Horror Movie Talk

Synopsis

Fire In The Sky tells the based on a true story of Travis Walton, a logger in Arizona traveling home with his crew getting abducted by an alien UFO. Now I know what you’re thinking they can’t possibly stretch out a single abduction story into a full feature length horror film. Well do I have news for you. You’re right. But! You can stretch it out to about 3/4 of a drama and 1/4 of a horror movie.

Review

This movie came out just months before the pilot of The X-files that all featured an alien abduction. Alien abduction was in the air in the early 90s and this movie came out at the prime time with a wide release and failed at the box office.

I saw it in theaters when I was just 11, so I definitely have thick nostalgia glasses on. It is not a prefect movie. In fact narratively it is a real oddity. It spend most of the movie exploring the fallout and doubt around Travis’ friends story of his disappearance. In the last 1/4 of the movie we are treated with some of the most intense sci-fi body horror put on film, and I think that 20 mins still holds up. Instead of the cold sterile and clinical scenes with grey aliens that are described by most alien abductions, this film shows a terrifying matrix like goo cocoons with menacing and indifferent wrinkle monsters conducting horribly invasive surgeries. The terror of Travis is palpable and visceral.

After the reenactment of the abduction the movie just kind of stops.

Score

7/10

Synopsis

Beginning her first year of Vet school, Justine is a vegetarian who has never had meat. Luckily her older sister goes to the same school and is there to show her the ropes. During an initiation ritual she is pressured into eating a raw rabbit kidney, and soon learns that, “hey, I really like meat!”. After the initiation her body starts to go through withdrawals, and she is desperately craving more. But breaking her lifelong commitment to abstain from meat leaves her insatiable, and animal meat just isn’t doing the job anymore. She needs something more real. Something more human.

Review of Raw

Raw, or in french Grave (yes its a foreign film) is a 2016 horror movie directed by Julia Ducournau who also directed the movie Titane. The movie focuses on the coming of age story of Justine played by Garance Marillier. The acting is great, and each character has life and nuance, making them fun to watch and interact with each other. The score of the film uses music so perfectly that I got chills in some scenes when the sound and the character’s facial expressions express the emotions of the characters so well. There are parts of this movie that give me a full body cringe because of how nasty it is, and that is really impressive to do, considering the body horror isn’t even that extreme. The true horror comes from the lengths the characters are willing to go to in order to satiate their unnatural desires.

Synopsis

In this horror comedy, we’re introduced to three sorority sisters looking for a fun, boys-free getaway at a riverside cabin. Of course, the boys show up anyway, bringing plenty of relationship drama along with them. But the real trouble begins when toxic waste creates a colony of bloodthirsty zombie beavers that just won’t stay dead. What started as a carefree getaway quickly becomes a frantic fight for survival 

Review

Zombeavers is one of those movies that has a huge following, and is incredibly hard for me to review objectively because it is so not for me. I understand the type of movie it is and it’s intent but I feel like things still could have been improved to make it more watchable: better dialogue, characters, pacing. I honestly like the idea of zombie beavers, but it has to be done a little better than this. 

The movie is very self aware in that it really is parodying horror tropes in general which makes you feel in on the joke but when the majority of the characters are hard to connect with in anyway you lose the attention of your audience.

Around half way through I was waiting for something more to happen, develop the characters or don’t this fell somewhere in limbo. When the action starts it’s pretty consistent. Goofy special effects are actually something I liked about this but something can be goofy and silly but have decent dialogue. I know there are die hard lovers of this movie but the whole time I was just wishing I was doing something else.

The movie definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously so you shouldn’t either but that being said it’s still a two out of ten movie for me.

Score

2/10

Synopsis

The late Sam Neill plays John Trent, an insurance investigator tracking down the whereabouts of Sutter Cane a famous horror novelist who has gone missing right before the release of his new novel. Trent suspects that the whole thing is a publicity stunt for the novel’s release, but as he searches for Kane, he finds the line between Kane’s fictional world and reality start to fray and overlap in disturbing ways.

Review

John Carpenter goes full Lovecraftian, melding his trademark independent film sensibilities and impressive practical effects with cosmic horror. If you look at his Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB ratings, you will also see that this is his last major film with significant critical and audience praise. It marks the end of an era where scrappy 80s gore and body horror was supplanted by slicker high budget meta narratives. This movie ushered in the new era with the likes of Candyman, The New Nightmare, and Scream.

standing between two eras, this definitely has more of an esthetic aligned with the scrappy indy vibe of Romero and Carpenters previous work. The idea takes center stage and isn’t handled preciously. It presents itself as a cool thing and lets the audience take a little ride without delving deep into the psychological or taking itself too seriously. Kind of like a Stephen King novel actually.

I picked this one because of the passing of Sam Neill and he does a great job here being the everyman descending into, you guessed it, madness. We also get Happy Gilmore’s grandma being freaky af, Vigo the Carpathian, and a very young Hayden Christiansen.

Like I said before, it’s a fun ride that doesn’t take itself too seriously. My only criticism is that it does rely on some repetitive cinematic moves such as jump scares and arbitrary time loops. But it’s all to service the films uneasy vibe and give impact to the singular moments of cosmic horror.

Score

7/10

Synopsis

Alice is a French woman who loves to smoke cigarettes. And her husband, Will, is an asshole. When the two get into a big fight at Will’s younger brother Joseph’s birthday bash, Will drunkenly drives full speed into a pedestrian, flipping his vehicle. The car catches fire and Will dies a horrific death. As the family gathers together for the funeral, Alice must face the scariest thing of all…in-laws. But not just any in-laws, but in-laws who are slowly taken over by the forces of Evil who want to burn your flesh off the bone like a candle stick.

Review of Evil Dead Burn

Evil Dead Burn is a stand alone film, and while it definitely seems to be connecting itself to some events in Evil Dead Rise and Evil Dead (2013), it does so in subtle ways. You don’t really even need to see any previous Evil Dead movie to enjoy this film. If you enjoyed the tone and style of Evil Dead Rise, you will find that exact vibe in Evil Dead Burn. It is incredibly violent from start to finish, with almost no breaks in the gore. The movie starts off horrific, is horrific for 2 hours, and then ends horrifically. I had a really good time with this movie, but I was stressed out the entire time. It can be exhausting to watch people get their head bashed in for the entire runtime, so if you are someone who struggles with the really nasty gore scenes in horror movies, I would probably sit this one out. Its hard to say if this film is more violent than the previous 2 in the franchise, but it certainly isn’t less so. The major difference I noticed in Evil Dead Burn was that a lot of the violence was akin to that of a physically abusive partner (throwing you around, punching you, and hitting you with things). The past films have focused a lot more on ripping and tearing the flesh (which of course we do get in this movie) but I think that the type of violence on display in Evil Dead Burn fits really well with its overall theme of overcoming an abusive partner, as well as breaking the cycle of an abusive family.

Score 8/10