Robert Eggers’ debut “The Witch” is a marvelous and absolutely mesmerizing film. It’s not just an incredible horror film, but a fantastic examination of how a family basically tears itself from inside out due to ideas of resentment, sexual repression, and pure isolation. Not many directors debut with a bang, but “The Witch” is a slow burn horror film that begins with the fuse burning and burning until Eggers delivers something of a humongous explosion that will leave audiences speechless. Eggers sets his film on 17th Century New England, where a patriarch of a small family named William is threatened with banishment by a puritanical plantation with his wife, daughter Thomasin, younger son Caleb, and fraternal twins Mercy and Jonas. Vowing to free himself of the puritanical village, William builds a secluded farm at the edge of the woods, swearing to thrive with his family at his side.
Tag Archives: Supernatural
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
From The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society and Andrew Leman comes the excellent “The Call of Cthulhu,” a short film I was lucky enough to experience years ago and was lucky enough to re-visit. From 2005, the independent effort channels the horror and sheer terror of HP Lovecraft’s mythology so well, the time manages to fly by without a hitch. “The Call of Cthulhu” is a brilliant throwback to the silent film era channeling the likes of Val Lewton to bring audiences a love letter to a time in film when horror meant the twang of the score, and focusing on the horror of our actors.
The Night Before Halloween (2016)
“The Night Before Halloween” should actually be called “I Know What You Did The Night Before Last Halloween Around 11:50pm,” as it borrows heavily from those slasher themes and, once again, steals a lot from “The Ring.” Someone at the Syfy Channel must have loved “The Ring,” as they seem persistent on copying its themes involving teens running from a dark curse that is targeting them or some such nonsense. Seriously, a movie like this should not be so complicated and confusing to follow. The storyline and mythos behind it is actually so confusing no one in the movie can ever explain what the hell is going on. To anyone. Set on the night before Halloween, a group of girls have a vicious prank played on them from local boys in their school. During the prank one of the friends, Beth, is accidentally electrocuted and nearly killed.
All Hallows’ Eve (2016)
“All Hallow’s Eve” is the fiftieth movie involving Halloween in the last five years named “All Hallow’s Eve” but this time it’s more of a low budget Disney-lite family film. Its Harry Potter meets “Halloweentown” in one of the more painfully derivative and hokey attempts to build a franchise around a teen witch in a long time. It’s not to say “All Hallow’s Eve” is terrible, but it’s a movie that has way too many ideas and not enough of a budget or script to help realize them. So characters spend a lot of time sitting around and explaining things, rather than allowing us to bask in the awe of magic and fantasy. In “All Hallow’s Eve,” Lexi Giovagnoli plays Eve Hallow. No seriously.
Stay Alive (2006)
This dry as a bone “horror” entry is part “Dream Warriors”, part “The Ring”, with neither of the characters is developed beyond your basic concepts upon which they’re established. And there are also your usual under-developed back stories that Bell limps along with for no reason. Here’s the hero who has a fear of fire. Why? Well—who cares? Look! A ghost! How can we root for characters whom are basic morons? Perhaps it’s Bell’s allusion that gamers in general, are morons. Not that hard to believe, when you think about it. The characters that are supposed to die die.
The Unspoken (2015)
Written and directed by Sheldon Wilson, The Unspoken is a pretty tame horror film. It follows the tropes of haunted housed films well without adding a whole lot that is new until the very end when a twist changes the whole story. A single mother and her son move into a house that has been abandoned for seventeen years following multiple deaths. Angela, whose single father has been laid-off for a while, is hired to look after Adrian, the non-speaking new child in town. The script up until then is fairly routine: a scare here, scare there, jump scare, lots of set up. Unfortunately, this formula falls a little flat for this big horror fan. However, this does not mean that it won’t scare of unnerve the casual horror fan, or the ones looking for their yearly scare.
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
IN SELECT THEATERS OCTOBER 28TH – Although Henry Selick does a damn fine job of directing what is one of the most entertaining stop motion animated films, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” has Tim Burton’s stamp all over it. It’s about an outcast, a love for the Gothic and Halloween, and it’s unabashedly menacing. Though Henry Selick’s animated movie was originally touted to kids, the film is very much a dark and harrowing narrative about monsters from the Halloweentown infiltrating the Christmastown, and using the traditions and rituals to terrorize random victims. One montage even features kids getting very creepy presents like a shrunken head, and a snake. Jack Skellington is the pumpkin king who is the anti-hero that finds himself restless with Halloween and accidentally becomes the villain when he falls in love with Christmas.