{"id":38111,"date":"2022-10-31T11:48:05","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T15:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=38111"},"modified":"2022-10-31T11:48:05","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T15:48:05","slug":"good-movie-monday-sole-survivor-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/31\/good-movie-monday-sole-survivor-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"GOOD MOVIE MONDAY: SOLE SURVIVOR (1984)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Because today is Halloween, and because I make my own rules, I\u2019m going to take a small break from talking about bad movies today and instead review a really good one. SOLE SURVIVOR is a supernatural horror movie directed by Thom Eberhardt. A name that may be familiar to fans of NIGHT OF THE COMET, another horror movie Eberhardt directed that is the far better known of the two.<\/p>\n

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After a few shots establishing some of the characters and locations, we open on one of the film\u2019s most striking scenes. The aftermath of a catastrophic plane crash. Amidst the pile of dead bodies and the plane\u2019s wreckage is one lone survivor. A television commercial producer named Denise Watson who is still sitting in her seat completely untouched. Denise is then taken to the hospital where everyone is amazed at how she doesn\u2019t have a scratch on her. Thus far, this isn\u2019t all that different from a drama. There\u2019s even a cute Doctor who flirts with her a little bit. Except that when Denise walks out through the hospital\u2019s back exit to avoid reporters she sees someone creepily staring at her from the shadows. After that, during the next few days, she starts to notice a lot of people creepily staring at her. Soon, those people begin to do more than just stare.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t lie and say that I\u2019m unbiased when it comes to movies like this. Ghost stories are my favorite genre and they always have been. Sole Survivor is often compared to Final Destination, which I feel can be a bit inaccurate. I feel it\u2019s much more similar to J-Horror movies like The Ring or The Grudge, where there is an initial incident that causes the protagonist to face a countdown, which then propels them on a desperate quest to find out what\u2019s going on and if it can be stopped before the timer reaches zero. In this case, Denise finds out that the dead are coming back to life in order to take her back with them because she wasn\u2019t supposed to have survived that crash after all.<\/p>\n

I like how Eberhardt effortlessly combines the main story of death stalking Denise in the form of resurrected cadavers, and the \u201cB-story\u201d of Denise trying to come to terms with having been the only survivor of a tragedy, in an organic logical way. Each propels the other one forward. I\u2019ve often mused that a genre movie is only as good as its non-genre elements. Take the original Halloween for example. Had it just been a movie about a couple of babysitters playing pranks on each other and fooling around with their boyfriends on Halloween night, I think it still would have worked. Might not have been as successful, but someone would love it as a cult comedy.<\/p>\n

Another thing I like about Eberhardt is that he really knows how to write dialogue. Now, by this I don\u2019t mean that he\u2019s Quentin Tarantino or Kevin Smith. Nobody in Sole Survivor makes long intricate speeches. In fact, the dialogue doesn\u2019t call much attention to itself at all, but that\u2019s what I like about it. It\u2019s natural, direct and focused. Everything that everyone says serves to advance either the story or their character. No wasted words. Also, all the dialogue feels like something that the characters would say in that particular moment. It doesn\u2019t feel forced. There are no long boring exposition dumps or character rambling about something irrelevant. You never appreciate good dialogue until you watch movies with a lot of bad dialogue, and I\u2019ve watched a LOT of movies with bad dialogue. He even gives the crazy psychic lady that tells Denise she\u2019s doomed, which in almost any other movie would have been a character written entirely in clich\u00e9s, some very decent stuff to say and do. Yeah, this is all low-key stuff, but damn if it isn\u2019t refreshing to see it done WELL.<\/p>\n

Alright, here are ten thoughts I had watching this movie:<\/p>\n

#1 – Girl, you need to play the lottery now. Maybe you and all the corpses that are coming to life around you can pool your money together or something. Go to the Bahamas together.<\/p>\n

#2 – If I was a psychic and could predict the future in dreams and visions, I wouldn\u2019t call people up at 3am to babble incoherently about death and doom. I\u2019d use it to make money. Nobody thinks you\u2019re crazy when you become a millionaire betting on horse racing.<\/p>\n

#3 – Um, Denise? It\u2019s a creepy little girl outside late at night. If Japanese horror movies have taught me anything it\u2019s to just run.<\/p>\n

#4 – Thom Eberhardt released Sole Survivor and Night of the Comet in 1984 and these movies are so different in style and tone that you\u2019d never know the same guy directed both. One is a dark gritty dead serious thriller, and the other one is a bright action packed horror comedy. He was a very underrated filmmaker.<\/p>\n

#5 – This movie so good I\u2019m finding it hard to actually make jokes about it.<\/p>\n

#6 – Old man in the park staring creepily? Well, at least he still has his pants on.<\/p>\n

#7 – You know Denise, since the dead don\u2019t seem to want to kill you in public, you might want to want to avoid constantly isolating yourself.<\/p>\n

#8 – You \u201ckids\u201d don\u2019t know this, but the eighties had some of the most drastic fashion changes of any decade. From about 1980 to 1983 people dressed like in this movie, which was basically \u201cThe 1970s Part 2\u201d. Then, from 1984 to 1986, it was all these neon colors and pastels and poofy jackets and the Miami Vice suits. Stuff that we all think of as \u201cThe Eighties\u201d. Then, after 1987 or so everyone either dressed like they were starring in Roadhouse or Beetlejuice, and very little in between, until Grunge became a thing.<\/p>\n

#9 – \u00a0The ending is the only place where this movie starts to get a little clumsy. It\u2019s mostly the music that doesn\u2019t quite work with the visuals. It\u2019s very \u201cSix Million Dollar Man\u201d Still, this is some effective stuff.<\/p>\n

#10 – I kind of miss when movies had THE END written at the end.<\/p>\n

Okay, that\u2019s what I got. Sole Survivor is available on Shudder in Canada, and I think you guys in the United-States also have it too. It\u2019s a nice fun low-key early eighties movie that is totally worth a watch, especially if you\u2019re already a fan of Night of the Comet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because today is Halloween, and because I make my own rules, I\u2019m going to take a small break from talking about bad movies today and instead review a really good one. SOLE SURVIVOR is a supernatural horror movie directed by Thom Eberhardt. A name that may be familiar to fans of NIGHT OF THE COMET, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38116,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38111\/revisions\/38116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}