31 Days of Halloween: The Dark

2018, Justin P Lange (The Seventh Day) -- Amazon 

Apparently we also finished off the season last year with one of Lange's flicks, The Seventh Day.

This might be a good candidate for Kent's horrornothorror tag, as it plays the thin line between horror movie and horrific faery tale very well. Let's call it a fantasy with horror overtones.

Mina is the boogeyman in the woods, in a remote area of... There are tales of a monster in the woods. She looks like a horrifically scarred zombie and acts like a feral child. Joseff has kidnapped Alex, also horrifically scarred, and blinded, likely by his captors. Mina kills Joseff, whom Alex was completely dependent on, and she is forced by some shred of humanity left in her, to care for Alex. A bond is formed. As the bond and trust increases, as the two hide in the woods, from hunters, and police, Mina's humanity appears to return, her flesh healing, her memories of her past (and her death) returning, until eventually she becomes (again) a real girl.

The tone is what makes this somewhat muddled indie movie. So many are going to compare the interaction with the original Let the Right One In but this movie wants to be more allegorical, more dark fairy tale, than true exploration of monsters. It gets the dark, shadowy nature of two abused people finding connection. But it is challenge by also trying to tie in a thriller plot, of a kidnapping ring, of a police hunt, etc. The timelines seem to be off, when the plot focuses on the thriller/horror aspects -- Alex's scars are years and years old, but the police hunt is fresh; Mina's death and her subsequent murderous resurrection was long enough ago to have her become urban legend but some of the trappings around her death appear to be recent. Either way, despite my desire to skip past the allegory and see a proper monster movie, I did enjoy this.

31 Days of Halloween: Wendell & Wild

2022, Henry Selick (Coraline) -- Netflix

Not horror, definitely Halloween.

ed. note: finishing this writing looooong after viewing.

Burtonian, but not Tim Burton, which is not unexpected considering he directed one of the seminal "Tim Burton films" - A Nightmare Before Christmas. This one, again, is weird, wonderful, imaginative and visually incredible to look at!

Kat's parents run a very famous local brewery. Apparently its supposed to be root beer, but my craft beer blinders were on and I saw a lovely local craft beer factory! I loved the addition of craft beer as a beloved family business, and the fact the family is black. Craft Beer is a very very white world, so happy to see some inclusion here. So, you can see, that is where my mind was and is.

Unfortunately, Kat (Lyric Ross, This Is Us) loses both her parents in an accident, leaving the brewery's future unknown. She is sent to live in an orphanage (or Catholic School or.... ?). Many orphanages, as she is a bit of a punky wild child, finally being sent to one in her home town, where upon her return, she catches a glimpse of the brewery, which has burned down.

Meanwhile, down in Hell, the titular demons Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key, The Predator) & Wild (Jordan Peele, The Twilight Zone) are using up daddy's hair creme as an intoxicant, and get a vision of Kat. Of note, daddy demon Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames, Death Race 2) is colossally big, and they are tasked with applying the creme one follicle at a time.

Kat is weird, sorta punky, very off-putting to her fellow schoolmates, who still seem to adore her, even when she gets all mixed up in the Hell driven hijinx. The story is rather convoluted but focuses around saving the town from the evil land developing Klaxon family, while Wendell & Wilde both plotting against Kat and working with her, lots of machinations going on, and boat loads of weird & wonderful characters (undead Father Bests [James Hong, Big Trouble in Little China] and Manberg, a wheel-chair bound custodian who collects demons in jars [Igal Naor, Riviera]). A recap would be loooong. The art style is a whole buncha fun, mixing the 3D with flat, almost 2D visuals. That said, I need a rewatch as it all is rather fuzzy in my head.

Series Minded: some Universal horrors

 [Series Minded is an irregular feature here at T&KSD, wherein we tackle the entire run of a film, TV, or videogame series in one fell swoop] 

Ok, this is a bit of a cheat for series minded, as it is in no way I'm going to do the entirety of Universal's classic horror run, which I believe begins with Dracula in 1931 and ends with The Creature of the Black Lagoon sequel in 1956, spanning roughly 40 films in between.   The Criterion Collection curated 10 of these features (all of their most prominent, save for Phantom of the Opera), which is what I watched. 

The early films were all prominently touted as productions of Carl Laemmle Jr., who had a taste for expensive productions, that eventually drove him (and his father) out of Universal after The Bride of Frankenstein.  I covered both the first Dracula and it's superior Spanish-language counterpart earlier this month, as well as Frankenstein and its first sequel, and all are watchable productions in their own way, but I find I'm more interested in them as artifacts than as actual entertainment which is probably why it's been decades since I've last watched them.

The remaining films in the Criterion Channel's curated viewing list are:

The Mummy (1932) dir. Karl Freund
The Invisible Man (1933) dir. James Whale
The Black Cat (1934) dir. Edgar G. Ulmer
The Raven (1935) dir. Lew Landers
The Wolf Man (1941) dir. George Waggner
Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) dir. Jack Arnold

And although it's not a Universal film, after watching all these, it's absolutely clear that Marvel's delightful Werewolf By Night (2022) dir. Michael Giacchino is absolutely aping the classic Universal movie mold, so we'll talk about that here as well.

---

The Mummy is, 90 years later, perhaps the biggest disappointment of all the original Universal Horror features, in that it only contains brief glimpses of the classic bandaged-wrapped Mummy, and that he's not some slow-ambling murderous undead horror.  What we do see, of KARLOFF in the makeup and wrappings, looks phenomenal (perhaps the best looking of all the UH creatures) but again, it's so goddamn brief, and so early in the production.  Some classic archaeologists/tomb raiders/colonials find the tomb of Imhotep, and a sacred scroll that, when read aloud, awakens him.  Imhotep murders a man and then disappears.

Ten years later, Imhotep looks almost fully human and goes by the name of Ardeth Bey, posing as an Egyptian historian, he enters the elite social circles of the graverobbers who found him.  Is this a revenge tale or a high society satire? No, because those would be interesting.

Instead Imhotep/Ardeth Bey becomes fixated on a woman he believes is the reincarnation of his lost love, and she should be the vessel for his old flame's immortal soul.  He looks into a pool of water, often, mind controlling people or just spying, and occasionally murdering, all because of his toxic, unhealthy obsessions with Helen. (His power set is really unclear).

There is a couple scenes where Ardeth Bey converses with Helen, and all the credit to KARLOFF for injecting some real sensuality into those moments.  He's not being creepy, he's genuinely enraptured by this woman, and Zita Johann plays those scenes as being somewhat receptive to his advances.  In a different age, this could have been a really sexy thriller.  Instead, it contains zero tension and is pretty direly boring.

Edward Van Sloane makes his third appearance in an early UH, who once again should have been Van Helsing and thus tying this somewhat dark universe together, but, alas is not. 

The Mummy also uses the same theme music as Dracula (which is actually just an excerpt from Swan Lake).

But is it horror?
Not even.

---

Surprisingly, having never seen the film before, The Invisible Man begins not in a lab, but in an English countryside inn and tavern during a brisk winter's snowstorm.  A man in full bandages and dark goggles trudges through the snow, with thick leather cases.  Entering the tavern, extra dramatically, his boorish behaviour earns him a room, and a whole lot of speculation from the sots at the bar.  Burn victim? Just bundled up for winter?

Nope, dude's invisible.  But, even worse, he's also a raging asshole. Dr. Jack Griffin, for some reason that's not truly explained, needs a quiet place to conduct his experiment, to try and turn himself visible again.  But in the meantime, he's going to be an utter dick to the tavern keeper (the delightful Una O'Connor) and her beta hubbie... he's also not going to pay his rent.

There's a whole other set of characters who knew Jack before he literally disappeared, including the requisite dame who does nothing but pine for her man...despite the raging dickhead he's become.  Jack, it seems, in testing his experimental serum on himself, has driven himself mad, mad to the point of becoming a literal supervillain...sneaking around stark naked in the middle of winter to get revenge on the people who crossed him.  He's gone so stark-raving-looney he thinks he can enact a plan so malevolent that the entire world will buckle at his feet, completely not realizing that something as simple as a bag of flour or a bucket of paint or a sandy beach is all it would take to take him down.  He starts with simple tomfuckery -  sweeping glasses off bars, stealing bicycles, tipping baby carriages over, knocking over grandfather clocks - but then quickly escalates into murder, and then mass-murder by derailing a train.  By the third act he's killed over 120 people... and yet there's still a woman pining over him, because she has nothing better to do.

In the end, it just takes a cop with a bit of brains to stop the unseen menace.  But man, does Claude Rains ever have a lot of fun in both his verbal and physical performance.  It's a charmingly simple and silly movie that dares to make its protagonist just the most caustic asshat, bringing you on board in rooting for his downfall.  The more time you spend with him, the more you want him to get his come-uppence (but only after he does a few more absurdly petty murders, or naive acts of terrorism in his vain acts of world domination.

But is it horror?
Almost. It's too goofy to be truly horrifying. But he knocks over a baby carriage.  What a dick!

---

The Black Cat is the first of the films in this Criterion collection I had no expectations for. It's not one of the iconic Universal Horrors, though it starts their two most famous leads in Karloff (he was really angling for that one-name moniker at this time) and Bela Legosi.

We open on a train cabin with David Manners' Peter, and Julie Bishop (curiously billed as Jacqueline Wells...I should, but won't, dig into that later) as are literally throwing F*me eyes at each other. They are a very convincing couple throughout the film. Later in the film Peter just hoists up a totally game Joan and tosses her on the bed, and then pounces. Was something happening with them off screen? Because it's definitely on screen. Too sexy for 1934, I tells ya.

Peter and Joan are deciding whether they're going to leave the cabin to get food, or, ahem "eat in" (and the way Joan's eyes light up, it's definitely a euphamism), when their romping time is interrupted by the porter who notes that the train was overbooked and this Dracula-looking M*F*er needs to share their cabin.

What really works, at least upon first viewing, is the expectations one has upon seeing Bela Legosi... I mean, he's the most infamous vampire, so there's gotta be something rotten about him, right? The film trades off this uncertainty for a lot of its run time, even as he tells his WWI horror story and heading back to Hungary face the monster of his past... we should have sympathy, but it's freaking Bela Legosi, so there's always just a hint of sinister, even when his eyes are softened and kind (plus is name is Dr. Vitus Werdergast, which is a red-flag name all over). Their time together in the cabin is deliciously awkward in a way we haven't seen in any other Universal Horror thus far, a real truthful moment of strangers pretending to be okay being around each other. At one point the lovebirds are sleeping, and Werdergast strokes Joan's hair, only to see Peter is awake, and the popped-eyes Manners throws at him are epic. He relates a story of the loss of his wife and child, which should further our sympathy, but this man is a total wild card.

The train arrives at station and it's just pissing rain and they all get into a wonderful-looking 1930's bus which has cute little roll-down flaps for doors to keep the rain out. The driver, somewhat gleefully, tells of the horrible history of the area from the War, only to hit a messy patch of road and they roll off the side of a cliff. The driver is killed, Joan is injured. They set off on foot and wind up at Werdergast's destination, the home of architect Hjalmar Poelzig. 

The house is a 30's modernist masterpiece on top of a hill (of death, and, apparently, a old munitions bunker) and the interiors are all clean and curvy with so many modern touches. I wanted this house to be so 30's futuristic, but I guess the set designers broke for lunch early and didn't get that far. It also could very well have been a very modern death trap of secret doors and panels and what not... alas.

The mood between Werdergast and Poelzig is wonderful. Full of animosity and tension, but also tremendous familiarity. The big surprise to me was to see that Karloff, known so famously as the giant Frankenstein monster, is actually a smaller man than Legosi, and later when Legosi has him on a torture rack and rips his top off we see Karloff is extremely lithe, not even close to the giant he can transform himself into.

Following this initial sequence in Poelzig's home, the film flounders as it tries to figure out what its angle is. To this point, the setting has been built extremely effectively and the possibility of danger looms. During the night in this home, there are some weird things, like Joan's sleepwalking that are never explained, and Werdergast's dramatic revulsion to a passing black cat (to the point that he grabs a knife and dead-aims it at the cat, killing it, to which no one really bats an eye) are ham-fisted set-ups that go nowhere. 

It's clear these men want to kill each other, and that Peter and Joan are sort of trapped in between, but their game of cat-and-mouse (where you're never quite sure who is the cat and who is the mouse) never really takes off with any stakes or tension. Poelzig shows Werdergast his trophy room of dead and preserved women in his bunker, which includes Poelzig's wife. It's pretty creepy, but not used effectively enough. LIkewise, we find out that Poelzig has since married Werdergast's daughter and the stakes it should raise also never come to fruition. 

In the end it turns out Poelzig is a Satanist and he's going to hold a sacrificial ceremony, with Joan as the sacrifice, but things don't go his - or really anyone's - way. It all seems like it's escalating in theory, but the stakes never actually rise. 

The film features an almost continuous score, full of classical music excerpts, many of which are more famous from other films, and many of which do feel sort of disconnected from the scene they're playing over, and I'm undecided whether I like this, or the dead space of no score as with the earlier Universal Horrors.

This is perhaps one of the least campy of the Universal Horror offerings (that I've seen...) and it does touch upon traumas experienced in World War I, which seems a rarity in film.

Tisit horror?
You know, it kinda is.

---

The Raven is closer to what I was hoping The Black Cat would be... a deranged man invites guests over to his house only to subject them to his many Poe-inspired instruments of torture. It just takes a long, circuitous route to getting to what is one of the more popular contemporary horror genre structures.

Bela Legosi plays the mad Doctor Vollin who thinks himself a god, like Alec Baldwin in Malice (anyone else dropping Malice references in 2022? Ok, how about Dr. Christopher Duntsch from Dr. Death?) but really is just a murderous Poe fanboy with too much money.

The party is nearly a Ruben Östlund-like satire of rich people, and if would have been far more delightful had the intention been for Dr. Vollin to be just fucking with the upper crust, rather than, as is here, just kind of opportunity for his own nerdy bloodlust to present itself.

The Karloff stuff, a lowly street thug looking for a Face Off situation to escape prison, only for Vollin to disfigure him then blackmail him into manservantry - seems really shoehorned in, though, as good a performance as Karloff gives with that terrible wonky-eye makeup he's sporting (the prosthetic eye stretches when he over enunciates).

Oh, also, there's a theatrical interpretive dance (before a sold out crowd) set to a reading of Poe's the Raven in this, which is probably the most batshit insane part of the film.

Horror, maybe?
I think it's too campy to be horror. Perhaps if there were more murder.  But it's pretty fun.

---

Humm.

On the one hand, The Wolf Man is quite a likeable production, with Lon Chaney Jr. spraying his Danny Huston-of-the-40's vibes all over the joint. But on the other hand, it's got red flags all over the play. Certainly a production of its time. 

Larry fucks around with his father's telescope, spying on a pretty girl in town through her bedroom window. He then approaches her at her place of work and uses his knowledge of the interior of her bedroom to try and woo her. Red flag! She says no, a number of times, and yet he persists. Red flag! He also, apparently, is the heir to the estate that pretty much runs the town and he can exude a lot of influence over anyone there (he doesn't, but he could...to his credit, I guess, he tries to hide the fact. Yellow flag). A large contingent of this film's plot revolves around "gypsies" (Red flags a flyin'). Larry takes Gwen on a non-date to the ... encampment in the woods to have fortunes read (Gwen, who's already engaged, agrees to go on the "date" (no flags, fair play) but brings along her friend Jenny, which I think was intended as both escort and perhaps a set-up. Jenny gets her fortune read by Bela Legosi who discovers she's his next victim, and promptly proceeds to victimize her. Red flag (if only for the dire lack of tension around all this). Jenny gets mauled by a wolf-man, Larry steps in to help and beats the living shit right out of the beast with his very distinctive silver-wolf-handled cane, but not before Jenny succumbs and Larry is bit himself. A wounded Larry is escorted home by Gwen and the Romani woman whose wolfmanson (that's a band name) he just killed, and the police go out into the woods to find both Jenny's mauled body and Bela's caved in skull, as well as the murder weapon, the aforementioned cane. The police the next morning confront Larry, suspicious that he committed murder in beating Bela to death (which he did) and that it was not a wolf, like Larry keeps saying (which is also true). They leave the murder weapon behind and Larry proceeds to carry said murder weapon around EVERYWHERE HE GOES! Everyone knows what it is Larry, and you're just throwing it in their faces, constantly. The rich guy, not only getting away with murder, but also just proudly twirling his preferred weapon of assault around all over town. Read the room, Larry, all of them! RED FLAG, Larry.

Anyway, Larry's a werewolf. He attacks and kills a few people. He gets hunted, and despite having killed her son, the Romani woman still helps him out more than once. But, he's too much of a wild beast and he gets put down in the end... or does he?

Am I the only one who thought Chaney and Claude Rains seemed much more like contemporaries than father-son? Only 17 years between them, so, still sorta plausible I guess?

Offensively enjoyable!

But can it be... is it... horror...!?
Close...very close

---

The gill-man from The Creature of the Black Lagoon is arguably Universal's best-looking monster. The suit is an amazing piece of pre-Star Wars creature design, an elaborate, detailed suit that moves incredibly well, works practicably under water, and doesn't look like just a guy in a suit on camera.

It's all too bad then that the actual movie is so boring.  At 80 minutes, you feel every minute ticking past.  

It's a small production with a cast of a half-dozen or so, mainly set in said Amazonian Black Lagoon, where a group of scientists argue about whether to kill or capture the creature, or just leave it alone, while the creature picks off all the unimportant characters one by one.  But the "important" characters have no personality, and you don't care a lick about them or their personal objectives.

There's a lot of solid underwater photography, but underwater photography just isn't as spectacular in black-and-white.  There's also a LOT of scenes of the gill-man's arm and hand emerging from the water onto shore, or the boat, or through the porthole, with the same damn horn sting over, and over and over again.  There's also a lot of shrieking from the one female character whose sole purpose is to look pretty and shriek. 

It's just schlock, but not even enjoyable schlock.  All the money shots of gill-man aren't enough to keep this one from sinking.

But is it horror?
It tries to be.

---

What I hadn't realized about Universal Horror is how tremendously short the films are.  With the exception of Spanish Dracula, they average around 70 minutes.  I also hadn't realized how uniformly thin the UH are on characterization, there's no stand out characters in any of these film beyond the main creature or villain, and even then it's less personality than it is just visualization or traits.  There's not even good mythology building in these films, as the writers don't really seem to have much sense of where these creatures or villains originate, what their power sets are, or what motivates them (except, in some cases, the very generic "madness").

The Disney+ original Marvel "Special" Werewolf By Night is fully inspired by Universal's Horror films of the past, and director/composer Michael Giacchino seems to just relish the opportunity to play in this terrain.  

The special, like classic UH, contains a small cast, limited (but elaborate) sets, and isn't terribly interested in developing characters so much as plowing through its story.  And yet, it can't help but do that Marvel thing of building mythology, creating a few attractive characters portrayed by charismatic actors, and of course using modern tools at its disposal to elevate the visual aspects of the story.

It starts with a gathering, a wake perhaps, of Ulysses Bloodstone, a fabled monster hunter.  A collective of other monster hunters assemble, with the promise of receiving Bloodstone's magic amulet should they win a competition.  The competition involves hunting a special creature released into Bloodstone's maze-like estate, and each other.  In the mix is Jack Russell -- posing as a more prestigious hunter, but actually there to rescue the creature, his friend Ted, the Man-Thing -- and Elsa Bloodstone, the estranged daughter who rejects her father's way, but no less wants his amulet as her birthright. 

Were this a feature-length film, we would have gotten biographies on each of the hunters, spent a lot more time setting up their individual characters and personalities, only to watch them die in so many different ways.  But it's better off this way.  We don't need to know more about them, and everything we really need is here in its 50-ish minutes.

Unlike Universal Horrors, this special is full of action, violence, and blood, things UH tended to shy away from.  It's also bloodier and more aggressive in its violence than Marvel typically is, but it's tempered by the shadows-heavy black-and-white (unfortunately digitally converted, rather than shot in) and the melodramatic tone it takes, doubled down by Giacchino's playful score (another thing unlike UH is the lack of repetitiveness in the soundtrack) and his playful use of light, shadow, colour (and lack thereof) and composition in his first directorial effort.

Gael Garcia Bernal as Jack, Laura Donnelly as Elsa, and Harriet Sansom Harris as the Widow Bloodstone all put in terrific performances that carry the film with ease, and I hope to see more of (those who survive). I enjoyed this tremendously...as a Marvel production, as a Universal Horror pastiche, and as its own thing which really does both stand out and exist independently from the MCU as we know it.

 [toastypost - we agree]

Be it horror?
It's more horror than any of the old Universal Horror, but still not quite straight up horror.

---

Ranking:

1. The Invisible Man
2. The Black Cat
3. Frankenstein
4. Dracula (Spanish)
5. The Bride of Frankenstein
6. The Raven
7. The Wolfman
8. Dracula
9. The Creature from the Black Lagoon
10. The Mummy

 

31 Days of Halloween: Even More TV

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, 2022, Netflix

This spread over a few nights and fills some gaps in our viewing. The series runs 8 episodes and we watched about two a night, thoroughly enjoying each one. Yes, we are already del Toro fans, but I am also a fan of anthology series, and these are all shot/done around the Toronto area, so we get a lot of familiar faces. AND del Toro worked with some of the most popular horror names currently in the business, as well as a boat load of familiar TV and movie faces, to create an incredible series. Unabashed adoration here, so I will do something I rarely do with TV write-ups, I will go over each episode.

Lot 36, Guillermo Navarro (Sleepy Hollow)

Nick (Tim Blake Nelson, Angel Has Fallen) is an asshole, in deep with his loan shark, looking to make some good money from a storage locker auction. What he gets was owned by some old guy who hid something weird behind all the old furniture and tchotchkes. The episode does a good job of establishing Nick, as surly and unlikeable, virulent to immigrants, and vitriolic even to those he has to work with. When he discovers a couple of books in an obviously magical table, his eyes light up with dollar signs at the suggestion the final volume could net him more than $100k. In tearing apart the locker, he ignores the warnings the buyer, who is assisting him, provides, even after finding a desiccated corpse in a hidden space at the end of the locker. Dude, when the creepy German occult expert tells you to not disturb the demon corpse trapped within a pentagram on the floor, listen to the fucker. Nick ignores him, disturbs the circle to get at the final book, and the tentacle-y, Cthulhian awakens to give chase, well, after eating the creepy German guy. 

The fun in this episode was in the minor details. The lights in the storage facility are on short timer, so Nick is constantly twisting dials, as he moves things out. So, when chased by a demon, we get to do a version of things-move-during-lightning-flashes via the timer lights. Everything that happens is entirely by the trope, but its all so well executed.

Graveyard Rats, Vincenzo Natali (Splice)

Salem, late-1800s; Massam ("Hey, its Rodney!", David Hewlett, Stargate: Atlantis) interrupts some grave robbers, not because he is a studious caretaker of a prestigious grave yard, but because they are interloping on his real job, which is taking the most choice pieces of jewelry from his charges. But Massam has been down on his luck of late, as rats have invaded his graveyard via subterranean tunnels and ... well, are stealing corpses. It sounds like a far fetched tale, but no sooner is he digging up the motherload of buried treasure than he sees the corpses being dragged off into Hell knows where. So, against everyone's (us) better judgement, he gives crawling chase.

Yeah, tunnels again; yay. But not just rats, but ... well, a rather large, blind, hairless rat, something best left fought by 1st level dungeon delvers, than a single man with a revolver. The crawling leads to falling, and Massam ends up in some deep, ancient chamber dedicated to an eldritch god. OK, so two episodes in, and two Lovecraftian references. But ancient chambers to ancient gods mean ancient treasure, but as all good D&D players know, ancient treasure protected by undead guardians!! "Mine! Mine!" the thing squawks as it gives chase, and soon Massam is running from TWO creatures better left to ... OK, 3rd-5th level adventurers. Just when he thinks he has escaped the things, he ends up in... standard karmic response, a buried coffin, and the rats he has been chasing now spill .... into him.

This was just fun. Hewlett embraces the maniacal character on a mission with glee. He does things only a man utterly desperate for shiny things that could net him coin does. Its creepy, full of claustrophobia and fear of unknown things in the dark.

The Autopsy, David Prior (The Empty Man)

Possibly the best of the lot, a story of eldritch creatures from beyond the stars instead of deep in the ground. After a mine explosion, Dr. Winters (F Murray Abraham, Mythic Quest) is brought in by his friend, Sheriff Craven (Glynn Turman, The Wire) to find out why the miner triggered the explosion. The miner is also tied to the disappearances and deaths of many other locals. Inside the miner is an alien parasite/symbiote that inhabits other bodies, using their senses, and eating them from within. And thus begins a battle of wills between creature and coroner.

At it's core, the episode is just a battle of wits, as the Dr. has to defeat the alien creature which wants to inhabit his body. The thing has already freaked him out, and restrained him naked to a table, as it abandons the decaying body of its last host. How will the Dr, who knows he is already dying of cancer, stop this evil thing from continuing. That is the core, but its the construction of the episode around it that wins. The place where Winters does his autopsy is not an ideal location, as Sheriff Craven has asked his friend to do this off the books, so as to foil the insurance company. The story leading up to the mine explosion was already sordid enough and Craven is fully invested in defeating this evil, before he knows what is going on, before he involves his friend. All this, along with a heavy dose of gorey body horror make the episode just fun.

The Outside, Ana Lily Amirpour (The Bad Batch)

Speaking of body horror. Ew, ick, icky! As a man who suffers from occasional flare ups of eczema, this episode just made me itch and cringe.

Stacey (Kate Micucci, Be Cool Scooby-Doo!) just wants to join the clique of "pretty" women at work, who gossip about everyone and spread hand lotion over themselves obscenely. Eww, ick. Stacey's more than a bit weird & wonky, not aware that taxidermy is not everyone's cup of tea, with a wobbly eye and big teeth. But her husband (Martin Starr, Silicon Valley) loves her, and their mundane suburban life, dearly. But nope, Stacey won't have it, as she wants it all, so when a late night TV ad shill (Dan Stevens, Legion) talks her into buying a truck load of previously mentioned hand lotion, she listens to the man on the TV talking to her, the man with the weird mix of European & American South accent and big ol white hair. BTW, by this point, Stacey is already having quite the allergic reaction to the cream, leaving her with bright red patches, peeling skin and an obsessive scritch scritch scritch. Eww, icky, ewww!

Apparently the hand lotion has its own agenda, which Stacey is buying into. I will leave it there, and I am itching already.

Pickman's Model, Keith Thomas (The Vigil)

Back to the HP Lovecraft influence, but more directly this time, adapting one of his short stories.

Its been decades since I read anything Lovecraft directly, but this one reminded me of why I soured quickly on his writing. Sure, the stuff is lush and creepy and full of world building, but its so very often just creepiness for the sake of creepiness, without much real point. It was a technique of pulp-ish spec fic writing back then, for the short stories to be much more about the author's flourid style than plot, but it just doesn't work as well for me.

Anywayz, Thurber (Ben Barnes, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) is an early 20th century art, doing OK for himself, when weirdo Dicky Pickman (Crispin Glover, American Gods; channeling Burn Gorman) shows up. Almost instantly Thurber is drawn to Dicky's work, following him into a cemetery where Pickman sketches dead things, and almost instantly, beginning to feel the affect of being around Pickman. He's seeing weird things, and feeling overwhelming sensations of fear. Exposure to Pickman's work has unsettling affects. If this was a Call of Cthulhu game, Thurber would have failed his sanity check.

Years later, Thurber has divested himself of Pickman's unsettling influence, until the man insinuates himself back into Thurber's life. It leads to Pickman inviting Thurber into his sanctum, likely recognizing the affect it has had, and seeking a like soul, someone who sees the otherworldly in his horrific paintings for what they really are -- doorways to actual supernatural corrupting forces. Instead, Thurber shoots Pickman and escapes. Alas, his paintings were on display, and his family has seen them. End episode with classic utterly horrible ramifications.

I didn't like the episode much, despite really good production values. It just didn't seem to have any point other than depicting the affect that Lovecraftian mythos has on some. Obviously, not on all, for many had seen Pickman's work and just dismissed him, commenting on how weird he and his subject matter was. But Lovecraft was obsessed with the "descent into madness", and liked to explore it, but that's about it.

Dreams in the Witch House, Catherine Hardwick (Twilight)

Some of them stay with me, some of them just leave an impression. While I recall thoroughly enjoying this one, I must have been hitting the Old Man time of the night, as its fading already (ed. note: it could also be the fact that you are writing it long after that date at the top of the post, which is being retained for the sake of the 31 Days event?)

Director of Twilight you say? Not exactly an accolade in my books, but sure, accomplished director. Also, another Lovecraft short story, but lesser on the sanity checks.

It begins with Walter (Rupert Grint, Harry Potter & the ...) and Epperly (Daphne Hoskins, The Baby-Sitters Club) as kids (sorry, what is her name again?). She is very ill, and he is the doting twin. She dies, appears briefly before him as a ghost and then is dragged by vines into some strange forest. And thus begins Walter's quest to find out what happened to his sister.

In most stories, this would mean finding out about some sinister thing that their family had been wound up in, something that ended with Epperly being relegated to a woody purgatory, instead of the afterlife. But being Lovecraft, it just has Walter seeking forbidden knowledge, seeking out charlatan mediums and the like, until he imbibes a narcotic that lets him enter the forest, the Forest of Lost Souls. He does find his sister, but is torn away before he can "save" her. He returns with a bit of her dress.

Also note an encounter with a painter (Tenika Davis, Hudson & Rex) obsessed with a witch's house, which felt like a straying from the ghost story, but does find its way back to the main plot, when on a second journey to the Forest, Walter sees her painting and states to him, he is not supposed to be there. But soon after, zooooop, back to the real world. Without any further funds to continue his journey to save Epperly, he seeks out the painter.

So, the painter lives in an old house that was owned by a persecuted witch, who was killed by whose body was never found. Since moving in, the painter has been haunted by visions. Walter decides that if he stays in the house, maybe he can once again make contact with the Forest and save Epperly. 

The climax and conclusion are rather chaotic involving an undead witch, resurrection, sacrifice, foretold rituals, the bonds between twins and a human faced rat (DJ Qualls, The Core). It all looked spectacular, but didn't really stick with me.

The Viewing, Panos Cosmatos (Mandy) 

Ouch. My mind got fucked.

This was one weird, brilliant, messed up episode severely lacking any point beyond experience, but was so utterly fucking enjoyable in how it played out, I forgive it entirely.

Its the 70s. A bunch of famous people are invited by an eccentric billionaire to his famous concept abode, the Sandpiper House. They have no idea why they are going, nor why they were invited, but each considers it the greatest opportunity. There is the novelist Guy Landon (Steve Agee, Peacemaker), the astrophysicist Charlotte Xie (Charlyne Yi, House MD), medium/psychic/charlatan Targ Reinhard (Michael Therriault, Locke & Key) and music producer / musician Randall Roth (Eric André, 2 Broke Girls). Each is famous and each understands how famous the other is. 

At the incredible house, all angles and colours (no pink or purple though!), they are greeted by Dr. Zahn (Sofia Boutella, Star Trek Beyond) and Lionel Lassiter (Peter Weller, Star Trek Into Darkness), their hosts. Lassiter has the perfect gift for each of them, seeking to set them at ease, and then dives into a monologue about how they are about to experience the greatest of experiences, because of who each of them is, will help him interpret it via their unique perspectives. The dialogue coming out of Peter Weller's mouth is riveting and steeped in dank bullshit, while Dr. Zahn seduces them with her confidence and giant bowl of cocaine & custom designed additive. She is seeking to open minds.

To what, you ask? Well, a freaky looking rock from space. Its entirely impenetrable, physically or any scan on the know spectrum, but obviously not a natural geographic formation. And obviously Lassiter knows something about it, for he has asked these others to come into its influence. Annnnd, well almost instantly, that doesn't go well. Faces melt, heads explode and the thing cracks open, spewing forth goo. Xie and Landon escape, tearing off into the night while the goo forms into a creature that also escapes into the drainage tunnels that surround LA.

End Scene.

Fuckity, it was trippy. But when is Cosmatos not? Not only does he embrace a 70s aesthetic, but he also triple-down'd on the drug & alien mind induced altered reality feel. The dialogue was incredible, every character chewing on their scenes, convincing us that they are intelligent people, even if some were more than a bit of a DB. And the visuals! I would love to see a Cosmatos attempt at a space opera.

And to end things off, a thoughtful, pensive ghost story...

The Murmuring, Jennifer Kent (The Babadook)

Kent (director Kent, not this-blog Kent) brings back Essie Davis (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) to star in an incredibly well-done, if not unfamiliar story of a couple dealing with the ever present grief of losing a child, and the ghosts in a house they visit. Nancy (Davis) and Edgar Bradley (Andrew Lincoln, Love, Actually) are renowned in ornithological circles for their knowledge of the Dunlin, a migratory bird known for its murmurations, those eerie formations of bird flocks that swoop & dive, creating mesmerizing cloud-like formations. They take an opportunity to study the birds in one of their migratory stops, on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia, in a vacant house storied by tragedy. But despite their focus on their work, the not equally shared expressions of grief threaten to derail their marriage.

This is a gentle episode, challenging and pain filled. Its a familiar story where one member of a couple deals with her grief differently from the other, leaving them at odds. Even if this was current days, most couples don't well communicate their troubles, and the addition of ghostly figures doesn't help Edgar further his support of his wife's torments. In the end, she has to deal with it head long, on her own, but comes out stronger on the other side, for all concerned, even the dead. As the cliche goes, Davis is masterful in her depiction of this woman, as she was in The Babadook, even considering how underwhelmed I was with that movie, one cannot deny she was grand. In the end, good performances, a tightly told story and eerie, otherworldly real-world ties to ghosts (I once spent an afternoon, watching mumurations over Toronto's waterfront, feeling like I was witnessing something supernatural) and flocks of birds.

Black Adam

 2022, d. Jaume Collet-Serra - in theatre

Had this movie come out 20 years ago, when the superhero genre in film was still finding its feet, I would have watched it over, and over, and over again, not believing my eyes that we have a film where Black Adam fights Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Atom Smasher and Cyclone. I'm a lifelong DC Comics fan, and I've long been dreaming of the deeper bench of characters making it to the big screen. That wow factor would have went a long way back then.

10 years ago, we got Green Lantern, and by then the bar on what I would consume on repeat was already pretty high, and it certainly didn't make the cut. Five years ago we got a Justice League movie, and I really wish we hadn't. Now we get Black Adam, with the Justice Society in tow, and while marginally more entertaining than Green Lantern or Justice League, we've also had Smallville, Stargirl, Titans and a decade's worth of Arrowverse shows playing with DC's deep bench roster in live action, so the wow factor of just seeing people in costume has pretty much been eaten up.

Of the "DCEU" movies, only Aquaman and James Gunn's The Suicide Squad impress me much. I like Wonder Woman and Shazam, but they don't "wow" me. Black Adam gave me little flutters watching the Justice Society quartet in action...they looked great, the costume design and effects were really nice, and the actors are all pretty solid...but there was no character development, no sense of their organization (why are they answering to Amanda Waller?), no meaningful sense of purpose within the world (maintaining world stability or some such) or to the story.... I get it, they're there to build out the DCEU and to provide some colourful flash and flutter to pit against Black Adam against, but it didn't have to be this clumsy or feel this tacked on.

And that's the stuff I liked about Black Adam.

What I didn't care for was most of what's left. It's not terrible, it's just nothing. It's not saying anything of real value, about the character, about its fictional middle eastern nation, about the world it all inhabits. Khandaq is a derivative of Wakanda with its special rare metal, but it's not a place or a people that is at all culturally defined. They watch Clint Eastwood westerns, listen to Player, read superhero comics and ride skateboards...so they're a bit stuck in the 1980s, except that they're living under a high-tech, non-descript foreign military state that Black Adam rightfully just decimates in an orgy of non-stop PG-13 murder.

As a character, Teth-Adam is here scripted to be an anti-hero with a tragic back story, which the film muddies by wading through 5000 years of muddled fables in the form of a tedious 5 (10 maybe?) minute opening sequence, a flashback or two, before a late-second act revision gives us the real poop on this guy and why he is actually so dangerous. It's all tedious circling that would have been better served straight forward and up front. It's not narrative intrigue, just mess. The Rock --still not middle eastern (despite having played the Scorpion King, twice)-- did grow on me in the role, but the script never keeps him consistent, but also doesn't really let him grow in any meaningful way. 

The human sidekicks served their purpose, and only annoyed me a little, which isn't too bad for that archetype.  I had hoped Sarah Shahi would be a superhero.  The film's villain is 80% maguffin, and 20% whatever.  A big nothing.  By the time Sabaac finally arrives, the film's purpose has been so obfuscated as to never actually feel, or even understand, the threat he poses. At one point he sits on a throne and a laser goes into the sky and apparently zombie skeletons arose from...not sure where exactly (if it had been all the dead Intergang guys Teth-Adam had killed that would have been more interesting) which aren't really much of a threat as the human characters pretty easily beat them down.

The music was, bluntly, overbearing and ever-present. A scene could never breathe, everything was punctuated all the time. More than anything, I found this audio assault to be the film's most challenging aspect to overcome. It's sweeping moments of triumph, especially early on, felt unearned, and often times the music felt incongruous to the scene. The closing credits composition, however, did feel quite epic (but again, unearned).

I wish this film had been properly titled "Black Adam vs. The Justice Society", as then there could have been more investment in the thinly wonderful Justice Society characters of the film. The title would have provided impetus for the film, to build up to their battle, and some time could have been spent building Intergang into some form of viable world threat with all their vibranium...I mean "eternium" mining.  But the film, as is, lacks such ambition.  It's a star-driven vehicle that requires the supporting cast to explain the character, their motivation and their backstory, because the star, as charismatic as he can be, is a bit too busy glowering and brooding and being all "extreme" like were back in the heyday of mid-90's comics.

Will I watch this again? Only if I can send it to myself 20 years in the past.

31 Days of Halloween: The Sadness

2021, Rob Jabbaz (Clearwater) -- download

This season wouldn't be complete without a proper zombie flick. I just wish it hadn't been this unfortunate attempt at a Garth Ennis over-the-top approach to zombies (his comic Crossed) to the genre. Let me correct that; it's not the concept that bothers me (an infected style of 'zombie' that is fueled by violence and sadism) but more the Ennis level of embracing the ick-factor. Ennis has always made his name by going past the line where most creators would stop. Sometimes, as in Preacher, its fun as he is held back by his publisher. But in the case of Crossed they pretty much let him do whatever the fuck he wanted, and at some point the comic became stomach churning. This movie decides to go that way. And my stomach was not churned by the gore, as that was to be expected, but by the "sadistic" choices the director chose to depict. Less would have been more in my opinion.

Jim (Berant Zhu, How to Train Our Dragon) and Kat (Regina Lei) wake up lovingly, no morning breath, perfect hair, perfectly in love with each other till Jim admits he forgot they were going to take a week's vacation together, and he needs to take advantage of a work opportunity. Meanwhile, "it's just a flu" pandemic is stirring outside. Kat has a very very VERY uncomfortable encounter with an older incel-ish man ("can't a man just compliment a woman these days?!?!") on the subway just before all fountains-of-blood Hell breaks loose. They lose contact, but Jim gets a "meet me at the hospital" txt msg, and begins to fight his way to her, as the world collapses around him.

This is the zombie apocalypse, as the infected lose all sense of decorum and attack others. Initially we get the violence, introduced by the attacks on the subway with Kat. The infected rip throats out, stab people repeatably and murder others with visceral glee. But as the movie escalates, we begin to see the unfettered nature of those infected, and eventually it leads to sadistic rape and torture scenes. Too many rape and torture scenes. Give me the fountains of blood, but humans giving in all too human behaviours? No thanks.

All in all the movie was shot, acted and directed well, I was just not interested in the direction it chose to depict. The idea was fine, and could have been  handled off screen, or even by just having others as horrified (not classic horror movie terrified) by the "zombie" actions as we were.

As for "the sadness", there was a brief nod as the infected shed tears, just before they lost all control, a brief moment of grief at what they were about to do. TBH, I also had this idea for a zombie fiction of my own, but instead of infected, the tears were shed by the last vestiges of the human trapped inside the walking dead body, a fading identity that moans and cries as it dies off as slowly as the body is.

31 Days of Halloween: Barbarian

2022, Zach Cregger (The Whitest Kids U'Know) -- Disney

OK, we need more like this one. Scary, compelling, well constructed and good acting. And apparently, part of this year's theme of tunnels / digestive tracts. OK, maybe I am stretching on that latter bit, but still... tunnels.

There is going to be more AirBnB featured horror in the coming years, just as chat rooms and cams became prevalent in the last few. The idea of being invited into someone's home, trusting the landlord to have been background checked well enough to preclude them being a serial killer. The fact that this one is in one of the more than desolate areas of abandoned Detroit just adds to the horror. 

Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell, Krypton) is in town to do an interview for a research job with a film maker. As she arrives, it is pouring and the key box is empty. She cannot reach the host, but just as she is about to leave and seek shelter elsewhere, a light comes on. Someone is already inside. Keith (Bill Skarsgård, It) answers the door. He also accepted a booking via a competitor to AirBnB. He has already settled in. But he sees the situation developing and invites Tess in to either stay, or further investigate finding another place. He also mentions there is a convention in town, trope lingo for "no room at the Inn".

The first night is tense, but cools off when she gets to know Keith. He is not, despite being Bill Skarsgård, a creep. In fact, he is a minor celebrity connected to the next documentary by the film maker that Tess will be interviewing with. They drink wine, they connect. She gets the bed, he gets the sofa but she is awakened by noises. Someone else is creeping around the house, but its not Keith as he is asleep, wrapped up in his own night terrors. But they survive the night, and she goes to her interview. It goes well. Things are going well for her.

When she returns, Keith is not to be found. Circumstances lead her to a secret tunnel in the basement, that leads to a room with a stained bed and a video camera. Ruh Roh. Before she can just "not go into the basement", she gets trapped by a door with an inconvenient lock. After a bit of panic, Keith shows at the basement window and helps her out. Instead of the two just running away and calling the police ("officer, I would like to report a creepy room."), Keith decides to investigate. He doesn't come back. Instead of HER running away and calling the police, she decides to investigate. Past the creepy stained bed & video cam, there is an even creepier stairwell leading into rough cut tunnels, rusty cages and ... Keith. But before she can be shushed by Keith, he is attacked by ... something.

Act 2.

AJ (Justin Long, House of Darkness) is a happy LA actor, driving in his happy convertible, singing a happy song. Then he gets the unhappy phone call. He is getting cancelled, both colloquially and literally, as the pilot for his new show is killed. Because he sexually assaulted a costar. Being cancelled for criminal behaviour is expensive so AJ has to liquidate some property, and guess what happens to be the property he owns in Detroit, which is on AirBnB ?

AJ shows up at the house not long after the above two go missing. Cuz, yeah, they have gone missing. He doesn't seem to be aware that his place is on multiple short term rental sites, and is kind of pissed someone has been sleeping in his bed, eating his porridge, etc. By this time, we don't really like AJ and are just waiting for him to find the basement. Which he does. And he quickly meets the ... something.

Detailed recap fades but the movie does continue. So yeah, this is a tense, well put together, utterly fucking creepy movie with some familiar tropes. I do like horror that is trope laden but does a good job with the tropes. The tunnels, and here we are again with tunnels, are deep beneath the house, all twisty and turny, with creepy lighting, and creepy videos about child rearing on VHS tapes. And there are cages, and holes in the ground. And a still alive Tess, who has to work with fucking a-hole AJ to escape from the ... something. There is a brilliant, but almost more horrifying scene where Tess, who has actually escaped, tries to convince the police about the creepy room, and the creeper tunnels and the something in the tunnels, and AJ being still down there. But they just see a filthy looking black woman in an abandoned section of Detroit, and ... well, just leave her behind. So Tess has to muster some empathy for asshole AJ and head back down to rescue him. It doesn't go well; oh, not as you would expect from that statement, but still not well, for Tess or AJ. We actually get a full Act 3.

I thoroughly enjoyed this flick. Social commentary, unexpected turns, expected turns well executed, etc. Hopefully Cregger will be around for this time next year.

P.S. Is Justin Long going to be type-cast from now on? Are people still annoyed with him being the facetious Apple Guy and just assume he is also an asshole in real life? Has he or will he be cancelled IRL ? News at 11.

31 Days of Halloween: The Borderlands

2013, Elliot Goldner (America's Monsters) -- download

Another from the Downloads bin of years past. Another where we ask, "Did we see this already?" As we watch more and more middle-fare horror movies, the plots and tropes blur together, so the back-of-the-box of "priests from the Vatican, in the UK, sent to the west country to investigate supernatural activity at an ancient church" sounds like at least a few things we have seen. And since, for the middle-fare, they fade so quickly, and with my memory these days, we could have seen it.

Nope. All new far, for I would have remembered this one.

For one, it's found-footage, much focused on the technology being used to capture not only the experiences inside the ancient hillside church, but also the day to day activities of the men sent to investigate, including wearing head-cams at all time. Apparently, Brother Deacon (Gordon Kennedy, The Halcyon) has a notorious reputation in his world, due to an unfortunate incident in South America where his team was murdered when they got close to revealing a hoax. So, the Vatican needs to make sure its all on tape, in case something goes awry again. 

Deacon and Gray (Robin Hill, Poldark), the tech guy, begin their investigation before the final member of their team, a grumpy skeptic, but devout, priest Father Amidon (Aidan McArdle, Sense8). He does not like Deacon, nor his constant drinking and less than pious behaviour. He wants to dismiss this whole investigation as soon as possible, but after a few failed initial attempts to find evidence of a hoax, but actually experience some actual eerie behaviour, Deacon becomes obsessed with finding out what is going on. It doesn't help that the priest who invited them, Father Crellick (Luke Neal, Halo: Nightfall), commits suicide, jumping from the top of the church steeple.

Instead of bowing to pressure, Deacon calls in a ringer, an old, revered member of the Vatican exorcism council, Father Calvino (Patrick Godfrey, A Room With a View), for he is now convinced that something dark and otherworldly is involved here. Deacon has uncovered signs of ancient cults, evidence the church was built on hallowed ground from the primeval gods once worshipped in these parts. Calvino is here to drive away any evil that may have been disturbed. Alas, the ritual goes very badly and Father Amidon and Calvino go missing. Desperate to protect his brethren, Deacon pursues them into the depths of tunnels below the church, being drawn ever further down, until...

Most of the movie was jump scares, tension and conflict between the characters, and the villagers. Something is going on, but the village does not trust these Vatican interlopers, even going so far as trying to scare them away, but lighting a local sheep on fire. Once their parish priest dies, the men cannot even get a drink at the pub. I wasn't quite sure where this was all going to lead, expecting a ghost or demonic force, but once the men begin delving deep into the tunnels, I saw something else was going to happen. A hint to the wise; once you have to crawl on your belly to go further, just turn around. Gather help, report your missing friends and GET HELP. Do not go deeper and deeper, until your ears pop and the walls begin taking on the appearance of a digestive tract.

Yeah that. That is what got me. From being sucked up into the digestive tract of a flying extra terrestrial monster, to purposely being lured into the belly of the beast; literally. Pagan gods sleeping beneath ancient hills, primeval creatures worshipped as deities until usurped by Christian gods, are not going to be in a good mood when you disturb their slumber with your mumbo jumbo rituals.

31 Days of Halloween: House of Darkness

2022, Neil LaBute (The Wicker Man) -- download

The Wicker Man. Snicker.

We are still behind on watching, by a few days, so we attempted to double-bill it. But, my Old Man State and the Work Stress (ever present) leads me to nodding off near 11ish, so only should we actually watch the first movie early, does this benefit. We did end up watching this one soon after its predecessor, BUT I will sneak it into the night after, so we have this subterfuge of watching something every night.

That's me pulling back the curtains to reveal a dwarf dancing backwards. Tollhouse Brownie points if you get that reference.

Meanwhile, this movie is more fun if you don't catch the spoiler-ific references right up front. Its a simple setup, of a man (probably drunk) driving home a woman he picked up in a bar. Her house is "in the middle of nowhere" (not really, as a later shot from a roof top balcony reveals the city lights just over the hill, likely implying the Hollywood hills), isolated from cell reception and suffering power bumps galore. The gothic edifice is gorgeous, and the man, Hap (Justin Long, Yoga Hosers) immediately reveals himself (i.e. his personality) when he implies there is no way a lone woman, Mina (Kate Bosworth, Superman Returns) could afford a house like this.

Much of the movie is banter, feeling like a stage adaptation, as the two characters, and then eventually two more, feel each other out. Almost immediately, Hap reveals himself not as a hapless (pun intended) man out for a night on the town, who bumped into a women he immediately connects with. He dodges all Mina's direct questions (like, "Are you married?"), texts his bar mate about his latest "conquest", and when her two sisters appear, makes rather gross and overt overtures. He's a man pig, that is without doubt. But Mina and her two sisters, Lucy (Gia Crovatin, Hightown) and Nora (Lucy Walters, Get Shorty)  are not innocents. Nor are they without their own agendas.

In case its not obvious, this movie is a Dracula inspired set piece. The three ladies are vampires, making some references to a father, as Lucy tells her story of being found, broken and dying in the woods at some point in the past, and rescued by a family. They have these old, dark houses all over the country, and likely the world, and have taken to luring less than savoury men into their midst. And they like to play with their food, before dispatching it. One could assume they want to give Hap a possible out, but I doubt it.

In the end, the movie felt more like an experiment, or an indulgence. The dialogue is thick, but inevitably pointless as we get the point very very quickly. The performances are impressive, but not sure what LaBute was hoping for with this presentation.

31 Days of Halloween: Blood Fest

2018, Owen Egerton (Follow) -- Amazon

Eep, these write ups are getting away from me. A nasty bout of acid reflux meant a few nights of turning in early, and missing a few flicks. Life always interrupts. Also, our lack of planning for this year's run is starting to show through. Despite my intention on plowing through all our Downloads folder, as well as all that have shown up on the streaming services, I still find myself asking every night, "What do we watch tonight?" Nothing is jumping out anymore. Maybe I just need to do some more digging.

Well, this one kept showing up on the Recommendations on Amazon, so finally we relented, when in the mood for something on the lighter, comedic side. I am also somewhat fond of the meta aspect of horror movies that are about the horror movie industry. While in contradiction, I am not that fond of the stereotypical productions spawned from the horror movie industry. Sure, the spectacle and the fandom are fun, with their costumes and exuberance, but most of the cliches (extreme gore, torture porn) they stereotypically gravitate towards just bug me. I prefer Under the Shadow, as a production of horror movie culture, than Chucky. But when it gets all meta, when the fandom is the fiction depicted, I kind of like it.

Also, Jacob Batalon is in it.

Blood Fest is a horror movie festival, sort of a Lilith Fair meets Disney Land, but for all the schlock of horror movie fandom. Dax (Robbie Kay, Sleepy Hollow) is really REALLY excited to go to it, despite his dad's misgivings, which are warranted, considering Dax's mom was killed in front of him when he was a child, by one of Dad's patients, who had been inspired by a horror movie. Instead of running away, Dax has embraced his mom's love of horror movies. Dad (Tate Donovan, The O.C.) does derail Dax's plans to attend, by cutting up his pass but Dax, along with his best friend Krill (Jacob Batalon, Reginald the Vampire) and coworker (love interest, duh; also, they work at a video store?!?!) Sam (Seychelle Gabriel, Falling Skies), figure out a way to attend.

But things don't go as planned. Apparently the organizer, a well known horror movie fan, has other ideas on what to do with hundreds of horror movie fans, i.e. lock them all inside with a bunch of hired slashers, a Cabin in the Woods style BTS control room, and a bunch of tech with which to recreate a bunch of horror movie tropes. So, while killing off everyone, he films it all, hoping to make the best film of his career. Part of me says this would have been better produced as a Found Footage, so we could see the movie, as if Blood Fest was the movie he was making, but instead, we just get a low grade comedy gore fest.

Rather than trying to stay as grounded as much as it could, the movie doubles down on the silliness. The director has tech that can literally raise the dead, providing him real zombie munchers and fabricated vampires. The rest of the "monsters" seem to be run of the mill slasher tropes, I guess representing the director's primary form of antagonist. The main characters run from everyone and everything, attesting to following the "rules" of horror movies (without going too deeply into said trope), but eventually (as expected) most are killed off, including Krill (pout). Alas the climax of the movie was completely expected, and rather a let down, but again entirely on point for this level of meta horror movie.

31 Days of Halloween: You Are Not My Mother

2021, Kate Nolan (Catcalls) -- download

Sombre. Its a word that often can be attributed to Irish horror cinema. Usually they are family related, but then again, many many horror movies begin with the introduction of a family dealing with something. Much of You Are Not My Mother is focused on young Char (Hazel Douple, Michael Inside) dealing with her mother's depression, and the bullying at school. Even when her mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken, The Lodgers) returns from an assumed suicide attempt, radically changed and improving (?), much of the movie focuses on the tension between all. The colour tones and lighting is all grey and moody, never a bright ray of light to be seen. Irish horror cinema in a nutshell.

So, yeah, her mother returned ... different. Its Irish, so immediately I wondered if changelings were to be involved. Enjoyably, or maybe the opposite if family drama is your trigger, much focuses on whether Angela was ... different, or just in a deeper spiral from her depression. That is, until she starts committing murderous acts. Then, the movie shifts to defense mode, as Char has to come up with a way to unveil the creature pretending to be her mother, with only her former bully to assist. 

Even for our love of The Different. the faithful to setting, this movie was just ... OK. Everyone was well acted, the setting appropriately bleak, but nothing really jumped out. And no, I don't mean jump scares. Its just well done family drama mixed up with a bit of otherworldly mythos, but not much else. I am never sure how to communicate what is lacking, but nothing was ever truly terrifying, nor eerie or even heart breaking. Its just as if bleak was the tone they achieved, and that was as far as they went. By year 10ish, maybe I am beginning to want more? 

31 Days of Halloween: Some More TV

Reginald the Vampire, 2022, Amazon

Vampires will always be Halloween to me, moreso ("conventionally spelled as two words, the one-word moreso gained ground in the late 20th century and continues to appear despite the disapproval of usage authorities and of spell check") from the popularity of plastic Halloween costumes of Bela Lugosi's Dracula. Even the most harmless stories fit the season, to me.

For example, the adaptation of Fat Vampire in this show, about a nice kid from a small but colourful (oh, so colourful) town working at a local slushy purveyor, who bumps into a decent vampire, only to end up as one himself. Given the source material, the idea of someone being made into an immortal being in the state of corpulence (fat), is unfortunate. They are forever locked in the state from when they were turned, so no matter of starvation or exercise will unmake him fat. And that offends other vampires, whose council has deigned "hotness" as a requirement. So, all the other vampires are Anne Rice / The Vampire Chronicles CW level sexy. Well, except for manservant Erich, but they don't explain him, as he is just a plot gimmick.

Oh, this show is all about the gimmicks but that doesn't detract from the charm. Its unfettered with much world building, sort of accepting we will know a wee bit about "vampire worlds" and just accept that which we are placed into. The focus is on affable Reginald (not sure why no one calls him Reggie; Jacob Batalon, Spider-Man: Homecoming), his crush on Slushy Shack coworker Sarah (Em Haine, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and his pains at navigating his new state. Their world is colourful, brightly lit, assumingly to offset that it will primarily be set at night, and gaudily decorated, whether the vampire world or the retail world. There is a subplot about the tension in the vampire world at Reginald's making, but I just hand-wave that away for the enjoyable focus on Reggie (there, I did it for them).

31 Days of Halloween: X

2022, Ti West (In the Valley of Violence) -- download

Waitasec, we have been doing 31 Days of Halloween as long as we have been doing this blog? I wonder if starting a movie watching/writing blog influenced us to celebrate the season, really our favourite eventful season, by watching and writing about said movies. We also seemed to have started the tradition with the watching of Ti West flicks. 

For a while, after his western, he shifted into TV but returns with yet another harkening-back-to-the-70s movie not just reminiscing about the era, but actually taking place in it. X is an easy setup; a film crew piles into a van, on their way to rural Texas, to the spot of land they rented to shoot a porn movie. But not just any porn, as they have in mind to be a bit more artsy, a bit more accessible, paving the way for the popularity of adult VHS tapes. And its a good idea, considering all the video stores I worked at ended up with a seedy space behind the curtain that adolescent Toasty always wondered about. They rent said spot of land from the classic Creepy Old Man who has a decaying house on a wide, open farm that doesn't seem to actually grow anything. Creepy Old Man has a creepier old wife who has an instant fascination with all these free living young people staying in her "guest house".

Horror movies have always had a spot of the titillation in them, and I imagine the treatment for this movie commented on not just sporting some sex starved teenagers and showing boobies, but dispensing with the charade, and just being fully about the nudity and exploitative sex. And while it does, and frankly has to, focus on the eroticism of what they are doing, its not... overboard? In fact, its a bit dialed back? They are making a porn, so there are sample scenes, nudity from both sides of the fence, perky tits and swinging dicks, fake moaning and professed real moaning, but the real focus is on the Creepy Old Man, Howard (Stephen Ure, Deathgasm), and his Creepier Old Wife, Pearl.

Body horror, drawn from the debatable ick factor of old people's bodies, is also common in horror. One of the famous scenes in The Shining shifts from caretaker Jack Torrance making out with a sexy ghost, to being horrified when he sees that she is a disgusting, ancient, creature. The young and fearless are forever terrified of getting old, repulsed by the old. And West puts this out for all to see, exploring it more than most of these movies do.

Inevitably, the killing starts. Pearl (Mia Goth, Suspiria) is drawn to the porn purveyors, an aging woman who longs (literally) for the days when she was young & beautiful, terrible and horny, and her husband could satisfy her. When they won't relent to her advances, she slays them. Once it starts, her husband has to help, killing each off, one by one until only self actualizing Maxine (Mia Goth, High Life) is left. Maxine is a force of nature, the debatable star of the movie, and the fact that they have Goth playing both Maxine and Pearl, the other debatable main character of the movie, is the grand design that West has for this movie, and the others forthcoming.

Given the sub-genre of horror movies, the hillbilly slasher, or backwoods slasher, that this movie ascribes to, its not particularly scary. And we are not particularly attracted to these types, so on the most basic level, it was just OK. But I do like the exploration of the elderly as another horror sub-genre, making Pearl an actual character with agency, not just "I kill to kill", and how he doubles down on the nudity and sex, eliciting our negative responses by including Howard & Pearl in it. West does seem to like making horror movies that are meant to be discussed over drinks after the movie, instead of just giggling off the adrenaline.

The prequel Pearl is already out, and the sequel MaXXXine is being produced right now.

31 Days of Halloween: Hellbender

2021, John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser (Knuckle Jack) -- download

This movie is more interesting as the project it is, than as a film proper. It grew during the pandemic, from their (the Adams Family) music project (H6LLB6ND6R), which is presented heavily in the movie, and was shot in and around the family home. The directors (and stars) are husband & wife and daughter; the other daughter also stars in the movie. At first, I assumed the music would be heavy metal, but its actually quite melodic soft experimental music, which I rather like. What they gave us is a witchy monster-y flick that is more concept than story.

Mom (Toby Poser, The Shoot) and daughter (Zelda Adams, The Hatred) live in a rural area, in a rather nice house, playing music shows for no one (in full metal style makeup) but themselves, taking long walks in the woods, and interacting with nobody. Mom goes to town to get things, while daughter avoids all contact, having been told all her life she has an immune disease that keeps her from meeting people. They eat twigs, and berries and leaves -- yes, seriously, just that, going far beyond veganism yet ... staying healthy.

Mom does witchy things to keep an eye on her daughter, involving blood and spit and fetishes of twisted foliage. She also has a locked room whose only key is generated every time she puts her hand over an arcane symbol, they key literally pushed out of her flesh. The room bears trinkets of Olden Times and a book (of spells?) from which just a touch gives Mom horrific visions. Then daughter bumps into a stranger in the woods, a hiker lost, who chats Daughter up. Mom intervenes, sends Daughter home and disintegrates the man. So yeah, not peaceful wiccans hiding in the woods from some legacy.

Daughter is pressing against the confines of her life. She didn't get sick from the chance encounter with the hiker, so does some further wandering, finding a house that the local teens break into to party. Uber Awkward Daughter tries to socialize with them, until she drinks a worm in tequila. And then things begin to get weird and derail. Mom gets wind of it, but instead of chastising daughter, she brings her into more knowledge of who and what they are -- beings who draw power from ingesting living creatures. The worm gave Daughter a taste of it, but Mom cautions it does not come without a cost, even if you ignore the cost of the life you are taking. They are Hellbenders, beings who turned away from God to find power from... Hell ? 

So, yeah pretty much Evil Witches, and yet, Mom doesn't seem so Evil, despite dusting the hiker. And she just wants to protect her daughter from the Evil that could flourish inside her, should she give in. Alas, Daughter has other plans.

As a build up, the artsy nature of the film was interesting, but it never really built towards anything... maybe, a sequel? The tension was always present, but in the horrific revelations, we are not presented with any conclusion of substance, more just a, "Wasn't it cool, how we got here?!!" The visuals were well constructed, always disturbing, always creative, and the music was great but... it was all lacking a semblance of cohesion. But knowing the Adams Family made it for themselves, and probably a small fanbase of the Family, makes it slightly alright.