all I liked the first story but the other two were not very interesting and pretty forgettable.

My rating:

Five Years, Seriously?!

I've been doing this for five years?! And I still haven't finished a whole month of blogs? Well, maybe this year we will get through all the reviews. 

Anyway, I am pretty excited about this year as there are quite a few new releases I've been meaning to watch from the last few years and I intend to include most of them on the list. I have watched a few horror movies already this year (Shhhhh, it's our little secret) and may also include some of those as special features. Lately though, I've been thinking about changing up the categories a bit. Especially because we have lost a few greats in the world of horror this year (George A. Romero and Tobe Hopper among them) and I've been thinking of featuring more of their movies this year in honor but don't really want to try to "fit" them into some category. In all honesty, I am running out of zombie movies and there are only so many new schlocky ones I can take. If you have any suggestions, I am all ears. For now, same old categories below.

            Supernatural Sunday A day to fit ghosts, witches, vampires, and anything otherworldly 

            that doesn’t necessarily fall into any of the other categories.

            Zombday In a zombie apocalypse, these slow-shuffling, brain-loving undead take over the 

            world. In Horror-tober, they take over a day. BRAAAAAAINS!

            Transcontinental Tuesday Foreign films. Japan, Korea, Spain, even Canada – wherever 

            offers up a good old scary story for viewing pleasure.

            Wacky Wednesday The fun and lighthearted. The funny and dark. The campy. Or the 

            animated and weird. Just plain "wacky". 

            Throwback Thursday Those classics I love or new favorites I want to watch again.

            Creature-Feature Friday For all things monster and creepy-crawly. 

            Slasher Saturday Slashers, thrillers, home invasions, torture porn, body horror, et al.

Again, I did not finish last year’s posts. However, I kind of like doing these breakdowns of the ratings from the previous year now. It's nice to remind myself of all the great, OK, and terrible movies I subject myself to in the span of a single month. 
   

1 – Holidays – 2.5 skulls – Creepy vignettes about various holidays. Was mostly OK.

2 – We Are Still Here – 3 skulls – Good haunted house vibes and throwback to horror movies of the 70s.  

3 – Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse – 1.5 skulls – Just too juvenile for my tastes. 

4 – Onibaba – 4 skulls – Superb storytelling and cinematography in this classic.

5 – Extraordinary Tales – 3 skulls – Different Poe stories animated in varying styles. Was decent. 

6 – The Babadook – 4 skulls – Psychological horror and family drama. Creepy as hell and good for a rewatch. BABA DOOK DOOK DOOOOOOK! 

7 – Grizzly – 3.5 skulls – Ridiculous prehistoric grizzly bear attacks and hunky men of the 70s. Worth it.

8 – Hush – 4 skulls – Definitely my favorite of the new ones for 2016. A nice twist on home invasion thrillers and well worth the watch. 

9 – Supernatural Shorts:

Foxes – 3.5 skulls – I love foxes, but they definitely have a blood-curdling scream.

Don't Move – 4 skulls – Delightfully gory and kind of funny. 

Teddy Bears are for Lovers – 4 skulls – Also delightfully funny. 

Geist – 3.5 skulls – Animated ghost story that was kind of heartbreaking.
             Red Girl – 2.5 skulls – Really short, OK. 
             Daddy – 2 skulls – Don't remember too much but that it was OK.
             Abandoned – 2.5 skulls – I gave this one an extra .5 skull compared to Daddy because I                was not expecting the ending. Otherwise OK.
             Coffer – 3.5 skulls – From the same director of the Lights Out short from last year. Good,              but not as good. 
             The Wicked – 2.5 skulls – Liked the single frame shot throughout, but meh.
             The Pride of Strathmoor – 3 skulls – Animated, decent but fairly disturbing.    

10 – Maggie – 3 skulls – Arnold zombie drama. Not too bad.

11 – Witching and Bitching – 3.5 skulls – Raucous and ridiculous and loved it. 

12 – The Voices – 3 skulls – Ryan Reynolds shines as a weirdo hearing voices (his pets talk to him, but not really. Because voices).
The Neon Dead – 1.5 skulls – Was the one I had originally planned to watch this night but it was so bad I had to fast forward and then watched The Voices.

13 – 2001 Maniacs – 3 skulls – Robert Englund. Cannibalistic, redneck/hillbilly/confederate ghosts? Need I say more? 

14 – Hobgoblins – 1.5 skulls – Best scene was the band playing at the bar. Literally almost 6 minutes (I could be exaggerating) of just the band playing and people dancing. 

15 – Special 4 Movie Feature at Hollywood Theatre – 4 movies. 1 night. Friends. Beer. Coffee. Rad.
             Race with the Devil – 2.5 skulls – Peter Fonda. You can't escape the Satanists, no matter              how long or far you run (or drive)! It was OK, a bit weird and somewhat comical. 
             Psycho II – 4 skulls – The best of the night. A sequel made over 20 years after the                          original. Most definitely an "underrated sequel". Was fun and pretty dang good. 
             The Funhouse – 3.5 skulls – Maybe a lesser well known Tobe Hooper scare. The only of                the 4 I had previously seen and I still enjoyed it. 
             Burial Ground – 3 skulls – "Bat shit crazy Italian gutmuncher" is an appropriate descriptor              for this movie. This was insane. And being the last of the 4 made it even that much more                  insane (because watching it at around 4am after sitting through 3 other movies).    

16 – Ghost concert – After 4 movies in one night, took a break to see one of my favorite bands! 

17 – Southbound – 2.5 skulls – Another anthology film with the stories all tied together in some way. Really enjoyed a couple of the stories but overall was nothing to get that excited about. 

18 – The Psychic – 3.5 skulls – Watched based on recommendation from a friend. Was not disappointed. 

19 – He Never Died – 3.5 skulls – Henry Rollins. 'Nough said.

20 – Special Presentation of "new" Rocky Horror Picture Show on FOX – 1.5 skulls – I had to give it a shot but I just, I don't even know why I watched the whole thing. I do love Laverne Cox and even was happy to see Tim Curry stepping into the role of the Criminologist/Narrator. But it just, no. Bad. No more words for how much I did not like this.  

21 – The Corpse Grinders – 2 skulls – Cat food made with corpses! I fell asleep, tried to watch again and fell asleep again. Not worth it. 

22 – Open Grave – 2 skulls – I wanted to like it because I love Sharlto Copley but it just wasn't very good.   

23 – Stake Land – 3 skulls – Decent vampire fare. Saw recently that there is a sequel, might give that one a try this year. 

24 – Monsters – 3.5 skulls – A good science-fiction/monster flick. Some good subtle social commentary in it as well.     

25 – Baskin – 3.5 skulls – I still feel fucked up after watching this movie. I liked it, but damn. Just writing this snippet about it is fucking with me. And it really wasn't terribly more shocking than other movies I've watched, but it just got to me in a fucked up way.   

26 – Goosebumps – 2 skulls – As an avid Goosebumps reader in my younger days, I had to watch this. It was OK.   

27 – Poltergeist - 2.5 skulls – I try my darndest to give remakes a shot and some are actually decent (Rob Zombie's Halloween for one, honestly). But I just wasn't feeling this one.

28 – Stung - 3 skulls –The only note I have on this one is that I gave it 3 skulls because of the practical effects. Seriously, a good way to win me over is the use of practical effects. Especially for "newer" films to use practical effects over CGI (or a combination of the two). 

29 – We Are What We Are – 3.5 skulls – A cannibalistic family drama. Decent. 

30 – The Houses October Built – 2 skulls – Haunted houses, the kind you go to to be scared, that are a little more "serious". I liked the premise, but poor execution.

31 – Ghostbusters – 3.5 skulls – Despite what the critics and even die hard original Ghostbusters fans have said about this movie, I really liked this. I wouldn't go as far as saying it was better than the original, but honestly having four female leads, and three in scientific fields, was pretty dang great. Yay for progress, I guess, yay! I also just fucking LOVED Kate McKinnon as Holtzmann. (I admit I have an Abby Yates Funko Pop! toy on my desk at work but every time I look at it I wish it was Holtzmann. Shhhh, don't tell Abby).  

Welp that's it for last year's movies. We've got about a week until the feast-ivities begin. AGGGGGHHHH! I can't wait!    

Horror-tober 11: Witching and Bitching (Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi)

This one has been on my list to watch for some time, so I'm glad that I finally got a chance to work it in for Horror-tober Fest.

A man, robs a "cash for gold" shop with some other down on their luck men, basically so he can escape with his son and no longer provide alimony. Running from the police with one of his accomplices, his son, a hijacked cab driver, and a man that was on his way to a job interview, this rag tag crew finds themselves on the way to France. But they have to pass through Zugarramurdi, a place known for dark magics and witches.

This Spanish movie is zany and over-the-top all the way through from the very begininng. With elements of comedy, romance, and good old gross out horror, this one was quite enjoyable. Also a farce on misogyny and feminism in a way. It is insane, the effects are weird and kooky, and it often does not make sense, but that is what makes this one a joy to sit through. Because I am running behind on my reviews, I am making this one and others brief.  

Horror-tober 13: Archivo 253

Another one I chose because it was pretty short. As you can tell by my tardiness with posts, I don't have a lot of time to write these things up as you can tell since I keep posting these days after I have watched them.

Archivo 253 tells the story of four paranomal investigators breaking into an old insane asylum to discover why it was closed without an explanation years before. This film falls into the "found-footage" genre. These "investigators" find that there is some spirit or spirits in the building, but they haven't found the good solid evidence they crave for. So of course when they are getting a pretty good response, one of them sort of pesters it by asking if it is an evil spirit and asks it to show itself. Don't they know the old saying, "be careful what you wish for?" In their case, it awakens whatever evil spirit or demon is haunting the institution and it has no problem messing with them. 

The jump scares in this one really did make me jump a few times which I give it credit for, but I guess that is what I get for watching a movie on my laptop with headphones. It also had a pretty slow build which I enjoyed, too often movies like this jump right in and it just doesn't work well. Aside from that, I just wasn't super drawn into the story. I actually caught myself paying more attention to Joey playing the video game, The Last of Us, than the movie. But again, to its credit, it scared me at parts, some moments were pretty tense, and it had a nice build to when the shit really goes down. That and something really creepy with human hair that is just unnerving.   

Horror-tober 6: Tormented (Rabbito Hora)

I chose this one this evening because I wanted to watch something fairly short and Joey expressed interest in it and it is always fun to get him to watch horror movies, because I know how much he loves them.

After Kiriko's brother, Daigo, puts a dying rabbit out of its misery and with his tenth birthday approaching, he starts having weird dreams and visions of a giant stuffed rabbit that seem all too real. On top of that, Kiriko's father doesn't seem concerned for either of them. But he is also still distraught over losing Daigo's mother in childbirth, so you can't really be too hard on the guy.

I'm not going to lie, I was intrigued by this one because I wanted to see creepy giant stuffed animals do creepy things. It had that, but the overall story was kind of all over the place, and even though there is a psychological twist, it just didn't really help to explain the finer details of the story. Also pretty predictable. Without spoiling too much, I will say that it did have some good creepy moments. When the cutesy giant stuffed rabbit turns into a more realistic and menacing rabbit and at the end the smaller stuffed rabbit loses its head but then its body crawls off the screen; both of which were a bit unnerving.

Hey, there. Wanna play? Both of these scenes have nice yellow tones too

I just noticed the more realistic giant stuffed rabbit has nipples, that explains some things

The whole time during the movie, Kiriko's father is making pop-up books of The Little Mermaid, not the sweet Disney version, and when shown on screen they are really quite beautiful. It also ties into Kiriko's narrative. She is mute. She lost her voice at some point as a child and it is implied that it was caused by a traumatic event in the past which then affects her situation in the film. Again, don't want to spoil anything for anyone wanting to watch this so won't give away too many details.

The little mermaid creeps into the Prince's room to kill him and get her voice back

In the end she could not do it and dissolves away as sea foam in the ocean

Definitely had some nice visuals and cinematography, but all in all, a little drab and not enough of the creepy giant stuffed animals. Joey gives it 2 skulls and I give it 2.5 skulls, purely for the pop-up books (reminded me of The Babadook, although not creepy like that one).  

Joey's rating:

My rating:

Pulse

It has been a long time for me to bring myself to watch this one, but is the first fort this year's Transcontinental Tuesdays.

Since I have recently been to Japan I wanted to kick-off this year's foreign films with a Japanese horror I have put off watching for some time. I also wanted to share this one since it was my first experience using hoopla. Hoopla is a free media streaming site through participating public libraries. You can find movies, music and audiobooks to watch and listen to for free with your library membership. They have a lot available that I have not been able to find elsewhere and you are allowed to stream eight items each month. Movies and television episodes can be borrowed for 72 hours, music for 7 days and audiobooks for 21 days. Of course, they also support apps for apple, android and the Kindle Fire so you can have access to your rentals wherever you are. It's a pretty nice program and although it doesn't have as much as Netlfix streaming or its kin, I am sure you'd be able to find something you'd enjoy. Alright, my plug for hoopla is done so back to the review.

For this, you are way cool in my book hoopla

Known as "Kairo" in Japan Pulse is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and based on his novel of the same title. Sometimes the subtitles blend with the film making them unreadable, which is somewhat annoying. After a group of friends lose a friend to suicide, they discover a disc he had with pictures of him and a ghostly face in his computer monitor. Shortly after, they begin seeing strange things around Japan, there are doors marked with red tape and people are killing themselves after witnessing something terrible. The parallel story-line in the film is of a young man that attempts to connect to the internet, only to be brought to a strange site where people are observed behaving strangely. When he turns the computer off, it turns back on in the middle of the night on a video of a man with a bag over his head and writing on the wall behind him. He goes to the university to ask computer science students about it and makes a friend that tells him ghosts are invading the human world through computers and the internet. Although it is a suspenseful, creepy and entirely unnerving ghost story, it is also a commentary on communication and the alienation and loneliness we experience which is created by modern technology. This gives it a lot more substance than your typical gore fest horror movie, which is nice to have every now and then. Especially for me when I am watching these kinds of movies every day!

Ghost in the machine

My rating:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

I chose this one purely because it was short, and I had a time constraint that evening. But it still fits for Transcontinental Tuesday.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari can be said to be the first true horror film. Made before the original Nosferatu, it is also a German silent film. I appreciate silent films, but I often do not like them very much. I did like this one though. I enjoyed the scenery, the set was very well made and gave the whole film a strange mood, which was perfect. The lines and shapes the set created reminded me a lot of Burton, maybe he was inspired by it? The overall story was interesting and the characters looked pretty neat. Especially the Somnambulist, Cesare. The lighting of the film was all good, and designed in a way to set the time of the story - an orangish filter for day and blue for night. Shadow play was also really nice in it.

I enjoyed watching it, especially since it is a little piece of film history, but I wouldn't say that I loved it. Good but not great in my opinion. However, it is worth the 71 minutes or so to give it a watch. Maybe it is because it is getting closer to Halloween, and Joey is getting into the spirit, but this is the fourth film he has watched with me - unusual for him it is since he is not a big horror or Halloween fan.

My rating:

Joey's rating:

The Loved Ones

This one I found randomly and boy am I happy I did for this week's Transcontinental Tuesday.

The Loved Ones comes out of Australia and is more of a psychological thriller, but can be classified in the "torture-porn" sub-genre of horror. Audition is one of my favorites and I was actually quite a bit more impressed with this one. Although Audition is still more cringe-inducing. I cringe every time I hear "Kiri, kiri, kiri, kiri" or "deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper" from Audition. This one had a similar sort of "mantra" and it was "We can't hear you!"    

A "We can't hear you!" moment *cringe*

Anyway, this little gem comes from Australia and is written and directed by Sean Byrne and is his first feature-length film. The story revolves around Brent and Lola. Just like Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink, Lola will stop at nothing to get the guy she wants. But in a much more psychotic way. When she asks Brent to the prom and he politely turns her down since he is already going with his girlfriend, Lola is not happy. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets - with the help of her equally psychotic daddy. But this film is not just about the torture. It is witty, intelligent, darkly funny and disturbingly believable. Lola is indeed "pretty in pink" in a very scary way. Moments throughout the film will literally put you on the edge of your seat. All of the acting was pretty superb, but Robin McLeavy as Lola stole the show. It seems hard to pull of a good psycho bitch, and boy howdy did she do it! Of course, none of it would be so great without a well-written script and outstanding direction. I see good things in Sean Byrne's future if he continues to write and direct this well. Any horror fan that likes a bit of gore, but can appreciate a well made movie with a bit more substance, will enjoy this one. 

Prom queen and king

My rating:

Hell

Hooray! It's Transcontinental Tuesday. (Man, that's a hard one to say.) And tonight, Hell was on the menu.

This film comes to us from Germany. In the not so distant future, Earth has become a barren wasteland as the sun scorches the surface. In the beginning of the movie, text reads:

2016 - The world as we know it has ceased to exist. In just four years, the Earth's atmosphere has heated up by 10 degrees Celsius. People are fighting for survival. Water and food supplies are running out. Social order is collapsing. 

I find there are infinite ways to show the human condition with post-apocalyptic movies. It's a reflection on how we react to extreme changes - how we struggle to survive. But also, how some cling to the past, and try to live as if nothing has changed. Their morals deteriorate to the point that they will do anything to keep that falsehood - anything to continue to survive as if their lives were normal. There are characters in this film that are like that. Most survivors, like our protagonists, are wanderers. Traveling to survive, but they encounter a group of people that are not nomadic as they are. They own a farm in the mountains that they can no longer grow crops on or have livestock - in fact, aside from occasional birds, it appears as if no animals have survived. This family can only find enough water to drink. Yet, they cling to their former lives, and without livestock they have found another source for "livestock."

Anyway, the idea of the movie was a little cliche, but I liked how it was done. It didn't delve too deeply in why it is like Hell on Earth - and I liked that. It went straight into the present and the action of the film. All the characters were believable and most were well acted. It was never too gruesome, which was good since it was more about the overlying story. It is definitely worth a watch if you are into post-apocalyptic movies or just want to see a movie that is interesting and will keep your attention.

My rating: