Three douchebags sneak into a closed state park to go hunting, where they are terrorized and hunted down by what turns out to be a couple of suburban kids who are in a closed state park terrorizing and hunting down people because, without them doing that, there wouldn't be any movie, now, would there.
Give these guys an 'A' for effort in this messy tale centering on two independently sick gorgeous women who meet through a support group for grieving parents. A strong director and good acting fail to save yet another "crime drama" that seems to present sickness, in and of itself, as entertainment, relying primarily on "plot twists" rather than "plot", including lead characters suddenly changing personality in what I assume is supposed to be a shocking "reveal" but instead just seems overly contrived. This one deserves credit for making the opposite mistake of most films like it: it spares the violence, and takes over 2 hours to tell a fairly thin wisp of a story, trying to draw it out as a drama rather than relying on shock as most movies of this sort do. And scene-by-scene, it's far better made than many films like it. It doesn't drag that much.…
Note: due to a wordpress plugin glitch, this movie's title may be truncated. It's "The Girl With All The Gifts"
Kind of a new take on some tired old zombie tropes. This starts off reeeeeeally dull for a while but eventually picks up nicely. It's one of those British horror films that tries to actually be a good movie rather than just going for scares, and by and large it works. It's got pretty much the first new ideas of any sort in the genre since "28 Days Later", which it builds on thematically with its infected-humans-standing-in-for-living-dead trope.
If "Night Of The Living Dead" is the Beatles of zombie movies, and "28 Days Later" is the Rolling Stones, this is the Faces at their best. (And, by the way, continuing the metaphor, "Dawn Of The Dead" is Paul McCartney & Wings at their peak, and the obscure 1964 Vincent…
DV-shot, slick production values, sitcom quality acting and writing, very faintly entertaining mess about hikers who encounter a UFO or something.
Good luck finding this movie, but it's well worth seeking out. Another one I can't understand why isn't considered a cult classic. Abducted girl and family vs serial killer who hasn't got things quite as under control as he thinks... I can say no more. Twisted, hilarious, gory, and uniquely bizarre. Stars Illyanna Douglas, Daniel Stern, and Kevin Pollak, which should give you a general idea of the caliber. Love it.
Seriously tense drama turns thriller as a new age dinner party gets weird, after old friends suddenly make contact several years after disappearing to join a cult.
This is one of those movies that seems like it was originally written as a play, which is something that I always tend to like, when it's done competently. Here, it works really well, although if I have any complaint it's that the story builds emotional unease so capably and steadily, that by the time it turns from emotional to physical brutality, it almost breaks the tension. It feels very emotionally authentic as the unease builds. Fucking creepy new agers. (I do have mixed feelings about transplanting the "no cellphone reception out here" trope to the city, although they do pretty much pull it off.)
It's seriously well cast, fairly original, well done all around. Good ending, too. And the closing song rips…
A personal favorite. I'm really surprised by the low audience score for this film. It's definitely not your usual horror movie, and if you're in it for scares, gore, or action (of which there is little, little, and almost none, respectively), you're going to be disappointed. This ain't "Saw". It's just as much a coming-of-age family drama as it is a horror film, and it's got as much heart as an afterschool special. In theory, that could go either way, but in this case, it's so well put-together, and ticks along so smoothly, that it adds up to as very satisfying and rather unique, if homespun and small-scale, film. It doesn't aspire to be more than it is, it just tells a good and original story with near-complete economy and a skill that belies its overall amateurish production values. If a horror classic such as "The Shining" is a banquet,…
Interesting sci-fi entry about a dinner party suddenly caught in a vortex of parallel universes. It's so embarrassing when you can't tell if your dinner guests are still the same people from your own dimension that you invited.
Low-key but thought-provoking enough to be a fun view. Nobody will ever call this a great movie, but the story is pretty different, and it's kind of a low-key personal favorite of mine, for sure.
The Final Girl kills the maniac. Set on an Irish Farm. I didn't pay much attention to it.
Something about english girls and UFOs. Kind of slid past my brain. Possibly the lowest production values of any movie I've seen. I think these girls were like, "What do you want to do this weekend?" "Hey, let's make a movie!" "Great idea! I'll go to the art supply store and get some stuf!" Seriously. Doesn't appear to be lit or edited, just kind of shot as-is in the house where they were.
As "Buckaroo Bonzai" was to goofy sci-fi and interdimensional travel, so is Nekrotronik to the supernatural, ghosts and demons. Fun. And, it's Australian.
Alison Brie as a young woman falling over the edge into complete psychotic breakdown in a painfully indie film that even Alison Brie as a young woman falling over the edge into complete psychotic breakdown can't make interesting. Duplass Brothers project, meaning it's not totally uninteresting, but in this case they save it all for the third act and by that time I'd lost interest.
Fairly mediocre woodlands pursuit pic. Bachelor party on a camping trip in the woods when someone starts shooting at them. They run. The shooter keeps shooting. For another 90 minutes.
There's two kinds of horror movies. There's the ones that start with "a kill" and the ones that don't. This one does. That's how you know it ain't literature. That said, I really want to like this movie, not least because so many people do. And, it does have a few things going for it: really good early John Carpenter-like cinematography, a really good 70s analogue synth early John Carpenter-like score, and in Maika Monroe the most likable heroine since Jamie Lee Curtis. I get why people like it. However, it also lacks, er, just about anything else. The "plot" is as thin as it gets, thinner than "Final Destination" which was thinner than an onion skin. Basically, a curse is passed along where if you are a gorgeous teen who has sex with another gorgeous teen who is cursed, you get followed by a creature bent on killing you…
OK, the setup is, a silent cowboy is essentially trapped in a Chuck E Cheese, battling sentient, murderous animatronic characters. Oh, wait, also: the cowboy is Nicholas Cage, which changes everything. This film knows exactly what it is, and remains unapologetically true to itself all the way through. Such a ludicrous idea doesn't need to be excessively overdone, and so it mostly isn't, it's just done and the natural excess of the whole idea is let speak for itself. I really kinda love this movie. Plus, you've got a movie in which Nicholas Cage has to be Nicholas Cage without uttering a single word of dialogue, which, ok, I can take or leave Nicholas Cage, but he's the man for the job in this case.
Seriously funny, geeky series about an alien abduction support group in Beacon, NY disappointingly ends after 2 seasons in a cliffhanger but is nonetheless well worth watching if you're into geeky sci-fi humor. Should be a cult favorite.
Surprised to find out this was David Cronenberg. Seemed more like Robert Altman doing one of those "look how horrible film industry people are" films that's primarily entertaining only to film industry people. I did notice it was among the more engrossing of those, but, still. Even the likable cast (Robert Pattinson notwithstanding) couldn't really keep me interested. Julianne Moore won some sort of big award for her performance as a vapid aging star in this. It was almost as weird as seeing her as a porn star in "Boogie Nights", and she basically managed to make even that work somehow, so, ok.
Overdubbed polish film with only its slightly odd, foreign tone and charming cast to set it apart from the usual psycho-picks-off-campers-in-the-woods flick.
Spike Lee does a horror movie, after a fashion, as well as his best impression of a European art filmmaker, in this remake of 1973's "Ganja and Hess". After a scuffle, a well-to-do doctor returns from the dead with a thirst for blood, plot gets tough to follow after that. Ok, I guess, considering I've never liked a Spike Lee movie. Definitely looks good visually without seeming too try-hard on that front. If this had been someone's first-time outing I'd have been impressed; from a very experienced director I say "meh". Great soundtrack, though.
Taylor Schilling's kid speaks Hungarian in his sleep. He's possessed by the soul of a psychopathic murderer out to claim the final victim who got away. That is all. Taylor Schilling makes it ok, actually.
I'm generally not a fan of "so bad it's good" films, but, my god. Except for the White Zombie-sounding tracks in the otherwise analog synth soundtrack, this 2017 film is a note-perfect simulation of gloriously over-the-top 1980s USA Up All Nite-style supernatural gorefest fare. Two gorgeous secret agents descend into a prison modeled after Dante's Inferno and full of psychotic and/or supernatural killers. Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Adrienne Barbeau, Dee Wallace, Michael Berryman, and every one of them chewing the scenery like they're loving every minute of it ... this one is kind of the exception that proves the rule. It's very, very hard to make a camp movie like this that I can sit through, but this one takes it so far, and takes itself so ridiculously seriously, that it accomplishes what few can. I would never recommend this as a movie for anyone else to watch, but for…
Just re-watched this movie, which I remembered as being pretty good, after many years. It's funny how different it plays in post-Trump America. It could almost be a parable. And the stereotypically smug, condescending, aloof liberal (to judge by their horror at someone owning — gulp — a gun!) city couple doesn't come off as innocent as they did the first time I watched it... to the extent that I was a little disappointed that, rather than make a controversial observation, aloofness simply wins in the end over brute physicality and living perhaps just a little too much in-the-moment, and apparently without even being really changed in any substantial way by the experience. But, after a slow start, the acting is every bit as good as I remember, and the movie actually raises a lot of interesting things to think about, all of which elevates it above the exploitation flick…
Fridge logic abounds as a sheepish yuppie gets convinced by a suddenly-reappeared-after-years old friend to spend a weekend at a mysterious self-improvement program in this rip off of "The Game" x "Fight Club". Mediocre film that might have worked if you have never seen those is ruined further by a nonsensical coda at the end.
Ok, what starts off as "Fatal Attraction" for millennials takes a cruel twist into a little more of a descent into madness than you'd expect at the outset. Far from perfect, and still kind of predictable, but ultimately a genuinely nasty little movie in its way, which redeems it from being totally derivative, totally predictable crap. I'll say it just makes the cut.
Comic artist, just released from an insane asylum, kills those he feel ruined his life. Entertaining enough comedy-horror. First you need to know it stars Barry Bostwick and Karen Black, which tells you part of the story, and then that it stars Kevin Corrigan, which tips the film into the hoped-for one of the two places it could go given that first fact. Kevin Corrigan, who, yes, you do know who he is, has pretty much only ever been in watchable movies, near as I can tell.
You know, I kind of liked this movie. What should have been a standard C-grade teens-getting-picked-off-in-a-remote-location horror movie packs some genuine creepiness in there, as teens in the deserve inadvertently summon a... well, it never explains exactly what the "Hisji" evil entity really is, but it can fuck with electricity and confuse the hell out of its victims before offing them. More about building mood than jump scares or gore, and while it isn't a great film, or even a very good one, it definitely has that going for it, and I liked it for that. Way less crappy that, say, "Candyman". In fact, not really crappy at all, just kind of... only-moderately-unambitious, at worst. The AV club has a pretty good review at https://film.avclub.com/one-of-the-biggest-horror-movie-scares-of-the-year-happ-1835452053, saying all the scares happen in well-lit scenes, and that this is not "don't go in the basement" horror, which is a good way of…
Pedestrian, entirely forgettable police procedural/haunted house flick as the story of a film crew (natch) filming inside a haunted house was murdered is told in flashbacks as Maria Bello interviews the lone survivor.
Victorian-style seance story told exclusively through acting and sets. Dreadfully boring, dreadfully British. Nothing happens at all for the first hour.
Self-consciously bizarre, surreal, Gilliam-esque bit of fluff about a guy who builds a labyrinth our of a refrigerator box in his living room which is larger on the inside than the outside, takes on a life of its own and is full of peril and monsters. Seems like it is supposed to be a kids movie, but, has cursing and a vagina. Entertaining for what it is, though. (EDIT: Ah! Written and directed by Calvin and Hobbes's creator Bill Watterson. That makes perfect sense.)(EDIT 2: No. It's a different guy named Bill Watterson. Still, would have made perfect sense.)
Have you ever seen a Stephen King TV adaptation before? This is actually one of the better ones, which isn't saying much, since every King TV adaptation except for the few great outliers is terrible. Harry Anderson with a cheezy mustache, John Ritter with a full beard, Richard Masur's disembodied head talking, that should tell you all you need to know. Oh, also, it's 3 hours long.
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