Category: Horror

The Conjuring (2013) [Midnight Movie]

One reason I avoided The Conjuring is I wasn’t a fan of director James Wan’s Saw, which I thought had great actors yet phony acting. Besides, the last time I saw Lili Taylor in a horror movie was 1999’s The Haunting, which helped kick off the crappiest era in horror movie history. Then there’s the conceit of calling this a true story (‘kay), which reeks of the same dishonesty that produced The Amityville Horror, one of the dumbest fucking movies ever made.

And if you think The Amityville Horror really happened, I would like to sell you a bridge, but there’s a good chance you’ve already got all your money locked away in a scam anyway. It just really rubs me the wrong way when movies try to exploit the “open-minded” by slapping “based on a true story” on a title card. Every other week I have to read news about children getting killed by make-believe exorcists and parents who chose prayer over medicine. (I imagine this problem might get worse now that Dr. Oz is focusing on faith-healing every Friday this month… that’s where we are now.) So when I heard this movie was about The Warrens, you better believe I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my skull.

I could go on and on about why The Conjuring didn’t look like my cup of tea, but now that I’ve seen it I’m in danger of something which shocks me: I could gush about this movie. Really. I think this is one of the finest horror films ever made—this in spite of the fact that, from a distance, it appears to embody everything I dislike about modern horror.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, who play the paranormal investigators known as The Warrens, are the kind of screen talent we don’t see much of today. They find themselves in introspective roles which might have been filled by the likes of Shelly Winters and Henry Fonda several years ago. There’s something satisfyingly old fashioned about their methods, which makes them perfectly believable in a story set in 1971, and I have to give James Wan credit for casting adults who look and act like real people.

Meanwhile, Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor play The Perrons, the parents of five daughters who are targeted by the presence haunting their home. Eventually, the strange happenings in the house become so frightening the family resorts to sleeping in the living room together because they’re too scared to stay in separate bedrooms. It’s at this point The Perrons seek out The Warrens for help, who will have to document the case in such a way the church grants them an exorcism. Naturally, the presence doesn’t like The Warrens’ involvement one bit and things become increasingly violent.

Here’s a movie which successfully homages everything from The Exorcist to Poltergeist with a lot of respect. I have a feeling I wouldn’t like James Wan’s opinions on the source material’s legitimacy, but damn it, he’s made a great movie with genuinely creepy moments. I love that little room where the Warrens keep the relics they’ve accumulated over the course of their career… if that’s not a bubbling cauldron of imagination, I don’t what is.

I’ll be featuring the sequel next Friday. Let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic.

Bullets of Justice (2017) [Trailer]

this trailer is awesomely NSFW
At first glance it looks like a movie, but it’s actually the beginning of a TV series. See the crowdfunding campaign here. The lower tier perks aren’t great (I can’t exactly stream “a prayer” or hang it on my wall), but at $35 you get a poster and an early copy of the pilot episode. And no, I’m not affiliated with the project, I just think this one looks like a modern B-movie with a rare balance between self-aware and genuine bad-assery.
Fucking pigs… I always knew they were not to be trusted.

Tales from the Crypt Vol. 1 (2007 revival series) [Comic Books]

With the worrisome news that M. Night Shyamalan is rebooting the Tales from the Crypt television series for TNT, I looked to the relatively recent comic book revival to lift my spirits. Instead, it all but crushed them. Even the lackluster cover suggests a downgrade in quality, but once you get to the first story you’re assaulted by some hideously out-of-place artwork.

Case in point:

Does anything about the above panel suggest horror to you? I’m not saying this is bad art, just that it has no business being in a Tales from the Crypt title. Yeah, I get they’re going in a new direction, but creative decisions like these suggest the creators were more interested in doing their own thing and only slapped a familiar title on it to sell it to an unsuspecting fan base. (I admit it worked on me, but isn’t the idea to sell a series of comics, as opposed to just one?) This looks more like Sunday paper funnies and the other stories don’t do much better of capturing the original run’s spirit.
Below is probably the best panel from the entire thing:
There’s something wrong when you have a lot less bite than your 1950s counterpart.

First impressions of Resident Evil 7 (2017) [PC]

This isn’t a review. More like notes I made during my first session. No spoilers. No VR headset, either. Current hardware: i5-4690k @ 3.50 GHz, GTX 970, 16gb RAM.

My first disappointment came immediately after launching the game: a text screen asked me to create save data and I couldn’t select the “YES” option until I plugged in a gamepad. Once I plugged the gamepad in, the mouse cursor appeared and I was able to continue with the keyboard and mouse.

I miss the spooky voice intoning “RESIDENT EEEEEVIL” when I start a game. Why abandon one of the game’s most memorable trademarks.

Motion blur is turned on by default and I’ve never been a fan of motion blur in a game. I can only imagine how nauseating it must be in a VR headset. Changing the FPS option from “VARIED” to “60” made the mouselook feel a lot more natural and responsive. Besides upping the FOV, I left the other settings on their default values and the game looks and feels great.

The controls are responsive, and the times you get stuck in a deliberately paced animation have been significantly reduced… no more waiting forever for a door to open up.

I can’t believe how fast this game loads from the desktop. Loading times in general are exceptional.

At times, the main character sounds awfully causal about a lot of the fucked-up going-ons.. he simply isn’t emoting enough fear (to give specific examples would spoil some of the surprises). I feel this is a voice directing issue rather than an acting one. Otherwise, the voice acting is good, sometimes great, but the dialogue and the character writing is frequently weak. The game indulges in various horror movie cliches, such as the dumb cop who gets himself killed before calling for backup (that’s not a spoiler for anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie… it’s immediately obvious that’s what’s going to happen).

I am really digging the Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe.

I like that the game gives you more bullets than the first handful of installments did, but fewer than the action-oriented sequels. (Not that bullets do much good in most situations.) It seems to balance the frustration and suspense factor a lot better, too.

I grew tired of the hiding mechanic in Alien: Isolation. Haven’t grown tired of it here yet. You’re not hiding in lockers, but staying crouched and almost always moving.

Instead of saving at typewriters, you save at cassette players, which are found few and far between. You don’t have to worry about collecting limited ink ribbons, either. (Horror games which allow you to save freely can get fucked.) The punishment of having to replay certain sections upon death gives the experience legitimacy. Thankfully, this aspect is also balanced well… it’s frustrating, but not fun-breaking.

The map design is brilliant. It feels like a first-person Metroidvania style game in the way you progress and backtrack… the environment is always changing, which opens up new paths to old checkpoints and points of interest. Other games in the series have done this, too, of course, but it’s just so much more refined now.

Occasionally you pick up a VHS tape and play it in a VCR to get additional chunks of the backstory. The ensuing cutscenes require player input, which kind of breaks the immersion for me. I would rather watch the cutscenes through the main character’s eyes than play as secondary characters. Imagine trying to watch a tape for important clues while constantly checking over your shoulder for ax-wielding maniacs.

In one of the aforementioned cutscenes, it seems more like the demo, in which the game favors trial and error to skill. (At one point I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do until a hint on the death screen told me.) In the game’s defense, I haven’t played it long enough to see how important this gimmick will become later on, if it all.

Puzzles. I’m getting bored of puzzles in video games, but they haven’t annoyed me in this installment… yet. I love that, during one of the complicated puzzles, the main character wonders aloud: “Who the hell makes this shit?”

I have a feeling this game’s going to be short or repeat itself by the end. The richness of it seems too great to sustain for several hours.

That’s it for now. I can’t wait to get back into it tomorrow.

Jason Vs. Leatherface (1995) [Comic Books]

Sometime between Friday the 13th VII and VIII, Jason gets unexpectedly freed from his watery resting place, wanders onto a freight train, then kills a hobo and his dog. From there he hitches a ride to Texas and—wouldn’t you know it?—he stumbles across Leatherface and his family of dimwitted cannibals. Talk about coincidence!

Before going any further, maybe it’s time to confess my shameful secret: I loved (and still love) comic books from the 90s. Yeah, modern fans live to shit on the era of impossibly posed women and gun-wielding anti-heroes, but if it weren’t for the likes of graphically explicit horror titles (and Spawn… let’s not forget Spawn), I might not have read many rags outside of Mad Magazine and EC reprints.

Speaking of EC horror, I was sure the evil businessmen responsible for draining Camp Crystal Lake (and subsequently freeing Jason) were going to get their just deserves in true Tales from the Crypt fashion. Nope. Just as in real life, these corrupt businessmen skate right by any undesirable consequences for their amoral actions. Maybe there was a follow-up planned that would address the lake’s draining, but as is it seems like an extremely convoluted excuse to get Jason up and killing again.

Which begs the question: How did the lake get refilled? And how does Jason find himself at the bottom of it again in time to take Manhattan? Those questions are not entirely explained. JvL feels more like an alternate timeline, sprouting from a fork in the road before Part VIII and Jason Goes to Hell, even though the comics’ editorials are adamant this is all canon.

The title, too, is misleading: if you’re expecting a colossal battle between the horror icons, you’ve come to the wrong place. At their first meeting, Jason and Leatherface get into a scuffle, but Leatherface loses his chainsaw within a couple of panels. At this point Jason could easily kill Leatherface, but he doesn’t because, for the first time since he was a child, he found somewhere he fits in.

And that’s where Jason Vs. Leatherface unexpectedly shines: the character development. I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t think I wanted it, but getting inside Jason’s head isn’t just a gimmick to fluff out three issues. I’m always annoyed when sequels and spin-offs attempt to rob a character’s mystique by explaining too much of their backstory, but it works here. Apparently Jason is a character who could use some fleshing out, which might explain why so many of the sequels grew stale.

You can tell writer Nancy A. Collins (a horror novelist) has a soft side for Jason, choosing to see him as a human being who doesn’t know why he kills. This version of Jason actually reminds me of Man-Thing and a little bit of Swamp Thing (the latter of which Collins also worked on). Nobody can blame Frankenstein’s monster for killing the little girl in the 1931 film… Jason Vs. Leatherface is a lot more gruesome than that, but hey, it was the 90s. What did you expect?

So Jason and Leatherface finally square off, which isn’t the story’s high point, but most of the stuff leading up to that point (and coming after it) is organic and endearing, particularly when Jason sympathizes with Leatherface’s situation. You expect a versus story to answer the “Who would win?” question, but Collins isn’t the least bit interested, which is a brave choice considering that’s how most buyers were sold on it. I would even say this mini-series is actually better than many of the movies which inspired it.

You’re going to like Jason here even though he is a ruthless serial killer.

Manhunter (1986) [Midnight Movie]

Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorites—easily in my top twenty—yet I almost always hate movies about serial killers. It’s not the subject matter so much as the sloppy way its handled. On the other hand, the first three Hannibal Lector novels were like crack to me and I inhaled them in a single week. (I never bothered with the newer stuff that dug into Lector’s childhood because I don’t want that particular mystery ruined.) The way Lector turns the tables on his captors in Silence was one of the earliest moments I can remember in which I knew I wanted to tell stories.

Before Anthony Hopkins immortalized the character in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 masterpiece (I rarely use that word so don’t accuse me of being hyperbolic), there was Michael Mann’s lesser known Manhunt, based on the original Lector novel, Red Dragon. Simultaneously an unmistakable product of the 80s and somehow timeless, the movie looks unbelievable in HD. It might even be the best looking film of the series, and the synthy soundtrack gives it a meaner edge than its much more conventional remake (which I also enjoyed).
While Hopkins probably makes a better Hannibal Lector than Brian Cox, overall I prefer Manhunter’s cast to the remake. William Peterson plays Will Graham, the FBI agent who captured Lector and almost got killed in the process. Brian Cox plays Lector a little more brutishly than Hopkins while Tom Noonan (who was born to play psychopaths) plays Francis Dollarhyde, the Red Dragon killer. Then you’ve got Dennis Farina as the old colleague who drags Graham back into the FBI, and Joan Allen as the blind woman to whom Dollarhyde unexpectedly warms up.
Manhunter is remarkably faithful to its source material until the action-packed finale, but Dollarhyde’s affair with Allen’s character is so rushed it’s a wonder why they included it at all. The movie quickly stumbles through these scenes (and I suspect there was a better cut at some point), which are ultimately resolved by a cheat. It’s one of the few aspects the remake did better.
Nonetheless, Manhunter is exactly the kind of movie I live for, the kind of electric stuff that makes routine thrillers and police procedurals sickening to the stomach. It’s the reason lesser movies like Kiss the Girls are so unimpressive. We’ve seen what this kind of movie is capable of accomplishing, so why do we have to suffer through bottom-of-the-barrel shit like Tyler Perry playing Alex Cross?

Silence of the Lambs is still the absolute best of these films, but Graham, who managed to catch Lector because he’s haunted by thoughts only serial killers should have, is almost as complex as Clarice… almost. Even if you’ve seen Red Dragon, it’s worth seeing it done from Michael Mann’s perspective. Manhunter is a fantastic movie.

Beyond the Gates (2016) [Midnight Movie]

Beyond the Gates is like Jumanji if the titular game of that movie required a VCR to play. In it, a couple of estranged brothers meet up to close down their father’s video store after he turns up missing. They’re not too concerned about his absence because he’s an alcoholic who’s dropped out of their lives before, on and off ever since the boy’s mother died. The oddly unemotional hero of the film was a bit of a drinker, too, until the day he grabbed his girlfriend’s wrist a little too hard. Now he’s sworn off the stuff, a subplot which seems superfluous in the end.

An obvious influence on Beyond the Gates is the subgenre of horror films which were made for children in the 80s, such as Gremlins and The Gate. The movie is deliberately paced to reflect the slow-burn nature of those films, but I think the filmmakers miscalculated a little bit because a lot of the excuses to postpone the action are flimsy. For example, the boys now possess the key which unlocks the secret room in the back of their father’s shop, a room he forbade them from ever entering. You’re telling me that’s not the first place these guys would go snooping?

It’s in this room where they find the titular board game, which proves to be supernatural as the trailer promised. I’m not sure how much more I should give away about how the game operates. All the juicy stuff happens much, much later.

Unlike the aforementioned horror films made for children, this one is extremely bloody. It’s as if it were made for the kind of kids who grew up on movies like that, bearing in mind those children are adults now. The bloody bits are good, but few and far between. You might be saying, “Hey, Gremlins and The Gate were slow like that, too,” but I just watched the trailers for those films after watching Beyond, and they serve as a good reminder of just how much action those older movies actually had in ’em. In other words: a lot more happened in each of those films than this one.

This isn’t to say I didn’t like Beyond the Gates because I did, I just want you to know what you’re getting yourself into before you splurge on the $7 VOD price. Once again, Barbara Crampton (who takes a producer credit) proves she was born for movies like this and, despite routinely appearing in genre flicks, she’s played a bigger variety of character types than most A-movie stars have.

I wasn’t crazy about Beyond the Gates, but I found it to be pleasant to watch. I’m just not sure horror movies should be pleasant. Either way, I think these are all talented people and I’m excited to see what they do next.