Film Review : "X"

 Spoiler alert "House of the Devil" is still my favorite TI West movie. His first horror movie in 9 years  works off the formula from the splatter films of the late 70s. The acting an character development is on par with your average Friday the 13th sequel, so unlikeable enough to hope they get killed. In this regard the movie gets it better than the last Texas Chainsaw Massacre that  Netflix released. The premise is a director leads a group of twenty somethings into bumfuck Texas to make Porn. From there all sorts of messages creep in regarding sex, but the real monster her is old age. The threat of youth and the repulsion the elderly carry.

The ambiguous nature of this movie until the shit hits the fan leaves much to the imagination until  everything unfolds. At first you think maybe the old lady is a witch. What she is in truth is the best actor of this movie. Kid Kudi's survival rate is about what you would expect from a black person in a horror movie, though he does not die first. For a van of people who came to have sex in the woods they destined to die by breaking the rules of horror movies. It is however the person who is most against sex when pressed to be open minded that dies first which is a spin on the normal morals. The gore effects are purposefully bad to looks like something from the 70s. 

Despite the gruesome deaths that unfold, including death by alligator, the most gruesome moment is the girl who has to climb out from under a bed old people are having sex in. This pushes the ageism theme home. The actors are made up to look more hideous that the normal panges of old age would bring upon them. Hopefully not the best horror movie we are going to see all year, it is not bad, and uses more restraint than not most of the time. Chelsea Wolfe does the music but aside the song at the end you can not really tell. If you have a thing for 70s splatter this is done better than most attempts to reboot it. 

Film Review : Netflix's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

 

When I review albums by artists, I expect more from them not accept less. That is why I like them they release albums of a higher standard.  As horror fans we should adopt a similar perspective rather than just accept whatever scraps from the table Hollywood will throw us. At the end of the day, we are the consumers. With properties that have a legacy like Texas Chainsaw Massacre there is a bar those films need to measure up to. Some of the earlier sequels have shown like the the second film this can be done with some b-grade camp and still make a great movie. Since then, varied levels of success have been achieved. I even liked the "Leatherface " prequel. This first wrong chord struck by Netflix's newest installment is it felt like a Blumhouse  movie to me. I hate Blumhouse as it feels like they are dumbing down their movies and trying to appease a teenage market with them. This also made it the first Texas Chainsaw movie I have fallen asleep during. 

That was not a dealbreaker. The deal breaker really lies in the poor writing. Most people are happy people get killed. Well, that is the bare minimum you should accept. When you can watch it want to be the more recent "Halloween" movies and still be entertained, then your opinion might not be subjective. Early on when the violence started there, we some inconsistencies that bugged me. He is strong enough to break a cop's arm and stab him with his bone, but the local fix it guy is going to be strong enough to hang with him for a round. Leatherface is crazy strong. The suspension of disbelief of this is maintained by making sure these lines up, across the board when displaying this strength that is why we are willing to believe the incredible feats. But the movie did not know what it wanted to do. Did it want you to cheer for the millennial stereotyped characters to be sawed in half? or were they hoping you would sympathize with them?   

In either case they were killed by the bus load. The kill scenes which have gotten the most positive feedback online, seemed to have little grasp of what would happen to flesh if it came in contact with human flesh. For one it would not just liquify a body into a fountain of blood. It would not be that pretty. There was some money invested in this film, enough to buy a town in Texas so it looks good until the violence occurs. The visual of Leatherface himself just seemed to be taking liberties for the sake of doing so, when his look is iconic. Netflix is out to appease the masses so should I be surprised they would want to model this after the more recent Halloween movies, complete with the victim out for vengeance motif ?   No, I am glad it did not have a happy ending and all those empowerment moments were cut back down to size. At the end of the day the joke was on the audience.    

The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2021

Hollywood has been in a bad spot, even before the pandemic, which put it on life support, if it had not been for Spider-Man to swing in a save the day with the biggest showing that even outdid all his other Marvel pals combined and he was just a little white kid with no agendas to hype.  A few horror movies did make it to screens when people began trickling back to the theaters and most of those were less than stellar. The big franchises all sucked as they got bogged down by various Hollywood angles. With streaming services, now providing original content it shakes tings up and most of these movies are from overseas.  I think you can tell a great deal by society when it comes to the type of horror being consumed. Things leaned more toward the supernatural this year. Only two had normal humans as the antagonists. We have vampires and demons more than ghosts or zombies. 

These might not be the movies that got the best Rotten Tomatoes score, though they all did pretty decent, nor are the the most popular as the most mass marketed movies tend to be for the lower common denominator. If your favorite movie is not on the list, it is not because I did not see it as a saw most horror movies that graced small screen and the inner webs this year, it because in some cases your favorite movie was unimpressive or trying too hard, in other's well it was not that scary. So, these are movies that proved to engaged me in some way more than the other horror movies not on this list. Here are the top ten horror movies of 2021

10- In the Earth

Environmentalists go into the woods to try to save them, and the irony is it is woods they need to be saved from. The "Oh no you are fucked now; you better try to just save yourself " quota was high here so it keeps you on edge. 

 

 9-Willy's  Wonderland

Why"Pig" which should make the worst list was marketed as a horror movie I am not sure, this Nic Cage vehicle, is cheesy as a 80s horror as he fights animatronic mascots, no great writing, but it was fun and to watch 

    

8-Malignant 

This Netflix film was not perfect and reminded me of the Robert Downey Jr movie "In Dreams", but it was fun and engaging thus earning its place here. 

 

 7-Lamb

If this was a list based off the best movie of the year, then this would have been number one, it is just not the best horror film as it is barely a horror since it is not scary, it is however tense and unnerving enough to belong here.

   

6-VHS 1994

There has always been a core story that runs through these movies here it was more in your face.  Not the best of this series, but makes you feel uncomfortable in the way horror movies should.

   

5-We Need to do Something

Most effective when it shows us the claustrophobic feeling induced by being trapped in one room with your family. Simple concept that finds people becoming unhinged by subtle supernatural elements, like the Mist on a smaller scale.

   

 

4-Titane 

Disturbing on many levels. Hits you at times in a place that is hard to watch, which is why did made it so high up the list, horror needs to challenge you in this way.

 

3-Blood Red Sky

Who knew vampires on a plane worked better than snakes? Almost more like an action movie, but I like the savage 30 Days of Night like take on vampires here . 

2-Coming Home in the Dark 

 This never turns into the I Spit On Your Grave or Last House on the Left type of thing you think it will. Instead, it serves as a cautionary tale for Cancel Culture, but most importantly keeps you on the edge of your seat.  

 

 1-Son

The what if your kid was the devil or a spawn of given a bleak gritty make over. Nothing is going to end well in this movie and the gut turning way they spiral into it is beautiful

 

Film Review: "The Matrix : Resurrections"

 When the "the Matrix" came out in 1999 it changed the way we watch movies. The special effects were groundbreaking, and its brand of dystopian cyber punk gave a spark to conspiracy theorists or at least those who would take that title from the tin foil crowd to make people think about how they were being controlled and perhaps their perception of the world was not what they were led to believe. Now in 2021 if you think those kinds of thoughts the virtue flying self-appointed Agent Smith's are here to sound the alarm that someone is thinking for themselves and against the popular narrative. We get a little bit of the groundbreaking shine with this meta sequel, but in terms of originality and cinematography compared to what the original did this seems like a made for television adaptation.  

People like to be critical of media that does not tug on their nostalgia strings. I have already seen posts of people saying, I like this movie, so this is not the place to tell me anything different than what I want to hear. Which is the kind of sleep walking thin skin the first movie challenged. If you are not comfortable with anything but your perception, then you fit the bill to the kind of person Neil Patrick Harris was talking about in the monologue that comes in the movies final 15 minutes as he talks about sheeple who want to be controlled for the sake of certainty. It is kind of ironic that the people who claim to be the franchises biggest fans are also the ones deepest in the real-life Matrix the first movie spoke of. 

Funny enough it's by not taking his pills that Neo wakes up. This is a stark contrast to trend of just taking your medicine and not asking questions. Things like the lack of Laurence Fishburn are more gracefully worked around than the poorly written plot which accomplishes little more than gives the characters another chance. The action sequences could have been in any movie and compared to any of the previous films not just the first the fight choreography is lacking, and we saw better fights in Shang  Chi. In fact, in terms of eye candy any time Dr Strange is on screen in a Marvel movie it's better than what happens here.  Where the original close with Rage Against the Machine over the end credits this film closes with Brass Against the female fronted covered band who will be most well known for her peeing on a fan in concert. This serves as a pretty fair metaphor in regard to how this measures up against the original. That might be generous as in the last 30 minutes of the film when it was supposed to be at its action climax, I found myself bored and having to force myself through it.    

Film Review : "Halloween Kills"

The good news is Halloween Kills is better than the 2018 film. David Gordon Green returns to direct , and Jamie Lee Curtis is also Laurie Strode again. I can not say stars as she does not get a great deal of screen time. This affects a shift in tone that plays into this being a better movie. It picks up right where the 2018 film left off. Not only does it do that but it back tracks to 1976 so the night He came home. This director wants to feel like he has left a thumb print on the ore of Michael Myers so goes back to retcon things to meet his vision.  This is where Hollywood allows things to go wrong with legacy franchises. There is a story to be told here. This does not offer the final chapter you think it is going to.  Hollywood needs to understand that if it is not broken it does not need to be fixed. In some ways they do grasp this concept and work off a theme that makes Michael Myers great, though in terms of storytelling this film has a lot to be desired.

This film marks the first time I have ever fallen asleep while watching a Halloween movie for the first time. The beginning is pretty decent and makes you think the film might have promise, then it wanders off in the middle. The girl power theme of the 2018 film is not only nowhere to be found but this movie shows they never get the job done right to begin with. You think Jamie Lee Curtis is a bad ass who stands a chance against Myers? This film says think again. It is also worth noting that whenever Myers is on screen the movie is at least decent. Instead we get some character being developed that we really do not need. Most of the time this knife fodder is trying to get their neighbors to band together and hunt Micheal down for what he did to their town.  

 

The end is worthwhile and this movie would have been good if the middle section had been handled better. It is a good thing this is Cutis’ last movie , as she spent most of it in a hospital bed looking haggard. There is not much about the characters to make you care if they live or die, that is aside from Micheal who I found myself rooting for when the odds were against him. I am a pretty big fan of this franchise , but the editing and script were both a mess, making this movie hard to follow or care about during the middle section.  They left the door open for Michael's story to continue. Hopefully they will milk  one last movie out , because I feel like he deserves a better ending. 

Film Review : 'Dune" 2021

 I was aware of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel as a kid before seeing the David Lynch film in 1984. My father kept an ever changing stack of  sci-fi paper backs in the bathroom and the covers of the Dune series were much different  than the others. When he took me to  see the movie , it was a surreal experience much different than what I had seen before. With other science fiction movies the emphasis was how the world and technology changed around mankind , but with Dune the emphasis was how man changed more than technology. There were little in the way of comic relief robots . Space ships seemed also obligatory rather than the focal point. ;Lynch's version has a steam punk feel before we we even the term steam punk.  Denis Villeneuve has done something very  different but manages to stay true to the story and capture the tone of the books, though if you have only seen Lynch's film all the moments are still in tact. 

What works is the scope he captured everything in. What worked in his take on "Blade Runner" works here, even though this is a much different future. The wardrobe choices were a little hit or miss, I think I like Lynch's costumes better. The acting is pretty on point. In some ways I think it is tailored a little too much to oblige the tastes of mainstream sci-fi pedestrians. There has to be lasers and explosions. There has to be the big battle scenes. I do not think this movie would be boring if these things were handled a little differently, but if you as which director did a better job of creating something the likes of which you had never seen before, then that would go to David Lynch. Hands down he is the more creative of the two. Denis is more of a dress up some source material and make it look weather beaten with beauty. 

I think the biggest problem with this movie is how it is marketed. It just kind of ends and leaves things not resolved , not just sets it up for a sequel , but is incomplete without one. If it was Dune part one, and you knew this was all set up, then it would have felt better to me. I think the pacing of the film could have been more balanced as well. I was never bored, but this quest for the girl of my dreams  with the blue eyes  was a little too heavy handed. Paul's hero's journey was too brooding teen. Not to say there should not have been a little of that, it just felt off. Aside from that I will give it another shot in theaters. It does seem to rely on wowing you with visuals than leaning into the story like Lynch's but this version dumbed things down for generations who do not read  and need things more spelled out, but when youy are hungry to put butts in seats and sell them pop corn to justify what had to have been a god emperor sized budget I guess that is Hollywood for you.     

Film Review : Candy Man 2021

 

Originally  slated for a 2020 release, Covid the theater releases off kilter and tis movie which would have ridden the coat tail of the more topical issues of the year, instead was laid bare with the grievous issues in it's writing glaring like the open wounds depicted over the course of the film. This is a sequel that ignores the other sequels so it is a re-boot in that sense. This short story by Clive Barker had already been milked for all it's worth. Lagging behind "Hell Raiser" and "Lord of Illusions" in terms of film adaptions of Barker's work, this movie would have done best if Jordan Peele had been left as a producer only and not allowed to participate in the writing.

They key to good writing of ay kind and perhaps the golden rule of story telling is to show me do not tell me. Instead we get the sub text of topics like gentrification pushed too heavy handed into the fore front, so it felt like you were being preached at rather than watching a horror movie. These topics came up in a more organic fashion back when Barker originally write this. Well not this particular piece, though they would have done better if it had. The start of the movie could have been OK, but as the film progressed rather than creating a sense of dread, things took a jagged turn. I called the protagonist's  descent early on and nothing felt like an unexpected turn. Some of the shots were ok and perhaps some where on the cutting room floor there is a better edit of this movie. 

Much like the emperor not wearing any clothes there will be those who want this to be a good movie so badly due to the nostalgia they have attached to the original that they will even tell you this is a good movie. I have seen people post things on line as absurd as it's the best horror movie of the year, which if this was remotely true would be a sad state of affairs' for horror in 2021. When you strip away the politics this movie is unsure how they want want to tell the story they are trying to tell and hope winks at their homage is enough to make you forget this. Well you can fool some of the the people some of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time. In short , I would not pay theater prices to see this movie, even if "Candy Man' is your favorite movie which in that case I hope you would be able to be objective enough to raise the bar higher for what you want to see when this property is brought to the screen,. but these days that might be asking too much from people.