“Buried Alive” is one of the earliest Frank Darabont movies that indicates a lot of what Darabont would have coming for fans of his cinematic outputs. While it’s very much a TV movie, and feels a lot more like an episode of an anthology series than a movie, it’s still a pretty strong revenge thriller overall. “Buried Alive” is dark and bleak from minute one where Tim Matheson is great as an everyday working man and contractor who is a victim of a devious and greedy woman. There’s nothing particularly wrong with his character, he’s just so set in his ways and can’t notice that his wife is a gold digger who has sinister plans for him.
Category Archives: Halloween Horror Month
Night of the Living Dead (1968): 50th Anniversary [Blu-ray/Digital]
With the unfortunate death of George A. Romero this year, now is the best time to re-visit “Night of the Living Dead.” It’s hard to believe what one small mistake could have done to alter history, as Romero’s accidental omission of the copyright sign for “Night of the Living Dead” allowed his horror masterpiece to become public domain, and for his idea of the zombie to become open game for anyone and everyone with an imagination. Just imagine if Romero had copyrighted the concept of the flesh eating zombie and we probably wouldn’t have about eighty percent of the zombie movies we have today.
Ruin Me (2017) [Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2017]
A non-fan joins a group going to Slasher Sleepout, a camp experienced based on slasher films, when a friend could not attend. As things take a turn for the worse and fake death becomes real, she must fight for her life and participate in this activity she definitely does not care for.
A Father’s Day (2016) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2017]
A man meets a young girl as they both are zombies and shuffling through life. As they make new memories and make the day special, their father-daughter bond strengthens.
Written and directed by Mat Johns, A Father’s Day creates a relationship that shows how strong the bonds between a father and daughter can be in a gut-punch of a short film. He uses the zombie apocalypse as a backdrop to show family bonds and how people can relate to each other. It’s a simple set up, yet it contains so many layers and so much in terms of emotional baggage. The film shows different levels of zombies and different levels of human interactions and bonds.
Cult of Chucky (2017)
I guess now that Don Mancini is taking the wheel back for the “Child’s Play” series, he can basically do whatever he wants with it. It’s just too bad that he follows up the great “Curse of Chucky” with an utterly inferior sequel that dodges any potential at bringing the premise of Chucky to a new level. “Cult of Chucky” looks shockingly cheaper than the previous film with a lot of green screen and obviously computer animated scenes, all with a back drop of a pretty clumsy riff on “Dream Warriors.” Mancini literally breaks all of the pre-established continuity (who knew ghosts could age?) and mythology in order to bend the premise to his will, failing to provide much of an explanation that’s worth buying in to.
Bride of Chucky (1998)
By 1998, the “Child’s Play” movie series reached the point of no return. The third film in the series was a stale slasher, and Wes Craven re-invented the horror movie, while accidentally spawning a slew of self-aware slashers and horror movies. Hence, “Bride of Chucky” came along and took it to a whole new level. The idea of a female version of Chucky is a great one, and one that could have spawned a wonderful and thrilling movie with a change up in the sexual dynamic and how Chucky approaches his murderous habits, but Ronny Yu’s reboot/sequel instead dives head first in to material that’s a spoof, a satire, a sequel, a meta-horror movie, a horror comedy, and sometimes just a flat out slapstick comedy that comes dangerously close to breaking the fourth wall.
Child’s Play 3 (1991)
“Don’t fuck with the Chuck!”
You can tell the studios basically ran out of ideas with this third installment of the “Chucky” series, so they pretty much just ripped off “Friday the 13th” part five this time around. This series was begging to be rebooted by the time we reached this new installment, as “Child’s Play 3” is filled with such a bland set piece, and pretty weak character motivations overall. For no real explanation there’s a very young boy in a military academy filled with people in their twenties, and Chucky seems to be running thin on reasons to kill. In the past he killed people that complicated his larger goals, now he kills because people decide to annoy him. Even for a psychopath that gets kind of boring.