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I never seem to have the time for these, but I may be able to make it work this year. A good excuse to finally tick off some of those titles that have been sitting in my library for up to a decade that I've never got around to.
A magnificent picture. Visually stunning in a way that I haven't seen before. Like Blade Runner/Suspiria/The Beyond/Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas amplified by 10 million mics of acid.
Great film to say the absolute least.
I haven't seen this in over a decade. A middling John Carpenter picture. The first act is a lot of fun. The second act drags. The third act picks up but the ending is pretty underwhelming. The ending feels like their budget was cut at the eleventh hour. The obviously cut gore during the motel massacre is a disappointment. But James Woods' charisma carries it. Unfortunately Daniel Baldwin's lack of charisma forms a weird Tao leading to a fairly mediocre picture.
Here's a drinking game idea for you: take a shot every time James Woods screams "Die motherfucker!" When killing a vampire.
Yep the newest Amityville film that sat on the shelves for 3 years. To only then get dumped on VOD and DVD in October of 2017. For a long time it looked like this film wouldn't be released. Dimension films kept changing the release date. Even moving it to the middle of the summer one time. Which is a sure sign that the distributor has no faith in a horror film.
Made in 2014 this film takes an new spin on the Amityville theme. Cause Amityville is the name of a town in New York anyone can use that name. So lots of indie horror films end up with Amityville in the title.Plus there is what 8 films now in the official franchise.The original which I have reviewed before,6 sequels. With parts 2,6 and 7 being pretty good. Then the kinda crappy remake from almost a decade ago now.
This new spin I mentioned is in the world of Amityville:The Awakening the original film,the second film which is a prequel and the modern remake all exist. One of the characters in this film even talks about watching one of the Amityville films while living in the real house the events supposedly happened in. Too bad the script writers didn't take this neat idea and do more with it.
The plot is a well wore trope. The mother,Jennifer Jason Leigh, moves into the infamous Amityville house to be closer to her sister and closer to medical care for her teenage son who is in a coma. Not long after Jennifer and her 3 kids move in weird stuff starts to happen. The youngest daughter starts talking speaking to someone only see can see.The comatose boy's twin sister,played by Bella Thorne,blames herself for her brother's condition. It seems the brother fell off a roof after confronting a boy who was passing around revealing photos of Bella.
After having been in the coma for 2 years ,while the doctor is visiting,the brother opens his eyes for the first time. This gets the family's hopes up. But Bella starts having nightmares about her brother killing the entire family. Pretty soon using a computer messaging program the family starts receiving messages supposedly from the comatose brother. And after telling her new friend about this Bella finds out about the DeFalco family and the supposed curse on the house in Amityville.
It is rare that a film sits on the shelves for years then gets a release and the film is great and worth the wait. The only modern example I can think of is the anthology film Trick R Treat. Amityville:The Awakening isn't a bad film. But I bet if it hadn't been held up for so long no one would even be talking about it.
The acting is decent. Jennifer Jason Leigh is almost always good. She gets totally into her character and I for a bit forgot she was the same actress I have been watching in films since Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Bella Thorne,who before this I had only see in kid's yogurt commercials,does the best with what she is given. Sadly in horror films the teenage goth girl is a well worn trope.
If you are a fan of the Amityville franchise or just enjoy possession and/or ghost films this is worth a rental or a buy if you find it cheap. But don't go in expecting a great film. It is just an average or barely above average horror film.
Decided to kick off Day 1 with a classic I hadn't previously got around to: Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques!
It's one of those films that's difficult to evaluate so many years after it was made - most of the shocking imagery and plot devices have been thoroughly worn-out from overuse in the decades since. But even if it no longer works on a level of visceral terror, it's still a stunningly and meticulously constructed thriller. The story is pure trashy pulp thriller but Clouzot takes it seriously, imbuing what could have been a silly plot with a calm, convincing sense of realism.
Perhaps most notable is the film's sense of confidence. Apart from the opening credits and closing title there is no music, and Clouzot never resorts to cheap tricks in order to build tension. Instead, the film relies on the audience to carefully watch, listen, and remember the stakes. There's a particular moment when a basket containing a dead body threatens to break open that, save a single brief closeup of a strap breaking, is shot exactly like a scene that didn't involve a corpse. The film relies on the audience's emotional involvement and doesn't try to unnecessarily ramp things up.
Unfortunately, any modern viewer will spend the entire second half knowing that there must be another shoe ready to drop, and it lands with a bit of a thud. Numbed by years of tricky thrillers (most indebted to Diabolique is one way or another) the ending feels a bit too obvious, and even though I never knew exactly what was going to happen the ending's imagery has been alluded to so many times that it failed to provide much of a shock. The film doesn't have the courage to be as shocking as it could be either, finding a way to dull the nastiness of the conclusion in a way that's clever and consistent, but still unsatisfying.
It's still a classic though, gorgeously shot and acted, and clearly ahead of its time. But the core elements are so familiar now that their shock power is significantly diminished.
1988's The Brain. Part creature-Feature and part Body Snatchers. It's an okay effort that desperately needed more gore. Similar in tone to much better late 80's genre pictures like They Live and Society.
Far more interesting and (given Findlay's reputation) competent than I was expecting. It's still a bit of a mess, with plenty of small narrative jumps and visual ideas that don't really work, but there's more than enough unsettling and potent imagery to make it worthwhile. I watched the hardcore cut and will have to go back to sample the R-rated as well, as many of the hardcore sequences feel like they exist purely as commercial considerations. That said, there are a couple of deeply uncomfortable scenes (specifically the lengthy fingering given by Michael Gaunt and Tara Chung's subsequent shower masturbation) that I suspect would lose much of their queasy impact in softcore form.
It's a deeply pessimistic film in which genuine human connection seems impossible, and everyone is complicit in their own misery. The cast all do good work, with Tara Chung in particular managing to come across as both fragile and menacing. It's great to see Crystal Sync and Jennifer Jordan sink their teeth into some dialogue as well, but the real joy is Marlene Willoughby as a nosy spinster, looking like she just stepped off the set of Pink Flamingos. I'm looking forward to listening to the commentary track for this.
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