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Now, on to the movies!

Rating: *** (3 out of 5)
Year: 1994

Review: Director Kenneth Branaough brings his Shakespearean flair to Mary Shelley’s classic tale. Everything about this movie is over the top. A simple kite-flying outing is set to the backdrop of some majestic Swiss Alps. The house that is one the main locations of the movie is the epitome of opulence. The acting is hammy and grandiose, and shots that call for blood have extra buckets on the ready. I think that Branough’s stage approach to the movie was one of those rare things that’s theoretically bad but works well in practice. The story is a bit stale and tried, but the gluttonous approach keeps the movie watch-able. A good way to start off the month.

Rating: **** (4 out of 5)
Year: 1989

Review: Another director of note starts off our second movie of the month: Robert Englund (aka Freddy Kreuger). I really wish that I had watched this the previous night; just what I was in the mood for! Its 1988 release date gives it that grainy nostalgic feeling with which movies from other decades simply can’t compare. The satanic powers of the horro-hotline are never really explained, but I think it was better that way. The kid who is the ostensible protagonist is a borderline sex-offender who would have been a trench coat mafia member in the 90s. The fact that he’s the one we’re routing for makes for an entirely disturbing viewing experience.

a tumescent Nipples

Rating: * (generously, 1 out of 5)
Year: 2006

Review: To answer the titular question: no (unless you’re talking about the prospect of a forced second viewing). With each word that angrily dribbles out of my fingers, the portion of my life wasted on this movie painfully increases. As a derivative Saw clone with the production budget that street-sweepers would scoff at, this piece of rubbish manages to fail on every measurable facet of movie making. Piss-poor acting, laughable writing, and back-yard sets moor this junker to the dock permanently. If the B storyline of the cop were a football, then it got fumbled early on and was intercepted and returned for a touchdown in the closing minutes.

Rating: ***** (5 out of 5)
Year: 2007

Review: Any film that insinuates a sexual relationship between a megalomaniac and an uber-sheep has to be good. And it’s likely to make you laugh… for one reason or another. Black sheep is one of the recent flock of horror movies for horror fans. Although it can be supercilious at times, director Jonathon King sells the goofy moments by going all out on plot and gore and effects. Full motion genetic monstrosities, a bitable penis, and an homage to the transformation scene from American Werewolf in Paris are all pulled off hitchlessly by WETA workshops (the same people who worked on Lord of the Rings and Revenge of the Sith). The pastoral New Zealand landscapes put a tried and true genre piece in a beautiful and new environment. And while the idea of granting innocuous creatures with the lust and capacity for brutal evil is not new, the finesse and skill with which it is executed is. I doubt I’ll watch another movie this good this year.

Rating: ***.5 ( 3 and a half out of 5)
Year: 1980

Review: Creepy. Weird. Bizarre. The movie opens on this horrifying milieu of pre-teen, incestuous voyeurism and and bondage. As any young lady with a head on her shoulders would do, the little daughter stabs daddy to death. It’s the kind of unsettling thing that makes the viewer think, “Jesus Christ! Where is this going next?” It’s a good thing too, because the next half hour is slow enough to be just boring without that added edgyness. Keep your guard up though! You’ll have to navigate through a HEAVILY EMPHASIZED mirrors theme, a killer glass slippers, a haunted eye-patch, and an exorcism. Good watch – gritty and nostalgic.

Rating: “Phtbtbtbt!”
Year: 1994

Plot: Some random girl (Annie) has dreams and visions. A paper doll psychiatrist hypnotizes her with his inanity and she relives some new murders and the majority of the original film.

Review: You know the saying ‘you’re not even a has-been, you’re a never was!’? Well, this is a not even ‘straight-to-video’, but a ‘never-even-went-to-video’. Video tape yourself watching Boogeyman 1 and, apparently, you can make it in Hollywood… I write this as I’m watching it. That’s how uninterested I am. Most bad movies are at least good for a laugh, but sitting through this just makes me angry. It’s like forcing myself to watch the end of a game where my Bucs are down 49-0 at the end of the third quarter. An underestimation of the percentage of this film that is comprised of stock footage of the original “Boogeyman” would be 50. Much of it with either a play by play of the pictures on the screen or simply crappy music overlays. Another 30% of the film is a single 2 minute sequence played repeatedly and in slow motion. Some scenes are inexplicably in sepia-tone. Quizzical jump-cuts, inaudible conversation, and voiceovers abound. Seriously, this is quite possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Rating: ****.5 ( 4 and a half out of 5)
Year: 1982

Plot: Daddy is a premiere real estate salesmen for Cuesta Verde development; so good, in fact, that he and his family get to live in one of the units. Problem is, when the community was built, the devs didn’t think it necessary to respect the dead people in the cemetery by not building houses on top of them. The ghoulies are pissed, and are salivating at the opportunity to take out their hostilities on the home’s current residents.

Review: Do you remember the good ol’ days when mom and dad smoked pot before going to bed, t.v. stations played the national anthem at the end of the day’s broadcast, and Stephen Speilburg had skill and integrity? Seems like a long time ago. Speilburg and director Tobe Hooper manage to take this 15 cent plot line and turn it into one of the most dynamic, intriguing, and terrifying horror flicks of all time. The completeness of the family’s backstory and the genuine nature of their interactions bring you in close to the action, giving you reason to care whether or not they are pulled into a hell dimension. With ahead-of-its-time special effects and a really creepy ghost hunter, you’ll find yourself holding your breath time and again. Craig T. Nelson also brings some acting chops that he must have left on the set before going on to star in “Coach”.

Rating: ** ( 2 out of 5)
Year: 1979

Plot: A long haired kid who thinks that he’s cooler than he really is needs to convince his near retarded brother that the local mortuary is home to a bad “tall man” who can weave the fabric of reality into a hell dimension of his own making. He succeeds. Their plan? Go in there with shotguns.

Synopsis: There are a few things that make this film watchable. They spent money on the mortuary set, and it shows through in its creepiness. Some of the special effects and sound design show ingenuity. And that’s about it. Since Don Corcarelli wrote, produced, and directed this, he didn’t have a voice of sanity around to scream, “HOW ABOUT A MODICUM OF BELIEVABILITY!?” The script barely qualifies as human speech. The decisions made by the main characters are simply unintelligible. There are no ‘rules’ by which the bad guy operates, and there are plot holes big enough to drive an ice-cream truck through. Having said all that, the movie is worth a watch. The badness of the movie borders on cute, and will certainly evoke an incredulous chuckle or two.

Rating: ***.5 ( 3 and a half out of 5)
Year: 1980

Plot: Icabod Crane comes to the teensy, snowy town of Sleepy Hollow to try out the job of schoolmaster. He discovers that the last 3 or 4 schoolmasters had all ‘gone strange’, but this fact doesn’t sway his empiricist’s attitude towards the town’s odd goings-on. He fancies Katrina Van Tassel, but Brom Bones is going to do everything in his power to prevent their union.

Review: This low-budget, made-for-tv version far surpasses Burton’s blockbuster. Jeff Goldblum is perfectly cast as the gangly, eccentric Icabod. Dick Butkus hams it up as the villain; it’s bad, but works well for the part. Despite a virtually non-existent budget, the writing is decent, some scenes are rather spooky, and the viewer is treated to fuller, more complex version of the story than he or she might be accustomed to.

Rating: **** ( 4 out of 5)
Year: 2006

Plot: A guy and his sister are vacationing in Brazil when the tour bus driver sends his charge over the side of a cliff in the middle of nowhere. All the occupants escape, and the siblings partner up with a handful of other tourists and decide to pass the time until the next bus’ arrival at a picturesque beach bar. That night, they are drugged, and through an increasingly creepy series of events end up imprisoned at a black market organ farm.

Review: A masterfully crafted blend of “Hostel” and “The Cave”. The bodies and beaches of Brazil serve as delectable eye candy for the first act of the movie. Tension in the second act plays on our fears of isolation and xenophobia. The third act is a combination of claustrophobic cave diving and heart pounding chase sequences where the chasers are intent on harvesting the chasee’s most precious possessions: their organs! The previews make this movie seem like another of the recent crop of torture/exploitation films, but the film is executed with a reserved and careful hand. The violence is, for the most part, necessary to the plot and stays shy of the negatively connotative ‘gratuitous’.

Rating: * ( 1 out of 5)
Year: 1981

Plot: It’s a new take on the traditional werewolf mythology… Indians and wolves enjoyed a symbiotic utopia of tens of thousands of years, and then the white man came and started killing everything in sight. Some of the survivors of the genocide became a species of uber wolf (Wolfen) that inhabit American cities and thins the pack of human undesirables. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that laconic detective and his hip-hop sidekick (played by Edward James Olmos).

Review: An interesting idea that goes nowhere. For the first five minutes or so, I thought that I was in for an eerie, carefully executed thriller. I was wrong. The ‘killer’s eye view’ effect is simply regular film stock presented in negatives. It’s overused and quickly becomes annoying. Painstakingly and painfully slow pacing drags the movie to a crawl from the beginning. The cop’s relationship with the police department is nonsensical at best… as is his relationship with reality.

Rating: ****.5 ( 4 and a half out of 5)
Year: 2006

Plot: A little girl’s somnambulistic adventures make mom (Radha Mitchell) fearful and frantic. She decides to take her daughter to the town she mentions while in her trances: Silent Hill. They do so against the advice of the locals, the commands of the police, and without the husband’s knowledge. Mom and daughter are separated upon arrival, and the rest of the movie is about her search to find her child. Is Rose (the mother) experiencing some sort of psychotic episode, or does the town of Silent Hill possess a demonic power to twists the nature of reality which it uses to force new-comers to hear it’s terrible tale? Here’s a hint, it’s the latter.

Review: Probably the best movie to come from a video game. The set design, color schemes, monster effects, pacing, sound design, and religious overtones combine for a permeating sense of creepy apprehension. The movie itself develops in much the same way that a video game would, with tasks that enable the pursuit of more advanced goals, the progressive release of background exposition, and even a cut sequence towards the end that feels very much like an end-of-the-game reward video. The movie makes use of a clever mechanism that allows the town to transition every 15 minutes or so between a simply creepy, off-putting ghost town and an out-and-out hell dimension. The protagonist’s journeys into the depths of that hell build to a panting crescendo that release the viewer at just the right moment. This is a movie I watch year after year.

Rating: ***.5 ( 3 and a half out of 5)
Year: 2007

Plot: A couple’s failing marriage is punctuated by car failure. They check into a skeezy little local motel where they are the solitary residents. The husband David (played by Luke Wilson) tries to pass the time by popping in some old VHS tapes only to discover that they are home-made snuff films… and they were taped in the same room that they are currently nervously staying! Will the prospect of vicious murder help the couple put aside their differences and stymie the hotel’s snuff producer’s plans for them? Will they make it out alive?

Review: Director Nirod Antal does a superb job of creeping me out without actually showing me all that much. The anxiety starts in early and builds upon itself exponentially. My heart caught in my throat 15 minutes in, and I couldn’t choke it back down until the movie’s final sequence. The premise is believable, and the characters are fleshed out with reality. Here’s a good example of how to scare people without any appeal to the supernatural.

Rating: *** ( 3 out of 5)
Year: 1992

Plot: From acclaimed horror Guru Clive Barker comes a modern twist on the urban legend genre. Set in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, he brings you the tale of a well-to-do bouncy blond whose thesis project takes her to the belly of the twetieth century beast. Perhaps she can escape the ghetto with a mere beating, but how will she fare against a supernatural, baritone negro with a hook for a hand and a belly full of bees?

Review: Candyman was released right on the heels of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots. The country’s racial tensions had never been higher, and this movie capitalizes on that anxiety without crossing the line into racism. One of the devices that works best in this movie is Candyman’s ability to make it appear as if his victims were actually killed by the woman whom he is stalking. Barker’s story writing succeeds in part because it’s just so damn weird. The movie goes in directions that the viewer really doesn’t expect. Perhaps it goes too far towards the end, but the flick’s flat-out weirdness increases the suspense. You think to yourself, “What’s this movie going to do to me next?”

Rating: ****.5 ( 4 and a half out of 5)
Year: 1997

Plot: The Village People and a mentally retarded man awaken to find themselves in an odd room that takes the shape of a cube. There are doors in all 6 surfaces that lead to other rooms that are exactly alike, with the exception of the ambient light color and the occasional homicidal booby trap. They have had all their possessions stripped and have been put into jumpsuits. They have no idea why or how they got there, or what the hell they are supposed to be doing. They laugh, they cry. They get each other killed and occasionally try to rape each other. Good times all around.

Review: The acting is terrible. The script is even worse. How then, can I justify 4.5 stars? Because the idea is f’ing brilliant. With the combination of no-name actors, simple technical effects, and a set that pretty much consisted of one room, the producers were able to make an innovative and eminently watchable movie for a very small amount of money. They did obviously spend some cash on the cgi death sequences, and they were worth every penny – the opening sequence plays like a Tool music video. It’s hard not to get creeped out while watching this… it preys on so many common fears: claustrophobia, xenophobia, confusion, and helplessness. And plus, it has lots of fun math-y-ish themes, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Munchy Suggestion: Ham and Cheese cubes with some Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Mustard… No. 7 mustard… get it?

Rating: ***
Year: 1989

Plot: If you’re ever been to WalMart, then you are fully aware of the possibility of a hideously horrible hairy mutant managing to get it on with someone and create some brood. And, of course, a hybrid child of a fly and a human would be a super-intelligent, exponentially aging 80s star. Enter Eric Stoltz. He’ll invent new stuff. He’ll woo pretty girls. He’ll mutate just like his dad and kill bunches of folk.

Review: My girlfriend gave lent me this movie with the proviso, “this is BY FAR the worst movie I’ve ever seen!”. Oh boy, is she in for some pain during the month of October… I actually liked this one quite a bit! One of the toughest things for a movie to do (especially a horror movie) is to create a unique world, and Fly II does this quite well. While you could construct something extremely similar to this iteration without ever having seen it, the director and producer do a pretty damn good job of going just far enough past the expected to be unique. The first movie was primarily known as a special effects flick, and they do a great job of carrying the torch. Wait it out, and you’ll be treated to plenty of slimy, bloody, gory indulgence in the third act. Stoltz is really the perfect pick for Goldblum 2.0… they seem to share the same quality… some sort of narcotized condescending gallantry. ‘Course, I’m biased to 80s films, so you may think this one totally sucks.

Rating: **.5 (2 and a half out of five)
Year: 1967

Plot: A moribund professor takes his bumbling assistant to the frozen reaches of Transylvania in an effort to confirm some of his controversial ideas about humanoid bloodsuckers. Turns out he’s right about all of them! ‘Cept the bat thing. They don’t turn into bats. Anyway, they arrive at a claustrophobic tavern where vampirific stuff happens. They follow one of the rascals to an old gothic castle. There they meet the count, his hunchbacked servant, and his bisexual son. The assistant has the hots for the innkeeper’s daughter, who also turns up at the castle. Professor and assistant attempt a rescue of the cute red-head, and pull it off much like Scooby Doo and the gang woulda.

Review: Rosemary’s Baby is one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, so I was very excited to see Roman Polanski’s stab at a Dracula movie. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the intent for this flick – it was marketed as a slapstick farce in the U.S.. So, it wasn’t very scary… but it wasn’t really funny either. Perhaps it’s just all the reminders about his pedophilia in the news lately, but I had a chill up my spine throughout most of the film. The sets are completely believable. Among them is one of the most genuine spooky old castles you’ll ever see. Although many elements of the Bram Stoker story show up here, Polanski’s version is different enough to be original, and it’s hard to tell just where the scene is going to take you. Overall, this is just a luke-warm rendition of a vampire movie, but certainly different than the rest, and definitely worth watching.

Rating: ***.5 (3 and a half out of five)
Year: 1991

Plot: A young boy from the ghetto named Fool gets dragged along to a burglary by his mom’s boyfriend (Ving Rhames). He’s heard that there’s gold there! The house is very well guarded by pit bulls and crazy inbred freaks. The burglars quickly die and Fool is left to fend for himself and try to escape. He runs into a young captive girl (Rayanne from My So-Called Life) and decides to try to get her out too. Apparently, being caught by the homeowners and held captive is a pretty common occurrence, cause there are about 20 people who live in the basement, and it looks like they’ve been there a long time. Can they all find a way to work together? I’d imagine so… otherwise, they probably wouldn’t have named the movie after them.

Review: You really can’t go wrong watching a Wes Craven horror movie. He has a sixth sense on how to creep you out. The idea isn’t all that original… it’s pretty much Texas Chainsaw Massacre set in the inner city with a kid as the hero, but it is executed very well. The homeowners are creepy as hell, and they do a good job of implying horrific acts and pasts without going through the painful experience of showing them to us.

Rating: ** (2 out of five)
Year: 1981

Plot: Campers try to pull a prank on a groundskeeper. Prank goes WHOOSH with flames. Burning and horribly painful permanent disfigurement follows. The dude is understandably pissed, so he returns to the camp a few years later and joyfully slaughters everyone in sight with garden shears. That should even things up.

Review: Get ready for a classic 80’s exploitation film! Yes that’s right kids, that means blood and guts, hammy acting, T & A (& P), and a complete lack of directorial imagination! What the death scenes lack in creativity they make up for with gratuity and often-ness. And then of course there’s all the camp sex – these kids make Alyson Hannigan’s Band Camp seem downright prudish… I’m still trying to figure out if “the burning” refers to the fires that take place at camp, or the sensation during urination that inevitably follows summers like those. When I was growing up, we came back from camp with a couple homemade candles and our throats and hymens in tact… come to think of it, their way might have been better.

Rating: ****.5 (4.5 out of five)
Year: 1967

Plot: Mission: stick a bunch of heroin in a doll in Canada and smuggle it into the states. Outcome: doll is given to stranger in airport, and when you get to the states you have difficulty retrieving it… and when I say difficulty I mean that you are murdered. Murderer’s new mission: try to finesse the blind girlfriend of the guy who has the doll into giving it to you willingly. Keep yourself untraceable by conning the Keystone Cops into doing some softshoe for you, and keeping the whole murder thing on the hush-hush. Murderer’s outcome: success on many fronts; marked lack of success on others.

Review: I’ve never been a fan of old movies. In fact, I’d never even seen a movie starring Katherine Hepburn, but the g/f wanted to alleviate such a deficiency by showing me this film. I now realize what all the hubbub’s about. There’s only about a teaspoon’s worth of blood. No aliens, no demonic children, and no naked, screaming sorority girls. And yet, somehow, the movie provides eminently compelling gripping suspense. Remember how much you loved old NES or Genesis video games? Have you ever noticed how the newer games, while 1000 times prettier, simply don’t have the same draw as the old ones you fell in love with? Well, one could argue that this phenomenon is due to the fact that the old stuff relied completely on substance. The same argument can be made here. There was no Weta Workshop back then, so the scares had to be genuine. They had to come from real characters and eerily plausible plot-lines. It is obvious that the writers have attended painstakingly to every detail. The plot and dialogue are masterfully crafted. While this movie might fall more into the suspense category than straight-up horror, it packs more creeps than a childless, solo, mustached man in a raincoat at a little league game.

Rating: *.5 (1.5 out of five)
Year: 2012

Plot: Guy finally works up nerve to ask pretty office girl out after Xmas work party. He offers to give her a ride home and douchy “friend” insists on getting a ride home too so that he can sit in the back seat and cock-block for no reason. In his drunken state, he insists on going to a cash-only diner, which requires a stop at one of those 24-hour ATM kiosks. When they get there, a stoic parka enthusiast stands around outside and freaks them out. Some people die. They’re in there for a long time. The parka guy and the ATM prisoners take turns playing “who can do the thing that makes the least amount of sense?!” until there are credits.

Review: Meh. Not terribly good on any front, but not bad enough to be enjoyably bad. Since these were a bunch of C-list actors, I guess the acting was better than expected. Physics in the movie were deplorable. A trip line strung across a 100 foot parking lot that doesn’t budge when hit full force? Is it made of carbon nano-tubes tied between two 747s trying to take off in opposite directions? One of those little pen chains that you break while picking up off a table used as a murder weapon? Is the booth built like an underwater observatory? Couldn’t get that door open an inch, eh? And, my god, the opportunities they had to escape! If Dexter had come and wrapped the parka guy in plastic sheeting and 3 rolls of duct tape, these fools would have been all like “No, don’t go out there! A sharp meteor might graze his cocoon and release him!” Don’t waste your time on this one.

Rating: ***.5 (3.5 out of five)
Year: 2012

Plot: Two allied forces buddies go on a secret mission to a small island occupied by the germans. Their initial task is to simply sabotage an artillery bunker, but when they hear the tortured moans of some woman, the siren song takes them into the bowels of the installation. Inside they find lots of death. And a succubus.

Review: The tone and production design of the film make for a desolate, intimate, and unique experience. The small number of ctors and sets give the movie the feel that it started as a play. I imagine that the movie’s shooting location (New Zealand) forced the interesting decisions to cast no germans or Americans in a WWII film. The plot is strong, as are the suspense and effects. Unfortunately, the best actor in the film is quickly eliminated from it. For me the movie peaked early (when the soldiers first decide to enter the bunker). That being said, it’s definitely worth watching to the end because you’ll spend most of your time having no fucking idea what’s going to happen next. This is a rarity in the genre.

Rating: ***.5 (three and a half out of five)
Year: 1992

Plot: Poor Jobe. He’s used to be a happy simpleton spending his days mowing lawns and his nights being abused by priests. He wasn’t happy, but he was dumb enough not to realize that he wasn’t happy, so he was. Then the brainy neighbor, made entirely of chest hair and suave, had to come and muck things up for him. The neighbor makes him play virtual reality games that make him as smart as a smart monkey, and then way smarter. Jobe realizes how shitty his life is at about the same time that he gets the power to set people on fire with his mind. This turns out to be a bad combination for the meanies in his life.

Review: This is Flowers for Algernon meets Johnny Mnemonic, but more ridiculous. I do have to admit that I gave it at least a full star just because I love the feel of movies made in this era. I also gave it some leeway for the originality and weirdness of the movie, but I have a lot of complaints. The business that Dr. Angelo worked for was not believable, nor were his ‘experiments’. The 3D sequences showing Jobe getting smarter actually made me dumber for watching them. Fahey also made the mistake in the beginning of the movie that goes directly against the sage advise of Robert Downy Jr. to ‘never go full retard’. All that being said, the characters themselves and interactions between them felt pretty genuine, and the special effects were pretty damn good for their time. Most importantly, it was fun to watch.

Rating: **.5 (two and a half out of five)
Year: 1920

Plot: In super old movies, it can be tough to follow a plot, but here’s what I was able to follow: A turn of the century town in Germany has the typical goings-on. Guys are mack’n on ladies – carnival comes to town, etc. One of the acts at the carnival is this creepy looking old guy who has a sleepwalker in a coffin. When the sleepwalker wakes up briefly, he can tell the future. It also seems like his boss (Caligari) can make him run around at night and kill people. Not clear why Caligari wants to kill people, but having a zombie commando is a good way to get rid of people for investigating you for sending the zombie commando to kill people. The sleepwalker dies after trying to steal a lady, leaving his boss to go back to his day job as overseer of the local mental institution. The cops keep on his heels though and determine that he’s seeking come ancient knowledge about somnambulism. Eventually their investigation spoils the ending of Shutter Island.

Review: A lot of the same things can be said for this movie as could be said about many other horror movies from the era. It was groundbreaking – years ahead of its time – laying the foundation for most of the movies we watch today. And its kinda boring. While I wouldn’t want to turn off the lights and watch this by myself on Halloween night, its great to watch with friends as its silent nature makes for good MST3K fodder. What really stands out in the film is the set design (apparently the right angle wasn’t discovered in Germany until 1921). The visage of Dr. Caligari is also truly disturbing. The movie is weird enough to keep you guessing the whole time.

Munchy Suggestion: Beet chips.

Rating: ** (two out of five)
Year: 2010

Plot: There’s a killer on the loose. He (or she) starts out very small, just killing old beer bottles and hapless rabbits, but then his thirst for mayhem vulcanizes. Spoiler Alert – the killer is a tire. The killings and stalkings are increasingly interrupted by demolition of the 4th wall by the director and the audience. This appears to anger the tire more than being run over or passing by the town’s tire fire. The film climaxes with an the unveiling of THE TRICYCLE OF ABSURDITY.

Review: Why should you watch this movie? No reason. Well, no great ones anyway. In some ways, the movie is incredibly unique, but in most ways, just incredibly awful. You can see the path the director is trying to tread, and he actually gets close to really turning the whole genre on its axel by challenging so many tropes, but the execution leaves the viewer feeling deflated. Exposition scenes can’t get enough traction and drag on far too long, you’re hit too hard over the head with justification for what’s happening, and the script/acting are very flat. The star of the movie is certainly (the tire) as the effects team does a fantastic job of anthropomorphizing the inert hunk of rubber. All this being said, the movie was worth watching simply for the originality of it, and I’d certainly prefer spending a Sunday afternoon watching it than a NASCAR race.

Rating: ***** (five out of five)
Year: 2014

Plot: Somewhat appealing and somewhat off-putting widow can barely put up with her fatherless son. While the kid *can* be cute, he spends most of his adolescent days creating weapons of mass destruction to fight boogeymen. While it probably started off as cute-noying, after reading a surprisingly terrifying children’s book at bedtime, his out lashings become downright lethal. As disturbing vignettes in the book start to manifest themselves in real life, you must ask yourself: is this mother suffering the effects of prolonged sleep withdrawal and shitty-son-ishness, or is this shit really happening?

Review: The initial setup of the movie is very believable. The mother is so incredibly sympathetic. It is hard to imagine the burden of not only moving on after your husband’s death, but when you throw in the fact that you’re responsible for keeping his disturbed spawn alive… my gods the stress! The kid is actually pretty sympathetic as well… you can’t not be fucked up when your dad died the day you were born, can you? He understandably gets a lo-o-o-ot of slack for his behaviors, which keep on spiraling from weird to super-creepy, so the horror starts off at a very human level. When you throw in that demonically emotionally eviscerating reading of the book, shit is intensely dark and frightening.

As the scenes from the book start to take form and the child swims further into the deep end of insanity, my terror mounted exponentially. I’ve seen hundreds of horror movies. This was the first time in quite a while that I’ve felt genuinely scared. Once the demon begins to possess, the fear starts to subside (the known fear is always less scary than the unknown fear). That being said, the climax is still incredibly engaging. The ‘open-to-interpretation’ ending will be a great conversation starter for friends who’ve both seen the movie.

The horror genre (and especially this haunted house sub genre) is replete with repletion. Literally thousands of people have tried to tell some form of this story in some form, across the spectrum from the light parody to the truly depraved version. It’s all been done. And yet, somehow The Babadook found a way to retell this folktale in a way that is unique relatable, unpredictable, and genuinely spooky. This would be a great watch for horror dabblers, but a phenomenal watch for the connoisseurs.

Rating: ***.5 (three point five out of five)
Year: 1977

Plot: Successful-enough actress overcomes super-depressing life event and decides to thrust her upturned chin straight into a new apartment in old-timey New York City. It is suspiciously cheap, but, hey, why ask questions? She’s got a lawyer boyfriend who isn’t *quite* as douchey as you’d expect him to be, but he appears wants nothing but the best for her. She has adventures in fashion modeling that bring out the best in future huge stars who were retrospectively surprised to all be in this movie together.

Weird stuff starts happening in her oddly cheap new apartment. After some more very brave attempts at chin-upped-ness, boy goes off on his own to try to fix all the gf’s problems. It doesn’t end well for anyone.

Review: God, I can’t tell you how much I love 70s/80s movies set in NYC! She (the city) is the Audrey Hepburn of her time – nothing is more engaging or lovable. Her (the city’s) existence is an automatic 1 point in my review schedule. The shock factor stuff was unpredictable enough to not really know what was coming next, and the ensemble cast made each new scene exciting. I mean, you had Ava Gardner, Christopher Walken, Jerry Orbach, Beverly D’Angelo, Tom Berenger, Jeff Goldblum… this movie was so overflowing with talent that freaking Richard Dryfus had an uncredited role as ‘man in background on sidewalk’. The plot was kinda Rosemary’s Baby meets The Exorcist, which certainly ain’t bad. Some of the effects fell a little flat, and some of the characters were a bit 2D… someone who isn’t a NYC-o-phile might not think the movie was very good, but I enjoyed those 2 hours.