2010s horror movies – Page 3

Livide (2011)

Posted on October 17, 2023January 4, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The teenage girl Lucie (Chloé Coulloud) lives in a small sleepy seaside town where she has her first day as a care-worker, assisted by Catherine. One of the posts is in an old, overgrown mansion owned by the ghoulish-looking old lady, Jessel (Béatrice Dalle), who rots in her bed while breathing through a ventilator in a coma. We learn that she was once a sadistic ballet instructor, but most importantly, she has a key around her neck that is rumored to open a treasure hidden somewhere in the house. And Lucie is keen to get her hands on the treasure so that she and her boyfriend can look forward to a better future. She also lives at home with her father after her mother committed suicide, and their relationship is tense.

It also happens to be Halloween and what could be more appropriate than spending the night treasure hunting in a big old house? Lucie, along with her boyfriend and another guy, enters the house from a basement window and sneaks into the bedroom to get the key, and… well, it doesn’t go so smooth from here on, as they get trapped inside the house like a survival-horror game after they encounter the “treasure” which isn’t exactly what they expected.

So this is the follow-up to Inside by the french duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. If you expect another rerun with non-stop violence in the purest New French Extremity ways, you might get mildly disappointed. Livide relies more on dim atmosphere surrounded by an old Victorian mansion filled with dust, cobwebs, probably a strong odor of mold, and some obscure history from a dark, twisted fairy tale. And I would recommend wearing shoes with some strong soles as the basement is filled with trash, clutter and whatnot from floor to ceiling, which makes Ed Gein look like a compulsive cleaner.

And with Inside, Livide and The Deep House, it’s fair to say that the duo is at their right element when it comes to haunted house scenarios. While their scripts aren’t always their strongest side, they surely know how to create a creepy, eerie, and sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere. Livide works mostly as a visual treat where the inspirations from Italian horror filmmakers Argento and Bava shines through as it slides further into a deep, vivid gothic nightmare. It’s gloomy, melancholic and poetic with an experimental third act, to say the least, and the ending is always open for interpretation. And yes, there’s gore. And it tastes delicious. Just be a little patient.

Writers and directors: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury
Country & year: France, 2011
Actors: Chloé Coulloud, Félix Moati, Jérémy Kapone, Catherine Jacob, Béatrice Dalle, Chloé Marcq, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Loïc Berthézène, Joël Cudennec
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1727516/

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)

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

Lord Emerson Blackwood is a renowned 19th century wildlife painter, who lives in a huge manor called Blackwood Manor. One day, he bludgeons his housekeeper to death in the basement, and afterwards he removes her teeth. Not only that, he also removes his own teeth…and offers them as some kind of sacrifice to a bunch of mysterious creatures living inside the old fireplace, who has kidnapped his son. The creatures reject his offer, and tell him that they only want the teeth of children. And then, just like his son, he also gets dragged in by the creatures. Fast forward to present day, we meet 8-year old Sally who moves into Blackwood Manor with her father Alex and his girlfriend Kim. They want to restore the old manor for a client, to have it put on the market for sale. Very soon Sally gets to hear and see glimpses of the teeth-craving creatures, who are eager to finally get some of those children’s teeth they want…

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a supernatural horror film from 2010, directed by Troy Nixey as his feature directorial debut, and written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins. It is a remake of the 1973 ABC made-for-TV film of the same name. In the original Sally was the wife of Alex, not his daughter, but this change kind of fits well for the more apparent fantasy-theme this remake has been given. And yes: obviously, it has Guillermo del Toro’s fingerprints all over it.

With the movie’s opening there isn’t much of a mystery plot going on, as we already know that there are some creatures living in the house which craves for human teeth, or specifically those from children. Thus, we already know the mansion is infested with ghoulish tooth fairies. We do find out a little bit more about them as the mansion reveals some of Lord Emerson’s secrets, which includes some of this paintings. Despite a lack of actual mystery, the atmosphere is one of the focal points in the film, blending the gothic mansion interior and exterior with the fantasy aspects and making it spookily fun. As for the monsters themselves, they’re…well, not exactly very impressive. They’re the standard CGI fantasy creature, fitting in a fantasy plot more than a horror one I guess.

Now, the original from 1973 is by many deemed a classic, and it appears to have given lots of kids the willies when they saw the movie sometime in the 70’s, and according to del Toro it also gave him quite a fright when he watched it as a child. A remake is bound to not have the same effect, especially when also changing the perspective from a grown woman to that of a child. It works pretty well, but it does of course change the tone of the story quite much. And since Guillermo del Toro was involved in this, I guess that there were also some people expecting a new Pan’s Labyrinth or something, which it is definitely not. It’s a typical movie that plays primarily on childhood fears, mixing in some bits from the world of mythology and turns it into something sinister, but not as dark as what can be seen in the aforementioned film. Overall, I still think it’s a well made gothic fantasy-horror movie, with enough spooky atmosphere to be enjoyable.

Director: Troy Nixey
Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Matthew Robbins
Country & year: US, 2010
Actors: Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Bailee Madison, Bruce Gleeson, Eddie Ritchard, Garry McDonald, Carolyn Shakespeare-Allen, Jack Thompson, Julia Blake, David Tocci, Lance Drisdale
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1270761/

To Your Last Death (2019)

Posted on September 29, 2023June 13, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Miriam is the only survivor of a twisted game her own father set in motion, which left her siblings killed in horrible ways. She is brought to the hospital, where a supernatural entity, the “Gamemaster”, offers her the opportunity to re-live that event from the beginning, and maybe change the outcome since she would then be armed with the knowledge of what is about to happen. She decides to do so, hoping to save her siblings from their own father’s cruel and twisted plans. And so, once again she’s together with them in their father’s high rise building because he asked them all to come. And he once again reveals that he’s got a brain tumor that is inoperable, and that he’s going to die soon…and then continues to tell them how awful disappointments they all are. Will Miriam be able to stop the murders from happening all over again, or will it be just as bloody as the first time?

To Your Last Death is an animated action horror film from 2019, directed by Jason Axinn and written by Jim Cirile and Tanya C. Klein. It was 114% funded on Indiegogo in 2016, with a total of $52.713 raised before the film went into production. At first, this movie felt a bit strange to watch with the pretty stiff puppet animation together with the realistic cartoon style, somewhat reminiscent to the show Archer, just a bit less polished. But I got pretty quickly used to it. It gives off a comic-book art style, and there’s even some scenes where there are comic book panels, so it was obviously made in order to replicate the graphic novel style. I also liked how they used Ray Wise’s character (the father Cyrus DeKalb) to look exactly like him. The voice casting is also excellent, with several well-known names such as Morena Baccarin and William Shatner. Bill Moseley (who plays Otis in the Rob Zombie movies House of 1000 corpses and The Devil’s Rejects) also has a voice acting role here, and he’s got the voice of one of the villains (no surprise there).

The story is a little bit like Groundhog Day meets Saw, and does it indeed get bloody and vicious at times! The evil businessman’s contraptions to have his own offspring killed is pure Jigsaw-esque in style and depravity, like how one of them needs to fill a bucked of blood by cutting themselves over and over again, or else they will get decapitated. Ooooh, messy! Aside from delivering on some very graphic kill scenes, it also offers enough tension to keep you invested throughout the movie.

To Your Last Death will definitely not be everyone’s cup of tea, and even though I liked the animation style I can understand that some people might be put off by it, at least for the 1 and a half hour duration. Still, it’s a pretty fun watch and quite fast-paced. There’s a lot of violence and gore, so gorehounds should start wagging their tails to this one.

Director: Jason Axinn
Writers: Jim Cirile, Tanya C. Klein
Country & year: US, 2019
Voice actors: Morena Baccarin, William Shatner, Damien C. Haas, Bill Moseley, Ray Wise, Mark Whitten, Benjamin Siemon, Bill Millsap, Florence Hartigan, Dani Lennon, Tom Lommel
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt3748918/

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017)

Posted on August 11, 2023June 13, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In a Mexican city devastated by the Mexican Drug War, Estrella is a young girl who gets her life turned upside down after hearing gunfire outside the school. There’s a panic, and Estrella’s teacher hands her three pieces of chalk, telling her that these will grant her three wishes. After the shooting incident, classes end up being cancelled indefinitely. On her way back home, Estrella sees a dead body in the street. Just a normal day in cartel-world, nothing new here…but the trail of blood from the body leads to her house, and here she discovers that her mother is missing. And it becomes apparent that she will not be returning anytime soon. Getting lonely and hungry, Estrella wishes for her mother to return, and then begins having spooky visions of her mother as a spirit. Soon, the desperate girl meets with other children, a group of orphan boys, who are trying to survive in a increasingly dangerous world.

Tigers Are Not Afraid (the Spanish title of the film is Vuelven, which translates into “They Return”), is a Mexican fantasy horror film from 2017, written and directed by Issa López. And while having some magical moments of wonder, it’s a dark and grim story about the horrors of the Mexican drug cartels, human trafficking and kidnappings. And even though the young girl is granted three wishes, the good old saying “be careful what you wish for” is ever so present here, like in many dark fairytales. Those who have seen Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and his lesser known The Devil’s Backbone, will immediately recognize the influences here, with children trying to cope with mixing fantasy and wonder into their terribly depressing and dangerous environment.

The children in the movie had zero acting experience prior to this film, yet their performances are quite impressive. In order to get as authentic reactions from the child actors as possible, the film was shot in chronological order and the children were never shown a script. When a movie features young children in very dark and dangerous situations, the acting is of major importance, and just like The Innocents (“De Uskyldige”) the child actors bring forth believable performances, and certainly deserve praise for their efforts.

Tigers Are Not Afraid is a touching movie with some realistic horror mixed with fantasy elements. While the film does have ghosts and corpses, the true horror elements lie in the savagery by the people surrounding these children. The ghosts are not the villains, and they’re mainly creepy because they resemble the injustice and brutality they’ve endured, and they want revenge. The supernatural events happening to Estrella also feels like a situation where the interpretation is left to the viewer. Just like in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, one can easily speculate whether the supernatural events really occur or if they’re just the child’s way of coping with what is happening around her. Tigers Are Not Afraid is worth checking out, especially if you like the typical Guillermo-style dark fairytale, where the most horrible things the audience will see is the part that most resemble the reality of the world we live in.

Writer and director: Issa López
Original title: Vuelven
Country & year: Mexico, 2017
Actors: Paola Lara, Juan Ramón López, Nery Arredondo, Hanssel Casillas, Rodrigo Cortes, Ianis Guerrero, Tenoch Huerta
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4823434/

The Shrine (2010)

Posted on August 4, 2023June 13, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Carmen is a journalist, and together with her photographer boyfriend Marcus and a few other people they travel to a Polish village in order to investigate the disappearances of some tourists. Upon arriving in this village, they quickly notice that the villagers appear to be secretive and quite unwelcoming. They also find out that no one in the village is allowed to leave, and everything becomes even more mysterious as they notice a strange area in the forest where the fog appears to be concentrated without ever dissipating. The villagers tries to make them leave, but who ever listens to the strange village people warning you and threatening you of doom and gloom, eh? So naturally they enter the fog, one by one. While walking through the dense fog, Carmen comes across a demon statue with bleeding eyes, and she starts hearing strange whispers. Is this statue part of the village’s secrets, and what exactly happened to the tourists who were reported missing?

The Shrine is a supernatural horror film from 2010, directed by Jon Knautz. The plot in the movie is one you’ve probably seen or heard a few times already: people coming to some place abroad and ends up in unimaginable danger. Now, horror movies about people traveling to some foreign place and finding themselves either trapped, hunted or otherwise caught in some kind of horrific troubles, is something that seems to be a scary premise for many. As for a setting in Europe, the torture-porn flick Hostel is probably the most well known among these. Apparently Europe is a terribly scary and mysterious place, or at least according to some horror filmmakers.

Now, The Shrine is not a torture-porn flick, but a supernatural horror movie which anchors its focus on the mystery it presents to you. There are a few nasty kills, but nothing over the top. The movie’s main strength is the atmosphere and the suspense created from the plot’s mystery of the disappearances, the foggy forest and the creepy demon statue. The scenes with the fog in the forest and the statue were all great elements of heightened suspense and a feeling of mystery and wonder. While the movie is supposed to be set in Poland, the Polish village Alvainia is a fictional. And of course it was not filmed in Poland at all, but in Canada.

The Shrine has some good moments, and ends with a straightforward kind of “twist” at the end which explains things rather than muddle them (which is the case in some twist-oriented movies, unfortunately). The average horror fan will most likely find themselves feeling that they’ve seen much of what happens here before as it does throw in a fair amount of clichés, but it still manages to offer some unexpected twists and turns. It is one of those horror movies that may feel a little bit sluggish and a tad too derivative in its first moments, until it starts picking up the pace and makes you realize this wasn’t that bad after all. Thus, The Shrine comes off as an overall well-crafted supernatural thriller.

Director: Jon Knautz
Writers: Jon Knautz, Brendan Moore, Trevor Matthews
Country & year: Canada, 2010
Actors: Aaron Ashmore, Cindy Sampson, Meghan Heffern, Trevor Matthews, Vieslav Krystyan, Laura de Carteret, Ben Lewis, Julia Debowska, Monica Hewes
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1341710/

Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

Posted on July 11, 2023September 26, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

The year is 1986, and the demonologist Elise Rainier is called to help Lorraine Lambert and her son Josh, who is being hunted by an evil spirit in the form of a black bride. Apparently, Josh has been using his astral projection abilities, and thus gotten the spirit’s attention. Elise says his abilities must be suppressed, and manages to plant altered memories in his brain so he can forget about it all and live a normal life. Now, twenty five years later, Josh and his wife Renai are being questioned after the death of Elise, where Josh is considered the prime suspect of her murder. Renai and their children relocate to Lorraine’s house, and paranormal events continue to happen all around them. A woman in a white dress is giving Dalton nightmares, and she also manifests and attacks Renai. Elise’s former associates, Specs and Tucker, attempts to contact Elise’s spirit and are told that they need to find answers at an abandoned hospital where Lorraine once used to work. Soon, the mystery of the black bride and the woman in the white dress starts to unravel.

Insidious: Chapter 2 is the second installment to Insidious from 2010, and is a direct sequel from the first one. Of course, after the success of the first there was bound to be more movies which would later spawn a franchise. This one is also directed by James Wan, and written by Leigh Whannell. The film was promoted in different ways, the first theatrical trailer for the film was actually screened to a live audience on location at the Linda Vista Community Hospital (where the hospital scenes in the movie were filmed), and a maze attraction called “Insidious: Into the Further” was featured in 2013’s Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Now, as this is a direct sequel to the first movie, compared to the first it’s not quite as effective in its scares and lacks the same tension, but there are some good things to find and we get to know a bit more about one of the villains presented in the first movie. The setting is spooky, and some of the scenes are filled with that good, eerie atmosphere. The backstory of the creepy “black bride” is what mainly fuels the story here, which proves to be an interesting character with both a tragic and horrific background. The movie also focus a bit more on explaining some of the things that happened in the first movie, which makes consecutive viewing mandatory in order to get the best experience.

Aside from spooky settings in creepy houses and an old hospital, we do of course get further glimpses into the netherworld-like area The Further, which is arguably the franchise’s best selling point. While there are loads of depictions of otherworldly dimensions seen in both other movies and TV series, there is just something fascinating about The Further’s somewhat simplistic take on it. It’s surreal and dreamy, vast, dark and for the most part appears to be rather empty. It’s like one of those surreal horror exploration games where the seemingly apparent emptiness still holds both dangerous and fascinating things hidden away in a corner here and there, if you manage to find it.

Overall, Insidious: Chapter 2 works well as a sequel to the successful first film, not on par with the first but still a creepy and decent supernatural horror flick.

Director: James Wan
Writers: Leigh Whannell, James Wan
Country & year: USA, Canada, 2013
Actors: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Barbara Hershey, Andrew Astor, Joseph Bishara, Philip Friedman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2226417/

Prequel:
– Insidious (2010)

Sequels:
– Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
– Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
– Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

Ed Gein: The Musical (2010)

Posted on June 16, 2023September 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

♫ ♪ Somebody Framed Meeeeeee ♪ …

– Shut up and quit singing!

Welcome to amateur hour. Today we take a look at Ed Gein: The Musical, a homemade micro-budget horror comedy made for shits n’giggles that was probably a fun time for all those involved. The rest of the world had to wait for ten whole years to finally witness a singing Ed Gein to be released on DVD.

The film starts straight to the point where Ed Gein enters Mary Hagan’s store and then shoots her with a shotgun. After the sinful act, we hear the first notes of Eddie as he sings (with the voice-over of Will Keizer, who wrote most of the songs).

♫ Oooooooooh no, I Did A Bad Thing … And Now They Are Coming For Meeee … There’s Nowhere To Hide … Ooooh Mama, I Did A Bad Thing ♪ …

Eddie takes the corpse to his shed with the second musical number while he chops up some limbs, titled Lonely Feeling, Lonely Reeling, and the energy is as electric as a Sunday evening at the local Bingo hall.

Ed gets arrested by the sheriff, suspected of the murder of Miss Hagan, and brought into the interrogation room. From here on, Ed tells his life story, filled with nothing but delusional fantasies as we dive into more zero-budget, amateur movie madness and two-notes of honky-tonk song numbers mixed with mainly acoustic guitar and not much of the basic understanding of how a musical works. The songs are completely forgettable and performed in the most bland, lifeless karaoke style with a static camera.

We see a quick flashback scene where a young Ed gets abused by his dad for having a picture of a half-naked lady. After getting whipped with the belt, Ed says: When I’m grown I won’t take this crap. When I’m grown I will be a handsome chap. Yeah, you heard that right. We then cut to the current Ed, dressed like a sleazy car-salesman as he sings… a rap-song. The cringe meter is already at its maximum, but it still manages to get worse. Because we haven’t seen the scene with Ed and his mom yet.

We see Ed in various scenarios. In one scene he’s in some hall with elderly people, he’s in the fakest-looking cemetery ever put on film, he sits in a bar, sings some duets with random chicks and more nonsensical buffoonery follows. We also see him in a sitcom setting where they forgot to add the laugh track. All filmed in blurry and out-of-focus images with the sense of filming in general as a blind, drunk sailor man who’s way past his bedtime. As for the comedy goes we laugh more at the film than with it, which is completely fine by me.

The only legit quality to point out is the eye-catching artwork on the DVD cover. For more Ed Gein, check out Deranged (1974), Ed Gein (2000) and the graphic novel Did You Hear What Ed Gein Done? (2021).

Director: Steve Russell
Writer: Dan Davies
Country & year: USA, 2010
Actors: Dan Davies, Clifford Henry, Laurie Friedman-Fannin, Lucia Stevenson, M.J. Marsh, Cindy Yungwirth, James Fairchild, Barbra Alloy, Edie Amundsen, Charlie Bitter, Jason Buss
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1562295/

The Silent House (2010)

Posted on March 3, 2023June 15, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Laura and her father arrives at a secluded cottage which they are going to repair, as the owner wants to put the house out for sale. Having planned to spend the night inside the house, with its unstable and unsafe upper level and windows that are nailed shut, they soon experience that things do (of course) go wrong. A radio starts playing a sinister melody, and after Laura turns it off, her father goes upstairs to check on an other noise. Laura hears a commotion from upstairs, and shortly afterwards she finds her father’s murdered body downstairs. In a state of grief and fear, she tries to escape from the house but someone has locked all the doors. As she moves around in the dark house, trying to find an exit, more sinister things happen around her…

The Silent House (La Casa Muda) is a Uruguayan horror movie directed by Gustavo Hernández and made with a tiny budget of $6,000. The film is made to look like it was filmed in real time, in one continuous 88 minute take, but the real story is that it was actually shot over four days. Despite not being filmed in one take, the length of the takes are still rather impressive though. The film is based on what is supposed to be real events that took place in 1944 in a village in Uruguay, where two brutally tortured men’s bodies, missing their tongues, were found in an old farmhouse. In that regard, one could consider The Silent House as a typical gimmick-film, with the supposedly “single-take” filming as well as the supposedly “true story” (which there is no actual information about to be found anywhere online, it seems). As for the single-take gimmick, there’s been numerous other films going for the same thing while having in fact been edited to appear that way. Most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope from 1948. Movies that rely heavily on gimmicks are often off to a troublesome start, though, and not surprisingly the movie’s reception was quite varied.

The Silent House is mostly leaning heavily on atmosphere, where inside the house the only light comes from two halogen lamps and some candles. The darkness in the house makes the viewer look for clues as to what might be hiding there, as the protagonist keeps cautiously sneaking around. It’s mostly a psychological thriller, with bits of haunted-house clichés like a haunting melody playing, a “don’t go upstairs” caution, and spooky imagery. Despite there not being much of a plot, it still manages to create a very tense atmosphere but the problem is still the pacing, which makes the film a little dull at times and some scenes dragging on for a little bit too long.

Overall, The Silent House is an atmospheric and different little horror film, albeit a little dull at times and offering a twist in the end which does feel a little confusing and ends up leaving more questions than answers.

There was also an english-language remake made in 2011, called Silent House.

Director: Gustavo Hernández
Writers: Oscar Estévez, Gustavo Hernández, Gustavo Rojo
Original title: La casa muda
Country & year: Uruguay, 2010
Actors: Florencia Colucci, Abel Tripaldi, Gustavo Alonso, María Salazar
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1646973/

The Demon’s Rook (2013)

Posted on June 25, 2022August 1, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

James Sizemore is a man of many traits and with a childhood consisting of several near-death experiences such as drowning, electrocutions, and almost hit by a freight train. And if that wasn’t traumatic enough, his childhood home in Georgia also seemed to be haunted by poltergeist activity. As he was influenced by these experiences he began to draw goblins, demons and whatnot which in later age evolved into producing some really cute Lovecraftian sculpt figures which he sells through his own company Wonder Goblin. He also makes music, has written one comic book, made two horror shorts (Goat Witch and Budfoot) and probably more I’ve forgot to mention. But the most important achievement in this case, is that he’s written, directed and produced one feature-length film, The Demons Rook. A passion project in which he gathered friends and family to a shooting schedule planned for three quick weeks in his local home community in Georgia with a tiny budget of five thousand dollars. In the purest indie-horror fashion they soon found themselves trapped in what is known as the indie horror-purgatory and continued the shooting for over two, grueling long years during the weekends, while questioning their own sanity, preventing the one mental breakdown after another, and promised themselves to never make a movie again. In other words, the normal cycle of independent movie making.

We meet the young boy Roscoe, not far from similar to the director himself, who during the day plays with his friend Eva, and sits up at night and makes drawings of demons. He is constantly visited by the demon Dimwos, a two-horned creature that looks more like something from Lovecraft’s universe. It is unclear why this demon shows up, but we can guess that he has been conjured by the drawings. Dimwos gets hold of the kid and one night lures him into the woods and down a hole that leads to Hell, where he trains him with black magic through manhood. Many, many years later, an grown-up Roscoe (now portrayed by James Sizemore) returns to the world with a long beard, confused and scared because, for some reason, he has accidentally managed to free three evil demons from Hell to Earth. And these demons are nothing to joke about, and makes matters worse by resurrecting the dead into Night of the Living Dead zombies and possesses people into Evil Dead monsters, to create hell on earth. Roscoe seeks out his childhood friend Eva (Ashleigh Jo Sizemore) and uses his trained Jedi powers to prevent a full demon apocalypse.

One quickly realize that director, producer and co-writer James Sizemore has a deep love for the good old video nasty-era horror cinema of the 70s and 80s, and has taken a laundry list of references that really shine through from old horror genre obelisks such as Dario Argento, George A. Romero, Stuart Gordon, Lucio Fulci, Lamberto/Mario Bava, Tom Savini, early Peter Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft and probably more. With impressive gory effects, juicy body-counts, and creative old-school prosthetic make-up, the use of light, colors, flexible camera work, and massive use of a smoke machine to set the thick, retro atmosphere, the film works perfectly as a visual throwback to the good old times. And a budget of approx 70.000 dollars well spent. That being said, The Demon’s Rook suffers from the same as most home-made horror movies, with underdeveloped scripts and pacing issues with scenes that drags on, and a mixed bag of acting from amateur to decent. The actor couple James and Ashleigh both make good efforts with some naive enthusiasm and energy, even though we do not care all that much about them in the end. They got married during the filming, by the way, and are still married today. How cute. A year later after The Demon’s Rook, she got the task to be breast-naked and sacrificed to Satan in her husband’s horror short Goat Witch.

The DVD-release from 2015 seems to be out-of-print, but can be found after a quick search on Amazon Prime (limited by region).

Director: James Sizemore
Writers: James Sizemore, Akom Tidwell
Country & year: USA, 2013
Actors: Ashleigh Jo Sizemore, James Sizemore, John Chatham, Melanie Richardson, Josh Gould, Sade Smith, Dustin Dorough, Lincoln Archibald, William Baker, James Becker, Michael Bremer, Laura Clark
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt2401215/

Sinister (2012)

Posted on June 11, 2022July 4, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Ellison Oswalt is a true crime writer who moves into a new home with his wife and two children. What he has not told his family prior to moving into the house, however, is that an entire family was murdered there by hanging, and his intention is to write a book about this case. This is something he does in the hopes of regaining his lost fame, as his latest works weren’t very popular and he’s desperate for a new success. There was also a little girl who disappeared following the murders, and he hopes to learn more about her fate so he can include this mystery in his novel. Upon exploring the attic of the house, he finds a box with several reels of Super 8 footage, which are simply labeled as “home movies”. Using the projector which was also located in the attic, he discovers that the films are footage of several families being murdered, all of them filmed by an unseen camera operator. Upon investigation these cases he finds similarities that makes him suspect that both the murders in the house he now inhabits, and the ones from the Super 8 footage, are connected in a sinister way, and dates all the way back to the 1960’s…

Sinister is a 2012 horror movie directed by Scott Derrickson (who will have a new movie hitting the theaters soon, The Black Phone). Scott Derrickson had previously shown his competence in the horror field with Hellraiser: Inferno (his debut film) and later The Exorcism of Emily Rose (which was based on the story of Anneliese Michel).

Sinister is for the most part a highly effective and creepy film, with a steadily growing sense of unease without tossing a bunch of jumpscares at you. There are some genuinely hair-raising moments here, led by solid performances, and the opening scene alone sets the tone right away where we witness the Super 8 footage of the family being hanged. This scene was actually all played by stuntmen, and almost went terribly wrong: when the scene was first done, the stunt coordinator botched the preparations for the scene resulting in the actors being legitimately hanged and choked. Yikes! Fortunately they all survived, and naturally the coordinator got sacked. This wasn’t the only potentially harmful scene either: one of the other “footage” films included a family tied to chairs and pulled underwater, and the filmmakers had to be extremely careful so nobody was harmed while the filming of the scene took place. All of these scenes were also filmed on real Super 8 films camera.

Overall, Sinister is a solidly crafted horror film with loads of atmosphere and a really creepy feel, where some parts are actually outright scary. While it does not have any nudity, very little blood and no cursing because they were aiming for a PG-13 release, it still got an R rating just for the content alone. It is now 10 years since its release, and it’s still one of the most decently crafted horror films from this period.

Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Country & year: USA, UK, Canada 2012
Actors: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Thompson, James Ransone, Michael Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley, Rob Riley, Tavis Smiley, Janet Zappala, Victoria Leigh, Cameron Ocasio, Ethan Haberfield
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1922777/