It is Halloween and Drew is ready to dress up as her favorite superhero and collect candy. It’s her favorite night of the year but her best friend Walker has no desire to go out for the holiday. That’s also because there’s been a string of mysterious disappearances over the last month, with four people gone without a trace. After successfully convincing her parents to let her go out at night, Drew convinces Walker to go out for Halloween, now that her friends from her old neighborhood Shane and Shana have come to town to pay her a visit.
Tag Archives: Adaptation
Tower of Terror (1997)
Director D.J. McHale manages to take what is a very simple but iconic ride for Disney World and transform it in to a pretty engrossing and charming supernatural thriller. “Tower of Terror,” now being remade in to a bigger budget Hollywood film, is one of the very few adaptations from Disney that not too many people are aware of. It precedes “Pirates of the Caribbean” and adds a neat mythology to the ride overall. “Tower of Terror” (sans the “Twilight Zone” connection) is something like “The Shining” except filled with a much sweeter tale about jealousy, grief, and a gross misunderstanding. Steve Guttenberg plays tabloid photographer Buzzy, a once prominent journalist now reduced to taking pictures for goofy supermarket papers. Alongside his loyal niece Anna (a teenaged Kirsten Dunst), the pair begin investigating the dreaded Hollywood Towers.
The Haunted Mansion (2003)
It is a shame that “The Haunted Mansion” has the Eddie Murphy taint all over it. I think there’s a good movie to be made about “The Haunted Mansion” and it doesn’t involve the same old Eddie Murphy tropes we’ve seen in the past fifteen years. Eddie Murphy is once again a dopey work a day man who babbles to himself, and is so self involved he can’t notice his family is right in front of him. It’s the same goofy plot points that count as conflict in Eddie Murphy movies these days. Murphy is one note yet again as workaholic dad Jim Evers, a dopey real estate agent impossibly married to a beautiful woman who is, as always, put upon and ever patient toward his priorities of choosing work over family. When Jim’s wife Sara is called to an old mansion to oversee the property, Jim tags along hoping to garner a sale.
Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (2016) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]
Before he was an iconic horror writer that every horror buff emulated, HP Lovecraft was a young boy named Howard whose imagination kept him company in 1897. After visiting his father in an asylum and consoling him for suffering delusions about monsters and beasts, Howard’s mother gives him his father’s journal to read for fun. Little does Howard know that his father’s journal, which happens to be the Necronomicon, is a portal to a magical world where Howard makes friends with a lot of creatures, all of which are not as they seem. There he makes friends with a squid faced monster that becomes his loyal guard, and has to face a monstrous being known as the Shoggoth in hopes of stopping an unusual queen who wants the Necronomicon.
Demon (2015)
Piotr moves to Poland to marry his long-distance girlfriend Zaneta whose immediate family is less than thrilled with the situation but still supportive. As the wedding day approaches, Piotr finds bones in the yard of his marital home. Things take an odd turn and a restless spirit, or dybbuk, possesses the groom. Co-written by Pawel Maslona and director Marcin Wrona, Demon is a slow burn drama with horror elements. The title leads one to believe it would be more straight up horror film but the reality is that it’s a drama about a wedding or marriage that may have been a bad idea to start with and as the film advances and the spirit manifests itself it becomes a battle between people’s feelings and beliefs and people searching for the truth.
Dennis the Menace: The Complete Series (DVD)
After many years of waiting, fans of “Dennis the Menace” finally have their precocious trouble maker on DVD thanks to Mill Creek Entertainment. In 1986, Hank Ketcham’s hit newspaper comic strip was adapted once again in to an animated series that played on Saturday mornings. I watched “Dennis the Menace” a lot as a child as the networks played the series through syndication allowing me to see the show every single day. “Dennis the Menace” is a fun and pleasant animated series that channels the antics of Dennis the Menace, along with the colorful characters and unique world that comes with the territory.
Alena (2015) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016]
After a traumatic event, Alena is forced to change school and ends up under the watch of a therapist at an all-girl private school. Here she attempts to make friends, love, and move on with her life as her past clings to her. As she tries to live her life and be happy, ghosts of her past haunt her. The film is based on a graphic novel by Kim W. Andersson and is adapted for the screen by Kerstin Gezelius, Alexander Onofri, and Daniel di Grado with di Grado directing. The characters are strong, well developed people, mainly female given the all-girl school setting, and varied.