Join us this Friday night, 3/14, at 11:30 pm for the demented Aussie masterpiece The Loved Ones! It’s a wild, violent, depraved way to spend 84 minutes, benefitting from one of the most inspired villains in modern horror. Throw in some of Studio 35’s awesome craft beers and settle in for a seriously wrong-minded flick.
Studio 35 Cinema and Drafthouse is located at 3055 Indianola Avenue. Tickets are just $5 and drink specials abound.
Join us!
Join George and Hope this Friday night, 11:30, at Studio 35 Cinema and Drafthouse for Round 2 of Fright Club! We’re showing the underseen indie horror gem Eden Lake starring Michael Fassbender. It’s a unique and terrifying picture that deserves a big audience. Enjoy some of Studio 35’s great draft beers and hang out with some scary film fanatics – what could be better?
Studio 35 is located at 3055 Indianola Avenue. Tickets are $5. Drink specials abound.
Join us!
At one point, it looked like 2013 was going to be a bloody banner year for horror. Remember that time? We’d already seen the magnificence of the Evil Dead remake as well as the spooktacular glory of the original The Conjuring, and we still had You’re Next, The Purge, Insidious: Chapter 2 and Carrie to go? Too bad those last few couldn’t live up to expectations.
The year did produce a handful of really excellent horror flicks, though. Here is our Top 5.
Director Neil Jordan returned to the modern day/period drama vampire yarn this year. Thanks to two strong leads, he pulls it off. Saoirse Ronan is the perfectly prim and ethereal counterbalance to Gemma Arterton’s street-savvy survivor, and we follow their journey as they avoid The Brotherhood who would destroy them for making ends meet and making meat of throats. Jordan’s new vampire drama attempts a bit of feminism but works better as a tortured love story.
The effortlessly creepy Brady Corbet plays the title role in Simon Killer, a college kid alone in Paris after a messy break up. He’s loathsome and cowardly and impossible to ignore as he hatches a plan with his new prostitute girlfriend – a wonderfully tender Constance Rousseau – to make some quick cash. The film draws you in like a thriller before morphing into a sinister character study that will leave you shaken.
Not enough people saw this gem, and even fewer saw the brilliant Mexican original, but both are essential horror viewing. The reboot takes a very urban, very Mexican tale and spins it as American gothic, with wildly successful results. From the same writing/directing team that brought forth Stake Land (if you haven’t seen it, you really should), this is one of the few Americanized versions of foreign horror to satisfy – although you may not be hungry again for a while.
Naming #1 was a tough call because of this one, among the all time best reboots in horror history. Fede Alvarez (with some help from the Oscar winning pen of Diablo Cody) respects the source material while still carving out his own vision. Goretastic, scary, and unexpectedly surprising given how closely it aligns itself to its predecessors, the movie has it all – including more gallons of blood than any film in history. Seriously.
James Wan mixes the percussive scares of modern horror with the escalating dread of old fashioned genre pieces, conjuring a giddy-fun spookhouse ride guaranteed to make you jump. And he did it all without FX. A game cast helped, but credit Wan for the meandering camera, capturing just what we needed to see at the exact second that it would do the most damage.
From the brightly lit opening cemetery sequence to the paranoid power struggle in the house to the devastating closing montage, Night of the Living Dead teems with the racial, sexual and political tensions of its time. An unsettlingly relevant George A. Romero knew how to push societal panic buttons.
Two hundred miles outside Pittsburgh, squabbling siblings Barbara and Johnny visit a cemetery to put a wreath on their father’s grave. Then comes the first of the film’s many iconic quotes: They’re coming to get you, Barbara.
My favorite, though, has always been, “Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”
A befuddled, borderline useless Barbara stumbles to an old farmhouse, where the very useful and not easily befuddled Ben takes her under his wing and boards up the place. Meanwhile, TV newsmen declare that the, “scene can best be described as mayhem” and note that Barbara, Ben and all those folks down the basement should avoid the mayhem’s “murder-happy characters.”
Romero’s responsible for more than just outstanding dialogue. (OK, at times, like the heavy handed score, the dialogue isn’t entirely outstanding. But often enough, it is.) As the first film of its kind, the lasting impact of this picture on horror cinema is hard to overstate. His inventive imagination created the genre and the monster from the ground up.
They’re dead.
They’re back.
They’re hungry for human flesh.
Their bite infects the bitten.
The bitten will eventually bite.
Aim for the head.
The tensions inside the house are almost as serious as the danger outside the house, once bossypants Mr. Cooper pokes his head out of the basement. And wouldn’t everybody be better off if Romero could write a worthwhile part for a female?
Still, the shrill sense of confinement, the danger of one inmate turning on another, and the unthinkable transformation going on in the cellar build to a startling climax – one that utterly upends expectations – followed by the kind of absolutely genius ending that guarantees the film’s eternal position in the annals of horror cinema.
Out today on DVD, BluRay and streaming is the scariest movie of 2013: The Conjuring.
Welcome to 1971, the year the Perron family took one step inside their new home and screamed with horror, “My God, this wallpaper is hideous!”
Seriously, it often surprises me that civilization made it through the Seventies. Must every surface and ream of fabric be patterned? Still, the Perrons found survival tougher than most.
The farmhouse’s previous residents may be dead, but they haven’t left, and they are testy! So the Perrons have no choice but to look up paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren – the real life couple linked to many famous American hauntings, including one in Amityville, NY. The Conjuring is allegedly based on one of the couple’s cases.
Yes, this is an old fashioned ghost story, built from the ground up to push buttons of childhood terror. But don’t expect a long, slow burn. Director James Wan expertly balances suspense with quick, satisfying bursts of visual terror.
Wan cut his teeth – and Cary Elwes’s bones – with 2004’s corporeal horror Saw. He’s since turned his attention to something more spectral, and his skill with supernatural cinema only strengthens with each film.
Ghost stories are hard to pull off, though, especially in the age of instant gratification. Few modern moviegoers have the patience for atmospheric dread, so filmmakers now turn to CGI to ramp up thrills. The results range from the visceral fun of The Woman in Black to the needless disappointment of Mama.
But Wan understands the power of a flesh and blood villain in a way that other directors don’t seem to. He proved this with the creepy fun of Insidious, and surpasses those scares with his newest effort.
A game cast helps. Joining five believably terrified girls in solid performances are Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, and the surprisingly well-suited Ron Livingston as the helpless patriarch. The usually sublime Lili Taylor is uncharacteristically flat as the clan’s loving mother, unfortunately, but there’s more than enough to distract you from that.
Wan’s expert timing and clear joy when wielding spectral menace help him and his impressive cast overcome the handful of weaknesses in the script by brothers Chad and Carey Hayes. Claustrophobic when it needs to be and full of fun house moments, The Conjuring will scare you while you’re in the theater and stick with you after. At the very least, you’ll keep your feet tucked safely under the covers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjk2So3KvSQ
OK, we’re 8 days in. It’s time to get real. And by that we mean real nasty.
There’s something not quite right about Chris Cleese (an unsettlingly cherubic Sean Bridgers), and his family’s uber-wholesomeness is clearly suspect. This becomes evident once Chris hunts down a feral woman (an awesome Pollyanna McIntosh), chains her, and invites the family to help him “civilize” her.
The film rethinks family – well, patriarchy, anyway. Notorious horror novelist and co-scriptor Jack Ketchum may say things you don’t want to hear, but he says them well. And director Lucky McKee – in his most surefooted film to date – has no qualms about showing you things you don’t want to see. Like most of Ketchum’s work, The Woman is lurid and more than a bit disturbing. Indeed, the advanced screener I watched came in a vomit bag.
Aside from an epically awful performance by Carlee Baker as the nosey teacher, the performances are not just good for the genre, but disturbingly solid. McIntosh never veers from being intimidating, terrifying even when she’s chained. Bridgers has a weird way of taking a Will Ferrell character and imbibing him with the darkest hidden nature. Even young Zach Rand, as the sadist-in-training teen Brian, nails the role perfectly.
Nothing happens in this film by accident – not even the innocent seeming baking of cookies – nor does it ever happen solely to titillate. It’s a dark and disturbing adventure that finds something unsavory in our primal nature and even worse in our quest to civilize. Don’t even ask about what it finds in the dog pen.
Let’s get October’s first creature feature out of the way with a fun, bloody, exciting trip to the Scottish highlands. Wry humor, impenetrable accents, a true sense of isolation and blood by the gallon help separate Neil Marshall’s (The Descent) Dog Soldiers from legions of other wolfmen tales.
Marshall creates a familiarly tense feeling, brilliantly straddling monster movie and war movie. A military platoon is dropped into an enormous forest for a military exercise. There’s a surprise, bloody skirmish. The remaining soldiers hunker down in an isolated cabin to mend, figure out WTF, and strategize for survival.
This is like any good genre pic where a battalion is trapped behind enemy lines – just as vivid, bloody and intense. Who’s gone soft? Who will risk what to save a buddy? How to outsmart the enemy?
But the enemies this time are giant, hairy, hungry monsters. Woo hoo!
The fantastically realized idea of traitors takes on a little extra something-something, I’ll tell you that right now.
Though the rubber suits – shown fairly minimally and with some flair – do lessen the film’s horrific impact, solid writing, dark humor and a good deal of ripping and tearing energize this blast of a lycanthropic Alamo.
by Hope Madden
James Wan is preoccupied. He’s made three nearly identical films back to back – Insidious, The Conjuring, Insidious: Chapter 2. In each, small children are terrorized by malevolent forces from beyond the grave, and their well-meaning parents are useless to help them, so the family turns to supernatural investigators. A big, scary dead lady is to blame.
Perhaps worry over Wan’s childhood is appropriate at this point. So why has his recent output been so much fun to watch?
Rock solid casting helps. Given the comparably miniscule budgets for each film, the fact that Wan drew the interest of Vera Farmiga, Rose Byrne, Lili Taylor, and Patrick Wilson (all three times!) says something for his casting ability. Even in this third go round – easily the weakest of the efforts – Wan still shows a joyous thrill for adventuring into something that clearly terrifies him.
As with the previous two ghostly installments, Wan also favors flesh and blood performances to FX when it comes to the spectral side of his films, which continues to elevate his work above other recent ghost stories.
Insidious: Chapter 2 picks up right where the original left off. The beleaguered Lamberts have their once-comatose-and-trapped-in-ghostland son Dalton back, but something ugly returned with him.
Far more streamlined than Chapter 1 but with little of the elegant slow build of Conjuring, Chapter 2 splits its efforts between two sets. We’re in the house with the terrified Lamberts, or we’re ghosthunting with Grandma (Barbara Hershey) and her paranormal investigators.
It amounts to two haunted houses, more children in peril, and ghosts who don’t just lurk and stalk but punch you full in the face. So that part’s new.
By this time, seeing an expert on the paranormal freeze in their tracks, terrified beyond words at the malevolent force only they can see feels a little stale. Rather than exploring the darkness as he did so weirdly well in Chapter 1, Wan mostly contents himself with the two real-world sites, which is a bit of a letdown.
Still, that “he has your baby he has your baby he has your baby” dude is pretty freaky.
Lots of images are, showing that Wan’s arsenal of unsettling vision wasn’t quite yet empty. Insidious 2 is a fun genre piece, but a bit of a disappointment after this summer’s spookirific The Conjuring. By this time, hopefully Wan has exorcised his demons and can turn his attention elsewhere.
Oh, that’s right. He’s directing Fast & Furious 7.
I don’t know. Maybe another ghost story would be OK.
by Hope Madden
Welcome to 1971, the year the Perron family took one step inside their new home and screamed with horror, “My God, this wallpaper is hideous!”
Seriously, it often surprises me that civilization made it through the Seventies. Must every surface and ream of fabric be patterned? Still, the Perrons found survival tougher than most.
The farmhouse’s previous residents may be dead, but they haven’t left, and they are testy! So the Perrons have no choice but to look up paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren – the real life couple linked to many famous American hauntings, including one in Amityville, NY. The Conjuring is allegedly based on one of the couple’s cases.
Yes, this is an old fashioned ghost story, built from the ground up to push buttons of childhood terror. But don’t expect a long, slow burn. Director James Wan expertly balances suspense with quick, satisfying bursts of visual terror.
Wan cut his teeth – and Cary Elwes’s bones – with 2004’s corporeal horror Saw. He’s since turned his attention to something more spectral, and his skill with supernatural cinema only strengthens with each film.
Ghost stories are hard to pull off, though, especially in the age of instant gratification. Few modern moviegoers have the patience for atmospheric dread, so filmmakers now turn to CGI to ramp up thrills. The results range from the visceral fun of The Woman in Black to the needless disappointment of Mama.
But Wan understands the power of a flesh and blood villain in a way that other directors don’t seem to. He proved this with the creepy fun of Insidious, and surpasses those scares with his newest effort.
A game cast helps. Joining five believably terrified girls in solid performances are Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, and the surprisingly well-suited Ron Livingston as the helpless patriarch. The usually sublime Lili Taylor is uncharacteristically flat as the clan’s loving mother, unfortunately, but there’s more than enough to distract you from that.
Wan’s expert timing and clear joy when wielding spectral menace help him and his impressive cast overcome the handful of weaknesses in the script by brothers Chad and Carey Hayes. Claustrophobic when it needs to be and full of fun house moments, The Conjuring will scare you while you’re in the theater and stick with you after. At the very least, you’ll keep your feet tucked safely under the covers.
