31 Days of Halloween 2016: Bleed

Starting in 2011 we (Marmy and I, as Kent is not that much of a horror fan) enjoyed celebrating the Halloween season (as soon as the candies hit the stores) by watching too many horror / Halloween related movies, most bad.  2012 had a few flicks but not the full month. Un/Re-employment kill 2013. Apathy killed 2014. But we returned last year with a full run. And we still had movies left over.

Like in previous years, the "best of _____" yearly gathering of good flicks had already been mostly exhausted. We like horror movies; we don't wait until October to see the year's best. Maybe on off years, I should re-post?  Anywayz, here we go!

Also note, I continue the trend of writing these the day following but fudging the date. It's not like I watched the movie and wrote immediately.

2016, Tripp Rhame -- Netflix

OK, seriously, a high score on IMDB ratings and a few other places? I think we are circling back as part of a backlash against all the cerebral horror movies of late, i.e. the people who consider them boring are jumping on the first jump-scare-gore-fest they find. This movie was terrible, just terrible.

Enter the tropes. A couple has moved to The Country, to fix up an old house with a reputation. Start the movie with a long drive on a winding country road. Enter an encounter with a weird talking country hick, the police man who actually is nice and helps her change a tire. But he is weird, and the tone & music makes him weird. And then the house, the supposedly old creepy house? Nope, an absolutely gorgeous country home. Nothing this lovely could grow out of a dangerous, creepy, redneck filled countryside. There were obviously too many re-decorators involved.

Enter the tropes. Dickhead brother shows up. Lovely friend with issues shows up, black boyfriend in tow. Wait, is there a cabin in the woods to be found? Nope, but there is a haunted abandoned prison. And the brother is a ghost hunter. We also get some cheap attempts at occultism with weird symbols and... and. Oh, I could just go on listing the wasted bits of tropes and all the familiar cliche horror inserts. But I won't, as the movie just didn't go anywhere. There was a core plot there, something mythological that just got ... lost in the editing? In the directing? Meddling? Who knows.

The movie didn't even know how to end properly, just abandoning the Final Girl trope and snatching the end of Eden Lake. Whatever mythos they were building up with butterflies and protecting ghosts (who also seem to forget who he was protecting) and birthmarks and reborn souls is dashed against the rocks of boredom.

Bleah.