Hey if you're new here, I'm Cy, and this is where I talk about the horror movies I watch.
Some basic stuff:
I will attempt to keep a basic structure to my reviews but I cannot always promise they'll be well-written, eloquent essays.
Likewise I can't promise I won't get verbose or slip into essay and analysis mode.
I will be posting ratings on a 0 to 5 star scale (when I bother to rate them.)
Spoilers will likely be discussed or dropped for each movie. I probably won’t do this every time, but my recommendation is, if you don’t want spoilers, don’t ever read below the cut.
I may reblog movie posters for things I am currently watching or have recently watched.
I welcome asks! Feel free to send me some, especially if you have questions!
Content and trigger warnings:
I will attempt to include warnings in my review posts, but I know everyone's threshold of tolerance differs. If you want me to include warnings for specific content/triggers, especially if you take any of my reviews as movie recs, please tell me what you want me to warn for.
Currently I warn for gore, body horror, bugs (will specify if spiders or otherwise,) animal death, child abuse/endangerment or harm, abuse/manipulation/gaslighting, alcoholism or other substance abuse, infidelity, and implied or shown SA.
Additional warnings may apply in some cases and I'll do my best to include them as I can think of them.
Movies I will not watch or review:
Anything with zombies or zombie-adjacent (including The Evil Dead and Re-Animator films)
Content warnings: sexual assault, murder of elderly and disabled individuals, blood and detailed injury, ableism
Summary: Academy Award-winner Lee Grant (Best Supporting Actress in 1975 for Shampoo) stars as outspoken TV journalist Deborah Ballin, whose crusade against domestic violence and rages a creepy loner (a truly disturbing performance by Michael Ironside, Scanners,) in Visiting Hours. He brutally attacks the anchorwoman in her home, but Balli survives and is hospitalized. Her assailant is enraged; he is haunted by a horrific childhood trauma...and now he has hidden himself inside the hospital to finish what he started. Can anybody—including her concerned boss (William Shatner), a frantic nurse (Linda Purl, Happy Days) or Deborah herself—stop the psycho's killing spree before it reaches sick new extremes?
Review and thoughts below the cut:
This movie is depressing. Depressing and grimly reflective of real-life serial killers who are incredibly smart and get incredibly fixated on victims and continue to kill others and escalate their behavior along the way. To this point, Michael Ironside does deliver an excellent and unsettling performance, as mentioned in the summary I copied from the back of the DVD case, but he also winds up being the focus of the film more than anyone else, which leads to the entire thing being nauseating.
A spoiler here: no. Nobody stops him before his killing spree reaches sick new heights. We learn very early on that he has killed people before for not listening to him or responding to his angry letters, and from almost the moment he enters the hospital the first time to attempt to finish off Deborah, he begins killing other unrelated people there and adding photos he takes of their terrified dying expressions to his collection. Numerous people—patients, staff, security, and other civilians—die horribly before the movie ends with him being killed.
The level of violence, obsession, planning, and the time we spend in his headspace results in our other characters barely getting even a fraction of the same development and screentime. Deborah feels like an afterthought in this movie despite being the titular character. Her boss appears maybe a handful of times and always very briefly. The nurse mentioned in the summary gets more screentime than Deborah, but her behavior is, frankly, inconsistent for a large portion of the movie.
The reason I give this movie even half a star is because it at least didn't fall into the horror movie sin of depicting a hospital setting as barely having people around. I work in a hospital environment, as does my spouse, so we are very critical of the way they're depicted in films and shows, and in horror, this usually sees the hospital with no lights (and almost no emergency backup lights/power) and empty hallways and unsecured wings, rooms, equipment, drugs, etc. So at the very least, this movie didn't do that, so I will give it one. It gets (1) one.
But this isn't worth wasting your time on, and I have no desire to rewatch it. I mentioned the DVD is a double feature; Scream! Factory released it with Bad Dreams (1988) in this combo pack (without a subtitle option, might I add, which is always a negative with me.) I still intend to watch Bad Dreams, but I imagine that if I do end up enjoying that one enough to want it in my collection, I'll still sell this double feature DVD and take the time to hunt down the Blu-ray for that movie separately. And if I end up not liking that either, then cool, I'll be able to say I gave both a try and they weren't for me.
Currently watching the 2024 micro budget horror movie Screamwalkers and man... I can already tell that this is one of those movies where, regardless of whether I end up enjoying it or hating it, it's definitely going to be a ride and I'm gonna have a pretty silly time with it. This genuinely looks like it was shot to be a '90s teen after-school special for Nickelodeon.
Currently watching the 2024 micro budget horror movie Screamwalkers and man... I can already tell that this is one of those movies where, regardless of whether I end up enjoying it or hating it, it's definitely going to be a ride and I'm gonna have a pretty silly time with it. This genuinely looks like it was shot to be a '90s teen after-school special for Nickelodeon.
Fwiw the MC's best friend definitely has baby lesbian vibes since she's her "date" for prom and goes in a suit with suspenders and a bowtie, and there's definitely some kind of queer undertone in their relationship (albeit, probably one-sided on the bestie's part.) Nothing is confirmed, because that's not really the movie's focus in its ~hour & 20 minute runtime (not including the credits) but that did disappoint me. It also doesn't take the time to finish fleshing out or resolving the emotional beats it does set up with the characters either. I personally think even just another 15 minutes would have been enough to let it really explore those points a little more and made it better.
As for the lack of scary...yeah, that one is fairly on-the-mark. The movie doesn't really build suspense or dread, beyond mostly being what it already says on the tin, so to speak. I've not even read the books but I understand that the entire plot is "someone is killing off the prom queen candidates", and if that doesn't bring enough chills on its own (it doesn't, imo) then this movie really doesn't add to it. There's maybe one or two attempts at building some dread (in the first kill, and in a later kill in a bathroom,) but you already know what's going to happen and it falls flat. The movie relies more on jump scares and gore, and as far as slashers in general go, that's such standard fare it's unremarkable. And that's why (at least for me personally) the lack of emotional exploration is a detriment, because even some more mediocre slashers do that to balance out gore and jump scares.
All that to say, I do think it's an okay movie but it doesn't feel the same as the OG trilogy by Leigh Janiak at all. And I do see that being the make-or-break point for this and other future Fear Street movies if they continue to lack the queer angles and decent scariness.
Just finished Fear Street: Prom Queen, and I feel like I've got mixed feelings on this one. Maybe some part of me is comparing it too hard to the OG film trilogy? I was trying not to, but. Hm. Might need to sleep on it.
Hotline (1982) was a pretty decent little horror-thriller with a slasher tone for a movie that was made for TV. It was never officially released on any format after VHS, so the DVD copy I have was just ripped straight from a VHS and put on disc. (It's in the public domain somehow so this is handwaved.)
I feel like the pacing was great, @reallyndacarter was a fantastic lead, the suspense and tension was very natural and well-handled. The audio quality of my copy wasn't the best at times, but it didn't detract from the watching experience. The quality of the film visually is in questionable condition, given the original copy has never been restored, but I do wonder if maybe it might not look better watched on an old tube TV instead of our flatscreen.
There were a few things regarding the killer's actual motivations and connections with another character that I feel are either unanswered or that I would have preferred to have explained in more depth, but that's really the only complaint I have and even that isn't entirely a strike against the movie. I just wish there had been a little more explanation.
All in all, I really enjoyed this, and I'm glad I have it in my collection!
That was definitely a movie. I don't really agree with the assessments that it's a Carrie ripoff; I do think it stands very much on its own strength without needing to borrow excessively. I'm not entirely sure I liked it, though I'm hard-pressed to say what about it exactly bothered me to the point I didn't enjoy it.
