The Good
I saw The Conjuring for the first time this month and really enjoyed it. It was full of jump scares but most were really effective. The Annabelle doll was creepy as hell , made creepier by the fact that a real Annabelle doll exists.
The Bad
I usually go through a nostalgia trip and watch a few Friday the 13th movies. I watched parts 3, 4, and 5. Part 3 was especially bad. If you don't know, this was made during a 3-D resurgence in the eighties so there are really bad camera angles set up for really bad 3D effects that just look lame. The acting is also especially bad even for this series. I almost want to do a rewatch of the series and talk about them.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Constantine.
Tilda Swinton, Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz and Shia LeBouf; not to mention the rotund alcoholic and American Psycho financier; extraordinary cast. Honestly, it'd just be an unremarkable post-Matrix/A Phantom Menace/Memento mediocrity if not for Tilda Swinton who is hilarious (and as stunning as s/he's ever been) as Gabriel. She's also great with Keanu, and really brings out some of his unrealised potential, years before he started to fulfil it. Incidentally, Keanu manages to do potentially the worst ever fake coughs put to celluloid. It doesn't get more frightening than that.
The terrifying: Return to Oz.
The rollerblading monstrosities and head wardrobe are legit unsettling, and the stop motion gnome-animation is spectacularly grotesque.
Basket Case, that was a good horror movie of many years ago.
gamingeek said:Basket Case, that was a good horror movie of many years ago.
I've just read a summary of this and it sounds pretty good.
Evil Dead the series or movie?
Viy / Вий, a 1967 Russian movie about a man in a church with a dead woman who comes to life at night. Also, there are men in monster costumes. The whole movie's on YouTube too.
House / Hausu, an insane Japanese movie from 1977 with surreal effects, a floating head and a hungry piano. Well, the trailer's on YouTube at least.
Pontypool, a 2008 Canadian movie about the insanity of linguistics. Or people going crazy and attacking each other. If you can handle Portuguese subtitles stuck on the screen, it's on YouTube... for now.
Housebound, a 2014 New Zealand horror/comedy movie about home detention in a crazy ghost house. Somehow it's on YouTube still.
And The Babadook is great.
By Miu Watanabe.
Viy is wonderful. The remake is amusing in its own right, yoo.
Every October I go on a horror movie binge and thought I'd share some of the highlights and lowlights that I've come across this month. There will be a few more additions before the month is over, but here's what has been memorable so far this month:
The good:
Zombieland: Doubletap - The original Zombieland was probably the best horror comedy of the last 10 years. The sequel just about lives up to it. It doesn't have the originality of the first, and there's a couple jokes that get driven a little too hard into the ground, but overall I loved it. The new characters are a riot and they throw in copious Elvis references which is always a good thing in my book. And there is a Bill Murray scene that is so good it would have saved the movie even if the rest of it had sucked.
Horror Noire - This is a documentary about blacks in the world of horror movies. Honestly I was surprised no one had ever done this before, but the rise of Jordan Peele as the most successful director of horror movies these days was the last push needed to get it made. Actors, directors, and film historians all discuss the contribution of black people in AMerican film since the 1910's. A few of the points and conclusions that are made are a little reaching, but overall this was quite good for any fans of documentaries.
The Bad:
Us - Jordan Peele's follow-up to "Get Out" was pretty divisive and I was on the end of those who didn't like it. It had some great moments, and without spoiling anything I'll just say that the viewers are basically forced to not ask "how" so they can instead ask "why." To put it another way, to accept the movie's social commentary you pretty have to discard all logic and to me that ruined it.
The Ugly:
Nude Nuns With Big Guns - Yes this is actually a movie. It's basically a modern day grind-house movie with non-stop guns, tits, and killing. It's more or less a revenge flick, and maybe not quite a horror movie, but if people can say The Devil's Rejects is a horroe movie than so it this. Anyway it's a low budget piece of crap, but it's so damned stupid that it's pretty harmless.