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I watched 6 movies last week:

• The Boogeyman feels so tediously familiar, and not just because of its generic title or because I’ve read the Stephen King short story on which the movie is (very loosely) based. Its plot calls to mind a dozen other horror movies of recent years, and even its moments of specificity feel generic—chosen not because they add an interesting twist on the formula, or even because they’re lifted from King’s (light-on-plot) text, but because they’re simply ticking boxes of the sort of things movies like this are supposed to have. It’s not badly made, and the main cast do a decent enough job, but it seems like it would only be interesting if you’d never seen a horror movie before.
• I think I enjoyed Meg 2: The Trench better than the original, but I say that only because I remember practically nothing about the original except that there was, probably, a giant shark. There are a few scattered moments of half-hearted Ben Wheatley-style horror in this one, but none of them are given a chance to breathe. And while there’s some enjoyment to be taken from the ridiculousness of the last act, it’s never ridiculous enough and never rises above the limited cleverness of your average Sci-Fi Channel shark movie.
• The Vampire Bat never really surprises you about where it’s going, but it’s a short enough ride that it’s not without its charms.

• The Last Broadcast is creepy, if a little crude and unevenly paced, but it’s mostly undone by a last-minute twist that might have worked in a different movie, but which bere feels tacked-on and unconvincing.
• Somebody made a remake/sequel of Friday the 13th in 2009. Having now watched it, I can say yes, that’s definitely a thing that somebody did. I don’t think it’s necessarily worse than any of the original films—of which i’m not the biggesr fan—but it’s definitely not better, nor does it offer any reason for rebooting the series in the first place. The slickness of its early 2000s production always feels at odds with the grimy…for lack of a better word “charms” of the originals.
• “What isn’t strange, when you think about it?” Despite the witches and the gore, You Won’t Be Alone isn’t a horror movie—except maybe it is, and the horror is simply being alone and human in this world. It’s a quieter and more contemplative movie than I’d expected, an often beautiful folk tale about outcasts and belonging.

I also re-watched The Exorcist. If there’s a better horror movie, I have yet to find it.

Here are all my #nowplaying songs from last week:

I watched 7 movies last week:

• Sole Survivor is creepy but very dull. Wnile it’s well shot, the movie never entirely makes sense, with side-plots and characters that do little but pad out the runtime.
• Dust Devil is a nightmarish fever dream. Which means it doesn’t always make complete sense, but it is full of unsettling and striking imagery.
• Blue Sunshine isn’t very good. Some of that’s down to the acting and obviously limited budget, but the movie also touches on themes that were handled a lot better by other directors before it—like Romero in The Crazies, Cronenberg in Shivers, or in just about any ’70s paranoid thriller, to be honest. By the end, the stakes start to feel increasingly low, and the characters woefully undeveloped.

• Some pre-Code films are less interesting for anything they have to say than for what they seem to be getting away with, subject matter that seem slightly more risqué than films made only a few short years later. Thirteen Women is such a movie: I’m guessing you didn’t see as many film plots so cavalier about poisoning young children post-Hayes, but the movie itself is fairly dated and boring.
• I’m just going to come right out and say it: I don’t think The Craft is a particularly well written movie. I think the cast is good, and I suppose there’s a lot to be said for its theme of female empowerment. But I also don’t think Roger Ebert was too far from the mark when he wrote that “Many of the scenes in this movie have no attention span—do not remember any of the other scenes—and exist only on their own terms.”
• Talk to Me has its share of violent jolts and jump scares, but it’s the smaller things, like the characters and the performances, that I found most surprising. Sophie Wilde is particularly good at creating a character with whom we immediately sympathize, even as we begin to like increasingly less.

• The Blackening is funnier than it is scary, but it’s usually pretty funny.

I also re-watched 1963’s The Haunting—which, for a movie that’s so much simply about watching characters act frightened, is incredibly frightening. It remains one of the best haunted house movies ever made.

Here are all my #nowplaying songs from last week:

I watched just three movies last week.

• There was a moment when I worried that No One Will Save You was just going to be its central gimmick—which I won’t spoil, but which is evident fairly quickly. But it does some clever things with that, has a good lead performance by Kaitlyn Dever, and is a lot of fun.
• Landscape with Invisible Hand is much blacker comedy than the trailer led me to believe, a lot bleaker in the pointed things it has to say about capitalism. But it’s also often very smart and funny.
• Even if Jules doesn’t quite stick the landing, it’s a fun and silly ride, with some touching moments along the way and good performances all around.

I also re-watched Don’t Look Now—which doesn’t really fit the alien theme of the rest of the week, but which is still drowned in creepiness and atmosphere, even when you know where it’s headed.