Five Movies to Look Out for at The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2023

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For the eighth straight year the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival comes to New York City to debut and celebrate a slew of horror films, from the independents to the masters. The Festival runs from October 12th through October 19th with all screenings held at Nitehawk Cinema’s Williamsburg and Prospect Park locations. This year, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is placing an emphasis on J Horror with tributes to Hideo Nakata and what became a sub-genre.

Here are five films on the schedule I’m looking forward to.

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Dear David (2023)

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In 2017, a weird ARG by the name of “Dear David” popped up online that became an instant viral sensation. It was the timeline of Buzzfeed cartoonist Adam Ellis who was documenting the supposed haunting of his apartment by a small disfigured boy. What began as a series of tweets and fuzzy pictures of unusual shapes hiding in the crevices of his one bedroom apartment slowly escalated in to horrifying taunts, and nightly visits as the apparent apparition became bolder and began to drive David to the brink of madness. “Dear David” is an okay adaptation of the original viral thread, and while it’s by no means a home run of a horror film, it works in rare instances as a tech based thriller.

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Ranking the “Scary Movie” Series from Best to Worst

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By the end of the 1990’s, the big slasher movie boom had all but run out of steam, allowing the sub-genre to be ripe for spoofing. In came the Wayans family, all of whom had had previous experience with spoofs in the eighties with their classic “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka!” Keenan Ivory Wayans took the lead directing “Scary Movie” for Dimension Films, which not only goofed on many of the films released during that period, but had a good time with it, too.

While “Scary Movie” promised “no sequels,” we did get them because—it’s Hollywood, after all. We received about four sequels to be exact, and they all arrived with very diminishing returns. Sadly, the more the movies went on, the worse they became, so it’s ironic that the series gets worse in order of the films’ release.

Here’s my ranking of the series from best to worst.

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Bring it On: Cheer or Die (2022)

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There’s a horror sequel to “Bring it On.” Repeat: There is a horror sequel (part seven!) to “Bring it On.” The cheerleading sports teen comedy that birthed a series of cheerleading sports teen comedies actually has a sequel that is a full on horror movie. That’s kind of like a sequel to “Mission Impossible” that’s a full on slasher film or something. It’s kind of amazing. It’s too bad “Cheer or Die” just isn’t.

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Hellraiser (2022)

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It takes a lot for me to invest in a new “Hellraiser” movie as they’ve all but quit trying to give us anything new or interesting. Thankfully director David Bruckner is up to the task of offering not just a new story but a new take on the Cenobites. Despite the troubling title (This “Hellraiser” is not so much a remake, or sequel, but kind of a reboot…?), David Bruckner’s “Hellraiser” film is really quite good. It’s dripping in suspense and terror, and finally brings some mystique to the Cenobites once again. The Cenobites are pure terror on two legs with “Hellraiser” and Bruckner doles out some twisted machinations of the Lament Configuration.

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Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)

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Allegedly Gary J. Tunnicliffe originally drew up a script for a “Hellraiser” movie which he then retooled in to an indie horror film after it was rejected. Later his concept was reworked in to a “Hellraiser” movie as a means of keeping the series in motion. Without the bits about the Cenobites, “Judgment” feels like a cheap “Seven” knock off about a serial killer that weaponizes the ten commandments instead of the seven deadly sins. It feels like a movie that was made in 2002 with choppy editing and murky directing that made it feel like a music video for Evanescence or System of a Down.

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Hellraiser (1987) [LA&M Film Fetish Forum]

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“What is your pleasure, sir?”

Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” is a purely body horror tale about hedonism in its purest and most raw essence. Even today it’s a very erotic, but gruesome tale about the pursuit of pleasures of the flesh and how it links to a breed of entities that may or may not be pure evil. “Demons to some, Angels to others” Pinhead (technically named “Hellpriest”) proclaims is a representation of the how the cenobites reach deep down in to the pits of sexuality and kink. And no human can ever really be prepared to see what the practices of this otherworld army has in store for them.

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