Month: October 2023

• Drawing parallels between vampirism and drug addiction isn’t necessarily profound, but it’s more deeply defined than any of the other parallels The Addiction seems to be drawing, like betweeen the choice of good over evil and mankind’s propensity for brutality and genocide. (The footage of actual war atrocities, in particular, is both too on-the-nose and in rather poor taste.) It’s not wholly uninteresting, and a very brief appearance by Christopher Walken livens things up for a moment, but it’s less than the sum of its parts.
• Let’s be honest, you watch Final Destination for the Rube Goldberg-like death traps and the creepy Tony Todd performance, and then you’re a little disappointed that neither of those are in the movie as much as you might have expected. It’s entertaining enough, although I’m not sure the internal logic it sets up entirely makes sense—but also feel like it would have been pretty easy to remedy that with just a few small tweaks.
• Soft & Quiet edges a little close to self-parody, but small, well-observed details in the performances keep it on a even keel. I’d recommend going in not knowing much of anything. At the same time, having the movie unfold in real time is perhaps both a strength and a weakness: it shows just how easily these things can escalate and spiral out of control…but then it also needs everything to spiral out of control very quickly. It’s a courageous and timely film, forcing the viewer to confront some real ugliness and brutality, but with both honesty and empathy.

• It’s strange to think that Unfriended may be too much a movie of its time, impressive for the way it uses then-modern-day internet technology to frame the horror story, but maybe seeming a little less impressive with each passing year, as the specifics of that technology continue to change. There have also been other later movies that have taken similar approaches (like Host and Searching), and Unfriended may just be a victim of being first, and no longer seeming as novel. That said, in the moment, the movie is often very scary.
• Phantom of the Rue Morgue is an effective enough Poe adaptation.
• I didn’t enjoy Halloween 4 even a little bit, so I’m not sure why I expected that to be any different with Halloween 5, but it wasn’t. This time around, with the so-called “Revenge of Michael Myers,” the movie doesn’t make one bit of sense. And while I understand I’ve probably now committed myself to watching Halloween 6, just because that’s how my brain works, I assure you I’m not the least bit happy about it.

• Friday the 13th: The New Blood is really only any fun when it goes full-on “Carrie vs. Jason,” pitting him as unkillable, machete-wielding zombie against a final girl’s telekinetic powers. The movie was reportedly butchered (no pun intended) in editing, eliminating most of its gory set-pieces and leaving not much of interest in its place.

As it happens, though, I also re-watched the original Friday the 13th and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. While it never rises above being a cheap knock-off of better, scarier slasher movies like the original Halloween, I’ve now seen enough bad cheap knock-offs to at least recognize a good one when it comes along.

A short #nowplaying mix from this past week:

I watched 7 movies last week:

• Flesh for Frankenstein can’t decide if it wants to be a parody of gothic horror or a transgressive counterculture send-up, but it doesn’t have a good enough script or acting to be either. Udo Kier sure chews a hell of a whole lot of scenery in it, though.
• I’m not entirely convinced the ending works, not least because I think I preferred the ending the movie seemed to be building towards just before that. But I can’t deny that The Wailing is a chilling, often terrifying meditation on evil.
• It’s strange to me how many critics and viewers of Two Evil Eyes seem to prefer the Dario Argento half of this Poe-inspired horror double-bill. George Romero’s “The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar” never rises above workmanlike, but it’s serviceable and entertaining, whereas Argento’s “The Black Cat” is muddled and sluggish, with possibly Harvey Keitel’s worst-ever performance. It doesn’t even betray much of Argento’s visual style, so I’m at a loss to understand the appeal.

• Stephen King was being kind when he called The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave an “Italian turkey.” The movie’s ending is somewhat interesting, but only because it takes a wild left turn that suddenly forgets everything that came before it, not because it’s in any satisfying on its own.

Bad Things is well cast, and I like the way it turns its mundane location into an unexpected source of real dread. But the movie gets a little lost in the weeds of wondering what is and isn’t delusion. It’s an intriguing modern queer take on The Shining, with interesting things to say about trauma and some very eerie moments, but it never quite came together for me.

• A Dark Song draws a lot out of just atmosphere and minimal sets, and it’s an eerie little thriller about grief and vengeance and forgiveness.

• The Raven is silly but charming, with a delightful cast.

I also re-watched The Exorcist III, which I think falls apart near the end—and might even have done so without all the studio interference. But it does a lot of things right, and Blatty asks honest questions about the nature of good and evil.

Here are all my #nowplaying songs from last week:

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.