6th Annual N&G 31 Days* of Halloween (2024)

8.) Halloween Kills
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A few of my horror-leaning watches of the past two days.

Hatchet III remains on par with the first couple Hatchet entries. Plenty of eye-popping practical mutilation effects. Crass and quick. The series is consistently fine for a one-time watch.

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Expedition Dogman is an indie doc/found footage cryptid movie that clocks in around an hour. Lots of talking and rather thin on substance, resulting in more of a character drama. In that personal story regard it's perfectly fine, but it doesn't deliver anything satisfying on the creature front. It served its purpose well as a background watch while I proofread for work.

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Trailer Park of Terror has been languishing away on my Tubi watchlist for far too long, so I finally threw it on. Hillbilly horror is really not one of my favorite categories. I found this one to have more in common with Hatchet than The Hills Have Eyes, which is actually a plus in my book. Lots of fun practical effects, crass humor (and songs!?), definitely distasteful. Still not entirely my bag, but it was the goopy, spoopy, shallow background watch my day needed.

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#4.
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When Evil Lurks
[2023] πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€

Thank you @Ghost for the recommendation!
It took me two sittings a week apart to get through this as I was far too exhausted to get through it last week and this weekend was all about watching disc golf so I'm glad I was finally able to get back to it tonight. What a great film. Some really solid freaky stuff with not a huge quantity but hugely impactful gore/violence with a fantastic amount of psychological and emotional heft. Honestly, I can see myself revisiting this one before the year is upβ€”I really, really liked it.
 
9.) The Awakening

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I have a couple weeks left of my Screambox subscription, so I'm trying to catch a few that I've missed over the years. This was first up on my list. Rebecca Hall was great as usual. I thought it was quite well done until the last third, which was just fine.
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#4.
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When Evil Lurks
[2023] πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€

Thank you @Ghost for the recommendation!
It took me two sittings a week apart to get through this as I was far too exhausted to get through it last week and this weekend was all about watching disc golf so I'm glad I was finally able to get back to it tonight. What a great film. Some really solid freaky stuff with not a huge quantity but hugely impactful gore/violence with a fantastic amount of psychological and emotional heft. Honestly, I can see myself revisiting this one before the year is upβ€”I really, really liked it.
FUCK YEAH. Glad you enjoyed it, some serious jaw dropper moments of horror in that one without just being plain gratuitous with shock value. A very well done spooky flick that one is.
 
#4.
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When Evil Lurks
[2023] πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€

Thank you @Ghost for the recommendation!
It took me two sittings a week apart to get through this as I was far too exhausted to get through it last week and this weekend was all about watching disc golf so I'm glad I was finally able to get back to it tonight. What a great film. Some really solid freaky stuff with not a huge quantity but hugely impactful gore/violence with a fantastic amount of psychological and emotional heft. Honestly, I can see myself revisiting this one before the year is upβ€”I really, really liked it.
Easy top 5 movie of 2023 for me. Rugna is going to be a directorial force to reckon with. I dug his earlier movie Terrified, but it succeeded more as a showcase of multiple ideas and special effects than it did as a unified story. Almost like an exploratory pilot for a potential series of supernatural horrors. When Evil Lurks was a marked improvement on the consolidation of ideas front.
 
1) The Hills Have Eyes (1977) πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ¦΄
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I watched this the other night, wanted to start off with a "Classic". I thought the first half was pretty good at building tension but the ending was kind of dull. For a cannibalism family, there isn't a lot of cannibalism going on. It made me think of this though:


Then tonight, I decided to go into some back to back black & white vampire horror.
2) A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ¦΄
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I enjoyed this one. I thought the music in it was fantastic. There were some great soundtracked scenes like at the pimp's home and the one where the girl invites Arash back to her place. It was actually strangely cute for a "horror" movie.

3) The Addiction (1995) πŸ’€πŸ’€
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I was pretty bored with this one. I get it, it's about drug addiction. There's too much philosophy being injected in. I thought the Christopher Walken's scene was the only really interesting scene in this - and maybe the party scene. Kinda interesting to see Fredro Starr from Onyx in this. That was a bit unexpected.
 
4) Thanksgiving (2023) πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€
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I've been meaning to watch this for a while but while watching, i realized this was one of Eli Roth's Grindhouse trailers that he made into full length movie! It wasn't great but it's pretty fun - silly Thanksgiving themed slasher. I hated all the characters but it was still enjoyable. I wish he kept the Grindhouse feel of it.

Bonus trailer from 2007:
 
#7.
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In A Violent Nature
[2024] πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€

Been looking very forward to checking this one out for months and it did not disappoint. The POV shift was very effective and the slowburn ambience it created was awesome (I can understand why some people complained about this one being "slow" but, as a fan of Manhunter and the original versions of Get Carter and The WIcker Man, I love me some long slow shots!) The cinematography was also particularly fantastic throughout. Story-wise, this didn't bring anything particularly new to the genre but it certainly did in the execution and I can definitely see myself watching this one at least a few more times.
 
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#7.
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In A Violent Nature
[2024] πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€ πŸ’€πŸ’€

Been looking very forward to checking this one out for months and it did not disappoint. The POV shift was very effective and the slowburn ambience it created was awesome (I can understand why some people complained about this one being "slow" but, as a fan of Manhunter and the original versions of Get Carter and The WIcker Man, I love me some long slow shots!) The cinematography was also particularly fantastic throughout. Realistically this should probably fall somewhere between 4 and 4.5, but THAT kill scene I'd been hearing so much about (but no specifics) was worth a full extra bonus point for me. Story-wise, this didn't bring anything particularly new to the genre but it certainly did in the execution and I can definitely see myself watching this one at least a few more times.
Still need to watch this one. Am much more inclined after your review!
 
Still need to watch this one. Am much more inclined after your review!

I never got around to buying it back when I reached out, but it finally showed up on Shudder and became my immediate priority other than watching Friday the 13th on Friday. I hope you dig it!
 
I never got around to buying it back when I reached out, but it finally showed up on Shudder and became my immediate priority other than watching Friday the 13th on Friday. I hope you dig it!
I'm still trying to get in everything in Screambox before my sub ends. Lots of really bad horror movies that the wife is not in board with, lol. Currently watching Creeping Death, which is not quite as bad as the review I read for it, but not much better.
 
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