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Citadel's now on my watchlist. Sounds like a good Irish stylish horror movie. I've noticed that not a ton of Horror movies come from Ireland (vs. The States or Britain) but most that do are solid. The Hallow, Liar of the White Worm, etc.

BTW been on the Christopher Lee Dracula kick lately. Been years - decades since I've seen some of these. The 1st 3 are really good in particular: The Horror of Dracula, Dracula Prince of Darkness, and Dracula has Risen from the Grave.
 
Watched "Don't be Afraid of the Dark". A horror movie set in New England. Initially earlier in the last century a famous artist is seen killing his house keeper and then extracting her teeth to feed to unknown creatures that only come out in the dark dark and reside in a hidden chamber. The estate in purchased in this day and age by a couple "with a young girl" looking to flip the mansion. The young girl soon starts to to catch glimpses of the ancient "gnome like creatures as well as mildly supernatural events. Initially no one believes her as the creatures grow more and more aggressive. The father and girlfriend eventually come to believe in the creatures and realize their evil intentions. Well Don't want to spoil the ending. Overall a good creepy creature feature with a descent story 7/10. Next on board "Citadel".
 
So glad I found this thread, excellent recommendations,,, yes Citadel freaked the hell out of me. Watched the trailers for Midsommar, the lighthouse and the new remake of Pet Cemetary. Just need some good links for them now.....but all months "to watch" list. ......Ohh also saw trailer for "in fabric". That looks uber -trippy , a must watch .

But yes, loving the Recs,,,!!!!
 
I wouldn't bother with the Pet Sematary remake, it's pretty poor, but to be fair it would be difficult to capture the book's utter bleakness. The changes they make are a bit silly.

In Fabric has been described as "Dario Argento's Are You Being Served?", it's not my favourite Peter Strickland film, he's getting even more self-indulgent if such a thing were possible, but it does have stuff that's so weird no other filmmaker would attempt it, or even think of it. So go for that one if you have a choice.
 
Bite: Body horror film. Casey is on her bachelorette party in Costa Rica when she is bitten by a sea insect. Back in the US she starts to transform, lays insect eggs and spits acid at people. Her prospective (domineering) mother-in-law better stop bugging her! Eerie the way her apartment is literally turned into an insect nest. Pretty gruesome with jealous friends and a hapless fiance who wanted progeny but not eggsactly what Casey produces. Directed, written and produced by Chad Archibald who also made The Heretics and The Drownsman. 7/10.

Showing again on the Horror Channel Tuesday 8th October at 9.00 PM.
 
The Abandoned: A truck crashes into a Russian farmyard in the 1960s, the farmer finds a dead woman and two wailing babies in the cab. 40 tears later, Marie (Anastasia Hille) returns to Russia to try and trace her family history, having inherited a property she makes her way to an isolated house. Things turn strange straight away - we have the obligatory peasant woman warning her not to go there and a surly driver who disappears once they arrive island farm. The house is dilapidated but Marie encounters a zombiesque woman, fleeing the house she falls in the river. Coming too she encounters Nikolai (Karl Roden) who claims to be her twin brother. Zombies or solid ghosts who are all too familiar to them attack.

Poltergeists, evil spirits, timeslips and timeloops abound in this dark film. Deaths are reenacted, Marie and Nikolai go out of phase with eachother as the house rejuvenates itself to its 1960s state. But time flows backwards and forwards in a storm. A creepy film, horror but not too many out and out scares, it depends a lot on atmosphere and camera work by Xavi Gimenez. The story is convoluted at times,,some scenes could have been shortened and the suggestion that experiments were carried out in tunnels under house expanded on. Directed and written by Nacho Cerdà. 7/10. On the Horror Channel.
 
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The Night Sitter is quite good fun. Low budget, reasonable CGI and some unpleasant ideas. A con woman poses as a babysitter to a nervous boy and his trouble maker potential step brother. There may be good reasons for why the boy is nervous. It made me laugh in more than a couple places.
 
Ready or Not seems to be the horror hot ticket at the moment.
 
The Night Sitter is quite good fun. Low budget, reasonable CGI and some unpleasant ideas. A con woman poses as a babysitter to a nervous boy and his trouble maker potential step brother. There may be good reasons for why the boy is nervous. It made me laugh in more than a couple places.

Sorry, but I thought it was complete trash. Gory yes, but the characters were all ludicrous stereotypes and it couldn't quite make up its mind whether to be all-out comedy or horror.
 
Ready Or Not: A Black Comedy Horror film with the comedy fading at times due to the brutality of the killings. Grace (Samara Weaving) is marrying into the wealthy Le Domas family. On her wedding night she participates in a family ritual, drawing a card from a box to decide on the game to be played. She chooses Hide & Seek. Soon she is fighting for her life. An ancestor of the Le Domas family had made a deal with Mr Le Bail (the Devil) which brought him great wealth- at a cost.

A gruesome chase ensues with maid's being accidentally shot with crossbows and crushed in dumbwaiters. The resulting injuries are starkly displayed and it would have taken just a few changes in the script to transform this from comedy to outright horror. The family engage in Satan worship and sacrifice goats as well as those new family members who choose a fatal game. Even children participate in the hunt.

Samara Weaving delivers a tour de force performance as she faces an onslaught of knives, bullets arrows and axes. .Very dark humour and horror combine to create an entertaining film. Ably directed by Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin who were also at the helm of Southbound and Devil's Due. 8/10.
 
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Quite enjoyed Aussie found footage horror "The Tunnel" last night.
A natural successor to the likes of Death Line, Catacombs and As Above So Below, it effectively combined extreme claustrophobia with genuinely creepy half-glimpsed horrors.
Available on Amazon Prime video or Netflix.
 
Level 16: A group of girls have been raised in an institute, told that conditions outside are lethal, Life for them is highly regimented and thy are taught to be subservient. Finally at age 16 they are being prepared for adoption by sponsors who will give them a better future. Two girls suspect that something sinister is at play. Dark, almost entirely fumed in a few rooms and corridors provoking a sense of claustrophobia, threat and tension. Writer/Director Danishka Esterhazy delivers a good Psychological/Horror film with a few disturbing scenes. 7/10. On Netflix.
 
Within: A family move into a new home, strange noises are heard, furniture moves, object disappear reappear. Turns out a murder/suicide occurred in house 10 years before. a creepy locksmith is hanging around as well. Tension is maintained throughout as you're kept guessing as to what's really going on. Some good jump scares and disturbing/violent scenes. Nothing particularly original but director Phil Claydon delivers an entertaining Horror/Thriller. 7/10. On Netflix.
 
Fractured: A paranoia filled Dark thriller. Ray (Sam Worthington) is on edge, arguing with his wife Joanne (Lily Rabe) as they drive across the US Mid-West. His young daughter Peri (Lucy Capri) has an accident and he rushes her to a nearby hospital. But several hours later hospital staff claim to have no record of his wife or daughter. They claim that he was treated for a head injury earlier in the day. Ray is on a short fuse and trouble ensues.

What is really going on? The medical clerk had asked some odd questions when taking the families details. Strange telephone conversations take place between hospital staff. Ray notices organ boxes leaving the hospital as seriously injured patients arrive. There is an aura of threat, even menace about the emergency department. Is Ray a reliable witness/narrator though? He's a recovering alcoholic who has just bought miniature spirit bottles and does have grazing to his head. But the medical staff act as if they may have something to hide.

Good performances by Worthington and Adjoa Andoh as a psychiatrist who tries to convince him that he is hallucinating. Director Brad Anderson working from a script by James B. McElroy delivers a work of psychological horror which will keep you guessing and intrigued until the denouement. 8/10. On Netflix.
 
The Influence (La Infuencia): Spanish horror film. Alicia (Manuela Velles) moves back home to help her sister Sara (Maggie Civantos) care for their coma stricken mother Victoria (Emma Suarez). Through flashbacks we see how Victoria, a Witch, maltreated both girls, forcing them to partake in her rituals, using a mirror and lockets containing hair and nails to control them. The house is dark and some rooms are filled with the mothers occult objects and books in particular an ibex skull which figures throughout the the film. There are also spiders, lots of spiders.

Alicia's daughter Nora (Claudia Placer) seems to able to communicate with the comatose Victoria but soon starts to fall under control of the Witches spirit, reacting violently to verbal bullying at school. She becomes trapped in her grandmother's room, poltergeist activity takes place. Nora also meets an oddly attired young girl, Luna (Daniela Rubio), who vandalises cars and walks on hot ashes.

The Influence is based on a story by Ramsey Campbell but is in some ways reminiscent of Hereditary particularly in plot development but is more unevenly paced and is pretty much a slow burner. Some truly terrifying scenes and the house itself provides a dark Gothic setting. Really good performances from Placer and Rubio, also by Sofia Tolina and Berta Sanchez as the young Alicia and Sara. This is Director Denis Rovira van Boekholt's first feature film and caveats aside is entertaining and scarifying. 7/10. On Netflix.
 
Vanishing on 7th Street: Detroit becomes darker than usual when there is a power outage. This blackout is accompanied by a super Rapture as the vast majority of humanity vanish, leaving behind empty sets of clothes. Jets fall from the skies, vehicles crash. A handful of survivors gather in a bar which has a generator. As the days have passed the Sun rises later and sets earlier each day. More people vanish, literally devoured by shadows, light is the only protection but fuel and batteries are running out.

An interesting post-apocalypse film, some good scenes of deserted streets, cars abandoned inhabited only by sets of clothing, a jet crashes into the skyscraper canyons behind the of the survivors. After a promising start the film does peter out (like the light) and doesn't really have a satisfactory conclusion imho. Director Brad Anderson delivers a flawed horror film which is just about worth watching. 5.5/10. On the Horror Channel.
 
New from Russia: Pain Threshold (Bolevoi Porog).In this survival/crime/adventure thriller a group of four tearaway rich kid Muscovite twenty-somethings go on a white water rafting outing in the Altai mountains.There they tangle with a group of escaped Russian convicts - and a deadly cat and mouse chase ensues.

The comparisons with Deliverance are obvious, but not milked too much. There is an interesting subtheme about the strained relationship between the Russians and the native people - but this is not really explored enough. In fact it is all rather predictable, if genuinely tense.

The main plus is the meaty acting from some up and coming new actors - but it wouldn't win over those for whom horror= the supernatural.


To be reviewed at more lenght in my blog.
 
A.M.I.: 18 year-old Cassie (Debs Howard) has lost her mother in a car crash and is suffering from survivor guilt which has left her with PTSD. She downloads an intelligent personal assistant and sets up her mother's voice on it. This is no ordinary Artificial Machine Intelligence though, it scans available information to adopt Cassie's mother's personality but it goes much further. Soon it begins to manipulate Cassie or possibly just enabling her to commit murder. As well as giving her new recipes it provides useful information on disposing of bodies.

A.I. gone mad is an old trope but it gets an interesting twist here as an app transforms itself into the ultimate personal assistant/assassin. Should have undergone more Beta testing. Creepy the way AMI detects Cassie's cheating boyfriend hooking up with her "best friend" and ensures that Cassie will find out. Some gruesome scenes but a line of dark humour runs through the film. Nothing extraordinary but Director Rusty Nixon (Residue, Candiland) delivers a enjoyable SF/Horror Thriller. 6/10. On Netflix.
 
Ghost Storm (2011): The ghosts of a religious cult who had committed mass suicide on an island in 1912 are freed from their tomb by an electrical storm. The ghosts send out strands of mist to suck the life force from their victims leaving them desiccated. As the ghosts gain strength they blast their prey to pieces and form a cloud which floats over the island. Similarities to The Fog abound, the island is in the US Pacific North-West, there is a conspiracy regarding the mass suicide, descendants of the cult's enemies are targeted by the ghosts, the killer mist/fog. The CGI is a bit ropey but writer/director Paul Ziller (well known for his TV horror films) makes the best of a low budget to deliver a watchable horror thriller. 5.5/10.
 
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The Drownsman (2014): Madison has strange dreams after nearly drowning; a dark figure tries to drown her in a glass tank basement. Developing extreme hydrophobia she misses her best friends wedding, unable to leave her house due to rain. Her friends plan an intervention getting a psychic to perform a ritual, things backfire when the dark figure is summoned up. They now discover that he is the ghost of a actual serial killer who drowned his victims. The Drownsman is now out to slay Madison and her friends. Hands reach out of washing machines, a woman is dragged into a spilled water on a table and transported to the killer's lair. So-so effects with a few frights and a dark secret is revealed. Written and directed by Chad Archibald (Bite, Ejecta) who gives us a watchable horror mystery. 5.5/10.
 
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