#horrorharvesters

[horrorharvesters]

October 4th, 2018- The Ritual (2017), David Bruckner

The Ritual follows a group of friends who decides to go hiking in the bleakest Mountains of Sweden for their annual boys trip, instead of getting lit in Ibiza, to honor a dead friend. Some unfortunate hi jinks lead to an ominous shortcut which lands them in the bowels of a demonic forest.

If the pics included are not that enticing it’s only because the monster is really cool and I didn’t want to spoil it. The creature design is totally unsettling and original. And they do a great job with the slow reveal. It’s the perfect amount of monster. The whole tone of the movie feels very unlike any horror I’ve seen. It almost has a dark fairy tale vibe, which I am 100% here for. Bringing in Norse mythology/forest spirits is really effective and clever.

I clearly liked this movie a lot. It was fairly low budget, but pulled off some legitimate scares, beautiful shots, and a satisfying ending. 8.5 out of 10.

[horrorharvesters]

October 16th, 2018- Mother! (2017), Darren Aronofsky

Oh wow I did not like this! 

I’ve read a lot of excuses for why this movie is allowed to exist. “It’s based on the bible!”, “It’s an allegory for global warming!”, and “It’s Darren Aronofsky!” So what. So what. So what. It’s a weak movie with flimsy characters. It’s shocking, but not in a memorable way. It’s beautiful, but in a painfully obvious way. It’s frustrating, it’s exploitative, it’s vague. It’s like eating a taco bell burrito where the sour cream is distributed unevenly: you are not having a good time but you finish it anyway. 

Also this movie is bad for women. I don’t have a well thought out political dissertation to back that up and I don’t need one. Somewhere amidst the extended scene of Jennifer Lawrence getting her face kicked in and just generally being brutally beaten by a mob, all while her perfect boobs flop boobily out of her shirt and people scream the three or four worst words you can call women at her, I realized “yeah, this is bad for women. All the women. Every women.” 

But the worst offense aimed at JLaw is the shitass character they wrote for her. SO WEAK. So passive. So obedient to Spanish Accent Bardem. I don’t care if this is some Giving Tree Shit metaphor can we please bring this around to one iota of self respect for this character? The freaking EAT A BABY and I still found that less disturbing than her character’s total inability to speak up for herself in her own home. 

This movie made me feel gross. Not like edgy gross. Just like tired gross. 2 out of 10 for Mother! and that’s only cause the cinematography is nice and they slipped 2 Gleeson brothers in there for shits and giggles. 

[horrorharvesters]

October 12th, 2018- As Above So Below (2014), John Erick Dowdle

Caving is a wretched hobby and if you are into it you are a capital F FREAK. Okay now that I got that out of the way... clearly I am claustrophobic and I don’t know why anyone would want to squeeze their body through a well lit, nicely maintained cave much less the bowels of Paris, but it is a thing and people do enjoy it. Some of these people are the protagonists of this movie: a rag tag gang of plucky explorers, French street toughs, a human mole, and one unlucky camera man questing for Nicholas Flamel’s alchemic wonder: the sorcerer’s stone (yup the one from Harry Potter). It’s a little goofy, pretty watchable, at times spooky, and mostly uncomfortable for anyone who thinks caving is the devil’s sport (me). 

So what had happened was. Tunnel caves in (gross). Tunnel leaves no way forward except for a different spookier tunnel that everyone unanimously agrees is probably the doorway to HELL. In case you are wondering, no they do not know this because of facts, they know this because it just looks like it might be the doorway to HELL. Things get trippy. People start dying. Hellscapes get hellscapier. 

The thing is, the reactions are off. The whole movie has a very Temple of Doom/dungeon crawl/adventurer tone to it, which is kind of fun, but no one is giving me the ear-bleeding horror movie shrieking that I came here for. People die and the rest of the crew are like, “Oh shit, that’s very bad, we need to go now and not dwell on this at all.” They are so practical. I don’t want practical. I want shrieking. 

As Above So Below gets a confused 6 out of 10 from me. CAVERS ARE MORALLY BANKRUPT. 

[horrorharvesters]

October 14th, 2018- A Quiet Place (2018), John Krasinski

As a horror movie fanatic I always get really excited when horror gets some mainstream attention and this movie did so well in theaters and got great reviews to the point of some speculative Oscar noms. Not to mention Jim from the office wrote, directed, starred in and even did motion capture for the monster in this movie. It’s cool to see a pretty well respected star give this much attention to horror. He called this movie a love letter to his kids which is kind of morbidly hilarious considering what the kids in this movie go through, but I get it. This movie, at it’s core is about parenting and protecting the ones you love. 

You could probably make an educated guess from the title, but this movie is about monsters who can hear really well. So you have to be quiet 1000% percent of the time. The family we follow throughout the film is already equipped for this because their oldest daughter is deaf. I read somewhere that the sign language in this movie is pretty legit. Respect for good research. Also the sound editing is really well done. It’s subtle, but after watching for a while you notice little things like that the sound drops out completely when they focus on the deaf character. The movie is understandably pretty muted so when loud noises surface it gets into jump scare territory, which for me would usually take points away, but I feel like it’s unavoidable in this case. 

The acting is really strong. There is an extended scene where Emily Blunt attempts to give birth silently and it looks excruciating. She did a great job with this. 

My only gripe is the ending. It cuts off in a place that I feel like is a structurally “good ending” from a storytelling perspective, but maybe is not the most satisfying ending from a viewing perspective. 

A Quiet Place is very well done. Making great strides in horror. For that it gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me. SHHHHHHH!!!!!!

[horrorharvesters]

October 2nd, 2018- Cult of Chucky (2017), Don Mancini

I think when you watch a Chucky movie the question is not “was it good?” but instead “was it fun?” This was fun at times! They definitely went for maximum fan service, all your “favorite” characters are back and Chucky has finally mastered a handier version of his soul transference spell which leads to a small army, a cult if you will, of belligerent little Chuckies running around and stabbing things. It’s about 30% fun and 60% meh. I liked the last one better, it took itself a little more seriously which actually paid off in the long run. 

This installment grabs at a lot of asylum horror tropes but doesn’t do much with them. There is a character with multiple personalities and Chucky inhabits one of those personalities, but then that doesn’t go anywhere. The mental hospital mostly functions as a backdrop for Chucky’s lackluster evil. He spends a lot of time saying things like “I’m not nearly as diabolical as you people!” Which, no surprise, makes him seem like a lot less of a threat. But no one else rises to be the main villain. So we end the movie with a bunch of misdirected Chuckies, also the main character is a Chucky now. And Jennifer Tilly is here too. 

Cult of Chucky did not convert me. 4 out of 10. 

[horrorharvesters]

October 1st, 2018- Veronica (2017), Paco Plaza

And we’re back! Let’s get spoopy 2018 and try to make it at least halfway through the month this time. 

I started off with Veronica a Spanish atmospheric horror movie set in the 90′s. Girl meets Ouija board, girl gets lightly possessed.

 If you like Dario Argento- which you should- you will like or at least appreciate what they are trying to do here. It watches a lot like Argento: we have thoughtful use of color and lighting, we have excellent synth/church organ fusion soundtrack, we have a beautiful brunette teenage girl who is very strong but also moody. 

Like Argento’s films it is full of stunning cinematography and really haunting shots, but it relies too heavily on this imagery at the expense of plot and of... actually being frightening. It’s a spooky movie, not a scary movie. I would recommend it to someone who wants to get into the October spirit but also wants to get a really good night’s sleep.  

The acting is good though. The siblings are really adorable and not off-putting like most horror movie kids. For better or worse. 

I am feeling generous because it’s still early so Veronica gets 7 out of ten from me. No tengo miedo. 

[horrorharvesters]

October 17th, 2018- The ABC’s of Death (2012), A lot of people directed this

Ok real talk, I only made it to L cause this movie(s) were both really bad and also fucked up and L had some content that made me nope, nope, nope right out of this. And I like torture porn, I do, Martyrs is one of my favorite horror movies. But this was just off color and boundary crossing, not even in a provocative way just in a yucky, no thank you, kind of way. 

I liked A is for apocalypse. It was about a woman slowly poisoning her lover and having to speed up the process in a violent frenzy because the end of days has arrived. 

F is for Fart was by far the best of the collection. Hear me out! It was total absurd Japanese bizarro horror a la Hausu. It was just fun and gross and baffling. Maybe just look this one up and don’t watch anything else in the collection. 

D is for dogfight was not great. People are paying to watch a guy punch a dog? And the dog is trained to kill him but it’s really his lost dog and they become friends again at the end. I think they really punched a dog in the face to make this and that is not. cool. 

Also H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion is about Nazi furries so if you are into that kind of thing (god help you) that one is probably for you. 

These were really bad for the most part. N is for Negative Review. 1 out of 10, with the exception of F is for Fart which gets a 9 out of 10. GENIUS. 

[horrorharvesters]

October 4th, 2017- IT (2017), Andy Muschietti

So first of all I’m a liar. We did not watch this last night we actually watched it the day after it came out and then we went home and watched IT (1990) and then we woke up the next day and talked about the two IT’s all day and then we went to go see IT (2017) again. I’m reviewing it now because we got distracted watching The Great British Bake Off last night and forgot to watch a horror movie.

“I really liked IT” would be the understatement of the year. I thought it was smart, brutal, joyful, all while being reverent of the original. It was a little heavy handed with the themes at times, and they took the floating concept to a weirdly literal conclusion, but overall I thought it was a more than worthy update.

Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise has a heightened supernatural quality. It’s easy to see him as a malevolent creature; some old bit of evil arcana embodied. He’s a monster for sure, not a guy in a clown suit. This concept is brought home by clever attention to detail. His eye color changes when he goes in for the kill, his face opens into a toothy mess along the lines of his clown makeup, his general size seems to change from scene to scene. His presence is bigger than a creepy clown, which is great because I’m not a coulrophobe. Which is not to say Tim Curry’s Pennywise falls flat. That is a classic, incredibly creepy performance, but watching them back to back I do get more of a “ew it’s a creepy hobo in a clown costume” vibe from Curry compared to “oh hey it’s fear incarnate” from the update. Also one is a TV movie from the 90’s and one is an R-Rated movie from right now so that probably has something to do with it.

The cast is awesome. Definitely got the same nostalgic rush as I did from Stranger Things. Both are such great tributes to kid gang movies of the 80’s and 90’s. It’s the kind of material that makes you really excited about the way people are treating horror recently and the time and intention that is going into these movies/shows. It’s not a throwaway genre!

I also thought the fears were done really well. Each individual kid’s greatest fear says a lot about their character, upbringing and maturity level. Some of them are dealing with grief, some of them are being abused on a day to day basis and some of them are scared of a painting in their dad’s office (albeit a really creepy painting). There is a wide range of experiences and levels of fear, but all of their fear is real and dangerous. It feels high stakes, even though the solution is ultimately as simple as just stick together.

Another thing I really liked about the update was that they included the house on Neibolt Street, a great haunted house scene from the book. It was pretty much everything I want out of an iconic haunted house sandwiched into a coming of age monster movie. 

I feel like IT gave me a horror movie sampler with some real scares and great acting and writing. I will most likely go see IT another time in theaters because giving my money to Stephen King and everyone else involved feels good.

9 out of 10. This was really close to a perfect horror movie to me. LOVED IT.