Campfire Stories (2001)

movie_36353I love anthology movies and I’m usually open to low budget horror movies because you never know when you might come across a gem, so I checked this one out unbiased. Boy, was I in for something. First, the movie begins with a badly computer animated flaming skull (how original) who speaks in a deep voice talking about creepy tales and something else. In this atrocity, we meet two hapless guys on the road in the middle of the woods driving to a “Middle of the woods” party. They get a flat tire after nearly running over a young woman named Natalie (Jamie Lynn Sigler) and she begs them to give her a ride.

They have to await a tow truck and run into a park ranger (Dave Johansen) who begins telling them three tales. (It gives them an excuse to be in the setting) and they meet Natalie in the middle of the road (They’re a bit suspicious but never ask where her car is or where she’s going) and they meet Ranger Bill who invites them in the forest to tell the stories. The first story is hilarious as we see badly edited scenes of a dentist torturing a patient in a mental asylum. He then breaks free from his restraints made out of rope (Why? Who knows) and jams a scalpel into his head. Four years later he’s now a janitor who gets bullied by four football players. These guys are boneheaded jocks who blurt out insults like “He’s such a penile implant.”

They chase him into the forest to kill him and he begins knocking them off one by one. The second one has these three boneheaded obnoxious bikers who drive a car who see a Native American buy coffee in the restaurant. He carries around a magical sack which no one asks about and he leaves after they insult him. They follow him home and watch as he smokes some killer weed. He begins hallucinating in a badly animated sequence as snakes wrap around him and he sees wolves. They strangle him to death and decide to take his drugs. They soon begin hallucinating and discover he’s not exactly dead. I found this story to be so bad it was painful. The third one is least terrible but is still very annoying as we have this whiny girl and her boyfriend kissing in a car and the girl, for some reason, begins telling of how her insane grandmother lived in their house until she died.

So they decide not to do the funky monkey and she goes home to her friend. She decides she wants to invite them back and play a joke on them. So, the boyfriends come over they drink and talk for a long time and they blindfold the boyfriends leading them around the house. One by one the guys get killed by an unknown person and the friend gets killed. The entire trilogy of idiocy ends with a hilarious and annoying final scene that left me dumbstruck. I usually love anthology movies but this one is utterly unwatchable.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

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The good thing about “Blair Witch 2” is that it’s a head trip and major mind fuck that explores the ideas about fandom and how sometimes the ideas of fiction and reality can be blurred. The plus sides to this are the disturbing turns at violence that help accentuate the lengths some of the entities go through to instill a sense of reality, and while it doesn’t rear its ugly head until the shocking end, it leaves a very fine mark. True, this is not as innovative or awe inspiring as the original, but it at least aims for different and something that pays tribute to the first film more than anything.

It’s not an official sequel per se, presenting a meta-narrative where “The Blair Witch Project” was just a movie and popular. The people we see are in our reality. The whole reason why the kids go into the woods is because of the first one because they loved the movie so much. It provides a lot of memorable twists and turns at once. This movie illustrates the often blurry and always terrifying line between truth and fiction. That said, it isn’t a perfect movie folks. The acting is rocky and the characters are pretty uninteresting and one note. The dialogue is atrocious at times; there were terrible lines spouted out one after another and it was distracting.

“Blair Witch 2” is very beautifully directed, and conveys a unique Gothic tone in keeping with Eduardo Sanchez’s original horror film, and adding to the mythos of the Blair Witch. Joe Berlinger gives his film a very nightmarish feel and makes every element and plot twist feel like a fever dream where we and the characters are going mad. While the suspense is nil in the first half, the build up works very well and pay off is still quite great. I was initially left my jaw hanging down and just wanted to see much more about what unfolded, and if anything in the movie had a sense of rationality, since it blurs reality and eventually even universes as a whole.

Though I felt this would’ve benefitted with a better cast of performers, and a much better screenwriter, I got a real kick out of “Book of Shadows,” and think of it as a neat sequel that works in the way “Season of the Witch” did for “Halloween” as a tale from this mythology and not a direct follow up.

 

The Gift (2000)

giftI am a big fan of “Evil Dead” and Sam Raimi once again displays his skill for horror and movie-making brilliance. Though “The Gift” is tonally uneven, it’s still worth a watch if only for the mood and inherent dread present. The movie’s scenery is comprised of a country setting, but the entire landscape of the trees and bayou is so grim and dark like a painting. The night scenes are the best, showing off the odd structure of the Dali-esque trees and scenery. When a young rich woman, Jessica (Katie Holmes) disappears, Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) the local town psychic reader must investigate the murder, but to the relentless harassment of an abusive man named Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves) who is angry at her advice to his wife about Annie advising her to leave him.

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Cut (2000)

Maybe that’s because I am humongous slasher movie fan. I like slashers. Whether they’re bad ones like “Happy Birthday To Me, Sleepaway Camp” or classics like “Psycho,” “Friday the 13th,” or “Halloween,” I love them all. This one is not an exception, as outside of “Scream” it’s one of the better movie-centric slasher movies made.

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Terror Tract (2000)

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“Terror Tract” is a fun, freaky, and creepy anthology filled with a trio of horror stories that, although derivative, pack a punch with their clever twists and top notch performances. John Ritter is an unusually quirky real estate agent named Bob who is showing houses to a newlywed couple on a weird neighborhood. We automatically get the idea that this is a weird neighborhood thanks to an incident involving a cat. From there, Bob begins telling our couple a trio of stories, one of which comes with every house he shows.

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Vampire Hunter D (Banpaia hantâ D) (1985)

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“Vampire Hunter D” is an underrated movie; sure, it may not rank up there to some with other anime masterpieces, but it will always top my list of the best anime horror I’ve ever seen. Though kind of an obscure animated horror/action classic, “Vampire Hunter D” is one of my favorite animated films of all time and is worth the watch. In the animated adaptation of the manga, we meet Doris, a lonely demon hunter and farmer who lives alone with her little brother. One night while hunting a monster, she meets up with a vampire warlord named Magnus Lee who brands her with his patented vampire kiss of death.

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The Blair Witch Project (1999)

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Made on a shoestring budget, “The Blair Witch Project” is truly an innovative movie in its own right, and while it didn’t invent the mock documentary format, it sure does a great job telling a spooky story with it. In Eduardo Sanchez’s hit indie horror film, we follow three film students who decide to make a documentary called “The Legend of Blair Witch,” based on a mythical witch who haunted the woods in the early 1900’s. Upon their filming and learning about the local lore, they venture into a deserted forest to seek a mythical graveyard of the Blair Witch victims, and soon find they are lost within the large area of trees and grass.

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