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The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 4 Mini-Reviews (Part Two)

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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31 Days of Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Child, Bone Tomahawk, cinema, Dead of Night, film reviews, films, Freddy Krueger, Freddy vs Jason, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, horror, horror anthologies, horror films, horror franchises, horror westerns, Lost River, mini-reviews, Movies, October, Pay the Ghost, remakes, Saw franchise, Saw: The Final Chapter, Wes Craven, Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Slowly by slowly, little by little, we continue to try to catch up with the avalanche of films from our October horror spectacular. Here are the mini-reviews from the second half of the fourth week of October, 10/22 to 10/25. Coming up, we finally approach the end of the 31 Days of Halloween with the fifth (and final) week of October. We’ll be discussing new films like Spike Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Contracted: Phase 2 and The Gift, as well as old favorites like Jaws, Trick ‘r Treat and Swamp Thing. Stay tuned, gentle readers: that light at the end of the tunnel might be daylight or it might be some sort of creepy ghost train…only one way to find out!

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Thursday, 10/22

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A Nightmare on Elm Street — It all started here. There’s a reason why Wes Craven’s seminal creation would go on to spawn not only a blockbuster franchise but a genuine pop culture phenomenon: it is, quite simply, one of the best, most original films to come out of the entire history of the horror genre, from the silent days to modern times. By welding the burgeoning slasher genre to something explicitly supernatural and dream-like, Craven made a cinematic Frankenstein that would change the game for decades to come and introduce the world to one of the most iconic boogeymen of all time.

Much grittier than anything else in the series until Craven would return with New Nightmare, there is very little of the trademark wisecracks and villain worship that would come. In the original installment, Freddy Krueger is a terrifying creation, a scarred, insane, remorseless child killing demon who morphs and bends reality to his whim, far removed from the smarmier jokester that the character would eventually become. The setpieces (Johnny Depp sucked into his own bed; the body-bag dragging down the school hall; Freddy in the bath; the victim tossed around her room by an invisible Freddy) are as iconic as anything by Argento and the cast is likable enough to make us actually care what happens. In a long career, Wes Craven would never top this unforgettable blast of pure nightmarish nitro.

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge — Coming off the high that was the original entry, the first sequel to Craven’s iconic creation was always going to have an uphill climb. It’s not that director Steve Miner didn’t try: there are certainly moments and setpieces (the opening school bus bit is pretty great, for one) that stand up with the first film. There’s a gleefully gonzo element to much of the film that allows for exploding parakeets, backyard barbecue massacres and an unexplained (but plainly obvious) homoerotic subtext that prevents the film from ever becoming boring.

On the other hand, however, Freddy’s Revenge is also sort of a mess, featuring an unnecessary possession angle (Freddy takes over a teen’s body in order to continue his killing spree), lots of rough acting and an unfortunately silly aftertaste to much of the proceedings: the aforementioned parakeet is one of those oddities that would never fit in anywhere, regardless of the film, context or era. If anything, Freddy’s Revenge stands as a fledgling franchise taking the first tentative steps towards immortality.

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors — The first NOES film that I ever saw in the theater (I snuck into the showing when I was the ripe old age of ten), Dream Warriors is also my very favorite installment in the series, including Craven’s original. Hell, the third entry in the NOES franchise is actually one of my favorite films, of any genre, period.

For my money, Dream Warriors is the perfect culmination of what Elm Street has to offer: the kills/setpieces are inventive, unnerving and pretty glorious (Freddy as puppetmaster and “Primetime Freddy” are probably my favorites); the kids are likable and fun; the pop-metal soundtrack is appropriately kickass (in that patented late-’80s way) and, most importantly, Robert Englund’s Freddy finally perfected his trademark brand of razor-sharp snark here, finding a perfect balance between smarmy sarcasm and genuine dread. Dream Warriors also has the benefit of being one of only three Elm Street films that creator Craven was directly involved with: although he didn’t direct the film (that honor would go to The Blob remake’s Chuck Russell), Craven did co-write the script. As far as I’m concerned, horror films just don’t get much better than this.

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master — Although it’s at least a solid half-step down from the utterly amazing Dream Warriors, Renny Harlin’s The Dream Master (his precursor to action juggernaut Die Hard 2) is still a great film and a more than worthy entry in the franchise’s “golden era.” We continue to get more of Freddy’s back story here and, although the humor is much more upfront, this is still, first and foremost, an inventive slasher film. Dream Master is also where Alice, NOES’ best final girl after the original Nancy, really comes into her ass-kicking own.

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child — Although Stephen Hopkins’ (also known for Predator 2, Judgment Night and the criminally under-rated Ghost and the Darkness) Dream Child is much jokier and more gimmicky than its predecessors, it’s still a fun, highly watchable and suitably entertaining entry in the series. Although the film is never as inventive as the ones that immediately preceded it, the notion of Alice’s ever-sleeping unborn child is a great revelation/complication and the “doll party” death is still one of the ickiest and most disturbing in the entire franchise. The last truly good NOES film, since I’ve always considered New Nightmare to be a slightly different kind of animal.

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Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare — When it first came out in theaters, I remember that I couldn’t get enough of Freddy’s Dead, the “supposedly” final installment in the Elm Street saga (at that time, at least): I know that I saw it at least twice but I might have actually seen it three times, to be honest. I do remember one thing quite distinctly, however: if I got any more excited about the film’s 3D aspects (we were given glasses at the screening and I think I still have a pair stowed away somewhere), I’m pretty sure that my head would have literally exploded, sending brain matter to every corner of my humble multiplex.

Time and perspective, as they often are, have not been kind to The Final Nightmare (feature debut for Tank Girl’s Rachel Talalay and one of only three non-TV credits to her resume, thus far). In every way, Freddy’s Dead is the absolute nadir of the series (including the goofy second film), a film that’s much more interested in throwing silly, random pop culture references at the audience (“You forgot the Power Glove!” is as immortal as it is idiotic) than it is in crafting anything approximating a legitimate scare. Gone is any notion of actually being frightening, in any way, shape or form: this is Freddy Krueger as stand-up comic, “slaying” the audience with the aid of things like an extended Wizard of Oz gag and cameos from Tom and Roseanne Arnold.

Despite a genuinely intriguing core premise (with all of the children on Elm Street finally gone, the adults have all gone insane), Freddy’s Dead is nothing but one lame, dated raspberry after another. Small wonder, then, that when the series did finally attempt to move past The Final Nightmare, it went in the completely different, meta-fictional direction of New Nightmare: when you’ve scrapped the bottom of the barrel straight to the wood, there’s just no further down to go.

Friday, 10/23

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Saw: The Final Chapter — As hard as it is for me to believe now, there was once a point in time where I not only really liked the Saw series but actually anticipated each entry with something that probably approached a low-level kind of fanboyism. Youth, as we all know, is very much wasted on the young.

By the time I finally got around to watching the concluding chapter of the series recently, not only was I no longer a die-hard fan, I actually disliked much of what I previously enjoyed, finding only the first and third entries to really have any merit. Saw: The Final Chapter (or Saw 3D, if you were “lucky” enough to catch it in theaters) is, without a doubt, the absolute worst entry in the franchise, a feat made all the more impressive when one remembers how truly wretched the 4th and 5th installments were. Loud, chaotic, nauseatingly violent, lunk-headed, ugly, inane and tedious, The Final Chapter manages to wrap everything up with a bow by introducing so many deus ex machinas and “twists” that it’s pretty obvious the series’ caretakers must dislike it as much as we do. The very best, most succinct way I can describe this film is “obnoxious.”

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Wes Craven’s New Nightmare — After the franchise went out in a cotton-candy bang of celebrity cameos, Nintendo references and more bad one-liners than an amateur open mic, it seemed that Freddy Krueger and his little spot of suburban hell might go the way of the dodo. Instead, creator Wes Craven would return to the series he kickstarted a mere three years later with New Nightmare, a smart bit of meta-fiction that would serve as a sort of dry run for what would become Craven’s “modern-day” legacy: the Scream series.

Much more serious, stream-lined and genuinely eerie than anything in the franchise since the debut film (not surprising, considering the genesis), New Nightmare uses the conceit that the actual creative personnel behind the films (writer/director Craven, original stars Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon, Freddy portrayer Robert Englund) are now being haunted by an honest to god demon, a creature which has decided to portray itself as Elm Street’s resident stalker for familiarity reasons (think of the various forms that It takes throughout the novel, as comparison).

The meta-angle is smart because it allows Craven to not only return to the franchise he created but to also comment on the violence, terror and nightmares he’s left behind in his wake. More so than his peers, Craven has always been at his strongest when he’s not only creating horror but actively commenting on it, perhaps due to his early turn as a member of academia. As a NOES film, New Nightmare performs lots of smart fan service, giving Elm Street acolytes the opportunity to spend a little more time with some beloved old friends: as a horror film, it’s generally successful, trading in the gaudy variety of the later films for a more streamlined sense of stalk-and-slash. That said, the film’s action can tend towards the cheesy, at times (the final confrontation, in particular, is pretty silly), and there’s never the overriding sense of fun produced by the best films in the series (3, 1 and 4, if we’re keeping score). It’s a good film, mind you, and exponentially better than what immediately preceded it: it’s just never been one of my personal favorites, that’s all.

Saturday, 10/24

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A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) — I actively avoided watching the 2010 remake of Craven’s immortal Nightmare on Elm Street for a few different reasons: I really, really dislike unnecessary remakes; the recent “reboot” of Friday the 13th not only didn’t add anything new to the mix, it wasn’t even a particularly good F13 ripoff and the NOES “reboot” looked identical; I didn’t think Jackie Earle Haley was a suitable replacement for Robert Englund’s take on Freddy; the implied ultra-serious tone turned me off in the pre-release buzz; there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the original NOES and I wasn’t sure what the new one was supposed to “fix” or “improve” and, of course, the most important reasons: I really, really dislike unnecessary remakes.

When it came time for this year’s October programming, however, I decided to give the reboot a shot and programmed it at the tail end of my NOES “marathon”: if there was ever a time to approach this with fresh, unjaded eyes, this was it and believe me when I say that I absolutely tried to do so. Despite my preconceived notions, I was fully prepared to let Samuel Bayer (better known for directing roughly a million music videos) blow me out of the water with his vision.

And then, of course, I actually watched the thing. Too technically well-made to be called crap, I still don’t have a problem applying the descriptor: this is soulless, overly glossy, loud, inane garbage, the kind of by-the-numbers modern multiplex filmmaking that’s conducted by committee rather than imagination. The new take on the makeup is awful, Haley’s performance is so generic and beige that he completely fades into the woodwork and all of the numerous references to the far superior original film (such as the “Freddy in the wall” gag) only serve to show just how chintzy and lame the new version is.

Look, I get it: modern audiences don’t like old stuff. No problem. In that case, why not give them someone new, then, instead of some idiotic reinterpretation of something that they’re not going to give two shits about in the first place? The NOES remake is offensive precisely because it appeals to exactly no one: old school fans need this roughly like we need a hole in our heads, whereas “the youth” will probably find this tepid version about as fascinating as listening to Gramps talk about record stores.

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Dead of Night — Perhaps the less said about this haphazard late-’70s TV anthology film, the better. Consisting of three stories, Dead of Night features a suitably interesting cast (Ed Begley Jr., Patrick Macnee, Elisah Cook Jr., Horst Buchholz, Joan Hackett and Lee Montgomery all feature prominently) and then doesn’t give them much of anything interesting to do. Ranging from a pre-Back to the Future time-travel jaunt to a clichéd vampire period piece to a grieving mother bringing her dead son back from beyond, nothing here hits with any lasting impact and the overall impression is of a strictly bottom-of-the-shelf product slotted into a lonely Sunday night in order to kill time. Hopelessly dated, Dead of Night is proof that not every wine becomes a classic with age: some just turn into vinegar.

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Lost River — Although it’s often easy to forget, celebrities and matinée idols are really, at the end of the day, just human beings like every one else. As such, they love (or hate) corn chips, sing in the shower and idolize other celebrities, just like everyone else. Case in point: leading hunk and all-around indie-action renaissance man, Ryan Gosling. While he may be a mega-charged star, in his own right, it’s pretty obvious that the Gos also really, really looks up to writer/director/badass Nicolas Winding Refn. After all, Gosling was already a lead before Refn cast him in the enigmatic Drive but it was that film (and role) that have clearly resonated the most with him: his “legitimization” in the world of “cool” films, as it were.

For his directorial debut, it’s not surprising that Gosling would turn towards the Danish wunderkind for inspiration, nor is it necessarily surprising that the result would be a huge mess. After all, Refn had to walk before he was setting the asphalt on fire, priming the pump with his Pusher series and the kinda/sorta biopic Bronson before diving into the weird with his surreal Viking curiosity Valhalla Rising and the magical-realist brutalist epics that would follow. With Lost River, Gosling jumps in without testing the waters, aiming for something like the neon-lit melancholy and perversion of Only God Forgives.

The problem, of course, is that all of this is way beyond the abilities of a fledgling filmmaker, especially one who’s still getting the hang of essential storytelling elements. In essence, Lost River is a mishmash of several dozen disparate tropes and themes, pulling in everything from weird, futuristic sex clubs (ala Clockwork Orange) and submerged towns to wandering gangs and general dystopia. There’s a love story (or two) here, lots of evocative atmosphere, plenty of head-scratching strangeness (the sex club, in particular is exceptionally strange) and not a whole lot of narrative. We get random musical numbers, probably because Only God Forgives did the same thing, but the effect is more one of opening random doors and observing assorted activities rather than any sort of overriding theme or intent.

None of this would, of course, make a damn bit of difference if the actual film was as mesmerizing as it intends. It’s not, unfortunately, but it certainly does try: Ben Mendelsohn turns in another of those performances that reinforces his status as the modern-day’s go-to sleazebag, while Christina Hendricks and Iain de Caestecker are solid as the mother/son duo at the heart of the film. There are eye-popping visuals aplenty and the sunken town is a fantastic concept, even if the actual execution leaves a bit to be desired. Even better, Gosling and cinematographer Benoit Debie (who shot Gaspar Noe’s mind-expanding/exploding Enter the Void) turn Detroit into a virtual post-apocalyptic wonderland, a crumbling land of the dead that provides the best possible backdrop for what Gosling has cooking.

Which, as previously mentioned, just doesn’t amount to much, in the end. Films certainly don’t have to make sense: there’s no written (or unwritten) rule that’s ever enforced that, least of all in my personal rulebook. The chief sin of Lost River isn’t that it makes an imperfect kind of sense: the chief sin of Lost River is that it’s haphazard and random, mood and image for the sense of such. Gosling might be looking towards such stylish artisans as Refn, Bava and Argento for inspiration but he’s forgotten the most important part: first and foremost, those filmmakers could tell a story. Lost River might be an “experience” but it could (and should) have been a whole lot more.

Sunday, 10/25

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Bone Tomahawk — Although I like and watch all kinds of films, there are two genres that definitely have a lock on my heart: horror films and Westerns. While I’ve loved and been obsessed with horror films since I was a little kid, I actually grew up disliking Westerns something fierce, although anything with Clint Eastwood in it was always at the top of my fave list, regardless of genre. Once I grew up and was actually able to appreciate the genre, I learned that I had been a pretty huge bonehead (sorry Mom and Dad!) and that Westerns could be every bit as glorious as the horror films that I always swore by. Doh.

Since that point, I’ve always had my eyes peeled for that perfect intersection of my twin loves, that Venn diagram of utter awesomeness: the horror-Western. Like most rare, reclusive creatures, however, the horror-Western is a mighty difficult one to pin down. In fact, in all of these years, I’ve really only seen two films that I would consider to be absolutely essential horror-Westerns: Antonia Bird’s criminally under-rated Ravenous (1999), one of my all-time favorite films, and J.T. Petty’s stunning The Burrowers (2008), which has been burned into my mind since the very first time I saw it. At long last, these past favorites can finally set another place at the table: writer-director S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk (2015) is not only the single best horror-Western I’ve seen since The Burrowers, it’s also one of the very best films of the year, hands down.

Bone Tomahawk, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how Kurt Russell channels the world-weary air of latter-day John Wayne for his flawless portrayal of Sheriff Franklin Hunt, one of the most effortless cinematic badasses ever. I love how Richard Jenkins’ Chicory is the culmination of every sassy, ancient deputy in the history of the genre. I love how none of the characters, whether Patrick Wilson’s kind-hearted and “traditional” hero or Matthew Fox’s charismatic but odious “Indian-killer” are ever reduced to just simplistic stereotypes or lazy cinematic tropes. I love how the smart, Tarantino-esque dialogue adds to the overall feel and flow of the film rather than calling unnecessary attention to itself: there’s a great scene involving the relative merits (or lack thereof) of reading in the tub that provides big belly laughs without detracting from the film’s overall thoughtful, mournful air.

I love cinematographer Benji Bakshi’s gorgeous, panoramic imagery, beautifully composed shots that elegantly place our small, insignificant heroes into a massive, almost apocalyptic landscape that perfectly illustrates the immensity of their quest. I love that the horror element (cannibalistic, nearly inhuman cave-dwelling troglodyte savages who communicate via a series of eerie howling calls) is grounded in reality but never so ruthlessly explained as to lose its overriding air of mystery and menace. Did I mention how much I love the opening that features Sid Haig and David Arquette doing what they do best? No? Well, I love that, too.

To be frankly honest (as if it wasn’t already painfully obvious), I loved every thing about Bone Tomahawk. Just like with The Burrowers and Ravenous, this felt like an instant classic from the very first frame, a feeling which remained constant and consistent throughout its runtime. This is not only a quality horror film or a quality neo-Western: it’s a quality film, period, the kind of immaculately made, exquisitely acted piece of art that makes my heart soar and validates any and every shitty, boring or clichéd film I’ve had to sit through this year. It’s an absolute given that Bone Tomahawk will end up on my year-end Best of list: if most critics didn’t wear blinders when it came to horror films, I’d be willing to wager it would end up on their lists, too.

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Freddy vs Jason — The worst thing about Ronny Yu’s Freddy vs Jason isn’t that it’s a dumb film, although it certainly is that. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the film is aggressively stupid, pitched at such a loud, blaring and bubble-headed level that it all but guarantees derision from anyone who grew up on the original NOES and F13 franchises: by comparison, Freddy’s Dead and Jason Goes to Hell both come across as downright Shakespearen.

No, the worst thing about Freddy vs Jason, by a long-shot, is how hard it tries (and overwhelmingly succeeds) in making Freddy Krueger look like a complete and total moron. Never more than one banana peel slip away from outright buffoonery (perhaps that’s on the Blu-ray extras?), this is even more terrible when one realizes that it will also probably stand as Englund’s last official outing behind the makeup. When I think of Freddy, I’d rather think of the cunning, wily and bloodthirsty monster of Dream Warriors or New Nightmare, not the dope in Freddy vs Jason who spends the entire film running around shouting the equivalent of “Those meddling kids!” while shaking his tiny fists at the sky. There’s never a point here where Freddy approaches anything like his former menace (although the Alice in Wonderland riff is a nice try): he’s the whiny nerd making threats while someone gives him a swirly in the boys’ room, the blowhard doofus who needs a little comeuppance from the “cool kids.”

Is it fun, though? Eh…it’s certainly loud, kinetic and action-packed…is that the same thing? Although Freddy gets the shortest possible end of the stick, Jason makes out slightly better, possibly because his constantly bemused expression stands as a perfect surrogate for our disbelief. It’s almost as if Mr. Voorhees is thinking: “Huh: get a look at this, will ya? This is some pretty out there stuff, man.” The actual fight between Freddy and Jason is fun, sure, even if the whole thing feels suspiciously like one of those Peter vs the Chicken fights from Family Guy: at a certain point, they might as well be smashing through panes of glass on the street and upending fruit carts, for all the actual impact it has.

I will freely admit one thing, however: I laugh my damn ass off each and every time I watch the scene where the stoner, referencing Jason’s murderous rampage, observes “Dude, that goalie was pissed about something!” My guess? He just got finished watching this stupid movie.

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Pay the Ghost — When it comes to Nicolas Cage, it’s never a given as to which side you’re going to get: will it be the teeth-gnashing, out-of-control, bee-hating Cage of The Wicker Man remake or will it be the restrained, low-key artisan of Joe? The glory of Cage, of course, it that it could be either (or both!): like a box of mixed chocolates, you never really know until you’ve paid your money and taken your chances.

For Uli Edel’s Pay the Ghost, we get a little of both sides, albeit watered-down: call it diluted Cage, if you will. And it works, for the most part: Cage is a massively likable presence as Mike Lawford, the hapless professor who manages to lose his young son during a chaotic Halloween carnival and uncovers a supernatural conspiracy when he tries to find him. There are some genuinely eerie moments here, even if many of them seem borrowed from similar genre fare like Mama or The Woman in Black (perhaps the closest parallel to Pay the Ghost’s themes and execution) and Edel (who was also responsible for the fantastic Baader Meinhof Complex) builds up a reasonable amount of tension throughout.

The biggest problem, as it turns out, is that the film ends up being both too convoluted and too familiar: the moments where Edel and screenwriter Dan Kay (scripting from Tim Lebbon’s novel) break away from the usual “evil forces snatching children” tropes end up being some of the film’s weakest, mostly because it’s often difficult for us to make the connections that the characters are. Even now, I’m not 100% sure of what transpired, although I’m pretty sure I’ve got the gist. That being said, the film is still a reasonable solid, well-made piece of multiplex-ready fare and features a strong performance from Cage and lots of creepy vultures: if that sounds like your thing, I suggest you pay this particular ghost and see what happens.

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 2 Mini-Reviews

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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31 Days of Halloween, A Christmas Horror Story, Air, Alien Outpost, All Hallows' Eve 2, American Mary, cinema, Curse of Chucky, Damien: Omen II, Escape To Witch Mountain, film franchise, film reviews, films, Gremlins, Hardware, Hidden, horror, horror movies, Knock Knock, mini-reviews, Movies, October, Omen III: The Final Conflict, Saw 5, Saw 6, Saw franchise, Some Kind of Hate, The Beyond, The Final Girls, The Hidden, The Midnight Swim, The Monster Squad, The Omen, The Omen franchise, The Stranger, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, We Are Still Here

Welcome back, boos and ghouls, to The VHS Graveyard’s 31 Days of Halloween (2015 edition). Last time around, we gave some brief discussions on our first week’s worth of movies: this time around, we’ll be tackling the films perused during the second week of October, from 10/5 to 10/11. As always, expect more in-depth discussion of these in the (hopefully) near future: for the time being, here are mini-reviews for the twenty-five films we screened last week.

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Monday, 10/5

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A Christmas Horror Story — Anthologies are nothing new in the world of horror films but horror-oriented Christmas anthologies? As rare as Kris Kringle in August. Here to remedy this sad little disparity is the multi-director/writer effort A Christmas Horror Story, soon to be joined by at least two other Christmas/Krampus-related anthologies in the next few months. ACHS looks absolutely gorgeous, thanks to some truly beautiful cinematography, and sports a pretty expert use of CGI to create things like a buffed-out Krampus and some pretty authentic gore. If only one of the stories has a truly satisfying finale (the Santa vs zombie elves episode is just about perfect), at least only one of them is kind of a stinker: when you’re dealing with anthologies, sometimes that’s the most you can hope for.

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Gremlins — Growing up, I watched Gremlins so often that I pretty much had the film’s entire blocking memorized. While the film, itself, is just about the best example of evil besieging a small town that’s ever been put to film (“Norman Rockwell meets hellspawn”), it’s the slyly subversive sense of humor that really makes this one so memorable. If you were a horror fanatic who came of age in the ’80s, I’m more than willing to wager that Phoebe Cates’ infamous Santa story was as integral to your formative years as it was to mine. Bonus points for effects that have not only aged well but actually surpass more modern, CGI-heavy spectacles.

Tuesday, 10/6

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The Stranger — I wasn’t really sure what to expect before starting this and, once the end credits rolled, I still wasn’t quite sure. Nominally a vampire film, The Stranger really owes more to mean-spirited ’80s revenge films. The dialogue is often awkward, as are the line deliveries from the predominately Chilean cast (the cast deliver their lines in English, which recalls nothing so much as similarly-made Itallo-gore films of the ’80s), and the acting can be earnest to the point of self-parody. Written and directed by frequent Eli Roth collaborator Guillermo Amoedo (who also wrote Roth’s upcoming The Green Inferno and Knock Knock), The Stranger is light years better than the patently awful Aftershock but, ultimately, that’s not much of a selling point.

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Saw V — Tedious, bland and full of performances that confuse shouting with passion, the fifth entry in the Saw franchise continues to grind out the increasingly complex and navel-gazing storyline but there’s not a whole lot of fun to be found here. There is a nice subtext about the need to work together in order to survive but it’s hopelessly buried in the muck like a rapidly dying star.

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Alien Outpost — In many ways, Alien Outpost is like a mockbuster version of Monsters: Dark Continent. Both films use the pretext of alien invasions as a way to make yet another comment on U.S. military incursions into the Middle East. Both films feature groups of largely anonymous, interchangeable soldiers (Alien Outpost, at the very least, has the benefit of Highlander’s Adrian Paul, the patron saint of poverty-row sci-fi productions) duking it out with insurgents in the desert. Both films relegate their creatures to the extreme background. Both films, as it turns out, are not only mostly interchangeable but largely forgettable.

Wednesday, 10/7

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The Monster Squad — One of the most important films of my formative years (along with Night of the Creeps), The Monster Squad began my lifelong love affair with those conjoined geniuses, Fred Dekker and Shane Black. While Dekker would only direct three features in his entire career (Night of the Creeps, The Monster Squad and RoboCop 3), Black would go on to write such little-seen indie sleepers as the Lethal Weapon franchise, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Smart-mouthed kids fighting famous monsters as written by the guy that created Lethal Weapon? Yeah…it’s kind of awesome.

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Escape to Witch Mountain — Another of my favorite films as a youngster, Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain feels a little dated, these days, but still largely holds up. Featuring Ray Milland and Donald Pleasence as nefarious 1%ers out to exploit the psychic abilities of a couple of cherubic extraterrestrial kids and Eddie Albert as the kindly (if curmudgeonly) guy who takes them under his wing, there’s lots of the usual Disney shenanigans (dancing puppets in an extended, almost overly jubilant bit) but also just enough real menace to give the whole thing a little bite.

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We Are Still Here — Before it collapses a little in the final third, writer/director Ted Geoghegan’s debut, We Are Still Here, is an appropriately chilling little homage to films like Lucio Fulci’s House By the Cemetery and The Beyond. Up until the Grand Guignol finale, the film is a mostly glacier-paced exercise in sustained tension that makes good use of its chilly, isolated locations, puncturing the relative calm with bracing moments of intense, physical violence. Although the film becomes much more predictable when it turns into something of a supernatural Straw Dogs by the end,  what leads up to that is suitably chilling and bodes well for Geoghegan’s future output. And besides: any film that features both Larry Fessenden (his séance scene is fantastic) and Barbara Crampton obviously has its heart in the right place.

Thursday, 10/8

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The Hidden — More of a relentless action film than a horror or sci-fi film (similar to the modus operandi behind The Terminator), The Hidden is a giddy, full-throttle and gently mindless bit of cinematic cotton candy. The interplay between a young Kyle MacLachlan and tough-as-nails Michael Nouri is the real star of the show, although elements like the kickass punk/metal soundtrack and a suitably slimy slug-alien creature do their job to keep the home fires burning. Add in a slightly subversive sense of humor (the scene where the alien becomes a woman for the first time is kind of great) and you’ve got yourself the recipe for a fun, if largely forgotten, bit of ’80s action fluff.

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Air — With an intriguing premise (two blue-collar guys are responsible for taking care of the rest of humanity, who are all cryogenically frozen) and a pair of solid performances from The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus and Amistad’s Djimon Hounsou, indie sci-fi thriller Air should have been an easy home-run. When the film just focuses on the nitty-gritty of Reedus and Hounsou surviving against the odds, it’s an enthralling watch. Once the two end up at odds, however, the whole thing becomes much more conventional and much less interesting, winding up in a “happy” ending that feels as undeserved as it is contrived. Moon, Gravity and All is Lost did much more interesting things from roughly the same area code.

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Hidden — Rarely have I been as genuinely frustrated with a film as I was with Hidden. For the first half or so, the film is virtually flawless, managing to make the plight of a family of three in an underground bunker seem as white-knuckle and relentless as a rollercoaster. Once the twists start to pour in, however (three major ones, in a row, which is at least two twists too many), the genuinely interesting survival aspect is put on the back burner for an “us against them” trope that’s as old and musty as an ossuary. This was far from a terrible film, which actually made the let-down that much more frustrating. Call it the case of the front-runner who snaps their ankle right before the finish line: the true definition of tragedy.

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The Beyond — The effects are largely unconvincing (although extremely enthusiastic), the acting is rather rudimentary and any sense of logic or continuity is largely absent but I’ll be damned if legendary Itallo gore-godfather Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond isn’t one of the most unintentionally badass films in the horror universe. With a storyline that tosses Lovecraft, King and graphic splatter into a blender and punches “liquify,” The Beyond is pretty much the epitome of a film better experienced than pondered.  Fabbio Frizzi’s kinetic synth scores hits all the requisite Goblin tones, the oppressive atmosphere is as thick as denim and that final shot of the “beyond” is as unforgettable today as it was 34 years ago. Fulci might have been somewhat of a spiritual bratty little brother to Argento’s assured maestro but The Beyond proves that the irritable auteur earned his place in the horror pantheon. And then some.

Friday, 10/9

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Some Kind of Hate — This had a pretty unbeatable concept for a teen slasher (bullied misfit gets sent to a camp for troubled teens and unleashes the spirit of a vengeful, dead bullied teen) and a great concept for the “ghost” (she harms herself in order to harm her victims) but was pretty much DOA from the jump. Obnoxious, full of eye-rolling performances and never with more than a Wikipedia-lite grasp on teen bullying, this was a complete chore to sit through. Lead Ronen Rubenstein isn’t terrible, even if his character gets annoying before the final reel, but Sierra McCormick’s pivotal Moira (the ghost) is pretty awful, concept notwithstanding. Obvious, blunt to the point of being lunk-headed and ridiculously fidgety, this was a pretty big disappointment.

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Knock Knock — For a filmmaker who’s been something of a trend-setter since the early aughts, it’s important to remember that Eli Roth only had three full-lengths under his belt prior to this year (Cabin Fever, Hostel and Hostel 2). With his 2013 cannibal film The Green Inferno (finally seeing release this year) being more of an homage to classic Itallo-cannibal epics, this leaves Knock Knock with the onus of being Roth’s first truly “original” film since Hostel punched our gorge reflexes in the solar plexus over a decade ago. If you think about it, that’s quite a bit of anticipation…could anything actually live up to the hype?

Right off the bat, Knock Knock exhibits many of the issues that I’ve always had with Roth’s films: he can’t direct actors to save his life (he wrings an absolutely awful performance out of poor Keanu Reeves, who seemed to be on an upswing, as of late), his wild tonal shifts fail as much as they connect (his insistence on sneaking slapstick into his films is the kind of smirking affectation that should really be slapped out of him) and his continued reliance on friend/writer Guillermo Amoedo has produced more terrible scripts than bad (Aftershock, The Stranger and Knock Knock all have simply terrible scripts).

On the other hand, it’s impossible to deny that Knock Knock is a huge evolution in Roth’s filmmaking. While his grasp on tension, in the past, was always precipitated on the promise of extreme, mind-searing gore, Knock Knock manages to maintain its white-knuckle tension with nothing more extreme than a fork in the shoulder (for Roth, that’s pretty much the equivalent of a Disney film) and an escalating series of bad decisions that end up bearing enormously bad fruit. Knock Knock is an absolute blast from start to finish, regardless of (and, occasionally, because of) all the aforementioned issues. Reeves goes full Nic Cage, shit goes from bad to worse in record time and the various twists are genuinely smart, regardless of the clunky dialogue. Without a doubt, my favorite Roth film (I’ve yet to see The Green Inferno) and one of the most intriguing films I’ve screened in a while.

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All Hallows’ Eve 2 — The first All Hallows’ Eve came out of nowhere and completely bowled me over when I watched it last October, so I was pretty darn excited when the sequel popped up just as mysteriously. This time around, there are eight stories instead of three and multiple writers/directors handle the tales rather than the unified vision of the first one’s Damien Leone (definitely a filmmaker to watch). This is a whole lot more polished and flashy than Leone’s gritty, lo-fi original, which actually works against the whole “found footage on a VHS tape” angle. That being said, the stories are all interesting, even if only three of the eight could properly be considered “shorts” with full structures: the others are more vignettes than anything else (one short is only two minutes long, after all). A post-apocalyptic trick or treat session yields some real chills and “A Boy’s Life” surprises with its genuine emotional heft and great acting. There are a lot worse horror anthologies out there than All Hallows’ Eve 2, even if it never approaches the disturbing heights of its predecessor.

Saturday, 10/10

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Curse of Chucky — I didn’t expect much when I started this, which made it all the more surprising when I fell head over heels for it. In the purest ways possible, Don Mancini’s Curse of Chucky (the sixth in the series, all of which have been written by Mancini) is a perfect horror film: the villain is fantastic and genuinely menacing, the acting is top-notch, the scares and tension are based around suspense and anticipation and the effects are astounding. Everything about the film shot for the sky and, for the most part, had no problem hitting orbit. Whether it was the way in which the film’s numerous set-pieces managed to channel Hitchcock (there’s a dinner scene that manages to sit nicely on the shelf next to ol’ Hitch’s classics), the subtle ways in which Chucky’s face gradually changed throughout the film or the brilliant ways in which Mancini not only tied the film in with the others but managed to expand on the mythos, Curse of Chucky is easily the best film in the series (that includes the original, ya purists) and one of the very best horror films I’ve seen in forever. Friends to the end, indeed!

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American Mary — I’ve already written extensively about the Soska Sisters’ American Mary when I first saw the film a few years back, so here’s the Cliff Notes version: this is an absolutely brilliant film and one of my very favorites, genre be damned. Impossibly ugly, heart-rendingly beautiful and featuring one of the most iconic protagonists in modern cinema, American Mary is one of those works of art that seems to descend from elsewhere, fully created and ready to set the world on fire. Completely badass, full of instantly memorable characters, thoroughly self-assured and absolutely fearless, American Mary is definitely one of the highlights of modern cinema. While this story of revenge, self-discovery and extreme body modification is a difficult pill to swallow, it’s the instant antidote to anyone who bemoans the lack of quality modern genre films. They exist: you just have to dig a little deeper, that’s all.

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The Final Girls — I went into Todd Strauss-Schulson’s The Final Girls fully expecting to love it and, to my extreme joy, I was not disappointed. Incredibly smart, cleverly meta, full of fantastic performances and genuinely emotionally resonant, this is easily one of the best horror films (well…horror-comedies) of the year. AHS’ Taissa Farmiga is simply stunning as the grief-choked daughter who gets a chance to reunite with her now-dead mother, albeit by “stepping into” an ’80s slasher film (blending Friday the 13th with The Purple Rose of Cairo is but one of the brilliant things presented here). There’s plenty of reliably comic performances here from the likes of Alia Shawkat, Thomas Middleditch and the always amazing Adam Devine but if you don’t choke up at the interactions between Farmiga and mom Malin Akerman, well…you might just have a heart of stone, buddy.

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The Midnight Swim — Leisurely paced to the point of occasionally feeling inert, writer/director Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim is the furthest thing from a thrill-ride. For patient viewers, however, this haunting tale of sisters returning to their childhood home to mourn their dead mother really pays off in the long run. While I wasn’t always on-board with some of Smith’s choices (there’s a goofy lip-synching scene that sort of sticks out and some of the scenes are held past the point of “evocative” straight into “navel-gazing”), I genuinely liked and respected the film. While the end may seem like a bit of a left-field twist, there are plenty of road signs to help guide us there and the whole thing ended up feeling impossibly uplifting and rather inspirational. Combine all of this with the fact that the film is, essentially, a found-footage movie and you have one of the most surprising, effective little films of the past few years. I, for one, cannot wait to see where Smith goes from here.

Sunday, 10/11

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Hardware — This genuinely frightening tale of technology run amok is impossibly weird, which only makes sense when you consider the source: auteur Richard Stanley is a genuinely weird genius. Full of hallucinatory images, nonsensical dream sequences, astounding moments of ultra-gore and some of the flat-out oddest characters this side of Mad Max (the scrap-dealing dwarf is great but the outrageously vulgar peeping tom is utterly unforgettable), this has been one of my favorite films since the very first time I saw it as an impressionable kid. I can guarantee one thing: you’ve never seen anything like this before and I seriously doubt we’ll see its like again. Apple pie nerve toxin: delicious!

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Tremors 5: Bloodlines — While I genuinely enjoy the first few films in the Tremors franchise (the original is an absolute classic), everything about the newest one is strictly by-the-book and rather silly. While the film looks pretty good and features decent performances from series mainstay Michael Gross and newcomer Jamie Kennedy, it’s strictly Sy-Fy when it comes to tone and intention. Add to this an uncomfortable tendency for the film to humiliate Gross’ heroic Burt Gummer at every possible turn (the scene where he gets trapped in a cage and is forced to drink his own urine, right before a large lion comes over and, literally, pisses all over him, is the worst kind of unforgettable) and you have a film that just isn’t a lot of fun.

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Saw VI — When I was younger, the Saw series was one of my favorites and I eagerly looked forward to each new installment. Years later, as I re-watch the entire series for the first time, I’m struck by one, simple thought: these films are actually kinda shitty. Aside from the invention of the first and the third entries, none of them have grabbed me anew and, to that end, Part 6 is one of the worst and most tedious. From the obnoxious hyper-kinetic editing to the genuinely ugly look to the impossibly stupid and increasingly complex motivations of the characters, everything about this film is like getting pounded in the face with a sledgehammer. Helmed by “filmmaker” Kevin Greutert, who would go on to helm the notoriously execrable Jessebelle, the only emotion Saw VI elicits is the overwhelming desire for Jigsaw to help the series end its pain. Wanna play a game? Naw…I’m good, dude.

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The Omen — Helmed by future Lethal Weapon director Richard Donner, The Omen is pretty much the epitome of multiplex horror circa the mid-’70s: based on a best-selling book, full of familiar faces, melodramatic and just violent enough to get the point across (the window-pane decapitation is a great setpiece, no matter how you slice it), it’s easy to see this appealing to the Saturday night, popcorn-and-soda crowd. On the plus-side, the film features sturdy performances from leads Peck and Remick and a handful of genuinely creepy moments (the graveyard scene is an easy highlight, as is the birthday party suicide). On the down side, it’s almost unrelentingly loud, heavy-handed and kind of dumb: add to that one of the most “Vasoliney” lenses since the glory days of Liz Taylor’s “White Diamonds” commercials and the whole thing feels fairly dated.

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Damien: Omen II — Despite being much more grounded and decidedly less hysterical than the first film, the second movie in the Omen series is still kind of a dud. None of the deaths have any impact (aside from the utterly batshit elevator scene, which easily tops anything in the entire series) and the military school setting is woefully under-used (as is poor Lance Henriksen). There is some interesting discussion based around Thorn Industries becoming a sort of proto-Monsanto but it’s more interesting in theory than execution. This is also where the first film’s mythos about stabbing the Antichrist with the seven daggers starts to get awfully slippery, leading to the final film’s veritable free-for-all. When the scariest thing in your horror film is a sinister crow, you might have a problem.

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Omen III: The Final Conflict — Finishing off the series, The Final Conflict lets the narrative from the first two films play to its conclusion, albeit influenced and modified by the burgeoning slasher trend of the early ’80s. There’s some first-person-stalker POV here (unlike the first two films) and the performances and violence certainly seem influenced by the era. Sam Neill is good as the now-grown Damien, even if his gentle gnawing of the scenery erupts into a full-on gluttonous orgy by the film’s final reel. For all that, however, the third Omen film is just serviceable, much like the first two. Extra points for the goofy, straight-faced religious salvation of the finale, which proves that evil always loses…especially when it chews the scenery like the Tasmanian Devil on speed. There are a couple genuinely shocking moments here (the attempted interview assassination begins on a slightly humorous edge before quickly nose-diving into pure horror) but, for the most part, is the dictionary definition of “middle-of-the-road.”

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 1 Mini-Reviews

09 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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31 Days of Halloween, cinema, Cooties, Dark Was the Night, Deathgasm, film franchise, film reviews, films, Hellions, horror, horror movies, mini-reviews, Monsters, Monsters: Dark Continent, Movies, October, Saw, Saw 2, Saw 3, Saw 4, Saw franchise, The American Scream, The Blood Lands, The Boy, The Houses October Built, The Nightmare, They, Turbo Kid, White Settlers

Grains of sand are curious things: if you have one, you really don’t have much of anything…if you have a couple trillion, you have a beach. This is, of course, all by way of saying that the scattered grains of sand that were my pending film reviews have quickly grown to something that more closely resembles a dune. Since it will still be some time before I can completely catch up, I figured I’d do the next best thing and write up some mini-reviews in the meantime, lest I quickly find myself buried beneath a solid month’s worth of films.

To that end, I now present a few thoughts about the films I screened during the first week of this year’s 31 Days of Halloween (10/1-10/4). Since one of the main purposes of this humble little blog is to turn folks on to new films, I wanted to make sure to get some recommendations out there while folks can still program a little Halloween goodness of their own. With no further ado, then..

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Thursday, 10/1

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The Nightmare — This fascinating little documentary about the frightening phenomenon of sleep paralysis comes to us from the filmmakers behind the recent Shining/conspiracy theory doc, Room 237. Through a mixture of interviews and re-enactments, we get a front-row seat to a genuinely disturbing, almost impossible strange malady that might affect more people than you at first realize.

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Dark Was the Night — Coming across as a sturdy combination of Feast and 30 Days of Night, DWtN is a thoroughly competent “monster invades a small town” flick that features strong performances from Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas and Nick Damici (one of my all-time favorites) and a suitably bleak resolution.

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The Blood Lands — Starting strong before gradually losing its way, The Blood Lands (formerly known by the much more incendiary but pointless title White Settlers) ended up on my shit-list by taking one of the best genre actresses in the business, Pollyana McIntosh, and saddling her with a simpering ninny of a character. Imagine if Lt. Ripley took one look at the Queen Xenomorph and decided to let the boys handle it, instead: yeah, I didn’t buy it, either. McIntosh’s glorious “The Woman” character would take one look at The Blood Lands’ Sarah and knock her straight into next week.

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They — Despite some effective (if minor) chills, Robert Harmon’s They is just about as beige and generic as its title would indicate. While this tale about now-grown friends confronting (literally) the demons of their childhood makes some minor nods to classic “confronting-the-past” horrors like It, it really plays out as more of a watered-down version of the already tepid Under the Bed. Even Ethan Embry can’t make this particularly interesting: make of that what you will.

Friday, 10/2

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The Houses October Built — This modest little found-footage flick about friends looking for the ultimate haunted house experience (as in “professional haunts with people in masks,” not “actually haunted houses,” which is an important distinction) genuinely surprised me: gritty, unnerving, fairly realistic and genuinely creepy, there’s a whole lot to like here. The “villains” are all quite memorable (scary clowns never get old, for one thing) and the film never quite devolves into “torture porn” territory, even though it toes the line. Pretty much the definition of a sleeper.

Saturday, 10/3

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The American Scream — A charming, thoroughly winning documentary about three families in a small American town who go all out for Halloween, turning their respective homes into some of the most impressive, cool amateur haunted houses that I’ve ever seen. Growing up, we always turned our home and garage into elaborate haunts every year, so The American Scream ended up being the best kind of nostalgia for me.

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Saw — Despite some truly terrible performances (Leigh Whannell, in particular, is astoundingly bad and poor Danny Glover isn’t much better) and a really ugly look, there’s something inherently feral about James Wan’s surprise hit debut. More of a mystery, ala Se7en, than the latter entries in the series, Saw features some great twists (I’ll forget the audience reaction to the final revelation when I watched this on opening night) and introduced the sense of moral relativism to torture porn that it so desperately needed (and still needs, to be honest). It’ll never end up on any “Best of…” lists but it’s also not the worst thing out there.

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Monsters — I was never a huge fan of this film when I first saw it, although my opinion has softened a bit in the ensuing years. In a nutshell, Monsters is sort of a mumblecore creature feature: we follow our hesitant “will they?/won’t they?” potential romantic couple as they attempt to make their way from monster-infested South America into the relative safety of the United States. Just as much an immigration/border parable as a monster movie, Monsters keeps its creatures firmly in the background, allowing the humans to take the stage. Think of this as the “anti-Pacific Rim,” if you will.

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Saw II — Continuing to expand on the original film’s “mythos,” the first sequel introduces Donnie Wahlberg and puts more of an emphasis on the traps. It’s a solid step-down from the first film, mostly due to writer/director Darren Lynn Bousman’s obnoxious stylistic quirks and some of the most unpleasant characters to grace the screen in some time. No wonder audiences rooted for Jigsaw: if it was up to me, I woulda nuked ’em all and been done with it.

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Monsters: Dark Continent — A fairly massive disappointment, this belated follow-up to Gareth Edwards’ effective original is really just another film about U.S. soldiers in the Middle East. It’s telling when the filmmakers opt to make local insurgents the real threat over the massive monsters that blithely roam around the Iraqi desert. We get it, guys: this isn’t “just” another monster movie….it’s about “bigger things.” They’re right: it’s not just another monster movie…it’s actually another dull, generic and clichéd war film. Huzzah!

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Saw III — Part from the first film, the third in the series is, hands-down, my favorite. The twisting machinations of Jigsaw’s convoluted plan are suitably gripping but it’s the downright nefarious traps that really get the blood pumping. There’s an honest-to-god story arc here about a father trying to get over the hit-and-run death of his young child and it really works. Plus, ya know, that bit with the liquified pig carcasses is pretty impossible to forget.

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Saw IV — More convoluted than the previous entry and decidedly less fun, the fourth entry in the series isn’t terrible (that would be the second and fifth) but it is pretty forgettable. This fully introduces Costas Mandylor’s Hoffman character and starts the series down the winding, twisting path that ultimately leads to its resolution. More than anything, though, it’s the fourth entry in a multiplex horror series: innovative, it is not.

Sunday, 10/4

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Cooties — Thus far, this gleefully misanthropic horror-comedy is not only my favorite film of October but one of my favorite films of the entire year (and then some). The concept is unbeatable (chicken nuggets turn pre-pubescent kids into ravenous flesh-eaters and it’s up to a motley group of grade school teachers to save the day), the cast is amazing (Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad and the single best performance by actor/writer Leigh Whannell that he’s ever done) and the whole thing expertly toes the line between laugh-out-loud funny and edge-of-your-seat tense. I instantly loved this as much as Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and I definitely don’t say that lightly.

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The Boy — The polar-opposite of Cooties, Craig William Macneill’s The Boy is a stunning examination of a burgeoning serial killer’s first, tentative, boyhood steps towards ultimate evil. Nothing about the film is pleasant in any conventional way but, like the iconic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, I dare you to tear your eyes from the screen. David Morse and Rainn Wilson are fabulous playing against their usual types but it’s young Jared Breeze (who’s also in Cooties, ironically) who will stomp your heart into a mud-hole. This is the kind of film that everyone should see, especially as terrible acts of random violence continue to plague our world.

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Deathgasm — Heavy metal and horror go together like beer and Slayer shows: you can have either/or but it’s always the best when they’re paired up. Screaming out of New Zealand, writer/director Jason Lei Howden’s full-length-debut is hilarious, heart-felt and full of more fist-raising set-pieces than you can shake a Flying V at. Sort of like the tragically under-rated Canadian TV marvel Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, Deathgasm doesn’t take any cheap shots at his corpse-paint-bedecked heroes: the “beautiful” people are the fodder and it’s up to the outcasts to save the day. Extra points for Kimberley Crossman’s frankly adorable transformation from stereotypical blonde princess to ridiculously epic ass-kicker: she needs her own stand-alone movie, stat.

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Hellions — I absolutely loved Canadian wunderkind Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool (easily one of the best, most ingenious and freshest zombie film to come out in a good 15 years), so my anticipation was through the roof for Hellions: after all, how could a film about a pregnant teenager making a desperate Halloween-eve stand against demonic trick or treaters fail? Turns out, it’s not quite as difficult as I imagined. While Hellions is far from a terrible film (the film’s pink-tinted look, alone, makes it one of the most visually interesting films I’ve ever seen, assorted creepy, hallucinatory images notwithstanding), it is a terribly confusing, cluttered and rather haphazard one. Similar to Rob Zombie’s Fulci homage The Lords of Salem, Hellions emphasizes odd, evocative visuals and dreamy, nightmare scenarios over any kind of narrative cohesion. I didn’t hate Hellions, by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s no denying it’s an odd, often off-putting film.

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Turbo Kid — My level of anticipation for this throwback to the VHS ’80s was so high that it’s probably inevitable I would be disappointed. Don’t get me wrong: there’s an awful lot to like here and even quite a few things to love. The synthy score is spot-on, the over-the-top violence comes close to Jason Eisener’s ridiculously radical Hobo With a Shotgun and the sense of world building (albeit on an extreme budget) is admirable. For all that, however, the film never fully connected with me. Perhaps it was the awkward love story (Laurence Leboeuf’s performance as Apple is so unrelentingly weird and strange that I was genuinely baffled as to what Munro Chambers’ Kid saw in her), the too-often self-conscious acting or the overall scattershot feel. Whatever the reason, I went into this expecting Turbo Kid to be my new favorite film and came out extolling the virtues of Hobo With a Shotgun, instead. Gotta love Skeletron, though!

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