Trick'r Treat Flicker Fleet for your Snicker Seat

 

 Netflix Horror Picks

for Halloween 2015

Last year, I reviewed a horror movie every day for the month of October.  Well, that's not gonna happen again, champ. It was also brought to my attention at the time that many of the films about which I wrote were unavailable to the home viewer. So this time, I am putting you in charge of the watching, because I know you like it that way.  There are a ridiculous number of top-drawer horror films on Netflix right now (and some real stinkers) so I have prepared this guide for plenty of options to carry you through All Hallow's Eve.



Choice Cuts


These are, for my money, the best horror movies on Netflix right now.  Most of them should appeal to people who just plain enjoy a good movie, whether or not they're strictly a horror fan -- which isn't to say that these are the milquetoast selections.  If you only watch one horror movie on Netflix this Halloween season, make it one of these.

The Babadook - 2014

The Babadook is the boogeyman-type character featured in a mysteriously appearing children's book, which begins to cross over into the life of a potentially disturbed young boy, and his potentially disturbed mother.  The Babadook is also an effective metaphor for the lack and loss of control felt by a single mother experiencing the kind of over-her-head moment in life that hides just around the corner for more of us than would care to confess it.  The manipulation of parental fears is on par with Dark Water or The Shining.  Spooky, intense and scary in some very relatable ways.

The Babadook on Media Bliss

Byzantium - 2012


Director Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire) returns to the bloodsucking undead with a very different tale about very different vampires.  "Sisters" Gemma Arterton and Saorise Ronan live a repetitious and directionless life, echoing the people that they were when they were alive, yet always running from their past.  It's vastly more human than Interview.  When I wrote about Byzantium previously, I declared that it was close in the running for my favorite vampire movie ever, and I've only come to hold that view more since then.


Byzantium on Media Bliss

American Mary - 2012

After I first saw American Mary, I went on a raving spree about it.  It was an original concept that tapped into some fresh, real, disturbing horror.  The one friend whom I know took me up on my suggestion said it was the first time she'd ever cried at a horror movie.  After I saw See No Evil 2, the follow-up film by directors The Soska Sisters, I momentarily feared that I'd misjudged American Mary, but another viewing reminded me just how fine a film Mary is.  See No Evil 2 is everything wrong with horror. American Mary is everything right.


American Mary on Media Bliss

The Seasoning House - 2012

The Seasoning House is a relentless and brutal film, rooted in real-world horrors.  Angel is a captive in a nameless Balkan war sent to a house for sex slaves.  Perhaps due to her deafness, and perhaps due to some undefined infatuation on the part of the pimp, she's spared from serving customers.  Instead, she's the house servant, forced to give the other girls the drugs that keep them docile and dependent.  This thin slice of freedom, coupled with her seeming insignificance afford her the means to fight for her life and freedom when the situation explodes.  A misstep in the finale disappoints both the story and the verisimilitude, but not enough to undermine the breakneck tension and the unnerving horrors linger in the conscience.


The Seasoning House on Media Bliss

 The Others – 2001

Alejandro Ammenabar's The Others cribs only as much of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw as it needs to saturate the film with all the elements of a classic haunted house film. The story is uncomplicated by the unnecessary. It builds a mystery and suffuses it with spooks, and pays off with a highly effective twist that makes the story a nice complete little gem. One of the top few ghost stories ever.

The Others on Media Bliss




Prime Round


Maybe not quite as delicately prepared as the Choice Cuts, but make up in flavor what they lack in finesse.

Housebound - 2014


Housebound, like Grabbers [below] is an import that recalls the young lions of American cinema in the 1980s. This Kiwi thrillhorror-comedy uses a young woman's house arrest – at her estranged parents' house – as a vehicle for a journey into Hell... or Heck, really. Perhaps a “bloody hell” here or there.


Housebound on Media Bliss



I Saw the Devil – 2010


Bleak, black and brutal, to the point that it either becomes, or reveals that it always was, a savage satire of itself. A strangely brilliant and completely moronic serial killer makes the unlucky mistake of selecting the fiancee of a South Korean special agent, which sets into motion what we assume will be standard (albeit particularly violent) revenge/chase action. When the agent catches the killer early in the second act, it becomes clear that there is much more going on here. What follows is the kind of ode to and indictment of violence and revenge that must have had Quentin Tarantino kicking himself in envy.


I Saw the Devil on Media Bliss


Horns- 2013


An unexpected collection of elements, twists and embellishments on what is essentially a mystery. Daniel Radcliffe is accused of murdering his true love, and even he can't quite be sure he didn't do it. When he starts growing giant devil's horns, as one does, it could be his damnation, or the key to the truth.

Horns on Media Bliss

Come Back to Me - 2014


The less you know about the story, the better it will be. Seriously, don't even read the blurb on Netflix. I'll just tell you this; it's about a young couple who move into a new home in a recession-ravaged Las Vegas, and then strange and disturbing things start to happen. It's creepy, and then it's really creepy, and then it's OH MY GOD SO CREEPY. If that's something you can deal with, just press Play.

Come Back to Me on Media Bliss

Neverlake - 2012


Jenny is visiting her semi-estranged father in Italy, where he has been studying Etruscan artifacts, particularly those relating certain mysteries about the lake upon which they live.  In a ramshackle hospital nearby, she meets a group of children with a variety of mysterious ailments.  Nice, creepy haunted mystery.

Neverlake on Media Bliss





Insidious: Chapter 2 - 2013


Insidious 2 requires a familiarity with the first film, which is no longer on Netflix. But if you've seen it and you've been on the fence due to the usual law of diminishing returns with sequels (and horror sequels in particular), then you can probably rest assured. Everybody hates something and everything has someone who hates it, but it is my strongly held opinion that the follow-up is not merely at least as good as the original, but it actually makes the original better by filling in some massive gaps.

Insidious: Chapter 2 on Media Bliss

Teeth – 2007


She has teeth.


Things get... complicated.






Creature Features


Monsters will always have a special place in my heart. Please don't let that be my ironic epitaph.


Monster movies also tend to be some of the most fun, if you ask me, and if you've read this far I am going to take it as implicit that you did.

From Dusk Till Dawn - 1996


This Rodriguez/Tarantino joint is slightly psychotic. It starts out as a brutal crime flick, following a pair of remorseless bank robbers (George Clooney & QT) on the run from a dragnet, and the family of a faithless preacher (Harvey Keitel) on their collision course to a Mexican cantina, just over the border. Then Salma Hayek gives everyone erections, and then the vampires come... from dusk until dawn. Savage, cool, and SO damned fun.

Grabbers - 2012


Speaking of fun, Grabbers recollects the horror/comedies of mid-80s, minus the loudmouth kids. Director Jon Wright backed up my theory with his more recent Robot Overlords, which does bring the kids. In Grabbers, however, an alien invasion of squiggly multipodes requires a more adult solution... a grand piss-up.

Grabbers on Media Bliss


The Host - 2006


This South Korean film about a mutated river creature centers heavily on some sentimental family drama and intense thrills to keep us invested. It's uneven at times and I have some reservations about the last act, but the overall package delivers.








Slashers

Slashers were never my favorite genre (so take that as you will) but I have come to appreciate them when they do something interesting and/or new with the concept (so take THAT as you will, too).

Maniac- 2012


The story in Maniac isn't really anything new or different, but by doing one other thing differently, it gives the story new meaning. That “one thing” is to show everything through the eyes of a serial killer with a mannequin fetish (Elijah Wood). The viewer is made complicit, no longer as witness, not merely as partner, but possibly as the reason the killing must happen at all.

Maniac on Media Bliss

Saw - 2004


Saw isn't strictly a slasher in the traditional teenage body count way. There is some killing, there is some gore, and there is a sadistic, franchise-spawning costumed killer. Most of all, however, Saw is a brutally intense psychological thriller, predominantly based around two men in a single room. Absolutely worth seeing once. The many sequels become increasingly gore-dependent and nonsensical.



Old School Kicks

If we're going to be perfectly honest with ourselves, there is a definite generational divide in the horror movies of the horror films of today and those of, say, 15 – 20 years past. The technology has changed radically, as have the expectations of a generally more grumpy audience in the 21^st century.

But that doesn't mean the old stuff isn't still good.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare -  1994

It's not mere vanity titling that Wes Craven's name leads the title of this very "meta" not-quite-sequel to the Nightmare on Elm Street series he originated.  It's Craven's and star-of-Nightmare Heather Langenkamp's dreams.  It's an imaginative and entertaining approach to a new kind of nightmare.  I like it at least as much as the original, and it makes a nice bridge to Craven's Scream series.

Day of the Dead - 1985

I, personally, am not really a fan of George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, but I really like the sequels, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead suffers from a little bit of the 1980s, but the story, satire and zombie effects are still as sharp as ever.

Re-Animator- 1985


I suppose it was meant to be funny at the time, but it's really funny now. A totally 80s splatterfest adaptation of a Lovecraft story that sort of bridges Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to George Romero's zombies. If you love old school creature effects – and I do – Re-Animator is essential viewing. If you're looking for subtlety, that is simply too damned bad.

Nightbreed - 1990


Nightbreed is adapted by Clive Barker from one of his own books. It's part slasher, part “I'm a vampire?” type relationship drama and a LARGE part monster mash. The monster mash is the part that works. Really works. Netflix is currently hosting the recent Director's Cut, which seems to help, although to be honest I couldn't tell all that big a difference. Like Re-Animator, it's essential for fans of creature effects.

Nightbreed on Media Bliss

Clive Barker's Hellraiser and the sequels Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Hellraiser III are also on Netflix.  They're not the only Hellraiser films currently running, but they're the only ones you should consider seeing.

The series was a breath of fresh viscera when it came out.  The stories become progressively messier, but we get more of the gore and freaky monster effects that we came for while the mythology deepens.






Grin Reapers

These are getting to be good times for fans of the horror-comedy. There are a few on Netflix already, but you should be able to expect more to come.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil - 2010

Turns the slasher film sideways. If the slow-witted yokels are the good guys, who's the serial killer?

Odd Thomas - 2013


An unexpected combination of romantic comedy supernatural thriller. Thomas can see... things, harbingers of ill tidings. He does what he can to help. But when he sees a lot of things, he's going to have to do a lot more. Not terribly horrific, but certainly has ample thrills and a lot of charm.

The Brass Teapot - 2012


Sort of a “monkey's paw” tale about a couple who discover a cursed teapot that pays cash for pain. To what lengths will they go to give the teapot the ever-increasing “kicks” it needs? To what lengths would others go to possess it?


The Brass Teapot on Media Bliss

Zombeavers - 2014

It is what it is, man.


If you're the kind of person who thinks that sounds funny and you'd like to find out if it is – it is.


If you're the kind who thinks that sounds stupid and you're pretty sure it's something you'd hate – it is.

Zombeavers on Media Bliss



Seems Legit

There are a TON of “found footage” horror films made these days. Most of them suck. A few are good. Fewer still are on Netflix, but there are some interesting variations on the style, between these and the V/H/S anthologies.

Troll Hunter- 2010


Researchers is Norway pursue the legendary giant trolls of the northern mountains. A series of set-pieces ramps up the wonder and danger with each expedition. It seems like giants shouldn't work this well, but they totally do.


Troll Hunter on Media Bliss

The Taking of Deborah Logan - 2014


A team making a documentary about Alzheimer's patients encounters a subject whose behavior blurs the line between dementia and demonology. The script bites off a little more than the budget can deliver in the third act, and the “found footage” perspective cheats a lot, but it's a good twist on a haunting/possession with a reasonably well-handled metaphor.




Candy Bowl


Gonna be passing out the candy on Halloween and want so bite-sized horror to get you through the night? Anthologies bear the blessing and curse of their structure. They can be as bad as their worst piece and as good as their best, but they can also give you a lot of different treats to try, and so what if you get a few pennies?

The ABCs of Death - 2012
The ABCs of Death 2 - 2014

The premise of the ABCs series is that 26 international film makers get one letter of the alphabet, and they have to make a short film about death on a theme beginning with that letter. The results are ALL over the place. Some are incredible. Some are mediocre. Some a totally, completely bug-shaggin' insane. A few are even boring, but at least there will be another one coming at you in about 4 minutes. I prefer ABCs 2 to ABCs 1.


ABCs of Death 2 on Media Bliss

V/H/S - 2012
V/H/S/2 - 2013
V/H/S Viral - 2014

Each V/H/S film collects a group of found footage shorts (presented as mysterious video tapes) from different creative teams, then wraps them together with an overarching story about an unknown evil that collects such videos, and uses them as a conduit to spread evil and terror. My order of preference is Viral > 1 > 2, but I'm not necessarily typical.

VHS on Media Bliss
VHS: Viral on Media Bliss





I Been All Around This Great Big World...


By coincidence (or not, or not really) these international films all feature girls (sort of) who may or may not kill. Or something.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night – 2014


Made by Iranian filmmakers in California, AGWHAaN is your best bet for foreign arthouse buffs. It's slow, in a good way. It's spare, in not quite as good a way. I felt held at a distance as a viewer which I'm not really used to and not sure I liked, but maybe I needed that. Despite a great deal of coldness, signs of life are revealed by the end of this tale about the death of more than a vampire's dinner.

Thale – 2012


Another fairly spare tale; this time from Norway. Two hazmat clean-up guys are assigned to clean up a remote cabin in the woods – the scene of a recent, grisly death. They're mostly wrapped up in their personal problems, until they discover a long disused secret laboratory housing a speechless girl in a tub of milk. The mysteries concerning her folkloric origins put them in exactly the kind of dangerous position they were trying to avoid.

Thale on Media Bliss

Let the Right One In - 2008


I'm going to do something I never do. I'm going to go ahead and endorse this even though I haven't seen it yet. Why? Why would I do that? I was very fond of “Let Me In,” the American adaptation of this Swedish film. The original is pretty widely considered to be superior, which doesn't really matter to me, but since it's on Netflix and “Let Me In” isn't, we're working with what we have. The story concerns a young boy who is bullied at school and ignored at home. Then he meets a girl with secrets who tells him that they cannot be friends. The impact that they have on each other will change lives, and not just their own.  

I will watch it in October because I'm a pro like that.


Won't Kill You


They're not the top shelf hooch, but they get the job done. Suitable for late night snacking.

Black Death - 2010


One of the things I like about Black Death is being able to tell D&D players, “Go check out what a paladin is really like.” Sean Bean heads up this grim band of knights under warrant of the Church as they escort a friar (Eddie Redmayne) to search for a rumored cure to the plague. The combat is brutal. The story is a little vague about where it's going, if indeed it's going anywhere at times in the middle. But it pays off in the end and packs in a twist that actually serves the story rather than itself.

Kiss of the Damned - 2012

A ridiculously gorgeous vampire wrestles with the implications of a new relationship with a human man, and goes ahead and does it anyway.  Just as they are embarking on their new lives together, her unstable and self-serving sister shows up to turn sexy-bitey time into bullshit drama time.  I was strongly reminded of KotD whenI saw Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive."  They certainly have some similarities, but they take those ideas and run in radically different directions with them, and that's not a bad thing in either case.

Kiss of the Damned on Media Bliss

Haunter - 2013


Abigail Breslin's family doesn't seem to notice much, and she's not sure why. They never change. They never question. They just live the same day over and over again. It's a haunted house story that definitely takes things off in its own direction. It doesn't always work when a movie writes new rules for the supernatural that challenge tradition, but Haunter works well enough to keep the tension and the pace ratcheting up all the way through.

Haunter on Media Bliss

Honeymoon - 2014


There were two very similar films in 2014; Honeymoon and The Device. Honeymoon is the much better one.


A pair of newlyweds decide to spend their honeymoon in her family's vacation cabin. Things get weird and super creepy. The weirdness around them agitates their unresolved anxiety about marriage, but becomes much more. The mystery is better than the payoff, but it does enough things right to make it not a waste of time.

Honeymoon on Media Bliss




PLEASE NOTE:

These listings were roughly accurate as of the first week of October, 2015 in the United States.  I can't promise anything you read here will still be on Netflix at any point past then.  The assessments will remain essentially true, although they may compare less favorably to the entirety of horror film history, than they compared to what Netflix had available at that time -- y'all dig?

 

Rock the Belles, and Bills, and Beavers - Shorts on Screen

FILM:


Time once again to round up some of my recent viewing. 31 Nights of Halloween was intended to clean out a lot of my backlog, but I think I actually finished the month with more things to watch, so now I'm REALLY clearing things out.  It still skews strongly to horror and I'm heading into a trend where I'm going to be watching a lot of old school stuff from the 80s (thanks largely to Call Girl of Cthulhu), but I am starting to get back into comedy and drama.

Once I'd watched Annabelle and Jessabelle, I felt obligated to watch Belle, which had been sitting in my backlog for some time.  Glad I did.  It was easily the best of the three (which really isn't a fair comparison), although the other two are perfectly serviceable horror movies as long as you go into them with restrained expectations.

Annabelle -2014
Written by Gary Dauberman
Directed by John R Leonetti
with Annabelle Wallis & Alfre Woodard

This film is marginally related to The Conjuring, but in no way a sequel or prequel or anything but a side-story that tangentially exists in the same universe.  The connection is the creepy-faced doll that the exorcists from The Conjuring keep in their Closet of Doom, and the main similarities are the themes of possession and the startling effect of loud noises.  Where The Conjuring was a recent high watermark for scary movies, Annabelle is more of an also-ran.  I admit, I got a few chills, but they were melted by the heat of my frustration when the characters did predictably stupid things that trumped normal human behavior.  It's actually not a bad story with some distinctly creepy elements despite feeling pretty predictable and having some major logic challenges.  A pivotal sacrifice in the climax  simply isn't credibly supported by the narrative.  Of course the biggest bafflement is that ANYONE, EVER thought that that was an appealing doll design.

Jessabelle - 2014
Written by Robert Ben Garant
Directed by Kevin Greutert
with Sarah Snook & Joelle Carter

An erratically paced bayou haunting.  It spends a lot of time trying to nurse the slow burn, which results in some rushed business once Jessabelle finally gets closer to the center of the mystery.  Good creepy elements, mixing a haunted house, videotapes from beyond the grave, voodoo, a wheelchair-bound protagonist and family secrets rising from the swamp.  Wastes a lot of time on a peripheral relationship that viewers are sure not to care about and introduces aspects central to the mystery far too late in the film, and without establishing their relationship to the climax.  As such, the climax is burdened with the jobs of explaining and thrilling at the same time, resulting in it doing neither satisfactorily.  As with Annabelle, there's a lot of good stuff here, but it could have used another pass at the script stage and a more conscientious director..

Belle - 2013
Written by Misan Sagay
Directed by Amma Assante
with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sarah Gadon & Tom Wilkinson

Only part way through Belle did I begin to expect that it was based on a true story.  That's a compliment as far as I'm concerned, since so many "true stories" fail to have as engaging a structure as the other kind.  Dido Elizabeth Belle was the daughter of a West Indie slave woman and an officer in the British Royal Navy.  He takes her home to England to be raised by his aunt and uncle before returning to the naval career from which he will never return.  Think Guess Who's Coming to Pride & Prejudice.  It combines all of the fussy English manners of one's place in society and what constitutes "marrying well" for women of a certain class in Georgian England with the added element of racial politics and identity.  Dido is heir to a noble father, but being black, occupies a virtually unique and confusing societal position, and this was a society that didn't tend to like piece that didn't fit neatly into their place.

Now me, I can't freakin' stand all that Jane Austen "marrying well" bullshit, so parts of this really grated on me, although that was kind of the point.  All of the courting practices that Dido and her cousin had to go through with a bunch of douchebaggy wanna-nobles filled me with some serious loathing.  It got much more interesting when Dido began to take an interest in a case before her great-uncle, who also happened to be Lord Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  The case involved the Zong massacre, in which a shipload of slaves were cast overboard and their owners tried to collect on the insurance.  This was a real case that led fairly directly to abolition in England.  Once that plot thread and the accompanying romance took the fore, it became a much more enjoyable film with less sense of hopelessness.

The Legend of Hell House - 1973
Written by Richard Matheson
Directed by John Hough
with Roddy McDowell, Pamela Franklin & Clive Revill

I was under the impression that The Legend of Hill House was based on The Haunting from 1963 which was adapted from a book called The Haunting of Hill House.  The thing is, even after watching The Legend of Hell House, I still thought it was based on The Haunting, but evidently it's adapted from a book (by the screenwriter) called Hell House, which is NOT based on the Haunting.  Well, you could have fooled me.

Both movies are based on the same premise; a wealthy benefactor pays a group of experts to discover proof of the afterlife in a notoriously haunted mansion.  The scientifically oriented team leader takes his wife along, and the other characters essentially fill the roles, albeit slightly shuffled around in terms of talent or demeanor.  House is super haunted and bad juju goes down.

I'll get right to the point.  The Haunting is in every way the better picture.  Legend of Hell House is ridiculously slow and far stingier with the haunting.  It's not even the slow pacing that drags it down but the huge stretches utterly bereft of energy.  Pamela Franklin, as the team's mental medium (Excuse me waiter, I ordered a mental large) brings some enthusiasm, but Clive Revill as the snotty scientist is like a human speed-bump for movie momentum and even Roddy McDowell who brings some serious spookiness to his role sucks the viewer into his creepy pathos, and then never really delivers on it.  He needed to get possessed or turn out to be a secret killer or discover his own body in a closet or something.

Anyway, see The Haunting instead.

The Gate - 1987
Written by Michael Nankin
Directed by Tibor Takacs
with Stephen Dorff, Christa Denton & Louis Tripp

The 80s were much more willing to blue the line between horror and juvenile adventure, which makes perfect sense to me given the interests of juveniles, but which sometimes looks startling in our modern context.

Two middle school age boys go digging for thunder eggs in the back yard, and discover a gateway to Hell.  While the parents are away for the weekend, leaving teenage sister in charge, a number of freak events occur that just happen to fulfill the requirements of the spell that will open that gateway, releasing all kinds of stop-motion beasties upon the world.  Fortunately, heavy metal has all the answers!

I watched it for the old-school special effects and the retro camp value, and I got what I wanted.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure -1989
Written by Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon
Directed by Stephen Herek
with Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter & George Carlin

And old favorite.  I always remember that it's fun, but I also always forget that it's actually pretty good.  It's like the dream that guys like Bill & Ted would have, only much better structured.  It's certainly picked up a sheen of irony now that the 80s version of the future it presents looks so dated and quaint, but that also gave it a certain poignancy when one considers the hopefulness that we've lost.  Yeah, think about it... we were actually more hopeful about the future in the EIGHTIES than we are now.  We have not been very excellent to each other.

Nightbreed: Director's Cut -1990/2014
Written & Directed by Clive Barker from his novel
with Craig Sheffer, Ann Bobby & David Cronenberg

Nightbreed originally came out when I was going through my Clive Barker phase, so I saw it in theaters and generally liked it.  It was full of interesting monsters, and not-so-interesting protagonists.  Over the years, I almost completely forgot about the serial-killer psychiatrist who manipulated the situation to serve his murderous agenda.  I watched the original theatrical cut again earlier this year and I was really impressed.  It would be an incredible pilot for a cable series about a bunch of monsters as they try to create a new home, or better yet, expanded into a full first season which then continues into seasons about searching and building.  The new Director's Cut doesn't make a lot of changes that are obvious to me, but it conveys an overall sense of being more itself.  The role of Cronenberg as the psycho psychologist is smaller in relative terms, containing him more within the role of troublemaker than sinister leading character.  The role of Boone is given a little more context in terms of his relationship with the Nightbreed, giving his leadership role more weight.  The actor is still terrible (as is his girlfriend, "We were lovers."), but the role is a little bit better defined.  If anyone ever made a series, they would definitely want to start fresh, and here's hoping that the Director's Cut can stimulate some interest in such a project.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey -1991
Written by Ed Solomon & Chris Matheson
Directed by Pete Hewitt
with Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves & William Sadler

The rushed-feeling sequel presents a mixed bag of elements.  On the obvious side, the performances are down a couple notches from Adventure (yeah, even KEANU'S performance is down -- whoa), the story is all over the place and the jokes just aren't as funny.  On the other hand, it introduces a lot of great elements like Evil Bill & Ted robots, Good Bill & Ted funky robots, a Bergman-esque personification of Death and the Martian inventor Station.  It was interesting to revisit, but it was never as good as Adventure and it doesn't hold up as well.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare - 1994
Written & Directed by Wes Craven
with Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund & Wes Craven

When is a Nightmare on Elm Street movie not a Nightmare on Elm Street movie?

Wes Craven's New Nightmare both is and is not a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.  Following the "Death of Freddy," I'm sure that New Line was humping Craven's leg to get him to think of a way to renew the series and keep the money trains rolling in.  Craven, looking at the disjointed nature of the sequels after his creation of the original saw something without continuity and wasn't interested in just doing "another" one.  So what he did was to jump totally outside of the established world of the series... into ours.

Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy, the heroine in the original Nightmare is back as Heather Langenkamp, the actress.  She's having nightmares about Freddy, only a darker, more real Freddy, and her nightmares are starting to be reflected by reality.  It turns out that Wes Craven is working on a new script for a new "Nightmare" based on his real nightmares, which have a way of sneaking into real reality.  It's all very meta like that, which I absolutely loved.  It creates a level of psychological surrealism that augments the visual surrealism that was always Nightmare's stock in trade.

It's no coincidence that Wes Craven's New Nightmare (and yes, I believe it's essential to include "Wes Craven's" in the title, as it is indeed HIS nightmare) falls between his films The People Under the Stairs and Scream (we're ignoring Vampire in Brooklyn which has "work for hire" written all over it).  It's a developmentally apt position for it, showing the evolution of the artist and his exploration of self-aware horror craft.

Urban Legend -1998
Written by Silvio Horta
Directed by Jamie Blanks
with Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayeheart, Robert Englund & really a lot more!

From the post-Scream (but less self-aware) I Know What You Did/Final Destination class, this college campus slasher comes with the twist that the murders reflect various urban myths, which, conveniently, is the subject of a class that everyone in the school is taking.  In retrospect, I realize that the mystery was completely irrelevant.  The motive is exposed about midway through the film, but virtually anyone could have been the killer based on the motive and the absence of character histories.  There IS an interesting twist to who it is, and I must admit that, even when it became evident that there weren't any other main characters left alive, I still didn't quite see it due to preconceived expectations.  I wouldn't use the word "good" to describe it, but I was definitely entertained.

Feast -2005
Written by Martin Dunstan & Patrick Melton
Directed by John Gulager
with Navi Rawat, Krista Allen & Balthazar Getty

A bunch of people are trapped in a bar while some kind of ravenous creatures attack them, intent on eating them.  And that it pretty much the whole story.

It reminded me a lot of Tales from the Crypt presents: Demon Knight.  We've got a bar full of people who do and do not know each other defending themselves from the onslaught of evil creatures.  The evil creatures get far less (read: no) story of their own, and that turns out to be perfectly okay.  It's kind of a drag, however, that in addition to being undefined contextually, they're poorly defined visually too.  I couldn't draw one of them if you paid me.  We have more bar patrons with more specified personalities, and that works pretty well too.  In fact, the film really has its most fun introducing these personalities, acknowledging that they're character "types" and then toying around with our expectations for each type.

Some nasty gore, some tense moments, some brutal action, and a lot of laughs.

Inside - 2007
AKA A L'interieur
Written & Directed by Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
with Alysson Paradis & Beatrice Dalle

Ugh, I hated this thing like Illinois Nazis.

The idea didn't appeal to me, but it kept popping up on lists of well-regarded horror and "People Who Liked This..." suggestions.  I am nothing if not fair, so I finally decided to give it a chance.  Why don't I listen to myself?  I am so rarely wrong about my impressions of things.

Part slasher, part torture porn, all ugly.  A pregnant woman is stalked and attacked by another woman with the intention of stealing her baby by any means necessary -- but scissors seem to be the means of choice.  Throughout the Christmas Eve siege at her home, various other people stop by to get murdered horribly, pointlessly, and all too easily.  The cops acted like fucking Shaggy & Scooby, wetting themselves and getting killed quickly and with little meaningful resistance.  Meanwhile, the crazy woman is pretty much indestructible and has mad ninja skills.  Being all po-faced or po-mo or just French about it doesn't make it anything other than what it is; a nihilistic gore-fest.  Fuck this movie and fuck the trash-humpers who keep calling it good.  By definition, it is not.

Hick -2011
Written by Andrea Portes from her novel
Directed by Derick Martini
with Chloe Grace Moretz, Blake Lively & Eddie Redmayne

Luli (Moretz) is a 13 year old girl from Nebraska who just up and runs away from her fairly shitty home one day. It's not hard to imagine why she would run away; her parents are train wrecks, but the character's motivations and intentions are poorly established.  She just decides she's going to Las Vegas and starts hitching.

On the road, she gets rides from a sort-of sweet, sort-of creepy cowboy named Eddie and a sassy-sign-of-things-to-come-if-she's-not-careful, Glenda.  It turns out that Eddie and Glenda both know each other and have a history as well.  Luli gets caught between the sides of that history and the creepy side of Eddie and becomes an example of why it's really gawdam stupid for 13 year old girls to go hitchhiking.  In the end, I guess she learned a lesson, and I guess there's a hopeful edge to it?

The performances are fine, but there's just a lot of meat on this one, and the persistence of illogic becomes wearying.  It's like an After School Special written by someone who's given up on life.

The Beaver - 2011
Written by Kyle Killen
Directed by Jodie Foster
with Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin & Jennifer Lawrence

At first I wasn't sure why this was in my inbox.  I've pretty much washed my hands of Mel Gibson at this point in both of our lives, but when I was looking for something to watch and I came across The Beaver, I decided to go ahead and watch it, of for no other reason than to have two "beaver" movies in this round-up.  Then, when I saw the cheerleader that made me say "Hey, is that Jennifer Lawrence?" I remembered why I had planned to watch it in the first place.  It's hard to believe that it's really only been within the past two years that she's become our ubiquitous "It" girl.

So, The Beaver...  presents a series of mixed impressions for me.  In one respect, it's a totally transparent effort at image rehabilitation for Gibson following some pretty appalling behavioral episodes.  It's directed by his personal friend and public defender, Jodie Foster, and it's about a man who goes into and epic depression and after he fails to commit suicide, experiences a psychotic break wherein he communicates through a hand puppet, the eponymous Beaver.  "Aw, he went crazy but he means well! We should forgive him!"

Gibson IS still a good actor, mind you, and his commitment to the role does sell concept to a large degree, although not to the degree to which it overreached.  The thing is, once he starts acting through the Beaver, the Beaver becomes some kind of miracle worker, instantly drawing his younger son out of his shell, re-endearing him to his wife and making him the superstar of the toy industry in which he works.  Too much, too fast.  The film works better when it stays small.  On the less convoluted side of things, there's a whole subplot between his older son (Yelchin), who hates his father and has a knack for writing term papers for other students, believably in their voices, and the valedictorian/cheerleader (Lawrence) who has her own family issues and wants him to write her commencement speech.  This part of the story, while certainly less grandly dramatic, I felt to be more satisfying with less straining of credulity.  it's not a bad movie.  Heck, it might even be a reasonably good one, but it would have been a better one if it hadn't tried quite so hard to make you like it quite so much.

Zombeavers -2014
see link for writing team
Directed by Jordan Rubin
with Rachel Melvin, Lexi Atkins & Cortney Palm

Exactly what it sounds like, and it knows it, which is what made it startlingly fun and funny.  Does spilled toxic waste turn beavers into zombies?  Does a group of young people go to cabin on the lake?  Does some creepy old man warn them at some point?  Do the zombeavers gnaw down trees to block the road and chew through the cabin's barricaded windows?  Do the infected humans grow beaver teeth when they turn into zombies themselves?  Do the film makers totally set up a sequel called Zombees?

You're god damned right they do.

Guardians of the Galaxy - 2014
Written by James Gunn & Nicole Perlman
Directed by James Gunn
with Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana & Dave Bautista

Okay, NOW I get what all the excitement is about.

Sure, if you hold it up to the light, you'll see the exact same structure as every other action movie they make these days, but once you put it back down and let it run around on its own, it has a bunch of fun characters and action set-pieces, plus quite a few actual jokes!  That's all we're askin' for... although one of these days we really ought to ask for a little bit more on the story end.

Dracula Untold - 2014
Written by Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless
Directed by Gary Shore
with Luke Evans, Dominic Cooper & Sarah Gadon

Let us be 100% clear about something.  Dracula Untold IS NOT HORROR.

What it IS, is just another action movie, and by "just another" I mean "cookie cutter."  For being "untold" is was entirely predictable.  It has been referenced by some (including people behind it) as a "dark superhero" movie, but even compared to superhero movies, it's way, way behind the curve.

Purporting to be the origin story wherein Prince Vlad becomes a vampire, it follows a completely paint-by-numbers formula that first establishes him as a badass with a heart who stands up to the Turkish bullies.  When they threaten to drop the hammer on his people, he seeks out a cave-bound vampire to gain the power he needs to defend his people.  The vampire gives him 3 days' worth of powers OR ELSE.  "Gosh, I wonder what will happen" said absolutely no one who saw this movie.

He then proceeds to piss around and pout when he should be killing Turks, allowing them to get the drop on his people, thus necessitating a "last second" crisis that didn't need to be telegraphed because you could see it clearly from space.  Oh, also, all of the people for whom he sacrifice himself got killed.  Ace job, champ!

The action simply wasn't that engaging, so even the one thing it decided that it could do, it couldn't.  It certainly didn't help things that Luke Evans, who pretty much always looks like a greasy creep to me, was at his greasy creepiest with his thin & patchy beard, hair so limp and manky that Severus Snape would say "Damn, dude, get some Prell up in that shit," beady eyes and all.

Dracula Untold should damn well have stayed that way.

Come Back to Me - 2014
Written & Directed by Paul Leyden
from the book "The Resurrectionist" by Wrath James Wright
with Katie Walder, Nathan Keyes & Matt Passmore

This one really came out of left field.  I had almost no idea what to expect, and what I had read was fairly misleading in the way it represented the story.

Josh and Sarah, a young couple in Las Vegas is going through some of the difficulties that young couples do; he works odd hours as a croupier, she's working on her thesis about the effects of internet porn, they're rarely on the same page when it comes to gettin' it on.  Dale, an awkward-bordering-on-creepy new neighbor moves in across the street and Sarah starts having night terrors; waking up in places she hadn't gone to bed and wearing different clothing.

The film is a surprisingly slow burn, and during the part when you think that it's just a stalker thriller, that slow burn gets a little frustrating, but there are a couple major twists in the third act that really make Come Back to Me startling and unique.

The Devil's Hand -2014
AKA Where the Devil Hides
Written by Karl Mueller
Directed by Christian E Christiansen
with Alycia Debnam Carey, Rufus Sewell & Colm Meaney

Mostly dumb.

Some religious cult with their own community and backward ways (but they're totally not Amish, you guys!) has their own version of Christianity with some random-ass prophecy about six girls born on the sixth day of the sixth month leading to doomsday, and sure enough, they're all born within about six minutes of each other.  The father of one keeps the preacher from murdering them all in their mothers' arms, and now, almost 18 years later (you know, because the devil cares about age of consent, I guess), someone is determined to take care of some unfinished business.  The funny thing about a movie like this is that you can tell all along that there's going to be a "twist" ending that ends up not being a twist at all.  Halfway-decent pacing, but really nothing much of a story or a reason to care.