I'm not afraid to admit that I like the remake of The House on Haunted Hill from 1999.But it is also no surprise that this sequel is not that great. Shortly after the suspicious death of her sister (Sarah, a survivor from the massacre at the mansion), Ariel, receives a mysterious journal of a Dr. Vannacut that speaks about a Baphomet idol with supernatural powers. An archaeology professor helps Ariel translate the journal and he ends up going to the mansion with some students in search of the idol. Some thugs that may be responsible for Sarah's death kidnap her and her boyfriend and they force them into helping find the idol. Anyhow, of course the house traps them in and kills off a bunch of people until only two are left behind. Honestly, the idol aspect for the existence of the ghosts was pretty hoaky. The acting was dull, although I was sort of excited to see Andrew Lee Potts from the UK TV Show Primeval in this but of course he is not one of our survivors. Really the best part about this movie was Jeffrey Combs returning as the ghost of the doctor. He didn't say a word but he was perfect. The rest of the movie sucked but provided some unrealistic but memorable and gruesome death scenes.
Yep, because this is what happens when you are pulled apart.
Foxes focuses on a couple in a strange community in Ireland. They seem to be the only people within the community and obviously there is some tension between the two. The wife begins to discover that there may not be other people around but there are many foxes and she finds her self fascinated, following and taking pictures of the foxes around their home. This one was pretty spooky, especially because foxes in real life are a bit scary. I mean the screaming noises they make. *shivers
Don't Move was one I found through Imgur and really only knew the back story before watching it. Some friends apparently summoned a demon that kills you if you move. It delves write into the action from the start and proves to be an interesting short with stunning special effects and gore.
Teddy Bears are for Lovers, a horror comedy about stuffed animals that come to life to exact their revenge for the exes of some player. The animatroinc animals in this were great and it was a good chuckle.
Geist is an animated haunting tale. A man finds himself on a beach in a storm and makes his was to a house where it seems some spirits are actively haunting it. Well animated and actually pretty heart wrenching tale.
Red Girl is avery short, short. A woman goes to sleep but something is inside the hose with her. I was mostly confused why she only had the picture on the wall and no other furniture in that room of her house. Huh. Strange but decent.
Daddy was also a short one. A man seems to be ignoring his daughter. I liked it a little less than the last one, It seemed to lag a little and was predictable. Meh.
Abandoned a B-movie in the short horror film genre. Pretty laughable in how cheesy it was too. There was some pretty epic "I'm lost and need to run and find a way out" music. Then our mystery teenager finds an abandoned house in the woods. After the beginning I actually enjoyed this one a bit, the music was more atmospheric and the house pretty creepy. And the end just totally was unpredictable and goofy. So it worked in an exploration with film and filters on iMovie kind of way.
Coffer is another from the minds that brought us "Lights Out" and "Pictured" which I featured last year. This time, our lady is hearing a strange noise in a chest inside her apartment. Even knowing the scares were coming, I still jumped watching this one. These two know how to make our skin crawl and how to make sure we sleep with the lights on at night.
The Wicked is the kind of short that uses the single frame shor to get the story across and make the scares. This one relies pretty heavily on the jump scare, and am a little ashamed to admit that it got me.
The Pride of Strathmoor. I kind of didn't want to end the shorts on the last one for whatever reason. But byy this point I probably should have just watched a full-length movie, whatever. It is nice to see different depictions of horror and terror from many different creators.
Decided to do another animation one. It had some pretty disturbing imagery and story. The animation was also interesting.
Animated tales from one of the masters of macabre and horror (the literary kind at least), Edgar Allen Poe.
This one is a series of animated shorts from all different Poe tales. The underlying story is that Poe is depicted as a raven talking to a statue that is actually Death as she takes him on a journey through his stories as part of his obsession with death. It also features a cast of great voices, like Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. Each animation is a different style but each captures the darkness and creepiness of Poe's tales in their own way. The score also sets an atmospheric mood befitting of the tales. Watching this was reminiscent of when I was a teen and would listening to recordings of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Pit and the Pendulum". I think my favorite of these depictions had to be "Heart", not only because of the nostalgia, but the narration from Bela Lugosi was just so perfectly timed. The animation of that tale was also my favorite. Dark, simple, and gloomy. I also enjoyed the watercolor like animation on "The Masque of the Red Death."
I enjoyed this one quite a bit although some of what is best about Poe is lost in these visual representations, at times not as dark and somber as Poe's words. However, if you like Poe give it a shot.
An homage to horrors of old with a modern twist for Supernatural Sunday.
A husband and wife move to a small town in the country after their son passes away (not exactly sure how until later in the film). Little do they know that there is something sinister in the house, yet they think it might be their son. The townsfolk also seem to know more about the house than they are letting on. An homage to the older supernatural/haunted house stories of the 1970s but it has a flair of its own as well.
The movie builds the tension well, although may be too revealing of its main ghosties/zombies, I don't really know what. At times, the acting seemed a little cheesy. However, Larry Fessenden, little known in the horror genre as a writer/director, producer, and actor (with such greats as Session 9, The House of the Devil, and You're Next), makes an appearance in this film as well. And he did a pretty superb job as sort of a new-age hippy that is into the occult.
This one also supplies some deliciously gory scenes towards the end. That being said though, the plot and script seemed to be lacking and was not executed well. Without giving too much away for those interested in viewing, I enjoy that the end is left open for interpretation but the flaws and plot holes within the main story make watching this movie frustrating and distracts from the good parts of what is presented. It loses some higher marks for that. Overall, a decent but imperfect film. I've read it is also an homage to Lucio Fulci, I honestly have only seen a few of his films, so maybe this is also a lesson for me to give some of his other films a watch and in so doing maybe I could appreciate this one more.
Joey had this to say about the movie after we got frustrated discussing the main storyline, "I liked the 'ash monsters'. But it showed them too much."
There is nothing I like more than a good Sci-Fi horror movie. To this day, the Aliens series is by far one of my favorites. But it could be said that many horror films have some element of science fiction, zombies created by a virus, futuristic and apocalyptic worlds where cannibals run rampant are a few examples. But often many don't actually take place in space or on another planet. Event Horizon is one of those that I haven't seen in a long time, but I can recall almost every little detail. It is a sign of a good film, especially for a horror film. One of Paul W.S. Anderson's (Resident Evil franchise) first feature length films (aside from Mortal Kombat), and it doesn't let you down on suspense or gore.
The "core" or engine of the ship
The Event Horizon is revealed to be a ship capable of folding space, like creating a wormhole, to travel to worlds yet unexplored. On its first test, it disappeared without a trace and after being lost for seven years it has reappeared. A team is unknowingly sent, with the scientist who created the Event Horizon, to recover it and its crew. When they arrive at the ship and go aboard they quickly find that there are no survivors among the crew. In fact one of the crew members is found to be a "corpsicle" as one of the characters calls it. Corpsicle. Ha. Anyway, stuff goes down when the core is reactivated and our team find themselves trapped on a terrifying ship. There is a solid cast in the film as well, with Laurence Fishburne as the captain and Sam Neill as the scientist. The effects are hauntingly disturbing and pretty well done and the set is very aesthetically appealing as well.
Inside the ship
A few notes about some scenes. Originally the doctor, played by Jason Isaacs, identified the transmission they had received as "liberate me" or save me in Latin. However, when s*** starts going down he reexamines it and realizes it is actually "Liberate tutame ex inferis," save yourself from Hell. I'm not a Latin expert and looking at discussions online, it is apparently incorrect. But for setting the mood of the movie, it works. Did the Event Horizon travel beyond into a sort of Hell for those seven years? Or did the ship itself become something else?
A scene of Hellish gore
Another one I somehow convinced Joey to watch with me, and he had this to say about it, "Not quite as good as I remember it, but it's got a nice slow build." He gives it 3.5 skulls and I give it 4.5. Maybe I am rating it so highly because I have such a fondness for it as a part of the formative years in my life for horror movies, but I don't care! It is still a solid horror film in my book, but the transition to the electronic music at the credits is a little laughable.
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!
Supernatural Sunday is kicked off with a good old ghost story. Technically it should have been on Tuesday since it is a British film, but I make exceptions when something has been on my list for more than year.
This film is a story about a young, widowed lawyer, Arthur Kipps. He travels to a sleepy coastal English town to examine papers of the Eel Marsh house his firm is arranging to have sold. It is sort of your standard ghost story, a town is cursed by a spirit seeking revenge for the death of her child. When she is seen at the house or near the property she "takes" children in the town, by making them commit suicide. So it is no surprise the town's people don't want Kipps around the house.
Creepy house
The house in the film was designed like your standard haunted house with creepy family portraits on the stairs, cobwebs everywhere, creepy taxidermic animals (particularly creepy "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys) and creepy children's toys, some of which looked like taxidermic animals made into music boxes. The perfect recipe for terrifying your viewers.
I really don't know what could possibly be giving my son nightmares.
Really. What could it be?
That, and a ghost woman wearing all black with a veil covering her face and when she appears, she often screams in your face! AAAAGGGGHHH! It had some good tense moments that made me jump and although it is pretty predictable, it is a fun flick.
Boo!
On another note, Daniel Radcliffe stars as Arthur Kipps and as much as I tried not to associate him with Harry Potter,at some moments, I couldn't stop from seeing scenes as if he was Harry.
Arthur Kipps at the train station - platform 9 3/4.
Train going through the English countryside at night - train to Hogwarts.
Daniel walking out of a room beneath the staircase - Harry's oh so cozy room at the Dursley's house.
However, he was really good in it and once I disconnected from seeing him as Harry, I saw him more as the character he was portraying. I also chose this one for Sunday in anticipation of him starring in the film adaptation of Joe Hill's novel Horns hitting theaters on Halloween this year.
Wait, he's parseltongue in this too? Now, you're just giving them to me.
It was a decent and moody ghost story so it gets 3 skulls.
As with the last posts, this is the last Supernatural Sunday for the month. I had to go with an old one with some good kitsch.
13 Ghosts comes from the mind of horror genius William Castle. In the late 50's and early 60's, Castle made a bunch of horror movies, each with their own gimmickto either scare or excite the theater audiences. In The Tingler, Castle rigged chairs to give a little shock to patrons at certain parts of the film. In this one, he provided modified 3D glasses that would allow the viewer to see or not see the ghosts. Titled "Illusion-O," this idea was a pretty genius way to use the 3D technology of the time. To view the ghosts, you would look through the red part, but if you got scared you could look through the blue part and the ghosts would disappear. The ghosts were still viewable with the naked eye, which apparently helped its run on television for many years after it ran in theaters.
Audience member is instructed to use the viewer
Aaah! A ghost!
13 Ghosts is a story about a family in dire straits that inherits a mansion from a late-estranged uncle. Dr. Plato Zorba studied the paranormal and traveled the world capturing ghosts that now reside inside the house. Dr. Zorba's lawyer, Ben Rush, helps the family with the process and gives Zorba's nephew a box that contains strange glasses with no explanation as to what they are for. Cyrus's son Buck loves ghost stories and is all too excited to live amongst the spirits. But there is also a "witch" in the house. Iconic Margaret Hamilton plays the housekeeper, Elaine Zacharides, which was a pleasant surprise. Of course the witch aspect is also a play on her having portrayed the wicked witch of the west in The Wizard of Oz - and there is a nice touch at the end of the film when she grabs the broom and winks at the camera.
Margaret Hamilton
When Buck and the family play with a ouija board, it tells them one person will die in the house and become... the 13th ghost! Later Cyrus finds a strange room (or before the ouija board thing, I can't quite remember) where he hears voices and tries on the glasses. He sees ghosts! And it is the viewer's first chance to use the glasses. Even later, Elaine explains that Dr. Zorba left a large sum of money hidden somewhere in the house. However, there is someone else that knows about the money inside the house, and is willing to scare or kill for it. Dun, dun... DUN!
How the living see the ghosts
The lion and lion tamer ghosts
It is fun, kind of silly, but enjoyable and worth a watch. It built the story well, and had a predictable, but good twist. This is one of the older horror movies that has been remade (ala The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill) and I am not ashamed to admit I liked the remake. But I can also say, I enjoyed this one a lot too, maybe even a little more. I checked out the entire William Castle collection from the library, and even though I will not get to fit them all into this month, I will be sure to enjoy them outside of it.
