horror movie review – Page 7

High Tension (2003)

Posted on August 30, 2024August 31, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

High Tension is the title and high tension is what you get.

We’re in the countryside in France (here, of course, filmed in Romania) where the two young best friends Marie (Cécile de France) and Alex (Maïwenn) are visiting Alex’ parents to study. It all seems like a quiet and idyllic summer in the country, but who’d know that a psycho killer (Philippe Nahon) is also roaming the area? He’s dressed like a mechanic, drives around in a rusty van and likes to chill out between the killing-sprees by giving himself a blowjob with a fresh severed head. Welcome to surfing on the first red wave of French Extreme Horror.

After this short and intense foreshadowing, it’s just a matter of time before this cold-blooded and emotionless serial killer drops by Alex’ family’s farmhouse to expand his kill count. And so he does. Already the first night when all have gone to bed, the doorbell rings. As soon as Alex’ dad opens, he gets his face sliced by a razor blade. Then our killer cuts his head off in some very creative way I won’t even try to describe. He slaughters the whole family like they were pigs, even the dog. Before he leaves the messy and gruesome murder scene, he captures Alex, ties her up, tosses her back in the van. Phew. Marie was able to hide during this brutal home invasion, but chases the killer to save Alex.

What we have next is an intense cat n’ mouse chase that spirals completely out of control. Alexandre Aja (with his co-writer Grégory Levasseur) has during the last twenty years established themselves in the US with The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D, Mirrors, Crawl, Horns and more. He was 22 years old when he made High Tension, and with this being his first horror film, one would guess he’d already made genre films for a decade. A solidly made slasher, a gory, relentless ride from start to finish, with strong performances by the two female lead actors. The throwbacks to the 70s and 80s are also eminent and the juicy special effects are a big factor here, delivered by FX artist Giannetto De Rossi (1941-2021) who also worked with Lucio Fulci.

But the film also has a rotten macaron in the room that has to be addressed, and that’s the infamous twist which only M. Night Shyamalan would still be impressed by. Aja took inspiration from the Dean R. Koontz’ novel Intensity, which also became an obscure movie made for TV in 1997. And what he had planned for High Tension was all another than the ending we got here. We can blame none other than Luc Besson, one of the producers, who demanded the twist that has aged like milk. But since Aja already here has proven to be a damn good director and able to keep the tension high to the end credits, it does not ruin the the overall film experience.

Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
Original title: Haute tension
Also known as: Switchblade Romance (UK)
Country & year: France/Romania, 2003
Actors: Cécile de France, Maïwenn, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun, Andrei Finti, Oana Pellea, Marco Claudiu Pascu, Jean-Claude de Goros, Bogdan Uritescu, Gabriel Spahiu
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338095/

Watcher (2022)

Posted on August 27, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Julia is married to Francis, who has a mother from Romania but grew up in USA. One day, he gets a promotion at work and is relocated to Bucharest, so it’s time to pack the bags and move to Romania. They move into an apartment building where the windows face the opposite building. Julia spends a lot of time on her own as Francis works long hours, and she gets more and more unnerved by seeing a man in the building across the street, who just stands there and appears to be watching her all the time. Her fears aren’t exactly subsided when she and Francis one day comes over a commotion on the street with an ambulance, police and a crowd of people. Apparently they just found the body of another victim of “The Spider“, a serial killer who decapitates young women. Like this wasn’t more than enough to fray her nerves, she’s also struggling with finding her place in a city where she doesn’t know anyone, and doesn’t speak the language. She befriends one of the few english-speaking neighbors, Irina, which appears to ease her mind a little. One night, when she stands looking out the window, the “watcher“ is at his usual place. She wonders if he actually is looking at her, hoping she might be wrong, and decides to test it by gently waving at him. At first, the man just stands there like he hasn’t seen anything, but then he waves back. And things spiral into something that’s completely out of Julia’s control.

Watcher is a psychological thriller from 2022, written and directed by Chloe Okuno as her feature directorial debut. It was filmed in Bucharest, Romania. The movie is based on an original screenplay by Zack Ford, and stars Maika Monroe as Julia, Karl Glusman as Francis, and Burn Gorman as the watcher. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was later theatrically released in the US, mostly to positive reviews. It still only made a total of $3.2 million against a budget of $5 million.

The movie follows a woman who moves to a new country with her husband, feeling alienated and alone in unfamiliar surroundings. The language barrier only adds to the feeling of being alone, and with her husband being so busy at work she hardly knows how to pass the time and make herself fit in within a world not quite her own. The pacing is slow (yep, another slow-burner), but it gives you enough time to get a proper grip on the isolation and paranoia that builds within the protagonist. You also can’t help but wondering if Julia is just a bit too paranoid for her own good: what is a real threat, and what is caused by her misconceptions and fear? When she’s standing in the window watching the watcher…then who is actually watching who? Yes, the movie does play along with the idea of making you question everything, but we also experience everything Julia does, positioning us in the same isolation she feels and with the same experiences. Thus, we do not necessarily question that something is wrong here, we just don’t know to what extent, and this makes it all the more thrilling.

Watcher is a suspenseful movie filled with paranoia and anxiety, and definitely worth a watch if you want a slow-burning mystery thriller.

Fun fact: when Julia wanders around in Bucharest and decides to visit the Cinema, she watches Charade (1963). It’s the same movie that was played in It Follows (2014) when Jay (played by Maika Monroe) and Greg went to the movies together.

Director: Chloe Okuno
Writers: Zack Ford, Chloe Okuno
Country & year: USA/Romania, 2022
Actors: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Burn Gorman, Tudor Petrut, Gabriela Butuc, Madalina Anea, Cristina Deleanu, Bogdan Farcas, Daniel Nuta, Ioana Abur, Flaviu Crisan, Stefan Iancu
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12004038/

Dark Was the Night (2014)

Posted on August 23, 2024September 3, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Maiden Woods is a small, isolated town surrounded by forest. We start off with a team of loggers that goes missing, and when the foreman tries to find out what happened to them, he encounters the body of one of them. Or, that is…a part of it. Upon finding a severed arm, he is then attacked and killed by some kind of unseen monster. Later, Paul Shields who is the sheriff in town goes together with Donny Saunders, his new deputy from New York, to speak to a farmer who insists that one of his horses has been stolen. Paul believes that the horse has simply escaped and decides to not think too much of it, and goes on to pick up his son Adam who will stay at his place for the night. He and his wife, Susan, no longer lives together after their other son, Tim, died in an accident. During the night, Adam claims he’s seen a creature in the back yard, and Paul also hears some strange noises but doesn’t see anything. The next morning, there are large hoof-like footprints in the snow around his house. Shouldn’t be too strange since they live nearby a forest and all that, but what’s quite peculiar is that the footprints appear to come from an animal that walks on two legs. On top of that, the footprints are left all around town. Paul, of course, believes it to be a prank. What else could it be, right? But then he hears about more animals that have gone missing, and the hunters informs him that all the deer and other animals in the forest seems to have left, indicating that some kind of large predator may have come to the area.

Dark Was the Night (released as Monster Hunter in the UK) is a creature feature horror film from 2014 directed by Jack Heller and written by Tyler Hisel. It is loosely based on the story about “The Devil’s Footprints“, a phenomenon that occurred in 1855 in England where people in a small town woke up to find biped hoof prints all over the place in the freshly fallen snow. Also, the title of the film addresses the 1927 blues-folk song Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson.

What sets the movie apart from many typical creature feature films, is the focus on mystery-fueled horror suspense during the majority of the playtime. It’s kind of a slow-burn, the monster is lurking in the dark and out of sight and the atmosphere is much more sinister and dark than the simple premise would make you expect. Hiding the monster is actually a good thing here, as it works wonders for creating the creepy tone. Kevin Durand, which was most recently seen in a role in the vampire horror movie Abigail (2024), does a good job on portraying a worn out and drained sheriff who’s had more than enough on his plate as of late, only to be dealing with something quite out of his comprehension.

And night surely is dark in this movie! And the day is…blue. Just as blue as the sheriff who looks like he’s on the verge of a breakdown at any moment. To be honest, I’m not really sure what the deal with the color palette is, but I have a feeling it’s used to somehow enhance the emotional state of the characters, or to provide a feeling of it being chilly since it’s set during the winter time.

Unfortunately, the movie does fall a bit apart during the final moments, mostly due to the rather lackluster reveal of the monster (could have been a cool game boss, but as something scary in a horror movie, not so much), and a somewhat cheesy ending. Overall, though, Dark Was the Night is a decent mystery-fueled creature feature film.

Director: Jack Heller
Writer: Tyler Hisel
Also known as: Monster Hunter (UK)
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas, Bianca Kajlich, Nick Damici, Heath Freeman, Ethan Khusidman, Sabina Gadecki, Steve Agee, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, Billy Paterson, Terry Fiore
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2251281/

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Posted on August 20, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Rain Carradine is an orphan who works with her adoptive brother Andy at the mining colony Jackson’s star. Andy is a reprogrammed synthetic human, whose only mission is to do what’s best for Rain. As can be expected, the mining colony is a shithole that treats its workers like slaves, and when Rain’s contract is unexpectedly extended, she’s had enough and wants out of the place in whatever way possible. Tyler, her ex-boyfriend and some of their fellow friends have found a derelict spacecraft nearby, and they decide to go on a salvage mission in order to retrieve the cryonic stasis chambers before others beat them to it. They all want to leave and travel to a planet called Yvaga, and together they fly a mining hauler to what they find is an abandoned research station called Romulus and Remus. Of course it proves to not be so abandoned after all, which is revealed when two of them are trying to retrieve some stasis chambers in a room filled with facehuggers. This inevitably leads to one of them getting an unwanted facial, which again leads to, well…you know what. All hell breaks lose and they must avoid both facehuggers and Xenomorphs while also having a time limit as the space station is getting closer to crashing with Jackson’s planetary rings.

Alien: Romulus is a sci-fi horror action film from 2024, co-written and directed by Fede Alvarez. It is the seventh installment in the Alien franchise, but it serves as a standalone “interquel” which is set in a timeline between the events of the first Alien film from 1979, and Aliens from 1986. It doesn’t take too many glances before you realize how it is definitely a love letter to the original movie from 1979, and Fede Alvarez even sought out the special effects crew from the 1986 movie to have them work on the creatures. Thus, the movie includes physical sets, practical creatures and miniatures which were used wherever possible. The animatronic effects were created in collaboration with Legacy Effects and Studio Gillis, where Legacy Effects is the successor to Stan Winston Studios, who worked on the 1986 film Aliens, and Studio Gillis is the successor to Amalgamated Dynamics, who worked on Alien 3 (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997). Aside from that, Fede Alvarez was also inspired by the video game Alien: Isolation from 2014, a game he played around the same time as his movie Don’t Breathe (2016) was released, and said: “I was playing, and realizing how terrifying Alien could be if you take it back to that tone“. So, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of love for the original movie and the franchise here. Is it nostalgic? Yeah, of course it fuckin’ is, and no, that’s not a bad thing.

The characters are much younger than in earlier Alien movies, none of them are fully fleshed out but it works well enough and makes them all moderately interesting. The interaction between Rain and her “brother”, Andy the artificial human, gives the movie a bit more heart without trying too desperately to pull on your heartstrings. The gore (although there isn’t any abundance of it) is decent, and the visuals and atmosphere are good. The use of practical effects though is very much the icing on the cake in this movie, and oh boy does some of those effects show the obvious rape analogies with phallic and yonic designs all over the place. A scene where a Xenomorph emerges from what I could best describe as an enormous slime-vagina on the wall, showing its phallic head in full display, very much leaves little to your imagination and if you’re one of those who never saw these obvious phallic designs in earlier Alien movies, then, well…here you have it. Now you cannot unsee it. Then again, if you’ve ever seen some of H. R. Giger’s other works (the guy who was responsible for the visual design of the creatures in the 1979 Alien film) you shouldn’t be too surprised over its obvious sexual undertones.

Overall, I thought Alien: Romulus was a blast when viewing it in the theater, and while it was nowhere near as bloody and gory as Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (2013), it was fun and felt as one of the Alien movies as of late that gave much of the same feeling of claustrophobia and unsettling atmosphere as the first.

Oh, and if you want more Alien, check out the impressive animated fanmade horror short Alien: Monday which was also released this year after having been in production for 6 years!

Director: Fede Alvarez
Writers: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Country & year: USA, UK, 2024
Actors: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, Rosie Ede, Soma Simon, Bence Okeke, Viktor Orizu, Robert Bobroczkyi, Trevor Newlin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18412256/

Mirrors (2008)

Posted on August 16, 2024August 31, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

We start off with a security guard running through a subway station, and upon entering a room and seeing his reflection in a mirror, he starts freaking out and begs for his life. This doesn’t end well, as his reflection takes a shard and cuts its own throat, and the same thing happens to him. Then we move over to the life of Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) who is a suspended police detective on mandatory leave from the New York police department after a shooting that went terribly wrong. Now, he works as a security guard and will start working at the Mayflower, which is a luxury department store that was destroyed by a fire five years earlier. And of course: the building has a vast array of mirrors still standing from when the store was open. How convenient. On his first night of patrol, he notices eerie things like how the mirrors are covered with handprints which seems to be from the other side of the glass. Couldn’t be anything suspicious about that, right? He also finds the wallet of the guard we saw in the opening scene, who he was told had killed himself. Inside the wallet is a note saying “Esseker”. He starts seeing more and more visions, and Ben becomes convinced that the mirrors play a part in what is happening here. And when his sister is also killed by her own reflection, Ben is fueled by rage and fear for his family’s safety, and becomes determined to figure out the mystery behind the mirrors and the mysterious note in the previous guard’s wallet.

Mirrors is a supernatural horror film from 2008, directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, Piranha 3D, Crawl). The film is based on a South Korean horror film from 2003 called Into the Mirror, and it was originally supposed to be a straightforward remake until Aja was brought on board to read the script, which he then wanted to change as he was quite dissatisfied with the particulars of the original film’s story. Thus, Mirrors only includes the basic idea involving mirrors. It was shot in Romania, most of it in Nicolae Ceausescu’s unfinished Academy of sciences which is located in Bucharest.

Abandoned places and spooky mirrors is of course a fine setup for a horror movie, merged with a protagonist who is troubled, divorced and having an alcohol problem (funny how those things always go hand in hand) we are left with what will inevitably not bring much new to the table, but at least it will offer some good creepy atmosphere and a mystery that keeps you intrigued enough to keep watching. Another plus is that there’s some really effective scenes, especially that of the sister’s death. If you watch this movie with some of the directors other gorier and grittier movies in mind, however, this one’s very different. There’s none of the really gritty vibe which can be found in High Tension for example, or any abundance of gore like in the incredibly gory Piranha 3D. This one’s a different meal, and Aja’s movies does indeed come in varied forms, you can rarely expect the same thing over and over from him. Which is not a bad thing.

Overall, Mirrors is a nice supernatural horror film where Jack Bauer, uhm, I mean Kiefer Sutherland plays the role as the alcoholic ex-cop pretty well. The best part of the movie is when everything is still a mystery, as the creepy vibe does diminish a bit once the supernatural goings-on are revealed, but this isn’t exactly uncommon in mystery-fueled horror movies. I have also seen the original movie this one was based on, and this is one of the (rare) cases where I actually prefer the re-imagined version. This is probably largely due to this movie being a re-imagination rather than a remake.

A sequel, called Mirrors 2, was released in 2010.

Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
Country & year: USA, 2008
Actors: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Arika Gluck, Amy Smart, Mary Beth Peil, John Shrapnel, Jason Flemyng, Tim Ahern, Julian Glover
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790686/

Hidden (2009)

Posted on August 13, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

We start off in a dark, dark forest, where a boy keeps running in fear. He’s deathly afraid of something or someone, and when he runs across a forest road he doesn’t see the trailer truck coming in high speed. Luckily, the truck misses him, but the driver lose control over the vehicle and it all triggers a chain of events when the truck crashes into another car. Then, we proceed forwards in time and over to Kai Koss, who has returned to his hometown to settle affairs after his mother’s recent death. It’s been 19 years since he set foot there because of his mother’s abusive ways, but he soon finds out that he can’t outrun his past. In his ancestral house, he starts getting visions of previous events and it messes him up to the point where he actually wants to burn the entire shithole of a house down. Some local police makes sure he won’t be able to do that, though. But this revisit to his old hometown doesn’t only bring back memories, people start dying too…and it seems like something has been waiting for Kai’s return.

Hidden (original title: Skjult) is a psychological horror film from Norway, written and directed by Pål Øie. It had a budget of 12.6 million NOK (approx. 1.2 million USD), and was filmed on several locations in Norway including Eidfjord in Hardanger, by Vøringsfossen (the 83rd highest waterfall in Norway). It received mostly lukewarm reviews, but got some international attention as one of the featured films of the After Dark Horrorfest in 2010.

Hidden often has a few lynchian vibes in it, being slightly dreamlike and nightmarish. The dark and brooding atmosphere is what holds the movie up, and they really found a creepy location for Kai’s old childhood home, a place that pretty much seemed just as tainted by degeneracy as the former owner. When we follow the protagonist in his mostly befuddled state, the movie makes it very clear that the intention is to confuse us on the same level as the character himself. The distinction between what’s real and what’s just in Kai’s mind, can appear a bit messy at times.

Overall, Hidden is perhaps a bit too clichéd, but on the whole it is an okay psychological horror slow-burner, focusing for the most part on atmospheric surroundings and a nightmare-vibe riddled with guilt, confusion and trauma. The cinematography is a highlight here, and you will most likely find it enjoyable if you like mystery horror of the slow and moody type.

The director, Pål Øie, had his first horror movie release with Villmark in 2003 (english title: Dark Woods), which was a fine horror thriller that unfortunately got a rather lackluster sequel in 2015. After that there wasn’t anything new in the horror department from this director, until recently when a new movie titled Kraken was announced. It’s going to be Norway’s first sea monster horror film. Hopefully it will be fun, with at least some grisly body counts and proper monster effects! Time will show, though.

Writer and director: Pål Øie
Country & year: Norway, 2009
Original title: Skjult
Actors: Kristoffer Joner, Cecilie A. Mosli, Bjarte Hjelmeland, Marko Iversen Kanic, Anders Danielsen Lie, Karin Park, Eivind Sander, Arthur Berning, Agnes Karin Haaskjold
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1347007/

Cherry Falls (1999)

Posted on August 9, 2024August 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

– HAIL, HAIL, Virgin HIGH! Drop your pants it’s FUCK, or DIE!

And that’s a classy, colorful quote from the more obscure Scream clone teen slasher that is Cherry Falls. That Shakespearean line didn’t just come from nowhere, by the way, because listen to this: In the small, idyllic town of Cherry Falls, teens start to get killed, one by one. And one particular thing the victims have in common is that they’re (- drumrooooll -) virgins.

One of the town’s young virgins is Jody (Brittany Murphy). She’s also the teenage daughter of the sheriff Brent (Michael Biehn). And when he starts to see the clear pattern of the killers motive, we have a pretty awkward father/daughter moment where he straight out asks her while she’s lying in her bed if she’s…you know…has lost her innocence with her current boyfriend, and the conversation continues like this:

You don’t have to worry about it. We broke up the other day, she says.

Yeah…., dad replies with a sigh.

Then she asks with a straight face Are you disappointed? Are you still disappointed that I’m still a virgin?

Dad answers No, no, not at all (Yes, you are). I’m very, very proud of you.

Good acting saved this scene from the ultimate cringe.

But, still though, since the script seems to be written by an alien boomer, we have some eye-rolling moments sprinkled all over the place with some questionable thought of logic. This is also what makes Cherry Falls so amusing, odd and weird. And the sweet cherry on the top is a borderline zany Britanny Murphy (RIP) with her teen angst boiling up to eleven and looks like seconds from bursting out in a panic attack. Please have someone give the girl a box of Belgian chocolate and a big teddy bear. It gets weirder when the news about this mysterious virgin-killer reaches all the kids at the Cherry Falls High School, and they have the plan of the century you’d never guess: To organize a huge event where all the virgin teens in the town gather to have a big, fat sex orgy, a fuck fest, with the T-shirt worthy slogan “Hail, Hail, Virgin high, drop your pants its fuck, or die!“ Alcohol included. Good luck and have fun. The title for this film should have been Fuck or Die. The German title is the closest with Sex oder stirb (Sex or Die). It’s far from the bloodiest slasher film out there, but it’s certainly one of the horniest. So I’ll give it that. Meanwhile, our protagonist Jody, sets her own little investigation to track down the killer.

Fun fact: Ken Selden actually wrote the script as an X-rated movie, so the orgy scene at the end could go full-out in softcore style. I bet Showgirls would look like My Little Pony in comparison. Too bad it never “came” to its full climax, that would have ended the 90s era of teen slashers with an epic orgasmic bang.

And if you find the tone of the film somewhat confusing and completely off, you’re not wrong, as director Geoffrey Wright and scriptwriter Ken Selden were clearly not on the same page. You see, Selden wrote the film from a more silly and satirical angle on the slasher genre, whereas Wright went for a far more serious approach. He also cut out many of the comedic elements to add more horror. Unfortunately, the kills are nothing much, where the only memorable death scene is the girl who gets tied and nailed to the ceiling after being stabbed to death. That’s at least the only one I can remember.

Despite its troubled production, Cherry Falls has its qualities. It’s polished, well-directed and goes its own unique way. So it’s not just a blatant copy of the more well-known teen slashers of that era. In the midst of the weird, muddled silliness, the film manages to keep on track with a serious mass-murder mystery to be solved. We also have an intriguing killer, spiced with some elements of true-crime to keep you invested. The killer also gives some Malignant vibes where I wouldn’t be surprised if James Wan took some inspiration from.

As mentioned, Cherry Falls didn’t have a smooth production, to put it mildly. The creative differences between the writer and the director are one thing, but the film is most notoriously known for being the most expensive movie made for TV with a budget of 14 million $ (approx the same budget as Scream.) The film was originally set up for a wide theatrical release in the US, but did never get an approval through the censorship – which is kinda odd since this is far from the most graphic mainstream slasher out there. But just the thought of teens having sex scares the bureaucrats at the rating boards more than anything else. The film also crashed with protests from the residents of Richmond where part of the movie was shot. So the film was dumped on TV (way before streaming services were a thing), and I would guess seen by few. It was only screened at theaters in the UK and other places in Europe with great success, even though the box office numbers are unknown. It has gained a cult-following throughout the years and was released on Blu-ray by Scream Factory in 2016, where they did their best to get the license to the fully uncut version through USA Films, but to no avail. Maybe there were some real orgy scenes to dig up there. Who knows.

Director: Geoffrey Wright
Writers: Ken Selden
Country & year: USA, 1999
Actors: Brittany Murphy, Jay Mohr, Michael Biehn, Jesse Bradford, Candy Clark, Amanda Anka, Joe Inscoe, Gabriel Mann, Natalie Ramsey, Douglas Spain, Bre Blair, Kristen Miller
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175526/

Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

Posted on August 6, 2024September 18, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It’s summer and the place is a sleepy hillbilly fishing town, Noyo, in northern California, where the local women are starting to get raped by humanoid fish monsters. Some context: it all starts with a fishing trip going horribly wrong when they catch one of the humanoids in their fishnets. It goes from bad to worse when the fisherman’s young son falls overboard and gets pulled under the water and killed. The boat gets blown to pieces when a flare gun accidentally fires into the gasoline-soaked deck.

Fishmonsters must be on everyone’s mind who witnessed it, right? Of course not. The locals suspect Johnny to have caused the explosion, because he’s an Indian and those who died on the boat didn’t like those kinds of people. Racist alarm. Well, there’s not much of a mystery here as the viewer is fully aware of what really happened. A dog disappears and gets found by the shore, totally mangled. Poor doggie. But that’s not the only one, as all the dogs in town have been brutally killed overnight and discarded like trash by the docks. And the only dog left alive is Johnny’s, the Indian guy. Not the greatest start when the town is preparing for a festival, sponsored by the legendary Olympia Brewing Company.

It gets more serious when more townspeople are getting killed. The schlock elements really kicks in with a teenage couple having a swim at the beach and getting attacked by some humanoids. Here we see them in full costume, which actually doesn’t look too bad. But that’s until we see them in motion, because actors in big, heavy rubber costume suits are not a good combination. A scientist, Dr. Susan Drake, enters the scene to get to the bottom of the case and her research can inform us that the town is being plagued by mutated salmons.

Killing dogs is one thing, but the most alarming thing must be that the humanoids rape the female victims, something that was not originally included in the rough cut. First-time film director Barbara thought a rape scene with a rubber-looking fishmonster would look dumb. She has a point, though. And her being a feminist, she refused to film such a scene. Roger Corman (RIP) was a producer on this thing, which explains a lot as his fingerprints are spotted all over the place. But why he hired a female feminist to direct under his New World Picture company is a ball-scratcher. Well, he never hired a woman to direct again. So, he fired Barbara (even though she’d already completed the principal shooting) and hired Jimmy T. Murakami (Battle Beyond the Stars, When the Wind Blows) to shoot the scene. Corman got some backlash for this, so for the hell of it, he recycled it one year later in Galaxy of Terror with a giant, horny maggot.

Another fun trivia: actress Ann Turkel, who plays the scientist, once said why she chose to do this film: “It was an intelligent suspenseful science-fiction story with a basis in fact and no sex“. It also had the working title Beneath The Darkness, which she loved. Oof, talk about being totally duped. Roger Corman, you little rascal. Because, not only did Corman add more scenes of graphic nudity, and spiced up the sleazy nature and monster rapes to amp up the schlock elements, he also changed the title to Humanoids from the Deep, which Turkel of course hated.

The script is very unfocused which blends some out of place slasher elements with melodrama between the Indian and the other locals that escalates into cheesy mass-fistfights while we’re waiting for some fishmonster action. It’s still a silly, entertaining and campy B movie that walks the tiny line between the more wooden Z movie territory. Surely not a masterpiece. The climax at the carnival is a highlight where we have some really bad acting to laugh at, and the film is as cheesy and fun as the title suggests. The awesome cover art for the Blu-ray does not lie, in other words. The gore is minimal, though, so don’t get too excited. But the little we have is pretty solid. Some of the makeup crew later worked on films like Cocoon, RoboCop, The Blob, Night of the Creeps, Blade II and more, so that should say something. It’s also worth mentioning that the film has the first musical score by James Horner, who was to become one of the most prolific composers in Tinseltown.

Director: Barbara Peeters
Writers: Frank Arnold, Martin B. Cohen, William Martin
Country & year: USA, 1980
Actors: Doug McClure, Ann Turkel, Vic Morrow, Cindy Weintraub, Anthony Pena, Denise Galik, Lynn Theel, Meegan King, Breck Costin, Hoke Howell, Don Maxwell, David Strassman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080904/

Longlegs (2024)

Posted on August 2, 2024August 2, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the 1990’s, where FBI agent Lee Harker has been assigned to work on a case involving a series of murder-suicides. In each of these cases the father in the family has killed everyone else and then himself, but the big mystery is how each case also involves a letter written in Satanic coding, signed by “Longlegs“. If someone or something has influenced the fathers in these families to commit the murders, then how and why? Upon investigating, Lee discovers that in each family there’s been a 9 year old girl born on the 14th of each month. And all the murders occurred within six days before or after the birthday, which makes the dates of the murders form an occult triangle symbol on the calendar. One date is missing, though. And Lee receives a coded birthday card from Longlegs, and he threatens her that revealing the source of the code will end up getting her mother killed.

Longlegs is a horror thriller film written and directed by Osgood Perkins, starring Maika Monroe as FBI agent Lee Harker and Nicolas Cage as Longlegs. It was released in the U.S. on July 12, and have since grossed approx. $74 million worldwide on a budget under $10 million, making it Neon’s highest grossing film so far and the highest grossing horror film of 2024. It seems to be steadily creeping closer to surpass the box office total for last year’s indie horror hit Talk to Me. How it became such a massive success is not only favorable reviews from critics and audience, but a devilishly (no pun intended) clever marketing campaign: the promotional teasers have been effectively chilling and with taglines like “The best serial killer horror film since The Silence of the Lambs“ and “The scariest film of the decade“, then yeah…expectations were set high, and the hype got real. And we all know that too much hype can ruin the experience for some. Of course, Longlegs isn’t the first horror movie to suffer a little from extreme hype, Talk to Me from last year was also so hyped that a certain type of people were ready to release bash-reviews on YouTube in pure spite. And that’s something both of these movies have in common, aside from being really good movies.

With the movie premiering in the U.S. several weeks before we (finally) got the premiere here in Norway (which is August 2nd, but we got to see it on an early screening on July 31st), we couldn’t avoid having new videos and reviews popping up all over the place during those weeks of wait. We did our best to avoid major spoilers prior to watching it, and as always: lowered our expectations a bit. And we both had a great time in what was a fully booked auditorium. That’s actually a first in a very long time, that a screening we went to was full, so that’s something.

Visually, Longlegs look great (I mean the movie, not the actual character who looks like something dredged up from your deepest fever-induced nightmares. Hmmm…I guess that’s actually a compliment in this setting). The cinematography and clever use of color is pure art, and I really liked the use of 4:3 format for the flashback scenes. The use of sound and music adds the perfect layer of ominous vibe to the movie, created by Zilgi which is a pseudonym for Elvis Perkins, the director’s brother. Performances are strong, with Maika Monroe’s portrayal of the FBI agent Lee Harker who appears to be somewhere on the spectrum, but also possibly influenced in other ways which I will not spoil here. But the icing on this Devil’s Food Cake is without a doubt Nicolas Cage as Longlegs. While the titular character has a limited screentime, whenever he’s on screen his uncanny appearance and freakish behavior evokes a perplexing mix of feelings: it’s a blend of goofy, disturbing, and zany. He talks in a Tiny Tim-esque voice, heightening the creep factor a dozen notches.

Cage said that he drew inspiration from his own mother for this role, channeling his late mother’s mental health issues. She suffered from schizophrenia and depression throughout her life, and in an interview Cage stated:

“It was a deeply personal kind of performance for me because I grew up trying to cope with what she was going through. She would talk in terms that were kind of poetry. I didn’t know how else to describe it. I tried to put that in the Longlegs character because he’s really a tragic entity. He’s at the mercy of these voices that are talking to him and getting him to do these things“.

So yeah…all of that gives an even eerier and tragic vibe to the whole character. Speaking of mothers, Osgood Perkins also stated that Longlegs is his most personal film as of late, and an ode to his own mother and the secrets she kept about her husband’s sexuality and how “a mother can lie out of love“. Perkins’s father was Anthony Perkins (yep, the Psycho guy), and his mother’s name was Berry Berenson, who perished in the first plane to hit the World Trade Center. So yeah, a lot of dark and depressing stuff to take inspiration from here, that’s for sure.

The movie also seems to have planted a seed in certain religious and devil-fearing circles. On r/Christianity it seems like it’s about time to pray some more. “I don’t believe you can say hail Satan that many times and not call upon anything. I just haven’t felt right and I’ve been praying a lot since I watched the movie“. I don’t know about you guys…but if this was supposed to be some kind of deterrent from seeing the movie, it did at least have the exact opposite effect on us.

Longlegs, being the great horror movie it is, is probably best viewed if you don’t let your expectations elevate too high prior to watching it. It’s not going to make you faint, have a miscarriage, puke snakes or have the devil hitch a ride back with you from the theater. It’s just a good, slow-burn atmospheric horror movie that really hits the sweet spot on oppressive, nightmarish and nihilistic mood. Having seen and appreciated some of Perkins’s earlier movies is a plus, but not completely necessary as this is the most straightforward horror film I’ve seen from him thus far. But it is a slowburner, it does focus a lot more on atmosphere than narrative (in order to repeat myself from my review of Gretel & Hansel), and it is made in total Oz Perkins-vibe. So if you can appreciate movies like this, go see Longlegs and Hail Satan!

Writer and director: Oz Perkins
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2024
Actors: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby, Lauren Acala, Kiernan Shipka, Maila Hosie, Jason William Day, Lisa Chandler, Ava Kelders
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23468450/

The Ritual (2017)

Posted on July 30, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Five friends – Phil, Dom, Hutch, Luke and Rob – meet in a pub and start discussing plans for a holiday trip together. Rob suggests a hiking trip to Sweden but the others think it sounds horribly boring and would rather travel to someplace where they can get as shitfaced as possible. Later, Rob and Luke goes into a store in order to buy some more alcohol, but ends up getting involved in a robbery. Luke finds a place to hide, but Rob ends up getting killed by the robbers. Then we fast forward to six months later, where the remaining friends have decided to honor Rob’s memory by taking the hiking trip to Sweden after all. After making a memorial of sorts by placing Rob’s picture on top of it, Dom ends up injuring his knee and they decide to cut through the forest instead of following the marked trail in hopes of getting to the destination sooner. Bad choice. The first bad omen they encounter is a gutted elk, hanged on a tree like a morbid christmas decoration. Having to seek shelter in a creepy abandoned cabin due to a rainstorm, they also come upon a sinister-looking effigy depicting a decapitated human torso made of twigs, with antlers for hands. The tension between them is also growing because of Luke’s survivor guilt and the feeling that the others blame him for not having done something to save Rob. As if all of this wasn’t bad enough and causing some pretty frayed nerves, there’s something evil out there in the woods, stalking them…

The Ritual is a supernatural folk horror film from 2017, directed by David Bruckner and written by Joe Barton. It is based on a novel by Adam Nevill from 2011 by the same name. Despite the film’s story happening in Sweden, they decided to film it in Romania due to tax credits and softer labor laws. It was shot on location in the Carpathian Mountains. And of course, there aren’t any Swedish actors here either, and the locals are played by a mix of Danish, English and Romanian actors. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where Netflix acquired the rights for $4.75 million. And with that being said…the screenshots aren’t of the best quality. It’s Netflix. ‘Nuff said.

The movie is for the most part a very character-driven story, where the subdued tension between the four friends comes more to the surface the further they go into the Swedish forest. The horrific findings like the elk pinned to the tree, pagan symbols on the trees and of course the headless effigy in the cabin all makes up for a gradual build of expectation: something’s wrong in the forest, and they’re about to find out what it is soon enough. There’s a sinister atmosphere from the very start, and you know the characters are not in for a holiday of the fun sort. The survivor guilt ripping Luke to pieces is portrayed in an effective way, not to mention how it’s a very clear “elephant in the room” with them all the time. The interesting thing is, despite how they all more or less collectively blame their friend for not having done anything to save Rob during the robbery, they don’t exactly practice what they preach. When they encounter the dangers in the forest, none of the characters show themselves off as a brave hero facing the dangers head first, pretty much proving they most likely wouldn’t have fared any better if they had been in Luke’s situation back then.

Now, over to the monster, which is being kept in the shadows of the forest for most of the time but comes into full display in the final moments of the movie. I have to give thumbs up for the creature design, it’s truly an interesting take on a Jötunn-inspired creature (from Norse mythology). It also works well to keep the monster hidden during the majority of the film, giving it the necessary build-up before the reveal. The earlier scenes where we see the monster’s disemboweled victims in the trees makes us wonder what kind of creature has done this, and how…

I have read several of Adam Nevill’s folk horror books but I haven’t read this once, so I cannot compare the movie to the novel. Overall though, I’d say the movie does portray a lot of the ominous folklore-horror vibes that I’ve gotten from the other novels, and makes for a fun lost-in-the-woods horror flick with a pretty cool monster design.

Director: David Bruckner
Writer: Joe Barton
Country & year: UK/Canada, 2017
Actors: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid, Matthew Needham, Jacob James Beswick, Maria Erwolter, Hilary Reeves, Peter Liddell, Francesca Mula
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5638642/