Tag Archives: Horror

Cinema Crazed’s 2018 Halloween Horror Month Has Begun!

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Once upon a time, “Halloween Horror Month” was an idea. An idea bred from a goal to look for an excuse celebrate our love for horror for a whole month. In the past we’d post a glut of horror reviews for Halloween and only Halloween, but that didn’t quite feed our appetite. Now we aspire to celebrate not just Halloween, but October, and the horror genre as a whole. For “Halloween Horror Month” we celebrate thirty two days of horror, the occult, and the paranormal. Yes, we count Dio De Los Muertos. For thirty two days we’ll bring you reviews, articles, lists, and a lot more good stuff for what promises to be a very entertaining Halloween season.

We hope you join us for all of October, and to get in the mood, feel free to view some choice Halloween/Horror themed videos below!

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Extremity (2018)

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A traumatized young woman signs up to be a visitor/victim at an extreme haunt to overcome her fears, her anxieties, and her past.

Written by David Bond and Scott Swan and directed by Anthony DiBlasi, Extremity takes a look into extreme haunts, how some operate, why some people may be interested in running them and in going to them. The phenomenon was explored in the documentary Haunters: The Art of the Scare and here it’s dramatized to bring a compelling story that can easily fall into horror on multiple levels. The writing and directing for Extremity are well-done and the interest in the explored themes seems genuine and not solely done for shock effect. The film does have a few mostly shocking moments but it is much more about the characters and their motivations than about attempting Hostel-like levels of torture porn which works for some movies but would have felt wrong here. Extremity is not about the body count but about fear and trauma on a more psychological level.

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Luciferina (2018) [Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2018]

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A trainee nun, Natalia, goes home after an accident kills her mother and leaves her father dying. Once home, she discovers family secrets and goes on a self-discovery trip with friends. There she learns even more and puts her own soul at stake.

Writer/director Gonzalo Calzada takes the concepts of good versus bad, god versus evil, Catholic versus pagan, family, legacy, and destiny and plays with them in a dark realm tinged by demonic forces and curiosity. The story here is done in a way that works for its characters, letting them get exposed and built before throwing in the evil/demonic elements. Most of everything here works and goes towards creating a cohesive story and world. Some of the timeline and exposure may feel a bit off as it foes, but it all makes sense by the end. Calzada has a story here that he knows how to tell and he gets it out here on the screen in a way the viewer can easily watch, connect with, and be entertained by.

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Mara (2018)

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As criminal psychologist Kate helps with a murder investigation that the police seems to consider an open and shut case, she discovers that other forces may be at play, putting herself in harm’s way as she investigates.

Based on a story by Jonathan Frank and Clive Tonge, Mara is written by Jonathan Frank and directed by Clive Tonge. Together they create a story that feels familiar with a few fresh elements added to it all interesting. The story does make fairly good use of the unknown factor, but it doesn’t build on the tension and suspense enough, rendering a potentially scary story only entertaining. The titular character is interesting and is given a fully fleshed out background as the film advances but something feels like it’s missing which will lead some to feel like what is missing is a sense of the unknown, leaving the film with very little dread or fear from this unknown or Mara. The story may be scary to casual horror fans, but will most likely not be all that scary to genre fans who have seen a lot of this story’s type.

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The Predator (2018)

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Somehow in the age of studios reviving remnants of the eighties and destroying them with convoluted mythology and narratives, “Predator” has been somewhat spared. Sure, it was involved with the “Alien” series for a bit, but it’s primarily stayed simplistic and true to the original film–unlike the “Terminator” and “Alien” movie series. “The Predator” is a movie that will likely divide fans of the original film and series as a whole; it’s filled with a ton of plot, an array of characters and is somewhat the antithesis of the original film’s more straight forward machismo based narrative. It also dares to expand on the mythos, should Shane Black be given another shot with a sequel.

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Female Filmmaker Friday: La Quinceañera (2017) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2018]

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On the evening of her quinceañera, Alejandra witnesses the slaughter of her family. With the few surviving members, they set out of make things right.

Created and written by Shane McKenzie and Gigi Saul Guerrero with the latter directing, La Quinceañera started off as a series of webisodes and then became a feature with all the episodes gathered together in one feature. The film version is easy to watch with separate chapters that lead the story from a sweet start to a very bloody ending. The characters built here are strong and work together in a way that is natural and very much like a family.

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