31 Days of Halloween - You will jizz in terror!

[Joe Molotov]

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Just got back from Smile, so I'm making the thread.

If you like "curse" movies in the vein of The Ring, The Grudge, and It Follows, you'll like Smile. It doesn't break any new ground, but it does go pretty hard. It has this discordant electronic industrial soundtrack that gets under your skin while the movie pummels you with pure nightmare fuel. It does overstay it's welcome a little bit with a 2 hour runtime that features a saggy second act that does the obligatory bit where the main character describes what's happening in a way that makes her sound nuts and ends with "I'm not nuts, you gotta believe me!" but no one believes her. But then the movie kicks back into a gear with a ridiculous finale that put a grin on my face (pun maybe intended). 4 out of 5  's

[chronovore]

Watched 2014’s “Cruel and Unusual,” a low key, slow burn morality piece. It’s iterative in its storytelling, and could practically be produced as a stage play, with a bit of lighting magic to handle rapid shifts between the two main locations.  Enjoyable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_Unusual_(2014_film)

Mentioned in the movie thread, I enjoyed “The Empty Man,” which starts off as one film, changes to the film shown in the preview, then loops back around to the opening scene to stick the landing. Recommended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empty_Man_(film)

[Transhuman]

I havn't even seen the first Halloween, seems a little late to start now

[Joe Molotov]

Movie #1: Saloum (2021)

Watched on Shudder
Saloum is a African produced action/horror/thriller about a squad of elite mercenaries made up of Chaka (the brains), Rafa (the brawn), and Minuit (the shaman). They're being paid a million dollars to smuggle a drug lord and a suitcase full of gold out of the country during the 2003 military coup in Guinea-Bissau and the subsequent brutal crackdown on the drug trade. After their plane is sabotaged, they're forced to put down near a small fishing village that Chaka says he's familiar with, but Minuit knows that he has a secret motive. An act of revenge reveals that village isn't as peaceful as it looks, and it actually home to demonic forces that threaten to kill everyone. Pretty cool movie, I'll give it 3.5 out of 5 Suitcases Full of Gold.

Movie #2: Blue Sunshine (1978)

Watched on Shudder
Blue Sunshine is a horror movie that's shot like a 70's paranoid thriller. It's about a guy named Jerry Zipkin that's at a party when his friend Frannie freaks out and kills everyone there before running into the street and getting hit by a truck. Since Zipkin is the only person left alive, he gets blamed for the murders and decides to go on the run instead of trusting the police. As more random acts of violence begin popping up around the city, he finds connections to a congressional candidate Ed Flemming and a batch of LSD that Flemming sold 10 years ago in college called Blue Sunshine. The movie has some cool ideas but it's wildly uneven and ultimately it lacks any sort of conspiratorial angle that could really make it pop. There's a congressional candidate, mysterious LSD that's making people kill, a man on the run; I kept expecting there to be some Tuskegee type shit, maybe a shadowy pharmaceutical company or an CIA cover-up, but instead it's all played as straight forward as you could possibility imagine. It's a bit disappointing, I'll give it 2 out of 5 Bad Trips.

[Transhuman]

What's your favourite movie from the Species quadrilogy?

[Joe Molotov]

I've only seen the first two, but I'll definitely go with the only one that stars Sir Ben Kingsley.

[Phoenix Dark]

I avoided this for a long ass time because it looked like it was just about some evil green water or some shit but...it's actually really good! That is my review.

[Joe Molotov]

Movie #3: The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)

Watched on Shudder
Oy luv, it's a crackin' good English zombie movie, innit? Actually, it's Spanish, despite being filmed in England in English. It's for the best, you can't expect the British don't know how to make a proper Eurosleaze zombie movie like the mainlanders do. I'll give it 4 out of 5 zombies eating policeman guts.

[chronovore]

Lights Out
I forgot that I had already seen this movie. The short film is not only more succinct, it’s a better film through and through. The amount of padding they stuck in this tiny little story is astonishing. Just go watch the original on YouTube, and enjoy its brevity.

LIFE
Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Canada’s favorite son, Ryan Reynolds. An interesting alien is rendered in unevenly applied to CG efforts. Clearly a tremendous amount of production effort went into this, with all of the actors appearing in zero gravity consistently.
Many friends said this movie is incredibly dumb and not worth watching. Some of these people have even seen Prometheus and Covenant, and did not call those movies stupid as vehemently as they did this one. However, I will admit that the sequence of shots leading up to the twist at the end make it virtually impossible for that twist to occur. Films should at least play by their own internal rules.

Velvet Buzzsaw
Another Jake Gyllenhaal movie. This time with John Malkovich, Toni Collette, Renee Russo, Natalie Dyer, and other notables. An impressive concept, mired down in overly explicitly showing how each victim is  killed. Good performances, mediocre movie. Perhaps its greatest conceit is keeping its title as a “Rosebud” moment for the end of the movie.

[Joe Molotov]

Movie #4: God Told Me To (1976)

Watched on Shudder.
A devoutly Catholic New York City cop investigates a string of mass homicides where the preparators all claimed that they were told by God to kill. The only common factor between the perps is a meeting with a mysterious, messianic figure named Bernard Phillips, who has followers in the highest positions of power. This movie is directed by the great Larry Cohen, one of his more serious horror movies before he would go on to direct Full Moon High,  Q: The Winged Serpent, and The Stuff. It's a solid movie, although The Stuff is still my favorite. This movie could have used Michael Moriarty. I'll give it 3 out of 5 Godheads.

[chronovore]

I liked this.