It’s amazing how a man like Rob Zombie who fancies himself a hardcore horror fan has done little to evolve since his first film “House of 1,000 Corpses.” Every film he’s made since that initial movie has repeated the same beats over and over, just re-arranged in various ways to look new and original. He fills the screen with genre veterans again. He inexplicably sets his movie in a mid-seventies gritty trailer park landscape. The opening of his film is directed by a goofy music video, padding the run time, and he even includes something of a montage with our characters, set to classic rock music as we saw in the finale of “The Devil’s Rejects.” Worst of all, he writes some of the clunkiest dialogue I’ve ever heard, and he is still dead set on placing wife Sheri Moon Zombie front and center.
Tag Archives: Mystery
Lookouts (2016)
I’m very surprised by how great “Lookouts” ended up being, as often times fantasy films from independent directors never really change my idea about the genre in general. “Lookouts” is thankfully a very unique and heartfelt fantasy thriller centered on a young boy who has to grow up to become a man, and face down a monster that’s stolen almost everything in his life that he cherished. I think if “Lookouts” is ever financed as a major motion picture, we could have a wonderful epic on our hands. Based on the popular Penny Arcade comic series “May we Die in the Forest, directors David and Kristin Bousquet do a bang up job realizing a world that’s both awe inspiring and teeming with menace.
Kristy (2014)
Oliver Blackburn’s survival horror film is an engaging and tense thriller with a deceptively simple premise. It is mostly a single setting horror film, but implements its college setting to feel terrifying and completely alien. Even when we’re watching heroine Justine walking around campus with utmost familiarity and soaking in the peace of the usually crammed halls, once the darkness falls, it feels like one of the most terrifying hunting grounds for evil ever depicted. “Kristy” is set during Thanksgiving break, where young Justine is stuck in college. With all of her friends and boyfriend off to see their families, Justine has the campus to herself, along with two random security guards. Haley Bennett is fantastic as young Justine, a seemingly random victim of a group of hooded masked killers.
What We Become (2016) [Blu-Ray/DVD]
It’s “Night of the Living Dead Yuppies” in what is easily one of the most asinine foreign zombie movies of the year. In a year where we were able to see brilliant zombie fare like “Train to Busan” and “Seoul Station,” it’s sad we have “What We Become,” a pretty frustrating horror drama that ends just as it begins to pick up steam. It’s not really a zombie movie, but it feels like one heavy handed commentary on how vicious and cruel we become when we’re faced with the task of surviving and caring for one another. It’s nothing we haven’t seen covered in George Romero’s films, or “The Walking Dead,” before. Yes, when faced with survival, we will tear each other’s throats out for a can of beans, the military is shifty and violent, the elderly are usually the first to go, and deep down we’re all selfish bastards. Also kids never stay in the damn house, even during a zombie apocalypse.
Child’s Play (1988): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]
Killer dolls are popular once again and now seems like a better time than ever for Chucky to enter stage left and remind people that once upon a time he was the plastic maniac with a butcher knife. 1988’s “Child’s Play” is still a mini-classic that dabbles in the killer doll sub-genre and offers up its own twist. It’s essentially a slasher movie through and through, but it has small doses of the supernatural, and mysterious to add some kind of logic to the origin of Chucky. Brad Douriff’s turn as Chucky is immortal as he plays serial killer Charles Lee Ray, a man who is chased by police during a robbery. After being mortally wounded during a shoot out, Ray ducks in to a toy store and finds no other option but to summon magic to keep himself alive. Said magical incantation allows his soul to be transferred in to a popular doll named the “Good Guy Doll.”
Psychotic! (2016) [Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2016]
This film follows a group of friends attempting to enjoy the party scene in Bushwick (Brooklyn) when a party killer starts eliminating party goers here and there. Not know who the killer is or when they will strike again. The friends are navigating life, dating, expensive apartments, and their passions. Credits for the film are not yet on IMDB, so the festival’s site is the only source of information for now. The film is directed and written by Maxwell Frey and Derek Gibbons who start the film off with a clear homage to stalker films of the early 80s with a scene that follows a person stalking a girl.
Ernest Scared Stupid (1991)
It’s really hard to ignore the charm of Ernest and his Halloween adventure. “Ernest Scared Stupid” most definitely has a lot of nostalgic value and sentimental value, but it’s also a very good kids’ horror movie where Ernest battles a bunch of trolls. Ernest and Jim Varney has just always had a good chemistry and here it’s on full display when trolls are unleashed during Halloween. Here, Varney plays Ernest as a garbage collector in a Missouri town. Hundreds of years before a troll that used magic to turn kids in to wooden dolls was locked in a tree and kept dormant. Ernest helps his three friends Kenny Binder, Elizabeth and Joey construct their own tree house which they use as a means of entertainment and warding off the local bullies.