I’m yelling! I’m yelling very loudly and at the same time as everyone else thus creating the facade that there is conflict in a boring movie! I am angry for some reason! I am lost in a labyrinth of an abandoned insane asylum and am yelling louder for some reason! Watch me yell some more proving there is conflict where there is none! Loud noises! My temper is inexplicably short! It is very scary when people are lost in dark halls for almost eighty minutes only to hear the occasional whisper and no pay off!
The Craft (1996)
The nineties experienced an odd resurgence in the interest of witchcraft for a while. So much so that even I dabbled in it and Paganism for a while. In my ever expanding love for the occult I took to intensive research of the art of witchcraft, and I think it was contagious for a while. There was the hit TV show “Charmed,” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” and of course there were films like “Hocus Pocus,” “Practical Magic,” the revived film version of “The Crucible,” and the rather slick horror drama “The Craft” to help induce the interest in the apparent appeal of the religion. While somewhat fading in to obscurity, it’s still an utterly mesmerizing teen oriented horror thriller and one painfully copied in “The Covenant.”
The Innkeepers (2012)
It’s odd that though Ti West is primarily a director who tackles horror films, that if he ever decided to write a drama or comedy, he could really deliver a near masterpiece. Save for “The Roost,” and “Cabin Fever 2,” director Ti West has proven a master of slow boil horror films that are written beautifully. Featuring rich and well developed characters, director Ti West is a very strong writer and horror director who has offered some unique horror films for indie fans. Though he’s not the juggernaut horror journalists are quick to tout him as, Ti West can write damn good scripts and create likable and charming characters who are involved in horrifying situations. And when he finally delivers the boom after a long session of watching the fuse burn, it’s satisfying and absolutely twisted.
Rosemary's Baby (1968) (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-Ray]
It’s not too often we’re granted a major motion picture with an all star cast that presents audience with such a subversive undertone of family and maternal struggles. It wasn’t up until this year that I learned “Rosemary’s Baby” comes from author Ira Levin who wrote “The Stepford Wives.” The latter work of fiction is a brilliant and horrifying look at the male animal struggling to repress the rising tide of feminism and women’s liberation across Western civilization through very shocking means. As the women of an elite group of men branch out seeking independence and liberation from home life, the men eventually form their plan to replace their women robotic drones that are perfectly content living the life of a subservient being whose goal is to please sexually and domestically.
6:14 (2012)
Fourth Wall Studios has invested in a project that I found quite fun to experience, even if the concept doesn’t totally make a lot of sense. “6:14” is one short film in their series of short horror films that doesn’t just make you the viewer, but the game player. After inserting my phone number and information to Rides.tv for my account, I watched “6:14” ready to see what would occur. Ethan Embry plays a man who keeps waking up at odd times during six o’clock. Whenever he awakens he finds he’s in a closed off environment and there is someone waiting in the darkness prepared to murder him in the most violent and creative fashion.
Shark Night 3D (2011)
Sara Paxton, Sara Paxton, and Sara Paxton. Now that you know why I saw “Shark Night” in the first place, let’s skip the excuses. And it’s only apt, since “Shark Night” should really be called “All the Boys Love Sara Paxton.” It feels like the studio only had sharks in a lake as a concept for a film and basic outline. They then discovered they were casting Sara Paxton, and they basically built the film around her. What starts as a goofy yarn about sharks in a lake, transforms in to Sara Paxton vs. Sharks in a Lake. The film is a love letter to Paxton and her absolutely unique sex appeal. She’s a country born small town ideal college girl who everyone wants. Guys flirt with her, girls hang around her, and even her own dog refuses to leave her side. She engages in a high speed chase with the local sheriff who happens to be her friend and he laughs off her fleeing, flirts with her, and has a beer! Even after she and her friends are hunted by sharks while their friend bleeds to death from a bitten off arm, the men still try to get Paxton’s character in to the sack.
The Thing From Another World (1951)
Upon its initial release, John Carpenter’s “The Thing” was poorly received both at the box-office and by critics. It didn’t help that it had been released around the time of “E.T” and its domination of pop culture, and that it had been considered by most to be a remake of a classic, barely flawed monster movie from the fifties. John Carpenter proved you can remake a film and provide your own twist without ruining the integrity of the original. “The Thing” is considered by most to be the closest adaptation to the original short story “Who Goes There?” around, while “The Thing From Another World” is not so much an adaptation and opts to create a hulking beast in place of an amorphous entity that hides inside human beings. Perhaps they thought it’d be too cerebral or dark for its time.