Tag: horror

The Babysitter

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The Babysitter is a rip snorting fuckin great old school horror throwback, I’m excited that money is being spent on projects like this, and stoked further that Netflix is purchasing them. With a premise culled from the depths of the 80’s and a revamped modern setting complete with obligatory pop culture references to assure us that although it’s steeped in nostalgia, we are in fact in the here and now, a recipe that cunningly embraces both sides of the fence, each with grass equally green. Plus it’s a fuckin intense, R rated, batshit crazy bloodbath, with smart writing to back up the carnage. Set on a sunny suburban afternoon, young Cole (Judah Lewis) is a bullied lad with loopy parents and obligatory nerdy nostalgic affinities, as well as a special bond with his sexy, sassy babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving), who is looking out for him while the parental unit takes off on a night away. It’s party fun friendship time with the two of them, who couldn’t get along better, until… Surprise!! Bee and her clique of high school friends are actually a murdering satanist cult with blood on their hands and killing on their minds. From there it’s a deliriously gory free for all as Cole discovers this is the night he becomes a man, and has to defend himself tooth and nail from these demented weirdos, and reconcile Bee’s betrayal, a theme I was shocked they had time to explore amidst the bloody chaos. It’s silly in the vein of the Evil Dead, but polished and succinctly written by way of Scream, and peppered with deliberate pop culture Easter eggs a lá Stranger Things, an irresistible flavour overall. Pouty lipped, well endowed Samara is a true find as Bee, earning both Cole’s admiration, adoration and finally fear with her spunky, scary performance. Her little cult is populated by slightly tweaked archetypes including the token black guy (Andrew Bachelor), the slutty cheerleader (Bella Thorne), the creepy Asian chick (Hana Mae Lee) and most entertainingly the douchebag jock (Robbie Amell has fun with the role and then some). Colourful pastel production design provides a palette for gallons of gushing blood to be spilled via stabbings, shootings, impalings, vehicular decimation and one of the best shotgun to the head sequences in years that’s so sudden it even has Bee remarking “holy shit that was graphic”. I love old horror flicks and I can’t get enough of this throwback trend they’ve been doing, when they do their research and put out solid gore-fests and fright flicks, and this one is a fuckin hoot from front to back.

-Nate Hill

Anaconda

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Anaconda is great stuff, no matter what anyone says. Revered as a B Movie cheese-ball, it holds up far better than anyone remembers, and there’s a lot to love about it. Reminiscent of creature feature stuff like James Cameron’s Piranha 2, Lewis Teague’s Alligator and Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing, it carved out its own nasty little adventure/horror story with neat characters, impressive effects for the snake and a knowing sense of fun. It sets the tone with a suspenseful prologue that sees poor poacher Danny Trejo stalked, attacked and killed by an unseen serpent, before the title card marches gloriously across the screen in true horror form. Then it follows a national geographic film crew led by intrepid Jennifer Lopez, whilst Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Vincent Castellanous, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson and sexy Kari Wuhrur tag along, pretty much for snake bait and for us to place drunken bets on who’s gonna get nabbed by the beast first. Along the way they meet the most engaging character of the film, a whack job big game hunter played to cockeyed perfection by Jon Voight and his greasy ponytail. Sputtering out ominous warnings in a warped, tailored South American accent, willfully misleading their party into danger and staring creepily at anyone in his scope of vision, he’s hilarious and clearly knew the right recipe of branded camp and genuine menace to put into the work. It’s a glorified B Flick for sure, but one that knows its place, showcases a big old fashioned movie monster and whisks the viewer away for some solid gold escapism. Do avoid the sequel though (Hunt For The Blood Orchid), it’s about as interesting as cardboard.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Furnace

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

A haunted Furnace that starts murdering convicts in the cluttered boiler rooms of a maximum security prison. Who thinks this shit up. It’s actually not as inept as it looks both on paper though, and does in fact get its act together for a few earned scares. It doesn’t hurt to have actors like Danny Trejo, Tom Sizemore and Michael Paré around either, who boost the quality. There really isn’t much to it other than a furnace eating people though, which leaves not much expository filler to pad the review. Ja Rule plays the head honcho convict who realizes something is up pretty quick, Sizemore is the violent, corrupt captain of the guard, Trejo is a short lived inmate who shouldn’t have gone looking down that ominous corridor, and Paré is a detective brought in to investigate the deaths. There’s a backstory to the supernatural aspect involving a pervy Warden from the building’s past and his unfortunate granddaughter (you get the picture there). The real magic with this flick has to do with the DVD though, and it’s extensive behind the scenes interviews. There’s all kinds of stuff with the actors, and you get a sense of just how crazy Sizemore can be in real life sometimes by his incoherent ramblings, gloriously unedited. The film itself is run of the mill grindhouse type stuff, done with enough flair, gore and gusto. But get that DVD and watch the extras, they’re unreal. Plus the cover art is straight out of the 70’s man, fuckin love it.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Rough Draft

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

A serial killer whose nasty crimes attract the attention of a journalist, who reaches out and wants to document, understand and write about the sicko. Sounds like prime material for a streamlined big budget exercise, right? Not so much. Rough Draft is a slack jawed, barebones B Flick blessed with the undeserved talents of Arnold ‘Imhotep’ Vosloo, who plays a freaky knife murderer with a self proclaimed love for his victims. He’s terrific, but the film, and his two usually excellent character actor costars Gary Busey and Michael Madsen, just straight up flatline. Busey is a washed up journalist who accidentally witnesses switchblade wielding psycho Vosloo murder a girl, one in a series of targeted brunettes who have been turning up dead across the city. Instead of putting old Gary under the knife, he reaches out to him and wants his story told via the written word, a nervous proposition at best. Madsen is the cool cucumber detective who’s on the case, and so it goes. It’s strictly by the numbers DTV sludge though. Busey spends one scene in drag, which is not an image anyone could forget too soon. Madsen wears a ludicrous English golf hat thing and mumbles listlessly. Only Vosloo rises above the swamp, and it’s a shame the character didn’t get a better script/film to play in, because the guy plays him with expert menace as a lucid, intelligent, grinning monster who wields his switchblade as elegantly as his charisma. This one is buried somewhere deep in the jungles of 1997 straight to VHS purgatory, and may as well stay there to be honest. Also titled Diary Of A Serial Killer on some DVDs, but Rough Draft has more zest and ambiguity.

-Nate Hill

Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

People often say that Jonathan Glazer‘s Under The Skin is one of those films you’ll either love or hate, and while I understand the stark precautionary sentiment, I think there’s more shades of grey than a knee-jerk reaction towards either side of the fence. I loved what the film did with sound, atmosphere, imagery and expectations. I hated how it made me feel overall. Detached. Alienated. Confused. Uneasy. Cornered by otherworldly stimuli. For what it’s worth, that’s most likely the intention behind the whole thing, and I applaud the genius in achieving a goal of exquisite discomfort, but I doubt anyone could blame me when I say that it’s a film I’ll watch once, and only once. Glazer goes for less of a conventional narrative and more of a dread inducing screensaver aesthetic, moving glacially through a series of events that seem to be both cohesive and just out of reach, toying with audience perception for a mood piece that is the cinematic equivalent to a particularly intense bout of disassociation. Scarlett Johannesson is as scary and sexy as one could get, playing some type of alien creature on a quiet, merciless rampage in various areas of Scotland. Seducing, destroying and stockpiling the pilfered essences of several unfortunate dudes who wander into her proverbial spiderweb, she, or rather ‘it’, eventually experiences some kind of inner awakening and undergoes a paradigm shift clearly brought on by her ongoing affiliation with those strange and sneaky creatures called human beings. If I’m being vague, it’s on purpose; there’s no gift wrapped cliff-notes for this baby, it’s something that makes its imprint on you in a language too illusory to impart in words. I’m reminded of other science fiction films like Darren Aronofsky’s Pi or E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten in the sense that most of what we see, hear and feel is not pleasing to the senses at all. Many heady sci-fi films are engineered to elicit positive emotional response from an audience, via a cathartic score, engaging production design and very human stories. Films like this, and the aforementioned, go out of their way to come across as cold, uncomfortable and stranded in a mist of off-putting hysteria. It’s a bold move whenever it happens. In the case of this film, it’s to give us a sense of what it must be like for an alien being to be thrown in with our lot here on earth. From the shrill, rhythmically jagged score by Mica Levi, to Scarlett’s alluring menace, to the murky nocturnal photography to the half mumbled daze of near incoherent dialogue, it’s all there to move us several planes away from ‘normal’, and get under our skin (hey that’s the title). Does it work? One hundred percent, and kudos, as it’s as scarily disorienting as they come. Is it pleasant moviegoing? Miles from it, it’s a beast built to provoke a reaction, and if you don’t like what it bristles up in you, you won’t hastily rewatch it anytime soon. I know I won’t.

-Nate Hill

“CHEESEBURGERS, NO BONES!” : An Interview with Mick Garris by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

Garris1

It took a while to get a hold of Mighty Mick – but I’m glad I had the patience. See Mick Garris is one helluva talented man. His passage through the movies is a veritable plethora of Amazing Stories – apart from the show-of-the-same-name where he achieved career lift off.

Since those early days he has gone on to become a prolific writer, director, producer, author, podcaster – the list goes on. He made me laugh with Critters 2, he was the writer of The Fly 2, which was one of the only times a film has forced me bring up my lunch, and he has conducted wonderful and insightful interviews with fellow filmmakers – some, sadly, that are no longer with us.

Through it all Mick remains the soft-spoken gentleman with a passion for his work and cinema in total. He has had a long successful run of adapting the works of Stephen King for the screen. I have vivid memories of sitting through, night after night, his extraordinary adaption of The Stand. This he beautifully followed up with further adaptions of Bag of Bones and The Shining, in which King adapted his own book, and which Mick credits as one of the best screenplays he’s ever read.

He was instrumental in bringing together the Masters of Horror as he was composing the elements which formed great movies either under his pen, or benefiting from his exquisite direction. Follow this link ( https://www.mickgarrisinterviews.com/  ) to Mick’s site and check out the bona fide feast of delights for cineastes he has on offer. As I said to the man himself, “You have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, and I can’t wait to cut me a slice of whatever you serve up next.”

So, without further ado,  it is my privilege to present to you . . . the one, the only . . . Mick Garris.

David Koepp’s Secret Window

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

David Koepp’s Secret Window is a terrific little psychological chiller, with just the right doses of fright and camp. Based on a Stephen King short, it’s got everything you’d want in a little vignette from the master: secluded wilderness setting, paranoia, whacked out protagonist, cerebral mind games wrapped in a classically meta package, the story being about a writer itself. The problem with the film is that it has a twist, and in this day and age after the loss of cinema’s innocence, everyone and their mother has seen a film with some variation of the revelation that Window has to offer. But this is not the film’s problem, really, because it hails from a simpler time back in the late 90’s, early 00’s, when twists like that were still somewhat new. The Sixth Sense hype had barely died down, the new age of psychological horror hadn’t yet dawned and stuff like this seemed really fresh. This one is terrific on its terms though, and has a certifiably loony central performance from Johnny Depp as Mort Rainey, a depressed nut-job novelist who’s holed himself up in a cabin on a lake to cook up his newest book, but really he’s just there to mope about his wife (Maria Bello) leaving him for the considerably less dreamy Timothy Hutton. His bout of self loathing is interrupted when freaky stranger Shooter (John Turturro) shows up at his door and aggressively accuses him of plagiarism. Turturro plays the guy in a weird Amish getup and with enough menace in his southern drawl to rival his perverse lunatic Jesus from The Big Lebowski. Anywho, after that Depp descends into sketchy paranoia, unsure of what’s real, who’s real, who double-crossed who and who’s trying to get the better of him. Set in rural Maine as per usual, this is classic King and benefits a lot from Depp, who wisely chooses to make his performance fun, engaging and just cartoonish enough where other actors might try to be too realistic or serious. If you watch it these days in the wake of countless other thrillers that have filled the gulf of time between 2004 and now, you might not be all that impressed. Try and retain your sense of wonder in terms of the genre, you may have a blast. I always enjoy this one.

-Nate Hill

Oz Perkin’s February, aka The Blackcoat’s Daughter

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I like Emma Roberts, and really dig the career path she’s chosen for herself so far. Daughter of eccentric, legendary badass Eric Roberts and niece to Hollywood’s darling superstar Julia, she could have easily taken the oft trodden path of teen sensation, appearing only in stuff that appeals to a new generation that’s forgotten much of the odd, freaky stuff of former times. Instead she’s deliberately accepted best, off kilter genre scripts, using an ongoing stint on FX’s American Horror Story as a launching pad for some really interesting projects that duck the mainstream, just like her dad. Oz Perkin’s February is one such outing, a laconic, nightmarish mood piece that plays like a demon possession film without all of the tired hysterics, using pacing, atmosphere and glacially mounting dread to tell its story. Roberts plays a young runaway stranded outside a hospital on one cold night. Picked up by a kindly man (James Remar ditching the villain shtick) and his wife (Lauren Holly, who apparently is still in films after all!), she embarks on a tense road trip towards a county far away. In said county, two forgotten girls (Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton) spend the holiday break at their catholic school. Gradually they start to feel some presence in the building, haunting them, and then shit gets crazy. This is textbook slow burn territory though, and anyone expecting a trove of jump scares need not apply. There are a few well earned moments of terror, but they’re fleeting, and all the more disturbing as a result. There’s a vagueness to the narrative too, with just enough left unexplained to spark some interesting Reddit discussions. A dark, moody flick that rewards those who give full attention with some scary secrets and a smothering atmosphere of danger on the horizon. You’ll find this titled as ‘The Blackcoat’s Daughter’ on demand and iTunes, but that title seems to not mean much except to quite an eerie song used throughout the film.

-Nate Hill

Brian Taylor’s Mom & Dad

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I read an article a while back saying that at the premiere of Brian Taylor’s Mom & Dad, the director attended the screening and prefaced it by saying that his film has “mental problems.” Well… he wasn’t wrong. Taylor is one half of the Neveldine/Taylor genre filmmaking team, a blitzkrieg duo responsible for both of the Crank movies, plus Gamer, and if you’ve seen any of those you’ll have an idea of the way their sense of humour slants towards the bizarre. With this one it kind of trundles headlong into willfully fucked up territory though, and before you know what’s happened, it’s scant 86 minute runtime is up and you’re left there in the dust, feeling somewhat violated. The concept is blunt and visceral: everywhere, all at once, the nurturing instinct in parents is savagely reversed and they immediately start to murder their own children. Only their children, mind you, and with a disturbing lucidity that I couldn’t decide whether to laugh at or get spine chills from. An amped up Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair play your average upper middle class parental unit, and the film mainly focuses on their eventual snap, and a subsequent tooth & nail fight to snuff out their poor son and daughter (Anne Winters and Zackary Arthur). That’s pretty much the film, although for such a seemingly simple concept within a short piece it somehow manages still clearly articulate its narrative amidst the ruckus and even comment on something deeper than it’s 70’s Midnite Movie veneer initially suggests. Cage treats this as the ultimate midlife crisis, and indeed his acting these days is more gonzo than ever. He’s got a mental breakdown midway through the film and before the killer epidemic even breaks out that is so over the top it reaches a kind of feverish harmony, not to mention appearing scarily un-faked on the actor’s part. Though quick and fierce, the film could have still tightened the pace a bit in the opener and extended the super violent, Home Alone-esque second act a smidge, but oh well. Watching Cage and Blair overact to the heavens as they try and kill their own kids with every household item they can grab including a meat tenderizing hammer (ouch) and a Sawzall (“Sawzall… saws…. all…”) hits some blissfully transcendent notes, if you have the twisted mind to stomach it. There’s a scene that will test boundaries though and walks a fine line between crazy and flat out uncalled for (one of my friends walked out of the room in disgust), but hey, that’s the kind of stuff this director is known for, so try and roll with it. Things get really bizarre when Cage’s own parents show up to add to the cluster-fuck, his demonic veteran daddy personified briefly and perfectly by a ferocious Lance Henriksen. Accompanied by a sketchy, warped and nerve-shredding score and some off kilter editing, this will either be your thing or it won’t, there’s just no middle-ground in an arena this fucked up. Good luck.

-Nate Hill

Indie Gems: Kevin Philip’s Super Dark Times

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The title ‘Super Dark Times’ serves as a warning of sorts for the film to follow. It should be wisely taken into consideration, as this is probably the most disturbing film I’ve seen all year. In contrast, it’s also one of the most beautifully made. Bring a comfort blanket or cuddle buddy though, because these aren’t only Dark Times, they’re bleak, grim and tough to absorb without feeling grossly affected after. I like it when films explore themes of both violence and adolescence bourgeoning side by side in small town youth, everyone from Stephen King to David Lynch have been fascinated by these ideas. Violence is an unavoidable step in the learning curve for youngsters and a key element in any individual’s coming of age, no matter what we tell ourselves. First time director Kevin Philips pads those themes well by telling his story in the most realistic, blunt fashion he can, casting kids that genuinely look to be high school age, using sound design and cinematography to create a frighteningly immersive atmosphere and not neutering the stark violence in off-screen gimmicks to soften the blow of a blood-chilling story. Two normal enough high school boys (Charlie Tahan and Owen Campbell, both superbly good) are set on different yet equally dark paths following a brutal accident that scars them both, awakens a dark passenger in one and lays a blanket of dread over their small upstate New York town. That’s all I’ll say in terms of plot, it’s a scary guessing game of dangerous encounters, adolescent discoveries and tragic violence that unfurls like a jet black velvet carpet of doom. Metaphors as colourful as that are just me trying to abstractly impart to you how affecting the visual and auditory mood-scape are, but you’d be better off just watching the thing for yourself. Philips leaves certain areas of the narrative *just* vague enough until one gets the gnawing notion that what is presented to us might not be the full story, a tactic which instills the aftertaste of unease beyond the film’s bloody conclusion. Speaking of conclusions, this has to have the most suspenseful climaxes I’ve seen in a while, a breathless, literally razor sharp confrontation that feels earned and urgent because of how invested I was in the characters up until then. The film opens with violence, proceeds through a violent tale and ends with it as well, but as is often the case with films that care to do so, there’s contrast, a certain vitality to the characters and a hope that lives in lingering shots of a dying sunrise or a girlfriend (Elizabeth Cappuccino) gently comforting one of the protagonists. I read another review that called this ‘a simple story, well told’, which I partly agree with. It goes without saying it’s well told, but there’s a complexity to it, an intuitive force guiding the proceedings that one can feel like an undercurrent, and the moods it stirs are anything but simple. One of the best films this year.

-Nate Hill