Tag: spooky

White Noise

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ll start with the Thomas Edison quite that this film opens with because I just love it:

“Nobody knows whether our personalities pass on to another existence or sphere, but if we can evolve an instrument so delicate to be manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life such an instrument ought to record something.”

I’m not sure what film critics were watching back in 2005 that caused such a knee jerk reaction of overall negativity, but the White Noise I saw was a chillingly effective, moodily atmospheric and very well done horror with a solid lead performance from Michael Keaton and one hell of a central premise. I mean it’s a bit low key, favouring hovering room tone and slow paced suspense over frenzied thrills or jarring shocks but that tends to be what I gravitate towards in horror anyways, so here we are. Keaton plays a Canadian construction CEO in Vancouver whose recently pregnant wife (Chandra West) doesn’t come home one night. A few days pass and her body is found near her crashed car, vaulted over a seawall gorge. As he begins mourning her, a mysterious gentleman (Ian McNeice) approaches him and claims that she has been contacting him via a phenomenon known as EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon in which the spirits of the dead can speak out across the gulf between worlds using electronic equipment, in this case a VHS recording system and a screen full of the titular white noise. Keaton is skeptical at first but it soon becomes clear that this is very real and with the help of another grieving woman (the great Deborah Kara Unger) he sets out to communicate with his wife and discern whatever message she has for him. Problem is, the VHS system is an open receiver and she isn’t the only spirit out there who can hear or talk, which sets the conflict in motion. I won’t say more but it’s a tense, brooding thriller and the Vancouver setting provides that classic rainy day, chilly PNW feel while much of the action is shot through these muted blue grey filters and accompanied by unnerving, otherworldly cues from the score by Claude Foisy. The scenes of communication over the VHS equipment are the film’s strongest attribute and fill the visual auditory realm of the film with a stark, creepy sensory dreamscape of fuzzy movement, shadows around the corner and wailing souls crying out from the abyss. Like I said, I’m really not sure what the issues were with this film from a critical standpoint other than the fact that they play fast and loose with plot a bit, but even then there’s a clear answer and resolute final act, while overall they focus on atmosphere and tone, which is my jam anyways. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Amat Escalante’s The Untamed

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

So Shudder just added a Mexican horror film called The Untamed about an alien that literally has sex with people and you know what it’s actually pretty good. When I say that I don’t mean metaphorically, allegorically or any other vague or illusory way to present the concept, I just quite bluntly mean that a slimy tentacled alien emerges from a crashed meteor and has slimy alien intercourse with any female body that gets close to it. Now as stark and upfront as the premise is presented, it is also subtly used as metaphor for what’s going on in the lives of several troubled individuals in small town Mexico, the extraterrestrial itself viewed as an arbiter for sexual dysfunction, closet homosexuality in a conservative setting, clandestine adultery and other interpersonal shenanigans of the like. Nor does the film present its subject matter as anything close to schlock or exploitative in nature and at times doesn’t even feel like an abject horror film, but rather a tense, eerie, melodramatic tragedy that just happens to have an extended cameo by a sex monster from outer space. The effects on the creature itself are tangible, tactile and terrific, the performances from the human actors all most excellent and elicit sympathy, show complexity and emotional range while being sufficiently creepy when under the sultry influence of the alien’s potent, seductive and very weird pheromone like spell, almost like a cosmic drug trance that is translated excellently into the screen by these artists, none of whom I’ve seen in anything else before. Word of warning with this one though: it’s not a prudish North American studio film and as such doesn’t beat around the bush with explicit sexuality, which is totally normal and fine if it weren’t for the fact that said sexuality includes a multi-tentacled being from space and you see *everything* when this thing is copulating with women, which may be too much for some. It’s not done in a violent, perverse or shameful way and the scenes have a sort of almost bizarre tranquility to them, but it is a *very* disquieting form of intercourse to absorb and experience onscreen and some may be uncomfortable. Very unique and challenging film overall.

-Nate Hill

Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-Di Koko-Da

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Shudder is a great streaming service if you’re looking to get lost off the beaten path within the horror genre and come across some truly weird shit that you otherwise might not have the chance to see. Long lost keystones of 80’s schlock, obscure off kilter creature features and more recently some bizarre foreign arthouse experiments like Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-Di Koko-Da, a terrifyingly surreal plunge into grief, madness, waking nightmares and past trauma that manifests in some dark, fairy tale esque ways. When a vacationing Swedish couple loses their young daughter in an accident that’s.. odd to say the least, her death sets deep rooted trauma in both of them. Sometime after they decide to go on a camping trip to rekindle their marriage and attempt to heal from the loss.. and let’s just say it doesn’t go too well. No sooner have they pitched a tent and are trying to get some sleep, three mysterious and *very* strange individuals emerge out of the forest from nowhere, proceed to torment, harass and eventually murder them. There’s a scary little white suited ringmaster dude, a big giant oaf carrying a dead dog and an unnerving mute girl with hair that would make Lady Gaga cringe. This trio of freaks continues to find and terrorize them in one of those scintillating time loops where they find themselves on the road, in the tent, under attack and murdered again and again and again. Who are they? Why do they keep accosting them? Why do they look like rejects from a Rob Zombie film or a travelling gypsy circus? Well, there’s a reason for that that’s actually a lot simpler and more straightforward than how the material is presented, through this sort of nightmarish prism of music, sound, surreal forest visuals and disorienting stylistic flourishes. The film isn’t going to work for everyone, simply for how bleak, unrelenting and alien the atmosphere is, and how the resolution of this couple’s grief and trauma comes in a fashion that’s anything but easy to process and absorb, much like their issues in question. There’s a specific object in the film, a sort of totemic MacGuffin that holds the key to everything, the identity of these three nocturnal scoundrels, related directly to their daughter and the eerie, ethereal nursery rhyme that hovers in the film’s auditory psycho sphere as a constant reminder and gives the film its inane but inherently menacing gibberish title. A challenging, deeply unsettling yet greatly rewarding piece of tricky arthouse neo-surrealism.

-Nate Hill

McG’s The Babysitter: Killer Queen

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The first Babysitter on Netflix is one of my favourite 80’s nostalgia bath horror flicks out there, so naturally I was curious about the recent sequel, Babysitter: Killer Queen. The first film is a blast of retro pop culture referential bliss, cheerfully gruesome cartoon gore, vividly farcical archetypal characterizations, a beautifully bold colour palette and some punishingly funny dark humour. So how much of that does this sequel bring to the table? Well thankfully a lot, and ends being like… 70% as dope as the first with a ton of rambunctious energy and clever new ideas.. however, it implodes a bit in the third act with some inexplicably off kilter character/plot curveballs that just feel weird, which I’ll get to in a moment. It’s been a year or so since the events of the first films and young Cole (Judah Lewis) is still processing almost being murdered and sacrificed to Satan by his evil babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving) and her mad dog gang of psycho high schoolers. Life goes on and no one seems to believe him until it all happens again, his would be best friend Em (Emily Alyn Lind) turns out to be another devil worshipping bitch who goes nuts on him right as Bee’s followers all rise from the dead for one night’s last chance to finish what they started and dispatch Cole for good. He’s joined by the ‘new girl’ in his class, a spitfire problem kid named Phoebe (Jenna Ortega) and soon enough genuine sparks fly between them. The action is shifted from the pastel suburbia aesthetic and placed on a riverboat and the surrounding Arizona desert/lake atmosphere for a nice change. The gore is fast and furious, the dialogue whip smart and reliably hilarious and the soundtrack packed with joyous 80’s deep cuts of everything from Alannah Myles’ Black Velvet to Tangerine Dream’s Love On A Real Train. It’s a ton of fun, except… well the problem here is Samara Weaving, or a lack of her anyways. Her character is pretty much absent for most of the film, while her exuberant cronies do much of the chasing, terrorizing and wise cracking. When she does eventually show up in the eleventh hour, she seems distracted, listless, even a little pale and not up to the task, like she was somehow forced into this by a contractual obligation and kept her presence as scant as possible. Nowhere to be found is the spunky, sexy, full of charisma and deadly sex appeal we remember her having from the first film. Additionally, they’ve chosen a completely out of left field twist on her character that makes absolutely zero sense when you look at the first film and feels just, so shoehorned in for whatever behind the scenes reasons, most likely spearhead by Weaving’s own ideas about the whole thing. It’s shocking and a bit frustrating and kind of derails the entire franchise, if I’m being honest. Still though, the first two thirds of the film are cracking stuff and on the level of pedigree as the first film, I’m just not sold on the ending, and whoever’s plan it was to go that route with this Bee character.

-Nate Hill

Netflix’s Marianne

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It’s always great to find horror content that is *actually* scary, like ‘scare a desensitized adult with decades of genre nerding out’ scary. France’s Netflix original series Marianne is most definitely scary as fuck, one of the qualities that makes it stand out amidst the multitudinous ranks of horror material streaming out there. What it also has is strong, emotionally rich storytelling, a unique and sometimes disorienting but organic way of presenting its story, characters with depth, compassion and complexity and a kind of meta storyline that feels like a tale within a tale at times, like King’s In The Mouth Of Madness or the like. Emma (Victoire DuBois) is a famous horror novelist whose work has taken her from the sleepy seaside town of Elden to big city Paris for book tours, autograph seminars and overall big-shot writer lifestyle. Her many books tell the ongoing story of nasty pagan witch Marianne, a monstrous force of evil who, it turns out, isn’t just a creation out of Emma’s imagination but is a very real entity from her childhood and that of all her friends back home she’s become so estranged from. This leads her on a journey back to Elden to reconnect with her friends, discover just how real (and how fucking terrifying) Marianne is, what she’s been up to and what can be done to end her reign of unholy terror over the town and everyone in her life. The story starts off jaggedly and it can be tricky to get a sense of (gotta keep up with those snappy subtitles) at first but once she’s settled back into Elden the magic really happens. Emma is a confident, assured and independent woman who has the rug of her cavalier personality yanked from under her when it becomes clear what a force to be reckoned with Marianne is, and Dubois’s performance is one of emotional resilience, startling vulnerability and aching sex appeal. Marianne herself takes several different forms, each more hair raising than the last and is really a fascinating character once the mythology fully unfolds. I won’t beat around the bush: this is one fucking scary ass show, and I *dare* you not to be totally freaked out by the makeup effects (those bulging eyes), shocked by the relentless, very efficient jump scares and just immersed in the overall atmosphere. There’s also a deep emotional core emanating from out of all the horror, as we see Emma’s varying relationships to her many childhood friends, how each bond is tested by time and the evil surrounding them. The town of Elden (actually the port of Doëlen) feels real and mysterious, complete with its own spooky lighthouse, as every small coastal town in a horror film should. The story is one full of mystery, pathos, hurt, horror, super high stakes (Marianne is one ruthless being with absolutely no regard for compassion or mercy) and just… everything about it *works.* Could not recommend this highly enough.

-Nate Hill

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Often horror franchises will set out on one path, hang out with one set of characters for the first couple entries or so and then go back to the drawing board to shift gears completely, placing their action and mythology elsewhere in a different scenario. It gives fresh perspective, new characters and a chance for an atmospheric transference to a new environment, which I think Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth handles terrifically. The nightmarish Rubik’s cube has somehow made its way to a 90’s big city and is purchased by an obnoxious nightclub owning freak-show (Kevin Bernhardt) who uses its otherworldly aura to boost both his club’s atmosphere and his own bizarre sex life. The cube, embedded in a sculptured pillar, has a mind of its own though and soon Pinhead and his merry little gang escape from their stoney prison and wreak all madness and havoc throughout the city, starting with an impossibly bloody free for all at the club. One intrepid reporter (Terry Farrell) knows a good story when she sees one and begins to get embroiled in the Cenobites plan for citywide mayhem, along with her friend (Paula Marshall). Pinhead is fun in this one because it’s not like the first two where he just gets summoned from the cube and is there all ready to go, here he’s been trapped in that stone pillar for quite sometime and has a lot of pent up rambunctious energy and when he gets loose, he *really* unleashes hell. He’s got some… quite interesting homies in this one too, not the same peeps from the first two. There’s one cenobite with CD’s embedded into its head who chucks them around like ninja stars and amputated people’s limbs. Another one has a fancy camera on its face and uses filmmaker lingo as it kills people and as ridiculous as these two might seem initially, one must remember that the cube and the forces within seem to mirror human experience back at us with their shenanigans so it kind of makes sense in a way, plus I greatly appreciated such audacious creativity. Bradley gets to play both Pinhead here and the colonial era British explorer who he used to be for a nice touch of variation and duality. This one was a blast; stunning gore and visual effects, nostalgic 90’s aura, a wicked fun female protagonist and a playful tone that sets it apart from the first two.

-Nate Hill

James Wan’s Dead Silence

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Ventriloquist dummies are creepy no matter what and immediately give horror material an extra boost, however in the case of James Wan’s Dead Silence it’s the ventriloquist herself that ends up being more terrifying, a ghostly presence called Mary Shaw who was once a woman that was barren and instead of having real kids, just made freaky dolls. She’s got a nasty vendetta against the townsfolk of Raven’s Fair, Ontario, relating to an incident from the collective past that has her return time and time again with her dolls to haunt them. Ryan Qwanten is a bit of a soup cracker as the lead, a thirty-something who once escaped the town and is called back by the mysterious forces at Shaw’s command, while the acting slack is picked up by other reliable faces including Bob Gunton, Amber Valletta and Donnie Wahlberg as one sarcastic detective who has no time for this hocus-pocus horseshit until it comes looking for him. Silver screen star Judith Roberts is incredibly effective as Shaw herself, a physically imposing, spectral presence and one hell of a resourceful, spiteful and dangerous otherworldly antagonist. There’s a few scenes where she stalks her prey that verge on that special nirvana of horror territory that actually has your hair standing on end and has you checking the closets later that night. The film is somewhat advertised as an evil doll flick and really that’s just the overall premise, most of the time it’s Shaw herself doing the hauntings, scares and killings and damn does she ever do a great job. Wan directs with sweeping, gothic stylish flair and has a sense of scope and spatial dynamics, Charlie Clouser composes a thunderingly melodic haunted house symphony of a score and the atmosphere hanging over this thing permeates everything. Also, I don’t think any film has ever had the balls to try and pull of a twist ending this… unflinchingly audacious and knowingly hilarious. It’s a bold, bold move but it somehow just works and adds to the charm, eliciting the prestigious slow clap reaction from me. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Indie Gems: Paul Fox’s The Dark Hours

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s home invasion films and then there’s whatever pseudo-psychological cosmic fuckery that transpires in Paul Fox‘s The Dark Hours, and I mean that in the best way possible way, this is a superior Canadian indie shocker that will knock your teeth out with its cunning verbosity, ruthless edge, terrifying villains and spooky atmospherics. Kate Greenhouse is Dr. Samantha Goodman, a veteran psychiatrist with a lot of inmates turned enemies who is spending some time away from her practice at a remote rural cabin with her hubbie (Gordon Currie) and little sis (Iris Graham). Unfortunately a former patient she once used shady malpractice on has followed her out there though, menacing serial rapist/murderer Harlan Pyne (Aiden Devine) with his twitchy, violent teen protege (Dov Tiefenbach) in tow. Harlan is extremely unstable, narcoleptic, sociopathic and out for mind-games, murder and revenge most sweet. Cue a very violent, anxiety inducing close quarters battle as we see the (not so?) good doctor match will, wit and physicality with this deadly psychopath and his monkeying lackey. Or do we? The third act of the film throws some metaphysical, supremely psychologically dense curveballs our way and there’s a reason for this: Samantha suffers from an inoperable brain tumour that causes unreliable rifts in perception, waking visions and all manner of cognitive disruptions. Additionally and for fascinating reasons that I won’t spoil.. Pyne suffers from the same type of ailments. So, we have an unreliable protagonist *and* an unreliable antagonist in an eerie setting with other characters orbiting them as cannon fodder for this brain damaged showdown and the result is nothing short of electrifying. The script is terse, intelligent, full of dark humour and vivid character eccentricity, the horror is shocking, genuinely unpredictable and very disturbing, the performances are raw, lithe and full of life and the overall aesthetic feels like a delicious concoction of Panic Room with splashes of Memento by way of the cabin in the woods motif. The very definition of a hidden gem, and a terrific film. This is streaming nowhere and dvds are apparently hard to find but there’s a decent version on YouTube, anyone can DM/email if they would like the link.

-Nate Hill

Disney’s The Watcher In The Woods

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Disney used to do a lot of cool, creaky old live action films back in the day, awesomely retro SciFi/horror/adventure type stuff, and while not as timeless or important to me as others of its type, The Watcher In The Woods is still an atmospheric enough piece with beautiful UK locations, eerie sound design and a solemn, spooky performance from Bette Davis. She plays the widowed owner of a massive Victorian mansion in the English countryside who rents part of her home out to an American family for reasons that I still can’t quite figure out, but it has something to do with her daughter who died on the grounds under mysterious circumstances decades before. It isn’t long before the eldest daughter (Lynn-Holly Johnson) starts t have strange visions, hears things on the edge of the woods outside the property and dreams of a ghostly blindfolded girl who cries out for help. This all escalates into an impressively supernatural yet still down to earth series of plot revelations anchored by Davis and her intense eyes and well acted by everyone. The youngest daughter is played by Kyle Richards who we remember as Lindsay Wallace in John Carpenter’s Halloween which packs in some further horror pedigree. I’ll admit I wasn’t as won over by this film as I thought I would be, but I think I built it up too much. I have been searching for this one for years, it’s far too expensive to buy on Amazon and Disney plus neglected to add it to their stable for some reason (they’re notorious for that vault-hoarding bullshit) so my only hope was thrifting. I did eventually score a DVD and was beyond excited but it just didn’t grab me like some films of its kind do. Terrifically eerie sound design and atmosphere for days, but the story felt like it could have been tighter, more focused and amped up.

-Nate Hill

Wolfen

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Many werewolf films take place in the woods, mountains or various other rugged and elemental vistas that are inherently threatening and suit the mythos. But what about the urban jungle? How many werewolf films can you think of that place their action in a big city? Wolfen is one that does this and as such stands out in the genre for being a moody, eerie inner city horror about a gruff, unfriendly NYC police detective (Albert Finney) chasing down mysterious murderous hoodlums who he soon realizes are some kind of lycanthropic shapeshifters straight out of a Native legend. This leads him on a hushed yet bloody and quite atmospheric hunt through some of New York’s shadiest areas, made all the more spooky by the presence of these ferocious and quite stealthy cryptid hybrids. He’s helped and hindered by many in one eclectic cast that includes Diane Venora, James Tolkan, Rino Thunder, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines as a slick streetwise colleague, a very drunk and very brief Tom Waits and Tom Noonan as an ill fated ‘expert.’ This isn’t a very loud, snazzy or schlocky horror flick and in fact if memory serves it’s more of a mood piece type thing than any sort of thriller or shocker. Finney is sombre, muted, hard to read and even vaguely menacing, while the cast around him are sly, eccentric and always seem like they know more than they’re letting on. The werewolf attacks are hazy, dreamlike and terrifying in an otherworldly sort of way while still retaining enough gore and gristle, the special effects for the creatures themselves wonderful and the use of real wolves (or dogs, perhaps) adds to the earthen, folky aura that collides fascinatingly with this urban aesthetic. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this (a rewatch is no doubt imminent) and I can’t recall everything except that it’s one strikingly distinctive, unique and very immersive big city horror cop flick amalgamation that is well worth checking out.

-Nate Hill