4th Annual N&G 31 Days* of Halloween (2022)

[hype]

Hellbender (2021)

This one actually caught me by surprise! It's def. not great but it's an at least somewhat original idea and is just a fun low budget indie ride. It's a Mother, Daughter Metal band but the Mom wont let the Daughter hardly go anywhere or be around anyone because she's "sick". She's a Teenager now though so obviously she starts to get more curious about the outside world and things get a little crazy from there. It's basically a Coming Of Age story with a Horror twist. The only real problem I had was the ending felt out of place like they weren't sure how to end it and tacked it on last second which brought down the entire film more then it should have but it's still a worthy late night watch imo!





A really awesome note about this film that made me a bit of a bigger fan is how it was made. If you see in the poster where it says "An Adams Family Film", well that "Family" is actually a real family.. The Mother and Daughter in this are that in really real life while the Dad directed it and the other Sister plays a "Friend" role in the movie. They also all pitched in and handled everything else as well as a family like the score, costume design, writing the script etc.​

 

[EvanBenner]

Hellbender (2021)

This one actually caught me by surprise! It's def. not great but it's an at least somewhat original idea and is just a fun low budget indie ride. It's a Mother, Daughter Metal band but the Mom wont let the Daughter hardly go anywhere or be around anyone because she's "sick". She's a Teenager now though so obviously she starts to get more curious about the outside world and things get a little crazy from there. It's basically a Coming Of Age story with a Horror twist. The only real problem I had was the ending felt out of place like they weren't sure how to end it and tacked it on last second which brought down the entire film more then it should have but it's still a worthy late night watch imo!





A really awesome note about this film that made me a bit of a bigger fan is how it was made. If you see in the poster where it says "An Adams Family Film", well that "Family" is actually a real family.. The Mother and Daughter in this are that in really real life while the Dad directed it and the other Sister plays a "Friend" role in the movie. They also all pitched in and handled everything else as well as a family like the score, costume design, writing the script etc.​

I liked Hellbender a smidge more, but the The Deeper You Dig was also a good Adams family production.

The Deeper You Dig (2019)

14-year old Echo and her mother Ivy, a tarot card reader, live a quiet life in a rural area. When reclusive Kurt moves down the road to restore an abandoned farmhouse, an accident leads to Echo’s murder, and suddenly three lives collide in mysterious and wicked ways. Kurt assumes he can hide his...

letterboxd.com

 

[hype]

I liked Hellbender a smidge more, but the The Deeper You Dig was also a good Adams family production.

The Deeper You Dig (2019)

14-year old Echo and her mother Ivy, a tarot card reader, live a quiet life in a rural area. When reclusive Kurt moves down the road to restore an abandoned farmhouse, an accident leads to Echo’s murder, and suddenly three lives collide in mysterious and wicked ways. Kurt assumes he can hide his...

letterboxd.com

I knew that title sounded familiar but had no idea it was done by them as well! Looks like that was another one I tried to watch late at night awhile back and fell asleep as it's half watched on my server so i'll def. be going back and watching that now.. Appreciate the heads up!

 

[EvanBenner]

Keeping my HoopTober progress trucking with another Hammer Films production—one of their last before imploding.

I'm always down for religious horror, and here we have a menacing Christopher Lee as a heretical priest trying to repossess a young, stolen away nun who was offered at birth to become the earthy vessel of Astaroth upon her reaching adulthood.

The damsel nun, Catherine, lacks any real agency. Instead, the movie is preoccupied with the tug-of-war between the black magic priest and her arbitrary, unwitting "guardian" who is an American friend of her father's and conveniently an author of the occult.

Anyways, Lee is great, and the film is an interesting case study in the direction Hammer was looking to steer its productions amid its surmounting financial woes, drawing more heavily on the popular stylings of The Exorcist, The Omen, and Rosemary's Baby. Much more engaging than my earlier Hammer entry here (Lust for a Vampire).

A ★★★ review of To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

Late Hammer does satanic possession in my latest HoopTober 9 selection. Offered up at birth by her mother and a heretical priest (Christopher Lee), a young nun's time has almost come to fulfill her role as earthly satanic vessel—unless her father's arbitrary American acquaintance (conveniently...

boxd.it

 

[Hemotep]

Day 20.

The Empty Man
Rating:

Glad @gaporter and @EvanBenner reminded me of this one. Got the wife to watch it this time around. I still love the intro the most, which is so well done. It lags a bit after and my wife got bored, but then she got back into it somewhat by the end. This should have gotten more attention but it probably would have if they'd tightened it up some which would have improved it significantly. Also the movie poster and the inevitable confusion with Slenderman stuff probably hurt it. I'm going to have to hunt down the graphic novel soon.

 

[gaporter]

MOVIE #15
Pearl (2022)

Got the chance to go see this earlier and couldn't pass it up. Very glad I did as the hype for it was warranted. I know a lot of you are probably going to want to see it for yourselves, so I won't go too deeply into detail, but all you need to know is Mia Goth absolutely kills it and Ti West continues to be a talent behind the camera. It's much more of a character study than X was, but I enjoy that it was its own thing and that you can watch it completely removed from its predecessor and I don't think the impact would be lessened. It's a perfect companion film in that way, as it only adds to the brilliance of the first movie rather than subtracts.

Rating:

A ★★★★½ review of Pearl (2022)

I enjoyed this pretty much every bit as X, albeit for different reasons. This is much more of a psychological character study that anchors itself almost entirely on Mia Goth's acting, a gamble which more than pays off. Her performance is extremely effective, as the weight of every unsettling...

boxd.it

 

[hype]

Cursed (2005)
​

That title doesn't lie.....

What could have been with this one! The Wes Craven movie made the same year as Red Eye which was significantly better since he got to actually follow through with his vision. I think I read they could have made 2-3 different movies with everything they filmed/changed. This is one of the top movies ever imo where the higher ups royally effed up what would have likely been a really good movie. Who tf tells Rick Baker his sculps and practical effects aren't good enough so let's do CGI instead . They lost the majority of the best actors at different points because of the changes and we're left with a 75 million dollar train wreck of ruined potential. I tried to enjoy this one for what it is but the entire time I just kept thinking about all the original ideas/going from R rating to pg-13/actors that left/epic practical effects over the lame badly aged CGI that could have been there instead. Maybe one day we'll actually get the supposed "Craven Cut" of this but idk how good that would even be since it would be so mismashed but no doubt still better then what we have now. As a huge Wes Craven fan it's just a tough watch especially learning over the years what should have been.



mostly just for nostalgia vibes and Ricci is always welcomed with open arms!​

 

[EvanBenner]

CW: Suicide, gaslighting

In sharp contrast to my last post about The the Devil a Daughter, the subject of my latest watch, The Fifth Floor (1978), has agency but it gets stolen away and she's gaslit to hell about it.

After a surviving a sudden case of strychnine poisoning in a discotheque, Kelly is interned in a psychiatric ward—suspected of having attempted suicide. Investigations into the incident fail to corroborate her protests of a failed attempt on her life, so she remains held in the "care" of disbelieving nurses and an abusive orderly.

Topically, this is one of those kind of stories that creeps into my psyche. The loss of power over one's own decisions and personal trajectory is something I find terrifying. Many reviews liken it to a low-rent but decent One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest riff, which I've yet to see but I assume to be true. Thematically, I'd liken it a bit to Shock (the gaslighty 1946 Vincent Price thriller), but with a full asylum's worth of a cast.

 

[Hemotep]

Day 21.
Escape The Field


If you're bored it's just below average.

 

[zomgbear]

9. Candyman (2021)
Rating:
Had this on my watchlist for a while now and finally got the chance to see it. This is the only sequel to Candyman that I've seen, although I thought the original movie was good. I think the main issue I had with this sequel was that they sucked the horror from the Candyman figure. They make him out to be an anti-hero where people are looking to bring him back to seek justice. By making him the character we've followed the entire movie, you're not afraid of him - quite the opposite . Also, this movie is missing the grittiness of the original. Visuals are too clean imo. What I did like about it was that they referenced and retold the original as if the story passed on changed with time (like many other lore) - which was pretty cool.

 

[EvanBenner]

9. Candyman (2021)
Rating:
Had this on my watchlist for a while now and finally got the chance to see it. This is the only sequel to Candyman that I've seen, although I thought the original movie was good. I think the main issue I had with this sequel was that they sucked the horror from the Candyman figure. They make him out to be an anti-hero where people are looking to bring him back to seek justice. By making him the character we've followed the entire movie, you're not afraid of him - quite the opposite . Also, this movie is missing the grittiness of the original. Visuals are too clean imo. What I did like about it was that they referenced and retold the original as if the story passed on changed with time (like many other lore) - which was pretty cool.

The only value of seeing the second Candyman (Farewell to the Flesh) is that it might make you appreciate this one more. It's not good.

I haven't seen the third (Day of the Dead) but it's got an even worse reputation.

(Surely, you've got to admit that drone shot of the patio window in the corncob building is fucking ART though...)

 

[zomgbear]

The only value of seeing the second Candyman (Farewell to the Flesh) is that it might make you appreciate this one more. It's not good.

I haven't seen the third (Day of the Dead) but it's got an even worse reputation.

(Surely, you've got to admit that drone shot of the patio window in the corncob building is fucking ART though...)

Yeah i mean this is definitely the first Candyman sequel that I wanted to see for sure. What interested me was it had Jordan Peele attached to it. Don't get me wrong, this movie was really nicely shot, it just didn't do it for me in the horror aspect.

 

[gaporter]

Getting caught up!

MOVIE #16
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

This was definitely better than the last one, though I realize that's not saying much. It tries to restore some of the dignity the series lost over the last three movies by ignoring the whole Jamie Lloyd storyline entirely and picking up where Halloween II left off. The best part is seeing Jamie Lee Curtis return to the role of Laurie Strode and take the destruction of Myers into her own hands. If they were ever going to end the franchise, I think this would have been a good place to leave things off, because while I don't think Michael is all that intimidating here, Jamie Lee gives a legitimately great performance that makes her having to face the boogeyman that terrorized her all those years ago feel like it has a lot of weight to it. There's a sense of finality to the film's final moments that feels refreshing. However, the film was a financial success, so of course they couldn't let this be the real end of the Michael Myers saga, but I think it works best when viewed through that lens. Either way, it's a solid sequel.

Rating:

A ★★★½ review of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

After the trainwreck that was The Curse of Michael Myers, the producers behind these movies must have realized that the series was going stale, and so they did what you always do when you've run a slasher franchise into the ground; reboot it! With Friday the 13th veteran Steve Miner behind the...

boxd.it

 

[avecigrec]

Getting caught up!

MOVIE #16
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
View attachment 152068
This was definitely better than the last one, though I realize that's not saying much. It tries to restore some of the dignity the series lost over the last three movies by ignoring the whole Jamie Lloyd storyline entirely and picking up where Halloween II left off. The best part is seeing Jamie Lee Curtis return to the role of Laurie Strode and take the destruction of Myers into her own hands. If they were ever going to end the franchise, I think this would have been a good place to leave things off, because while I don't think Michael is all that intimidating here, Jamie Lee gives a legitimately great performance that makes her having to face the boogeyman that terrorized her all those years ago feel like it has a lot of weight to it. There's a sense of finality to the film's final moments that feels refreshing. However, the film was a financial success, so of course they couldn't let this be the real end of the Michael Myers saga, but I think it works best when viewed through that lens. Either way, it's a solid sequel.

Rating:

A ★★★½ review of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

After the trainwreck that was The Curse of Michael Myers, the producers behind these movies must have realized that the series was going stale, and so they did what you always do when you've run a slasher franchise into the ground; reboot it! With Friday the 13th veteran Steve Miner behind the...

boxd.it

PLUS LL Cool J!

 

[gaporter]

MOVIE #17
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

What a disgrace! This was the worst one yet, bordering on "so bad, it's good" territory. As a horror movie, it's an abject failure, but I admit I had to laugh a couple times just because it was so ridiculous. It plays more like a spoof of a Halloween movie than it does an actual sequel in the franchise. I know that reality television and online broadcasts were staples of the early 2000s, but am I seriously watching a movie where Michael Myers is hunting down teenagers who want to be on TV and a kung-fu kicking Busta Rhymes? It's just so dumb and at this point, nothing about this even remotely resembles the eerieness of the John Carpenter classic. The closest this comes to feeling like an actual Halloween movie is the opening with Jamie Lee Curtis, but that ten minutes is such a waste of time that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie that you wonder why they even bothered including it. Just so they could put Laurie Strode on all the posters? Ugh. Terrible.

Rating:

A ★½ review of Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Oh, fuck, this was the worst one yet. I'm honestly not even sure how to properly rate it, because I have no clue how seriously I was supposed to take it. If I didn't know any better and somebody told me this was a Scary Movie-style parody of the Halloween franchise, I'd probably believe them...

boxd.it

 

[gaporter]

MOVIE #18
The Amityville Horror (2005)

Since I watched the original for last year's thread, I decided to give this remake a chance. It's not a horrendous retelling, but it's not nearly as effective as the 1979 version, lacking that film's oppressively creepy atmosphere and replacing it with jumpscares and dated effects. I think maybe I need to pump the brakes on the haunted house type movies for a bit, as I've watched quite a few of them recently, and this didn't even have the kind of pizzazz that someone like James Wan brings to the table going for it.

Rating:

A ★★½ review of The Amityville Horror (2005)

I think I braced myself for this to be much worse than it actually was, so when it turned out to be for the most part your typical humdrum horror remake, I was relieved. It was a fun surprise to discover that this was the screen debut of Chloe Grace-Moretz, who as it turns out was a decent actor...

boxd.it

 

[Hemotep]

Day 22.

The Munsters


This is like the worst TGIF show and a commercial for a theme restaurant no one wants to go to rolled into one. An absolute pile of crap in every conceivable way. And I tend to enjoy most Rob Zombie movies, but this can't possibly appeal to anyone. It has to be in the running for the dumbest movie ever made. I'm an hour in and every minute has been worse than the one before. 45 minutes left to go and I'd rather be getting drilled at the dentist.

 

[zomgbear]

MOVIE #17
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
View attachment 152103
What a disgrace! This was the worst one yet, bordering on "so bad, it's good" territory. As a horror movie, it's an abject failure, but I admit I had to laugh a couple times just because it was so ridiculous. It plays more like a spoof of a Halloween movie than it does an actual sequel in the franchise. I know that reality television and online broadcasts were staples of the early 2000s, but am I seriously watching a movie where Michael Myers is hunting down teenagers who want to be on TV and a kung-fu kicking Busta Rhymes? It's just so dumb and at this point, nothing about this even remotely resembles the eerieness of the John Carpenter classic. The closest this comes to feeling like an actual Halloween movie is the opening with Jamie Lee Curtis, but that ten minutes is such a waste of time that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie that you wonder why they even bothered including it. Just so they could put Laurie Strode on all the posters? Ugh. Terrible.

Rating:

A ★½ review of Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Oh, fuck, this was the worst one yet. I'm honestly not even sure how to properly rate it, because I have no clue how seriously I was supposed to take it. If I didn't know any better and somebody told me this was a Scary Movie-style parody of the Halloween franchise, I'd probably believe them...

boxd.it

Ok even if it's bad, i want to see Busta Rhymes do kung fu

 

[gaporter]

Ok even if it's bad, i want to see Busta Rhymes do kung fu

In all fairness, he is the best part of the movie.

 

[avecigrec]

In all fairness, he is the best part of the movie.
View attachment 152129

Absolutely worth the price of admission!
Unlike most of the rest of the movie.

Also, admission was much cheaper back then.