Rating: B-/ I know literally nothing about the history of the Iran-Iraq conflict, but this movie was compared by certain people to Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, two movies with which it was not necessary to understand the political and social context. I came into this movie with high hopes, but personally I don’t think it measures up to Guillermo Del Toro’s two masterpieces. Continue reading Movie Review: Under the Shadow (2016)
Rating: B/ I knew next to nothing about Kubo and the Two Strings going in, and I probably wouldn’t have even watched it at all had my dad not bought a copy for my sister on her 13th birthday. I had seen a few ads and knew it had a monkey in it, but overall my interest was minimal. While Kubo and the Two Strings’ plot structure is not the most original (it features a pretty standard heroes’ journey arc where Kubo picks up a couple of unlikely companions and moves from place to place trying to find items with magical properties that will help him fight an ancient evil,) it is visually astonishing and peppered with some entertaining characters and funny dialogue. Continue reading Movie Review: Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
Rating: B/ Behold the Many is kind of a strange book, and one that is hard to summarize and describe, but I’ll try my best to put my feelings about this novel into words. I had never heard of it when I picked it up but I was immediately sucked in by the beautiful cover art, featuring an a black-and-white picture of an innocent-looking Asian girl overlaid with colorful flowers. The image, much like many examples of cover art on the front of novels, has very little to do with the actual story, seeming in this case to have been randomly picked out with little correlation with the plot itself. Continue reading Book Review: Behold the Many by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Rating: D-/ Flowers is a very strange film, and not in a good, Eraserhead way as much as a ‘why-the-fuck-am-I-watching-this’ way. Although it is almost entirely devoid of redeeming qualities, I enjoyed watching it, the reason being that I got three of my best friends over to watch it and we kept up a running commentary of it’s pointlessly self-indulgent ridiculousness. I’m thankful for my friends and their crazy senses of humor for making this even watchable. Continue reading Movie Review: Flowers (2015)
Rating: B-/ Oculus is unusual in that it manages to employ just about every horror cliche in the book at some point but still winds up being a pretty decent watch, due to it’s more innovative moments and occasional flashes of brilliance. Eleven years ago, Kaylie (Karen Gillian) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites) father (Rory Cochrane) committed a brutal crime due to an apparent psychological imbalance. Cut to present day, and Kaylie is determined that the shattering act of violence was not caused by her dad’s inner demons but instead a haunted mirror that the family bought shortly before their problems began, an artifact that seems to devastate the lives of anyone it comes into contact with. Continue reading Movie Review: Oculus (2013)
I’ll admit, I kind of went out on a limb with this one. I had seen the theatrical trailer quite some time ago, and it didn’t look like my type of movie, which is a polite way of me saying it looked like crap-ola. But I had just seen John Carpenter’s Halloween for the umpteenth time, and I saw this on Netflix Streaming and decided to give it a whirl. How bad could it be, right?
Pretty bad, as it turns out. This ain’t no Halloween, and to top off a heaping shit cake is the king of all crappy twists. Did anyone actually think this was a good idea? The plot follows Kristen (Amber Heard,) a cute blonde who burns down a farmhouse and is taken to a sinister mental institution. She says she’s perfectly rational and sane; for some odd reason the shrinks overlooking her case disagree.
Kristen goes under lock and key in North Bend Psychiatric Institution, where she meets her fellow patients, flirty, manipulative Sarah (Danielle Panabaker,) brainy Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca,) who is rarely seen without her handy-dandy sketchbook, contrarian Emily (Mamie Gummer,) who picks fights with just about everyone and paints her mouth clown-red in protest at group meetings, and timid, infantile Zoe (Laura-Leigh,) who talks in a wittle bitty baby voice and clutches her stuffed bunny in protection against a world she can’t quite comprehend.
Little do these disparate band of loonies know that shit’s about to go down in a big way, when the ghost of a dead patient lurks around the halls of the spooky institution. Meanwhile, creepy nurses scuttle around menacingly, and Kristen tries to convince her shrink (Jared Harris) that something, er… not human is making it’s rounds around the psych ward, which goes over about as well as a fart in church.
The drab grey color scheme and the movies utterly self-serious delivery of campy situations and lines, without a smidgen of irony or humor, should single-handedly sink this enterprise, but it would almost just barely get by as a passable movie if it weren’t for the spectacularly dreadful ‘twist’ at the end. I won’t spoil the delight of this abomination for you here in my review, but let’s just say it’s been done in other movies, and done better, many times. I’m starting to think if you don’t have a truly innovative and interesting twist, you should just forgo the damn thing and stick with a straightforward plot.
The acting here is okay (‘okay’ in that I didn’t want to scratch my eyes out, but I still I still wasn’t overly impressed ,) The main problem (besides the super-hokey twist ending) is that the movie takes itself far too seriously without delivering any real scares. It lacks a real sense of purpose and terror, yet lacks the strength to go all the way as a satire or even a comedy-horror hybrid.Being simultaneously corny and grim isn’t a good position for a fright flick to take. And we never really care that much about Kristen, as Amber Heard’s performance lacks the ferocity or the plausibility to take her beyond the realm of poorly written heroines.
I highly recommend you avoid The Ward like the plague. In attempting to kick-start his career, John Carpenter has committed the worst of moviemaking vices- he’s wasted his time, and ours. A failure on almost every concievable level, The Ward is best forgotten and moved past as a regrettable misstep in Carpenter’s career.
Old houses are evil. But if I owned a mansion as nice as the one George C. Scott has in this movie, I’d take a chance on the vengeful child spirit. Scott plays John Russell, an unflappable musical composer coping with the unexpected death of his daughter (Michelle Martin) and wife (Jean Marsh.) Russell moves into a gorgeous old house intent on doing some work on his music and attempting to move on from his loss, but before you can say “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts” strange and eerie things start happening in the mansion. Largely unperturbed, and aided by lady friend and love interest Claire Norman (Scott’s real-life wife, Trish Van Devere,) John decides to investigate.
I won’t go into who haunts the house or why, because it would cheat you out of the experience of seeing the movie and finding out for yourself, but I will say The Changeling is an eerie (a bit too dated to be truly frightening) horror classic with a great deal of mystery. The best part was when John Russell finds a secret passage behind a wooden shelf in his closet that leads to a hidden room. That meant a great deal to me, because when I was a youngster I used to spend vast expanses of time searching for hidden panels and doors in my a hundred-year-old but strangely unexceptional home (I might have also been looking for a wormhole to Narnia, but let’s not focus on my childhood obsessions.)
The characters were a bit underdeveloped (John being weirdly nonreactive to the supernatural mayhem around him while Claire plays the role of the typical classic heroine, shrieking and fretting constantly until you want to tell her if she can’t deal with a little ghostly hi jinks, she needn’t get involved at all.) John’s motivations actually make a lot of sense; as a recently bereaved husband and father a suggestion of life after death should be a relief to him. He’s already experienced so much grief, more than he lets on, why should the spooky antics of a spirit not at rest break him? However, although George C. Scott does an amazing job balancing stoicism and unfathomable grief, his character left me a little cold. And I had no use for Van Devere’s shrieking woman in peril, who falls in little flat from the perspective of someone who has seen so many bad-ass women portrayed in movies, or at least women with something to do in the script except wail and tremble in abject terror.
That said, I really do like The Changeling. It’s a classical ghost story with a lot of atmosphere; no gore or lurid shocks to be seen. If you like movies like The Others with Nicole Kidman (one of my favorites, and superior in many ways to the much-hyped The Sixth Sense,) you’ll like this. I love that The Others in all likelihood borrowed the character idea of a elderly caretaker named Mr. Tuttle, a homage that none but the most perceptive horror fans will probably catch. Although I feel sorry in a way for the wronged spirit, just a boy at the time of his death, I thought he acted a little harshly in punishing the senator (Melvyn Douglas,) indirectly related to his murder but still the only remaining opportunity to get revenge on a living person.
I really felt for Melvyn Douglas’ character, who discovers something no one should have to learn about their much-loved father. While Douglas is the ‘changeling’ of the title, he’s not as much a perpetrator as a fellow unfortunate who was nevertheless lucky enough to live to a ripe old age and achieve success, while the spirit languished and limbo and allowed his hate to grow.
The Changeling isn’t really a horror movie of a keep-you-up-all-night variety, it’s low-key and dated and in all actuality not terribly scary. On the other hand, if you like murder mysteries that will keep you guessing and that incorporate a creepy supernatural element, this movie is for you. It takes a somewhat old soul or fan of older horror to appreciate this; it isn’t for those that crave instant gratification or get impatient easily. It’s a mood piece, graced by the formidable presence of George C. Scott. But it will survive when the majority of modern fright flicks are forgotten in junkyards somewhere.
Best described as a ‘haunted house movie that’s not a haunted house movie,’ “Housebound” starts out rather unimpressively and gradually takes hold of your attention with an intriguing mystery and a surprising twist. Once I realized it wasn’t going to be a laugh-out-loud giggle fest like another recent NZ horror/comedy, “What We Do in the Shadows” (although “Housebound” as it’s chuckle-worthy moments, however modestly offered up) I settled in and enjoyed the mix of camp and cult sensibility combined with some legitimate creepiness and entertaining, if cheesy, practical effects.
Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) is a world-class bitch and juvenile delinquent which a long standing bad attitude toward adults, authority figures, and the world in general. She is picked up by the police while bashing open an ATM to satisfy her methamphetamine habit and sent to live with her family on house arrest. Worse, Kylie hates her overly gregarious, soap opera-watching mom (Rima Te Wiata) and taciturn stepdad Greame (Ross Harper,) so she’s pretty much as pissed off about the arrangement as she could possibly be.
Until the supernatural gets mixed into the arrangement, and her bratty, futile anger turns to fear. Her mom has always suggested that the house could be haunted, being a hotspot for strange and ghostly activity. The weird happenings intensify when Kylie arrives in the house, but who, besides her oddball family,will believe her? Certainly not the authorities who put her under house arrest; certainly not the cops. Or so she thinks- until the realization that her parole officer Amos (Glen-Paul Naru) is a huge paranormal enthusiast and could not be more eager to accompany her on her spooky investigation.
The beginning of this movie doesn’t bode well for the film as a whole, with too little humor and too few things of particular interest going on. Plus, Kylie isn’t exactly a likable character, with her self-absorbed disdain for anyone who tries to stop her from doing exactly what she wants to do. At the beginning, I was tempted to pack it up and go to bed, but by the end I was glad I didn’t . This movie’s twist is creative and astonishingly well-thought-out.
“Housebound”‘s acting is halfway decent (nothing that’s going to win a Academy Award, but good in the context of the movie) and the identity of the true baddie is a shocker- in classic mystery fashion, they’re the last person you would expect! I’m not sure why this was so highly lauded by Rotten Tomatoes, but I’m glad I watched the whole thing. The movie, while not being the future horror classic some made it out to be, has it’s charms. It’s no “What We Do in the Shadows” (a movie I feel in love with immediately upon watching) but it’s got some value in the horror/comedy world of the great, the okay, and the just plain awful.
When will you silly people ever learn? When the house starts doing weird shit, get the hell out of it. And when in doubt, keep away from the basement.
A grieving couple must face human adversaries as well as ghostly ones when they move into a isolated, spooky old house in “We Are Still Here,” a fun, over – the – top, and delightfully gruesome (if sometimes painfully cliched) indie horror flick. All the markers are there of a Hollywood ghost film – a couple too stupid or too skeptical to leave a fucked -up ghost inhabited house, creepy sounds, things that go bump in the night, sinister locals, and a ball that goes bouncing down a set of stairs when – wait for it – nobody threw the damn thing to begin with!
What separates this film from others of it’s ilk, for better or for worse, a whole lotta gore.Things go squish and people become human soup a lot more than is typical (or perhaps necessary) for this type of film. The acting is dodgy, although the two leads (Barbara Crampton and Andrew Sensenig) are surprisingly good. Crampton is surprisingly touching as a mother who recently lost her child in a film that, to be honest, generally doesn’t allow for much pathos.
Crampton and Sensenig play Anne and Paul Sachetti, a couple devastated by the loss of their teenage son a few months prior. They maintain a affectionate, if somewhat stagnant relationship and Paul tries his best to comfort Anne amidst her deepening grief. Paul moves Anne to a remote house in the country in hope that a change of pace will be beneficial to her. No sooner have they moved in than Anne begins feeling her dead son’s presence.
She tries to tell her husband she believes that the old house is haunted, but he remains ever the skeptic, trying to talk some sense into the troubled woman. Soon thereafter, the couple, fist Anne, then Paul – are haunted by visions of a burnt -up family. Against her husband’s wishes. Anne invites over two hippy -dippy friends of her’s – good -humored stoner Jacob (Larry Fessenden) and flaky psychic May (Lisa Marie) to conduct a seance, which is when, as they say, shit gets real.
All this is set in the dead of winter, filmed so that the viewer can practically feel the cold brushing against their skin. I haven’t seen such a chilly wintery horror film since “Let the Right One In.” And this is no “Let the Right One In.” But it’s fun, a spooky, cheesy Halloween time diversion. It walks the line between creepiness and outright (intentional?) comedy, sporadically collapsing in a heap into pure camp. Come on, guys? Who else laughed when the possessed guy swallowed the sock? It was hysterical! It can’t be only sick, jaded bitches like me who find this shit funny!
Simply put, I wasn’t scared by this movie. But I was entertained. The director does a decent job building tension and the gore (no pun intended) is to die for. I can understand why people wouldn’t like this movie. A lot of aspects of it are, for lack of a better word, weak. But as a bombastic, bloody whole, it’s worth a watch by horror fans who like cheeky, subversive gorefests that maybe can’t compare with the spookier, more atmospheric horror flicks, but are decent scare films in their own right (even if this one didn’t scare me as much as keep me in stitches.) I didn’t look away from the screen once, didn’t get bored with the goings-on, didn’t check the time. Shouldn’t that count for something?
Note to self- Do. Not. Buy. Into. the. Controversy. Given more attention already than it deserves because of a suicide attempt scene that was edited and eventually cut the by the British censors, “Soulmate” is a tepid supernatural soap opera centered around a woman’s all-consuming love for an angst-ridden spirit.The filmmaker, Axelle Carolyn, can’t be bothered to let any mirth or light into this painfully self-serious and grim production.
Audrey (Anna Walton, who does a pretty decent job considering) is a bereaved Englishwoman whose husband Tristan (Richard Armitage)’s untimely death drives her to an ill-advised suicide attempt. Emotionally fragile, she abandons her worried sister and parents to take up residence in a Welsh cottage to wait her grief out. No sooner has she moved there than she begins to hear strange noises emanating from a locked room in the house.
The town-peoples’ refusal to offer any explanation for the strange sounds lead Audrey to seek out the entity behind the racket, who turns out to be a ghastly pale but still dapper spirit who died years before of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Small world. Not long after Audrey meets Douglas (Tom Wisdom,) the ghost, she begins to fall for his unearthly charms. But will the unusual romance result in Audrey giving herself to Douglas in death? And what exactly are the locals hiding?
First of all, the concept of a woman contemplating killing herself so she can lay a ghost bothers me. It’s not a feminist, nay, even a moral issue. But have you ever heard of a person’s bed being haunted by two apparitions fucking in that cold dark space between life and death? No, because it’s stupid. The whole concept fails at everything. Even if there was a possibility that deceased spirits could harness their ghostly genitals to copulate with each other, it doesn’t work in a film, because it sounds so silly.
Telekinetic brooding lovesick ghosts don’t really appeal to me. Moreover, I just didn’t really care about any of the characters. None of them seemed particularly real to me. The acting was fine, there was just something lacking that probably could have been built on in the film’s conception. Audrey isn’t a reprehensible or even an unpleasant character, but there’s no reason to root for her (beyond the hope that she will find a better way to deal with her depression than ending her life.) None whatsoever. Moreover, I didn’t find the lonely and despair-driven poltergeist Douglas all that compelling. He just is. Yeah, he’s haunting the house. Big whoop.
This might be a minor complaint, but I would think anyone who’s ever been halfway serious about suicide would know that you don’t slit your wrists in a bathtub when your sister’s scheduled to come home at any minute. A self-inflicted wound like that, however gruesome, takes time to kill you. Audrey decision to go all “Goodbye, cruel world” with her sister going out for a brief amount of time (when it’s highly probable that Audrey’s already on suicide watch) makes me wonder if she even really wanted to die at all, which is apparently what we’re supposed to believe.
“Soulmate” isn’t really a bad film, just overbearingly mediocre. There are, however, a few tense moments and atmosphere to spare. I recommend the more well-known alternative “The Others” for a really spooky Gothic chiller. It might be particularly behoove you to skip it if you are currently in a self-destructive state of mind or are vulnerable to that kind of imagery, especially since Netflix instant has the uncut (no pun intended) wrist-slitting sequence. It’s not worth an nervous breakdown, honest.
The Cinematic Emporium 