Tag Archives: Halloween

Terrifier (2017) [Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2017]

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A crazed clown terrorizes a group of young women and the people trying to help them on Halloween night.

Written and directed by Damien Leone, Terrifier takes the scary clown idea and ups the violence from recent films such as IT and makes the kills bloodier and more brutal.  The film has some definitely good ideas and the clown’s design is interesting and creepy for sure, but for those without coulrophobia, the clown is only as scary as the performance for him.  This is something that will be touched on in a little bit.  The story here is the classic slasher on Halloween night story; a killer maims and hurts a group of people on Halloween night.  The difference is in the execution which is well done here but still feels a bit like more of the same at times.  The title, Terrifier, gives an expectation for the viewer that this will be terrifying and unless you are really scared of clowns, the film is only a little scary and not quite terrifying.

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Donnie Darko: Meat Suits and Multiverses

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Richard Kelly’s “Donnie Darko” has managed to become somewhat mythical among movie buffs, despite being so widely celebrated. It’s a movie with a fairly simplistic tale about time travel and paradoxes, but also has been interpreted by many people and injected with ideas that fit the general frame work of what “Donnie Darko” is. Some people call it a Christ allegory, some people call it a time travel movie, and Kelly himself has called the movie “Catcher in the Rye” if it were written by Phillip K. Dick. There is a surefire hint of author Phillip K. Dick in the way that our main character Donnie Darko is stuck in this hazy world of suburban conformity and alarming aggression. It seeps in to the desperation to be accepted and act accordingly by just about everyone.

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3 Dead Trick or Treaters (2016)

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3-dead-trick-or-treatersAn author writes stories for the 3 dead trick or treaters he killed and buried.  These stories are about teens going murderous, a human sacrifice, hungry homeless people, and a special delivery. Writer/director Torin Langen takes the anthology sub-genre and gives it an extra twist by having no dialog.  The film is not actually silent, there are noises and the characters make the occasional sound, but no one actually talks to anyone.  This twist or different way to do things forces the film to develop its stories without the strength of the spoken word, giving more importance to the actions and the music to pass information and emotions.  This shift is interesting and leads to the viewer having to pay more attention to what is on the screen.

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Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell (2016)

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hulk-wheremonstersdwellYou can’t get anymore Halloween than teaming up Marvel’s monstrous Hulk alongside the Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange. On Halloween Night, demons begin wreaking havoc in New York City, prompting Doctor Strange to do everything he can to slay them and bring them in to his holding cell in his temple. Thankfully he calls upon the Incredible Hulk to help him, and Hulk is more than happy to oblige in stomping some demons. Little does Hulk know that the demons are manifestations of human victims that are being held hostage by the villainous Nightmare who has kept them held in their own dream plains. Strange ventures in to the dream dimension to save Bruce Banner when Nightmare begins using the Hulk to hurt Strange.

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Trick ‘r Treat: Days of the Dead (Paperback)

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trtdotdFor folks that didn’t know if “Trick r Treat” would end up as a one and done horror classic, or end up becoming a full fledged dynasty, creator Michael Dougherty is nice enough to team up with Legendary Pictures to deliver “Days of the Dead.” Michael Dougherty pens the introduction to “Days of the Dead,” where still uncertain if a sequel would ever blossom back in 2015, helped build this anthology to keep Sam alive in our hearts. “Days of the Dead” is a mid-quel ripped directly out of the “Trick r Treat” universe, the graphic novel unfolds five stories involving Halloween and Autumn that tries to recapture the spirit of the original film. With the mid-quel being a graphic novel, Dougherty side steps the interconnected story format from the film and bonds the tales mainly through our beloved Sam.

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Everyday is Halloween

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“Everyday is Halloween, Isn’t it? For Some of Us.”

the-tinglerIt’s Halloween.

When I was a kid, my mom would always sit us down to watch whatever cartoons or action movies were on, while she went off to cook or clean. Back then, we didn’t have cable, but we did have many VHS movies, and most of them were horror movies that my mom kept in a chest in her room, away from us.

My mom had a stellar library of the classic horror films, and many of them were on VHS, and included titles she’d watch religious. Though she banned more adult horror films from us for a long time, she’d trained us to be horror fans, and to quench our thirst for the frightening, we’d watch stuff like “The Monster Squad,” and “The Goonies.” These were films that were creepy, but not scary enough to keep us up at night.

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Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)

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amadeahalloweenIt’s too bad we get a Halloween comedy, but it’s a man who’s based his entire career around a character tailored for religious audiences. I’m not saying the religious can’t celebrate Halloween, but Tyler Perry seems to center his movie on the holiday for absolutely no reason other than grabbing October crowds. “Boo! A Madea Halloween” isn’t a bad movie by any stretch, but it is Tyler Perry’s most unfocused and tonally inconsistent. Perry has no idea how to handle the aesthetic of Halloween. He can’t even use it as a means of conveying what could have been a very touching story about a dad who is trying to gain control of his increasingly out of control daughter. Halloween is more of an after thought here.

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