After a clown is killed by a virus in Romania, his corpses is brought back to the United States. Not long after, an office building is under attack by vampires and humanity’s only hope is a ragtag crew of inept night watchmen.
Tag Archives: Horror
The Bye Bye Man (2017)
It’s “The Bye Bye Man,” or as I call it “Honey, We Ripped Off Slenderman.” In all honesty, “The Bye Bye Man” actually looks like a weak Senator Palpatine cosplayer who died from toxic poisoning from his face make up and became a demon who likes to rip off his shtick from The Babadook, Freddy Krueger, and your every day mime. I’ve experienced scarier stories in young adult sections at public libraries, and could come up with a monster ten times more imposing, and with a name that doesn’t automatically inspire me to chortle under my breath. A movie this bad could only inspire me to gather my thoughts of bewilderment in an itemized list.
78/52 (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a hardcore film and horror buff and one of the first shots of a horror movie I ever recall watching was the scene in “Psycho” where Marion Crane is stalked in her shower and mercilessly stabbed to death. It’s a scene I’ve seen at least a thousand times since I was a child and its effectiveness and impact have never worn off for me. Every scene, every second, every single shot is so deliberate and meticulous that Hitchcock creates an entity on to itself in a genuinely flawless horror film. It’s not often you’ll find a full length documentary about one shot in an entire movie, but the iconic moment with Janet Leigh is a sequence that warrants so much examination and analyses. It’s every bit the symbolism and metaphor audiences of the fifties weren’t expecting.
Tragedy Girls (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
Did you see “Scream 4”? Do you remember the finale and surprise reveal, as well as the reasoning for the murderer’s devious deeds? Well, then you’ve seen “Tragedy Girls.” It feels a lot like Tyler MacIntyre loved the finale to “Scream 4” so much that he took that one twenty minute explanation, and transformed it in to a ninety minute movie that presents glimmers of brilliance, but stumbles quite often. While many will liken “Tragedy Girls” to “Heathers,” it’s actually about as smug and annoyingly self-satisfied as films like “Detention” and “Easy A.”
The Night Watchmen (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
Coulrophobics look out, “The Night Watchmen” is easily your worst nightmare come true, but it’s also one of the best horror comedies I’ve seen in a while. Director Mitchell Altieri delivers one of hell of a great horror gore fest that imagines the world overrun by vampire zombie clowns. “The Night Watchmen” is set primarily in an office, and Altieri makes great use of it, picturing the night shift from hell. You could make a sub-genre out of horror movies set in an office work place, these days, but “The Night Watchmen” has a great time making use of the back drop, with the various halls and corners of the office, and the typically monotonous setting.
Dead Man Tells His Own Tale (El Muerto Cuenta su Historia) (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
A man who can best be described as a misogynist cheating liar finds himself undead and bound to do the biddings a coven trying to raise their goddess to take over the world.
Written by Nicolás Britos and Fabián Forte with the latter directing as well, Dead Man Tells His Own Tale sets up its lead to be despicable and dislikable, doing so very successfully and keeping that up almost throughout the entirety of the film. Then it attempts to make the public care for him and his undead plight, something that works a lot less given that he’s still an unlikable being and still is trying to do what he always has and wanted to without much care about how it affects the people around him. The way they build him makes it very hard to care for him. Most of the characters built are hard to care for as most are written in a way and into situations where they do things that make them less than likable. This creates an atmosphere of negativity that evolves towards the ending here which makes sense, but does not make this viewer want to care.
Small Gauge Trauma 2017 [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]
Small Gauge Trauma is a programming block of shorts at the Fantasia Festival that sort of functions as a two hour anthology movie without a wraparound story. The shorts can be in any genre and are chosen by rough theme. In the 2017 edition’s case the theme was “Family” and while I know that this doesn’t sound overtly ominous, trust me when I say that it should.
Before I even start the review(s) I’m going to issue a mild to medium spoiler warning. Short films are, well… you know… short. So I have to talk about something and because the various runtimes are often under ten minutes I may mention stuff that happens towards the end. I promise I won’t ruin any twists and I will try not to describe every aspect of the plot and story, but I have to work with what I got.