Though considered something of a horror classic by many, I’ve never personally enjoyed “Pet Sematary.” For the simple fact that though the idea of the pet Sematary is good on paper, director Mary Lambert’s horror drama about a Sematary that revives the living is hell bent on melodrama and meandering back stories and never quite focuses on the allure of the Sematary. In the end the Sematary poses more of a plot device than anything, and spends much of its time on unlikable vapid characters we can never really feel empathy for.
I wanted to love “Exit Humanity,” but in the end I feel like there were just too many ideas for one film. “Exit Humanity” attempts to take a simply a period piece zombie movie and turn it in to a high concept art house film. So there’s narration (by the great Brian Cox), there’s an alleged journal chronicling the rise of the dead, there are animated wipes that progress to the next scene, there are animated sequences where our hero fights the walking dead, and there are an endless stream of flashbacks and nightmare sequences allegedly symbolizing the carnage of the situation at hand.
I quite like the premise of “Hell Comes to Hollywood.” Create a short horror story that in some way involves Hollywoodland and its devices. In that general framework, Eric Miller’s compendium of various horror stories from a cadre of actual Hollywood screenwriters and television writers makes Hollywood feel so bleak and hopeless. There are no happy endings in any of the stories presented here, and thankfully there isn’t a bad story to be read either.
Much like “Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles” was much more about the journey of Sarah Conner rather than the life of John Conner, “Bates Motel” is much more about the psychosis and sheer lunacy of Norma Bates, rather than the origin of Norman Bates.
Director Jared Skolnick’s “The Earth Rejects Him” is one of the most surreal horror films I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s not often I can watch a movie with a baffled expression and still recommend it as a great film. Not many indie directors know how to direct child actors, and director Skolnick brings out the best in his young cast. Ellis Gage gives a very memorable performance as this young boy who finds himself in an extraordinary predicament and has no idea how to handle it without becoming homicidal.