Horror Highlights! 👻💻🦹♂️🐺
May 2021
Hey, folks! It has been a while since I have done any rapid reviews. Allow me to get you caught up on some of my horror highlights.
👻 House on Haunted Hill (1959) - 4.5⭐️
This is a good ole fashion "Let's have a party in a haunted house" movie and it fucking rules! I am super late to the game on this one but better late than never, right? William Castle did a great job of crafting a fun, creepy story set in an eerier house while throwing in a dash of murder mystery, and providing some decent jump scares that even got me 62 years later!! - Mrs. Slydes is still frightening! - Viewing this did make me appreciate more of what William Malone did with the 1999 remake.
Castle seems to draw fear from the unknown, trust - or the lack thereof- as a whole, and the frightening power of greed. Nora is driven to the brink of madness and you are not sure who she can trust. The rest of the guests question if they can trust her and what she claims to have seen in the house. Vincent Price's character handpicks his guest based on who is more desperate for money, and well... it works. His wealth has put him in a unique position of power to where he can pay people to think they are risking their lives for $10k ($91k in 2021). And let us not forget about Annabelle's greed...
As I mentioned, the scares are still effective! I love the esthetic of the cob-webbed covered mansion, the ghostly score, and that damn skeleton at the end was perfect. Castle even had theater owners rig up pullies in the theaters to have a skeleton fly across the audience during that scene for a bonus 3D (4D?) scare! Why don't movies do gimmicks like these anymore? Take me back!
I know it is weird to recommend a classic like this, but don't be like me, get to watching this! I’m so mad at myself for not naming my show “Spook Talk” in reference to a Vincent Prince line now 😩!
💻 Warning: Do Not Play (2019) - 3⭐️
There was some buzz circulating around this movie when it reached Shudder in and I now totally get the hype. I finally watched this because I was surfing Shudder TV, the best feature of any streaming platform, and was hooked by the few intense scenes that I saw. I immediately went to stream the film from the start.
Warning: Do Not Play is a Koren horror/mystery/ghost/found footage movie directed by Kim Jin-Won. It is a story about a struggling young director, Mi-Jung, that is looking for inspiration to create the next big horror movie. During her quest for inspiration, she comes across the legend of a horror movie that was directed by a ghost. It is rumored to be so scary that people die after watching it. Its premise is somewhat cliche but executed nicely! It is very meta with lots of name-dropping of other American found footage movies (ex. The Blair Witch Project) and a very funny conversation among young film students arguing over Christopher Nolan movies.
This movie is scary and intense! Lots of creepy, terrifying ghosts, gore, brutal deaths, and running frantically around in a rundown movie theater. One of my favorite moments of the movie is when it gets trippy. Mi-Jung keeps trying to exit the theater as she is being chased by a ghost, but as she tries to exits, she is also walking right back into the theater. It is a sort of paradoxical loop and it is SO COOL! I love it when movies/video games do that. It always makes me think of Batman: Arkham Asylum video game when Batman is trapped in the morgue. LOVE IT!
I will preface my recommendation with I am not well versed in Korean horror movies. I have read several lukewarm-negative reviews of this claiming that it is not doing anything different from other Korean horrors. That being said, I still highly recommend it to someone looking to be spooked and is down for subtitles.
**Trigger Warning For Self-Harm in Warning: Do Not Play**
🦹♂️ Brightburn (2019) - 4⭐️
My buds over at Shoot the Flick have invited me to come on to discuss the superhero horror, Brightburn. It has been on my watchlist for far too long and boy did I enjoy the shit out of this! It is definitely a satire of the modern superhero movie, specifically Man of Steel. Brandon has mostly the same powers as Superman, there are several shots that are just redoing what Synder did but with a dark twist, and the score even sounds similar.
They could have gone about this a dozen different ways and I think they picked the perfect route; focusing on the parents. I LOVE that they made this a family drama. The upbringing of a Superman-like being is a tremendous amount of responsibility and if done poorly, it can lead to the world's most dangerous serial killer. This brings me to my next point...
They correctly did not make Brandon a world-beating supervillain. They made him a serial killer and drew inspiration from other serial killers. He drew disturbing pictures of what he wanted to do to his victims, dissected some of them, and showed no remorse at all. Additionally, Brandon had a signature logo, much like The Zodiac Killer, and was driven to murder by voices he heard from his ship, much like how David Berkowitz blamed his demonic dog for telling him to commit his crimes. While playing the satire card, it is also an allegory for parenthood. No matter how hard you try to raise your child, they can still become the next Jeffrey Dahmer...scary thought.
I HIGHLY recommend checking this out. The plot is good, the kills are great, and it is legit scary! I can go on and on about this movie and I will do so on my guest spot for Shoot the Flick, be sure to check it out!
🐺 The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020) - 3.5⭐️
This was an interesting one! I love werewolves- they are my favorite monster- and I had heard some people I admire - Sean Fennessey of The Ringer Network- mention this movie during their October 2020 movie recs. I had never heard of Jim Cummings but I knew I could trust Mr. Fennessey. I decided to gift myself this Bluray while Christmas shopping aaaaand it has just sat on my shelf. One lonely night, I decided to pop it in and I had a lot of fun with it! The movie plays as a drama/horror/comedy with a dash of whodunnit. Jim Cummings wrote, directed, and stared in this and I have to say, I was impressed.
One of the biggest pros to this that our protagonist is the perfect metaphor for a werewolf. He is a recovering alcoholic with anger management issues. He falls off the wagon and loses his temper several times throughout the course of the movie. Perfect metaphor. The hook of the movie is the whodunnit aspect. Many townspeople believe there is an actual werewolf stalking the good people of this small town in Utah. Jim Cummings's character is bamboozled as to how people could even consider such a possibility. Who is correct? I won't spoil here.
I will say that this movie does set the "horror" in this horror-comedy to the side, unfortunately. I think it would have benefited greatly from leaning more into the kills and added some chase scenes. Although, what it lacks in fears it makes up for in terrific creature design and playful editing of the death scenes.
I'd recommend this to any person who is more interested in a comedy-drama and only wants a pinch of horror.
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Thanks for stopping by!
-Brucker