Film Review -"Gretel & Hansel"

Saw this movie a couple weeks ago and just now getting around to typing out my thoughts. Not the title is Gretel and Hansel, not Hansel and Gretel. This classic piece of Germanic  folk lore is being spun in a way that places the focus on Gretel. She is older than Hansel who is just the little brother she takes care of in a paternal manner after he mother goes crazy and kicks them out. That is when things take on a creepier tone. This movie is a horror movie in the same tone as "the VVitch" . There lurking dread more than jump scares or the less subtle forms of typical modern Blumhouse film making that seems prevalent in today's horror movies. This movie is very visual, sometimes it might even seem slowly paced. We all know the story. Once they get to the witch's house we know things are not going to go well, though once they arrive the plot takes a turn from the normal story.

The acting is great, because you can not really imagine any of the actors as any one other than their roles. It also works that these are not big name faces you have attached to other roles in your head. In some ways this takes  a more realistic take on the classic story. The house is not made of candy. There is a not a big oven. Though there is that element. I would say the direction they take this movie is darker than the original story, It explores Gretel's darkside and young Hansel often seems like the voice of reason.  The witch sometimes seems pretty reasonable. This makes her scarier. There is a strong feminist under current to the film's main message In today's culture of instagram witches, it might be a cautionary tale as every thing comes with a price. .This echoes the original story . You can not just eat a candy house without knowing you are being buttered up for something. That sounds like a message Bernie Sander's followers could stand to hear,. The writer for Plugged In, did not like the message and thought it was hollow. This is because he is also a fucking idiot.

Oz Perkins, yes... Norman Bate's son, did and excellent job directing this. When things got gruesome its well done. . Yet pushes the bounds, especially when you consider children being eaten is part of the premise.  Jessica De Gouw plays the young witch, if she looks familiar that is because she played Mina in the Darcula show that came out a few years ago with Johnathan Rhys Meyers. Would have like to see more of her , but you get what you get. Overall, if you like gothic supernatural horror that works off mood then this movie is worth your time. 
  

Film Review : "the Color Out of Space"

Mandy was fun, I feel it got a great deal of cult cred perhaps too quickly. I would also say it was more like a "Mas Max" revenge flick with a weird cult in it . There were too many things that were explained in a sloppy fashion. Here this is gotten away with because that is part of HP Lovecrafts style to not give it all away . Lovecraft worked off the notion that what you do not see, the unknown is what is scariest so the film did keep that tone. Though I would not say this movie was all that scary.   Nicholas Cage might have been better in "Mandy' it seems like he was transitioning into playing the kinds of roles that John Lithgow once played. The co-star was really the scientist kid, who was pretty boring and I did not give a shit about what happened to him. The mother in this movie was also unlikeable. I which they did more with Tommy Chong, his character was one of the best , along with the Witch daughter. The Necronomicon was placed in her scenes which was an amusing wink.

The scene with the color were pretty to look at. I read a review that said this is a movie about how the color pink ruins your life. Not untrue and fair synopsis. It mutates what it touches in a manner that would have made Stuart Gordon proud. I like when the color rippled through their bodies. I think some of the monster effects were better done than others and some could have been better served more suggested which would have stayed closer to HP Lovecraft's vision.  I remember being on a horror panel once where someone brought up the reason Cthulhu has such a hard time transitioning to the screen because once you show a tentacle monster it is no longer scary. Stuart Gordon managed to blend this in a way that mixed camp with the grotesque and this movie while paying homage to his style could have taken better notes on this part.


Does it seem like I am talking about many other things that are not this movie ? Well that because it is made up of parts that are not all that original. Perhaps by today's standards, but when most horror these days is remakes then the bar is pretty low. This is not a bad movie. I made it through and was marginally entertained most of the time. I think it plays it too safe and experiments in the wrongs ways . This is so mediocre that if it makes it onto my end of the year list then it had to have been a pretty sad  year for horror movies if we do not ten more better than this one.