More Great New Halloween Staples

Last year, I put out a list of 13 new horror films that can be added to the canon of flicks you turn on every year for Halloween. Now I have a few more. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see a few of the movies I had planned to - namely The Boy and Goodnight Mommy. But maybe I'll get to add those for next year's installment of this, who knows. The picks here are sometimes obvious and sometimes not - maybe you can find some new favorites.

Here they are:

Dead End (2003)

I've known this movie, about a family that gets lost on a long country road at night, for years. It's probably a bit patchy, as the dialogue is often silly and the acting is over the top. It isn't perfect. But what made me put it on this list is the real horror and absurdity of what happens to these people. There are some legitimate scary scenes here and some cool horror tropes - things creeping in the shadows, people acting abnormally. It's a fun, sometimes silly, creepy flick. I still think about this movie whenever I'm driving at night, so that says something.

[REC] (2007)

A lot of people know this by its American remake Quarantine, but this Spanish film from 2007 is a raw, bloody good fucking time. This is a found footage thing that really makes you feel like you're in the middle of this terrifying disease outbreak. That's how the found footage style should be used - to immerse the viewer further into the world. [REC] does that, and it never lets up the frenzied, fast paced chaos. It's a killer movie and I think any fan of fast paced survival horror will enjoy it.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

An insane movie that, for some shady reason, was never actually given a legit release. This is a serial killer film to end all serial killer films, so over the top it starts to seem satirical and hysterical - but it pulls you back and doesn't quite go all the way either, remaining a pretty grisly, gruesome tale. This is a pretty one note movie and isn't particularly clever from a storytelling point of view, but it's put together well, and the whole thing is a sick, gleefully evil good time if you're in the mood for something completely tasteless. It's very low budget, and the potential is oozing from every pore. I'd love to see what these guys could have done with a bigger budget.

Crimson Peak (2015)

Guillermo del Toro's latest foray into horror, and I think this is a better film in that genre than he's had in some time. A period piece set in the late 1800s or early 1900s, this story is about a young girl who marries into a family that perhaps isn't what it seems. The characters and acting are really good in this, and the settings and scenery start out beautiful and slowly slide into horrifying. There are a lot of great gory ghost effects in this, too - killer stuff. The story has been done before, but there's always a place for good re-tellings of a classic styled tale, which Crimson Peak certainly falls under. Bombastic, fun and mournful somehow all at once. A powerful, energized film.

The Canal (2014)

Really brooding, eerie supernatural horror in the "wait, what's REALLY going on?" genre, rife with plot twists and supernatural eerieness you're never sure is actually really there. I loved the setting and visual style of this; there was lots of real seedy, bizarre stuff to look at, and the way the story unfolded just built tension like Lego blocks on top of one another. This is an extremely tense, dark film. The last plot twist wasn't that great, but everything that leads up to it is so good that it doesn't matter. This is just a creepy, weird trip into a dark, fucked up place, and I thought it was pretty awesome.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

An artsy, quiet film about a vampire terrorizing a small Iranian town. It's spooky, weird and kind of touching in a way. The story centers on this vampire who attacks men who disrespect women. It's really well shot and the atmosphere is through the roof. It never really goes for full on blood and guts or even psychological horror - it's more of a subtle, artistic tale. But the black and white color is used effectively and the desolate, run down setting is suitably eerie. Go see this.

Starry Eyes (2014)

I've talked about this before, but Starry Eyes is a first rate new horror movie. It's about an aspiring actress in California working at a shitty job when she gets the offer of a lifetime: a job with a weird director who's actually part of a cult. Part Lynch and part gore-flick like Contracted, this is a bone-chilling, atmospheric and brutal story. The film talks about the ambition of a young wannabe artist and also about disillusionment with being surrounded by a bunch of hipsters who don't do anything - her friends in the movie are all really pretentious douches who talk about making movies but then do nothing but get high. It's a lot of fun. Go watch it.

Lake Mungo (2008)

A dark, sad movie about a family who loses their daughter, and how they deal with it. This is a very slow and quiet tale told in faux-documentary format. There are hints of the supernatural, as the ghost of the dead girl is believed to be there, but the movie subverts the usual tropes and tells a gripping and left-of-center story about grief and moving on. There's a lot more to it, but I feel like telling you too much would be ruining the film. I found this a moving story but also a haunting and chilling one. Equal parts scary and sad, Lake Mungo is a very good film.

The Houses October Built (2014)

Real low budget found-footage stuff about a bunch of friends who go on a road trip in search of the most extreme haunts and haunted houses. The characters in this are actually likable and fun to watch, and the haunted house scenery is a gold mine for the Halloween season, dripping with October atmosphere. The haunted house scenes are fun, the dialogue is witty and the plot descends into real seedy, dark, scary waters later on as the characters search for the most extreme haunted houses they can find in backwoods America. I love this movie, and so will anyone else who's as into haunted houses as I am.

What We Do in the Shadows (2015)

I didn't know if this really belonged on a list of great horror movies, but it's too good for me to leave off. And it's got vampires in it, so fuck it, right? This is really more of a comedy than a horror film, about a bunch of quirky vampires rooming together in a New Zealand flat. The acting is good, the characters are a lot of fun and the story playfully subverts vampire cliche and makes everything fun and quick-witted. The film is clever, too, and has more dimensions than just wacky comedy. It delves into some surprisingly touching moments and ends up a more nuanced film than some other ones of its type. Really entertaining, I highly recommend it.

The Babadook (2014)

Horror should always be about something. When you're making a real serious horror film, it has to have some point, some real life tie-in or metaphor to what's happening. If you want to scare people, you make a horror movie that's actually about real things, because the best horror reflects things in real life that we're worried about or scared of, and builds off that. Because otherwise, you're just making a dumb movie at the end of the day. You can make it as supernatural and absurd as you want, but unless you make it real, it isn't fucking scary.

The Babadook, about a single mother struggling to raise her young son, does that in an exemplary way. This is a chilling, mean movie that keeps you on edge at all times. Everything feels uncomfortable and harsh and cruel. It's an assault on your senses, and the way it slides inconspicuously into madness is excellently done. A well made, blood-curdling terrifyingly good time.

It Follows (2015)

This and The Babadook are the most talked about horror films of the last year, and for good reason. It Follows is a fresh, fun film with one foot in classic 80s horror and the other in a more modern, arthouse-style direction. This movie is about relationships. It's about the journey every young person takes to finding one, and about the confusion and absurdity of it all. Very little in this movie has rules or makes sense, and that's how life feels when you're navigating that time of life. The characters do dumb things when trying to fight the evil thing chasing them, because in real life, most people do dumb things, and most of us wouldn't be able to MacGuyver our ways out of a scary situation. So that was refreshing.

With likable characters, a cool, creepy soundtrack and a bunch of super eerie scenes of things creeping up from far away, this is a great film. This is a scary movie, but it also has a sentimental side to it, and several scenes come off more wistful and even kind of romantic than a lot of genre films would try. With an extremely unique style, an interesting story and a palpable, tangible atmosphere and mood, this is a great horror film, and surely one of the best post-2000 ones.

Who says horror is dead? There are more I didn't even get to this year. Until next year, then!

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

Cinema Freaks LIVE: Goosebumps (2015)

Nostalgia is a powerful force these days. Everyone wants to remember what they sort of forgot. The Internet gave them that, like a golden goose's egg, and now movie studios are milking it for all it's worth. If you want the biggest example of that, well...there are probably a lot. But one of them is the new Goosebumps movie. Which Michelle and I did a podcast about!

(SPOILERS are in the podcast and review, for those who want to avoid those!)



Wasn't that great? On second thought, don't answer that. Instead, you can read the review if you're not convinced.

Director: Rob Letterman

Starring: Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Basically about a kid who moves to a new town, befriends a girl and finds out her father is RL Stine, and also that he has a bunch of books which, if opened, unleash all the monsters from the classic Goosebumps books on the unsuspecting real world. You know how it goes. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy has to fight off obvious marketing tools in a kids' horror movie.

The movie is rife with all sorts of witty puns and dialogue from every character. They spew them like gumball machines. It's like all of them sat down in a room and wrote out their dialogue before actually going out to speak to one another. Main character Zach at this point might as well get a job writing for Buzzfeed, he's so quick with a light jab or quip.

"Hang on, mom, I need to consult my joke writer to see what funny stuff he's got for me to say!"

The movie really shows its true colors with a scene of this girl, Hannah, calling to him and making friends. They exchange some dialogue that will be repeated over the course of the film in a predictable way, but is still rather likable anyway, so I'm torn on what degree I should make fun of it – a full on inferno-burn, or a mere sizzling like bacon on a griddle? Eh, it's not terrible.

But I love the part where Jack Black as RL Stine pops out of the window and tells Zach not to talk to his daughter, like a threat against him – come on, SHE talked to HIM first! What is he supposed to do? Ignore the cute girl in front of him flirting with him in the middle of the night? At like 16 or whatever age he's supposed to be, I think a Catholic priest would have an easier time resisting his urges!

"Hey, let's exchange some light hearted, scripted-sounding banter!"
"Sounds good! Can we flirt more?"
"No, this is a PG movie and that would get us thrown in jail."
"Well sheeeeeeeeeeeeaaaatttt."
"Sssshhhh!"

"I'll make sure you turn GAY before you talk to MY DAUGHTER!!!"

The next day at school, we get all kinds of wacky scenarios, like Zach's mom starting her new job as the vice principal at the school and saying “Twerking” in her opening speech rather than “Tweeting.” Oh the hi-larity! And also, Zach meets this weird kid named Champ, who asks him to go to the dance together...to pick up girls. Yeah. That's why he wants to. Uh, yeah...cough...then Champ hands him a business card, which really makes sense for a high school kid to have and also points out how fucking weird this kid is.

At night, Hannah takes Zach out into the woods, where she shows him an abandoned carnival that somehow still has the power on. I guess they just forgot to turn that off and just chalk up the thousands of dollars in extra electricity towards residents' taxes to a fluke. If it seems weird that I am spending time thinking about that shit during a kids' movie, well, don't pay attention to me. There's another scene  right after where they climb up the old Ferris wheel with nobody around and hang out there, because apparently death excites them.

There's really nothing that can save them here from death – Zach even asks how they get down at one point, which I'm sure Hannah's real answer to was “you can't get down, I own you now!” But they had to cut that out and continue the movie, because otherwise nobody would have gotten paid. Oh well. All I'm saying is, it's insane that this fairground thing is a plot point in the film.

They eventually make their ways back to RL Stine's house, where Zach thinks Stine is abusing Hannah. I remember thinking the trailer showing this plot point was really fucking dark, and not even knowing what movie it was at first. But then of course, they break in and discover Stine's secret – he has every book he ever wrote locked up, and if they're unlocked, the monsters come to life and terrorize reality.

"Why is there one copy of a Bearenstein Bears book in here?"

There's never really much of an explanation for why or how this happens, except that Stine has a magic typewriter that can do it. I guess he never considered STOPPING writing the books even after he had to have known it was possible after a FEW of the fucking things. What a psycho! And why does he have them just displayed like that on a shelf? Shouldn't they be locked away in a safe at the bottom of the ocean or something?! Something tells me this RL Stine in the movie is less a horror writer and more a demented and hell bent sadist bent on humanity's violent destruction.

Stine: "I could have stopped this, but I secretly wanted this to happen!"

But oh well – so the plot doesn't make sense. What do you want? All we're really here for are the action scenes. They're generally well done. We get a few pretty enjoyable scenes of the characters fighting a snowman and a werewolf in various places. And Jack Black (again) as Slappy the dummy is hilariously good – he's almost worth the price of admission by himself.

I guess there are a couple of forced 'serious' moments as the film tries to give us a plot about how Stine was bullied as a kid and that's why he grew up to write the Goosebumps series. It's really rather silly and doesn't come off well. Mostly because we needed another bullied-kid story like I needed a bag full of fire ants at the foot of my bed. Oh boo hoo, you got bullied as a kid? Let me play you the world's smallest guitar, doing the intro to Stairway to Heaven.

...wait, I don't think THAT'S right...

But the real reveal is when they find out that, shock and awe, Hannah is actually a creation from one of his books! She isn't even real and doesn't know it. Goddamn. That means he can create functional human beings out of thin air. I mean, yeah, THIS time he created a sweet teenage girl. But what about when he gets the urge to replace a politician in power with his own pawns? Can he just create a proxy who will do whatever he wants? Will we all end up under the thumb of the totalitarian RL Stine reign without even knowing it? Jesus. This just became the most terrifying movie of the year, easy.

I'll put this image here to balance it out.

So the only way to defeat the monsters is, apparently, by writing one final book about all of them, which will end with them getting sucked back into the book. Stine tries, and even almost finishes a book in an extremely short amount of time while Zach is doing something else – maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seems like this movie has mixed messages. On one side, Stine is a terrifying potential dictator who can do anything with a keyboard. On the other, “hey, he writes his books in under an hour!” Maybe both are true.

This goes fairly well until Slappy breaks Stine's fingers, rendering Stine unable to write. So it's up to Zach to go finish the last page of the book without getting his head torn off by monsters. Meanwhile, though, Champ saves this really hot girl in a skimpy dress from a werewolf, and she rewards him by kissing him. Because, you know, if you can save a girl from a werewolf, you deserve her as a prize, I guess.

I went to acting school and all I got was a shit role where I had to give myself to a dorky character!

Zach manages to finish the book, but only after a terrifying near-death experience in which a Ferris wheel almost kills them when it comes off its hinges and rolls down a giant hill. Seriously, how did they survive that? I think a career in stunts would seem as harmless as a knitting job after that. Jesus.

"WE REGRET DOING OUR OWN STUNTS!!"

So yeah, they stop all the monsters at the end, but Hannah gets sucked back into the book as well. The next day at school, I guess everyone just got over that whole 'most of our town was annihilated' thing pretty easily, as no one seems to care anymore. Stine is even a teacher there now, because I guess almost destroying an entire town with monsters you created makes you qualified to teach whatever kids didn't get massacred the previous night by said monsters. Life is fun when it makes no sense, huh?

To add an extra dose of pandering, apparently Stine wrote Hannah back to life just so she could be with Zach. A literal fictional girl created just to be someone's girlfriend. What do I even have to say? It's pretty lame. Should our movies really be teaching young boys that if they do absolutely nothing, a children's author will write a girlfriend into existence for them? Ugh. I've just seen that bad lesson in movies way too often.

This film is just silly, mostly. Nothing in the plot makes sense. But then again, when did the original Goosebumps plots ever make that much sense? The film is pretty true to its source material! The whole thing really is just intended to be like an extended, over the top version of what the classic Goosebumps stories were - it has the same structure and format; a kid meets a girl and gets into supernaturally-laced trouble.

It's nonsense, but it's fun nonsense. The characters are enjoyable in a dumb way and the story is fast and exciting enough, especially for younger kids and teenagers. Jack Black is electrifyingly fun as RL Stine and the effects are enjoyably cheesy. While I can't say this is that good or anything, it is entertaining in its own silly way. So go see it, especially if you used to like Goosebumps.

But seriously, guys. Be careful of who you piss off. You don't want to run afoul of RL Stine, as he is a master of the arcane old arts and possesses unspeakable powers with which he can ruin your life. He rules us to this day from his horrific mountain lair, creating monsters wherever people irk him. On second thought, if you don't see me any time soon, just assume he did something to me because of this review.

Images copyright of their original owners. We own none of them.

About #BoycottStarWarsVII, Racism, Etc...

While I was out doing stuff over the weekend, apparently the Internet had a collective hemorrhage over  another new Star Wars trailer that came out. That really sucks for me, as I was trying to go a full three months without having to write a post like this. But here we go again: apparently, a couple of trolls on some page called End Cultural Marxism wrote a few posts about how the movie is promoting white genocide because none of its main characters are white males. Which I think is probably true. I always knew there was something fishy about that JJ Abrams fella...

But seriously. Most people are obviously not so stupid as to believe this movie is promoting white genocide or any anti-white fervor. Most people just take it for what it is, a film. Most tweets about it are very much against racism and against this ridiculous hashtag "boycott" that's apparently going to happen. The racists who actually are angry are only a vocal minority, nothing more - which, to describe them as a minority, is acutely ironic and humorous actually. Now I want to do it more often. I think I will.

It's tempting to give into that and go on this big rant about how wrong racism is, but I don't really think it's necessary. Of course racism is bad. And it feels good to rave against those who promote racist ideas. It releases sweet brain-chemicals that make us feel vindicated. We all need a target to shoot at once in a while. But I think mostly it's fine, and we have nothing to worry about. The racists will go back to their holes and Abrams, Disney and the other producers behind the movie won't hear their cries over the sound of all that sweet, sweet green gold coming in truckloads to their mansions the hour after the film's debut. The movie is in no danger, nor is Star Wars as a franchise, from this nonsense.

But I can't help myself: If people are really pissed about the fact that there are minorities in leading roles in a Star Wars film, they're actually more thin-skinned, weak-willed pussies than any of the so-called "SJW" types they constantly call out for being overly sensitive.

Ahh, yes. Wash over me, sweet, sweet feelings of vindication. Now that I've said my piece against racism, my day is complete.

It's good that we have a new Star Wars film with a diverse cast. That's important. I'm not sure the movie will be anything all that exciting; probably it'll just be a decently entertaining blockbuster, nothing more. But it's about time we had more big action movies with better and more diverse casts. There are enough movies with white dudes as the main characters. Why not shake it up? Even if you don't care about racial progress or social justice, the fact is, it's just more interesting to have a wider variety of people in a movie.

This is the wave of the future. For a long time, minority actors couldn't get any good roles in big movies. They were bit parts, supporting casts, caricatures whose whole identity was based on race. Now that's changing, and not only can a better selection of promising actors get more interesting roles, but kids can have heroes that look like them in movies. That's important, too. I believe we're making progress in this area. There will always be detractors and those who are uncomfortable with change. Let's keep going, and don't let a bunch of racists drag that down or distract from how much progress we've made.

Plus, the actor in question, John Boyega, was in a kick ass movie called Attack the Block a few years back. That shit was awesome. We should be glad he's a part of this.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Most people know the Halloween series for one thing: Michael Myers, that lovable lunk-head who likes to go around and kill his family members on Halloween every year. I guess he’s a bit one dimensional, but hey, he had spirit to him. But if there’s an outlier to the series, most people would point to the 1982 sequel, Season of the Witch.

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Starring: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This was the only one not to feature Myers as the killer, as the studio wanted to turn this series into an anthology with different stories every year. But the movie bombed and people were unhappy with the lack of Myers, so they ended up scrapping that idea completely, like a bunch of pussies, and brought back Myers for a bunch of sequels almost no one liked.

But this isn’t TOO bad, is it? I mean, it’s got a pretty cool soundtrack. And it has plenty of children running around, happy that Halloween is right around the corner. Ahh, yes. I can feel the autumnal ambiance already…except in the opening scene, where we see a man being chased by a bunch of guys in suits, who are apparently trying to kill him for some reason. That’s not very nice of them.

The movie is about this doctor, Daniel Challis, who is doing normal doctor things like disappointing his family on Halloween by having to go back into work for an emergency, and grabbing nurses’ asses like a fucking creep. He’s the best guy ever. But the reason he was called in is to tend to the guy from the opening chase scene. He’s been brought in almost dead and clutching a pumpkin mask, and he uses his last dying breath to tell a doctor they’re all going to die. Makes sense to me. I’m gonna use my last words on Earth to say things that sound ominous like for a horror movie trailer, too!

"Nothing can save you now...was that good enough for a trailer quote?"
"Eh, sure."

Challis is also constantly surrounded by, well, the catchiest song in the universe.



Yes, this commercial jingle in the movie’s world is for Silver Shamrock, a company which makes a bunch of masks for kids - well, really only a bunch of copies of the same three masks for kids. Because, apparently, what little kids really want is to be mindless conformist drones all wearing the exact same fucking costumes. The song is played probably two or three dozen times in this movie. I’m tempted to say it’s actually the starring role here.

The plot is, I guess, that the guy who died was delivering something for that mask company and caught wind of what they were really doing, which is why they sent those Terminator-esque guys to silence him. One of them sneaks back in later and finishes the job:

But before he can be prosecuted, he does the typical criminal thing and lights himself on fire in his own car. God dammit. Another one slips through the cracks of the American justice system...

I can't tell you how many times this very specific incidence has prevented the justice system from being able to prosecute a killer. Damn, just damn.

The dead guy’s daughter, Ellie, played by Stacey Nelkin, shows up and is obviously distraught. This character shows a lot of realistic grief and gives the movie a somber tone. Nah, just kidding; she teams up with Challis instantly to go on a ludicrous adventure to solve her father’s murder. That’s a pretty unusual way to grieve. “Hey, random doctor who works at the hospital where my father died! Let’s go solve the murder!”

It's especially baffling when you remember that Challis is a doctor, and most doctors are not usually qualified to solve murders. A lot of the time, cops handle that instead. I guess the cops in this movie's world were just too busy doing other things, like playing pub trivia or looking for the next best deal on used furniture. So solving crimes just fell to the next rank down the pecking order, doctors, to take care of solving the murders.

Their investigation leads them to this small town where Silver Shamrock masks are made in a giant cliche looking evil factory. In the hotel at night, Challis initially offers to sleep on the floor or in his car, which is nice of him, being a gentleman. Then Ellie asks him where he wants to sleep, eyes wide like a deer in headlights (though I believe it’s supposed to be a flirtatious look), and Challis doesn’t miss a beat. He immediately goes “Where do you THINK I want to sleep?”

Clearly, he was just waiting for this. He is a big fan of ‘my father just died and we’re trying to solve his murder’ sex, you know - the popular fetish.

It's an aphrodisiac.

Most of the movie after this point is just the characters wandering around trying to spy on Silver Shamrock, which turns the movie into a bigger budget version of you and your friends playing James Bond as kids in the backyard. Seriously, how many scenes are there in this movie of Challis just running from place to place? What is the director’s fetish with that?

But I guess I can see why Silver Shamrock is scary. I mean, their malfunctioning equipment is still deadly enough to kill people with laser beams to the face!

Then a bug comes out of her face, but I'm pretty sure the bug was always in there, and the laser just let it out.

It turns out the mastermind behind all this is a man named Conal Cochran, who gets the prize for being the most affable mass murder aspirer ever. Seriously, he may be trying to kill children with evil masks, but listening to his deep, comforting voice, you almost want to believe that the batshit nonsense he is spewing makes sense.

He could convince you to eat your own pinkie toe, he's so charismatic.

They find out that for some reason, they can’t contact anyone outside the town! That’s no good. It’s implied heavily that Cochran is behind this because, who the fuck else would it be in this movie? So they go ahead and break into the Silver Shamrock factory. They almost immediately get into a fight with the army of robots inside. Yes, really. An army of robots. I know it sounds like I’m just doing mad libs at this point, but it’s true.

And then the army of (blank) kidnapped the hero, who works as a (blank) so he wouldn't stop the evil (blank) from doing (blank) to all the children of the world.

They catch both Challis and Ellie and tie them up. Meanwhile, all the kids in the country are buying the same three stupid masks from this company for Halloween, which Cochran reveals will kill them if they see the commercial while wearing them. Okay, for one, that’s pretty cool technology, which I am sure Apple or Google is already developing. And two, really? All the kids buy those masks? There was no one buying a Batman costume or a cowboy one? Everyone just wanted those three same masks? I gotta say - the movie is making an excellent critique of ‘be like everybody else’ mass marketing culture.

...or, maybe, it’s just dumb. Yeah. Maybe that.

"Alright, we got three masks! Hooray for variety!"

We also see what happens when the mask activates: it collapses your head and makes bugs come out. That’s pretty cool.

Eh, it was before the current safety standards were enacted. What can you do?

There’s also a scene where Cochran explains his plan to Challis - he’s going to kill all the children in the world with masks because he doesn’t like how commercialized Halloween has become, wanting to return it to its original Pagan roots. Well, hey, seems a bit extreme, but we all need a hobby.

They escape, killing the robots and for some reason leaving Cochran alive - seriously, it didn't show him dying. He could still be out there now!

Then later in the car, it’s revealed that Ellie herself is a robot now, and she tries to kill Challis in the car. I actually think it’s because she had a delayed reaction to him sleeping with her while they were trying to solve her father’s murder. She just realized, hey, this guy is a dickbag. But it’s okay, he kills her and leaves her on the side of the road. Wow. Once a douchebag, always a douchebag.

This screenshot sums up the whole movie for me, actually.

Then he tries to stop everyone from showing the commercial, making several frantic calls to TV stations. A couple of them, surprisingly, actually do it - I guess they always listen to insane doctors screaming on the phone and change their scheduled programming for them. But most do not, as the commercial is apparently on every single station. The movie ends with mask-wearing kids watching the commercial and Challis screaming as Armageddon comes. So overall, a happy ending.

"If you could see how wide I'm opening my mouth right now, you would definitely give me what I want!"

Halloween III is a silly movie. It's got a slow, trudging pace and a lot of silly moments. When you think about the plot, it makes no sense. Why were there robots working for Conal Cochran? How did they make those masks? The rest of the story, like the whole 'doctor and beautiful girl team up to solve murder and have sex' plot, is pretty hilariously dated. The movie is slow-paced almost to a fault.

...but, somehow, it still works!

Yeah. It's just got that corny, fun vibe about it. The soundtrack is great and the plot is ghoulishly fun. It could be a lot better, and some just won't be able to look beyond the flaws. But I thought it was a nice slice of October fun with a goofy plot like they just don't make anymore. If you want a fun horror flick to watch this Halloween, this wouldn't be a bad choice. And at least it's better than 90% of the actual Michael Myers Halloween movies...

Images copyright of their original owners, I own none of them.

Cinema Freaks LIVE: The Visit (2015)

M. Night Shyamalan is something of a punchline now, and all of his movies have been reviled by everyone for years. He’s basically the equivalent of that guy in town no one likes and everyone has a story about him they laugh about over drinks - a clown not respected by anyone. It’s easy to get sucked into that, and rag on him - but he’s an easy target, so I don’t do it very much. However, The Visit is the worst shit I’ve ever seen from him. Tony and Michelle and I did a podcast about it. Check it out!

(Both the podcast and the review contain heavy SPOILERS, so if you actually want to see this for some reason, don't say we didn't warn you.)



This movie is an insane disaster, complete hot, wild garbage stinking up to the high heavens. It’s bad in every sense of the word. I could go on and on like this, but I don’t think it’s really a good form to do nothing but bitch about how bad it is with no actual criticism. Cough...yeah...I'd NEVER do that...

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle and Tony.

The problem is...I just don’t know where to start. Pretty much everything about this is either unpleasant, grating or poorly done. I mean, what was the plot behind this? Shyamalan got drunk off some fruity cocktail drinks and then said, "I have a new movie idea: old people are bad!" And then, for some inexplicable reason, a studio gave him money to make the movie.

To make matters worse, it's produced by the people who gave us Paranormal Activity, Sinister, The Purge, Ouija and more. Which is like two Japanese Kaiju monsters combining in a horrible lab accident and forming some sort of super monster to destroy Tokyo. M. Night Shyamalan teaming up with the people who gave us Ouija and the Insidious sequels - I think superhero movies typically feature less evil villain team-ups.

The premise is that these two kids are going to visit their grandmother and grandfather in a small town, who they’ve never met because their mother hasn’t spoken to them since she was 19 years old. Also, their father is out of the picture after a divorce. Hooray, dysfunctional families!

"Bye, kids! I'm glad you're leaving so I can get wasted and have tons of irresponsible sex!"

So, okay, not TOO bad so far. I mean, it is a story at least, even if it’s a flimsy one. Until we get to the fact that it’s a found footage movie, anyway. As I’ve said before, the genre can be done well. However, here it’s a couple of annoying white kids exchanging witty quips and blathering about how they think movies should be directed. I guess it’s kind of realistic, but both of them are so obnoxious to watch that I find it hard to be invested in at all.

Unless the movie wants you to be his ear, nose and throat doctor, this shot is pointless!

It's a shame because the young actors are pretty good and I hope they do more stuff as they get older, but here, they were victims of the Shyamalan Curse, which renders any actor awful.

There’s one scene where the girl is pointing the camera at a swing and saying they need to let it swing naturally. This is important because it shows that Shyamalan’s own directing skills are the same as that of a 15-year-old amateur.

Also, the little brother is constantly rapping, and it’s awful. I know he’s just a kid, and it’s mean to discourage kids from their hobbies and passions, but whoever made that rule up never heard this kid rap. I mean, holy fuck. What was the writing process like for that? I'm guessing Shyamalan decided that him walking into the middle of the scene himself and saying in a loud voice amplified above the rest of the movie, "I hate you, audience, and I want you to die," over and over, would have been a bit much. So the rapping was the next worst alternative.

The kids have a 9:30 bedtime, because after that specific time every night, the grandma gets naked, claws the walls with her fingernails and walks around with a knife. These obvious signs of mental illness probably would have been mentioned to the kids before they got there in real life, but it makes for good gross-out gimmicky shock scenes, so that's more important than storytelling!

How do they time it at exactly 9:30 anyway? What if grandma decided to strip down and grab her favorite kitchen knife at 9 p.m. when they’re down in the living room watching Nickelodeon? Weird.

There’s a part in the beginning where the brother’s phone doesn’t work, which I guess is the excuse for why the characters can never call the police. But we see that Skype works just fine, and they use the Internet later to look up stuff. Shyamalan could have easily just written out the part where the phone didn't work, but I think he was deliberately doing this just to piss everyone off. He had a plot that made sense, then he decided to make it confusing and bad for no reason, like he was protesting imaginary ghosts in his head who wanted to challenge his creative process. He is a special snowflake, after all, and the laws of reality don't apply to him.

More weird stuff starts happening, which they try to tell their mom, but she shrugs it off and says they’re old. Yeah! That’s it. They’re old. You’re the best mom ever. Old people are always stripping naked and carrying knives around! You kids have got to learn the hard and brutal facts of life sometime or other.

He could be suicidal and need real help, but nahhh, just senile!

There’s a bunch of filler scenes of them running around with the camera and filming shit, and it’s about as boring as it sounds. There’s no real development of the story. The camera stuff is so badly ingrained into the story, it’s practically a square peg into a round hole. I mean fuck. Most of the time it’s just the kids filming their grandparents making breakfast, or them driving. We don't get scenes of the two kids in the bathroom, but that's probably because Shyamalan's lawyers intervened before he could do that.

I don’t know if there’s even a point in saying so, but kids don’t use a camera like this. Nobody does, unless you’re directing a real, budgeted, scripted movie. No sentient human being does this. And it's also too clean looking for what's apparently just a reel of everything they filmed in the movie's world. Real life, there’d be way more errors, breaks in the video, et cetera. I just don't get what this was even supposed to be in the movie's universe - just a collection of footage from her camera, or a finished project? If it's the latter, hoo boy, I hope she's ready to submit it to Sundance! It'll be a gem.

But hey. Shyamalan knows it’s dumb. While they’re setting up a secret camera to spy on grandma and the sister wonders if it’s ethical to do that for a documentary, the little brother quips about how there’s no cinematic standards anymore. Which I think is obvious based on this movie.

Zing!

There are multiple scenes of the grandparents telling insane stories about seeing ghosts and monsters in the lake. It goes nowhere every time, and while I don’t think the movie would’ve been better with some supernatural elements, it would have been better if our time wasn’t wasted listening to these asinine stories from a bunch of senile old people.

The twist at the end is that the two old people are NOT actually the real grandparents. After like, five fucking days, the mother finally notices that they’re staying with the wrong old fucks. The movie has shown them several times speaking with the mother via Skype, and somehow that was never noticed. The mother, by the way, has been at a beach resort having fun and partying all movie long, and she didn’t even bother to make sure her kids got to the right grandparents. Parenting: it’s easy so long as you have no brain! Are you even really divorced, or did you forget to tell him when you moved?

Oh, and I guess the two old people are escaped mental patients. Who, I guess, nobody noticed were missing from the asylum they were being held at! That's just great. Keep up the awesome security at that mental facility there, jackasses. After all, who cares if a couple of serial killers escape? Fuck it, not even worth sending out cops to look for 'em.

"But if someone's got some weed, we'll gladly arrest them!"

Also, due to convenient writing, the two old fucks were able to keep it together okay until they were found out to be impostors, at which point they went crazy and started acting like the murderous psychotics they are. Writing is easy when you don't want to try! Anyone can do it.

See?

The climax involves a game of Yahtzee in which the grandma wolfs down a bunch of cookies and then screams right into the camera, crumbs dropping from her gaping maw of a mouth. Yahtzee issued a public apology saying they were sorry they ever invented the game after seeing this, and if they knew it would have been in this movie when they first made it, they would’ve aborted the game creation and set their building on fire.

Irreparably damaged now. Shame...

Then we get a bunch of scenes of shaky-cam fumbling in the dark as the kids discover the bodies of their real grandparents in the basement. Oh, and there’s a scene where the grandpa shoves a shit-stained diaper into the brother’s face. Thanks for that one, Shyamalan. I'm sorry I don't have a joke for that. I was...completely unprepared for movie scenes about diapers thrown in little kids' faces. Next movie I see it in, I promise I'll have something.

The fact that these fight scenes made it into the project is dizzyingly stupid, when you consider the fact that, in the movie’s universe, this whole thing was supposed to be edited together by the sister as a documentary project about her family. What made THAT worth putting in? What kind of documentary is this?

At the actual end, they get rescued and then the daughter and her mom have a heartwarming ending where we find out the BIG REASON she and the grandparents had a falling out years ago. It’s been hinted at all movie long and now we’re finally getting the answer. So. What is it? Take a seat here, this is going to be intense and I want to make sure you all can handle this huge revelation.

Are you ready? Okay: Apparently, when the mom was 19, she yelled at the grandparents and they pushed each other around a little. Wow. That’s why they never talked again? That’s why this whole mess happened? I'd say that's underwhelming, but that's like saying most school shooters just need to have a cookie and a beer and they'll be fine. It's not an accurate statement.

There’s also this really tacked-on moral about forgiveness and family and stuff. Really, was THAT what I was supposed to take from the shit-diaper-in-face scene, or all of the scenes of the grandparents telling conspiracy UFO ghost stories? Wow. That went totally over my head! Shyamalan is clearly much smarter than we thought. I guess this was a good movie after all.

The end credits are played over a scene of the brother rapping again. This time it’s full of product placements, because I guess Shyamalan needed to whore himself out to pay for this shit heap of a movie and also, for all the diapers he needed as props. I mean, there were a lot of those!

M. Night Shyamalan, now sponsored by adult diapers.

This is practically the dictionary definition of a bad movie, and I think Shyamalan did it on purpose. There's a nauseating level of self-aware 'bad on purpose' pandering about this. I think he made this just to fuck with Hollywood and the viewers/critics who hated his other movies, because the whole thing is pretty much the movie critics who hate him THOUGHT his other movies were. Hell, he's literally smearing shit in our faces. This movie is pretty much like a bratty child frustrated that no one gets his "brilliant" ideas, so he's passive-aggressively lashing out. My mother, upon seeing the trailer for this some months back, said it looked "exhausting" to watch, and frankly, that's the best summary I can think of.

This really is up there for worst movie of the decade. It's just so, so bad; everything about it is. Nothing makes sense. Fuck, I need to go lie down.

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