25. Hatchet II
Better than the first mostly because Candyman aka Tony Todd played a much larger role, though in the transition Marybeth was recast as Danielle Harris which I feel was a downgrade. The movie takes a hit early on to the pacing with a padded, mostly-unnecessary recap of Crowley's origins, and then a meandering middle. In fact, while watching it I was looking at the time left, and the bloodbath doesn't really start until the movie has 25 minutes left. To the film's credit, it felt fairly natural to not start the killings earlier, but come on, even the first movie killed off a couple goobers with gators before Hatchet himself showed up.
This is a better made film than its predecessor but watching them back to back left me a little more cynical about the series. Once the shine of "retro slasher camp" wears off there's not much to this uninspired franchise, which is unfortunate because the potential is there. My recommendation would be to only watch one of these movies a year if you're interested.
2 / 5
26. The Host (2006)
A pretty good Korean monster flick, though the monster was a little on the smaller side. Still, in the early scenes it still creates some good tension. The character roster was big, but thankfully not too big.
If not for the monster movie aspect, I'd almost call this a black comedy or satire. It touches on a lot of things, from America to activism, and while it sticks out a little it's usually used to the film's benefit. The story is good, but has weird pacing (reminded me of Snowpiercer in that regard), and the characters are memorable and likable overall. One particular sequence absolutely thrilled me from sheer direction alone (guy running and grabbing the little girl's arm.) The music, the camera angles, the cuts, all fantastic stuff for any movie let alone a foreign indie flick.
3 / 5
27. Tales of Halloween
Heralded as "the best horror anthology since Trick 'r Treat," I knew I had to give this a watch - and it mostly delivered. It's not as polished or interconnected as TrT (hence my middling score), but it's still definitely worth watching and captures the "spirit of Halloween" every bit as well as its forebear.
From the get-go, this movie introduces something like ten shorts with their directors, so I knew the movie was going to be packed with smaller shorts compared to TrT's four meaty interwoven ones, and I was right. I don't think most of the shorts were all that great, but almost any one of them could easily go toe-to-toe with, say, the V/H/S series' bests.
The highlight short for me was "Friday the 31st," an obvious Friday the 13th homage that asks "what if Jason was the one being hunted?" Some of the shorts, like "The Night Billy Raised Hell" and "Trick" seemed interesting but lost me as they played out, some were pretty insubstantial ("Grim Grinning Ghost," though a cameo by Lyn Shaye made it worthwhile), and some were entertaining and well-suited to a short format ("This Means War" and "Bad Seed.") The whole thing was pretty scattershot compared to Trick 'r Treat's quality, but that's what happens when you cram in ten whole shorts.
Considering it does have ten shorts and all of them are entertaining on some level, I'd definitely say give this a watch next Halloween.
3 / 5
