horror movie review – Page 12

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

Posted on December 12, 2023September 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

The Conjuring 2 opens with the well-known Amityville case which took place in the late 1970s. The Warrens are gathered in the living room where a seance is about to begin. Lorraine goes into a trance which reminds me of The Further where she witnesses Ronald DeFeo murdering his own family of six with a shotgun. An intense segment that surpasses most of the countless Amityville films alone. Lorraine gets led down the cellar where she gets attacked by a creepy nun (yes, The Nun) that looks like the twin sister of Marilyn Manson and is about to see the most terrifying thing in her life. This is as close to Hell I ever wanna get, Lorraine says after waking up from the trance while sobbing in Ed’s arms. She’s had enough and wants to retire. Dream on, lady, cuz London is calling.

We then meet the struggling and freshly divorced mother Peggy Hodgson with her four kids who lives in a council house in the town of Enfield, north of London where the strong odor of black mold hits you like a brick. So does the old, brown leather chair that rots in the corner of the living room. The economy is in the toilet, times are bleak, and the only joy in life is to chew on biscuits while Margaret Thatcher is on TV bragging about her red dress. Things haven’t changed much.

Anyway, in order to avoid dying of total boredom under the already dire circumstances, the two daughters, Janet and Margaret, have made themselves a cute little spirit board to do exactly what it’s for. Janet starts to sleepwalk around the house and finds herself in the chair in the living room. She starts to behave like a Regan by growling and speaking in a raspy man’s voice and mumbling things like This is MY house! This, of course, scares her older sisters shitless, whom she shares the bedroom with and suggests that maybe it’s best to sleep with the lights on.

One of the sons in the house is also experiencing some creepy stuff at night, such as his toys starting to move by themselves and someone shouting BLAEEEEEERGHH from the tent in the hallway.

After Janet behaves more like she’s under the influence of some serious possession, the Hodgsons is being visited by a group of local paranormal investigators, lead by Maurice Grosse. The skeptic and psychologist Anita Gregory is also on the spot, who can’t wait to debunk the whole thing as a hoax. In real-life she described the Enfield case as “greatly exaggerated” and “pathetic”.

We soon learn that the entity who has claimed the meat suit of Janet is a fellow named Bill Wilkins, and that he’s an old, grumpy man straight from the grave who only wants his house back. And while our experts scratch their heads and bollocks and don’t know what to do, the case goes to Ed and Lorraine Warren. Lorraine is very reluctant to do another case due to what she saw in the cellar in the Amityville house, while Ed is ready for action like a kid on Christmas Eve. And it also happens to be around Christmastime. How convenient.

And here’s a quick history class: Guy Lyon Playfair, one of the original paranormal investigators on The Enfield Poltergeist Case who worked alongside with Maurise Grosse, came forward prior to the movie’s release and said that the Warrens had showed up “uninvited” and only stayed for a day. Ed, on the other hand, claimed that he visited the place three times by himself while Lorraine was home presumably feeding her roosters. So who’s lying?

One of the few facts we can take from the film is Bill Wilkins, who lived in the house before the Hodgsons and had died of a brain hemorrhage while he sat in the chair we see in the film. This has been confirmed by his son, Terry. Other than this, there’s no info to find about this poor old bloke Billy, and no gravestones were vandalized this time.

The family’s mother, Peggy, kept living in the house until she died in 2003. Rumors say that she died in the same chair as Bill. That’s grim. So its appropriate to ask if it was the chair all along that was the cursed villain here and why Ed didn’t claim the chair to bring it home to his occult museum so we could have the spin-off The Chair, from the producers of Killer Sofa.

Now, back to the movie:

Yeah, so what more is there to say other than “if you liked the first one you’d also like this?” This one has longer screen time which ticks over two hours, but thanks to James Wan being the master of suspense that he is, it flew away in a ghoulish heartbeat. While the story isn’t the strongest, this is still a rock-solid and highly entertaining sequel. A first-class ghost ride filled with atmosphere, great scares, and James Wan’s unique ability to manipulate us to get the sense of something evil lurking in every corner despite we don’t see it. All performances are solid all the way and they also really nailed the look of Maurice Grosse.

I also like how they re-created the house of the Hodgsons with the grim 1970s esthetics and the fugly posters on the girl’s bedroom walls. If the film itself was shot on film instead of digital, the film would look like it was straight from that decade alongside with The Exorcist and The Omen.

I’m not the biggest fan of the Nun character, even though she was a creepy enough presence in this film and overall has a great look. The shot of her standing in the narrow hallway in Warren’s home where their daughter Judy points at her in pure shock is a scary and eerie moment. Too bad that the two spinoffs of hers have completely desensitized her creep factor, at least for my part, so I’m not alone blaming the character. The scene where Lorraine gets attacked by her in Ed’s office room, in some very creative and suspenseful fashion that only James Wan could pull off, is the creepiest scene you’d ever get with The Nun.

Then we have The Crooked Man, where I every time have to remind myself that he isn’t CGI, but actually a guy in a costume. The actor’s name is Javier Botet and has worked a lot with Guillermo del Toro.

The Conjuring 2 was also a hUUUge success, but despite that, James Wan hasn’t directed much other than two DC films. He returned to horror with the awesome Malignant in 2021, which was very much panned and ridiculed because people expected a new Conjuring. As for now, he seems more comfortable as a producer. In 2021 we also got the third installment The Conjuring: The Alcohol Made Me Do It, most known for not being directed by Wan. The fourth one with the undertitle The Last Rites is under pre-production, which looks to be a crossover with The Nun. Can’t say that I’m too excited…

Also check out the miniseries The Enfield Haunting from 2015 if you want a considerably more faithful film adaptation of the case.

Director: James Wan
Writers: Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes, James Wan
Country & year: US, UK, 2016
Actors: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Frances O’Connor, Lauren Esposito, Benjamin Haigh, Patrick McAuley, Simon McBurney, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Simon Delaney, Franka Potente, Bob Adrian, Robin Atkin Downes, Bonnie Aarons, Javier Botet
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt3065204/

Prequel: The Conjuring (2013)
Sequel: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

The Conjuring (2013)

Posted on December 8, 2023September 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Has it gone ten years since the release of this modern haunted house classic already? Oh my. Ed and Lorraine Warren are more commonly known now than ever, but here’s a quick summary of this oddly fascinating and charming couple.

Ed Warren was a self taught demonologist and his wife Lorraine was a clairvoyant who could “read” the human aura. Both were hardcore Christians. After they founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952, the oldest ghost hunting group in New England, they claimed to investigate over 10,000 cases of paranormal and demonic activity over the course of four decades. Most of them were debunked while some required assistance from the Catholic Church to perform exorcisms.

Lorraine was the more quiet one (for lack of a better term), whereas Ed never seemed to have a filter and would claim bizarre things such as:

– I know sorcerers who have never worked a day in their life, yet they’re financially well-off. For them, everything falls into place. Life is easy; good things always come their way. They have no troubles at all. Money finds them. Why? Because they’ve made a metaphysical arrangement and work in league with the demonic. –

This is a real quote from the book The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren. So it’s fair to say that our dear uncle Ed surely had some screws loose on his top floor. But I don’t doubt that he was harmless like a soft teddybear as he and Lorraine were deeply devoted to each other. Aww.

They’ve gotten several books written about them, such as The Amityville Horror, In a Dark Place (The Haunting in Connecticut), Satan’s Harvest (Maurice “Frenchie” Theriault) and The Haunted (The Smurl family). The latter was already adapted in 1991 as an obscure movie made for TV. Great books, by the way, but they work more as horror fiction than they do as “documentaries”, so keep that in mind if you’d like to read them. I was hoping one of the installments in the Conjuring franchise would be about Maurice Theriault, based on Satan’s Harvest, which we also see some glimpses of during Ed and Lorraine’s classes in the first movie. The mix of grim and tragic drama with horror would be perfect here, but since they already have already completely butchered Maurice’s character arc in the two Nun films, it’s not likely to happen. Bummer.

Ed died back in 2006 at the age of 79, while Lorraine kept fighting the good fight until she met her maker in 2019 at the age of 92. Their son-in-law Tony Spera kept their legacy alive for a while with their famous Warren Occult Museum (which is now permanently closed) and was alongside with Lorraine a consultant on the two first Conjuring films. He now runs the Official Ed and Lorraine Warren Channel where he has given some lectures on ghost hunting to show people like Zak Bagans how you really do it. He was also one of the producers of the Netflix reality series 28 Days Haunted, a complete fake amateurish nothingburger of a show yet still the most unintentionally batshit-funny thing I’ve ever seen in the ghost hunting genre.

One of their more known cases of the Warrens was with the Perron family, who lived in an ancient farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island from 1970 to 1980. The house was built in 1736 and surrounded by a big dark cloud of terrifying rumors that several suicides took place there throughout many years. The house was also haunted by an evil paranormal entity by the name Bathsheba Thayer Sherman who terrorized the family over the whole decade they lived there where Ed and Lorraine visited regularly to bless them. The mother of the family, Carilyn Perron, believed that Batsheba was jealous of her, which opened an iceberg of conspiracies, one of which that she once upon a time was an evil witch after allegedly a baby had died whom she was babysitting. The legend says that a sewing needle was found in the baby’s dead body. The only official documents we can dig up from this Bathsheba is that she lived a long life from 1812 to 1885 as a wife and mother.

The rest is based on urban legends, rumors, myths, dark morbid fairytales and totally fabricated boolshit. In other words: there’s no documents of her being an evil satanic witch that drank infant blood and threw babies in the fireplace before she cursed everyone who dared to take her land and hang herself on a tree branch outside her house three past midnight. But that’s at least what the movie and the oldest daughter Andrea Perron want us to believe, who was a part of the promotion of the film and also has written a series of self-published books based on the whole alleged experience. And there were sure some airheads who actually believed it all. Sherman’s gravestone in Harrisville Cemetery was vandalized several times after the release of The Conjuring, and was broken to pieces in 2016. It has been fixed since. If Bathsheba had lived during the more recent decades, it’s not unlikely that some relatives would sue Warner Brothers for pure defamation.

Other “victims” of the release of the film were none other than the owners who have lived in the real conjuring house since 1987, seven years after the Perrons moved out. The big fat irony is that the couple who took over the house after the Perrons have never experienced any paranormal activity, but were instead haunted by curious trespassers on a daily basis after the release of the film. It’s not far from the same story with the owners of the Amityville house who had to remove the two distinct and iconic “eye windows” so no one would recognize the house. The no trespassers signs on the property didn’t help much either. It got to the point where they sued Warner Brothers, a case that didn’t go anywhere. After they eventually moved out, a young couple bought the house in 2019, and they knew exactly what they moved into. They launched the property into a lucrative business to allow investigations and day tours. A documentary called The Harrisville Haunting: The Real Conjuring House was made, and the place is now a landmark tourist attraction. G r o o v y.

Anyway … the movie:

After the opening with a quick introduction of Ed and Lorraine Warren and their case with the Annabelle doll, the film starts off like a classic episode of the TV-series A Haunting where the Perron family (Roger and Carolyn with their five daughters) is moving into their new house in the quiet and idyllic countryside in Harrisville, Rhode Island. It’s the summer of 1971 and everyone is so happy and excited about their new home, except for their dog Sadie, who refuses to enter the house. First red flag. After some exploring, they see that the door to the cellar is boarded. Second red flag. The cellar is creepy. Third red flag. They’re ready to spend the first night in the house and the dog still refuses to be inside. Fourth red flag. Next day, Carolyn wakes up with bruises on her leg. Fifth red flag. The toilet in the house doesn’t work. Sixth red flag. One of the kids’ bedrooms smells like someone had died there. Seventh red flag. All the clocks in the house stop ticking around three past midnight. Eighth red flag. The house is freezing. Ninth red flag. They find the dog dead outside the house. Tenth red fla…they’re fucked!

It doesn’t get more peaceful from here on and after the paranormal activities reach the breaking point when an angry, demonic, scary-looking witch (yeah, guess who) pops up from nowhere like a deranged ninja-monkey to attack the kids, it’s time to call you-know-who.

On the surface, there isn’t anything new and groundbreaking about The Conjuring, not even back in 2013, other than it’s based on Ed and Lorrie Warren, which at least gives it a unique take. As a ghost story, it’s very formulaic and James Wan with his two screenwriters doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but – most of us knew already then that Wan was a master of building up tension and creating some great, claustrophobic suspense that eventually reach the climax in full rollercoaster mode. And that’s even more than I expect from a film like this. A big plus is that he worked with the same crew from the first Insidious movie to create a haunting atmosphere only with the set-design. The whole house here looks cursed, all from the old, dusty organ in the cellar to a certain cabinet wardrobe and the walls themselves. I would love to move in by a heartbeat.

Both Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine is a perfect match and they take their roles pretty seriously. Their chemistry really sparks where I have no doubt that they love each other like two college teens. Joey King stands out among the six child actors and I still, ten years later, believe her when she says that “someone is behind the door”, yet I’m also still asking “what is…”. Music composer Joesph Bishara, who also played the lipstick-face demon in Insidious, is terrifying behind the Bathsheba make-up, and her introduction in the film has become a really classic moment by itself. I have some very fond memories by watching this in a packed movie theater twice as people were screaming their lungs off. Bishara’s distinct soundtrack with the mix of strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, electronic instruments and more also amps up the mood. Some clever jump-scare here as well. Clap-clap.

The Conjuring became a hUUUge financial success, both praised by the critics and audiences and sat the gold-standard for modern haunted house films. A formula that countless of directors have tried to copy but mostly failed time after time. The Neverending Amityville Franchise Inc. is always hiring directors though. Instead of rehashing sequels we got The Conjuring Universe with spin-offs like the pretty decent trilogy with the Annabelle doll and the pretty lousy Nun films which I hope we’ve seen the last of. Three years later James Wan followed-up with the sequel The Conjuring 2.

Director: James Wan
Writers: Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes
Country & year: US, 2013
Actors: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston, Shanley Caswell, Hayley McFarland, Joey King, Mackenzie Foy, Kyla Deaver, Shannon Kook, John Brotherton, Sterling Jerins, Joseph Bishara
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1457767/

Sequels:
– The Conjuring 2 (2016)
– The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

Thanksgiving (2023)

Posted on December 5, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It only took sweet sixteen years but here it is. The turkey is finally served. And it tastes delicious. Even Gordon Ramsay would agree. No donkey business here. So let’s eat!

Just for some clarification: the film is nothing like the Grindhouse trailer where the grainy, low-tech aesthetics are concerned. Nor is the film set in the early 80s or the 90s but in the current time. And that means; bring on the smartphones everyone, so we can connect with the MODERN world! Meh…

We’re in the small town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, which is also the birthplace of the Thanksgiving holiday tradition. The town is preparing for the annual parade, but first there’s Black Friday where the owner of the local Walmart (here called Rightmart) is getting all ready for the zombie horde to gather outside before the doors open. All hell breaks loose in the usual way, but it quickly escalates to a massacre where people gets stamped to death, arms and feet gets broken and an important key character gets her head’s scalp ripped off in some unique bizarre way. What a great opening!

We then jump to a year later where the town is still in shock from the last year’s incident. The parade is still planned to go on as usual, but the holiday spirit is pretty much tainted. We also have a bunch of teens and other folks who start to get brutally killed by some mysterious person in a pilgrim outfit and with a John Carver mask. As the body count piles up, the teens in town have to team up to expose the killer as they are getting tagged on cryptic instagram posts that hints they’re a part of some ritualistic revenge-spree connected to the Rightmart incident.

The characters/body counts aren’t as insufferable as they’re in most of Eli Roth’s films, and that may be because the script for Thanksgiving was written by some other guy by the name Jeff Rendell. That being said, most of the characters are flat and bland like a NPC (non-playable character) and I couldn’t remember a single name or a character trait that made them different from one another. The funny thing is that we have a NPC joke here while they sit in a diner and have some boring conversations. The only one among the body counts who seemed enthusiastic and to be having fun was Tim Dillon, and he should have had some more screentime. He should also be the final guy. That would be hilarious. The only one who stands out is the killer with the cloak, captain hat, the John Carver mask and the axe. Still, I have to say that the motive of the killer here was the weakest shit ever.

Anyway – as a slasher film, Thanksgiving is overall an entertaining watch with some great and brutal kills mixed with some suspenseful chase scenes. Instead of some generic knife-stabbings, we have face-skin that gets ripped off from a freezer door, heads get ripped off, some poor dude gets his face impaled, torsos gets slashed in half… Yummy! The gore delivers, in other words, where Eli Roth’s love for old-school slashers like Pieces and Happy Birthday to Me spiced with some elements of the 90s shines through. And had this been made in the 80s it would have gotten added on the video nasty list in a bloody heartbeat, that’s for sure. Surprisingly, there’s some CGI gore here but I’ve seen a lot worse. The opening scene with the Black Friday riot in Walmart/Rightmart was epic, which I assume was meant to be satirical, but that incident couldn’t be closer to the actual clown world reality. The parade scene is also a great highlight, where it gets pretty messy, and a third act which involves a crispy and morbid dinner scene. Enough gore candy to fill your belly here. Burp.

There’s also a scene with a fluffy cat here and… just wait for it. And yes, the trampoline scene which alone became a classic in the faux trailer is of course here. No titties, though.

Despite the NPC’s and that I missed some of the more grainy and primitive image quality, this is overall an entertaining and a welcoming addition to the Holiday slasher horror genre with razor sharp edges. And I wish that the Christmas-themed slasher films had the balls to amp up the grisly brutality like this one did. Because most of them are tame and forgettable trash, with some very few exceptions which I can count on one hand. Hopefully our man Damien Leone will finally change that with his next Terrifier movie.

And as I’m writing this, it has grossed 36 million of its budget of 15 million, and a sequel is already in development. Nice.

Director: Eli Roth
Writers: Jeff Rendell, Eli Roth
Country & year: US, 2023
Actors: Patrick Dempsey, Ty Olsson, Gina Gershon, Gabriel Davenport, Karen Cliche, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, Derek McGrath, Katherine Trowell, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Mika Amonsen, Amanda Barker
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1448754/

Event Horizon (1997)

Posted on November 28, 2023August 16, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

The year is 2047, and the rescue vessel Lewis and Clark is dispatched to investigate the distress signal from a starship called Event Horizon. This starship disappeared seven years ago, during its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri, and now it has mysteriously appeared in a decaying orbit around Neptune. The eerie distress signal consists of a series of screams and howls, in which the Event Horizon’s designer Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill) believes is the Latin phrase “Liberate me” (“save me”). When the crew of the rescue vessel, joined by Dr. Weir, enters the ship they find evidence of a massacre. They search for survivors, but then the ship’s gravity drive activates and causes a shock wave which damages the rescue vessel. They are all then forced to stay on the Event Horizon, and soon begin having hallucinations which corresponds to their fears and trauma…

Event Horizon is a science fiction horror film from 1997, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson and written by Philip Eisner. The filming took place in Pinewood Studios, and Anderson modeled the starship after Notre Dame Cathedral using an architectural cam program. And oh boy, did this film have a troubled production, where the filming and editing was rushed by Paramount when it was revealed that Titanic would not meet its projected release. Not only did the movie suffer from being rushed, but to top it all people complained about the “extreme gore” during the test screenings, and it’s claimed that some of the audience actually fainted. Even the Paramount executives were shocked by how “gruesome” it was, and demanded a shorter runtime with less gore, so apparently some of the best bits were cut away from the movie. The original 130-minute film was savagely edited on the studio’s demand, much to Anderson’s dismay.

It was both a commercial and critical flop, grossing only $42 million on its $60 million budget. In some way, the movie entered into its redeeming phase when it sold pretty well on home video, where the DVD release sold so well that Paramount actually contacted Anderson with wishes of beginning the restoration of the deleted footage. But, too late, because at this point it had been either lost or destroyed. So thanks a lot for that, you squeamish arseholes who demanded the movie to be cut during the test screenings. Had it not been for you, we’d have a much more disturbing and gory movie.

The movie can be best summed up as a haunted house-story set on a spaceship, which has quite literally been to Hell and back. Thus I guess some people were quick to label it as some kind of Alien meets Hellraiser, which isn’t really the case. Just like the typical haunted house setting, the fears play mostly on the psychological at first, and we already know from the eerie and sinister surroundings that things are not as they should be, with strange things happening that spooks the crew. And let’s face it: supernatural happenings in space is a lot more claustrophobic and threatening compared to happening in some old house. In a house, you can at least run outside…

The dark, empty hallways in the spaceship appear just as menacing and threatening as the hallways in an old mansion, and the visions the characters are seeing are suspenseful and effective. The performances are good, but best is Sam Neill’s performance as Dr. Weir who slowly starts falling into madness and becoming absorbed by the gruesomeness the starship brought back with it. There are no aliens running amok here, just anxiety, paranoia, violence and gore. It’s like the place it came from had been the very depths of Hell itself, which makes it very interesting when you keep in mind that the design of the ship was modelled after the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Over the years Event Horizon has developed a cult following as well, sometimes referenced in other works of popular culture. It is an effective horror film albeit not a masterpiece, and it sucks that some of its most disturbing content is lost. Overall, it’s a decent 90s sci-fi horror which will probably forever hold the mystery of what those extra minutes of playtime could have been.

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Philip Eisner
Country & year: UK, US, 1997
Actors: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee, Peter Marinker, Holley Chant, Barclay Wright, Noah Huntley
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0119081/

The Orphanage (2007)

Posted on November 24, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Laura is a woman who once was adopted from an orphanage in Spain, and is now returning to the place with her husband Carlos and their seven-year-old son Simón. It’s been 30 years since Laura was adopted from there, and the orphanage is now closed. She plans to reopen the place and turn it into a facility for disabled children. Simón claims he has befriended a boy named Tomás, whom he draws as a child wearing a creepy-looking sack mask. This mysterious friend also tells Simón a secret Laura and Carlos have kept from him: that he is adopted. This revelation makes Simón angry, and he and Laura starts arguing which ends with her slapping him across the face. Even though she immediately regrets this, the damage has already been done, and he runs away. When looking for him, she encounters the sack-mask child who locks her inside the bathroom, and after managing to escape she is unable to find Simón anywhere. At night, banging sounds can be heard from within the walls of the orphanage, and old secrets from the place slowly starts unveiling.

The Orphanage (El orfanato) is a gothic supernatural horror film from 2007, and the directorial feature film debut of J. A. Bayona. The script was written in 1996 by Sergio G. Sánchez, and it caught Bayona’s attention in 2004, and he then went on to ask his long-time friend Guillermo del Toro to help him produce the film. The movie was well received, and won seven Goya awards. New Line Cinema bought the rights for an American remake, which was later cancelled.

As many classic ghost stories go, it’s rich in emotional struggles and relies more on visceral impact than jump-scares. There is a deliberate slow pace that feels rewarding more than protracted, offering a steady build-up of mystery and suspense. The movie manages to unravel the old orphanage’s mysteries in a way that keeps you engaged, while the dusty rooms and forsaken grounds all offers a sense of disquiet and foreboding, along with the sinister presences from the past that start making themselves known and reveal their secrets. Belen Rueda does a good performance as Laura, a woman devoured by loss and a desperate yearning for the truth.

A sense of sadness and despair is what appears to be deeply rooted within the story of The Orphanage, aided with spooky surroundings and, of course, the obligatory medium and séance scene. With a masked child appearing to be an imaginary friend (they’re always bad news in horror movies, we all know that), noises behind the walls, restless spirits of children and something terrible from the past that remains to be revealed, it’s all a recipe for a grounded ghost horror movie that treads along a safe path while still being able to held a steady course for an intriguing viewing experience. It’s not breaking new ground, but what it does, it does well.

So overall, The Orphanage offers a fine gothic ghost story, often more poetic than horrifying and more atmospheric and sad than scary. A perfect watch if you want an old-fashioned ghost movie that’s both creepy and beautiful.

Director: J.A. Bayona
Writer: Sergio G. Sánchez
Original title: El orfanato
Country & year: Spain, 2007
Actors: Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep, Mabel Rivera, Montserrat Carulla, Andrés Gertrúdix, Edgar Vivar, Óscar Casas, Mireia Renau, Georgina Avellaneda, Carla Gordillo
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0464141/

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Posted on November 21, 2023September 20, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Dr. Henry Jekyll is an English doctor in Victorian London, who is head over heels in love with his fiancée Muriel Carew. They both want to get married as soon as possible, but her strict father orders them to wait as he’s obviously not considering the good doctor to be quite good enough for his precious daughter. And he’s not entirely impressed after Jekyll’s speech during a dinner, where he claims that within each man there’s strong impulses for not only good, but also for evil. And this is also exactly what the doctor starts experimenting with: creating a drug that is supposed to unleash his evil side (because, that sounds like a really good idea, right?). And upon drinking it, not only does his whole demeanor change, but his appearance as well. The well-mannered and respectable Dr. Jekyll has now transformed into the savage brute Mr. Hyde…

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a 1931 pre-Code horror film, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and based on the famous 1886 gothic novella by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was the first horror movie to win an Academy Award, and upon viewing it I have to say the movie really appeared to be quite ahead of its time in regards to its quality and visual effects, as well as its boldness. As it was made just before the full enforcement for the Production Code (aka the Hays Code, which was a set of self-imposed guidelines for all motion pictures released between 1934 and 1968 which prohibited suggestive nudity, profanity, realistic violence, sexual persuasions and rape) it managed to get away with some of its content which is quite sexual (for its time), mostly embodied in the character of the bar singer Ivy. The movie premiered in Los Angeles on December 24, 1931 and opened in New York City on December 31, 1931. It grossed $1.3 million in domestic rentals, making it a box office hit. It also had a very high budget for a horror film at the time, at $535.000.

Visually, the movie looks great with its period-accurate studio sets which were all built for the movie, 35 sets in total. The camera work comes off as quite playful for a movie from this time period, where it’s always moving and giving us interesting views and perspectives, with great use of light and shadow. The effects were surprisingly good, and the transformation scenes were actually held a secret for decades until the director revealed in The Celluloid Muse (1969) that the make-up was applied in contrasting colors with a series of colored filters that matched it, which enabled the make-up to be exposed gradually or made invisible. The looks of Mr. Hyde was inspired by the popular image of him depicted in media and comic books, displaying him as simian and with large teeth. It may come off as a bit goofy at first, but it fits well with his drunken caveman-like behaviour. And while the story behind Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has been theorized to the left and the right and to the high heavens and hell below, it still goes without saying that the allegory for alcoholism/substance abuse is clear as day. Perhaps not a surprise, as Stevenson learned at a young age the devastating side effects from strong drink.

The movie version is very different from the original story of the book, to the point where the only similar factors are that the doctor creates this potion for evil and turns into Mr. Hyde. In the original story he is more homicidal, while in the movie version his violence tends to be more sexually motivated. Despite the differences, the core remains the same: a good man unleashes his evil side, and for that there’s dire consequences both for himself and those around him. The idea of there being some kind of evil beast hidden beneath our very selves is a common idea, and how the civilized person will always try to suppress urges which may cause harm.

A remake of the film was actually made just 10 years later, in 1941, by MGM who bought the negative and the rights to both Mamoulian’s version as well as the 1920 silent film, paying $1.250.000 for it. So yeah, they could do the whole remake-stuff back in the days as well, obviously. But MGM took it a lot of steps further: they actually recalled and destroyed every print of the 1931 film they could get their hands on, in order to promote their own version and avoid any kind of comparison or competition. Fortunately, they were not able to destroy all the copies of the movie, as a print was rediscovered in 1967.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has remained one of the most famous pieces of English literature, often considered to be a very defining book for the gothic horror genre. There’s been lots of media referencing it, everything from movies to comics, games and animation. There’s everything from other takes of the story, to parodies and small references. It’s undoubtedly one of the most influential horror stories every written. The phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” is also often used to refer to people with very shifting personalities, and let’s face it: Stevenson’s 1886 story will forever be relevant because we all have a Hyde within us, and we all have the responsibility to control him and make him stay inside, and not offer him the aiding tools that will let him out.

Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Writer: Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath
Country & year: US, 1931
Actors: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Halliwell Hobbes, Edgar Norton
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0022835/

The Boneyard (1991)

Posted on November 14, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Alley Oates is a well-respected psychic who’s received several prizes for helping the police solve crime mysteries over the years. Most of her job was to solve brutal crimes which involved children, which seems to have taken a toll on her mental health. Now she’s a deeply depressed, overweight (if she wasn’t already) middle-aged woman who spends her time burying herself in her bed under a mountain of blankets.

For some strange, bizarre reasons, this lady made me think of the nanny from Duckula. She’s got hands that could break coconuts, and I bet that her big, solid solid figure could easily crash through walls. Wouldn’t mess with her.

Anyways – life goes on as children are still missing and the local police need her help. A police man manages to drag her out of her hibernation cave to the the local basement morgue to unravel some dark mystery about three ghoulish corpse children. We learn that the bodies of the kids are possessed by some Asian demons called Kyoshi, and as they’re getting trapped in the basement, the ghoul juniors are about to wake up at any moment to get the schlock party started.

The Boneyard starts off with a dry and serious tone, more than it should, with static and boring dialogue scenes that didn’t leave the best first impression. But that starts to shift slightly when we enter the morgue and get introduced to the wacky receptionist, Miss Poopinplatz (lol) and her cute little poodle named Floofsoms. From here on, the film starts to loosen up and get more drunk as the silly, B-movie fun starts to set in.

Return of The Living Dead meets a very low-budget version of George Romero’s Day of the Dead is maybe the best way to describe this odd little film. The gore is very minimal here though, yet The Boneyard has several moments of solid fun value and special effects. The little kids who run around in their ghoulish rubber costumes add to the goofy charm. And then we have one of the characters who turns into an animatronic monster straight from Beetlejuice. The film rounds off with a crazy climax which could as well have been a deleted scene from Peter Jackson’s Braindead. Some name-dropping here, I know, but you get the point. Overall, it’s nothing spectacular but has its unique scenes and moments that make it an entertaining midnight watch. Ruff, ruff.

The Boneyard is on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

Writer and director: James Cummins
Country & year: US, 1991
Actors: Ed Nelson, Deborah Rose, Norman Fell, James Eustermann, Denise Young, Willie Stratford, Phyllis Diller, Robert Yun Ju Ahn, Richard F. Brophy, Sallie Middleton Kaltreider, Janice Dever, Cindy Dollar-Smith
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0101497/

The Void (2016)

Posted on November 10, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Here we have one of the more grimmer throwback horror-80s movies which seemed to be made by accident, or followed by a witness to an accident to be more correct. You see – other than producing their own low-budget horror films, the creative guys Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski from Astron-6 (Father’s Day, Manborg, Psycho Goreman and more) have also worked on bigger Hollywood films such as It, and Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark with special effects and art designs. They also worked with one of the greatest; Guillermo del Toro and Jeremy Gillespie was working at Pinewood studios where del Toro was in pre-production of his magnum opus which never happened: At the Mountains of Madness. After the project crashed and burned due to the high budget costs and the fact that del Toro refused to add in a love story and a happy ending to the studio’s demand, Gillespie and Kostanski got inspired to make their own low-budget spin on the story. And with their obsession for the 80s and the old school of filmmaking, it was natural to make it as a throwback.

It’s around past midnight when the small town sheriff, Daniel Carter (Aaron Pole), picks up a wounded guy on a rural road and takes him to the local hospital. Here we also meet our small group of characters, among them a cute young pregnant woman who’s about to give birth. And let’s hope that nothing bad happens to her and the baby (ha-ha). To bring this John Doe to the hospital seemed to be a very bad idea as weird things started to happen, such as the lights flickering and the phone shutting down. From here, it gets messy pretty quickly around the hospital when one of the nurses gets shot by the sheriff after she stabs the eyes of one of the patients . The lights shut down and the hospital gets surrounded by a group of cloak/hazmat suit-wearing cultists who have no intention of letting anyone get out of the building. Some ancient supernatural forces have also seemed to awaken in the basement which transforms dead people into the most grotesque-looking mutants that has been put on film in modern time.

It’s valid to mention that this is not an Astron-6 production which focuses more on humor, as this one has a far more serious tone. The Void is also crowdfunded on Indiegogo with a raise of only 82,510 dollars (!), which seems like a box of molded breadcrumbs for an ambitious Lovecraftian project like this. Having that said, the film looks pretty damn good with overall solid, creative filmmaking with a long string of clear inspirations from 70s and 80s classics. We have the siege element from John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, the claustrophobic paranoia from The Thing, the morbid, grotesque madness from Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond and the cryptic vibe and atmosphere from Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, to mention some – all blended into its own unique, beefy and tasteful love letter for us older gorehounds. A great soundtrack by Blitz//Berlin which also suits the grim retro style perfectly like a penis in vagina. Except for some very few visual effects, there is no CGI here, only the usage of gallons of fake blood and sticky, top-tier latex monsters that could be something straight from 1987.

Writers and directors: Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski
Country & year: Canada, 2016
Actors: Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Ellen Wong, Kathleen Munroe, Daniel Fathers, Mik Byskov, Art Hindle, Stephanie Belding, James Millington, Evan Stern, Grace Munro
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4255304/

Night of the Demon (1980)

Posted on November 7, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Night of the ~~Demon~~ Bigfoot is an amateur monster schlock from 1980, which starts off with a wounded dude, Bill Nugent, lying in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors and a police inspector. He’s an anthropology professor, you see, and here’s his fascinating story you wouldn’t believe, which is about his adventure with a group of his students to track down Bigfoot in the woods of Northern California. And he has to convince the doctors that he’s not insane and that he was the only one who survived Bigfoot after the monster killed all of the students.

And good-fucking luck with that, my dude. Mr. Kallen from Slapped Ham would have loved to have you on his first podcast.

Bill starts with the first story, the first series of flashback scenes where we see Bigfoot killing random people. The first victim is some guy in the forest who’s getting ready to fish by a river. In order to have some suspense here, the monster is shown through POV and off-screen and, just like in the great classic Blackenstein, we have a moment where we see the monster rip his arm off with zero force in silhouette. Someone has clearly taken notes from the very best. While he bleeds to death with the use of the thinnest cranberry juice streaming from his ripped arm, the blood streams down to fill one of Bigfoot’s footprints, following the opening credits.

As Bill and his group of students head into the forest to find our mythic creature, they hear about this lady Wanda. She’s a mysterious outcast who lives as a hermit in a cabin deep in the woods, and the legend says that she knows where Bigfoot is. Okay, then. In the meanwhile, as they’re heading for Wanda’s cabin, we get some more flashback scenes told by Bill as they sit around the campfire to remind us how dangerous this Bigfoot is. All these campfire scenes were shot and added during the post production because the producer wanted to amp up the gore. We see Bigfoot killing people in different ways, but don’t get too excited. In one scene, he even uses an axe and the effect is the cheapest-looking rubber wound sticker they could afford.

The most memorable scene is the biker dude who gets his dick ripped off when he’s about to take a piss. Because this is no laughing matter. This is serious. Dead serious. Just look at the deadpan seriousness on Bill’s face when he tells the story. Don’t you dare to even chuckle or roll your eyes in disbelief. Show some respect for the poor guy.

We also have a campfire story about this random couple who’s about to have sex in a van. This is also the only body count flashback scene (as far as I remember) that was not shot in broad daylight. This is one of the more what-the-fuck-moments where the guy gets dragged by Bigfoot up to the top of the car while the lady can’t decide how to react as she makes orgasms sounds and looks confused rather than terrified. It’s noteworthy to mention that director James C. Wasson mainly produced porn films, so maybe there are some connections there.

Then there’s the star of the film, the man, myth and the legend himself: Bigfoot… and I have to be honest and say that the face-makeup is not the worst I’ve seen. Some effort went in here for sure, and I would assume the make-up artists took some inspiration from the creation of Michael Myer’s mask in Halloween, only here based on the face of Mick Jagger. And I don’t think anything can really top that.

Night of the Demon is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Severin Films, restored and uncut. A fun time for all lovers of schlock and funny-bad movies.

Director: James C. Wasson
Writers: Mike Williams, Jim L. Ball
Country & year: US, 1980
Actors: Michael Cutt, Joy Allen, Bob Collins, Jody Lazarus, Rick Fields, Michael Lang, Melanie Graham, Shannon Cooper, Paul Kelleher, Ray Jarris
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0081229/

Totally Killer (2023)

Posted on October 31, 2023June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It is the end of October in 1987, and it’s Halloween time! For some teenage girls in the small town of Vernon, things have gotten way too scary, however…Tiffany Clark, Marisa Song and Heather Hernandez are all killed by someone going by the nickname Sweet 16 Killer, each having been stabbed 16 times on the night of their 16th birthday. And they all had their birthdays in the days close to Halloween, of course: on October 27, 29 and 31. Many years later, to present day, the murders are still unsolved as the killer was never caught. Jamie Hughes is the daughter of a woman named Pam, who used to be friends with the three victims of the Sweet 16 Killer. Naturally, Pam is having a rather strained relationship to Halloween, and feels anxious when Jamie goes to a concert with her friend on Halloween night. While being at home giving out candy to the trick or treaters, Pam is suddenly attacked by the killer who seems to have come back for her all these years later, and she’s stabbed to death. While Jamie grieves over her mother’s death, she also helps her friend Amelia finish the final parts of her time machine (yes, an actual time machine), which Jamie later activates and is sent back to 1987. Realizing that she can now stop the Sweet 16 Killer from actually going on the killing spree, she tries to warn people (which goes as well as one might expect) and befriend her mother and her group of friends, hoping to stop the killer and save her mother from dying in the future. But she’s got to hurry – or else she will be trapped in 1987…

Totally Killer is a comedy slasher film from 2023, directed by Nahnatchka Khan. It premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 28, 2023, and was later released on Amazon Prime on October 6, 2023. I guess the best way to describe it is a movie where Scream meets Back to the Future. In the leading role we have Kiernan Shipka as Jamie(who also played Sabrina in the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), who plays a typical modern teenage girl. This is something that the movie makes sure to exploit when she gets sent back to 1987, where things are considerably less “politically correct” and Jamie often finds herself baffled by what was apparently deemed okay in the past. While this does sometimes come off as a bit overkill, I can’t help but feeling that this is probably exactly how a teenager of today would have experienced a trip to the latter part of the 80’s: constantly on edge by all the stuff that could potentially be offensive by someone or something. Whew.

Totally Killer is fast paced, generally fun and very much your typical teenage slasher flick. Already from the start it’s very upfront about what it is: a movie that’s supposed to be uncomplicated fun mainly aimed at teens. There is no excessive gore to be witnessed, but the violence is moderate and offers some bloody kills here and there. The killer is walking around wearing a Max Headroom-esque mask, which was made by makeup artist Tony Gardner.

Overall, Totally Killer is an entertaining horror comedy in the same vein as Happy Death Day: it’s nothing spectacular, but offers just the right amount of amusement which will make it a fun experience. There are some obvious plot holes, especially for those who might like to nitpick on things, but they don’t really overshadow the movie as a whole. Just bring forth your Halloween treats and some popcorn, and have fun!

Director: Nahnatchka Khan
Writers: David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, Jen D’Angelo
Country & year: US, 2023
Actors: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Charlie Gillespie, Lochlyn Munro, Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, Liana Liberato, Kelcey Mawema, Stephi Chin-Salvo, Anna Diaz, Ella Choi, Jeremy Paul
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt11426232/