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PhillyBen
Reviews
Hush (2016)
Pretty good, pretty tense, worth your while
I like Mike Flanagan. There, I've said it. I don't know the guy, I have nothing to gain, but my daughter and I spent many enjoyable hours watching The Haunting of Hill House and the Haunting of Bly Manor, and I appreciate him for those.
I watched Midnight Mass on my own and liked it pretty well.
I saw Occulus and thought it was really sub-par, and my review will probably get down-voted by folks who really ARE Flanagan insiders.
Bottom line is: I know the horror genre, both the literary and film varieties; I like Mike Flanagan b/c he's mostly been good; and I've been unafraid to call him out on his missteps.
Hush is not a misstep. It's a flawed but very good suspense film, and if you're willing to suspend belief and critical judgment just a bit, I'm willing to bet that you'll like it, too.
Yes, there are points at which the viewer's likely to facepalm. The neighbor's boyfriend did WHAT? The protagonist delayed her actions WHY? My recommendation is to take it in stride, to expect that you'll be seeing some logical missteps and to build them into your experience, and then to let yourself appreciate a relatively fresh take on the slasher/ home invasion genre that generates some legitimate tension and sticks with you days after viewing.
Gripes:
Flanagan could and should have done more to play up the hearing-impaired angles, and to explain why a hearing-impaired individual who only lost her hearing as a teen wouldn't retain an innate impulse to make noise when horrified or hurt.
...should have made the minor characters more believable and smart.
...should have kept the killer masked, which is much scarier.
...should have revealed more about the killer's motivations and psyche if the killer's face is gonna be shown and that creepy, anonymous mask-face is gonna be abandoned.
With those gripes listed, the film still does a lot of things right and keeps the viewer guessing and engaged. I give kudos for those things. No one is bullet-proof, and Flanagan did mess up Occulus, but in the main he's done outstanding and smart work and he deserves praise for Hush, too.
Oculus (2013)
Decent, but a lesser Flanagan effort compared with later works
Mike Flanagan is very talented, and I'm a fan. So I hope that the following review won't be dismissed by anyone who's completely all-in on defending him. Oculus is a decent movie, much better-looking than some of the dreck that's out there, but it's nowhere near the level of Flanagan's finer efforts. If you've seen very little horror, and don't know ghost stories, this might strike you as groundbreaking. If you were starved for a halfway decent horror movie back in 2014, this might have scratched that itch. Otherwise, I can't understand the glowing reviews left back when Oculus was relatively new. It's just not a great horror/scary movie. It's decent.
One can see some of the calling cards that Flanagan would use to much greater effect in later projects, such as The Haunting of Hill House, and it's kind of nice to see his development. But IMO if one likes the Hauntings of Hill House and Bly Manor, and likes Midnight Mass-- I very much enjoyed all of those-- one can't possibly give Oculus a really high IMDB rating, because it's so much "lesser" than all of those. That's not a super-harsh critique; it's just the way it is. I don't see how anyone could put Oculus on a par with best projects.
I won't go into spoilers, because others have provided plenty of those. Suffice it to say that IMO Oculus is a lot like an extended episode of the long-running show Supernatural. There's a cursed/haunted object and some people want to destroy it (or its curse). If you've watched a lot of Supernatural, I defy you to show me how Oculus is significantly better, or even as good-- especially with its longer run-time-- than some of the better "cursed/haunted object" episodes.
There are also a LOT of logical problems and unexplained reasoning, such as why the characters engaged in any of the activities that they did rather than just attempting to achieve their aim straightaway, at the outset. The answer is probably that there wouldn't have been a movie had they done that, but that's not a good enough reason.
Again, Oculus isn't a bad movie, and Mike Flanagan is a very talented director. But even fans have to be able to discern the better from the less-good, and this one is lesser.
As Above, So Below (2014)
Good & smart; maybe a little too smart for its own good
I liked "As Above So Below" (AASB). It's a smart horror movie in the "found footage" tradition, although it's not really found footage if you step back and think about it. Some films trade on their location, as if once you've found a creepy, abandoned building you can throw anything together and call it a horror movie. AASB has just about the coolest location imaginable, the real Catacombs under Paris, but the (director and writers) Dowdles don't stop there. They come up with a reasonably interesting backstory that, to be honest, could have been changed in any number of ways while still working. There are plot holes and inconsistencies, sure, but not as many as in most low-budget horror movies. And overall the dialogue and acting are both pretty good-- and the setting is spectacularly creepy and claustrophobic-- so the overall effect is positive. As a horror movie, it may be more frightening just b/c of the claustrophobic dread it will induce in some viewers (like me) as the protagonists go further underground with no apparent way back/out, than it will be because of any monsters or jump-scares. Although there are some pretty creepy moments, such an old-fashioned telephone ringing underground. Kudos for that.
There's one thing that's most likely to divide viewers b/w those who like AASB and those who dismiss it: its reliance on certain kinds of esoteric or academic knowledge. I'll save those references for the next paragraph, because they could be thought to contain spoilers (for any folks who-- as Frank Costanza on Seinfeld-- "like to go in fresh!"). For now I'll just say that those who know AASB's underlying literary/ historical references are much more likely to appreciate the film as an extremely clever work and less likely to accuse it of incoherence or unexplained leaps than those folks who don't know those references. I'm not making any judgments on those who do or don't know it; these days it could be considered somewhat esoteric knowledge. I'm just saying that the movie relies more on highbrow literature than any horror film in recent memory. I like that; your mileage may vary.
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The main literary reference is Dante's Divine Comedy, primarily the Inferno section, and AASB draws very strongly from Dante's structure. Even the inscription over one of the tunnels, "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here," comes not from "mythology," as main character Scarlett explains, but from Inferno. I love Dante's work but it's a risky proposition as the basis for a horror movie that aspires to gain a wide audience.
To be clear, I think that the film works *reasonably* well even if one doesn't know Dante, or only knows a little bit about literary/ historical portrayals of hell. But I could see some viewers perhaps perceiving the developments and appearances as being "random" or unexplained if they didn't recognize the progression along Dante's 9 circles of hell (Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery). There are probably other reviews out there that specify lots of direct references to Dante, as for example the loud, windy/watery noises near minute 46 of the movie, that could represent the perpetual storm that buffets lost souls in the 2nd Circle (Lust). The 7th Circle, Violence, will kind of speak for itself. ;-)
I'll leave most of that to others and just say that the Dante structure & references drive a LOT of the movie's progress, and again, those who know & like Dante may appreciate it quite highly while those who don't-- again, no judgment!-- might be cooler on all if it.
At first when the film started mixing in Egyptology I thought, what the heck, is this just a hodgepodge of ancient languages/ symbols/ traditions? Then I remembered that the Divine Comedy itself draws from a lot of ancient traditions, and that Inferno contains references to characters in ancient Egypt (like Cleopatra) as well as Greece. But in a 90 minute movie it can feel a bit cluttered.
There were missteps, as others have pointed out, such as some of the characters translating ancient languages in rhyming English. That struck me as silly right from the outset, but I guess the filmmakers were going for a wider appeal with that part. Didn't bug me too much, or make me think that the filmmakers were stupid, because the rest of the movie shows that they're not.
One more thing: I have a different take on the movie's title than some other reviewers have offered, which they seem to have based on the character Scarlett's explanation. She says that "As Above, So Below" means "...what is within me is outside of me. As it is on earth, so it is in heaven." So I've read people interpreting the title to mean something like the phrase in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That could be part of it.
And some of what Scarlett says seems to mean that healing comes from within, not from the supposedly healing powers of the Philosopher's Stone. That winds up being borne out in the movie's ending.
But the main key to the movie's title, IMO, is Dante's use of contrapasso, or "suffering in return." It relates to the idea that what you do on earth, you suffer in hell. As per Dante's narrator, the poet Virgil: "what each has done, he suffers." Now put that in terms of the movie title: As Above, So Below. What you do above on earth, you suffer below in hell. It's a lot less cheery than the Lord's Prayer version, but I think it's completely in keeping with Dante's purposes and with AASB's themes as well.
BOTTOM LINE: AASB is a very smart, complex, intricately planned horror movie that gets a lot of mileage out of the phenomenal setting-- Paris's Catacombs-- and the attendant sense of dread from going farther and farther underground. Those who know Dante and some older Christian theology might wind up liking it a lot more than those who don't, which isn't to judge one kind of viewer as better. It is what it is. But those who don't know a lot about Dante might enjoy reading some summaries and re-watching the movie, if only to appreciate what I take the Dowdles to have been intending.
Caveat (2020)
Sorry to spoil a directorial debut but: Bad Film. Just Bad.
If you're thinking about watching this Shudder offering, let me save you some time: don't. I went in cold, with no preconceptions except that I saw the trailer and thought it looked interesting. It's an Irish film and seems low budget without zombies or CGI effects, so believe me: I wanted to like it. I want to support filmmakers outside of Hollywood and those working on small budgets. But there's just not much to like. Many reviewers here seem to be saying similar things but then giving Caveat middling numerical scores, and that's not right. Unfortunately, it deserves something very low. It's just not good.
Why do I write that? Certainly not to be mean. Other things being equal I'd like to support what I'm told is a directorial debut. But you have to give us sympathetic viewers something to work with. This film has poor internal logic, absolutely no really scary scenes (in spite of what a few reviews might indicate), lots of loose ends, and a bizarre ending that might perhaps be symbolic but that doesn't give us a key to figure out what it might be symbolizing.
Here's an example of a loose end, and it doesn't contain any spoilers. Relatively early in the film, the protagonist-- I think one has to regard Johnny French as the protagonist-- lies down in his room and is unnerved by a portrait of a young, glaring, apparently dark-complected woman. (The lighting isn't great so it's hard to tell if she's just painted in shadows.) He turns the portrait to face the wall. Soon he looks again and it's been turned back to face him. And then, when we're not looking, the portrait's eyes change. That could conceivably be spooky ( although the effect isn't very scary), but the portrait and that young woman never resurface. Why were they shown to us in the first place? Was that sequence supposed to represent something happening in the protagonist's conscience? If so, why? We don't get any reveals later in the movie as to why his conscience should have been trying to tell him anything through a glaring, dark-complected young woman. Is it supposed to be a younger version of Olga's mother? If so, it looks nothing like the version of her that we see. Still scratching my head.
The notion of a protagonist agreeing to be strapped in to a harness that would let him wander, chained, through the house but not enter a bedroom or leave the house: what the heck? Why would anyone agree to it? Why would such a harness even exist? We're told that Olga's grandmother used to sleepwalk and the harness restrained her from walking out into the woods, but why would you give a sleepwalker the full run of the house except for one bedroom? Why not just lock her door? And if the harness is leather, why couldn't a protagonist just cut it open?-- there are knives lying around. It's kind of creepy to think of someone being chained inside of a creepy house, but not if there's zero reason for him to have agreed to it and not if the harness winds up playing only a small role in the story.
And what the heck is the deal with the crossbow? Why would anyone make such a thing a central part of a 21st century story? If you watch Caveat, tell me whether you have a better account of it than I do. Because I'm left wondering why the heck those weird accoutrements played any role at all, other than that they might have been lying around when the writer/director was making the movie and he figured that he'd use anything he could.
There were times at which I suspected that the writer/ director had had many more ideas and storylines that were eventually cut-- explanations of Olga's mother, her father, who they were and what their deal was, explanations of Olga herself or her uncle, explanations of ANYTHING--, with unmoored remnants left in accidentally. Although if good ideas and themes were cut to save time, that would really be a shame because there were plenty of very slow scenes left in, so that the film dragged terribly at times even though it ran "only" 87 minutes.
Again, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but Caveat doesn't deserve any applause or praise. It doesn't deserve your time. If Damian McCarthy is really talented then hopefully he'll take the time to produce a final product that actually tells a full story and represents his talent. Caveat does not do that.
Gon-ji-am (2018)
Well made for the genre: creepy & occasionally scary but not gory
I found Gon-ji-am a really pleasant surprise. Like many horror fans I've seen a lot of "found footage" movies and sometimes I'll downgrade a film if it adds nothing to the genre and/or seems like a series of rip-offs. This one warrants a high rating. It doesn't really add a lot in terms of completely new scares or themes, but it does so many little things thoughtfully and well that they add up to a *kind* of new thing by themselves.
Many "found footage" films have tremendous holes and point-of-view problems. How/why are we seeing this particular scene when there's no one filming from that angle? Gon-ji-am's. Director Jung Bum-shik either has an amazing ability to plan and anticipate, and/or he's seen tons of similar films and made sure to supply their deficiencies. Early on, we see the characters spelling out how many cameras they'll be using, how they work, what kinds of camera angles to expect, etc. They even take out a flying drone camera while driving to the "asylum" so that we viewers can understand why there's an aerial shot. The thoroughness and thoughtfulness were really impressive and appreciated.
I've seen scarier movies, and dimly-lit pieces with more unsettling imagery, and we've all seen movies with more scares per minute. This one takes quite a while to get going and builds a sense of creepiness and dread. But there ARE unsettling and even scary scenes for those who are patient, and IMO they're worth the wait.
The acting is quite good, MUCH better than what one usually gets in "found footage" movies. The characters' unease and eventual terror often seems realistic. Sometimes they behave in ways that you or I wouldn't do if we were in a crazily scary situation, but sometimes they behave as real people would-- and that's a rarity. I must confess that I had some difficulty keeping the characters straight at times, especially when we were seeing only a close-up of their faces in badly lit scenarios, but part of that's on me and it didn't spoil the enjoyment.
Some things are definitely left unexplained or under-explained, but for some viewers that could be a good thing. Maybe the director was trying to leave a few things to our imagination. I'd have preferred a somewhat more complete backstory that matched up a bit more clearly with the scary scenes, but I found Gon-ji-am quite enjoyable nonetheless. It's probably best watched in a dark room.
Deadstream (2022)
Decent, kind of funny, but like a "Supernatural" episode ("Hell House")
I wanted to love this movie. Instead, I mildly liked it. I must say that I can't really understand understand the hatred it's gotten from some reviewers, unless they're reacting against some of the equally inexplicable super-glowing reviews. I realize that it can tempting to try counteracting obviously inflated reviews. But I'm not going to do that. My honest take is that "Deadstream" is kind of funny at points, kind of jump-scary at times, and kind of annoying at times, a combination that makes it watchable but not particularly memorable if one recognizes just how derivative it is.
Staying overnight in a haunted house is far from a new concept. HR Wakefield's short story "Blind Man's Buff" does it in the 1920s, and in 1949 the radio series "Suspense" adapts that story into "Ghost Hunt," which live-chronicles a radio announcer (played by Ralph Edwards of Truth or Consequences fame) broadcasting overnight in a haunted house. (I love that "Suspense" episode; you can find it on YouTube.) Even the Scooby Doo gang got into the act with "A Night of Fright is No Delight" (from the first season, 1970), a "night in a haunted house" story that creeped me out as a kid.
And then there's the TV show, "Supernatural." Season 1, episode 17 (2006) is called "Hell House," where the series' main characters Dean and Sam meet would-be online ghosthunters Travis and Ed spending a night in a haunted house.
Supernatural season 3, episode 13 ("Ghostfacers") goes full-on horror-comedy as Travis and Ed, chasing fame and fortune, try to video record a haunted house night for widespread broadcast.
See what I mean? Folks who see "Deadstream" seem to recognize that the idea's been done before, but they may not realize just how many times. And it goes far beyond "Blair Witch," which I didn't even mention earlier. Watch the "Supernatural" episodes I referenced and see how well you think of Deadstream then. It has to lose at least a few "originality" points just b/c of its unacknowledged lineage.
OK, then, how's the movie itself? It's all right. Silly, goofy, and a bit funny for the first 40% or so. Then it gets scarier with jump scares and introduces supernatural elements. Alternates between horror and comedy pretty regularly thereafter, which can be OK. The real problem is that, as some other reviewers have noted, the main character's (Shawn's) hysterical and sometimes goofy reactions undermine any kind of genuine horror that anyone might feel because he doesn't react in the way that a regular person probably would.
The special effects are indeed pretty terrible, as other reviewers have also noted.
I was also bothered by the lack of narrative consistency, the lack of understandable "rules of engagement" regarding ghosts and other supernatural creatures. Everyone who follows the genre knows that certain materials and tools are supposed to be useful vs. Certain forces, and others aren't. "Deadstream" seems to acknowledge such "rules of engagement," because it brings in rules-based commentary and videos from fictional internet viewers. But those rules wind up not providing any useful foundation for understanding what the heck is going on. Here's a question: Can ghosts be cut, bleed, get knocked out by household objects? I shouldn't have to be wasting my time and attention on that question when I'm supposed to be on the edge of my seat. That's just one example. It's a sign of sloppiness, and while I understand that "Deadstream" kind of makes a joke of its sloppiness and schlocky effects, one can't really call that a virtue.
But this is far from the worst thing I've seen. It's not bad, and might be decent for a Halloween evening when you've seen most of the obvious choices. Just go in with modest hopes.
Sissy (2022)
Decent film, good lead; not really scary
I liked Aisha Dee. Let's start with that. She did a nice job as the movie's lead. I could also see the under-30 crowd, Tik Tok and Instagram folks, liking some of the messages.
On the not-so-great side, the movie takes a very long time to get to any point that could remotely be considered horror, and by that point most experienced viewers could already predict most of the finish (minus a few details).
There's some bloodiness but not really freak-out gore, if you either want that or want to avoid it.
I found the music intrusive; they try too hard to make statements with the music.
Importantly, I found none of the characters particularly sympathetic or likable. (I liked the lead actress but not so much her character.) Most are shallow; one is shallow AND vindictive/ cruel; one is extremely unstable to say the least; and I didn't particularly want to root for any of them. That's a problem.
Also: none of the 20somethings seems to have, or ever to have had, parents or other family members/ influences. If I could really believe that the movie was intentionally trying to make a statement about the lack of any positive (or negative) influences in people's lives save the internet and apps, I would appreciate it for that. But nothing in the film gave me the sense that it was as clever/ thoughtful as that.
Overall: fine; a diversion; a good lead performance; probably impressive given its likely budget. But I had seen "Sissy" rated as the 2022's top horror movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with incredible critical reviews, and when it's judged by that standard it has to fall far short. If one goes in with low expectations one might be pleasantly surprised.
Creep (2014)
2-Person Cast on a Shoestring Impresses, but also fizzles
I gave "Creep" 7/10 because Brice and Duplass really do deserve credit for generating a mounting sense of dread, with some very creepy moments, and all achieved without gore. There were a lot of tense and creepy moments. The film has major flaws, too, which would have resulted in my giving it a lower score if the filmmakers had had more resources at their disposal. As it stands, Brice and Duplass make quite a lot out of the sparest possible production: a 2-person cast (plus one disembodied phone voice) that makes the scenes feel claustrophobic.
Unfortunately, even though they achieve a lot with a little, they still make some regrettable choices in the film's final 20-25 minutes. Things get less and less plausible and a series of stupid choices are made, each one dumber than the last, which the film tries to acknowledge and explain but without real success. If they just could have nailed the ending they would have really had something.
I'll list some spoilers below because I want to be able to compare "Creep" with other pieces of fiction and my choices would give too much away without a spoiler alert.
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SPOILERS
"Creep" reminded me a lot of the Nosleep Podcast mini-series, "Penpal," written by Dathan Auerbach in 2011. I think it might have originally been shared as written fiction on the Nosleep Reddit, but I heard a spoken-word version on the Nosleep Podcast. Without wanting to spoil "Penpal" for those who haven't listened, it was better than "Creep."
The final 10 or so minutes of "Creep" also reminded me of the Dutch film "Spoorloos" and its American remake, "The Vanishing." I don't want to spoil either of THOSE films for those who might not have seen them, so I'll leave the comparison at that-- and don't worry, if you see "Creep" first, it won't give away what happens in those earlier movies. There's just a strong resemblance in one area.
Ultimately, as some other reviews have pointed out, Aaron's choices get inexplicably stupid, and the penultimate scene at the lake is just inexcusable. No way, no how. Brice and DuPlass are clearly clever people; surely they could have come up with something better. I read that there are alternate endings, and I'd be interested in seeing them, but the one they stuck with just doesn't work.
For all of that, it's still a tense movie that I have to applaud for keeping me riveted at times on an absolute shoestring of a budget.
We Are Still Here (2015)
Really bad. Don't know where the good press came from.
This is like a mediocre-to-bad episode of the TV show "Supernatural," minus the Winchesters, drawn out to movie length and with movie-length expectations. Bad direction, bad acting, lame effects, stupid backstory. I just don't know what else to tell you. Don't watch it.
I watched because some Paste Magazine article listed it as 79th best horror movie of all time, and said that it might have been the single most terrifying movie of 2015. What utter nonsense. "We are Still Here" is really, really bad. I don't need to give spoilers. But the entire premise is absurd, dumber than most campfire ghost stories. It's poorly written, poorly explained, almost no internal logic. And the effects are laughably bad. Jaw-droppingly bad. Throughout the movie one has no idea what can explain the fiery "theme" of the special effects. They're not explained by the script. After the movie has ended, the closing credits roll against the backdrop of old newspaper headlines and articles that could give maybe a 20% explanation of what had happened during the film... but they come after it's over! And they only explain 20%! And we don't care at any rate!
Hopefully that explains why the writing is bad (bad acting as well). As for the direction, early on there are these tiny, manufactured jump-scares where the sound or a little movement tell you that you're supposed to be frightened, but the story and action haven't warranted that reaction. As the movie progresses, the director starts relying on the jaw-droppingly bad effects, and that doesn't improve matters at all.
I'm guessing that they cut some pretty relevant backstory material for the sake of brevity, without realizing that now the story logic wouldn't make sense. One review mentioned Lovecraftian themes: um, no, except maybe the mention of Essex. If there was supposed to be something Lovecraftian, maybe that's part of what got cut. But you can't just slop some stuff together and expect to be praised.
Look elsewhere.
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Forecast: Low Clouds and Coastal Fog (1963)
Fun and Games
Without giving any spoilers-- those will come below, and you can turn away before you read them-- I'll just say that I was surprised at how dark an entry this was. Dark with a Capital D. There are multiple bad people afoot, and not many (if any) who are completely sympathetic. Even when you find out that this or that character isn't a full-fledged villain, you can't help but note decisions and actions that make the person at least partially culpable. Beach life isn't all fun and games.
Another reviewer had it right in pointing out that the Karen character was inconsistently written. She's terrified one night, then goes surfing the next day, then -- incredibly-- declines her concerned husband's repeated pleas that she not stay home alone again the next night. It was one of multiple instances when I threw up my hands and said out loud, "what the heck?"
Still and all, the last 20 minutes are quite tense and the last 5-10 are downright creepy. To give away more I'll need to reveal spoilers.
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I titled my review "Fun and Games" because this episode's ending reminded me of the incredibly disturbing 1997 movie and 2007 remake, "Funny Games." That movie has two, not three, clean-cut young adult psychopaths, but its sense of sadistic menace comes through in the Hitchcock Hour's conclusion as well. I wasn't expecting multi-person-- ahem--
"assault," to use a cleaned-up term, as well as murder to be implied so strongly in an early 1960s TV program. That turn of events took me by surprise, even though we the audience could see what was coming a few minutes before the main character did.
But while the surfers are the baddest guys, family friend Simon (O'Herlihy) is no angel, either. He comes over knowing that the husband is away, apparently with the intent to have his way with Karen. He prefaces his actions with a soliloquy on the murderous darkness inside every human being, and then gets physical. That he comes back later to apologize-- at least, that's his story-- and helps to catch one of the psychos, doesn't excuse what he'd earlier come to do. And the grief-stricken Sanchez, whose girlfriend has been killed: he refuses to take any responsibility for what happened to his girlfriend, even though he put the homeowner-- the aptly named "Karen," at least by 2022 pop culture standards-- in a terribly uncomfortable position and even though he might have avoided all of the tragedy had he just asked Karen to call the police.
Instead he turns all of his wrath against her, refusing to see how menacing he must have seemed and declining to look for whoever actually assaulted and killed his girlfriend. He breaks into Karen's house and seems intent on doing something very bad. That he, like Simon, winds up saving Karen after the psychotic surfers have revealed themselves as the previous night's murderers doesn't overshadow the misguided revenge that he'd earlier intended.
All in all, a very bleak portrayal of men and not an especially redeeming a portrayal of the lone woman, either. But creepy and a bit haunting if you think back on what might have been.
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: What Really Happened (1963)
Much Ado about Nothing
I agree with the reviewer planktonrules: this is one of the lesser Hitchcock Hour entries by a good margin. The "surprises" don't really matter much for the overall outcome, and there's neither great tension nor chills. It's hard for me to understand just why they placed this script alongside so many better offerings, and why so many viewers here seem to have rated it almost as highly as the better episodes. If you're looking for a suspenseful whodunit, or for something that'll keep you thinking long after you view, look elsewhere.
***********SPOILERS************
As a couple of reviewers have already mentioned: right near the outset we know "whodunit." The police and prosecutors seem to act illogically in overlooking the fired housekeeper and in arresting the wife, when there's zero hard evidence that she killed her husband. She may have had motive and opportunity, but the housekeeper had just as much of both-- more, quite obviously, since she was just fired and would have to leave with her "son." But she doesn't factor for a moment. As has also been mentioned, the murdered man's mother gives strongly biased character testimony against the man's widow, but that would have to be taken with many grains of salt and it didn't do anything to establish guilt or eliminate all doubt. The whole thing was more of a character study than anything else, or an opportunity to test out the technique of retelling a story from more than one perspective, but it should take more value to snag a place on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Possibly my least favorite episode to date.
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Bonfire (1962)
Quite good-- don't listen to the naysayers
I'll keep this brief. I can understand why some user-reviewers have invoked Elmer Gantry as a comparison, but the one who brought up Robert Mitchum had it even more on the money. Peter Falk brings elements of each, but more Mitchum. He gives an excellent and creepy performance.
Others have given plot summaries, and you don't really want more of those, do you? It's a short screenplay and won't take you long to figure out what's going on. What I want to mention is that in addition to good directing and acting, the play isn't purely obvious. Having read and watched many Hitchcock-type short stories and short screenplays, I knew to look out for irony and twists. I won't give any spoilers, but I'll say that things didn't go just as I had expected-- and that's a good thing. Not the most inventive or mind-blowing Hitchcock piece out there, but this is a solid and creepy production with pretty good character sketches. One of the better Alfred Hitchcock Hour presentations I've seen.
Suspiria (1977)
Difficult to watch at times but genuinely creepy & disturbing
I'll let the experts dissect the film and provide trivia and advanced insights. For my part, I appreciated Suspiria and considered it more disturbing than The Exorcist. (I think that the latter must take on special significance if one is Catholic.) I went in without knowing the overarching plot other than that there would be some gory killings, and that probably increased my enjoyment.
The soundtrack is quite unnerving, not only the music itself but the almost-constant, white noise undercurrent (or under-chorus) of voices that one can't quite make out. The violence is over-the-top gory, as one might expect from Argento in this period, and it doesn't really matter that it's not realistic by today's standards. Some of us still find it tough to watch up-close stabbings and organ mutilation, even if the blood looks fake. But since I knew that that sort of thing would be present before I started watching, I don't hold it against the movie. Caveat emptor.
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Mildest of all spoiler alerts
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I give Suspiria some special credit for having elements of horror, terror/thriller, and supernatural all in the same movie. There aren't a lot of movies that do all three elements well; it's impressive. I might have enjoyed Deep Red just a little bit more, but that one doesn't quite get all three boxes so that's one accomplishment for Suspiria.
The Wild (2006)
Unbelievably bad
This was the worst "children's" movie I have ever seen. Bad beyond all previous standards of bad. The animation was OK, but who really cares that much about the animation? Once it's at least passable the important things are plot, dialog, originality, character richness and development. This film was a zero in all regards. "The Wild" was completely derivative, stealing stuff from a wide range of movies (most notably "Madagascar" and "Lion King"). Other reviewers have gone into the nitty-gritty, so all I'll say here is that if you have kids, don't subject them to this dreck. It's noisy, scattershot, and absurd; the main "scary" subplot is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in ANY movie, including "Plan 9 from Outer Space." It's the kind of film that might have been written in a single, all-night session augmented by recreational drug use. Instead, choose an oldie like "The Jungle Book" or one of the better "modern" kids' flicks.
The Aristocrats (2005)
Brilliant inside joke for comedy buffs-- but NOT for everyone!
I had heard so many great reviews of The Aristocrats that I finally needed to see it for myself. But two friends of mine had watched it recently and had to turn it off 1/3 of the way through; they just couldn't take the vulgarity and repetition. In my opinion you're either going to love it or you're going to find it indefensibly offensive, and neither assessment is simply right or wrong. It all depends on your tastes and your orientation.
To me, it was brilliant. I haven't laughed so hard in... well, I don't know how long. At root it's a love song to the field of professional comedy, an intimate portrait of how a single, bizarre, vulgar, and flawed joke can cement a secret society of whackos and give harmless vent to some of the darker elements in the human psyche.
But I have to confess, in the first 10 or 15 minutes I thought about turning it off. It just seemed so... repetitive. I couldn't see how it could be drawn out into feature length. But it could be, and it is. And IMO it's wonderful.
Here's a quick litmus test to see whether you're likely to like it. Do you have a deep fondness for the under-appreciated Woody Allen film "Broadway Danny Rose"? If so, you're on the right track. "The Aristocrats" is its NC-17 companion piece. In fact, even if you haven't seen Broadway Danny Rose-- *especially* if you haven't seen it-- I recommend renting that movie and watching it before watching "The Aristocrats." Broadway Danny Rose is a LOT more sweet and sentimental, but at root they're about similar themes: storytelling, friendship, and the desire to make a splash. (BDR goes deeper than that into betrayal and forgiveness, but that's a different matter...) If you have an abiding interest in the fraternity/ sorority of professional comedy and you can stomach some seriously disturbing imagery (told for the sake of pushing your limits), get "The Aristocrats" soon. I'll be buying it... and keeping it from my kids 'til they can handle it. :-)
Sideways (2004)
Little film with a big impact
"Sideways" is a lovely little film with some of the most enjoyable characters that I have seen in a very long time. It's not about all that much; rather than showing us a big heist or an intricate drama or a sob story it simply chronicles two unlikely buddies' trip before one of them gets married. But it makes us care about those buddies, and the women they meet, in a way that's pretty rare for contemporary cinema.
The acting performances are first-rate all around, and the casting is excellent. I was pleased to see some great character actors who aren't necessarily all that well known, instead of the usual "pretty boy" and "pretty girl" faces-of-the-moment. Paul Giamatti deserves all of the plaudits that he has received, but Thomas Haden Church is a revelation. He plays his character superbly-- maybe even better than Giamatti does, but because his "Jack" may be less likable than Giametti's "Miles," Church may have received a bit less recognition. Even the supporting characters, played by Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen, seem like real people who have their own flaws but are a lot of fun nonetheless.
That's one of the best things about "Sideways": the characters seem very much like people we all have known, perhaps even like ourselves, and they evoke painful sympathy as well as laughs. Their motivations, actions and reactions are believable yet not always predictable, so they retain the power to move and amuse us. Miles' and Maya's insights about wine reveal aspects of their personalities, their hopes and their desires that they might not yet realize themselves. Jack's empty and self-gratifying philosophizing and philandering ultimately show that he's just as lost as Miles, even if he seems more at home with himself. And Stephanie simply kicks butt.
"Sideways" seems to have a genuine affection for its characters and their predicaments that neither lets them off the hook too easily nor gift-wraps any kind of traditional Hollywood endings. I wish that more movies were made in its mold nowadays. I saw it recently and I'm sure that it will linger with me for many days.
Boo (2005)
BOO for Boo!!!
If you like quality horror films--and I've seen TONS of them-- there is NO WAY you will like this one. If you like teenage slasher/ gorefest movies, there is STILL no way that you will find this one a classic. It's derivative, badly acted and atrociously written.
The film rips off other (and better) films left and right. The backdrop is admittedly quite creepy; the old hospital is definitely the star of the movie and its scariest element. But the director rips off the lighting and jittery, flitting images from the remake of "The House on Haunted Hill" and even the abysmal remake of "13 Ghosts." Lots of movies these days are using those effects, in fact. They can indeed be eerie but they're far from original and they require a genuinely scary plot line and developments to redeem them. "Boo" can't provide that.
The acting is just terrible. Most of the cast members look as if they're cast-offs from the college drama club. Dig Wayne, who plays an Blaxploitation actor-turned-policeman, deserves special mention because he's a relatively experienced actor but performs as if he got the script the day filming started. The others (Rachel Melvin excluded) can probably be forgiven because they have no talent, but forgiveness doesn't equal acceptance. Their performances are painful to watch.
The characters aren't any better. The main "bad guy," Jacob, is a poor, poor, poor man's Freddy Krueger: a child molester who was burned to death by someone wanting to stop his rampage, now back for vengeance and sporting some burns on this face. The actor even LOOKS a bit like Robert Englund (except he's not scary at all). What, did the writer/director think we wouldn't even NOTICE those similarities? Talk about lazy and unimaginative...
Ditto for the writing. Granted, horror films are not usually fine literature, but we should be able to expect believable dialogue. Not in this movie. All we get are clichés. The film's opening rips off "Scream," but without the ironic wink at the genre that smart, self-conscious films such as "Scream" can effect. "Boo" even throws in a "scary clown" for one brief minute-- his presence is never explained-- for no reason other than to check another horror film convention off the list.
In summary, stay away from "Boo" unless you have 90 minutes to waste.
Chicken Little (2005)
Disney hits a new LOW!
We brought our little one to see "Chicken Little" and wound up leaving early, something I almost never do. But Chicken Little is so loud and manic yet unimaginative and incoherent that I don't think we missed much. The animation stinks, at least by Disney's standards. Anyone who grew up watching "Dumbo," "Bambi" and "Snow White" will surely be chagrined. But I could probably forgive that if only the plot were first-rate, the writing clever and the characterizations very likable. They're none of the above.
The movie opens with such a bizarre concatenation of sound and images that it feels as if it were made by young teens chugging Mountain Dew (or maybe Ritalin). Things don't get too much better after that.
We have seen this plot before from Disney: son feels unappreciated and misunderstood by Dad and so embarks on some kind of misadventure in order to prove himself and win his dad's love. Bleah. If I had never seen one of these before, maybe this one would have been passable; as it is, Disney is insulting our intelligence with reheated mishmash.
The hardest-working people on this movie, the ones who achieved the most, were the folks who put together the theatrical trailer. That was 10 times funnier and tighter than the movie itself.
This might merit a 5 out of 10 had it been made by some indie company on a shoestring budget and had it been the first of its genre. Coming from Disney, with their track record, their billions, and the talent at their disposal, it surely earns no more than a 2/10. Bleah.
Bad Disney! Bad corporation! Lazy corporation!
Bananas (1971)
Funniest movie of all time!!!
"Bananas," while not a great movie from the perspective of plot or production values, contains the greatest number of laughs of any film, ever. I'm a big fan of Woody Allen work-- at least, up until around 1994, when it took a significant downturn (excepting "Deconstructing Harry"). I'm also a big fan of comedies through the ages. For sheer, absurd hilarity, Bananas trumps them all.
Great comedies almost never sustain their intense humor over the course of a full movie; I guess it's just too hard to save up enough great material. (All of the Marx Brothers movies flag a lot after their early zaniness, for example.) Bananas is no exception. I agree with one of the IMDb reviewers who divided the movie into 3 acts. The first act is just incredibly funny, with some of the most absurd situations and images I have ever seen. The second act flags quite a lot, in my opinion (when the action moves to San Marcos). The third act, with Fielding's trial in NY, is very funny once again although in a less manic way than the first act. The closing scene is one of the most imaginative satires of television ever aired, and taken with the film's opening scene it provides a wonderful set of comic bookends.
Manhattan, Annie Hall, Hannah & her Sisters, and Crimes & Misdemeanors are all vastly superior films, but Bananas tops them all (plus every other film) in the sheer quantity (and quality) of its laughs. The way to appreciate Bananas fully is to go into it expecting a brilliant comic showcase with a slow middle act rather than a polished comic drama. 9 out of 10.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Great premise & great ending; otherwise flawed
I liked the Blair Witch Project, but I didn't love it. What I *did* love was the Blair Witch website that accompanied this film's release and also the mock-documentary that aired on the Sci Fi channel. If you read the website thoroughly and see the mock-documentary and THEN you watch the movie, it all adds up to a thoroughly frightening experience. Unfortunately, those extras were necessary because the movie itself left out a lot of crucial information vital to "getting" the full import of the story and imagery.
Still, the film did tap into (and probably fed) the growing fascination with "reality" TV and films, and it used the trick on which camp ghost stories have always relied. It's really scary to be trapped in a place where something scary was REALLY supposed to have happened. Since most of us go into the woods at some point we can imagine how terrified the movie's kids must have been, and we can feel some of that terror ourselves if we think about the allegedly "real" imagery when we're out in the woods.
One final note: the "reality"-based scare tactic wasn't even all that original. In 1992 the BBC aired a mock documentary called "Ghostwatch" that pretended to be real, live-broadcast investigative journalism. Its shocking ending so terrified the television audience that it elicited hundreds of phone calls and was never aired again. THAT was a real landmark moment in mass media, right up there with Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds."
The Shining (1980)
Probably the BEST scary movie of all time!!!
This movie is so darned good and scary that I get goosebumps just thinking about it. I have read the Stephen King novel and seen the movie and in my opinion the movie is MUCH scarier. King supposedly didn't like the ample changes that Kubrick made but I think that they improve the whole thing greatly.
Jack Nicholson is freaky as heck and he pretty much sets the gold standard for all "now-I'm-calm, now-I'm deranged" acting roles. (Robert DeNiro is also great at that kind of thing.) Shelly Duvall is fairly annoying, but in the novel Wendy was *supposed* to be kind of annoying. The hotel maze is a BIG improvement over the hedge-animals in the novel, and the twins are an incredible addition. (They weren't even in the novel at all.) The movie's ending is also MUCH better, scarier, and more satisfying than the novel's. (I love Stephen King but he often has a problem providing endings that match his novels' quality and scariness. See the novel "IT" for a case in point. Pet Sematary is an exception.) I have seen many, many horror movies in my time and "The Shining" sits atop my list. It's a masterpiece of suspense, creeping insanity, and things that go bump in the night. It's one of the very few films that I think merits a full 10 out of 10. If you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for?
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Lots of fun, well done; maybe just a bit long for kids
Wallace & Gromit films are always fun, and this outing-- their first full-length feature-- is extremely well done. Lots of puns and jokes for older folks and delightful imagery for the younger set. Kids under 4 might not get all that much out of it, but hey-- you can't appeal to everyone.
My only complaint is that this movie seemed to run a bit long. It's a bit long to hold small children's attention but, more importantly, it's a bit long to be stretching the otherwise very cute subject matter. Even Bugs Bunny can get a little bit labored in a full-length movie about a single subject; it's just the nature of the genre.
Still, that's a small complaint. Overall I applaud the creators' ingenuity, humor and dynamism and hope for many more Wallace & Gromit venues!
Session 9 (2001)
Under-rated gem for all horror fans!
"Session 9" is a very, very good horror movie that stayed with me weeks after I watched it. The Danvers hospital backdrop was probably the best thing about the movie-- it was so spooky that I would never set foot in it after dark. But not all movies can take advantage of great settings; see the abysmal "Boo!" for example. "Session 9," on the other hand, packs a wallop.
The acting is quite good, as well-- none of the giddy idiocy that so often plagues horror movie casts (especially those movies aimed at teen-aged audiences). And the script and direction builds a palpable sense of dread as the movie proceeds.
It's not without flaws. See the excellent review here by "Bingo_Crepescule"; I agree with just about everything he says about the film's failure to draw out the implications of the taped sessions or of Simon's presence. If the writers had fleshed out those elements and given them their due, this could have been an all-time classic along the lines of "The Shining." Even so, the film as it stands is so much better and smarter than most entries in this genre, and so genuinely creepy (with imagery that lingers long afterward), that one can forgive its shortcomings.
"Session 9" is one of the best (and least well known) horror movies that I've seen in the last 5 years. 8 out of 10.