Tag Archives: horror

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Fright Club: Dogs in Horror

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Whether used to terrorize us or to break our hearts, dogs add something powerful to a horror movie. Unless it’s Zoltan: Dog of Dracula, because nothing, not even the most gorgeous dog, could save that piece of poo. But these dogs, these dogs are keepers.

6. The Woman (2011)

Maybe you haven’t seen Lucky McKee’s amazing, disturbing 2011 feminist horror The Woman? Get on it! But just in case, we’re going to avoid any spoilers, which means leaving you kind of wondering why this film made the list of best dogs in horror. Suffice it to say, the dogs are mentioned throughout but meeting them … well, please see this movie.

5. Cujo (1983)

A New England couple, struggling to stay afloat as a family, has some car trouble. This naturally leads to a rabid St. Bernard adventure.

Though the film contains many faults, once Donna (Dee Wallace) and her asthmatic son (pre-Who’s the Boss Danny Pintauro) find themselves trapped in their broken down Pinto (What? Those seem like such reliable cars!) with a rabid dog (bigger than the car) attacking, the film ratchets up the tensions and rewards you for your patience.

Profoundly claustrophobic and surprisingly tense, benefitting immeasurably by Wallace’s full commitment to the role, the film traps us in the heat inside that Pinto and quickly makes up for the entire rest of the picture.

4. The Omen (1976)

Billie F. Whitelaw, ladies and gentlemen. Her performance as little Damien’s new nanny really took things up a notch, didn’t they? Instantly, not only was Mummy (Lee Remick) unnecessary, but Daddy (Gregory Peck) found himself in a battle for Alpha—a battle that begins over a dog.

There are actually quite a number of great, terrifying dogs in The Omen, Richard Donner’s iconic Seventies horror. The dogs in the cemetery, the bones in the casket—what, exactly, was Damien’s mother, anyway? But Mrs. Baylock’s Hound of Hell—that’s when the unflappable Robert Thorn realized there may be things to fear inside his home.

3. I Am Legend (2007)

Yes, there are scary dogs in horror movies, but more often than not horror filmmakers use dogs to break our hearts. Oh, sure, kill all the people you want, but once we hear that off-screen whimper, we’re bawling.

Tell us Sam’s death in I Am Legend didn’t gut you. No? Well, stay away from us you sociopath.

Horror has done us some damage in the way they treat dogs: Jaws, Raw, Snowtown, The Babadook, It Comes at Night, Greta, Audition, The Hills H ave Eyes, The Wailing, Hounds of Love. But we not only loved Sam, we recognized Robert Neville’s (Will Smith) aloneness, his vulnerability to grief and madness, because of Sam. That dog is the only reason this movie works.

2. The Voices (2014)

Director Marjane Satrapi’s follow up to her brilliant animated Persepolis is a sweet, moving, very black comedy about why medicine is not always the best medicine.

Ryan Reynolds is Jerry. As Jerry sees it, his house is a cool pad above a nifty bowling alley, his job is the best, his co-workers really like him, and his positive disposition makes it easy for him to get along. Jerry’s kindly dog Bosco (also Ryan Reynolds) agrees.

But Mr. Whiskers (evil cat, also Reynolds) thinks Jerry is a cold blooded killer. And though Mr. Whiskers is OK with that, Jerry doesn’t want to believe it. So he should definitely not take his pills.

1. The Thing (1982)

Who’s a good boy?!

OK, not the new rescue dog on MacReady’s team. What a gorgeous boy he is, though. A perfect specimen, adaptable to Antarctica’s hostile climate, bred to survive. He makes those beard-tastic humans look positively vulnerable.

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I Was Promised a Treat

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Trick

by Hope Madden

Always choose treat.

That’s a great horror movie tagline. It’s also just good advice. Two for two before the credits even roll, Patrick Lussier. Onward!

Lussier co-writes and directs Trick, a new horror show about an unstoppable, maybe even supernatural serial killer who comes back to Smalltown, America on Halloween to kill teens.

Hang on, isn’t that the basic plot of the Halloween franchise?

It is! But wait, there’s more! This loner wearing face paint appeals to the disenfranchised of the world, creating an online following that’s almost dangerous in its obsessive behavior. Who knows what his influence might make them do…

Well, now that’s just Joker.

Correct! But this guy has a cool knife that says TRICK on one side and TREAT on the other side.

Yeah…that’s kind of cool…So if the knife comes up TRICK, he kills you, right? What if it comes up TREAT?

He still kills you. There’s no additional purpose to the knife. But stay with me, here! A beautiful, studious young woman who’s devoted to her invalid dad survived the first attack and now “Trick” Weaver may be coming back to claim her for his next victim!

Oh, come on! That’s every single slasher sequel. Ever! And this isn’t even a sequel—that’s just lazy. Does Trick bring anything new to the table? Offer anything provocative? Are the kills at least interesting?

Did I tell you about his cool knife?

Sigh.

Lussier (Drive Angry, My Bloody Valentine) cobbles a movie together from pieces of at least four different Halloween films plus a Scream vibe (even poaching two franchise actors, Omar Epps and Jamie Kennedy). His film would feel desperate to be socially relevant if it were not so incredibly lazy in just every conceivable way.

I was looking forward to a treat. Trick is like that time my babysitter said she was giving me a Tootsie Roll and it was really beef jerky.

That totally happened, by the way. I’m still mad.

Shudder Premiere

Muted Fury

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The Furies

by Brandon Thomas

Horror and social commentary are synonymous with one another. Fifty years ago, Night of the Living Dead tapped into America’s anxiety about the Vietnam War. 1978’s Dawn of the Dead used the zombie apocalypse to attack consumerism. More recently, Jordan Peele’s Get Out looked to horror to comment on race in America. These are all top-shelf examples of horror tackling social issues. 

Of course, not everyone can be George Romero or Jordan Peele. The new Shudder exclusive, The Furies—screening as part of Australia’s Monster Fest in October before its release in Australian cinemas from November 7—is a stark example of that.

After being kidnapped right off the street, Kayla wakes up in a coffin-sized box somewhere in the Australian outback. Before she can get her bearings, she finds herself hunted by someone wearing a horrific mask. As Kayla makes her way through this hellscape of murder to find a friend, she and the other hunted girls start to succumb to their form of savagery.

The Furies starts strong with a visually impressive prologue. Director Tony D’Aquino gets everything on the screen – from production design to some top-notch gore effects. Visually, the movie is a feast. 

Content-wise?

It’s a tonally confused mess.

There’s a weak attempt at commenting on women’s treatment in horror. When these characters aren’t being hunted down by armed slashers, they’re assigned another one of these ghouls as a protector. On paper this sounds like a novel idea: “Women are either fodder or in need of protection in these movies!” Unfortunately, D’Aquino never does anything more than set those ideas up.

Complicating things more is the way these women are written as merely paper-thin caricatures. They run, scream and die. Rinse, repeat. Kayla’s journey of “discovery” has the depth of a red Solo cup. Instead of looking inward at her own darkness and allowing that to come through in the performance, the movie settles for wearing a dark hoodie and saying tough things while handling a taser.

The messy ideas continue into the movie’s overall tone. The horror elements are strong, but there are also some half-realized sci-fi threads peppered about. Instead of exploring these nuggets in any meaningful way, D’Aquino treats them like the first episode of a network series to be explored later.

Despite some impressive visual sleight of hand with excellent cinematography and practical gore effects, The Furies can’t overcome the inherent shallowness of its story and execution. 


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Set a Course for Adventure

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Harpoon

by Hope Madden

There are a limited number of reasons people become and remain friends. Some of those reasons are just nonsense. And yet, three friends of dubious worth to one another gather to repeat their familiar patterns, which land them on a yacht for an apology daytrip.

Richard (Christopher Gray) —  brash, spoiled and quick to anger— is apologizing. Jonah (Munro Chambers – Turbo Kid!) —bruised and bloody—is probably too quick to forgive. Sasha (Emily Tyra) has plenty of reason to be tired of both boyfriend Richard and bestie Jonah.

The fact that Jonah and Sasha bring along Richard’s birthday gift clarifies how little anyone in this triangle has learned.

And so, Sasha, Jonah, Richard and Richard’s new harpoon set off on an unplanned, ill-advised, seafaring jaunt.

Drinks all around!

Co-writer/director Rob Grant keeps events snarky with a voice-of-God narration (assuming God’s a sailor) performed by a brilliantly deadpan Brett Gelman. As far as this nameless narrator who inexplicably sees all is concerned, the dangers facing this volatile threesome have less to do with their pathological history and more to do with the sailing omens they ignorantly flout.

Give an irrational drunk prone to fits of rage the gift of a pointy projectile weapon? Meh. But bring bananas on board—now that’s really pushing things.

The darkly silly commentary adds some tang to the friends’ foolhardy adventure, but Grant’s themes are not entirely comedic. He strands the trio at sea for days on end, their survival instincts overtaking their petty sniping as they find a new reason for friendship: the common good.

Grant offers a nice balance here between dark humor and genuine tension born of realistic performances. Chambers, Tyra and Gray offer frustratingly recognizable characters, the kind that make idiotic choices, less because it forwards the action of the script (although it does) and more because people are stupid and they fall into familiar roles.

The film makes more than a few convenient moves, but it packs a lot of surprises and showcases very solid performances.

Who knew redheads were bad luck?

Shudder Premiere, Slider

Hell to Pay

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Hell House LLC 3: Lake of Fire

by Brandon Thomas

I’m an easy mark for found footage movies.

When done well, their use of unseen horror gets under my skin like no other kind of scary movie. There’s a heart-pounding anticipation prevalent in these movies that tends to hit everything I find terrifying.

Of course, this reaction comes with good found footage movies. Does Hell House LLC 3: Lake of Fire rank up there with the greats? 

Yeah… not so much.

Right before its demolition, Russell Wynn (Gabriel Chytry) swoops in to buy the infamous Abaddon Hotel. He’s young, showy, rich… and full of potentially bad ideas, such as using the hotel as the venue for his popular interactive show, “Insomniac.” Along for the ride is a journalist and her camera crew, a handful of actors for the show, and Russell’s dedicated, but ultimately naive, staff.

The original Hell House LLC delivered a budget-friendly, but fun, offering into the found footage canon. The filmmakers weren’t reinventing the wheel, but they understood what they could produce with the premise and money available to them. Director Stephen Cognetti’s knowledge of how to make basic scares work lifted the film to a higher level. 

The slow-building of dread is a staple in this genre. It’s what gets the audience to squirm well before the proverbial shit hits the fan. Hell House LLC 3 peaks early with its scares and doesn’t quite finds its footing again. The climax ends up being more chaotic than scary with conveniently placed camerawork being substituted for well-placed frights. 

The film truly stumbles by relying too heavily on the installments that came before. There’s far too much time spent building a mythology that brings in characters from the other two movies. As a result, Hell House LLC 3 never gets to work as a singular piece of filmmaking.  

Outside of a few clever scares, this third installment in the Hell House LLC series never manages to rise above being a middling effort.

https://youtu.be/k3BpmE10u4E


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Hello Cleveland!

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Haunt

by Hope Madden

Have you ever noticed how adorable Browns fans are during pre-season every year? Every year! There is always reason for optimism.

That’s how I feel about filmmakers with the “haunted house attraction that’ll really kill you” premise. Year after year (The Houses October Built, 2014; 31, 2016; The Houses October Built 2, 2017; Hell Fest, 2018) somebody wheels out the stinky old corpse of an idea and says, “This year, we’ll get it right!”

The 2019 attempt belongs to writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who struck silent film gold last year with the screenplay for A Quiet Place. (In retrospect, maybe we didn’t give co-writer/director John Krasinski enough credit for that one.)

Haunt follows a handful of college students seeking thrills on Halloween. They stumble upon an isolated haunted house attraction—with not one single visitor. On Halloween night. Kids! Come on! Clearly it’s either the lamest thing on earth or it will kill you. This isn’t rocket science.

And yet, they give up their cell phones, sign some waivers and enter.

Katie Stevens is Harper, damaged but mainly wholesome brunette and center of gravity for the group. Will Brittain is Nathan, pre-requisite “will they or won’t they” nice fella who sees past Harper’s prickly exterior.

In truth, the actors playing the six gullible youths all perform above expectation and, mercifully, Beck and Woods choose not to subject us to the couple that just can’t keep their hands to themselves.

Made sensibly and economically, Haunt sticks to what it knows and focuses on what it came to do. Gaps in logic are few (they’re there, but they’re not distracting). One or two of the kills offer intrigue and the villains are, if not especially impressive, at least kind of fun.

It’s adequate. Unlike the Browns. The Browns are going all the way this year. No doubt. No doubt about it.

New In Theaters, Shudder Premiere, Slider

Day for Night of the Living Dead

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One Cut of the Dead

by Hope Madden

For about 37 minutes, you may feel like Shin’ichirô Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead delivers, cleverly enough, on a very familiar promise.

One Cut opens as a micro-budget zombie movie, which soon reveals itself to be a film within a film when real zombies show up on set. As the bullying egomaniac director continues filming, ecstatic over the authenticity, Ueda appears to deconstruct cinema.

And though that may sound intriguing on the surface, the truth is that what transpires after that 37 minute mark officially defines Ueda as an inventive, gleeful master of chaos and lover of the magic of nuts and bolts filmmaking.

To detail any additional plot points—as tempting as that is—would spoil the enjoyable lunacy One Cut has in store.

Suffice it to say, Ueda improves upon that opening act without really losing the themes he introduces. Everything that feels like a misstep blossoms into an inspired bit, all of it highlighting Ueda’s true love for what he’s doing.

Likable and silly, One Cut is brightly economical, embracing rather than hiding its shoestring – in fact, Ueda’s camera jubilantly closes in on shoestrings. His movie giddily exposes the neuroses, dangers, tribulations and mistakes—he really, deeply loves the mistakes—inherent in genre filmmaking. If nothing else, this movie is a mash note to artistic compromise.

The manic comedy proves as infectious as the zombiism on the screen, and much of the reason is the committed cast. Ueda allows each performer the opportunity to grow and discover, and every actor at one point or another takes full advantage of his or her moment to shine.

Harumi Shuhama particularly impresses as, well, let’s just say she’s the make up artist and self defense hobbyist. Yuzuki Akiyama delivers the most layered performance, but, playing the director, Takayuki Hamatsu steals every scene. He’s hilarious, adorable, compassionate, and incredibly easy to root for.

Like this movie.

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Even the Losers

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It Chapter 2

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Two years ago, director Andy Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman accomplished quite a magic act. They made the film It, not only improving upon Part 1 of the beloved 1990 TV miniseries, but cleaning up some of Stephen King’s most audacious, thrilling and sloppy work.

Their second outing together closes the book on Pennywise, the scariest of all scary clowns. But this sequel faces inherent obstacles that loom even larger because the second half of King’s novel and the ’90 adaptation are both worse than weak. They’re massive let downs, and it’s pretty tough to make a great film with poor source material.

How bad is the King ending? So bad that it’s actually a running gag in It Chapter Two, a tale that sees a bunch of losers returning to their hometown 27 years after they last battled town bullies, abusive fathers, low self-esteem and that psychotic, shape-shifting clown.

The outstanding young cast from chapter one returns for flashback sequences and sometimes awkward de-aging effects. Their adult counterparts are, to a one, impressive. Jessica Chastain is reliably solid, as is James McAvoy. Isaiah Mustafa (hey, it’s the Old Spice guy!) and James Ransone (Tangerine – see it!) make fine additions to the cast, but it’s Bill Hader who owns this movie. He’s funny, heartbreaking and more than actor enough to lead this ensemble.

But Muschietti runs into serious problems early and often. He’s at a disadvantage in the thrills department in that children in peril generate a far more palpable sense of terror than what you can get by threatening adults. We’re just not nearly as invested in the survival of the grown up Losers Club.

The filmmaker flashes some style with his scene transitions, but betrays a serious lack of inspiration when it comes to both CGI and practical effects. If the scare doesn’t come directly from Bill Skarsgård’s committed performance as Pennywise, it doesn’t come at all.

And even then, set piece after set piece seems constructed with only one aim: a clearly telegraphed jump scare. The slog of a second act is where the film is at its most undisciplined -and where the nearly three hour running time feels more than unnecessary.

When the Losers strike out alone to face their long repressed demons, the narrative loses its grip on any sustained, cohesive tension.

Then, like a conquering hero, act three arrives with guns blazing, blood spurting and the emotional weight to give this bloated clown show a proper send off.

It’s here – when things get most intensely horrific – that the psychological wounds Muschietti had been poking are the most raw and resonant. Nostalgic melodrama finally gives way to graceful metaphor, and we remember why we cared so much about these characters the first time.

Does Chapter Two improve the finales of the novel and TV version? Most definitely.

But can it successfully realize all the promise from the first chapter?

Sadly, that’s a clown question, bro.

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Bird of Prey

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The Nightingale

by Hope Madden

There is a moment in George Miller’s 2015 action masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road. The empty bridal chamber is revealed quickly. Scrawled on the wall: Who killed the world?

It occurred to me partway through Jennifer Kent’s sophomore feature The Nightingale that Miller isn’t the only Aussie director with that question on the mind.

The Nightingale is as expansive and epic a film as Kent’s incandescent feature debut The Babadook was claustrophobic and internal. In it she follows Clare (Aisling Franciosi), an Irish convict sentenced to service in the UK’s territory in Tasmania.

What happens to Clare at the hands of Leftenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), the British officer to whom she is in service, is as brutal and horrifying as anything you’re likely to see onscreen this year. It’s the catalyst for a revenge picture, but The Nightingale is far more than just that.

As Clare enlists the aid of Aboriginal tracker Billie (Baykali Ganambarr, magnificent) to help her exact justice, Kent begins to broaden her focus. Those of us in the audience can immediately understand Clare’s mission because we witnessed her trauma in its horrifying detail. Kent needed us to recognize what British military men were capable of.

What she wants us to see is that the same thing—the worst, almost imaginable brutality—happened to an entire Australian population.

In the second act, Clare—on a higher social rung than her tracker, and just as condescending and racist as that position allows—and Billy begin to bond over shared experience. Franciosi’s fierce performance drives the film, but Ganambarr injects a peculiar humor and heart that makes The Nightingale even more devastating.

Kent’s fury fuels her film, but does not overtake it. She never stoops to sentimentality or sloppy caricature. She doesn’t need to. Her clear-eyed take on this especially ugly slice of history finds more power in authenticity than in drama.

Her tale becomes far more than an indictment of colonization, white male privilege, domination and subjugation. It’s a harrowing and brilliant tale of horror. It’s also our history.

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Fright Club: Missing Persons

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There is something primally terrifying in the idea of missing persons – losing someone or being lost. Where are they and what is happening to them? No mater which side of that question you are on, the imagination conjures terrifying images.

Listen to the full podcast, including a special interview with Hounds of Love director Ben Young.

5. The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

John Erick Dowdle’s film is a difficult one to watch. It contains enough elements of found footage to achieve realism, enough police procedural to provide structure, and enough grim imagination to give you nightmares.

Edward Carver (Ben Messmer) is a particularly theatrical serial killer, and the film, which takes you into the police academy classroom, asks you to watch his evolution from impetuous brute to unerring craftsman. This evolution we witness mainly through a library of videotapes he’s left behind—along with poor Cheryl Dempsey (Stacy Chbosky)—for the police to find.

Cheryl is Carver’s masterpiece, the one victim he did not kill but instead reformed as his protégé. It’s easily the most unsettling element in a film that manages to shake you without really showing you anything.

4. Berlin Syndrome (2017)

Aussie photographer Clare (Teresa Palmer, better than she’s ever been) is looking for some life experience. She backpacks across Europe, landing for a brief stay in Berlin where she hopes to make a human connection. Handsome Berliner Andi (Max Riemelt) offers exactly the kind of mysterious allure she wants and they fall into a night of passion.

What follows is an incredible combination of horror and emotional dysfunction, deftly maneuvered by both cast mates and director Cate Shortland. The mental and emotional olympics Palmer goes through from the beginning of the film to the end showcase her instincts for nuanced and unsentimental performance. Clare is smart, but emotionally open and free with her own vulnerability. The way Palmer inhabits these characteristics is as authentic as it is awkward.

Even more uncomfortable is the shifting relationship, the neediness and resilience, the dependency and independence. It’s honest in a way that is profoundly moving and endlessly uncomfortable. Riemelt matches Palmer’s vulnerability with his own insecurity and emotional about-faces. The two together are an unnerving onscreen pairing.

3. The Vanishing (Spoorloos) (1988)

Back in ’88, filmmaker George Sluizer and novelist Tim Krabbe adapted his novel about curiosity killing a cat. The result is a spare, grim mystery that works the nerves.

An unnervingly convincing Bernar-Pierre Donnadieu takes us through the steps, the embarrassing trial and error, of executing on his plan. His Raymond is a simple person, really, and one fully aware of who he is: a psychopath and a claustrophobe.

Three years ago, Raymond abducted Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) and her boyfriend Rex (Gene Bervoets) has gone a bit mad with the the mystery of what happened to her. So mad, in fact, that when Raymond offers to clue him in as long as he’s willing to suffer the same fate, Rex bites. Do not make the mistake of watching Sluizer’s neutered 1993 American remake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcA10H-85×4&t=36s

2. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Blair Witch may not date especially well, but it scared the hell out of a lot of people back in the day. This is the kind of forest adventure that I assume happens all the time: you go in, but no matter how you try to get out – follow a stream, use a map, follow the stars – you just keep crossing the same goddamn log.

One of several truly genius ideas behind Blair Witch is that filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez made the audience believe that the film they were watching was nothing more than the unearthed footage left behind by three disappeared young people. Between that and the wise use of online marketing (then in its infancy) buoyed this minimalistic, naturalistic home movie about three bickering buddies who venture into the Maryland woods to document the urban legend of The Blair Witch. Twig dolls, late night noises, jumpy cameras, unknown actors and not much else blended into an honestly frightening flick that played upon primal fears.

1. Hounds of Love (2018)

Driven by a fiercely invested and touchingly deranged performance from Emma Booth, Hounds of Love makes a subtle shift from horrific torture tale to psychological character study. In 108 grueling minutes, writer/director Ben Young’s feature debut marks him as a filmmaker with confident vision and exciting potential.

It is the late 1980s in Perth, Australia, and at least one young girl has already gone missing when the grounded Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) sneaks out her bedroom window to attend a party. This isn’t nearly as dumb a move as is accepting a ride from Evie White (Booth) and her husband John (Stephen Curry).

As the couple dance seductively and drink to celebrate, Young disturbingly conveys the weight of Vicki’s panicked realization that she is now their captive. It is just one in a series of moments where Young flexes impressive chops for visual storytelling, utilizing slo-motion, freeze frame, patient panning shots and carefully chosen soundtrack music to set the mood and advance the dreadful narrative without a spoken word.