31 Days of Halloween: Berberian Sound Studio

2012, Peter Strickland (In Fabric) -- download 

Sometimes a movie being recommended by every "best horror" list makes it an essential watch. And then, sometimes its more about the temperament of the fanbase than the movie itself. Berberian Sound Studio is a movie about a lauded sound man Gilderoy (Toby Jones, The Detectorists) being invited to work on an Italian giallo, a genre of Italian thriller-horror movies that are rife with artistic suspense and sex-ploitation. Strickland designs his movie in much the same way that Gilderoy sees the movie he is recording sound for, and we end up watching an odd flick that is artistically astounding, from the visuals to its own sound design.

But absolutely nothing fucking happens, and then it just ends.

Seriously, for a moment, I thought I had downloaded a bad copy, one that had a massive chunk accidentally deleted. But no, this was the entire flick.

Gilderoy arrives in Italy and is immediately beset by the strange behaviour. They refused to pay his expenses, miring him in fabricated red tape and delays. The staff continually seems to resent his presence, despite their foppish director completely fawning over him. The producer who is truly controlling the movie is rude, abusive, manipulative and just a fucking asshole to everyone. Gilderoy endlessly ponders a letter from his mother about murderous birds. As the film making proceeds Gilderoy begins participating in the foley work for the most gruesome parts of the giallo, torturing of the witches of which the movie is about. And then the lines between reality and the horror genre Gilderoy is now immersed in, blur. He is hearing things, seeing things and is suddenly fluent in Italian, and then the movie starts being less about witches and more about him and then... ends.

Visuals and audio are stupendous. Toby Jones is remarkable to watch. That is all I can get out of the movie. I am not someone to immediately dismiss a movie for its artistic focus, but nor am I to forgive a movie for only having that. 

Or maybe I am just getting old and cranky and am only left being the monster Gilderoy saw himself becoming.

31 Days of Halloween: A Classic Horror Story

2021, Roberto De Feo & Paolo Strippoli (The Next and some shorts) -- Netflix

Overhead shot, vehicle driving through unending forest (this time, in remote Italy), something forces them to pull over. The trope is age old. Don't trust dark forests, being away from civilization is dangerous, you will always lose cell signal. De Feo and Strippoli start a movie with all the familiar tropes and then go much further than doubling down. This is a movie about horror movie tropes, as much as it is a horror movie. It is metatastic! OK, its fine, its just metaOK.

A group of strangers are travelling with each other via a ride sharing offer, with Fabrizio driving the ancient RV that his mom owns. Oh yeah, creepy RV trope. There is the nice girl with a secret, the pretty girl, the toxic boyfriend and the brooding older doctor. And Fabrizio (Francesco Russo, Il Regno), the awkward weirdo. After an accident with the RV, the group wakes up to find the RV in a field, nowhere near the road they were driving upon. Nearby there is a building that looks like a mashup of your traditional cabin in the woods and a church from a cult movie, ala Midsommar. Nobody knows how they got there. There is no cell signal.

When they try to leave, they either walk in circles or come across even creepier set dressing, such as scarecrows, wicker men and severed pig heads. Inside the structure they find ancient trappings and a girl tucked inside some sort of woven wicker nest. A group of wooden masked strangers appear outside, grabbing toxic boyfriend from the RV, dragging him into the structure while the others hide above, peering down on the scene via cracks between the floor struts. The strangers kill him in brutal ways that remind one of Saw and Misery. Oh, and there are nerve grating sirens and red lights blasting whenever the wooden masked strangers appear. Its all expected to unhinge one from their sanity.

Eventually only Elisa (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Revenge), the nice girl with a secret (she has an unwanted pregnancy), is the survivor, the Final Girl, and she is presented the true secret behind the movie. We are supposed to get a scrrrrrrrtch-record-scratch moment (do people get that reference any more?) when its revealed that Fabrizio is the son of a Mafia queen, and he desires to raise horror films in Italy out of the mire they are in. He wants to bring popular Hollywood style horror to Italy, and he does so by not only stealing every fucking trope on the wikipedia page, but by actually murdering people and filming it. He has extras and crew and money at his disposal, so gets to play the auteur AND a minor role in his own movies.

But unknown to Fabrizio he is also in a real horror movie, one that follows the Final Girl getting revenge on her antagonists.

This is a fun little flick that does some good reworking of familiar tropes, but many would accuse them of just stealing them, but that is obviously entirely intentional. There are some good scares, but once the table is turned, and we see the set revealed, it does feel a bit ... wonky and unrealistic. Sure, mafia bosses control people and kill all the time, but... this seems outside even their comfort zones.

31 Days of Halloween: Night Teeth

2021, Adam Randall (I See You) -- Netflix

We watched Randall's last flick last year, continuing the trend of seeing at least a handful of the directors repeatedly year to year. Good; I like that. I need to find more Mike Flanagans to add to this month. And this year we got two Flanagan offerings, but more on that later.

This is not a horror movie, but it is a vampire movie, something that gave me a lot to chew on, pun so fully intended. It was chock full of world building, almost like someone decided to write a Vampire: the Masquerade movie and ended up with this instead. Then again, I will always compare detailed worlds where humans and vampires interact in stylish, but always violent ways to the old RPG.

In this world, the vampires and humans of LA established a truce. The vampires may feed in established quarters, as long as it is consensual. And they are to stay out of Boyle Heights, wherein live a cadre of gangsters tasked with keeping the peace between the vampires and humans, punishing both sides should they transgress. But one night, Jay (Raúl Castillo, Army of the Dead) the leader of this cadre is forced to let his younger brother Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Bumblebee) take his place as a chauffeur (his cover job I guess?), while he hunts down a vampire who is breaking the rules. Alas, he does not know that Benny is driving around the rebel vampire's two beautiful but deadly henchmen. And they have been tasked with assassinating all the leaders of different vampire power groups in the city. And add to that mix, a group of human vampire hunters who decide to take advantage of the ensuing chaos to take out more vamps. They are not really there for any particular plot point, just more world building and added violence.

The weird thing about this movie is that it's less an ultra-violent thriller (oh, it IS that as well) but also often a coming of age meet-cute, because Benny has taken a liking to one of the two vampire ladies, the alluring but sad looking Blaire (Debby Ryan, Horse Girl), the younger (in post vamp years) of the two. Benny is nervous, awkward, more than a little stoned during most of the movie, and also rather attracted to Blaire, so he ends up tagging along with them even when he realizes they are murderous creatures of the night, but not before he learns of his brother's involvement. Benny definitely doesn't get the scope of what the girls are doing, nor the consequences on how it will all end up playing out. He should at least understand they won't let him live, but nah, drug clouded Benny is only thinking with his heart/hormones. 

In the end, Benny saves the day, slays the evil rebel vampire (Alfie Allen, John Wick), saves his brother and gets the girl... for all eternity? Yeah Benny the slacker becomes a vampire. It was all a little silly but fun and violent, and likely to be added to any vampire-in-current-setting fan list.

31 Days of Halloween: Sweetheart

2019, JD Dillard (Sleight) -- download

This one has been sitting in the Downloads folder for a couple of years, chosen because of its presence on many "best horror of 2019" lists. But something about the less than compelling poster art kept us from watching it. But we said that THIS year we would watch more of our less loved downloads AND I was in the mood for a "creature feature" so we ended up with this one.

Wow. Just wow. This one was good. I will have to watch his Sleight.

Jenn watches up on a beach. Something has happened, her boat has sunk. Brad is nearby but he has a chunk of coral in his belly, and doesn't last long. So its just Jenn, her washed out notebook and whatever washed up with her. Oh, and there are the remainders of someone else who washed up a loooong time ago, a time when there were Gameboys and Polaroids. But they died.

I love Small Movies, movies with limited geography and limited cast, ones where it all relies on a plot and a small number of characters. For much of the movie, its just Jenn, an average American girl with some, but not a lot of, skills. She cracks coconuts, catches fish and makes herself some shelter. And she buries Brad.

But soon after arriving she finds that Brad was dug up ... and eaten. Something is out there, something not on the tiny island but something that comes out of the water. Something not human.

I like Jenn; she obviously has some personal issues, something that disconnected her from her fellow boat mates but also gave her an edge up on surviving on her own. And just when she thinks she is going to be out-thunk by the monster on the beach, more of her friends wash up. Lucas and Mia are in a life raft, which Jenn immediately wants to push back out to sea and escape the monster. But who is going to believe her that there is a monster coming out of the sea? And Jenn has issues, so Jenn is not to be trusted.

Gahhhh !! The whole title coming into play when Lucas shouts in frustration, "Sweeeeetheart!" Gah, I just loved that, the whole comment on toxic masculinity in a movie about a girl on a beach with a monster. Why shouldn't a fucking creature feature make commentary on the more monstrous aspects of personal interactions? In a Small Movie, where locations and casts are small, so can the themes and commentaries. Yeah, I was dialed in all the way.

This is the whole point of small budget movies, to do challenging interesting things but still keep you compelled. And I was. All the way to the end.

31 Days of Halloween: Halloween Kills

2021, David Gordon Green (Manglehorn) -- Download

The last version of Halloween, also by Gordon Green, was both a reboot and sequel, a sequel to replace all that came after the original first movie. We watched it two years ago and I really loved it. I lauded this reboot as not straying into the lunacy of the sequels and other remakes; alas I cannot say the same about this sequel.

I felt I should have rewatched the aforementioned reboot, as it picks up IMMEDIATELY after it. I pretty much forgot everything with the kids of that movie, and only recall that Laurie Strode had gone all prepper, building her entire house into a trap, for Michael's inevitable return. And she succeeded. She trapped him. He was burning up inside the ruins of the house. That is, until the fire department shows up. Why did she think Michael was that easy to kill, if she had waited 40 years for him to return to kill her?

So, yeah Michael breaks out of the burning house and goes all Rambo on the fire fighters. It is utterly gruesome and ultra-violent. Laurie is taken the hospital not knowing what just happened behind her, but soon the entire town knows, including a number of survivors of Michael's original killing spree in the 70s, who are all grown up. This is where the plot goes kind of wackadoodle.

Sure, the flick really still does a great job of retaining the mood and fear inherent to this franchise. Michael is a fucking scary killing machine. He is the epitome of the unstoppable unkillable killing machines of all other movies. Its not overtly supernatural, but it has to be ... something. Nobody just goes through what he does and walks away. And yet he does.

Alas the fear is not the prevalent element of this sequel, but more the mob mentality of reacting to him. The townsfolk are only lacking pitchforks and torches, and while I commend the side reference to Frankenstein, it really didn't work here, especially when they start using a catch phrase.

There are some fun references to the previous version of the sequel, where they focus on things that Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance via deep faking) tried to do -- he knew that Michael was Evil Incarnate, and should be destroyed. But those are not enough to draw this movie out of the lunacy that are inherent in everything that came after John Carpenter's original classic.

31 Days of Halloween: Don't Listen (Voces)

2020, Ángel Gómez Hernández (Behind) -- Netflix

Another year, another first time director who comes from a background filled with acclaimed horror shorts. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against it, I just find it interesting, like a venue has been created that generates horror film directors.

Am I tired of the "ghost hunting" sub-genre? Maybe. When I found out this movie was going to have EVP (electronic voice phenomena) I was not at all enthused. But the movie diverges from the idea quickly enough that I was not annoyed. Daniel (Rodolpho Sancho, The Valdemar Legacy) and Sara (Belén Fabra, Zoo) have bought another fixer-upper house in relatively rural Spain, doing the common enough idea of fixing and flipping. Son Eric must be having issues with the latest move, as they have a therapist coming in to talk to him. Eric talks about the voices, the voices that tell him things he is not supposed to share. Along with the voices, Eric's room seems to also have flies, flies coming from a rather nasty rotting crack in a main floor wall, that nobody seems all that concerned with. But one of those flies goes along with the therapist for her drive home, crawls into her ear and she dies in a car crash. Eric draws the car crash; the flies/voices must be his muse.

And then Eric dies. Said voices must have not just been manipulating him into horrible drawings, but also had him drown himself in the fenced off swimming pool? Parents are devastated; Mom goes to stay with her parents for a short time, and Dad is just going to hang around the house immersed in his grief. Until HE hears the voices coming from the walkie-talkie. And enter into the mix a paranormal investigator who specializes in EVP.

Sure, the do the usual setup where the investigator fills the house with cameras, both normal and infrared, as well as mics & speakers. We don't play any "is it real or imagined" games, as almost immediately the investigator sees shapes on the cameras, and know something is up with the house. A little research connects the house to the Spanish Inquisition (whom nobody expected) and tortured and burned witches. Ah HAH, they must have been REAL witches.

So yeah, evil is doing as evil does. Dead witches are never truly dead, and the flies are her conduit to influencing the living, along with ... well, walkie talkies I guess. Not sure why the EVP but sure, its creepy sounds along with brain washing flies and visions of things not really there.

The tension and creepiness factor was all solidly done, as well as the production values and acting. But the story was a little lacking refinement. Once you reveal that there is a thing responsible for it all, it sort of just takes time for it to play out. Defeat the witch, kill the flies, or just burn the whole fucking house down. Either way should work.

But then Hernández did something neither of us were expecting. After all is said and done, and Dad is the only one left alive of his family (Mom had an unfortunate run in with a noose and a fly) and the investigator and his daughter are safe. Then Dad finds all the drawings done by Eric, that he just never seemed to notice before, including one that shows Dad drowning his own son. Fuck, what? Yup, Eric the poor kid hearing voices never did kill himself. Dad did, by way of fly influence. And that is all just the final straw. Boom goes the shotgun.

Fuuuuck.

31 Days of Halloween: A Quiet Place Part II

2021, John Krasinski (A Quiet Place) -- Amazon

My write-up of the A Quiet Place was eaten up by the great Hiatus Creature of 2018, but you can take my word for it, I enjoyed it. Recent PoAp with monsters is always down my alley, and he did a LOT with tension and silence, despite being littered with logical inconsistencies. I find that when making movies like this one, where it relies on a specific premise (a deaf girl vs blind monsters with acute hearing) they often sacrifice logic for theme and tone. Given that the delivery of this movie was sooooo good, I forgave it a lot. I was looking forward to the sequel despite knowing it was would be sans Krasinski himself, as he was such a good character. Alas, director chair took precedence over character survival.

We do get a good prequel segment at the beginning of the new movie, where we get to see Day One. Small town American families doing small town baseball things when they all look up to see a rather large .... thing crashing into the Earth, burning up the atmosphere. I am sure he intended on having this explain "the monsters are aliens!" but it just led to more questions for me. 

Is that an asteroid crashing down? Is it a spaceship crashing? If its an asteroid, wouldn't we be dealing more with a full-on apocalyptic event after it crashes? If it's a spaceship were these monsters the crew, or just cargo or criminals being transported? Maybe it was a spaceship that had been shot down by militaries, and there is a whole other movie's worth of THAT story? Yep, doing my filling in blanks thing again.

But again, its a movie to focus on theme and tone than explanations. So, skip logic and just enjoy the tension.

Mom (Emily Blunt, Edge of Tomorrow) knows they have to leave, to go beyond the confines of their nice soft sand paths, out into the world of crunchy leaves. Sure, daughter (Millicent Simmonds, Wonderstruck) has her hearing aid defense against the creatures but its not infallible, and they still have a crying baby, and the bottled air, that allows them to seal the baby in a box, is running low. But where do they go?

Where ever they were going, they end up in an abandoned factory in which an old friend (Cillian Murphy, 28 Days Later) is hiding / living. He had his own family losses and has not recovered. Guilt and necessity gather them together. Daughter has her own designs on the future, a repeating song that she believes is coming from a small island off the coast. If there is a signal, there are people and hopefully they are safe. But brother is wounded, so mom will stay with him, and Regan and Emmett will make their way there.

Sure, the gimmicks of the movie are most often repeated, and some could be considered tired, but the way Krasinski builds the tension still works. They never know where the creatures are, especially Regan and her limited hearing. Sure, they have a weapon against them, but these things are FAST and next to impossible to wound. If the first movie was about just plain survival and the keeping alive of positive spirits despite all odds being against them, this movie is about providing hope for the future.

Again, my brain went down the empty blanks path, one not covered in white sand. All too often these movies are within a confined area, one with little interaction with anywhere else. We apply the rules (everyone is likely dead, there is no military, no government) we see locally to the rest of the world. But for all we know, there are more out there, entirely different situations playing out. Krasinski plays this card of possibilities, an island of at peaee survivors, a signal that could broadcast Regan's defense. I bought into it and wondered, what will the next story be.

31 Days of Halloween: Ghosts (US)

2021, CBS -- download

This American remake of a charming but not deep British series, starring Rose McIver (iZombie) and Utkarsh Ambudkar (Free Guy) is... well... not very good. But we watched three episodes before truly settling on that.

The premise is simple enough. Young couple inherits a mouldering mansion from a dead relative that happens to be haunted by many MANY ghosts of past inhabitants. Samantha falls down and bangs her head, and hereafter can see and communicate with the ghosts. At first the ghosts want nothing but to drive her and Jay, the husband, out of the house, but once they know they can talk to her, they backtrack.

The ghosts come from all ages. There is an American Revolutionary guy, a 90s Wall Street guy, a Viking, a 20s flapper, a 60s hippy, an stodgy Edwardian (?) dame, and let us not forget Scout (as in Boy) with an arrow through his neck. Sam and Jay are going to renovate the place into a B&B / hotel which consternates the ghosts (so many livings!) but what can they do.

Oh! Let us also not forget the Cholera Victims in the Cellar. They are the best thing about both series.

The British version was weird, quirky as expected and not very good unto itself, but at least it had its typical wonky British charm. I especially like the caveman Robin with his wonky proto-European accent and strong knowledge of the American space program -- they can watch the Internet over people's shoulders. The replacement for him is a rather droll, but more educated (he doesn't seem to let death stop him from paying attention) Indigenous man in a likely offensive stereotypical Indian outfit (Hell, it might actually be accurate for all I know, but it looks like a Halloween costume off of Amazon), but I miss the dumb fun of a caveman.

The primary difference I noticed between the shows, besides the Americanisms, is the way that the lead Sam is played (as opposed to her British equivalent Allison) -- she is just so unabashedly chipper and nice. Allison comes off as nice, but annoyed by the ghosts constantly sticking their noses full of bad judgement into her business. They are dead, she is not -- she takes precedence, but they don't get that, or there wouldn't be a sitcom. Also, British hubby is a bit of a dumbbell, while Jay is inoffensive in a way only an American can be portrayed. And really, it is the mains that make a dumb sitcom comedy.

I guess we might watch more? Who am I kidding, we probably will. Afterall we watched most of The Big Bang Theory.

31 Days of Halloween: Black as Night

2021, Maritte Lee Go (Phobias) -- Amazon

Welcome to the Blumhouse is an imprint used by Blumhouse Productions, representing a collaboration between Amazon Prime and Blum. They are producing six movies in total, supposedly thematically tied, but so far, that tie is pretty thin. The company focuses on doing low budget horror movies where they give the creative team full control, i.e. Jason Blum doesn't come along in a purple suit sticking his nose where its not wanted. I might not enjoy all that they do, but I do like the production values.

The low budget on this one only really shows on the choice of talent (all relatively unknown faces) and the shooting locations (run down sections of New Orleans) but doesn't affect the impact of the movie at all. It's a rather fun vampire romp that struck me as a throwback to the more-teen-adventure-less-horror vampire flicks of the 80s & 90s, such as Lost Boys and Fight Night. 

Shawna's (Asjha Cooper, Secret Diary of an American Cheerleader) not a nerd girl, but she does lack for self-confidence. I wonder how prevalent the light-skinned vs dark-skinned tension is in New Orleans, but it definitely does play into the popular vs unpopular kids dynamic that has Shawna nervous about approaching the popular boy she has a crush on. It doesn't help that Shawna's mother is fighting addiction issues prevalent since the trauma after Katrina, and is living in a mostly abandoned apartment complex. It also doesn't help that her mother is turned by vampires using the same apartments as feeding and breeding grounds. When she accidentally gives her mother final death, Shawna decides to go on the offensive.

Shawna recruits Granya (Abbie Gayle, Scream Queens) a non-Goth but local vampire fiction fan (disappointed there were no overt Anne Rice references), her best fried Pedro (Fabrizio Guido, World War Z) and inadvertently Chris (Mason Beauchamp, Filthy Rich), the boy  she has a crush on, when he does the post-funereal visit and offers to deal with whoever hurt her mother. He didn't know it was vampires, but once he does know, he is all in. Good kid.

There is some fun vampire mythos table-flipping here, especially when a very very old vampire turns out to have no ties to Eastern Europe at all. The rest is good, old fashioned stake and garlic and silver and vampires go poof into dust familiar stuff, all tied to the culture and troubles that New Orleans has as its recent and distant histories. All the kids were played solidly, leaving most of the ham & cheese to the adult vampires.

Based on this one, I might be checking out the rest of the Blumhouse ones in this series.

31 Days of Halloween: Alone (Pandemic)

 2020, Johnny Martin (Delerium) -- Netflix

Yay! Zombie night! Marmy is not as fond of the zombie genre as I am, so these are always a concession.

On Netflix you will find this listed as Pandemic, for no reason other than Alone must not sound enough like a zombie flick, and the word pandemic is serving double duty these days. Amusingly enough the thumb-nail on Netflix is for an entirely different movie called Pandemic from 2016.

Alone is meant to be a study in being alone when trapped by the zombie apocalypse going on outside. The idea was already visited somewhat in the French zombie movie, The Night Eats the World but this one does a rather decent job of it, especially when he discovers he is not so alone, and does his best to connect with other people. I also mentioned my own personal recurring dream related connection to this particular aspect of the genre when I wrote about that French movie.

Sexy, tattooed Aidan wakes up with sexy, nameless girl who soon after leaves. On the news weird things are happening and people are panicking: infection, cannibalism, avoid people, stay safe. Almost immediately after a neighbour barges through his door, Aidan demands to know WHY and then, just after convincing the guy to leave, he watches the guy change before his eyes, a bite on his back revealed. Rage Zombie! Aidan pushes the guy outside and blocks the door with his fridge.

If the French movie replaced the moans & groans with an eerie teeth chomping silence, this movie replaced it with the infected repeating the last thing that went through their head before the virus took it over. Imagine being chased by people continuously yelling, "Help me! Help me!" or "Kill me! Kill me!" Along with the usual roars and cries of rage, these utterances are utterly unnerving. Are the people still trapped inside there, a body controlled by a virus but the conscious brain still active. THAT is the real horror.

Aidan runs low on food, and patience. His family has died on voicemail and he is truly alone, for the first time in his life. As he is about to kill himself, he sees a woman in the apartment across the laneway. He had his windows covered up, to hide himself from alerting the zombies, and did not notice her in the 50 odd days. Till now. The rest of the movie is about Aidan desperate to connect with her, in a more personal human contact way, but also in an inevitable romantic way -- they are two young, beautiful people after all.

While the parallels between the French movie and this one abound, I was not adverse. As mentioned, my brain-pan seems focused on the idea once again, so I was happy to see another exploration of the idea. Also, I now get to watch the Korean version of this movie, based on the same script my Matt Naylor!

31 Days of Halloween: Impetigore

2019, Joko Anwar (Satan's Slaves) -- download

OK, its very annoying I cannot (officially) find out what the name of the movie, the word impetigore, means. Considering the original Indonesian name of the movie is Perempuan Tanah Jahanam (Woman of the Damned Land), I am not sure the word has a real meaning. I can only guess that someone thought they were clever by combining "impetigo" (a bacterial skin infection in kids) with "gore" as the movie is about a curse affecting the skin on children. Sure, whatever.

I found our previous Joko Anwar movie (Satan's Slaves) a decent watch, but nothing really stuck with me. That said, it amuses me how very few of our 31 Days... movies stick with me. Some are faint memories, usually a scene or two embedded in the brain pan, but some I literally recall nothing, not even after reading my own posts. I suspect it is related to how stressed I was at the time of the viewing. All I remember of Anwar's previous movie was a weird inner-house well that the child in the movie kept on gravitating towards. The horror? Not so much.

Impetigore brings back lead Tara Basro as Maya, a toll booth operator, along with her best friend Dini (Marissa Anita, Gundala). Maya is attacked by a man with a machete (or the Indonesian equivalent of a large blade) who recognizes her. She knows very little about her past, but that she came from a small village when she was a child. She decides that the village the attacker mentioned might indeed be her home, and she has a childhood photo of her standing in front of an old house. Could she have a wealthy background she can claim? The two girls are barely getting by, maybe having abandoned the toll booths after the attack. They decide to take the long bus ride to the village to see what is what.

To say the village is remote is an under statement. The only "taxi driver" (if by taxi, you mean donkey cart) who knows where it is charges an exorbitant amount, and the ride, goes over roads not gravel, not paved, but barely cart tracks. But in a small village, which is obviously very rural (from what I can guess about Indonesian standards), they find her house from the photo, an obvious sign of wealth considering its architecture and size. She must have come from wealth, but why is it now abandoned?

Of course, the village is creepy. The girls are squatting in the house, avoiding revealing who they are until they figure out what went on with her family. And we keep on getting weird ghostly visions in the background, so we know something supernatural is up. After a bit of setup, things get really rolling. Unfortunately.

Like the other movie, there are a lot of layers to this story. The village is under a curse, a curse where all the children for the last 10 years or so are born disfigured, and have to be quickly drowned. They are born without skin, and not expected to live long. The curse came from Maya's family, a rich man who was said to have murdered three local girls and eventually gone mad, murdering his staff before being taken down by the son of his housekeeper. The locals believe that they can lift the curse by killing the rich man's daughter, for the curse was tied to her being healed by the evil acts. Yes, Maya had been born without skin, and her father cast evil spells to ... grow her skin? We find out this when Dini mistakenly pretends to be the long lost daughter. That lie ends her life tragically. The movie has done a great job building the relationship between the two girls and this is a fucking tragic death. But of course, the daughter is Maya, and she's very alive.

The ties to family, the dedications and obligations are tightly tied to the horror in this movie. All the horrific acts come down to what people are willing to do to save their own families. So much evil is performed here in that dedication. When all is revealed to Maya, strangely by the ghosts of the three original murdered little girls, she learns what she has to do to lift the curse. The evil acts have to be closed, all of them, and not just the ones they villagers were aware of.

I was more invested in this movie than Anwar's last. Maybe it was the better establishment of characters and the lack of Christian mythos, but I enjoyed the tension and the reveals and the actual horrors committed by people outweighed any of the supernatural elements. I am curious to see what tale he will tackle next.

31 Days of Halloween: Psycho Goreman

2020, Steven Kostanski (The Void) -- download

The tropes of 31 Days of Halloween include monsters and gore. So, whether this movie be more a scifi comedy is of no matter, we got silly, inventive monsters and gore in buckets, sometimes literally. I like that Kostanski is playing to form, having first seen his work in The Void (which Kent seemed to like more than me) telling me he likes practical effects monsters and working in small Canadian cities. Where the first movie was devoid (ba dump bump) of humour, this is basically a comedy. And it worked.

OMG main character Mimi! Again with the precocious child that I am not (too) annoyed by. But how can I be annoyed by Mimi, she's just absolutely, undeniably HORRIBLE ! She bullies her brother and her parents equally, constantly spouting dismissive catch phrases and utterly convinced she is the centre of the world. But she makes me laugh, constantly. Kudos on Nita-Josee Hanna (Buckets of Blood); she's going to evolve into something to watch.

So, sociopath Mimi and her brother are playing their own version of Calvin Ball (google it) in their backyard with culminates with her brother having to dig his own 6 foot deep grave. Yup, she was going to bury him alive as part of the game. Oh Mimi! But instead, she finds some sort of purple glowing stone thingamajig and claims it as her own. 

Purple Thing turns out to be the control stone to an Evil Alien Overlord brought up in a forgettable, but on brand, opening text scrawl, exposition dump. Eventually said Evil Alien Overlord crawls out of the brother grave (parents interrupted before he was actually buried in it) and kills some local Bad Guys in a most ludicrous over the top way. Evil Alien Overlord looks like a rejected villain from The Power Rangers which just adds to the scene. Without his Purple Thing (snicker) his powers are minimized so he follows it to its current location -- Mimi, who instantly realizes she has control over him. Her first act is to name her nasty Evil Alien Overlord, and after some banter, they come up with Psycho Goreman or PeeGee for short.

The rest of the movie is mostly from Mimi's vantage point, as she uses PeeGee for whatever insane whim comes into her head, while doing her barest effort to stop him from causing chaos and mayhem wherever they go. But every so often we get a reminder that Evil Alien Overlord was buried in the ground with a Purple Thing for a reason, and the Galactic Federation (or whatever) of weird, fucked up aliens (one is a robot with a fleshless head) still needs him captured or dead.

There is some backstory, in oh so glorious over the top 80s/90s throwback style. The movie seems to be set in another of those weird 90s amalgam time periods -- the cars are all current but they only use VHS. Eventually some of PeeGee's minions come to Earth not to reconcile with him but kill him, and we get a hilarious battle that looks like an R-rated version of before mentioned Power Rangers but instead of giant monsters, we get weird fucking aliens like the walking bucket filled with blood and guts, or the baby headed shaman. Its all such cheesy, wonderful practical effects and makeup.

Eventually there is a grand battle between Evil and Evil and Mimi (who really, is also Evil) which ... resolves things? Kind of? PeeGee is left on his own, destroying the rest of the world, but at least Mimi and family are reconciled and she won't be bullying her brother as much. That's a good thing, right?

Oh, Mimi!

31 Days of Halloween: The Banana Splits Movie

2019,  Danishka Esterhazy (Level 16) -- Netflix

OK, the premise was just so bonkers, I could not resist (eventually) watching. And since we were doing an early Turkey Day, and suffering massive amounts of carb coma, we went with something, "Dumb and easy to watch." So yeah, said premise takes a short run kids show from the late 60s, which itself was a knock-off of The Monkees, pretends it just continued on and on and on until now, and somehow was still very popular. Oh, THAT is not the premise, that is the foundation (which reminds me, I have to continue watching Foundation) for the actual premise is that the characters, thought to be people in suits, were actually giant independently functioning robots, which after a bad software update, Go Bad and start killing people. So, bonkers premise like the Nick Cage Willy's Wonderland but without the Nick Cage insanity.

This movie was bad folks. Baaaaad. Boring main characters, utterly bland villainous characters, relatively mundane special effects and pretty much no plot. Sure, the show is being cancelled by an Evil Studio Exec, so the bad software update causes the robots to interpret "the show must go on" in their own special homicidal way, and the studio audience suffers the consequences is a plot. But not much of one. 

If anything saved the movie, and no it was not saved, it was the presence of a little girl, a supporting character played by Maria Nash (Elinor Wonders Why) who was coerced to join the main character on his birthday trip to see the Banana Splits. She doesn't want to be there, but she is a good kid who makes the best of it. Especially when things go very very wrong. I usually don't like the Precocious Kid but she pulled it off with more heart than the rest of the cast did, even the bevy of familiar Canadian faces, which was weird for a movie shot in South Africa. What is up with the height of door handles in South Africa, and yes, I was more into pondering that then what would happen next in this dumb movie.

31 Days of Halloween: No One Gets Out Alive

 2021, Santiago Menghini (Milk) -- Netflix

The least thing you can say about this movie is that the horror is based around what the undocumented (illegal immigrants) have to go through. If that is all you get out of this movie, you are not getting much. It is the foundation, a character background, that contributes to the setting of the movie but it is not the primary theme.

Ambar (Cristina Rodlo, Miss Bala) is a young woman who escapes from Mexico to ... Cleveland after the death of her mother. I realized, in watching the movie, that I know very little about Cleveland, not in a pop-culture American TV & movies sort of way, nor in a the-city-has-a-defining-characteristic sort of way. Beyond The Drew Carey Show I know nothing. But according to this movie, it shares much with Detroit, in having cold winters, decrepit buildings repurposed for the desperate, and much of the city is decaying. 

Ambar arrives with enough cash to get her going, fund a faked ID and rent a room for a while. She ends up at the haunted rooming house set between two abandoned, falling down structures, run by a sketchy guy. But it's not like she really has much of choice. While she arranges for the ID, from a fellow sweat shop coworker, so she can apply for the legit job her cousin is setting up for her, she has to just deal. Deal with the creepy rooming house owner, his even creepier brother, and the constant screams and cries from beneath her, which do not seem to have any origin. Well, to her. We, as the movie viewer, get to CONSTANTLY view the glowing eyed ghosts that linger in the background behind Ambar.

Of note, we are also dealing with screams and cries seemingly from the dead, but I know them to be coming from our new downstairs neighbours. Maybe they are haunted.

Not long after being swindled out of her fake ID money, Ambar has to choose between freezing to death or staying in the house, haunted by the dead of previous tenants, or the very living owners. I am not sure Ambar knows who to be more afraid of. But considering the ritual that the owners are performing, I would be more afraid of them.

The movie culminates on an explanation, a full expansion from hauntings to otherworldly monsters creeping out of a mesoamerican version of a dybbuk box, a stone doorway into another dimension from which creeps the most horrible thing of hands, and taught skin and inappropriate mouths. The brothers running the house are sacrificing the young undocumented women to this monster, in return for ... something, something that is curing the older, bully of a brother but not doing much for creepy main brother. Family. There is something to be said for drawing upon the non-Christian mythos and otherworlds, as we also saw in Terrified. I do rather like the idea of other dimensions of horror, the Cthulhuian concept that the most horrible things from from ... somewhere else.

All in all the movie was rather well shot, especially for his first feature, it just needed a tighter story, and to amp up the actual horror.

31 Days of Halloween: Old

 2021, M Night Shyamalan (Unbreakable) -- download

Yeah yeah, Shyamalan apologist here. I like the way the guy builds a movie, so sue me.

Anywayz, his last horror movie The Visit was wonderful so I was looking forward to what he would do again in the genre. And its October, so, yay!

This is back to the atmospheric and exquisite direction ala Hitchcock, with a story just above a Twilight Zone level mystery but some pretty decent performances; and some terrible ones. It's not a great movie, but I really enjoyed it, as expected. Yes, I forgive the guy a lot, but he does things in a way that pleases me, so I get out of the movie what I want.

A family in distress is invited to a resort in Mexico, one of those all-inclusives that prides itself on anticipating your every whim. The first hint of discontent is the German host. Why is that a hint? Well do Germans run tropical resorts, or more precisely, do Germans in movies ever run resorts? Along with our primary family, who are doing one last family vacation before separating, there is also secondary family made up of the Older Doctor (Rufus Sewel, Dark City) and the too young, too skinny, too beautiful wife (Abbey Lee, Mad Max: Fury Road), their child and his disapproving elderly mother. Almost immediately, rather than being lumped in with all the other guests, creepy German Host (Gustaf Hammersten, Lords of Chaos) offers them an off-resort experience, a beach completed isolated, away from most of the guests. No amenities, no activities, just beach and sun. And Mr. Shyamalan, the resort shuttle driver, drops them off, the two mentioned families, with a lot of food. And quickly departs.

Primary Family Mom (Vicky Krieps, Beckett) has a tumor, something they also tell the kids, who are six and eleven, after the trip. Primary Dad (Gael Garcia Bernal, The Motorcycle Diaries) is a bit of a weaksauce, an actuary more focused on his numbers than the emotional distress his wife is suffering. Their kids are aware, and probably knows what is going to happen after the vacation. But they are a nice family; we like them.

Meanwhile Old Doctor is going through something himself, but is angry when anyone brings it up. Young Wife is uber-Karen, and doesn't mind when a lone Black Man -- rapper Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierce, Krypton; I love fake rapper names), who was already sitting on the beach when everyone else arrived, casually glances at her. Old Doctor is immediately jealous. And probably a little racist. And then more guests arrive. 

Much of the movie is dedicated to setting up the characters, before the Oldness is even noticed. There are slight hints that almost all are going through... something. Its made clear, but not in a pushy way, a deliberate action Shyamalan takes as we explore who we are working with. And then there is the beach itself, as creepy and brightly smiling as the German Host. It is enclosed by a mass of sheer cliffs, entered by a narrow crack. All the encroaching plant life seems to just end at a certain point, not dead, just ... gone. There is definitely something about this section of the beach that separates it from all else.

It doesn't take long for the aging process to be noticed, especially when the two smallest children sprout up over an hour. There are hints of everyone being constantly hungry, but the growing children just ... gorge. The process is (visibly) slower with the already older, of course. And anyone who suffers any sort of condition suddenly sees it progressing. Old Doctor's dementia gives him more paranoia and obsessive behaviour, his mother's heart gives out, Family Car's blood disorder just never stops bleeding. The second act is focused on understanding what is going on.

Of course, nobody can leave the beach. The horror is that everyone is trapped here, with about a day left to live. The youngest kids probably would get until the next day but it is all about that that day. Not a lot of pure horror (jump scares, gore, etc.) things happen, most are just minor shocks, and one utterly gruesome death, which is more comical than horror-filled. The horror has to come from being tied to the characters and knowing what becomes them, that dread filled anticipation...

But like the best Twilight Zone episodes, there is a resolution, not just a brooding end to all the lives. It was an unexpected "happy ending" if any such could be. I have always pondered on the endings of such horror movies where one or a few survivors make it through. What can their lives be like afterwards, how do they ever live normal lives. Do they write best selling memoirs? Do they do the talk show circuit? Do they hide themselves away never overcoming the trauma? Sometimes just being the survivor is not the best ... ending.

31 Days of Halloween: There's Someone Inside Your House

 2021, Patrick Brice (Creep) -- Netflix

Waitasec. I just noticed that the title, drawing upon that classic horror movie / campfire tale trope of the killer calling you from inside your own house, is not even really used in this movie. Oh sure, there is the briefest moment of the killer being inside their homes, but in house based slasher movies, the killer is ALWAYS inside the house. This movie is not about the trope, even in the slightest. Which defeats the point of the title. Whatever.

And again, waitasec, this incredibly bland, pablum flavoured YA teen slasher movie was done by the same guy who did the creep-tastic Creep? Oh man, how the mighty fall when presented with a budget and a fucking douche in a purple suit.

We chose this light fare, because I got home late from work, fast food in tow, in no mood to look up from my greasy fried chicken to read sub-titles nor sit through anything two-plus hours. I was needlessly annoyed at everything, hopped up on energy drinks and work frustration. So, we settled on something perfect for the season but not requiring much mental energy.

If I was 17 with no discernible taste in movies, I would have probably really enjoyed this. Alas...

Small mid-western town is beset with a killer who 3D prints masks of their victims, victims chosen for their secrets, secrets initially dire (one gay-bashed a football teammate, one was a thinly-closeted white supremacist) but eventually just ... anything hidden. Our cadre of odd ducks, including a token black kid (as opposed to our mixed-race main character), token non-binary kid, and rich kid. Rich kid? Rich kid's dad is hated in the town, so he ends up with the odd ducks.

If anything redeems this incredibly boring, formulaic teen slasher movie, it is the performance of the main character Makani Young (Sydney Park, The Walking Dead). Makani has her own secrets, one deep & dark, and one just typical teen. Of course they put her on the killer's radar. But Park's depiction of strength and pathos is welcome amid the cookie cutter kids everywhere else. 

But the 3D masks were downright creepy.

31 Days of Halloween: Midnight Mass

2021, Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) -- Netflix

OK, forgive us but we just used the next two nights, as well, to measuredly binge this 7 episode limited series. It was that good, where you want to keep on watching, but also not have it end.

 Nothing but spoilers from here on.

The remaining four episodes cover four key events: the death of Father Paul and his resurrection as a true vampire, the turning and subsequent true-death of Riley, the final plans for the islanders laid bare, and the final end of the island and all who lived upon. In writing that I didn't want to just throw it all there for you, but to comment on the apothegmatic manner in which Flanagan tells the tale. Each episode is integral, each episode tells us so much, and all in four short episodes. 

Of note, I am never apothegmatic, but I love the word.

We already knew this all involved a vampire, an old creature revealed in an Israeli desert, and brought back to the US by a priest who believes the monster to be an angel of the Lord. The ties to Christianity in this show are rather disturbing. I already mentioned that Stoker displayed those bones in Dracula but the manner in which Flanagan lays it out for us had me pondering, "Really? Wouldn't that be terrifying if it ALL was based on a vampire myth, one that took over the Judaist myths of the time." He is not just postulating a thematic connection, but an actual origin story of Christianity being less than Heavenly. Far less. But of course, the real monsters were the people. Mostly Bev.

OMG Bev, this woman! She comes off as sweet but stern, helpful but loyal, but SHE KILLED PRUITT ! I came to that realization while walking back from lunch today. We see Pruitt die, pink froth pouring from him, only to return a short moment later. No three days for him. I had assumed the constant drinking of wine mixed with old vampire blood had run its course, but it never occurred to me that Bev sought to supplant him. Her end goal? Hasten the change? Doubt she knew that much; more likely, she just wanted him out of the way so she could return to controlling the community that the doddering old Monsignor Pruitt had barely cared for all these years. She was the real power behind the altar. But little did she know what she was unleashing. Though once revealed, she rolls with the punches soooo smoothly. And the island is doomed. Bev sucks. Pun intended.

Riley has never really trusted Pruitt, but when the priest slips up about the disappearance of his new friend, and fellow recovering alcoholic Joe Collie, he comes to confront Father Paul. And the old vampire is revealed to him. And it takes him. And he is turned. Riley has been presented, thus far, as the main character, the person returning from off island, our view into its strangeness. That we are given an episode where it is very apparent (OK, it takes most of the episode for us to guess where it is going) we are losing him was shocking to me. I may have yelled at the screen. I did that a lot during this show.

Riley faces his fate, faces the sun, reveals to Erin what is happening on their island, and finally is received into a Heaven in which he does not believe. That final scene, so beautiful from his viewpoint, almost fully conflicting his scientific atheistic idea of what happens when you die, is less a long running final dream, and more a reveal of a beautiful true angel forgiving and welcoming him; it is so fucking tragic. It is so tragic because, seconds later we see what Erin sees, and hear her torturous screams. Her best friend, the man she has just confessed love for, and received it back in return, he has just burned up before her eyes. She has lost so much, but also been left with so much more terrible knowledge. She cannot escape the island like he asked her to, she must try to help.

I am recapping apparently. I didn't intend on it, but the economy of story is so well done, and I enjoyed it all so much, I want to impart upon you dear reader (all 3 of you) the tale that captivated, when so much (so so SO much) does not.

As the penultimate episode played out, Marmy commented, "Another cult viewing," commenting on how we went from the goofy evil cult of Midsommar to this show. I disagreed, believing she was applying her opinions of Catholicism (in much the way Flanagan has done) to this show, equating Catholics as Cultists. All religion is a cult? Maybe, but I disagreed, despite the evidence laid out before me. But as soon as Bev pulled out the plastic cups filled with her favourite rat killer, I retracted ... heavily. His parallels were overt and intended. Gah.

The Cult of Bev (by this time Pruitt seems as much a pawn as the rest) has setup the island for ... conversion. Easter Mass will be held at midnight. The boats of the island have been disabled. The ferries sent away. The power cut off. The cell tower sabotaged. They are cut off in the dark, and the non-Christians of Crockett (and there are some) are oblivious to what is going on, on their peaceful sleepy little island. But Erin, and now the doctor and her "miraculously" de-aged mother join the congregation, as much out of curiosity (what is the end game?) as fear (not joining means being outed as transgressors). And nervous Sheriff Hassan attends the congregation as well, as his lost son has also joined the flock, much to Hassan's sorrow. He joins to oversee. Bear witness, as you may.

Into the cult ceremy is introduced the Angel of the Lord -- a fucking demonic vampire with giant bat wings and full Nosferatu look. "Its a fucking demon!" I yell at the screen, but such is the sway of Bev (fuck Bev) some are shocked, but most follow suit. But not even her and Pruitt's control of the congregation can hold back the evil of born again vampires. They lose control to those that hunger. All goes to Hell. It is shocking, horrifying and bloody. Even Pruitt is shocked.

The final episode is about The End. Some escape, but that is not the point. Everything is lost. By giving into Bev blindly, they are all lost. The non-Christians become fodder for the Catholic vampires. Erin and survivors burn the boats, knowing that if these vampires reach the mainland... Bev and her fanatics are burning the island's structures, seeing fire as the new Biblical flood, something to wash the old world away, bringing on the new. Where will they sleep come dawn? In the nicely outfitted community centre paid for by Bev's embezzlement of Church funds. That is, until Erin and Hassan burn it down.

All the island burns. But Erin's faith in God is not burned away. Even as she dies, she does his Good Work and disables the master vampire. Even as she dies, she adjusts her beliefs to see her connection to everything. It is beautiful, it is peaceful. It is without doctrine. The sun rises, the new born vampires are not prepared enough to survive; even Bev's feeble attempts to bury herself are for naught. The island is cleansed, as she intended.

It was grand story telling filled with thinly veiled metaphor and allusion and oh so filled with great performances. It was blasphemous (so much so, I am surprised the protests were not everywhere -- I guess they are busy being anti-mask and anti-vax) and uplifting. As much as it was dismissive and derisive of Christianity, it also acknowledged loudly that Good People do Good Work. And that is always how I felt. I am not fond of Christianity and all its corruptions, but I do see Good People all around it. I just wish they were able to be a better influence on the structures, instead of more often weighed under the terrible things.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Beckett

2021, Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (Antonia.) -- Netflix

I am a man who likes to watch the familiar draped in the clothes of the unfamiliar. I have started re-watching Shetland, a typical British procedural but set in the remote communities of the Shetland Islands. The islands are so foreign yet familiar looking, bleak yet beautiful, the procedural crime stories sad but a comfortable wool blanket. So, Beckett feeling to me like a typical man-on-the-run American thriller set in a foreign land also sounded like thriller comfort food. But Kent's write-up told me it was more, more than typical, less about the capable American foiling his foes while running from a political conspiracy (men on the run, are always on the run from a conspiracy) and more about the Every Man, the far less capable man who decides not to give in. And it all takes place in Greece, a country we see so little of, besides sea side shots from yachts and vacation villas.

Beckett (John David Washington, Tenet) and April (Alicia Vikander, Jason Bourne) are vacationing in Greece. She seems to know what she is doing, and he is just tagging along, following her lead. They decide to avoid the turmoil of political and explore more remote areas in the hills, but this has them heading late to the B&B they had booked, Beckett driving the small car down the narrow not-lit-at-all roads, until he falls asleep at the wheel. He awakens, finding April dead within the ruins of a small house, but not before a brief flash of a red headed boy being sheltered by a woman. When he comes fully awake, neither are to be found, and it is only Beckett, April and his immense regret and grief. A few days later, after a short recovery in hospital amid the awkward calls to April's family and language barriers, Beckett returns to the scene, distraught, needing to make it real, needing to ... end it all? And then someone starts shooting at him, including one of the policemen who took his statement.

From there Beckett is on the run, a run through rough, unfamiliar terrain. He does not speak Greek, he does not have any money, he does not know where he is going, he does not know who to go to. At first he is just ... running, but after a few missteps which get others hurt, he finally sees an image of the boy from the ruined house, and now he needs to find out why, why people are shooting at him, why this is happening to him. 

Much of the interplay between plot and Beckett is through his average person eyes. The conspiracy is muddled, even after some hints and exposition; Beckett, and us via him, are not meant to understand it all. Its all happening around him, to him and he is just running on adrenaline, reacting, with one goal -- find that boy, or at least what happened to him. It is always rough, full of pain and exhaustion. We don't question when John Wick pushes past the bullet wounds and thousand punches, but when Beckett does it, we feel the weight, the effort required. And when it ends, not with a grand action sequence nor masterful reveal, just a blunt, foolish fall from a great height, we feel the relief and accomplishment along with Beckett. I was glad for this less than slick journey through Greece, with a hint at what they have been going through, even though I am not expected to understand it all.

31 Days of Halloween: Midnight Mass

2021, Mike Flanagan (Gerald's Game) -- Netflix

Of note, this writing covers the three episodes (of a 7 run limited series) that we watched over two nights.

Speaking of comfort blankets, its nice knowing that something Mike Flanagan will come along pretty much every year. This is the third of his series for Netflix, but this time not even indirectly connected to A Haunting... But, he does bring back much of the cast from the previous two series, which is rather endearing as it shows he likes working with these people and that they like working with him. 

This time we leave a house for an island, a small isolated island off the coast of New England, not only isolated geographically, but also seemingly lost in time. Gone are the days of prosperous fishing, gone are the days when the young were not expected to leave. The island is emptying and those left behind are stuck in their ways, for better or worse. 

The world building for this island is meticulous, but not in the "look at the details!" way that Midsommar presented, but more in a grand way of filling out the background in which the characters inhabit. The houses are all low and flat, to have the nor'easters blow over them. Everything is weather worn and grey-green-brown. The electric street lamps are from a by-gone era, the roads are still only earth. The Sherriff's office is in the back of the convenience store. There is a bar, but we never visit it, as all our main characters are God Fearing Christians, well all but the recently hired (appointed? elected?) Sherriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli, iZombie) who is a devout Muslim, but one who converted himself. He less plays the odd duck on the island, and more the voice of reason in the furor to come. Everyone else we meet is a Catholic.

Into this small Christian community, there are two returns. Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford, Friday Night Lights) returns from "the mainland" after having spent 4 years (of a 4 to 10 year conviction) in jail for vehicular manslaughter -- he killed a teen girl in a drunk crash. He has lost everything and so returns to the island, to the home of his parents, to meet the terms of his parole. We immediately see that he is truly and wholly haunted by the image of the girl he killed, an eerie image of her face embedded with glass, reflecting the flashing lights of the first responder vehicles. He sees her every night. The second "return" is the arrival of a new priest, Father Paul (Hamish Linklater, Legion) who arrives to replace Monsignor Pruiit, an aging man who fell ill after his return from the Holy Land, and is recovering on the mainland. But things are not as they seem; well duh.

*Spoilers*

Given she is only a seven episode run, Flanagan doesn't leave much room for filler, thank the Lord. In episode one we get hints of something strange going on: Father Paul dragging a massive sea chest into the rectory with him, with a thumping coming from within, the kids hearing and seeing something on the island they canoe to, to drink and smoke, the death of all the stray cats that said island was inhabited it by, each one drained of blood before being washed up on shore by the first episode's storm. He is not going to play the mystery game with us, and by episode three we are secured in our understanding that a vampire has come to Crockett Island, a big leathery creature brought by Father Paul. 

But that is not the horror, the horror lies in the devout Christian faith being subverted by the corruption of this monster. Even Dracula relied on the connection between vampire mythos and Christian mythos. It is no coincidence that one drained by a vampire rises from the dead three nights later. It is no coincidence that a Christian mass involves drinking "the blood of Christ". And Father Paul, nee Pruitt, sees himself as having found not a demon, but an Angel of the Lord, in the Holy Land of all places, and has brought it to Crockett to heal the wounded, and bring youth to the aging.

And fuck, do I hate Bev Keane, the right hand of Father Pruitt and an utter cunt, excuse the word. She embodies all that is wrong with Christianity, all the corruption and bitterness and slander and hate, all masked in a friendly, saccharine, condescending veil.

I hope she gets what's coming to her.

31 Days of Halloween: Nightbooks

 2021, David Yarovesky (Brightburn) -- Netflix

Funny, last year we also seconded with a kids movie. Nightbooks is based on a children's book by JA White, about a witch who imprisons a young boy and forces him to read scary stories each night or suffer an end fate. The movie adaptation brings in Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones) in as Natacha, the witch who abodes within an apartment that travels the world, capturing kids for slave labour and stories. By the time Alex is taken, the massive other dimensional library she drew upon has been all but exhausted, and she needs Alex to write original stories. Its a cute movie, but I was really disappointed the apartment wasn't 23.

The movie begins with Alex (Winslow Fegley, Come Play) going through something. He's the kid into horror, with a bunch of posters from age-inappropriate movies on his wall, who is in the midst of tearing down everything, stuffing it into a bag to be burned in the apartment building's furnace. Something has gone wrong to dash his love of genre. But on his way down, he is charmed into an apartment showing The Lost Boys and offering pumpkin pie. I guess spells overran his horror movie common sense.

The apartment is grand, a place that moves from location to location grabbing kids as needed, with a lot more space inside than even a witch could afford in NYC. It is also very German decorated, hinting at the connection to Grimm's faery tales and Hansel & Gretel in particular. But something dire underlies the witch's desire for scary stories, something that shakes the place and her nerve. If the stories are not particularly bleak, the apartment reacts and Alex has to adjust. Between stories, Alex and fellow captive Yasmin (Lidya Jewett, Hidden Figures) are trying to find a secret to escape, some they don't end up like all the other kids who have come before -- being transformed into statuettes. I guess the tales of witches eating kids were just tales.

Alex is supposed to be that fandom kid, that kid overly into something other kids probably roll their eyes at. I was that kid, but into fantasy, into Lord of the Rings and D&D and Star Wars. In today's over abundance of genre choices, I wonder if kids would still get teased for enjoying anything. Or maybe any choice other than Marvel is to be reviled? It's not like kids need good reasons to bully others. I was somewhat disappointed that the reason for Alex's traumatic response at the beginning of the movie was rather benign, but I get it was intentional, to show us adults how impactful even the "smallest" events can have on the emotional life of a child. I cannot imagine how being captured by a witch and threatened with constant death will affect him in the long run.

The movie was fun and inventive and following suit with the neon & bright colours of current movie themes. The ever present pink (ultra violet) glow I have mentioned from previous movies has had other glow-in-the-dark colours added, giving much of the movie a rave-y kids' Pantone colouring to the movie. Its intentional; it works. It also has sufficent scares, and jumps and gross matter to accommodate even the most jaded kid. But unlike the movies Alex is into, this one is entirely kid-safe, nothing truly dire beneath the surface, beyond the consequences for the kids should they fail.

31 Days of Halloween: Midsommar

 2019, Ari Aster (Hereditary) -- Netflix

Starting in 2011 we (Marmy and I, as Kent is not much of a horror fan) began celebrating the Halloween season (all of October, of course) by watching too many horror / Halloween related movies, most of them bad.  2012 had a few flicks but not the full month. Un/Re-employment killed 2013. Apathy slayed 2014. But we returned in 2015 with a full run. 2016 had a good start, but stalled in the last few days, likely due to work life. 2017 almost started with a fizzle, but then I remembered, "It's October 1st !"  It still fizzled. Life abounds. And in 2018, almost the entire year was Halloween *ahem* as in the year of posting was mostly October. 2019 did alright for itself, considering I went off to Las Vegas sometime in the month. 2020 was it's own horror fest, and I am not kidding or being pithy in the least; the horror movies we watched were almost a relief.

This year was almost forgotten about, and did not have the ritualistic "let's Google what the best horror movies of the past year have been" but did include lots of, "Let's just save that movie for October." Besides, we have TONS of movies downloaded or bookmarked from previous years, that we never got around to.

For example.

It is strange. Despite the stress I put on myself to watch and write about a movie every... single... day, I most often look forward to this month. I actually seem to enjoy writing about these movies more than I do the daily "reviews", a term I am still loathe to use, because I do not like the structure of a review, the journalism of it. But in writing quickly and often about the horror movies I am watching, I am more doing journaling than journalism. Besides, by this time, after having watched hundreds of horror movies for this event alone, it is like pulling on an old, warm, comforting coat, for it is Fall.

To quote myself, when writing about Aster's debut Hereditary, it was completely in an "unsettled space". Many horror movies are, as the technique moves us out of groove of complacency & comfort into a mindset ready to be disturbed. This movie begins in the US with a murder/suicide, the unbearable weight of the consequences and the utter distain of toxic masculinity. Dani (Florence Pugh, Black Widow) briefly worries about her suicidal sister while dealing with Dick Boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor, Kin) before learning of said sister's suicide, and murder of their parents. Christian does not want to be supportive, nor do his thesis-writing friends, but what choice does the guy have? He may be a dick but he's not entirely a monster. Or so he tells himself.

The movie then moves to Sweden, north of Stockholm, six months later (a time jump left subtle so we can go from mid-western US winter to....) in the bright light of Mid Summer, above the Arctic Circle where the sun never truly sets. It really shouldn't be that bright, but the commune Pelle grew up in is eerily bright and shiny, full of reflective surfaces, pristine white clothing and brightly smiling folk. Not at all disturbing.

We moved from one unsettled space into an entirely new one, one we will never leave.

Aster has shown now that he is all about the finely created details of his setting. Like the intricate miniature models of Hereditary, the commune is replete with background details. Sure, he is creating another world to force our average Americans into, but there is so much there. The clothing is simple yet adorned with intricate needle work, both the familiar red and blue stitching, but also much more intricate designs. Paintings and murals abound in the interiors of their well built structures, many telling (from right to left) disturbing tales of commune culture. And amid the beautifully constructed buildings are a few discordant, weird angled ones, that hint at the disruptions beneath this very pretty surface.

But we know this. We know we are watching a "horror" movie. We know something has to Go Wrong. We know that there will be an evil beneath these seemingly benevolent folk. So, knowing that, Aster doesn't take very long to reveal it to us, with a ritualistic suicide of two aging members of the commune. Horrific, graphic and shocking. But not unexpected. Still, that is not good for Dani in her current state of mind. Of course, the toxic boyfriend and others are more intrigued -- don't judge the weird rituals of the locals! Only the British tourists, brought to the event by Pelle's childhood friend, react accordingly and plan to leave the next "morning".

But again, we know things won't go well. We know that any plans to leave will be foiled. We know that nobody can be allowed to escape. And yet Aster just has us move along, learning more about the cult (commune is now too nice a word) again supplying us with endless pretty details to be absorbed in, to disarm Dani, to distract the rest but lead them all to whatever end the community has in mind for them.

After that initial shock, nothing else is really overt. Oh sure, horrible and disturbing, but nothing is ever SHOCKING. More so it's the horror of knowing they are all doomed, a very bright and entirely peaceful doom. And maybe it is actually what Dani has needed all along, so wrapped up in her grief, without any real support provided. These people really do seem to want her here, but for what end?

In the end, did I like this movie? As an exercise in creation, yes. As a plot, not so much. All the performances are solid, especially so (bias acknowledged) Pugh who bears her grief like a wounded beast, but nothing ever really drew me in. It was like being a tourist at a high end resort, where everything is very well constructed, very well presented, all meticulous and well designed, but beneath all that, I didn't find much character, much depth. The allusions and metaphors are also all there, but didn't serve me as a viewer. If anything did, it was that I never felt weighed down by the two and bit hours of the movie; I was always there, which in of itself is an accomplishment.

Kent wrote about it here, and yes, before I did. Nobody is more shocked than I was.