Category Archives: Horror

Enigmatic Estonian Folk Horror: November (2017)

By way of the YouTube channel Dark Corners Streaming Review my Sweetie-Wife and I discovered the Estonian film November.

Adapted by writer/director Rainer Sarnet from the novel Rehepapp ehk November by Andrus Kivirähk November set in an isolated Estonian village in the 19th century and the story

Homeless Bob Productions

principally concerns a love triangle between Liina (Rea Lest-Liik) a peasant girl, Hans (Jörgen Liik) a peasant boy Liina adores, and the baroness (Jette Loona Hermanis) daughter of the local baron and with whom Hans is deeply infatuated. Both Liina and Hans, desperate for the love and attention turn to supernatural aid to win the attention of their loves.

Films often break down into two vast categories when dealing with the supernatural. In one case the supernatural is in intruding, unknown, force that shatters to the existing order and introduces chaos which by the end of the tale must be dispelled to restore or create a new order. A Vampire moves in next door and until it is destroyed there is chaos.

The other great category is a subtle one where the events can be interpreted as possibly taking place in reality, though the evidence is quite thin, or possibly the tale is the product of a deranged mind and there is no supernatural at all. Are there ghosts haunting the children or has the nanny gone mad?

November defies both categories.

From the film’s opening scenes, it is clear that the supernatural exists and is a part of the peasants daily life. The dirty, squalid, and tenuous lives of the peasants is infused with the supernatural. Ghosts, werewolves, devils, witchcraft, and animated golem-like creations composed of farm equipment are all routine and accepted by the peasant as ways of surviving their brutal environment. Visitations by the dead is as routine as stealing from the Baron.

Curiously the supernatural’s integration doesn’t extend to the local lord. At no point in the story does the Baron or his daughter make use of or acknowledge to spirit world with the same level of acceptance as the peasantry.

Cinematographer Mart Taniel captures the world of November is stark, high contrast, black and white. Fog glows with a spectral inner light, moonlight is diffuse, and the shadows are dark, deep, and threatening. I suspect that Taniel and director Sarnet also employed filters in a manner similar to Eggers’ The Lighthouse so that the skin of the peasantry took on a dark and unhealthy appearance while keeping the nobility clean and pristine further dividing the classes.

November is far from a standard horror film. It is atmospheric and moody focusing more on tone that scares. It almost but not quite follows a nightmare or dream logic reminiscent of David Lynch but with a more linear and straightforward narrative. It is not a film that gets your adrenaline pumping and one that sets your heart racing, but one that rather lingers in your mind like a half-forgotten dream.

November is available on VOD, Kanopy in the US, and Amazon Prime in the UK.

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Movie Review: JAWS (1975) in 3-D

Released in 1975 Jaws, along with Star Wars two years later, created the summer blockbuster. Optioned and sent into development and production before the novel was published Jaws made a superstar director of Steven Spielberg and terrorized a generation. 14 When I came out Jaws was a memorable theater going experience and one my all-time favorite films.

Seven years ago, I attended a screening celebrating the film’s 40th anniversary but that screening was nothing like the one I experienced last night.

The digital projection was flawless with the image sharp and perfect as though we were

Universal Studios

watching a print struck directly from the original camera negative. The sounds, which may have been remastered, was rich and enveloping with the bass notes of Williams’ iconic and unforgettable score presented powerfully. Of course, what made this screening so very different from any other of Jaws was that the movie had been retro-scanned into a 3-D format.

In 2016 I made the trip to Hollywood for some Halloween themed fun at Universal Studios followed by a screening of 1979’s Dawn of the Dead retro-scanned into 3-D. Because that conversion had been so successful in presenting the film in 3-D without savaging the experience I wanted to see if Jaws had a similar result.

Yes, yes it did.

The 3-D conversion, which I understand Spielberg helped supervise, was flawless, giving the film that illusion of depth but without taking away from the masterful filmmaking of Spielberg or cinematographer Bill Butler. The added planes of depth changed the experience for me. Now, I have seen this film countless time. It is a movie I know well and can quote at length, but this version felt new and fresh as I noticed the framing of foreground and background elements in a manner I have never noticed before. Because these elements exist in their own plane of depth that are easier to notice and pay particulate attention to. For example, during Quint’s famous ‘Indianapolis’ monologue this was the first time I really noticed that Hooper is in the frame for the entire speech giving Dreyfus time to listen and subtly react as the horrific tale unfolds. With the laser-sharp projection and a screen that is never too dark due to the polarizing glasses, Jaws in 3-D is an experience not to be missed.

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Streaming Review: Hatching (2022)

Hatching is a family-drama/horror film from Finland.

Siiri Solalinna plays 13 years old Tinja, a girl trying desperately as a gymnast to please her

Nordisk Film

mother, a former gymnast herself and now creating content for the internet presenting her life and family as a model of perfection.

When a stray bird ruins one of mother’s video shoots it ends up dead and feeling guilty for the animal Tinja finds the bird’s nest and begins incubating its egg.

Kept secret from the rest of the family Tinja egg’s grows to enormous size and reacts directly to her presence and touch. Once hatched the chick, nearly as large as Tinja herself, displays a deep emotional connection to Tinja and begins acting upon her repressed feelings and anger.

Sadly, Hatching is not a very engaging picture. It is a prime example of a plot-driven structure. Aside from taking the egg to begin with and hiding it Tinja, our protagonist, does very little to drive the action of the story or even make meaning choices in her actions. Tinja reacts to the bird’s death, reacts to the strange egg, reacts to discovering her mother’s affair, but rarely is proactive making for a passive character. This is a shame as Siiri Solalinna is a terrific young actress and, in my opinion, gives the most compelling performance of the film. I certainly hope to see more her as she matures and continue her career.

The special effects of the film are quite good. I believe that for most of the ‘monster’ effects the production utilized puppetry and make-up effects rather than digital visual imagery and their choice was correct. Hatching doesn’t feel or look cheap The cinematography is lush and vivid, the sets and design inviting and create a real of real places and locations. It is the script that fails the production giving as an interesting premise that never fully mature into character driven story.

Hatching is currently streaming in the US on HULU.

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Streaming Review: Glorious

Streaming Review: Glorious

Released last week to the streaming services Shudder as an exclusive the cosmic horror film Glorious is a very different take on universe spanning threats.

Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is a man in the midst of an emotional crisis. Driving alone and distraught far from freeways and large cities and after a night of drunkenness at a lonely rest stop he finds himself trapped in the bathroom with an ominous voice (J.K. Simmons) speaking to him from the other side of a stall’s ‘glory hole.’ (If you do not know what a ‘glory hole’ is in reference to public spaces I strongly suggest that you do not Google the term from your work computer.) Wes endures horrors, physical and revelational, as the voice implores and compels him for a favor.

Directed by Academic, Scholar, and filmmaker Rebekah McKendry, and co-written by her spouse David Ian McKendry and Joshua Hull, Glorious is a small film that utilizes all of the potential of its limited location and cast in a spare but efficient 79 minutes. McKendry and cinematographer David Matthews continually find inventive ways to frame and shoot their film with a bare handful of locations, keeping clear of the trap of boredom within such a confined space. Like many ‘cosmic horror’ films following in the wake of Stanley’s The Color out of Space the film leans heavily into the purple and violet to convey the unworldliness of Wes’ plight and the looming threat over existence.

Even with its brief running time the script carefully doles out Wes’ backstory and the source of his emotional trauma, judiciously avoiding rushing in to explains too quickly, leaving revelations for the audience as well as the characters.

While the film is not sexually explicit, see above the term you should never Google from work, it is violent, bloody, and not lacking in gore but does not lean into those elements to achieve its effect, but rather uses them to enhance the story being told. One should not watch Glorious if the sight of on-screen blood is disturbing to you.

I very much appreciated that the film did not linger or lazily get to its point. There is nothing wrong with a massive satisfying 3 hour epic but there is also beauty in a story that flies without need for rest breaks.

The standout star of Glorious is J.K. Simmons. While audio manipulation has been employed to enrich the timber of his voice and enlarge its presence it is Simmons’s delivery that make the unseen character come alive with power and menace. Had a lesser talent been engaged here the product would have suffered terribly.

Glorious will not be to everyone’s taste. It is dark, it is disturbing, and its humor, where employed, though effective can be nausea inducing if that is your inclination. That said the 79 minutes I spent watching the film were thoroughly enjoyable and if this sounds remotely appealing to your tastes then you should surf over to Shudder and give it a go.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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Series Review: The Sandman

 

Sorry for the lack weekday updates this week. Tuesday evening, I got to experience something new to me, a gout flare. Wednesday was spent in quite a bit of pain and many hours at the kaiser Urgent Care, and by Thursday night it had nearly all passed. So now when I watch the musical 1776 and Franklin is wishing that King George felt like his big toe, but all over, I fully understand the kevel vitriol he is throwing in the crown’s direction.
Last night my sweetie-wife and I completed the Netflix series adaptation of Gaiman’s The

Netflix Studios

Sandman. The 10-episode series follows Dream/Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) one of the Endless, personifications of enduring concepts interregnal to humanity. Morpheus is the Lord of Dreams and some of the other Endless are Death, Desire, and so on. Following a century long imprisonment when human sorcerers were attempting to capture Death, Morpheus embarks upon a quest to reclaim stolen items of power, rebuild his decayed kingdom of The Dreaming, and recapture escaped nightmares of major Arcana who has in his absence troubled the waking world.
I have never read the original Comic run from which the series is adapted and as such I cannot speak to the quality of transformation but merely react as it is currently presented.
I like the show. It’s fantastic elements meld with the reality of the ‘waking’ world quite nicely and rarely does the show lose itself in deep lore and heavy bouts of exposition. (Always a tricky balancing act with genre fiction.) The cast Are quite engaging and well placed in their parts. (There has been controversy over the gender-flipping nature of some of the parts but I found no issues with any of the cast.) Sturridge had a particularly difficult task; he is the show’s lead and central character, and he must carry the show while playing a withdrawn and more silent than not personification. The part required that subtle tics and posture inform the audience to the character’s inner turmoil and crisis a challenge that Sturridge proved equal to.
The story slides easy between sweet fantasy and disturbing horror, particularly in episode 5 which centers on the horrific events over a single day and night in a diner where a troubled man lifts the veil of lies that often makes life bearable to terrible consequences.
Over all the series is well worth a watch and here’s hoping that it is successful enough for Netflix to engage another season.

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Movie Review: PREY

1987 saw the release of Predator itself inspired by the 1980 wholly lackluster low-budget movie Without Warning, both films used the premise of an alien hunter come to Earth for the sport of hunting humans. Unlike the 1980 movie Predator exploded at the box office quickly becoming a massive success spawning 4 direct follow-on film and melding it with the studio’s other Sf/horror franchise Alien.

Prey, the latest franchise entry, is set in North America during the early 18th century as a band of Comanche deal with a predator-hunter come to Earth. The film’s central character, Naru, (Amber Midthunder) a young woman skilled in healing arts but with a burning desire to a tribal hunter, finds herself struggling to survive the alien’s stalking while navigating the difficult waters of both her tribal politics and the further encroaching of the Europeans into the continent.

There are many who are praising Prey as not only a great sequel but superior to the original 1987 film. This is overly enthusiastic. Granted compared to the lackluster Predator 2, The Predator (2018), or any of the Alien v Predator entries Prey stands out as solid, enjoyable filmmaking. Only it and 20103s Predators took the central premise and did anything more than simply copy the form with cut-and-paste caricatures. That said I think none of the subsequent movies surprise the surprise, tension, and thematic depths of the original film. Predator’s commentary of the emptiness of bravado, and as Lucifer in Sandman might say, the traps of tools, is something that rings true today 35 years later. Prey like all the other films in the Predator franchise has its moments that shatter disbelief. However, it does not layer these issues repeatedly and thus audiences can recover their acceptance of the story as it unfolds. The incongruity that has stayed with me is that any herbal concoction that lowers your body’s temperature to background is simply lethal. No mammal gets to survive that experience.

That is not to say that Prey is a bad film, it is not. Prey boasts interesting characters, who act and react with authenticity. Something that is far too often lacking in popular genre media. (Yes, I am looking at you X.) The tribal characters are engaging, realized human beings with the writers avoid both the cliche of the ‘noble savage’ wise in all things, and the ‘brutal savage’ untamed and untamable. Little can be said for the French fur trappers that who make a brief appearance in the film as all of their dialog is un-subtitled and your humble reviewer speaks no French. Jeff Cutter’s cinematography capture the scale, scope, and beauty of Canada doubling as the American wilderness reminiscent of the fantastic vista often found in John Ford’s best westerns. Director Dan Trachtenberg, previously best known for 10 Cloverfield Lane a tight, confined thriller with a fantastic performance by John Goodman, delivers on the action and tension inherent in a Predatormovie. Naru’s escape and refuge in a beaver lodge is a particularly powerful if short sequence that displays both the character’s quick intelligence and Trachtenberg’s confident directorial skills.

The visual effects are competent and largely invisible. (That pun fully intended.) With CGI creatures and beast flawlessly integrated into the picture. The grizzly is particularly well executed. Prey unfortunately has no theatrical release, and it is possible the VFX would not survive on massive screens but on my 55″ 4K television is worked perfectly.

Prey is well worth watching and is currently streaming on Hulu.

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Movie Review: The Black Phone

From the Writer/Director team that brough us Sinister and Doctor Strange comes the cinematic adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story The Black Phone.

Set in a Denver suburb in 1978 The Black Phone focuses on a pair of siblings Finn (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeline McGraw), their abusive alcoholic father, (Jeremy Davies) and the child abductor/murder dubbed ‘The Grabber’ (Ethan Hawke.) Things turn dire for the brother

Universal Pictures

and sister when Finn is the next victim of the serial killer, trapped in a soundproofed basement while The Grabber taunts and terrifies the young boy. In the basement a disabled telephone, it landline wires severed, rings and voices of The Grabber’s pervious victims attempt to help Finn survive and escape his ordeal.

The Black Phone is the second horror film I have watched this year with a nostalgic view of the later 1970s, the other being Ti West’s A24 release X. While X felt like someone had been told about the 70s and reproduced the period from that secondhand dissemination The Black Phone is more authentically accurate without the jarring anachronisms, Adult as missing persons on milk container, 24-hour UHF stations, and the like, of X. This film is peppered with beloved detritus of the 70s, the TV show Emergency! and if you look closely issues of Starlog Magazine. The only real violation of the period is Finn’s miniature penlight Saturn V which was far too bright and lasted for too long for the incandescent flashlights of the era.

The performances are consistently good to outstanding. The children characters are both written and directed as realistic children avoiding the ‘overly adult’ manner often found in child protagonists. Thames and McGraw are particularly standout as actors, giving performances that make both ends. terrified and determined, of the actions credible.

Brett Jutliewicz’s cinematography is unsettling and naturalistic, capturing the gloom and cold of the killing basement while just slightly off from reality that supports the supernatural aspects of the story. C. Robert Cargill’s and Scott Derrickson’s script is tight with little wasted time, moving the story along with a clean pacing that carries the audience through the story. Not everything established is critical but everything critical is established in the film’s first act showing a proper deference to Chekov without smashing the elements over the audience’s head.

The Black Phone is a solid entry in the horror genre and well worth seeing either in theaters or at home.

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Movie Review: NOPE

This weekend Jordan Peele, writer/director of get Out, and US, released his third feature film again playing in the fields of horror with Nope.

The film centers on brother and sister Otis Jr (Daniela Kaluuya) and Emerald (Kiki Palmer) as they struggle to save their ranch and film horse training business following the sudden, tragic, and bizarre death of their father Otis Sr (Keith David.) Between encroaching visual effects

Universal Pictures

wizards rendering live horses almost inconsequential and a local western themes amusement park seeking to expand by buying up the failing property the survival of Haywood Hollywood Horses is in grave doubt. It is in this dire situation when a threat descends from the clouds that both threatens the inhabitants of the ranch and simultaneously offer the possibility of financial salvation.

If you saw the previews for Nope you might be tempted to think that Peele was moving into the alien invasion sub-genre of horror and science-fiction and to enter the theater with that fixed as an expectation is to invite disappointment. Nope is closer akin to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, individuals isolated and under threat than the grand global menace of War of the Worlds. Modifying your priors and you are far more likely to enjoy Nope than if you expect the film to be something it is not.

That said Nope doesn’t entirely gel. It has ideas, characters, and settings, the backstory and subplot of Steven Yuen’s Ricky Park, a former child star and now owner and proprietor of the western-themed amusement park, is tragic and horrifying but only symbolically belongs in the same film as the threat hanging over the ranch. It was the sequences where we see the source of his trauma and its repercussions that truly unnerved me and produced the most tension. Uts failure to fully integrate into the main plotline left me unsatisfied.

However, there is a lot to praise Nope. Kaluuya continued to demonstrate that he is a terrifically talented actor able to inhabit with utter authenticity his characters. Palmer is more manic in her performance which is an excellent choice for Emerald and her willingness to push and chase a dream beyond the bounds of reasonableness. The visuals of the film can be spare in a manner that accentuates the isolation and vastness of a distant and secluded California Ranch. Perhaps once of the greats slight of hands in the film’s cinematography is the way Peele, Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema, and VFX artists capture fleeting glimpses of something in the skies that is enough for the audience and the characters to know that something was there but not enough to describe the thing.

Nope was an enjoyable if somewhat scattershot movie with enough character and threat to carry most audiences through the rougher patches but not achieving the heights of his debut film Get Outwhile avoiding the too fantastical ‘rationalist’ explanation of Us.

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Final Thoughts: Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes

My sweetie-Wife and I have finished watching the Netflix Norwegian series Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes, which presented a fresh and novel take on the Vampire story.

Set in the isolated rural community of Skarnes Norway the series follows the troubles of a family-owned funeral parlor facing bankruptcy due to the lack of business. The daughter Live is found dead in a field but reawakens on the autopsy table kicking off the supernatural/vampire plot, along with the mystery of who attacked and killed her.

Post Mortem avoids overt displays of the supernatural stripping vampirism of many of its flashier powers and abilities revealing a much more humanistic story that serves as an analog for addiction. The vampires of this setting do not required blood for sustenance and as such can endure avoiding the harsh consequences of not obtaining any with far less than would be needed as ‘food.’

Begin Rant

I’m going to digress for a moment and state I have never liked supernatural vampires that burn in sunlight and flee from crosses substituting cow’s blood for human as an alternate food. These revenants are not consuming blood for the fats, carbs, and proteins floating in the flow, it is a magical fluid that sustains them and plasma from bovines does not fit that bill.

Rant Over

The characters inhabiting Skarnes, the local police chief Judith, the annoying yuppie-like businessman, the eccentric attendants at the forensic morgue, and more are all entreatingly sketched and performed giving the series a vitality. As with all successful stories it is the characters, their problems, and their humanity, even as vampires, that pulls you in and keeps you watching.

The series answered all the major questions it posed, completed the plots it started, and left enough open that a second season would fit nicely, or it can be considered resolved and complete with just these six installments. I approve; I detest cliff-hangers.

Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes is worth your time.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel, Vulcan’s Forge, available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and is the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and his desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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An Unofficial Extended Cut of 1978’s Dawn of The Dead

Romero’s Zombie masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead, officially has three versions, the 2-hour 7-minute US theatrical release, the 1-hour 59-minute Dario Argento edited European release, and an extended cut release on home video of 2 hours and 19 minutes.

On YouTube I discovered an unofficial 2-hour and 34-minute edit that combines material from the previous version. It was quite an edit and in general I really like this fully fleshed out version of the story.

I saw the original release of the film back in 1979 when it played at a local drive. (We’ll skip over the part where I bicycled to the drive as I had no access to a car.) The film then was impressive and as I have aged and matured my appreciation has only grown. In addition to horrific events, gory set-pieces, and action the film is a satirical commentary on American consumerism and how easily we put material goods and comforts over more important matters and duty. I do not think it is by chance that our characters are all people who have abandoned their responsibilities in favor of themselves.

The long version has more ‘world-building’ as we spend more time with the characters and their environment before they discover the abandoned shopping mall. We see more of the disintegration of society at the television station and with more police abandoning their posts as the main characters flee the crumbling city.

Nothing about the core story changes and the ending remains the same as Romero never photographed his script’s original conclusion. It is a shame that this is an unauthorized edit as I think it works quite well and it would be nice to see it have a proper home video release.

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