14.
CreepshowReally enjoyed checking this movie off my list. The direction was good, and while the quality was inconsistent (Stephen King's short was definitely the weakest, and The Crate went on a little too long for me), the direction as great. Not really super creepy but still nicely atmospheric and with some nice gore effects. I especially liked the light filters whenever shit got real instead of tinting the entire picture in post-production, felt very gritty and low-fi. Loved it.
4 / 5
15.
Texas Chainsaw (2013)The parade of idiocy on display in this movie was fairly off the charts. Thankfully no one was particularly unlikable, but no one redeemable either (especially in the second half of the movie.)
What's striking is how much this movie goes out of its way to sync up with the 1974 original, positioning itself as "the one true sequel," and then proceeds to shit all over the movie with ridiculous retconning and a massive stylistic clash. Where as the Tobe Hooper original was moody, barren, and suffocating, this new "sequel" is noisy, dumb, trashy, gorey, and worst of all, boring in spite of it all.
Gonna spoil the movie (but I have a reason): in the middle, the main chick finds out Leatherface is her biological cousin. He's been killing her friends and some townspeople the entire movie, but then the Mayor turns on her for her lineage and she finds out about her past.
She proceeds to throw a chainsaw into Leatherface's hands and shout, "Do your thing, cuz!" before he carves up the Mayor.
To be honest, I'm tempted to give it a point just for that incredibly hilarious moment. I was cracking up for a few solid minutes and had to rewind to watch it again.
1 / 5
16.
Creep (2014)A well-acted but mostly empty movie about a guy who is hired off Craigslist to video document some weirdo who is allegedly dying of cancer. Dying guy is making a video thing for his future son, or so he says.
It's tough to say why this one didn't hit for me. After I watched it, I saw it had 92% on RottenTomatoes, and I probably would have given a lower score if I knew that ahead of time. It's just... empty. I can sort of see why it resonated with critics, the acting as I said was top-notch and it focused on thrills over gore. For me though, there just wasn't anything to grab onto. I was somewhat expecting a supernatural bent, and I'm not disappointed I didn't get it, but the fact remains it's lacking
something.
Not sure. If anyone else saw this movie, tell me what I was missing (or what the movie was missing, if you agree.)
2 / 5
17.
MamaThis movie was definitely the scariest of the last week or two. The monster was absolutely amazing, definitely worthy of a Del Toro-produced picture. There were some good jump scares, and the central premise was decent, but the moment-to-moment feeling of dread wasn't as high as I expected. It was also obvious this was originally a short stretched into a full feature, as the psychologist sideplot was almost entirely fluff (especially considering all the backstory happens in a dream anyways.)
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Also, I know it's going to make me sound horrible person, but I was so happy when the younger sister died at the end. Holy crap what an annoying fricking character. And also, a very punchable face. OK, that makes me sound even more horrible. (But it's true.)
3 / 5
18.
House of the Long ShadowsThis is an incredibly overlooked movie, which is a shame. The atmosphere is crazy-good and haunting, and the core mystery is fairly engaging. The biggest reason to see this is the star power: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine. I'm not as knowledgable about Carradine, but the former three? Oh my god. This is the only movie in existence that they all appeared in together, and they're easily the highlights of the entire film.
Imagine The Avengers but for the Hammer era horror flicks. This should have been a big deal, but I fear the reason it wasn't is because it came a little too late (1983.) Still, this movie cannot be missed.
I should say the rest of the cast wasn't nearly as strong (and were occasionally annoying), and the scares weren't
quite there for me, but I was easily able to overlook those flaws. If you have good taste, you probably can too.
Besides everything else, drunk old Peter Cushing is a national treasure that should be cherished at all costs.
4 / 5
19.
The GallowsHaha, this movie
suuuuuuuccccked.
The commercials were touting:
"Jason had his machete. Freddy had his glove. Charlie... has his noose."
"ON JULY 27... MEET THE NEXT NAME... IN HORROR."
They're all produced by New Line Cinema, so it's totally in their prerogative to draw the comparison, but man, I cannot imagine it misfiring harder than this misfire of a movie. I watched this movie purely out of morbid schadenfreude. I wanted to see just how badly they failed.
And hoo lordy, if I had low expectations, they now seem like Everest in comparison now. This checks all the late 90s/early 00s bad cliche boxes with an almost religious fervor.
Horrible, unlikable, putrid characters? Check.
Terrible acting? Check.
Worthless and nauseating found-footage shaky cam? Check. (More late 00s, but still.)
Generic, uninspired "bad guy" killer with braindead backstory? Check and check.
Jesus. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about this slop-pile other than the inspiring thought that if this piece of shit could get made for $100,000 and hit it big, then indie film makers might not have it too bad.
Other than, you know, crying themselves to sleep every night because The Gallows was produced and not their assuredly-much better films.
0 / 5
spoiler (click to show/hide)
The only movie I've ever given a zero to.
