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Horror Films

Jim said:
Just watched the "The Hallow". An atmospheric thriller with some Gothic clock and dagger mixed with just enough creature features to let you know it's a definite horror movie.
A young couple moves into an ancient Irish millhouse. They are warned about creatures and mythical entities surrounding the area, but believe such talk to be the stuff of legeng. The creatures start attacking about 1/2 way though and are horrible to look at (during the few brief occasions that one can actually see the things). With great taste the films director "Corin Hardy" chose to only show the beasties and their powers for brief but shocking moments. I won't say any more for fear of ruining it for those who desire to see this film. Hell to the critics I give it a 9 out of 10.
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That looks pretty good, I'll be watching that one .. and it's got him from SPACED and Shaun Of The Dead in it ..
 
ramonmercado said:
Exam (2009): The near future (or an alternate present), eight candidates sit in a room, they must answer one question, they cannot communicate with the invigilator or the security guard (he remains in the room). If they spoil their paper or leave the room they will also be disqualified. They have 80 minutes to complete the exam. The prize is a much sought after job with a multi-national corporation. Through info-dumps we discover that a viral pandemic has resulted in many depending on expensive medication, for either themselves or loved ones this makes the job's health care package all the more important to the examinees. But the exam paper is blank.

Tension builds as various attempts to figure out what the question is fail to achieve a result. Infra-red, ultra-violet light; even urine on the paper doesn't work. Is someone taking the piss? THings start to turn nasty as outliers are identified and bullied. How far will the prospective employees be prepared to go to be the successful applicant?

A (mostly) gripping Psychological-Horror film which slips a bit towards the end. All of the action takes place in the Exam Room. Directed, written and produced by Stuart Hazeldene. 7/10. On Horror Channel.
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I saw this a long while ago and loved it. Your review has reminded me it's worth a re-watch!
 
The Hallow looks great. Anything with Michael Smiley is usually a good bet.
 
Wrong Turn 6: Yet another tale of horrendous hillbillies in the Appalachians. Guy inherits a resort/hotel in West Virginia and travels to it with a posse of friends. Dark deeds are taking place there, we see a member of a visiting group felled by a flying hatchet, already we've observed a pair cycling through the forest cut down with arrows. These aren't your average hillbillies though, more inbred than most they look as frightening as anything you would find in South West Kerry (Healy Raes) or rural Norfolk, oh, they're cannibals as well.

The hotel is run by a weird young couple who we soon discover are in league with the inbred cannibals. They have a plan for the inheritor which involves him staying and literally injecting new blood for the area. The other visitors can stay for dinner or rather be dinner. Good Hillbilly Horror. 7/10. On Horror Channel.
 
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The Guardian: Lesser known William Friedkin film which he co-wrote and directed, he was none too happy with the result but I would classify it as good Folk Horror. There are references to Druidic Tree Worship and human sacrifuces A nanny who is really a Hamadryad has a penchant for sacrificing infants to her Mother Tree seeing as there are no druids around to do the job.

Great horror action as people are devoured by the tree, roots strangle and crush them, spikes burst up through the ground impaling unfortunates. Not having wolves to hand (it's in LA), a pack of coyotes dalso take care of troublesome oiks who discover not all is right about the nanny. Outdoes a lot of Nasty Nanny films. 7/10. On Horror Channel.
 
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The best nanny horror is Bette Davis in Hammer's The Nanny. The Guardian is absolutely ridiculous - I remember seeing the trailer playing up the Exorcist angle, but it's a million miles away from that in quality. Fortunately Friedkin still had a couple of decent films left in him afterwards.
 
GNC said:
The best nanny horror is Bette Davis in Hammer's The Nanny. The Guardian is absolutely ridiculous - I remember seeing the trailer playing up the Exorcist angle, but it's a million miles away from that in quality. Fortunately Friedkin still had a couple of decent films left in him afterwards.
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Actually I liked them both. Similar themes.

Just saw "Don't Knock Twice". Not bad they don't over do the special effects, but never the less have some good creepy ones. I won't spoil it the plot gets quite interesting during the last 1/3 of the movie. Keeps one guessing a bit is the actual villain supernatural or a deviant SOB.
 
Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema on BBC4 tonight: the one we've been waiting for, the horror episode. Excellent stuff, nice to see newer cult favourites like It Follows, The Babadook and Under the Shadow taking their place alongside the acknowledged, older classics. Bit spoilerific at the end, mind you, they even blew the ending of the film on afterwards! But it's been a great series, and the horror one was the blood red icing on the cake.
 
Unfriended: Dark Web: Matias (Colin Woodell) is a bit of a nerd but he really loves his deaf girlfriend, Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras), he's working on an app to translate his spoken words into text but she would prefer if he learned sign language, things aren't going great. but it's games night and he joins his friends online to have some fun. He has a new laptop and and as the games progress he finds hidden files and a Norah C IV starts to contact him claiming the laptop is hers, yes: he found it. But the files turn out to be vids of women who have been kidnapped and the abductors could have murdered them. The gamers are drawn into a game of cat and mouse with the denizens of the Dark Web as Amaya comes under threat.

Tension builds throughout the film as the action unfolds on Skype, messages, pop-up screens and side windows. Unwise decisions are made as the online and real world battle ensues. Adequate acting all round apart from a few OTT moments by gamer AJ (Conor Del Rio) result in a convincing enough film with some shocks and frights. A worthy directorial debut by Stephen Susco who also provides the screenplay. 7.5/10.
 
I LOVE a film about social media - thanks for the recommendation, ramon. Have you seen The Den? That was excellent.
 
The first Unfriended was surprisingly decent, at last a good spin on found footage. Not really a horror, but Open Windows with Elijah Wood is entertainingly ridiculous (the ways they keep cameras on!).
 
The Possession of Michael King: Michael King's wife dies in an accident after she follows advice from a psychic. wanting to debunk all psychics and believers Michael (Shane johnson)sets out to prove that neither God nor the Devil exist. Things don't go so smoothly though as he encounters a series of believers in Satan, necromancers and even a mortician who will provide body parts for use in dark ceremonies. At first the attempts seem farcical as police disrupt an attempted summoning in a graveyard. But during one of the rituals something seems to follow Michael back and his increasingly erratic behaviour worries his friends. Michaels sister Ellie (Ella Anderson) is looking after is daughter and is concerned for the child's safety.

Nothing particularly new in this competent horror flick directed and written by David Jung (no relation) but it has more than a few scares with convincing effects. The tension gradually builds as Michael's possession occurs more more often and the spirit is more fully able to control him. Starting with dark eyes it leads on to levitation, telekinesis and abnormal strength. A vein of dark humour runs through the film especially helped by the necromancer/mortician (cullen Douglas. 7/10. On Horror Channel.
 
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Zeke Newbold said:
The Meg.

An international underwater marine biology lab, off the coast of Shanghai, is researching the lowest undersea poiint of the Earth and find that ithey can penetrate even further down. In so doing, however, they disturb a relict megalodon - a prehistoric gargantuan shark - which traps one of their submarines. They then have to call in a Megalodon expert called Jonas (sic) (Jason Statham) who is the only man to have encountered one before.

They didn't believe him then.
This time they're going to have to.*

Jonas rescues the submarine members but the Meg - meanwhile (and for reasons that are not really apparent) leaves its abode and goes on the rampage. So the team members have to hunt it down. This will take them to a coastal resort of China where the Meg could have a feeding frenzy....

Shark attack scenarious have become a B-movie cliche now, and they're usually tongue in cheek with ropey CGI effects. This one stands out for its good production values (I think they use a model for the most part) decent acting and reasonably credible plot, which is not so predictable either.

The film, though, couldn't be more cheesy if it tried, with every cliche in the book being rattled through: the selfless heroism, the matey merry banter, the sexual tension between the two main actors, the cute but clued up kid, the cool black guy who act as the voice of reason, the dedicated scientist...and so on.

The film has some Chinese input, in the form of Chinese actors and dialogue - which is refreshing, if increasingly common.

Statham is not my kind of actor - too old school action-hero for me - but here is more likeable as the dragon slayer whou would, given a choice, run away from the dragon.

I would like to have bean treated to more scientific exposition - after all the premise is quite a credible one. Allso I would have prefered a more eco-friendly ending (the story seems to promise one).

8/10: Ideal summer movie (which I saw on my UK break!). It is not the creature feature Jaws reboot I was expecting, more of an undersea adventure yarn, but there's a naive goodnaturedness about it which is impossible to dislike.

* That's my line not theirs, but they can have it - with commission!
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Saw it last night, great fun. 8/10.
 
Frankenstein's Army (2013): Found footage Horror Film but it's WW2 footage. Dmitri an army propagandist is provided with a state of the art camera and is attached to a Red Army reconnaissance squad at the front. It opens with the usual shots of soldiers hamming it for the cameras, but also shows the outcuts where the troops don't behave so well. The squad come across some strangely mutilated bodies and really bizarre skeletons. Further on they discover a dead German soldier whose body seems to be fused to an odd fighting machine. The real horror begins when they reach an apparently abandoned building but are attacked by man-machine hybrids. The battle ensues and sonn Dmitri comes in contact with the mad scientist in charge of the operation - Dr Frankenstein.

Some good cinema verité shots both in ordinary battle and fighting the monsters. Clashes in tunnels gives this the feel of Aliens without being too derivative. Some real thought went into the creation of the hybrids, slashers, guns, hooks attached to arms, these are literally steampunk cyborgs. One even has an aircraft engine complete with propellor affixed to his upper torso. Sounds crazy but perhaps it is a reflection on the bizarre medical experiments the nazi doctors performed in Concentration Camps. Frankenstein wishes to bring about a literal meeting of minds by melding two lobes from different people together.

Directed by Richard Raaphorst, written by Chris M. Mitchell and Miguel Tejada-Flores, Frankenstein's Army is an effective Horror/War drama, veined with dark humour but starts to drag a bit towards the end. 7/10. On Horror Channel.
 
Summer Camp: The title suggests a slasher film, even the build up points to this with a mysterious knife wielding stranger in the woods and odd new age travellers in the area. Three Americans are hired as counsellors to work with the director at a Spanish camp in an old building. Problems abound as animals come down with a strange illness, turning savage.

Soon humans are also affected and turn violent after vomiting up a dark liquid. This is a fast zombie style illness involving biting and feral behaviour. Some impressive action scenes as the violent ones hunt the uninfected through the building and the forest. Perhaps a little drawn out and the attacks/violence becomes a tad repetitive. Nevertheless it is an effective directorial debut by Alberto Marini who also co-wrote the screenplay. 7/10.
 
ramonmercado said:
Summer Camp: The title suggests a slasher film, even the build up points to this with a mysterious knife wielding stranger in the woods and odd new age travellers in the area. Three Americans are hired as counsellors to work with the director at a Spanish camp in an old building. Problems abound as animals come down with a strange illness, turning savage.

Soon humans are also affected and turn violent after vomiting up a dark liquid. This is a fast zombie style illness involving biting and feral behaviour. Some impressive action scenes as the violent ones hunt the uninfected through the building and the forest. Perhaps a little drawn out and the attacks/violence becomes a tad repetitive. Nevertheless it is an effective directorial debut by Alberto Marini who also co-wrote the screenplay. 7/10.
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I saw that last night! It was OK.
 
I've just seen Ghost Stories again. It's actually really sad.
 
The Meg: Don't expect logic or good science but to compensate you will get plenty of fun. Jason Statham is an underwater rescue expert, burned out after he lost two men in a strange incident. He was blamed but is certain a creature attacked the wrecked sub he was rescuing the crew from. Now his ex-wife has dived deeper then the Mariana Trench, through some membrane into even deeper warmer water. But her submersible is attacked by a giant squid and then by a Megalodon 90 foot shark, causing serious damage. Will Jason get to her on time and also be vindicated? Will she survive the Viz style wise-cracking by her two crew members?

We also get a selfish billionaire, stock doctors, scientists and engineers. Even a cute kid on a research station who isn't annoying. And we get underwater gliders which look like a 1960s idea of a 1990s car, lots of glass/perspex but manages to dive 6 miles down! Great fun! 8/10.
 
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ramonmercado said:
The Meg: Don't expect logic or good science but to compensate you will get plenty of fun. Jason Statham is an underwater rescue expert, burned out after he lost two men in a strange incident. He was blamed but is certain a creature attacked the wrecked sub he was rescuing the crew from. Now his ex-wife has dived deeper then the Mariana Trench, through some membrane into even deeper warmer water. But her submersible is attacked by a giant squid and then by a Megalodon 90 foot shark, causing serious damage. Will Jason get to her on time and also be vindicated? Will she survive the Viz style wise-cracking by her two crew members?

We also get a selfish billionaire, stock doctors, scientists and engineers. Even a cute kid on a research station who isn't annoying. And we get underwater gliders which look like a 1960s idea of a 1990s car, lots of glass/perspex but manages to dive 6 miles down! Great fun! 8/10.
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A cute kid that isn't annoying? In a movie? Is that possible?
 
ramonmercado said:
Yeah, I liked it. my review:

The Lodgers: Gothic Irish Horror set in a decaying mansion in 1920. Twins Rachel (Charlotte Vega) and Edward (Bill Milner) live alone in this crumbling manor, their parents having committed suicide four years before. Strange entities also dwell in the house and force the twins to follow three rules: they have to be in bed by midnight, no stranger may be admitted to the house, if one of them flees then the life of the other is forfeit.

Now they are eighteen and Rachel falls for Seán (Eugene Simon) who has just returned to the local village having lost a leg in WW1.Seán and Rachel are tormented by local yokels who resent his service in the British Army and her ascendency background. But Rachel and Edward are very much in reduced circumstances having to get food on credit from a local shop. A creepy solicitor (David Bradley) arrives and tells them that the house must be sold.

The film is perhaps an allegory for the fall of British Rule in Ireland, the manor crumbling like the old institutions, the Anglo-Irish being lodgers but the locals also being lodgers in their own land which they still don't rule. The director (Brian O'Malley and screenwriter (David Turpin, a real life Goth) confirmed this in a Q&A session after the film screening. But in spite of any allegories it is very much a horror film.

The twins parents drowned themselves in a lake as did their grandparents and generations before them to atone for some original sin. The question now is whether or not Rachel and Edward will escape the fate which seems to be predestined for them. Ghostly naked figures appear in the mansion, water seeps upwards through a trapdoor to the basement where the entities dwell.Some great scenes of terror as waterbound creatures drag people down and existential terror is expressed through shadows and filtered light in a forest. 8 /10.
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The Lodgers is now on Netflix.
 

The Bride - full movie with subtitles.

This is the second horror flick by Svyatoslav Podgaevsky - a director who seems to be turning into the James Whale/Wes Craven of Russian horror cinema. Before this he gave us `Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite` (as shared above) and after it `Mermaid: Lake of the Dead` ( as reviewed above) - and has another horror one out next year. It seems to be a new one each year at this rate!

The opening prologue to `The Bride` contains some genuinely harrowing scenes invovling photographing dead loved ones and being buried alive - following that it becomes more gentle, and indeed could have been scarier. Essentially it's a weird-family-in-a-creepy-old-house yarn with some elaborate occult lore grafted on. Shades of `Rosemary's Baby` at first and then after that pretty much any of the `Sinister` franchise movies - yet remaining Russian all the same.

The lead actress is drop-dead, if irritatingly child-like.

As with of Podgaevsky's films (so far) the Dark Vengeful Femnine is at the heart of it. Does this tell us something about Modern Russia perhaps?
 
Yithian said:
How have I not seen this?


Classic Trailer!
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Yith, have you seen The Wailing? A Korean Folk Horror film:

The Wailing: South Korean Horror involving Demons, a Shaman, strange infections, murders and perhaps Zombies; certainly a lot of biting going on. A Japanese stranger (Jun Kunimura) is living in a shack in the woods in rural South Korea, people say that he eats deer alive and infects people, perhaps both physically and mentally. Is he some sort of Demon? There is also a strange young woman (Chun Woo-hee), is she in fact the source of the area's ills?

Villagers begin to act strangely, start murder each other gruesomely, run around biting people, commit arson. A local police sergeant (Kwak Do-won) investigates and puts his own family at risk. His daughter (Kim Hwan-hee) may be possessed or controlled by a Demon. He is persuaded to call in a Shaman (Hwang Jung-min) to perform an exorcism but the Shaman realises that this in itself won't solve the problem, a stronger ritual will be required to finally rid the village of the Demon.

Quite a violent film with several brutal murders committed both on and off stage. Also elements of psychological terror are well used throughout the film, in particular the primeval panic evoked by the forest. The ritual itself is explained and illustrated in detail, both the animal sacrifices during it and the cleansing rites necessary beforehand, bringing to mind the film A Dark Song. This is South Korean Folk Horror.

Directed and written by Na Hong-jin this is a demanding film which you will not easily put out of your mind. At 156 minutes however it does drag at time and would have benefited from 20 minutes being judiciously cut from the running time. 8.5/10. On Netflix.
 
Not heard of it, but it sounds good, doesn't it?
 
Just watched 'A Quiet Place'. Great premise and some really tense scenes, I did feel they could have made a better movie from it though. The monster had definite shades of 'Stranger Things'.
 
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