Category Archives: Horror

Nope

Nope                     4 ½ stars

Nope is Jordan Peele’s the third horror production and this one brings all the classic aspects of traditional Hollywood monster movies together, only set against a wide-open western frontier. Like his previous movies Get Out and Us, Peele tells his stories from a uniquely black perspective. In Nope, early on we are introduced by Keke Palmer’s Emerald Haywood to a story about the first “moving picture” which featured a two second clip of a galloping horse with a black rider, whose name is missing from history. Emerald claims that the man was her ancestor and in a way this reminds us of the role that Black Americans played in taming the West and in the early days of moviemaking. Emerald’s brother is OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) who runs the family ranch in the foothills of northern California that they inherited from their father who dies mysteriously early in the movie. Eventually OJ becomes aware that there is something strange going on as mysterious lights appear in the sky and the horses have a tendency to get spooked and run away. With the help of a tech store clerk, (Brandon Perea) the team puts together a video surveillance system in order to capture the alien visitors on film. Before we get a good look at the aliens there is a good indication of the level of horror we are in for when in a flashback we see an especially troubling incident involving one of the characters that occurs on live TV. (We learn there is a reason that chimpanzees do not appear in commercial TV shows.) Midway through the movie Peele takes us from glimpses of the threat, ala Jaws, to the full-on terror of facing the enemy. He gives us a cacophony of voices and noise and blood-soaked terrain as our heroes struggle to get the images recorded while at the same time surviving the assault. Through it all, the quiet OJ is amazingly cool and calm as he plans what his next move should be, (sort of a Clint Eastwood character in a classic western). Palmer, though much more vocal shows how resourceful her character can be. Peele’s hit blockbuster of the summer expands his story telling skills beyond what we have seen before. You will have to go see it in the theater to really get the full experience of this horror movie.

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Bodies Bodies Bodies     4 stars

Bodies Bodies Bodies by director Halina Reijn is billed as the slasher movie of the summer. This hip comedy horror features a young Gen Z cast full of digital social media references and a hip hop soundtrack so it is obviously meant for a younger audience. That said, the script is surprisingly smarter than one would think. The premise is that a group of young people of privilege gather for a night of partying at one of the member’s father’s house in the path of a hurricane because that is a thing that people do. The young cast includes Amandla Stenberg (star of The Hate U Give) as Sophie who is just out of rehab and Maria Bakalova (from Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) as young immigrant Bee who is in a romantic relationship with Sophie. (Don’t worry if you don’t remember Maria Bakalova because Rudi Giuliani will.) The pair arrive at the house where the rest of the partiers have already gathered. There is a history of relationships among the group that will become apparent as the night progresses. As the storm approaches the group plays a game called Bodies Bodies Bodies, a sort of role-playing murder game that serves as a precursor of what is to come. Among the group is David whose father is the owner of the afore-mentioned house. As played by SNL’s Pete Davidson, David is a first class dick and really gets on the nerves of some of the partiers as he ridicules some of the jargon they use. Inevitably one of the members turns up dead from horrible injuries which leads to the chaos of the rest of the movie. Waves of suspicion and accusations emerge among the group as they try to cope with this rapidly changing situation. Conflicts based on relative wealth and race emerge as the arguments rage. Much of this is filmed with low lighting and hand-held cameras which lends itself well to the confusion among these Gen Z children of privilege. The intelligently written movie is not so much a slasher film, but more of a lesson in the consequences of a breakdown in trust and understanding. Of course there is more than enough blood and mayhem to satisfy the true horror fans out there.

Orphan: First Kill

Orphan: First Kill               ½ star

Orphan: First Kill is the prequel to the 2009 movie Orphan about dwarf young woman who passes herself off as a child who also happens to be a psychopathic killer. Judging by First Kill I won’t be seeing the earlier one. The movie explains how Esther, the diminutive 30 year old and the most dangerous inmate of an asylum in Estonia escapes and makes her way to America and convinces a grieving family that she is their lost daughter who disappeared four years earlier. First Kill breaks one of the rules of horror movies at the start by leading with scenes of bloody mayhem instead of waiting the customary 20 minute minimum. After that it asks way too much of the audience to believe as the premise plays out. In the first Orphan Esther is played by a 10 year old playing the part of a 30 year old pretending to be a 10 year old. In First Kill the same actress is a 25 year old playing the part of a 30 year old pretending to be a 10 year old. I can’t tell which is harder to believe. Perhaps we are supposed to blame the victims for falling for such an absurd trick. There are other inconsistencies that are not explained such as the lack of any genetic testing in this modern age of DNA and how the medical doctors could be fooled by the masquerade. There is an attempt to make things more interesting with a twist that is introduced midway through the movie with Esther not being the only one with a secret to hide. I advise everyone to stay away from Orphan: First Kill, especially with so many interesting movies coming out in the next few weeks.

Halloween Ends

Halloween Ends                2 ½ stars

It has been four years since the night of terror in the town of Haddonfield when the inhabitants tried to take revenge on Michael Myers only to have him mysteriously escape. Things are quiet now as Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is putting her thoughts into a book about her fight against the evil entity, while some people continue to blame her for the cursed events. This third film by director David Gordon Green takes a departure from the earlier Halloween movies as we get a lot more back story about the characters that includes a relationship between Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichek) and the bullied Corey (Rohan Campbell) who is blamed for an unfortunate babysitting accident. (Nothing turns out well for babysitters when it’s Halloween.) Frankly, it takes too long for Michael Myers to turn up along with his version of mayhem, but he is still there when October 31st arrives. When he does emerge he carries out the usual knife wielding bloody executions in his efficient style. We get a montage of past scenes from the earlier movies and that familiar theme music as well as a view of a scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing. We even get the long anticipated final showdown between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers as promised, even though Curtis doesn’t have the focused role we see in the earlier films. Jamie Lee Curtis says this is her final Halloween movie. Will there ever be another repeat of this franchise? It’s hard to see how but I wouldn’t bet against it.

Halloween Kills

Halloween Kills                  2 ½ stars

It’s almost Halloween and that means it’s time for that masked maniacal killer Michael Myers to return to the town of Haddonfield, Illinois to go on one more murderous rampage through the residents of the town. Halloween Kills is actually the second part of a planned trilogy of new Halloween films by director David Gordon Green. This, after the original series with Roman Numerals appeared on screens in 1978 and the eighties. I saw all of the earlier series of films but missed the last one in 2018 (but did see later). This one picks up where that one left off with a wounded Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a pickup truck being taken to the hospital with her daughter (Judy Greer) and granddaughter after they have finally eliminated the spree killer, Myers. Or so they thought! We get an introduction showing us what happened forty years earlier with the first attacks against local teenagers and the town’s cops while Laurie had been babysitting and got caught up in the nightmare. It doesn’t take long before Michael shows that he is not so easy to get rid of and starts a fresh bloodbath using knives, broken glass and other sharp implements. He can make quite a show of creativity as he finds new ways of slicing and battering people to death! The earlier film got some good reviews, but this sequel, I admit was somewhat disappointing with Jamie Lee Curtis mostly sidelined in the hospital where she must recover from an earlier attack while offering philosophical statements about what Michael Myers represents in all of us. The fight is left to her offspring and a number of other characters who are determined to stop Michael as they chant Evil! Dies! Tonight!. This includes a local hot head (Anthony Michael Hall) who works the crowd into a frenzy after they gather in the hospital where the casualties come in. We get plenty of victims peering through rooms in the dark until the inevitable surprise attack by the masked Michael. It feels like a lot of the same without a satisfying resolution since we can imagine how it will end. It appears we will have to wait a little longer before this chapter comes to a close. Who knows. Perhaps Laurie Strode will still be fighting Michael into her eighties?

Halloween

Halloween          4 stars

Halloween night is approaching and the kids are out trick or treating in their costumes and the teenagers are having a party. In the small town of Haddonfield that can only mean one thing. Michael Myers is about to unleash terror with a bloody murder spree on the town’s inhabitants. In a freak mishap the insane killer has escaped from the mental institution where he has resided for the past forty years. But Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, the Scream Queen) who somehow survived the slaughter all those years ago has been obsessed with Myers and has prepared her house to serve as a fortress with a safe room and an arsenal that matches that of the most devoted survivalists. This version of Halloween is the first of a trilogy made by director David Gordon Green with John Carpenter, the director of the original 1978 Halloween and it stays true to that original movie. You should forget all those other sequels made over the years, most of which are dreadful. This time we get a real feeling of the psychological damage done to Laurie with her obsession being responsible for her losing custody of her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) at age twelve, who now has her own teenage daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). After the first few victims meet their fate, being battered and slashed (including a pair of unfortunate podcasters from England hoping to research Michael Myers as well as a psychiatrist who only wants to understand what drives this killer) the inevitable showdown will occur with the three women of this damaged family and the man in the white mask. With its camera shots of the killer’s view, the suspenseful scenes of impending doom and the updated theme music, this version of Halloween captures the style of the 1978 classic. Of course we know that the threat didn’t end with this film despite the climactic ending. There are still two more sequels to come!

The Menu

The Menu           4 stars

I must be hitting a theme this year with movies attacking the habits of the rich and self-absorbed. The latest film in this genre is The Menu, a black comedy-horror (my favorite kind of horror) directed by Mark Mylod (who has done episodes of Game of Thrones and Succession) where we spend an evening with a young couple journeying to an exclusive expensive restaurant on a coastal island, serving twelve guests by invitation only. The restaurant is called Hawthorne where the chef, Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), regarded as a culinary artist introduces each course with detailed descriptions and his personal philosophy and charges $1,250 a plate. Tyler (Nicolas Hoult) can be described as a fanboy of the chef who obsesses over each course while his last minute date Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) couldn’t be less interested in the food. The rest of the guests includes a restaurant critic (Janet McTeer) and her husband (Paul Adelstein), an older couple (Judith Light and Reed Birney), an aging movie-star (John Leguizamo) and his assistant, three corporate a-holes and one elderly woman in the corner. As the meal progresses it becomes clear that the chef has an agenda for the evening when personal attacks are made on each of the customers. He has a connection to every one of them and feels he has been wronged by each in some fashion. The lone exception is Margot who Slowik says wasn’t supposed to be here. At some point the film becomes full blown horror of the revenge variety when it is revealed that Slowik intends that no one is going to survive the evening, thus making things outright terrifying. Effectively, the movie is preaching about the misdeeds of the rich and privileged and about those seeking retribution. The best scenes involve the personal interactions between Fiennes and Taylor-Joy as they engage in a battle of wits and she tries to find ways to counter his actions. Both are well cast in these roles. Hong Chau of Driveways and The Whale does an excellent job as Elsa, the guide who gives the initial tour for the guests. I had not heard of director Mylod before and hope he has more interesting projects ahead. For fans of satirical comedies, this one is entertaining.

Bones and All

Bones and All                     4 stars

From director Luca Guadagnino comes a story of two young lovers on a road trip travelling across the country in the 1980’s in a search for purpose. Timothee Chalamet is Lee, reuniting with the Call Me by Your Name director, and Taylor Russell is a teenage girl, Maren in this teenage romance horror as a young pair learning to deal with the secret that they both share. I won’t reveal what that secret is but let’s just say that it involves a lot of blood and they are not vampires. Bones and All is actually based on a young adult novel by the same name where the heat between the two young travelers gradually intensifies as they drive from one rundown  Midwestern town to another. The story is actually reminiscent of Badlands or Natural Born Killers as they commit certain crimes against the unsuspecting victims. We must understand that this is not a matter of choice. It’s just that this is who they are. Maren is on this journey to try to find her birth mother accompanied by a cassette recording from her father and her own birth certificate that reveals her mother’s hometown. She encounters Lee by scent, revealing that they share something in common. Oh, and there is an old man she meets along the way (Mark Rylance of Bridge of Spies) who teaches her some things about their kind. (This has to be the creepiest role of Rylance’s career to date! He plays it perfectly.) He will show up at the most unexpected of times. The well paced movie alternates between slow cinematic scenes of the country and loving interaction to scenes of utter bloody horror. There are also a few single scene roles for some well known actors including Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloe Sevigny, David Gordon Green and Jessica Harper. Despite their acting skills the movie mainly belongs to Taylor Russell who is very believable as the young Maren. Besides 2017’s Call Me by Your Name, Guadagnino is also known for his films Suspiria (also a horror film), and I am Love. This one is probably best meant to be viewed by the strictly horror movie fans. I look forward to his next project, Challengers, starring Zendaya coming in 2023.

Scream VI

Scream VI            3 stars

The sixth installment of the popular Scream series that debuted back in 1996 descends on us in what is referred to as the sequel to the requel. I haven’t seen all of them but I think I know all the rules that have to be followed. There is a series of murders committed by a costumed figure called Ghostface using a large knife that are based on the movie franchise “Stab”. Characters return from previous movies that are apt to become victims of stabbings to come. The potential victims are also potential suspects. Each entry in the series must be more spectacular than the previous one. And there must be numerous nods to other horror classics like Halloween and Friday the 13th. (Also, the murdering tasks are typically shared by more than one Ghostface.) Many of these rules are explained to us thanks to a monologue from Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) where she outlines the whole series to us. The surviving characters from the previous outing in California have all migrated to New York City (minus Sidney Prescott, sorry Neve Campbell) where Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega of Wednesday) is now attending Blackmore University. Older sister Sam (Melissa Barrera of In The Heights), who previously dispatched the Ghostface from last year, followed her here to protect here and shares an apartment with several other young adults. Sam and Tara just happen to be the daughters of Billy Loomis who was the original Ghostface back in the nineties. It doesn’t take long before the bodies start falling with the appearance of Ghostface along with his menacing phone calls. Also appearing is the infamous Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox making her sixth appearance) who is now a news reporter trying to get a story. And Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere of Bring It On: All or Nothing and Amanda Knox) shows up again only this time she is an FBI agent sent here from Atlanta to investigate the murders. Local police detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney of My Best Friend’s Wedding and The Family Stone) becomes involved in the case after his own daughter becomes one of the victims. Before the killer or killers are revealed there are plenty of tension filled moments featuring confrontations with the masked killer and harrowing escapes, plus plenty of blood from all the stab wounds. Amazingly, some of the victims manage to survive deep knife wounds to the abdomen that should be fatal, leaving them with possible openings to return. But after six entries in this franchise things have probably gotten a little repetitive so it may be time to put Ghostface to rest.

I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow            4 stars

One of the movies featured at Sundance made its way to the theaters so I took in one of the festival’s favorites by watching I Saw the TV Glow. This teen horror about fandom of a cult TV show is the second feature from writer/director Jane Schoenbrun and is unique with its style and presentation. (Her first movie was the horror film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.) It has the potential to be a cult classic and is meant to appeal to young audiences who see themselves as loners and misfits but find comradery in a mysterious TV show. In the movie we meet Owen (Ian Forman), a middle school student who lives with his parents and has no friends at school. One day while accompanying his mom (Danielle Deadwyler of Till and The Harder They Fall) to a voting booth, he spots Maddie (Brigette Lundy-Paine (Bill and Ted Face the Music)), an older girl, also a loner, reading an episode guide for her favorite TV show called The Pink Opaque. Owen has heard of the show before but could never watch it because it is on Saturday evenings after his bedtime. (The movie is set in the nineties before streaming and DVRs, so most TV shows are watched live.) The show is very campy with poor special effects but is popular with young audiences. It is about two teenage girls (actors Helena Howard and Lindsey Jordan) who meet at Sleepaway camp and become friends though they live far apart from one another. They have psychic powers enabling them to communicate with each other. Each episode they fight against the monster of the week that always appears in ridiculous looking costumes. (Think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except on a much lower budget.) The monsters are controlled by a mysterious being called Mr. Melancholy who looks like the moon and is out to destroy the girls. Owen and Maddie aren’t close, (She is gay, and Owen isn’t sure what he is.) but they bond over the show after Owen sneaks over to her house to watch it. Then Maddie provides Owen with VHS tapes of episodes so that he can watch it on his own. A couple of years later Owen is still watching the show but he is then played by Justice Smith (The American Society of Magical Negroes). (In a note of irony, the high school they attend is Void High School (VHS).) It is only then after Owen’s mother passes away, Maddie mysteriously disappears with her TV set on fire in her back yard and The Pink Opaque is cancelled after five seasons, that we get the sense there is more to the TV show than we realized. The teens find that their very lives are intertwined with the show, and they can’t separate their lives from fiction. The neon colors and disturbing images of I Saw the TV Glow are designed to give us a sense of escapism, to get away from reality and not think about the troubles of our lives. Goth style music and dark unkept rooms aid in the nightmarish feel of the whole experience. I Saw the TV Glow may be a new cult movie that today’s Gen Z will relate to for years to come. I would like to see what Schoenbrun will bring us next.