Category: Reviews

Directed by Jonathan Demme [Other horror films: Beloved (1998)]

This is one of those very contested, borderline genre pieces. Personally, I find there enough qualities in this classic to consider it a horror flick, but if you’re one of the many who just don’t see the horror here, that’s understandable too. That discussion aside, The Silence of the Lambs is of course a solid movie, with it’s biggest strengths being the story and great performances.

It’s the combination of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins that really give this movie life. Hopkins does a great job as Lecter, and despite his moderately short screen-time, he has a presence that really can’t be contested in the film. Playing Buffalo Bill, Ted Levine shows a fantastic, crazy side as opposed to Hopkins’ calmer form of insanity. Other performances worth noting are Scott Glenn (I love his rather straight-laced character here), Anthony Heald (who I saw somewhat recently in the 2006 comedy Accepted), and Frankie Falson (admittedly, he didn’t really do much, or get that much screen-time, but he’s still an actor I appreciate).

When you combine such a stellar cast with a pretty hypnotizing story, only good things can come from that, which I think is clear from the film. Though violence wasn’t much the point, there are a couple of standout sequences, such as Lecter’s breakout, that are well-worth seeing.

Quite often, this is a clever and psychological film, and it’s obviously very well-known, and for good reason. Many probably wouldn’t consider the film horror, but like other well-loved borderline flicks, such as Jaws and Identity, I certainly think it has its place in the genre. A great film with a lot going for it, this is definitely a 90’s film worth seeing, if for some reason you’ve not already.

8.5/10

Directed by Peter Sullivan [Other horror films: Summoned (2013), High School Possession (2014), The Sandman (2017), Cucuy: The Boogeyman (2018)]

I’ll first say that this will be a shorter review than usual – I’ve seen Ominous twice now, and really, it’s not worth extrapolating on. Really, there’s only about one reason to see it, and that’s for a hilariously bad death scene. Everything else had been done before, and ultimately, this made-for-TV flick is just bland and pretty God-awful.

The cast is almost wholly poor. Mark Lindsay Chapman (who played Nick in The Langoliers, a fact I didn’t realize until after the movie finished) was the best of the bunch, and he had a solid, moderately sinister presence. None of the other performances did anything for me. There’s a few interesting names here, such as Barry Watson, who starred in 7th Heaven for quite some time, and Esmé Bianco, who I know mostly as a supporting character from Game of Thrones, but their acting didn’t come close to wowing me here.

A lot of the fault, though, can go to the uninspired plot. I just don’t get why anyone would want to see this film, in which bereft parents make a deal with the devil to raise their recently-deceased son from the dead, only to discover he’s the Antichrist, when they could stick with a classic like The Omen, or even a different take on the story, like the 2017 Little Evil. It’s a bad, low-budget television movie (which really shows in it’s special effects failures), so I just don’t get why anyone would opt into watching this willingly.

Admittedly, I’ve seen it now twice. Luckily, there are a few terrifically horrible scenes that make at least portions of this film bearable. In a classic sequence, a priest gets clobbered over the head by a falling cross, and then set on fire. In another, multiple people die from flying projectiles at a park. And then we have the bird attacks at the end – while slightly better-looking than Birdemic (which isn’t actually praise, believe it or not), the birds were horribly rendered, and it just looked so God-damned awful.

Which, when it comes down to it, is what this movie is. Ominous (which, by the way, is a terribly bland title) just sucks hard. It’s one of those modern-day television flicks which just reeks of pointlessness. As fun as some of the sequences are, it’s definitely not worth it to watch the whole of this film.

3/10

Directed by Ansel Faraj [Other horror films: Three Shadows (2010), Mr. Twistedface (2011), Hunters of the Dark (2011), The Last Case of August T. Harrison (2015), The Night-Time Winds (2017)]

There are times when I sort of liked what Loon Lake was going for – a somewhat somber, slow-moving flick about a man who recently lost his wife and faith dealing with a witch in a small town, utilizing flashbacks to show the witch’s story – and though I did like the tone of this one, and the somewhat sparse setting, I don’t know if it’s ultimately memorable.

I do think that star Nathan Wilson did a great job playing a rather aimless guy. He had a sort of standoffish personality, and I thought it really fit with the trials he was going through. David Selby, though, who pulled double duty and played two distinctly different characters, is probably the best of the bunch. His portrayal of Emery reminded me quite a bit of Fred Gwynne’s Jud from Pet Sematary. As either a witch or a misunderstood girl, Kelly Erin Decker put in a good performance, and though her character didn’t add near as much as I thought she would, Brittany Benjamin was solid too.

Loon Lake does have an amateurish quality to it, but I think it works out well regardless. This may partially be due to being filmed in the (real) small Minnesota town of Round Lake, and that small town vibe really comes through here. The camera-work here is pretty solid, and there are a few decent scenes, so that helps.

The problem is that the story, while interesting to a point, sort of runs into a stalemate once the main character starts battling whether or not the things he’s witnessing and experiencing are just his imagination run amok or something more. It’s that psychological horror that can be okay, but when it takes up the bulk of the second half, it doesn’t quite do as much for me. I did sort of like the fake-out ending toward the conclusion, and the conclusion itself was decent, but overall, I was more lukewarm toward this than anything else.

Personally, I think Loon Lake is an okay movie. It never felt too generically Hollywood in it’s encapsulation of jump scares, and for lack of a better term, it felt genuine. The issues of faith and religion are dealt with in a somewhat unsatisfactory way, but I still think the movie was okay. Problematically, there’s not much that really stands out about Loon Lake, though, so while it was decent for a single watch, this isn’t one I can imagine many people doing back to, which is like to be it’s downfall.

6.5/10

Directed by Tom Holland [Other horror films: Fright Night (1985), Child’s Play (1988), Two-Fisted Tales (1992, segment ‘King of the Road’), The Langoliers (1994), Tom Holland’s Twisted Tales (2014), Rock, Paper, Scissors (2017)]

Thinner’s a book I’ve not read, unlike many other Stephen King novels (technically, Thinner was written under Richard Bachman, but even so), which may play a part in my review. While the movie is mostly enjoyable, there are a few performance issues, and ultimately, I think the film is missing something.

The story starts out well, but after a certain point, I personally think things drag a bit. It doesn’t help that the main character, played by Robert John Burke, came across as overly hammy toward the second half of the film. Near the end, it was definitely a bit much.

Which is one of the biggest problems with the film. Sure, the story is a bit thin (see what I did there?), but if Burke had put in a better, more serious performance, I think I would have liked the flick at least a bit more. As it is, the highlight of the film is really Joe Mantegna (who I know most from both the 1994 comedy Airheads and a long-lasting role in Criminal Minds). Without Mantegna’s presence here, I really don’t think this movie would have been anywhere near as enjoyable. Michael Constantine puts in a solid performance too.

Perhaps it’s because of Burke’s occasionally hammy acting, but the film felt just a bit on the light-hearted side at times. It’s tone didn’t work too well with me, but once Mantegna’s role becomes more a focus toward the end, things start coming together.

On a side-note, while the special effects were moderately decent for most of the film, there was a lengthy dream sequence that was entirely too goofy, and I definitely could have done without.

I’ve seen this once before, and I wasn’t overly amazed. It’s a good flick to sit back and eat popcorn with, but even for the mid-1990’s, which wasn’t the best time for the horror genre, Thinner just felt as though it was lacking. Good ideas in this one, to be sure, but an inconsistent tone and main performance places this one below average.

6/10

Thinner was covered by Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and myself on Fight Evil’s tenth podcast, which you can listen to below.

Directed by Stephen Cognetti [Other horror films: Hell House LLC (2015), Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel (2018)]

The third installment of the Hell House LLC trilogy wasn’t too far removed from the previous two, which is a problem the second film shared also. Is it still an enjoyable slice of found footage horror? For the most part, yes, but while I like elements of the conclusion, I sort of wonder if things got a bit away from them at the end.

We of course get some fun and somewhat memorable characters. He didn’t really add that much to the story, but Harvey (Scott Richey) was fun, as was Jeff (Sam Kazzi). The character of Russell Wynn (played by Gabriel Chytry) was an interesting additional, and adds a little lore, in a way, that further connects the three films. The main woman here, played by Elizabeth Vermilyea, was decent, though didn’t really do anything that previous others in her role had done.

Upon originally finishing this, I thought it was a bit even with the second film, but giving myself a few days helped clear my head a bit, and I’ll say that it’s probably not quite as decent. I do think the finale here was ultimately better than the exposition of the second film, but at the same time, seeing the carnage wrought by the demons sort of loses a bit of impact, and the ending of the film, while interesting, wasn’t necessarily amazing.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the first Hell House LLC was amazing. But did such a great found footage flick (and there aren’t really that many in the horror genre) really need two sequels? In some ways, it helped flesh out a few aspects that were left mysteriously unanswered in the first movie, but at the same time, I do think they went a tad overboard when it came to explanations. I appreciated what the conclusion of this one was going for, but I didn’t totally love it.

I’m not going to go as far as to say that the third installment of this series is bad – for found footage horror, it’s still decent. It’s just not that far removed from the first or second films, and with nothing to differentiate beyond that, I’m calling this movie around average.

7/10

Directed by Scott Beck [Other horror films: Nightlight (2015)] & Bryan Woods [Other horror films: Nightlight (2015)]

I really thought I was going to like this one a lot more than I eventually did. Haunt certainly had a lot of potential, and it truly was tense up to a point, and the build-up? Damn solid. But it really loses it’s thread during the second half of the film, and when all is said and done, I don’t think Haunt will be that memorable in the years to come.

What does Haunt get right? Well, the idea, while nowhere near original (House of Purgatory and Hell House LLC called, and [insert end of played out joke here]), did the extreme haunted house thing well. The spider hallways (fake spider webs with fake, and also real, spiders) freaked me out, the branding room was done nicely, that crawling area solidly claustrophobic, and the tension palpable.

Though the performances are somewhat forgettable come the ending of the movie, most of them do okay. Andrew Caldwell was decently amusing at times, though Will Brittain was really generic. I wasn’t really wowed with Schuyler Helford, Shazi Raja, or Lauryn Alisa McClain, but none of them were necessarily bad either. It’s Katie Stevens, as the main girl, who made the most impact, especially with the emotional sucker-punch that was the flashback, giving her character and situation (including an abusive ex-boyfriend) more depth. I wouldn’t even say she was amazing, but she was the most consistently solid cast member, in my view.

Where Haunt starts losing stream is with the perpetrators of the haunted house. I won’t, for the sake of spoiling things, delve much into this, but let’s just say where they go with the identity of these people leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. Also, what they do with Samuel Hunt’s character is lackluster. And the ending? Gorry, what an utter disappointment.

Keep the first half of the film, and change everything about the latter half, and Haunt is a good movie worth a few rewatches. But in the form they went with, Haunt has the sizzle but lacks the steak. It’s all hat and no cattle. It’s – okay, I’ve run out of idioms, but seriously, Haunt really could have been a pretty solid movie, but ultimately, I think it’ll end up being a forgettable flavor-of-the-week.

6.5/10

Haunt is one of the films covered on Fight Evil’s podcast on episode #21. Here’s a clip of Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discussing it.