a lot of stories about the post-apocalypse ask if humanity is innately good or evil enough to survive. too evil and they’ll destroy each other, fail to rebuild civilisation. too good and they’ll die, unable to carry on with cruel but practical necessities. Threads says it does not matter. the individual goodness and well-meaningness of people does not matter. we will all die, one way or the other.
Threads is a docudrama, which is crucially different from a mockumentary. it does not, as many mockumentaries do, have any kind of in-universe film crew or insert the creation of the piece into the narrative. the characters are not being observed by a film crew. it’s more accurate to say the actors are re-enacting what is believed would happen in the case of a nuclear bomb being dropped on britain. it is intercut scenes from many perspectives; a handful of families we follow from pre-war to after the bombs drop, a group of government workers trying to keep the system running, daily glimpses of life in britain. these are intercut with a documentary narration telling us the effects of things like fallout, like hypothermia, like the kinds of disease you will get when there is no more clean water.
on a next to nothing budget and shot for tv, Threads makes do by not relying on special effects or big flashy scenes. it manages pretty well at showing the total devastation of the area, but it’s the deeply grounded nature of it that sells the entire film. the actors are natural, the sets are real demolished buildings. some of the makeup work is shoddy by modern standards but with so much more horror to distract you it hardly meaningfully impacts on immersion. i found the inability to depict graphic burn scars kind of a relief, actually, considering how relentlessly bleak the rest of the film is.
the world after the bombs drop will be bad, Threads says. it takes its time. the bomb doesn’t drop until an hour into the film and until that point we are mostly watching the quiet family drama of a young working class couple realising they are pregnant and deciding to get married, the interactions with their families, their hopes for the future. in the background the news spells war and disaster but the characters continue on with their lives. as one of them puts it, watching a news story about escalating tensions between america and russia: “There’s nothing we can do.”
there is nothing they can do. they attempt to prepare for the bombs to drop, but no preparation is enough. they do not understand the scale of what they face. there are no measures in place to protect them, not ones that will work. Threads is unrelentingly bleak not because it revels in human suffering but because, simply, it does not believe humanity understands the reckoning it faces. the families we see are ordinary, every day people who just want to carry on with their lives. no one rises to be a hero or a champion. who could?
the horror of Threads is a deeply impersonal one and the documentary style helps with that. it’s probably one of the most harrowing films i’ve ever seen precisely because of the helplessness you feel watching it. like the characters themselves, you are not going to be able to do anything. you can only watch, as they do, as the world falls apart. it doesn’t make false pleas to you about how you can do better if you build a fallout shelter or vote someone in. it doesn’t moralise at all, and any attempt to do so would only lessen the point it’s trying to make. that in the face of the apocalypse there is nothing you can do. and that’s it.
the way you analyse media is so good, i've been binge reading all your movie reviews. you have such a fun style of writing that's really enjoyable to read and i can tell that you really understand what you're talking about, which is better than a lot of movie reviewers out there. you're also very funny. it's a shame you're not as popular as you should be; i look forward to seeing more of your content :)
this was a film i saw a couple of times as a teen that inexplicably really stuck with me so i was hopeful on revisiting it that i’d get something out of it again. unfortunately i was disappointed. i can see the bones of what appealed to me as a teenager, but Pin is hurt deeply by its straight to tv budget and style, with its dull sets, uninteresting soundtrack and lack of directorial vision.
there’s some real drive there to make an interesting and deeply weird thriller but i strongly suspect the original ideas come from the novel and the film itself is a very watered down take on the concept. i mean the idea of a boy becoming psychotically fixated on his imagined friendship with an anatomical dummy is a pretty wildass fucking idea and the film relies heavily on you being creeped out enough by this core concept to hold together.
overall i think the film reminds me most of those awful lifetime movies you get about girls in horrible violent issue-of-the-day situations, but hailing from a reality where your twin brother being obsessively controlling via ventriloquism and a dummy is a serious threat. it has the same ropey acting, pop psychology and deeply uninteresting visuals.
it’s too bad this film isn’t as good as its fucked up premise wants it to be. i think you could make something genuinely great and weird and esoteric out of this, but not on a canadian made for tv movie budget.
Maniac Cop from the start is very clear about what it thinks of cops. they are liars who are willing to put the public in danger to protect their own, are violent and untrustworthy, are corrupt, racist and ineffectual. whether or not Maniac Cop thinks any of those things are bad is unclear. it’s aware of the corruption and the violent history of the police, doesn’t think the police have ever been good or useful, but also all of its characters are cops and none of them have a problem with it.
so Maniac Cop is a slasher movie about a cop. not just any cop, the biggest, toughest, meanest cop who killed a tonne of crooks and then died in prison. whether or not we’re really meant to believe officer matt cornell was a hero is not obvious. several of the other cops love him, decry the system for putting him away ( “he only killed bad guys”) but i don’t think we’re necessarily expected to agree with them; most of the characters in the film are fairly scummy and unlikeable. was officer cornell a good cop whose gone bad since his murder? or was he always bad and supported by other bad cops? the film doesn’t effectively prove either point, but i’d like to believe the latter is intended because of how often the film goes out of its way to tell us the cops are corrupt.
outside of the vague politics Maniac Cop is pretty standard slasher fare, with your usual series of bloody murders and disposable victims. on the downside it doesn’t have really any particularly great or memorable kills outside of the villain’s own backstory, but it does have a good setting, being one of the only slashers i can think of set in nyc. new york is shot really well in this film and i love how the first half of the movie makes use of dark, gritty new york nights with the neon lights and deep blue skies. it’s disappointing that the latter half of the film and the climax take place in the broad daylight and shed the spooky atmosphere for a more traditional action set piece.
the acting is fairly uneven. tom atkins is wildly underutilised; he’s set up as the hero only to get undercut by bruce campbell turning in a pretty neutral performance and laurene landon playing a pretty dreadful character. this film totally fails all of its women characters; there’s not a single woman in this who doesn’t entirely revolve around a man. there’s some potential to make the characters more interesting, there’s definitely an attempt, but it doesn’t particularly work.
overall Maniac Cop is a pretty decently enjoyable slasher movie. it’s not as insane as William Lustig’s earlier outstandingly weird and mesmerising film Maniac, but it’s watchable. it’s distinctive and often charming enough that it’s worth the 85 minutes of time it demands from you, though i don’t think it’s going to convince anyone who isn’t already a slasher fan. it’s not truly weird enough to grab you for that or genius enough to have something worth saying, but it still manages to be a standout entry in a pretty crowded subgenre.
this film was kind of a lot like getting hit by a train. i was not anticipating the unbelievable break-neck pace of this film and by an hour in i was feeling completely flattened by the non-stop insanity of it all.
that’s not to say i didn’t enjoy it. i did. The Frighteners has the same black surreal comedy that makes me adore Beetlejuice, and it’s impossible to not get sucked into the energy of the film. but it’s a relentless force; halfway through the film i thought that there was no way the film couldn’t be headed towards an ending, only to find out that there was a lot more movie to go. this movie has more film per film than most movies could ever dream of.
there’s a particular kind of comedy -- Airplane is a good example -- where the film has so many jokes that it doesn’t matter if one falls flat because it’s already moved on. The Frighteners is kind of like this but instead of jokes it’s plot points in the movie. the film ricochets between ideas so frantically that looking away for even a second risks missing a major plot point.
the way things -- characters, jokes, plot points -- are crammed in means that it’s hard to let things sink in. this is fine for the jokes, a lot of which haven’t aged particularly well (there can be a real nasty bent to the humour i didn’t enjoy thought a lot of the rest of the film is genuinely very funny), but it hurts when the film is trying to go for actual emotional moments. the tone can’t settle long enough for things to have any affect. i didn’t really care about Michael J Fox’s dead wife because it’s walled in between wild characters and slapstick humour. but then again it’s hard to say that storyline is a drag because there’s so much else going on i don’t have time to think about it.
i think Frighteners is best watched for the experience. it’s wildly unique, packed to the brim with attention-grabbing nonsense, and offers more than enough to keep you very entertained. Michael J Fox’s character is kind of flat in the latter half of the film when he’s getting drowned out by the sheer amount of insanity surrounding him, but if he was more over the top the film might not have been watchable at all. the fact he holds his own is pretty admirable. there was a lot that i felt left something to be desired, mostly in the uninteresting romance and the questionable relationship between the villains, which felt like it was thrown in for no real reason other than yet another dramatic story beat, but The Frighteners is a runaway train ploughing through a circus and it has no time or interest in criticism.
a writer and his wife and son go to a new home where they’re living a short while in exchange for doing work on the house and land. as they stay there, the father’s behaviour begins to change, possibly because of the influence of the house itself, leading to a sudden and explosive climax. this is of course the sh... burnt offerings?!
Burnt Offerings, both the original novel and film, actually precede the shining by several years and the two share a good deal of ideas. i would be pretty shocked if this wasnt a film or novel Stevie King was familiar with. the similarities end after the general premise, though.
i was actually surprised that Burnt Offerings is an american film by an american director; it feels much more like some of the old, slow british ghost films of the sixties like Whistle And I’ll Come To You or A Warning to the Curious. slow movies that take their time allowing you to absorb the environment and the people in it. the time we spend with the loving Rolf family makes their changes later more prominent.
the film is very simple in its concept and its execution. i would struggle to say the film has any real deeper subtextual meaning to it; its focus is very strictly around the question of “how much suffering can a family take?” (though by modern horror standards the traumas they endure might be considered mild) and the contents of the story is built around supporting that.
for being a two-hour film its very lean on story. there aren’t any real backstories to the characters and more so than that there’s not really any backstory to the house, what i’d consider the biggest difference from The Shining or even other haunted house greats like Poltergeist. the house merely exists as an evil entity and the few ghosts we see in it (like the nightmarish chauffer) have no explanation at all. i actually kind of admired the movie’s disinterest in bogging itself down with what would now be considered an almost mandatory attempt to explain why the house is so fucked up.
because of how slim the story is its very easy to understand why the film is a dull experience for many. there’s no real mystery to this because the characters aren’t interested in trying to solve it. they think they know what’s going on and they don’t care to find out otherwise, actually. sometimes this works, sometimes it feels like they’re being a little too oblivious. it also rubberbands oddly between who we’re meant to be sympathising with. sometimes a character’s emotional distress about their own actions is explored, sometimes they’re just suddenly nice again after being an unforgivable asshole moments before. some of the relationship politics of the film are questionable to say the least.
i’m a little uncertain of how effective the pacing actually is. the moments when the evil of the house overcomes a character and forces them to act out sometimes feels almost jarringly extreme in the middle of a peaceful film but then again, maybe that’s the point. the first real horror scene, where the father Ben almost accidentally drowns his son Davey in a pool, is so sudden and alarming that it definitely leaves an impact.
without the absolute powerhouse performances of the cast it wouldn’t work at all. it takes a hell of an actor to be able to carry all the emotional weight of the film’s many, many extreme close-ups. the extreme close-up on Ben Rolf in extreme emotional distress is Burnt Offering’s favourite way of conveying tension, something that is both affecting and sometimes a little too cheesy.
overall i’d say Burnt Offerings is a Good Movie. it’s a humble and oft overlooked entry in the haunted house subgenre and worth some admiration if just for Karen Black’s performance, but it’s also understandable how it gets lost in the shadow of the more ambitious and weightier films like The Shining or Poltergeist or The Changeling.
you heard it right folks, for the second year in a row i watched
Every Halloween Film
it took around 18 hours. there are eleven movies now after all. next year there will be twelve, and next year i will throw myself into the river thames if i make myself watch Rob Zombie’s Halloween II again.
this time i wrote it out as a journal. it is a mess. i will not edit it. if you read the entire thing you dont get a prize. im very, very tired. i watched eleven movies today. i like five of them.
9:27- I boot up Halloween (1978). I don’t know if this is the movie I’ve seen the most in my life, but I’ve certainly seen it dozens of times, and it never loses its impact. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m reading into micro-expressions on actors’ faces and I don’t know how much any of this was ever intended, but it certainly enhances my own reading of the film. I catch the expression of slight annoyance on Judith’s face when Michael walks into her room; it’s clear she had just no idea this was coming.
9:37- The staging of the opening of Halloween is so like a nightmare, a comparison I keep using this year for the movies I watch, but there’s a sense of being placed in the immediacy of what’s happening with no context and a burden of responsibility that only exists in dreams in the first few opening scenes. You don’t know where you are or what you’re supposed to be doing, but something huge and terrible is happening and the thick, dark shadows combined with the pale white-blue light the film uses makes everything emerge out of the black but never truly divorce itself from the darkness.
The way Loomis talks about Michael like some kind of animal is such a point of fixation for me. He calls Michael ‘it’ and wants ‘it’ to be locked up for life. Maybe it’s just being of a crazy persuasion myself but being the responsibility of a doctor who despises you and refers to you as an untreatable evil doesn’t feel like it would be much help to me. I just don’t think Loomis is a great doctor, is my point.
Laurie’s introduction is such a surge of light in a film that has up until now been shot almost exclusively in darkness. We are shown someone good, normal, happy, but the long, distant shots mean we are not accompanying her on this journey from her perspective; we are following her. Halloween legend suggests Michael doesn’t start stalking Laurie until she approaches the Myers’ house, but it feels like his eyes are lingering on her long before she does that. He casts a long shadow over her life before she even knows he exists.
9:42- The fact the film approaches the idea that it doesn’t make sense Michael would know how to drive a car but doesn’t explain it at all is weirdly funny. Just fuck it man, he can drive.
9:45: I really love the focus on Michael as a physical being. The fact we see him touch someone with his hands, open a car, steer while driving, run his hand over a fence… All of this adds a sense of Michael being tangible that I think is so vital. Michael Myers is a human being, not a demon, and that’s precisely why he is scary. Halloween as always meant to be a movie about the person next door; the fear comes from the fact that something inside your apparently nice, normal neighbourhood is rotten to the core. Laurie herself is incredibly on edge almost from the start; she knows something is wrong. She just hasn’t figured out what yet.
9:57- The gravekeeper’s insistence that something like this happens in every town is probably right on the money. It’s definitely what the film wants you to understand. The apparent nicety of your hometown doesn’t mean it’s free of violence, only that you’re trained not to notice it.
10:01- at exactly 0:33:16 Michael drives by in the background right behind Loomis without Loomis noticing, which is hysterically funny to me. I imagine Michael finds this incredibly funny too.
10:02- Laurie saying she’d “rather go to the dance with Ben Traimor” smacks of being a teenager and gay and saying the name of the first kid you know who’s nice to you because you guess that’s what having a crush is?
10:05- Loomis’ insistence at 0:37:12 that Michael killed and ate a dog raw is incredible to me. Also, I can’t say “Michael raw dog” to my friends without them screaming hysterically at me. They’re fuckers, and I hate them
10:07- From Loomis’ description, he met Michael when Michael was six, already condemned by the doctors as an incurable patient, and stopped treating Michael and turned to insisting he be locked up by the time Michael was fourteen. I think about this a lot.
10:13- “I’m not about to let anything happen to you.” I’m always very touched by Laurie’s immediate assertion of her position as a protector of children.
10:19- Lindsay caring literally only about watching horror movies is incredibly relatable. Truly a hero I can finally understand.
10:28- The house across the street, Lindsay’s house, is almost as haunting as the Myers house itself. It’s certainly a beautiful spectacle, the huge white building with its pillars and vast, blank windows, looming out of the darkness like a moon-lit tombstone. Laurie always seems so lonely when she watches it from the outside.
10:33- The head tilt after Michael pins Bob to the wall is so fucking iconic. It’s the first time it was done, I believe, and while it’s a cliché now it’s still chilling. The way Michael just studies Bob’s corpse, thoughts completely unable to be interpreted. The fact he turfs up in a ghost costume wearing Bob’s glasses moments later is so strange; there’s really no reason he would do that at all, other than the idea he finds it funny. There’s more showmanship to what Michael does than people recognise a lot of the time, I think. It’s like he really wants his work to be seen.
10:43- The shot of Annie on the bed under Judith’s tombstone has to be one of the most beautiful shots in the franchise. The perfect arrangement made just for Laurie to walk in on and experience in one precise way is so meticulous. Michael’s obsessiveness nature manifest in so many ways. The final showdown between Michael and Laurie is only around ten minutes long but it’s an incredible endurance test of a scene; the way Michael grows out of the shadows like he’s being formed within them is still beautiful and terrifying.
I think a really underrated part of this sequence that makes it so frightening is how Laurie is pointedly not alone; the neighbourhood she’s in is populated, and there are people around her. But when she runs to the neighbours for help, screaming and banging on the doors, they choose to ignore her. Seeing something they don’t like in their neighbourhood, they shut it out.
10:50- the closet scene is an incredible piece of filmmaking. There’s really never been anything before or since. I love art with a lot of lines and shadows and seeing the shadow of Michael moments before he breaks through the door is so haunting.
10:52- Laurie desperate and holding the knife in her hands is stunning. I love her.
10:54- I love the brief glimpse of seeing Michael’s face and how it stops him dead in his tracks. The fact he looks so painfully normal is so important too.
10:55- There’s a lot to be said about Loomis confirming Michael is ‘the Boogeyman’. I think Michael’s definite physical humanity in this movie is so important because it contrasts so strongly against the dehumanisation of him by the characters around him. We can only accept there’s a nightmare inside our neighbourhoods if we choose to believe it isn’t natural to it; that someone like that could not form there, but must have been artificially summoned, like a demon. Later movies and the remakes run with this idea; that Michael is somehow an outsider, but I think that defeats the entire point. Michael is part of this world just as much as Laurie is, whether we want to believe it or not.
10:57- I should be starting Halloween II but unfortunately, I have to go to the pharmacy. It might be Halloween, but prescription medications wait for no slasher villain.
11:13- I start watching Halloween II (1981). I like that this movie starts off with Mr Sandman. Horror movies having nursery rhymes in them now is another cliché, but this is such an interesting pick for Michael. I suppose it fits with him being the Boogeyman; he’s a creature of nightmares that slinks into our homes only through dreams. Allegedly.
I like the decision to pick this movie up right after the last one stopped, something that it looks like 2020’s Halloween Kills will be duplicating. It just makes a straightforward kind of sense.
11:21- The hysteria of Loomis screaming “I shot him six times!” over and over is sort of funny and sort of sick. There’s a slight traumatised, obsessive lunacy in Loomis the same as there is in Michael. I like the parallels between them. Loomis raised Michael more than Michael’s own parents did; it makes sense he’d have a lingering affect.
11:23- The shots from Michael’s perspective both in the first movie and this one are great. I love that we’re challenged to be inside his mind. We follow Michael a lot in this early opening. There’s an obvious strategy to his actions in this film, but the randomness of his kills are new. In the first movie, all the kills either get him something or revolve around Laurie. In this one, he kind of just does whatever, a theme that carries on for the rest of the movie.
11:24- A difference I don’t like so much in this movie is that the neighbours are so much more keyed into each other; they pay attention to the screaming and the strange noises, watch out for things that look out of place. I feel like it clashes with the first movie’s themes of isolation simply through your neighbours not caring what happens to you.
11:32- Ben Traimor getting hit by a cop car which crashes into a van and then explodes is one of the funniest fucking things that’s ever happened in this franchise. It is so completely fucking inexplicable and suddenly violent and pointless that it becomes hysterical, which is unfortunate given it’s meant to be a serious scene.
The breakdown scene that follows, where the Sheriff Brackett finds his daughter Annie is dead however is excellent. Charles Cyphers manages to carry the weight of the tragedy pretty effectively for a film that can veer into the goofy too easily, and Dr Loomis’ more measured delivery on his beliefs about Myers is Donald Pleasance at his best.
Halloween II isn’t any longer than Halloween, but the pacing is worse. It lets go of the original’s constant, haunting tension and delivers a sloppier movie as a result, too padded with side characters and people passing through the world with no consequence. The character of Brett is probably one of the most obnoxious characters in the franchise, which is saying a lot.
11:46- Laurie literally not knowing it was Michael Myers who was after her until she’s told is weirdly sad. Like of course she didn’t know, but it’s still sad. She feels very small and vulnerable in this movie, very lost in the big, empty hospital. The fact her parents are inexplicably missing and never shows up makes me crazy. I always wonder if there was a dropped plot thread where Michael was meant to have killed them, or something, because there’s really no explanation.
11:53- The musical stings in this movie are so odd. They’re too bleepy. Don’t know what the hell happened.
11:55- I take the laptop into the kitchen to make a sandwich while I watch the movie. It’s early for lunch but I don’t eat breakfast and I can actively feel my braincells hurting me.
12:01- I’m fascinated by the shots in this of the faint dream Laurie has of seeing a boy in the hospital when she was a child. I can never decide if these are real or not; if she’s unlocking some strange, contextless memory from childhood or just imagining it, instinctively feeling the connection between her and Michael without knowing the truth.
12:04- Bud’s off-screen death is so unsatisfying. Also, so continues the trend of Michael being mistaken for people’s boyfriends. Guess he’s just boyfriend material. Seems unbelievable to me she wouldn’t notice how dirty his hands are, though. And Jesus, the boiling her to death kill is really pretty brutal and graphic, after kills in the first few movies are so relatively restrained.
12:07- Michael writing SAMHAIN on the wall is so over the top. Yeah, I can believe he’s fucking 21 years old. Michael is a performance art student.
12:09- Laurie having Michael’s ability to go deadly still and silent is neat. I like them having links. They’re siblings after all. Runs in Myers family.
12:11- The needle into the side of the head kill is bizarre. Also, the head-tilt here feels cheap. I have already started stealing candy from the bowl intended for trick-or-treaters. In my defence, I could, and I wanted it.
12:20- I like that Laurie has an instinct to run, hide and defend herself. I don’t know if it’s the trauma of surviving or a prenatural sense that Michael is coming for her, but I like it. I don’t like that this entire movie is like twenty minutes longer than it needs to be, or how little Laurie is actually in it.
12:28- The reveal that Laurie is Michael’s sister is so great. It fits so well. I say bullshit to anyone who doesn’t like it. The repetition and obsessiveness of Michael’s behaviour, the strange links and parallels between Laurie and Michael. The fact that the two of them are just as much parts of Haddonfield as each other. It just feels right for them to be related. They are related.
12:31- Laurie crawling on the street begging for help as Loomis ignores her again – this man is truly useless.
12:33- Michael walking directly through a glass door is hysterical.
12:38- Laurie calling Michael’s name, stopping him for a second, blinding him with a shot… This last sequence is fantastic. There’s an enormous amount of pity in seeing Michael blindly stumbling around, swinging his knife, unable to see but still so desperate to kill. The fact she stops him by calling his name is great. The way it almost, for a second, perks some recognition inside him. I think a lot about Michael’s sense of identity. Who does he think he is? I guess we’re never going to find out.
12:43- Halloween III: Season of the Witch time. There’s a trend now of saying this is really the best Halloween movie. I can’t really argue with people’s personal takes, but there’s always a sense to that to me of denying the classic to favour the underdog. People love an underdog. But Halloween III definitely does kind of rule. As much conspiracy thriller as it is horror movie, Halloween III is deeply weird and creative, but packed with great performances and truly memorable special effects, with a killer soundtrack to boot.
1:11- Halloween III is so distinct feeling; it almost feels like a John Carpenter movie, but more like The Thing than Halloween. The film is less aesthetically distinct than Halloween; it takes place over days, in many locations, following the characters as they dig into the conspiracy behind the menacing Silver Shamrock company. It’s well-written and often pretty witty and builds an incredible sense of menace and strangeness. The little company town surrounding the Silver Shamrock factory is bizarre and frightening and although the film can be a little heavy-handed in its depiction of a surveillance state, it certainly builds up atmosphere.
1:20- The scene of the old drunk being taken out by the corporate men in black rules in how suddenly violent and horrible it is. We love a horror movie.
1:26- Some of the digital effects leave a little to be desired but god the practical effects are fucking incredible, and so goddamn memorable and horrible.
1:33- The over-the-top niceness of the Silver Shamrock owner is so pitch-perfect. He’s so nice that it’s obviously, blatantly menacing. What owner of a big corporation like this just gives shit away for free? I mean, come on. I really love the apparent legends that surround him, though, the reputation of being a genius and a great man.
1:48- The complete calmness with which the whole plan gets revealed is so good because you really sense how fucking little threat our heroes pose; no one here thinks they have a chance in hell of stopping Silver Shamrock. The plan in itself is absurd, but like, who cares. It’s fun. The fact Cochran is like, delighted to show off his big ideas because he’s so confident nothing will stop them. And in a way he’s right; at least partially, the heroes do ultimately fail.
2:00- the speech Cochran delivers about the power of Samhain rules. It’s so intense and menacing. Fucking great performance here.
2:07- As much as I like the ending, I think how much it drags on kind of kills some of the tension. Feels like it could have been cut back. The imagery at the very end is fantastic though; it’s so weird. The way this movie embraces strangeness is great; I’ll always take a film that tries to be something different and weird over anything that plays it safe.
2:20- Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Jesus we’re starting down a dark path now. Halloween 4 is pretty thoroughly ‘ok’ and even has a couple of good moments but God. The decision to return to just being about Michael Myers after risking and flopping with an anthology movie is fine by me, but Halloween 4 plays it as safe as possible and lacks any of the flair or charm of the original. It just doesn’t have any style, and the forced drama falls short. Jamie Lee Curtis’ absence also feels like a sucking void in the film; it’s too painfully obvious that she was meant to be in this movie, and the fact she isn’t, the fact she died off-screen in some completely nondescript way is so depressing. The filmmakers assumed no one watching gave a shit about Laurie, and that’s so wrong and so disheartening.
2:25- the other doctors hating Loomis really adds to my reading of him as a man on the brink. He must be insufferable to know.
2:30- It really feels so painfully fucking unfair that Laurie would go through so much to just die in a random car accident. Or maybe there’s a kind of poetry in her dying without Michael’s involvement; just part of her own life.
2:36- Donald Pleasance is such a mensch. As stupid as these movies get, he never stopped bringing his fucking A-game and giving them as much respect and gravitas as he could. What a fucking legend.
2:41- Loomis seeing Michael in the diner is so fucking good. Loomis’ quiet pleading, asking Michael not to go back to Haddonfield but just take him instead, the quiet God damn you. Such a great moment. Would be better if Michael didn’t just suddenly teleport out of the room with no explanation, but you can’t have it all.
2:42- Why are later Halloween movies so fond of explosions.
2:43- The kids literally chanting ‘Jamie’s an orphan’ at her is incredible. Not in a good way.
2:50- I fetch the kitten to keep him on my lap because my house is colder than Michael Myers’ black heart.
2:55- Michael looking at Laurie’s photos… Ugh.
2:56- Why do people not just believe Loomis when he says Michael is back. We have this thread every week, comrade.
3:06- Michael just kinda standing around in the background doesn’t really do much in terms of fear. It’s just silly. And his mask looks ridiculous.
3:12- This film is a masterclass in failing to raise tension.
3:23- There’s an attempt to manufacture conflict by having the police clash with a group baying for mob justice, but it all feels completely inert. Nothing in the film carries any weight or drama, and the tension is all derived from using familiar music stings to try and kick your brain into recognising it’s an appropriate place to feel something.
3:25- The kitten bites me, drinks my water, and goes to sit in a box instead. I hate him. The kill where Michael stabs someone through the gut with a shotgun and pins them to the wall is the most flagrantly absurd thing I’ve ever seen. The fact she’s immediately found also really kills the tension. Also why is Michael so fucking strong. He’s so strong.
3:31- I can see the intention with the roof scene, but there’s too much unintentional comedy and Michael is so unthreatening that it doesn’t hold together at all. I especially hate how Michael will just suddenly appear out of nowhere; the first movie utilises his forming out of the shadows so well, but it doesn’t fucking work the same if he’s just there, in a formerly empty and well-lit corridor. He’s not being beamed in by a spaceship.
3:39- God this film is slow. Michael’s hands look absolutely terrifically fucked up. I wish Laurie was here.
3:41- It is insufferable how this film has like ten climaxes. Jamie running to inspect Michael really just doesn’t make any sense. I understand why the filmmakers did it, but it doesn’t make sense. They allude to some connection between the two, but it’s really underplayed and doesn’t pay out well when so much of the movie is her being flatly scared of him. They could have – and should have – acted more on the idea of her finding some sort of familiar connection between them. Famously, the movie ends with the idea Jamie might have somehow inherited Michael’s drive to murder, but the plot thread disappointingly gets dropped after this movie.
3:47- It’s time for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. God, this movie is such a non-entity in the franchise. It doesn’t have 6’s turbulent history or 4’s dramatic ending. It just like, occurs. It occupies space and time. It tries to further the connection between Jamie and Michael, turning it into something psychic and supernatural, and begins to introduce elements of the Cult of Thorne before that takes over as the plot of 6, but none of it is interesting and I also hate the attempt to make Halloween a supernatural franchise.
4:04- The totally legal for sure stream I’m using starts fucking up so everything takes a break while I find somewhere else to watch it.
4:05- Contemplate if life is worth it.
4:06- Film returns. It’s not worth it.
4:27- If screaming at kids was always Dr Loomis’ brand of psychiatry no wonder he couldn’t help Michael.
4:30- You really need to put in more effort than this if you want to make someone being murdered in broad daylight scary. If you’re not putting in the kind of effort Midsommar does to sell the death, you aren’t gonna get there. Halloween as a franchise seems obnoxiously dedicated to doing shit in the middle of the fucking day, for something who built the power of the original scares so much off of the quiet and darkness of the shadows.
4:39- Imagine leaving a traumatised child alone because you want to get laid. Tina’s character is fucking absurd. There are far too much entirely interchangeable faces in this movie screaming incoherently.
4:57- The scene of Michael desperately trying to run Jamie over with a car while the camera swings around hysterically and then the car inexplicably exploding is like peak mid-sequel Halloween. It really exemplifies how much the franchise started relying on noise and flash instead of like, being scary.
5:02- Loomis begging Michael to ‘fight the rage that drives you’ and saying that killing will never drive the anger out is too little too late, ain’t it. I like the idea of an appeal to his emotions but there’s so little emotional weight to the rest of the movie that it fails to maintain a meaningful tone. All the moments where Jamie is communing with Michael are supposed to drive tension I guess, but it mostly is just very silly.
5:09- Every set in this movie look so much like a set. Considering the first movie was just shot in a house I don’t understand why they didn’t do the same. I like the prospect of Loomis trying to talk to Michael, to get through to him emotionally, but seeing Michael just standing there in the really goofy fucking mask they gave him this film is just ridiculous. Donald Pleasance can only do so much.
5:19- Again we return to the idea of getting through to Michael emotionally. Jamie calls him uncle and asks for him to take his mask off. He does, even. But there doesn’t feel like there’s any understanding of who Michael is; there’s no consistent psychology or examination, only the gut feeling that family has to be important. But we know how Michael feels about family, and it’s not tender. He speaks his own language.
5:21- Where the fuck did Loomis even get a giant chain net and tranquiliser drafts.
5:25- Sure why wouldn’t a guy with a machine gun show up and just start slaughtering everyone like who the fuck cares.
5:28- I take a break to gather my thoughts and feelings emotionally so I can handle watching Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers.
5:32- I change the cat litter to avoid watching Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers.
5:40- I start Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers.
5:50- The woman calls into radio station and says she’s in love with Michael Myers is the only person in this film I respect.
5:51- The decision to bring back Tommy Doyle as a conspiracy theorist who’s obsessed with Michael is a great concept, which is why I’m glad Tommy Doyle is in Halloween Kills so I never have to say Halloween 6 makes a point again. Paul Rudd (yes, that Paul Rudd) is shockingly terrible in this movie, and also, I don’t like him as an actor, so nothing about this performance endears him to me. I have no fucking idea what they directed him to do. It is miserable.
6:01- I am straight up not having a good time bro.
6:03- This is the only Halloween movie in a long time to actually try and show off its location; Halloween 5 could be set literally anywhere and is unfollowable, but Halloween 6 at least attempts to ground the movie in Haddonfield and show that this is a normal neighbourhood. Unfortunately, this movie takes place in nonsense magic doo-doo land so any attempt to ground us in anything is a waste of fucking time.
6:13- There’s a lot of reasons I don’t like this movie; I think the additions of mythology are absurd and go against the themes of the original, the conclusion is dumb as hell, the story is boring. It isn’t scary and it isn’t well-shot or well-written. But on a more abstract level, I hate its schlock, cheap understanding of what obsession and trauma does to someone. I fucking loathe that it uses rape as a shock tactic and how much abuse it puts its female characters through for no catharsis.
6:50- This curry I’m eating sucks ass. I want that on the record.
7:22- Jesus fucking Christ it’s finally time for Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. I love this movie. I love it for the ambition it had. It might not be a as fully realised examination of trauma after time as Halloween (2018) is, but I admire it for its vision. It doesn’t try to mimic the style of the first film, and I guess there’s a certain loss in aesthetic as it’s more akin to Scream or other fairly uniform 90s slasher movies in appearance, but it’s a far more confident movie than the other middling Halloween sequels. It has a clear understanding of what it wants the movie to be and is genuinely tense and thrilling because of that, as well as more readily grounded in reality. It has a genuine respect for the original that others fail to and tries to build an original film that follows it in a meaningful sense.
7:56- Laurie is really condemned to be around people who don’t listen to her but as much of a horrible little punk shit her son is, narratives about inherited or family trauma make me go insane, so this all affects me still.
8:01- I like the discussion of fate in Frankenstein as parallel to the discussion of fate in the first movie. It’s silly, but I like it, and that’s on me.
8:07- One of the smartest moves this film makes is using its own score. A lot of the middling sequels just lift from the original without any care, but H20 puts in some effort into building up some actual atmosphere.
8:13- I like that Laurie is a mess but still holding it together. She’s jumpy and always watching, with a bottle of alcohol a little too close beside her. It’s not exactly the most monumental depiction of lifelong trauma, but the film makes an effort. I love its effort. I love Jamie Lee Curtis as well.
8:26- This film brings back a theatricality to the presentations of Michael’s victims that I feel the movies sorely lack. If it doesn’t look like an art project why bother? I was going to say I wish there was more development of the relationship with Michael and his nephew, but I don’t. I want more Laurie. Love Laurie.
8:28- Michael’s not good with keys. I love the fact that his hands and eyes are so clear, though. It brings back that kind of essential physicality he had in the original. Him making contact with Laurie, the shot of the two of them through the glass looking at each other is so fucking good.
8:34- Laurie standing in the drive with a fucking axe screaming Michael’s name as the Halloween them kicks in fucking rules so goddamn hard. The final fight scene between these two is an all-time great.
8:39- Laurie pulling a gun on a cop so she can kidnap the coroner’s van so she can make sure Michael is actually dead is fucking incredible. She’s the best person who’s ever been written. The final conclusion of the film, with Michael reaching out to her when he’s pinned down, and it’s unclear if he’s asking for help or trying to reach out to hurt her one last time but his eyes are filled with desperation is one of the best moments in any of the films, and the power of Laurie just delivering the killing blow makes it even better. The fact they both get to be so vulnerable and so human and have a moment, just a moment, where their hands touch for any reason other than violence is so fucking strong. I love this fucking movie.
8:45- Halloween: Resurrection. Because after just seeing Laurie fight for her life and get out alive, triumphing over Michael once and for all, obviously what we want is to have the whole thing turn out to be bullshit and a fake out and for Laurie to die in the first five minutes of this film? Fuck this movie man. Like fuck this movie.
8:59- as bad and stupid and shallow as this movie is, the slight manipulation Michael performs is pretty great, and Laurie’s line “Are you afraid of me?” is an all-time great. This film doesn’t earn Laurie’s death, though, and it doesn’t deserve Jamie Lee Curtis. I’m not even totally against the idea of finding out what Michael would do if all his family was dead, but this movie’s option of ‘be in a reality show being filmed in his house’ is probably the answer I never, ever, ever wanted.
9:03- I have given up.
9:25- People make a big deal out of the ending scene where Busta Rhymes electrocutes Michael Myers in the nuts but it is really the only moment of levity in what is otherwise the most boring experience anyone can have.
10:00- I am eating leftover candy and contemplating my life.
10:17- I boot up Halloween (2007). I have accepted death.
10:19- Yeah, what Halloween was really lacking was a guy yelling “I should crawl over there and skullfuck the shit outta you!” before hitting on his teenage stepdaughter. The level of overt grossness and extremity that Robert Zombert brings to this franchise is so fucking putrid and unnecessary. All he brings to this franchise is insane amounts of unbridled misogyny and pop psychology. I said the same thing last year and I’ll happily say it again; this movie’s idea of what makes a serial killer is like something from a daytime TV movie. I’m sure it was intended to be edgy, but the demonization of the working class and sex workers and the position of Michael as the lower-class outsider to the nice suburbs is the most conformist class politics in existence. Halloween (1978)’s depiction of a serial killer who was a part of and came from inside the nice, safe, upper middle-class suburb will always be a far, far more revolutionary statement than this.
10:44- I don’t believe this really gives Michael ‘more backstory’ since it basically just re-treads what the first movie did, but it sure does it worse. The film just takes an incredible amount of time to say ultimately nothing at all. What really gets me is that this does really destroy the Michael is the big bad boogeyman myth simply because the childhood it gives Michael doesn’t fit with who he is. The change just feels forced. The suddenness of his violence feels forced. There doesn’t seem to be any observation here other than it would be scary if a nice kid was actually murderer.
10:56- Why does Michael’s mother own a huge projector. The melodrama of her killing herself is so absurd.
11:03- Michael Myers gets called the F-slur so many times in this movie that I’m officially adopting him as part of the LGBT community.
11:12- people criticise the original for not having the most natural of dialogue for its teenage girl characters, but the teenagers in this film are so incredibly obnoxious that it’s borderline unbearable to watch. Their dialogue is unnatural too, because it’s the kind of shit a weird old man really, desperately wants teenage girls to say.
11:23- There isn’t a scene in this that doesn’t drag on for too long in a completely unfunny, charmless way. It’s also insanely aggravating how Zombie is incapable of holding the camera still for longer than a couple of seconds at a time, and why everyone in the movie always has to be twenty feet away at all times.
11:25- This movie is just the first movie but longer with people screaming fuck constantly and added rape scenes. It is so insanely fucking worthless it really defies description.
11:28- I could be hanging out with my friends but I’m watching a bad movie. Contemplating life again.
11:45- I wish Robert Zombert wasn’t so horny.
11:51- I like truly never want to hear screaming again. There’s so much noise in this movie all the time. There isn’t a fucking second of silence in this film that couldn’t be filled with someone screaming hysterically or shit breaking. There isn’t a moment where the camera holds still and lets us take in the information in the frame without wobbling deliriously or swinging around like it’s on a fucking office chair.
12:10- I wonder if I can go see Doctor Sleep tomorrow. It’s technically not Halloween anymore, but if I manage to watch all these films within twenty-four hours I think it still counts.
12:13- We’re on Halloween II (2009). I like that this movie opens up with an explanation of what the symbolism of the white horse represents, in case you’re too stupid to figure it out for yourself. I like that the flashback is also completely drained of colour, in case you’re too stupid to figure out that it’s a flashback, even after it had a title card explaining it was. Just in case you thought Michael turned into a kid again, or something.
12:17- Glad we’re back to the constant screaming and camera swirling, just in case you thought for a brief second you’d have a moment of fucking peace.
12:21- I joked about the absurdity of Ben Traimor in Halloween II (1982) getting hit by a van and then exploding but it really doesn’t match up to the pointless fucking spectacle of violence that occurs roughly every ten seconds in Halloween II (2009). There’s no reason whatsoever to have the coroner’s van full of rapists crash into a cow and have the most incredibly bloody crash scene ever while one of them screams fuck over and over, but it happens. It isn’t scary, funny, or interesting, but it sure happens. That just about sums up this movie. Loud, bloody, and gratuitous, but not, y’know, interesting.
12:39- What an exploitative ‘I think crazy chicks are hot’ vision of trauma this is.
12:48- The idea of Loomis cashing in on his fame and becoming a celebrity psychologist is a good idea, but in classic Rob Zombie way, it’s done in the least interesting way possible.
1:04- What the fuck is happening.
1:13- it is like fucking incredible how boring this movie is. None of these scenes have any purpose. It’s just stuff, it’s stuff to put on film, with no larger thesis or point. I don’t fully understand why anyone bothered making this movie.
1:29- Great, a party sequence. That’s what this film really needed. More pointless noise and scenes that go nowhere. It was way too quiet and plot-heavy until now.
1:31- Does Mr Zombie know he can just make music videos. Like wouldn’t it be easier.
1:55- The ending scene in this movie is so incredibly incoherent and unwatchable. The bringing of the strange psychic ghosts that haunt Michael and Laurie and making them real, physical presences only makes the film more incoherent. It’s all jerky, wild camera movements, strobe lighting and screaming from here on out. Michael is such a non-entity in this film. He’s in at least half the movie, but he’s not himself. He’s just like a big guy with a beard and one line.
1:59- The slo-mo is so unnecessary. Like you fucking had to make this movie even longer? For who? For what?
2:00- I wish we were all dead.
2:01- I think I’ve seen Blade Runner 2049, a movie I deeply love and cherish, less times than I’ve seen Rob Zombie’s Halloween II.
2:02- Feel depressed about this.
2:03- If I ever hear Love Hurts again, I’ll kill myself.
2:04- Spent two minutes in silent contemplation.
2:06- It’s finally time for Halloween (2018). It’s hard to understate how much respect I have for this movie. Like I said earlier, I admire H20 a lot for its attempt to be a reaction to Laurie’s trauma and grief, but it does not manage to pull this off with anywhere near as much grace and effectiveness as Halloween (2018). And on top of that, the film is stunningly shot, the only film on par with the original in terms of how beautiful and memorable the cinematography is.
2:10- The distance from which we see Michael initially is so great; there’s so much restraint. He’s unmasked for a good portion of the early movie, but the film holds back in a way that makes his face completely unreadable and instead focuses on people’s reactions to and fear of him. It gives a sense that he’s almost too frightening to be fully captured on film. We can never really understand the legend of Michael, the same way people who don’t see him ‘in the wild’ can’t; we can only see him through legends.
2:14- The soundtrack in this movie is a fucking incredible beast. John Carpenter is God, frankly.
2:17- I adore Laurie’s portrayal in this movie. She’s so cold and defensive towards people who don’t believe or respect her, but there’s a painful, raw vulnerability to her as well. She’s traumatised person who has run the gamut of people refusing to understand or respect her trauma or the worldview she’s developed. There’s such a profound mixture of power and pain, a sense of immense dignity to her. She’s sick to death of the lack of respect and cruelty she’s faced. I just love how much emotion was put into her performance, how much the filmmakers really cared about making her a fully realised expression of trauma and the way people react.
2:24- Dave blowing up a pumpkin with a firecracker is the most accurately teenage thing that’s ever happened in these movies.
2:25- Laurie standing on the sidewalk outside the school in a mirror of how Michael did rules. The callbacks in this movie are always so underplayed that they feel like they take actual meaning, rather than just being a case of demanding fans look at something cool they recognise.
2:31- I am deliriously sleepy. Laurie’s breakdown at family dinner is so painful. She carries so much grief; she is, in her eyes, the only one who does and who may ever know the truth, surrounded by people who can’t understand her because trying to put themselves in her world hurts them too much. I think Laurie’s daughter’s description of what it was like growing up in a survivalist environment filled with anxiety and paranoia is so key; it was traumatising for her to grow up in a trauma-based environment. I hope she gets more time in the next movie.
2:43- This is the third movie in the franchise where Michael kills people in a public toilet, but definitely the best time it’s been done. Michael throwing teeth at the journalist writing about him is something that is so insane that it’s now burned itself directly into my brain and I am incapable of not tweeting ‘i wish michael myers would throw teeth on me’ at least once every three weeks.
2:46- The gravity that’s given to Michael putting the mask on is mesmerising. Again, I love the physicality of his hands and motions; this movie doesn’t forget he’s a real, physical person.
2:52- I’m obsessed with Michael’s decision not to kill the baby. He’s on a random murder spree, killing anyone who he sees without any particular cause, but he passes right by the baby. Looks at it, and then chooses not to. He made an actual choice not to. I always wonder what was going through his mind at the time.
2:59- Alyson’s costume was a really great way to have her end up with the same silhouette as Laurie in the first movie without having her just straight up dress like her grandma. Nice touches.
3:01- “You are so getting dry-fucked tonight” is probably one of the most wretched lines of dialogue in this franchise.
3:09- Laurie hunting for Michael is so good. She’s so fucking ruthless in this movie; she’s afraid but she’s fucking tuned in completely to her revenge hunger.
3:13- Sartain is a character I really love. The set-up is obviously that he’s Loomis 2, Laurie even refers to him as “the new Loomis”, and he reflects and subverts this in interesting ways. I like that he calls Michael “property of the state”; it’s his own way of dehumanising Michael. To him, Michael is an asset, something to be poked and prodded and studied. But of course, unlike Loomis, his obsessive interest in Michael is far more appreciative.
3:16- This film’s ability to just use silence is so good.
3:17- The first time Alyson sees Michael is incredible. The musical sting. Fuck me. God, I love this movie. And God I love this fucking soundtrack.
3:22- The twist of Sartain turning and killing the cop, protecting Michael and trying to seek out what it feels like to kill is great. Also, the way he stroked Michael’s face? I hate to break it to you, but if you don’t think they were fucking? Grow up.
3:30- I love the drama of Michael’s corpse arrangements. Back to the good old art student days, I see. He’s having a midlife crisis. Every time Laurie and Michael see each other is so fucking powerful. The connection between the two of them is so vibrant. And her shooting half his hand off? Iconic. Really excited to see how the makeup department carries that on next film.
3:39- The final showdown sequence is incredible. Laurie and Michael nearly being on equal terms sounds like it should make it boring, if she can match him hit for hit, but the film never drops a level in tension. It manages to be surprising not just for us but also for Michael, who obviously wasn’t expecting to be on the back foot with Laurie, which only makes the scene more intense.
3:42- WHY IS HE SO STRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3:43- The performance of Karen screaming she needs help and she can’t do it only to shoot Michael point blank and then have Laurie emerge out of the shadows the way she does is one of the best fucking moments in cinema. The three women working together to defeat Michael and kill him where he stands, absolutely kicking the shit out of him and then setting him alight is fucking incredible. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a triumphant fucking ending in anything. The Strode women’s win feels like such an incredible fucking win. I have no fucking idea how Halloween Kills is going to follow this up.
3:46- I love this movie. The house burning down with Michael inside it is so striking. The way fire is shot is so powerful, and the ending shot of the Strodes? With Alyson holding the knife? A perfect movie.
it is Mexico City. Estrella has not seen her mother in days. children who live wild on the rooftops of abandoned buildings tell stories about a tiger roaming the city that eats lost children, but amongst the fairy tales they tell stories of the truth; that a gang of human traffickers is spiriting people away, and no one is taking notice.
with no one to turn to, Estrella chases down another orphan, Shine, and joins his gang of homeless kids. armed with a stolen iphone filled with videos of victims of the gang, Shine knows who is leading them -- and the man in charge, politician Chino, knows they have evidence against him.
Tigers Are Not Afraid packs a surprising amount of plot into its 83 minute runtime, but never loses sight of what it is; a fairy tale, told by children. fantasy is mixed into the very real crime and violence that fill their lives, with little distinction between what is “real” and what is just their interpretation of the world. to the children, it is all real; the weight of responsibility Estrella feels towards the “three wishes” she carries -- sticks of chalk gifted to her by a teacher -- are as real as her desire to find her mother. the child-eating tiger who stalks the alleyways might as well be as real as the gangsters hunting them down. in this movie, magic and storytelling are ways of interpreting and understanding the world they’re in. that tiger is real because the idea of a big cat lurking in the shadows is just as plausible and just as absurd as the idea of a man whose political and criminal ties offer him the power over life or death.
some of the plot elements might seem a little tidy or predictable, but it’s impossible not to get swept up in the narrative of Tigers Are Not Afraid. over the time we spend with them, we become deeply involved in the lives of the kids, watching how they live, how they try to seek out a sense of routine and normalcy in the abandoned corners of the city. at times it can be magical by itself; there’s always something faintly unreal about seeing children completely wild, running free and discovering life for themselves.
but the harshness of reality is always hanging in the background of the story. rather than being a distraction or a separation from real life, the magic is used to enhance the stakes of real life. Estrella’s wishes are serious burdens she has to use responsibly; when she uses one to wish she wouldn’t have to kill a man she’s been ordered to, the granting of the wish doesn’t bring her relief because it doesn’t unmake the consequences of what’s happened. the few times she speaks to the dead doesn’t either; they are not there to provide her with magical answers or unsolved prophecies. she does not get to escape her reality.
Tigers Are Not Afraid is brutal; children or not, fairy tale or not, it doesn’t compromise on the tragedy or danger of this situation. despite this, it doesn’t feel like an exercise in melodrama. always, there remains a lingering sense of hope. the kids in the movie are too young to really worry about their futures and in that they are the eternally young and free lost boys of neverland. the film dots through enough moments happiness for you, and these kids, to cling onto in the midst of their intense, hectic lives.
a lot of the burden of carrying the movie falls on the performances of the kids, which are exemplary. Tigers Are Not Afraid keeps the performances lowkey and mature and becomes all the more intense and real for it. the cgi and special effects aren’t particularly up to the standards of its multi-million dollar contemporaries, but the film is powerful enough to stay emotionally gripping and never relies too much on the effects for it to be a deterrent. the film uses what it has exceptionally well.
the ending is bittersweet in the extreme; i found myself longing for some more definite note that maybe things would magically get better. and that is Tigers Are Not Afraid’s true power; you can’t watch it and not hope that just maybe the magic will solve everything, this time. you believe in it almost more than Estrella does.
Lake Mungo is a movie that is not so much truly frightening as it is soaked in dread. as a film it is truly haunting; what lingers with you after you watch it is the profound sense of loss and loneliness that is so pervasive in it.
after the sudden death of their teenage daughter Alice, the Palmer family begins experiencing strange happenings around their home. convinced they are being visited by Alice’s ghost, the Palmers start trying to work out what the ghost’s final wishes might be.
it’s incredibly hard to go into why this film is so effective without ruining the ending, so i’ll hold back from doing so. this is not a movie with sudden, predictable twists or stock villains. or any villains at all, actually. my impression of it was that it was almost more of a meditation on grief and what it means to be haunted; the narrative of the film tracks the family’s investigation into what Alice’s spirit wants, but the sensation that gathers over time is that this is catharsis for them more than it is appeasing her ghost.
in the minds of her family, Alice’s spirit is an opportunity to finally answer deeply buried secrets they had long suspected lurked under the surface; her presence might as well be a series of clues or a manifestation of their own guilt about the tragic death of their daughter.
the ending of this movie and the reveal of the true loop of the film is too good to be ruined, but as a film it effectively hammers home the true tragedy of what it is to be a ghost in a way a lot of louder, flashier films never will. as we see the quiet catharsis her family go through, we also see what remains of Alice.
Lake Mungo builds an enormous amount of empathy for a character we never really meet; we see Alice only in the reflections of what she means to other people, what people wanted and possessed her for. no one realises they’re doing it -- Alice is dead, after all, you can’t hurt the dead -- but there’s a feeling in the film that even in death, returning for a reason she is unable to communicate, Alice is a silent partner watching as others interpret her as a snapshot or reflection. we will never really know what Alice truly wanted or if she got it; in her life and in her death she is someone people only knew in fragments, believing they have the entire story. she tries to tell her own story, but only she knows if it is understood.
Nell, after spending over ten years caring for her mother, joins a group of paranormal researchers who are spending time in the allegedly haunted Hill House to try to find proof of the paranormal. there, Nell is thrilled to finally find purpose with a group of people who want her to be a part of them, but finds herself becoming more and more drawn into the dark story of the house itself.
The Haunting is undeniably a ghost movie, but it’s a ghost story of a different stripe entirely. Nell is haunted by a dead person alright, but it’s the memory of her recently deceased mother that’s hanging over, not a spirit. her entire life she has never had friends, independence or freedom, and she is consumed by a need to take control over her own life and find a place she belongs.
the ghosts themselves are not the focus at all; if they exist at all, they’re not given any personality or persona for the audience to latch onto. what we are given instead is how Nell latches onto the house and her projection onto the former residents. The Haunting is a movie about the psychology of the people investigating. if the ghosts are there, they pose no threat we can really see. as the Dr Markway says, the ghost world is just another kind of science we don’t understand yet.
as a horror movie the intent is less to horrorify and more to express the feeling of absolute terror that Nell sinks into; we are in her POV entirely, watching her fall into the embrace of the house. she is fixated first on the idea of being embraced by a group of people, of being a part of something and having her own lived experiences, and the house becomes symbolic of that. Nell knows that outside the house she has nowhere to go and no one to be with, and that feeds into her fear of leaving. is she possessed by the ghosts of the house or have they become a metaphor for her desperation to belong?
there is no villain in The Haunting; Nell’s mother is long dead and her spirit never returns. the frightening stories of the house’s past reflect Nell’s life but they never return. the only enemy in the movie is her own internal voice filled with paranoia and vitriol against herself.
the other character of note is Theo; the film came out in 1963 but it’s obvious from the start that she’s a lesbian, and remains an interesting and nuanced character throughout the movie. she is sometimes cold and cryptic, but she is human and sympathetic and cares deeply about Nell from the get-go. it’s kind of remarkable she exists as a character all, especially as one as sympathetic as she is. Theo attempts to bond with Nell, but it’s Nell’s own fears and anger about her place in the group that forms a wedge between them.
everything in the film ties back into its central themes; it all loops back around to Nell’s own psychology and the breakdown she approaches. it’s also an extremely beautiful one; the usage of panning and tracking shots in the film and the photography involving the cramped, claustrophobic sets were revolutionary for the time. there’s an eternity’s worth of writing on the film already; it’s one of the most enduring ghost stories ever told, and it’s probably all down to the fact we never see a single ghost in it.
this is not a very easy movie to watch or talk about.
cut here for discussion of sexual assault and anti-indigenous racism and australian colonialism. this is a heavy movie.
irish convict Claire was sent to work as a servant for a british army unit in Tasmania, where she married and had a child. the lieutenant who owns her, outraged that Claire and her husband ask for the freedom they have earned, murders Claire’s husband and baby and rapes her. left for dead, Claire hires Billy, an aboriginal tasmanian man to help track down the soldiers.
The Nightingale starts off as a rape revenge movie, although one with more tact than I Spit On Your Grave, but becomes a film about the barbarity and savagery of british colonialism. the villains in this are not just the men who attacked Claire, this is not a ‘these men are bad’ situation, this is a situation where the english colonialist empire is evil and the agents of it are constantly wreaking evil.
the common discourse about this kind of movie is the ethics of showing rape on screen. in these scenes, the camera focuses entirely on the face of the victim, on her pain. the scenes themselves are not sexualised or gratuitous, but if their inclusion at all is gratuitous in itself is another question.
the film does not shy away from the extreme horror of colonialism or how widespread and insidious it is. Claire is our hero, supposedly, but she is no better. though her and Billy earn each other’s loyalties, initially she is just as brazenly racist as anyone else, and the film doesn’t apologise for it.
it’s a brutal movie. there is no happy conclusion to the events; they don’t cure racism or the british empire. we are just shown the vast, horrible extent of Tasmania’s crimes and expected to understand that we are looking at history, whether we like it or not.
the film brings up english colonialism of ireland but perhaps wisely doesn’t compare the two, other than to talk about the characters’ mutual hatred of the english. Claire’s privilege as a white woman is not disguised at all; we see the misogyny she faces, but the movie understands the power that a white woman wields over an indigenous man.
i am absolutely not the person to delve into whether or not this movie is effective or too gratuitous, and i won’t pretend to have the most important voice in the room.
i do feel like the film lets down black women; the sole black woman we see is assaulted and then dies and i found myself questioning the decision to centre a white woman in a movie so much about colonialism. the black woman is not given a chance for her own revenge quest, we just see her suffer and die. in a movie already so full of the extremity of violence inflicted upon indigenous people, i’m unsure of the need of this, or why it’s the sole moment we see a black woman in the movie at all.
The Nightingale is not an easy movie to unpack. it is definitely a powerful movie; Aisling Franciosi’s and Baykali Ganambarr’s performances are incredible and the film is gripping, the intensity of the violence is hard to watch but the emotion of the quiet moments is often deeply moving.
it’s a raw film with a lot to say. it’s very beautifully shot and impressively well-made. i would say it’s a film worth watching for yourself, if you feel you are able. it’s certainly unflinching in its portrayal of colonialist Tasmania; whether or not you think that’s a value is not for me to decide. i would say there aren’t enough movies about australia’s history out there in the public eye, but maybe they don’t necessarily need to centre a white woman or be made by a white woman.
in a world full of low-budget Halloween rip-offs, The Slumber Party Massacre is one in millions. originally intended as a parody, the studio decided that they wanted a serious film instead. what results is a bit of mess; while the film has its honestly funny moments, it lacks enough camp to truly be funny without having any of the tension or extremity to make it actually frightening.
it’s a tale as old as time; an escaped murderer breaks into a house full of teenage girls and starts murdering them one by one until they finally dispatch him. there are some other events in this, but the core story is the same.
what makes The Slumber Party Massacre interesting is that, at the time of writing, it’s the sole horror franchise to be solely directed by women. the original movie was written by feminist writer and critic Rita Mae Brown, also known as the author of Rubyfruit Jungle. her intention was, obviously, to critique and parody the slasher genre tropes popularised by films like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
so like... does it? is this a feminist movie? does it even qualify as parody? was it girl power when Valerie cut the murderer’s hand off with a machete?
i mean... man... i don’t know.
i wouldn’t, though, necessarily say this is a film that really says anything interesting about the genre. it posits the killer as being intensely masculine and sexually driven; the drill, his weapon of choice, is an overt phallic symbol. the girls in the movie are highly sexualised, far more gratuitously than in the fairly tame Halloween or even the more relatively extreme Friday the 13th. the film is self-aware about the tropes of the genre and where they should go, but is self-awareness parody, or is it just observation?
the film goes far more overt with the sexualisation than the violence; despite only having a 78 minute runtime, the movie devotes a huge chunk of time to showing as much of its female cast as possible undressing. one of the modern complaints that gets lodged at the original Halloween is that the script has very little apparent awareness of the behaviour of teenage girls -- though i think it’s important to note that Halloween was co-written by the legendary and deeply influential Debra Hill -- but Slumber Party Massacre doesn’t have anything particularly enlightening to say either. its cast of 18-year-olds played by 30 year olds are luridly sexualised and given little personality outside of their relative feelings about sex.
but then the violence of the movie is pulled back extremely -- the total lack of genuine suspense in the film means that the kills are generally extremely sudden and deeply unsatisfying, often cutting away from the violence completely or showing little more than someone with a blood splatter as the sole extent of their injuries.
if the extremity of the sexualisation is commentary on the genre, then why the pullback on the violence? is one more acceptable than the other?
the disconnection of the killer from most of the movie -- in a lot of it he might as well be an off-screen set of hands -- makes it difficult to understand what he is. the obvious is the phallic symbolism and his defeat at the hands of the final girls, but he so severely lacks motivation or drive or drama that he is the most uninteresting stock figure in a movie full of very two-dimensional filler.
in the end the joke is that the drill or knife, whichever, is a phallic object and it penetrates pretty women. that really runs the movie dry on its humour; if the original script said more it’s impossible to know, but the direction of the movie leaves a lot to be desired.
all throughout the film i was constantly wishing it would be more over the top, more campy, more extreme. it focuses so deeply on one aspect of the genre in neglect of all else, and doesn’t seem to have much more else to say than that slashers are often a mixture of sex and violence. there’s some humour that lands and a lot that doesn’t, and the stuff that doesn’t is generally more focused on the idea that these bitches be HORNY, when the humour that works is more specifically about playing with audience expectations. i just found myself disappointed that, for a maybe parody, the film was never allowed to embrace that enough.
i think Slumber Party Massacre is a fascinating artefact, but the meddling behind the scenes makes it hard to know exactly what it was aiming for or if it was truly successful in reaching it. films like Scream, It Follows, The Final Girls and Halloween (2018) are generally more developed, complex takes on the genre, but The Slumber Party Massacre was out here doing it first. and you have to respect it for trying. if it was trying? maybe? hey, who knows. i certainly don’t know shit.
Ring has such a long and storied history in horror, its influence stretching so wide and its imagery so embedded in a global cultural knowledge of horror that we forget that it also very much fucking rules
for those who somehow dont know; Ring follows Reiko Asakawa, a reporter, who hears about the stories of a video tape that will kill you in seven days after it is linked to the death of her niece. Reiko seeks out and watches the tape, and finding it disturbing, decides to try and solve the mystery of the tape alongside her ex-husband Ryuji.
Ring is something that a lot of horror movies never really dare to be and this is precisely also why it works; it is quiet, methodical and thoughtful. the characters, a reporter and a university lecturer, approach the central mystery in the most logical way possible. they are handed the tape, a video that depicts mostly disconnected disturbing imagery and the now infamous well scene, and knowing the story behind it still choose to go out and research it, watching it frame by frame to try and find the truth.
its fascinating to me how calm a movie Ring is; within it persists a constant sense of dread, the time that the characters have left steadily ticking away. while Reiko is understandably terrified of her encroaching death, the film shows this in the way her fears steadily manifest more and more in her life. she watches her reflection in TV screens, sees things in the corner of her eyes. all the while she works steadily, not allowing the threat of what might be stop her work. when the tensions peak and tempers turn bad, both characters still continue.
and the horror in Ring is so pulled back. we are not shown Sadako in more than glimpses for the vast majority of the movie; she is a lurking threat, her shadow hanging over the characters as they work to find out who she is and what she might want. there is a very human element to Reiko’s pursuit of the truth; she is seeking to protect herself and her child, but she is filled with sympathy also for Sadako’s suffering.
women in the movie often relate and sympathise with each other’s suffering, seeking out each other’s stories and relaying the warnings. we are shown specifically young girls talking about the stories first, and Reiko is the one who takes them seriously, digging into the story herself. later, we are given information from a housekeeper who knew the story, while Sadako’s grandfather remains close-lipped. Ryuji’s student helps, and Sadako’s only ally was her mother. it’s women’s concern for each other that drives a lot of the narrative, and men’s selfishness that imposes a threat. without Sadako’s father, we would never have her rage.
we forget too easily how at the time Ring was a really fascinating convergence of the old -- the ghost stories of Japan -- and the new technology of VHS tapes and TVs. its funny that very few things have managed to pull this off to the same extent; the absolute glut of god awful “possessed phone” or “evil website” movies prove that very little has ever managed to replicate Ring’s success. but maybe that’s because Ring’s focus wasn’t on the evil of the medium itself, but on the power of human determination and storytelling. a more appropriate comparison would be Candyman perhaps, than Unfriended. as much as everyone knows about Ring, we forget what made it really such an iconic bit of cinema.
Benoit is a serial killer. Remy and Andre, along with some disposable sound guys, are making a fly on the wall documentary about his life. in a series of disconnected clips we watch Ben give monologues on his feelings about dating, architecture, recite poetry and commit acts of brutal violence.
less a narrative and more just a spectacle, Man Bites Dog is eerie in how real and unreal it feels. Benoit as a character veers from absurdly confident and charming, surrounded by people who adore him to frighteningly insecure, petty and bigoted. the closeness of the film means that over the run time, the layers to Benoit become more and more apparent; a brief observation would suggest he’s just cocky, intelligent but narcissistic, but a deeper observation reveals how much of him is a series of fronts and misdirections.
Benoit is worryingly real, but he lives in a mad world that slips in and out of reality, helped by the intentionally incoherent editing of the movie. scenes of his killings are spliced in with no build up or warning, the events of his day to day happen without explanation, the film jumping erratically between moments. one second Benoit is with his adoring mother and the next he is brutally strangling a postman; the next he is in a boxing match, the moment after that he is in a bar, dressed as a priest.
if Man Bites Dog is a convincing documentary, it’s notably not a very good one. Andre and Remy eagerly get themselves involved in Ben’s activities, not just glorifying his violence but partaking in it, aiding and abetting him until they become murderers themselves. the haphazard nature of the editing makes sense in light of their own preoccupation with what actually matters; they don’t care about the victims, the before or the aftermath, they just want to see the good bits.
the surreality of the film comes from the disjointedness of the images; lurching back and forth between entirely unrelated moments in Benoit’s life makes it impossible to follow the thread of what’s going on in the day to day. the freedom with which he conducts his activities, unbothered by consequence and surrounded by people who passively accept his deeds, creates a sensation that we’re looking into a disturbing other world where these things are acceptable and happening just out of the corner of our eye. it’s a sickeningly unsettling movie, the horror coming most typically in a creeping feeling of disgust.
as a film it’s very accomplished in what it sets out to do; Man Bites Dog is not a movie i enjoyed, but it’s something i appreciated the direction of. it’s a fascinating piece of cinema, even if it’s not necessarily something i would rush to watch again.
i fucking love slasher movies and it’s hard to think of a better argument for them than Stage Fright. this is a movie that says alright, if you’re going to say this genre is all style over substance then by god, we’re going to give you fucking style.
Stage Fright looks and sounds incredible. the rock and synth soundtrack is the kind of thing that plays in the dreams of the 80s nostalgist. the set, limited almost entirely to the rooms of a large theatre, is used to the peak of absolute drama in every occasion. you fucking bet there’s a chase scene through the catwalks -- multiple, actually. and you know someone creeps under the surface of the stage, desperate not to be seen. sneaky switching in the changing rooms? it’s all here.
the film is packed with incredible visuals; for a first movie, there’s an enormous amount of confidence in the strange, dream-like images that Michele Soavi creates. the fantastic final scene where the killer, Irving Wallace, arranges his stage of victims to create his perfect play is wonderfully strange and disturbing, the only time we really get to see the killer up close after he’s spent so much time in the shadows, and the only time we really get to question who he really is. it’s easily the film’s most memorable scene and holy shit; someone trying to pick up a key has never been more fraught with tension.
like i said, the story isn’t much to write home about. it keeps it very simple. a group of actors and their director become locked in the theatre they’re in by a killer who has just escaped from a mental hospital, and proceeds to pick them off one by one. it really doesn’t have anything much to say about anything, but it really sells the story it has to tell. the tension and the pace never lets up, and the characters themselves have a group of really surprisingly good actors behind them which helps sell the movie. the mistakes and stupid decisions in the movie feel less like bad writing and more like the characters taking selfish, cruel decisions to save their own hides. i thought play director Peter was particularly well-done, seemingly often deceptively heroic right up until the moment he’s needed most.
but the most important part of any slasher i’m pretty sure anyone would fucking agree, is the killer. in this case, we have Irving Wallace, a pretty clear Michael Myers duplicate that doesn’t really try to push any boundaries of what we understand a slasher to be. he was once an actor, but one day he snapped and killed many people before he was arrested. why? no one could say.
Irving Wallace is evil because he’s crazy, and he’s crazy because he’s evil, and it’s being evil and crazy that makes him do murder. all the backstory we get is that he was once an actor, then he snapped and started killing. he lacks the gothic mystery of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, the humour of Krueger or Ghostface, the cuteness of Leatherface, and even really the truly disturbing turns of Black Christmas’ Billy. Irving is a little lacking in personality compared to some of our most iconic, but he more than makes up for that with drama.
the second you see Irving’s mask he becomes unforgettable; the ostentatiousness of it, the sheer strangeness of the vast, feathery owl face. it’s disturbing just because of how weird it is. Irving himself sticks firmly to the shadows throughout the majority of the film, and he has no clear MO. no one knows exactly why Irving went on a killing rampage in the first place, and the film offers little explanation. the methods he kills with and the people he kills are varied; he shows little to no particular preference towards anyone. all Irving seems to want is a willing audience.
Stage Fright is a movie that really needs to be seen to be fully understood; it’s a fucking great time and a fantastic experience based just on how much the movie asserts its own style and imagery within a subgenre filled with look-alikes. it also can’t be overstated how much the soundtrack rules; the film sounds better than any slasher since Halloween and possibly until It Follows.
a special shoutout also goes to the character of Brett, a man so fantastically camp that he stole every second he was onscreen and whose memory should be treasured because of his dedication for living for gay pettiness
