Movie Reviews

Hey, look! It's a good old-fashioned horror movie! If this had come out in the 70s, it'd be a minor classic. It even has the old-school analog synth soundtrack. Vacationing couple gets stuck in an island in Mexico where it turns out the night before all the kids suddenly woke up in the middle of the night and killed all the adults. It's kind of the opposite of"Mom & Dad", or"The Birds"but with children instead of birds. In fact, I'd be surprised if"The Birds"wasn't a conscious influence. But the nice thing is, that's as close as it gets to cliches, excepting the title. Very far from a Hollywood horror movie, that's for sure. Light on gore in terms of screentime devoted to it, but extremely gory in the few brief moments it's shown. Not great by a long stretch, but good, in a way that they don't really make horror movies anymore... definitely only for horror fans, though. Gets pretty brutal by the end, seriously doesn't pull its punches, which, when you consider the bad guys are a bunch of children, is even more brutal. Honorable mention, I think. Looks like the kids probably had a mess of fun making it, too. Amusingly, Wikipedia says this film made a total of about $2500 in theaters. Also, turns out, it's an almost shot-for-shot remake of a 1976 Spanish horror film called"Who Can Kill a Child?"which, really, would be a much better title for what it is. It's funny, because something about it reminded me of Long Weekend, another '70s film which I got turned on to by liking a remake that nobody else cared for.

A houseful of twentysomethings discovers that their recently deceased neighbor across the street was a scientist who invented a camera that takes polaroids of 24 hours into the future. I've always been fond of this movie. I can't say it's a great movie but it's an ok movie, would have been kind of the sci-fi equivalent of a"teen scream"horror movie, but—despite some serious flaws, such as some flabbiness to the plot involving a bad guy whose performance just screams"miscast hipster actor trying hard to play bad guy"—it's saved by mostly above-average clever ideas and execution, most especially some careful and creative plotting right when it's needed, which gets better as the movie goes on... kind of the reverse of the usual"started good but ran out of steam"problem. I spent the first half of a much later second viewing saying,"This is good, but I'm not sure it's really much better than average"but by the time it was done, it was like, oh, yeah, I did like this for a reason.

As described in my last review, compilation of three interwoven short tales, revolving around a broadcast signal driving people insane. I like this one a lot, very well done. (Note: there's another 2014 horror movie called"The Signal"that isn't nearly as good.) I just recently, 10 or 15 years after it had faded to a distant memory of a film Ihad especially enjoyed, popped back up on Tubi (which, among the seemingly thousands of awful horror films it gets, seems to also manage to get these distantly-remembered, hard-to-find favorites.) I remember why I liked it. It's gorier than I remember, and, I don't know, I can't say it's exactly a great movie, but it seriously well done for what it is and the kind of gem I would say non-horror fans shouldn't go out of their way to see, but, every horror fan should see it. As noted elsewhere, the first of the three episodes, directed by the guy who went on to do"The Ritual"and a bunch of better stuff I noted in my review of that film, is the best of the three, very effectively ratcheting up the suspense. The rest is nearly as good though. The second two rely a little bit on camp humor, not my favorite thing, but it's strong enough all the way through to pull off this off-kilter and gory end-of-humanity tale. Also, never realized unti now, the female lead was also one of the leads in"YellowBrickRoad"another favorite deep cut.

Ok, this one is special, I think we have an honorable mention here. A folklorist investigates tales of strange creatures appearing in Vermont. When I threw this on, I was suprised to discover it was an old horror movie, not a new one, and nearly turned it off, but thankfully I didn't. Within just a few minutes I found myself thinking that I'd forgotten just how visually beautiful some of those old black and white movies are... similar to some of those John Ford westerns. It was quite a ways into it before I realized something was a little too clean—by the end of the movie I realized that certain lighting revealed that there was no film grain. Which makes sense, because the movie was actually made in 2011. But other than that, WOW, the 1930s reproduction is note-perfect, the acting style, the costumes, the special effects, most definitely the lighting... somebody involved with the making of this film had a spectacularly good eye for black-and-white cinematography, it's just beautiful and would probably have stood out as a great example of vintage cinematography if it had actually been vintage. The story is not great but absolutely good, it builds as effectively as some of the great vintage horror, and the plot ticks along, nothing about it sags at any point from start to finish. There's clearly some modern special effects used but for the most part they're effectively disguised to look like 1930s technology, and mostly the whole thing works. The monsters are a little cheezy but by the time you see them I was so into it that I didn't care. This film really caught my attention, there were a few times I had to rewind to see things a second time. Plus, a dark ending, much more Lovecraft than Hollywood, even though only the first two acts are actually from the Lovecraft story this is based on. Very nice work from an indie director. Not quite a great film, but definitely a treat, from where I sit, for sure. Quality entertainment. Incidentally I notice this one gets high marks from a lot of Lovecraft fans in the review section on IMDB.