Tag: USA

Directed by Rick Rosenthal [Other horror films: The Birds II: Land’s End (1994), Halloween: Resurrection (2002)]

In many ways, this sequel reaches similar heights as it’s predecessor, and though it lacks the classic feel of the original, it’s both a fun and oft-thrilling watch.

Much of the suspense works due to the setting, a rather isolated and understaffed hospital, filled with empty corridors and many deadly weapons (and a therapy tub, used to glorious effect). It’s worth noting that the film doesn’t have a significantly higher amount of gore (aside from a pool of blood that one character slips in), and still manages most of the kills without showing that much. That said, there is a much higher body count here, so there’s still certainly enough to keep us looking for more.

The great setting aside, the fact that Laurie is wounded here also makes the chase sequences just a bit more suspenseful. When in her prime, Laurie could defend herself against Michael, but here, she’s nowhere near her best, and watching her stumble down a deserted hallway to escape Michael, then going into a dingy basement area, those were great scenes, and perhaps my favorites of the movie.

Of course, Jamie Lee Curtis does pretty good here as Laurie, though she doesn’t get nearly as much screen-time as you might expect. Donald Pleasence is fun here too, and gets a few more wild moments only hinted at in the first film. He especially gets in some good action toward the end and the explosive finale. Lance Guest is pretty solid here, though doesn’t have as much to do with how the film goes as first thought. Finally, returning from the first film, Charles Cyphers is nice to see, but quickly gets put out of commission after finding out his daughter, Annie, was a victim of Myers’.

Speaking of the first film, I liked how this film replayed the last few moments of the first, the music not kicking in until after Pleasence talks to a neighbor attracted to the gunshots. A nice, subtle beginning that quickly turns into a chaotic police manhunt, but of course, Michael still evades the search. The one plot twist in the film isn’t necessarily the best thought out (I think we all know what I’m talking about), but for this one film, it works out fine.

Halloween II doesn’t feel nearly as good as the first movie, but given how I think the first movie is one of the best horror movies ever made, that should hardly come as a shock. Still, there’s plenty in this movie to deeply enjoy, and ever since I first saw this many years back, I absolutely loved the hospital chase sequences, and always found them thrilling. The ending too was also pretty epic, and if they had wanted, would have served a fine conclusion to the story. A great movie by any means, this film stands the test of time, and brings a lot to enjoy to the table.

8.5/10

Directed by Stephen Cognetti [Other horror films: Hell House LLC (2015), Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire (2019)]

The second film of this planned trilogy doesn’t really change a significant amount as far as the style or story goes, but at the same time, it doesn’t set itself apart from the first one that much either, and toward the end, sort of goes a bit overboard on explaining some things.

Pretty much everything decent about the first movie is decent here – the multiple media forms (such as YouTube videos, a morning talk show, interviews, etc), the subtle creepy scenes, the setting itself – but there’s little here that wasn’t in the first movie, and the stuff that was added doesn’t much help the film a whole lot.

I think the biggest problem is toward the end, in which a sequence takes place that throws all subtly out the window, and instead makes obvious what could have mostly been inferred already. The scene felt unnecessary to our understanding of the story, and it was just too much. Instead of that, if they had thrown in some more creepy clown scenes, I think I would have been happy.

I do like all of the references to the characters from the first movie, and the fact that they expand a bit on one of the unanswered questions the first movie brought forth. Shining a light a bit on Alex’s motivations, both in the middle of the film and with the flashbacks at the conclusion, really add something that I thought was actually relevant.

Personally, I feel that if you’re a fan of the first movie, as I definitely was, this isn’t really all that different. True, I feel the first movie has a more mysterious and creepy, uneasy vibe to it, especially given that in this film, most people agree that the hotel isn’t the safest place to be, and it dampens the suspense. Still, it’s mostly a clone of the first film, which is both a good thing, as it does many of the same things right, but it also doesn’t seem to try and be more.

If you liked the first one, you’ll possibly like this one, as apart from the unnecessary sequence toward the end, there’s not a whole lot of differences.

7.5/10

Directed by Shaquita Smith [Other horror films: N/A]

While not a necessarily good movie, this was nowhere near as bad as the title or rating on IMDb (3/10 when I first wrote this review, and it’s a 2.4/10 right now) led me to believe. Still, it did come across as rather soulless, which is it’s biggest problem.

The story isn’t really that unique. Combining elements of past films like Truth or Dare (2012) and Most Likely to Die (2015), this flick felt as though it had been done before. That said, for a lower-budget movie (the estimated budget is around a million dollars), it had a decent production, and I sort of liked what they did with the flashbacks in the movie.

Worth noting, the movie, while only an hour long, has a somewhat ambitious plot, and probably more characters than necessary (there’s Michelle, John, Chiggy, Claudia, Egypt, Rashad, Lucas, Juan, Felicity, and Alex as the main characters). It didn’t take much to figure out who was who or what relationships they had with each other, but given the first twenty minutes of an already short movie were devoted entirely to showing these characters, it felt a bit much.

As said, the story’s generic, and while some actors and actresses do decent, others are pretty cringe-worthy. Those who did well include Jake Levin, Jillian McLendon, Caleb Spivak, and Alyx Libby, Spivak and Libby perhaps being my favorites. Austin Chunn and Drew Stephenson didn’t do much for me, but both were moderately competent. Gina Hiraizumi (who is probably one of the most-accomplished cast-members) didn’t work for me, though, and Tevon Plunkett was laughably over-the-top at times. I’m torn by Maia Kavchak – she did well at times in her role, but she also did horribly during a few scenes.

That said, the failures of acting isn’t what brings the movie down the most. It’s that the story, while somewhat well-constructed (despite pathetically weak kills), felt utterly soulless. Some movies of a similar plot, such as the aforementioned Most Likely to Die, Don’t Go to the Runion (2013), and ROT: Reunion of Terror (2008) all had more feeling (Reunion of Terror wasn’t that good, but for an indie horror, it knew what it was going for). This one had a decent story, if not derivative, but I didn’t get the sense that those involved loved what they were doing. It felt a bit stale, especially compared to Don’t Go to the Reunion, which was a clearly made-for-horror-fans-by-horror-fans flick, made for about $18,000.

You could do worse than making a movie without feeling – like I said, there were some good performances here, and the way the story was told, especially regarding the flashbacks, was somewhat inspired. But I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to watch this again if I had those other previously mentioned movies at my disposal.

5.5/10

Directed by Peter Sullivan [Other horror films: Summoned (2013), High School Possession (2014), Ominous (2015), The Sandman (2017)]

This is definitely one of the better flicks I’ve seen on Syfy in the last few years, surpassing my admittedly low expectations of it rather easily.

Focusing on the Latin American-based mythology of Cucay or the Sack Man, the movie had a strong Spanish feel to the film, which is something that I generally don’t care for. Here, however, they made it work, a big part due to the characters themselves who were mostly solid. It helped too that the story was pretty well-done, especially for a television flick.

Bella Stine did pretty good for as young an actress as she is. Both Marisol Nichols and Pedro Correa did commendably also, though it did take a bit for Correa to grow on me. The star of the film, and also the strongest performance, was Jearnest Corchado, who came across quite well as a strong teen fighting for her sister.

Another somewhat surprising aspect of the film is that the design of the titular Cucay isn’t that bad. At first, it does look a little ridiculous, but like Correa’s character, it grew on me after a while. I’m somewhat reminded of the 2017 Syfy film Stickman, in which the story was decent, but the design was terrible. Here, luckily both the story and special effects are superior.

So too is the ending. Instead of tacking on a hideous downer ending in the last two seconds of the film, they do something a bit differently, and though the effects of the specific scene I’m referring to are sketchy, I really liked the implications.

Most modern-day television movies don’t blow me away, and this one didn’t either, but I certainly recognize it as clearly one of the stronger efforts in the last few years (the only other one that really comes to mind is Neverknock from 2017). For a television movie, you could certainly do worse than this one, and though it doesn’t really add much to the genre, I was happy with the final product.

8/10

Directed by John Carpenter [Other horror films: Someone’s Watching Me! (1978), The Fog (1980), The Thing (1982), Christine (1983), Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988), Body Bags (1993, segments ‘The Gas Station’ & ‘Hair’), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), Village of the Damned (1995), Vampires (1998), Ghosts of Mars (2001), The Ward (2010)]

Without a doubt, this classic film is one of the best horror movies ever made, surpassing films such as The Evil Dead, The Shining, Jaws, and A Nightmare on Elm Street with utter ease.

So many factors of the film are great – masterful cinematography, an amazing musical score, pretty good performances, a captivating story, and a fine control of suspense. With little gore, Halloween manages to be the slasher that so many others afterward try to set their standards by, and generally reach nowhere close.

It’s true that Jamie Lee Curtis doesn’t look like a high school student, but she had a great performance here for her first film (her previous appearances were on television shows). I adore her character, the fact that she’s a mostly good girl who’s not averse to good times (the weed scene), and she’s just great here. Donald Pleasence, who has a long history of horror before this, dating back to 1960’s The Flesh and the Fiends, is amazing as Loomis, and while occasionally over-the-top, has some of the best dialogue in the film.

Between P.J. Soles (Lynda) and Nancy Kyes (Annie), I have to say I like Kyes’ character a lot more, though Soles’ does have a great piece of dialogue about the lack of necessity of books. It’s somewhat unfortunate that Kyes didn’t have much of a career (she appeared in the third Halloween, along with The Fog, also directed by Carpenter), as I thought this showed a lot of potential.

If there’s any problem with the film, it could be that Michael seems focused on Laura for absolutely no reason. While later sequels attempt to explain this, as far as this movie goes, it’s random with no meaning behind it. In some ways, though, I think that makes it more effective, and given that Nick Castle (who brilliantly plays The Shape, as he’s called) is fantastic throughout, it’s only an additional positive.

The only other John Carpenter film that could compete with this one, in my mind, is The Fog, and while the Fog is good, few movies could ever reach this level of excellence (on a side-note, many may be outraged I didn’t mention also The Thing, but I’m not as big a fan of that one as others).

For this movie, though, whether you watch it with or without the additional television footage, you could only do worse. One of the twenty or so horror films I see as pretty flawless, Halloween is a movie that will never get old, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, and the ending will never not be iconic (focusing on different locations seen in the movie with that music playing – perfection).

10/10

This classic was covered on Fight Evil’s third podcast. If interested, give it a listen as Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss it.

Directed by Sheldon Wilson [Other horror films: Shallow Ground (2004), Kaw (2007), Screamers: The Hunting (2009), Carny (2009), Mothman (2010), Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010), Killer Mountain (2011), Scarecrow (2013), Shark Killer (2015), The Unspoken (2015), The Hollow (2015), The Night Before Halloween (2016), Neverknock (2017), Stickman (2017)]

Oh boy. This Syfy film is pretty derivative of better movies from the past (such as 1989’s Leviathan and 1998’s Deep Rising), and doesn’t bring anything remotely interesting to the story to make up for the lack of originality.

What hurts the movie most isn’t necessarily the story, though; it’s the fact that the cast (comprised almost entirely of women) is utterly one-dimensional. I finally ended up learning their names toward the end of the film, but there was very little about the characters that we really knew, aside from the fact they were all on a ship together. None of the actresses did much with their shallow characters, but that’s more likely an issue with the script than the actresses themselves. I guess Nikohl Boosheri did the best, as tepid praise as that is.

The special effects weren’t terrible, though I didn’t care for the look of the parasitic organism. The stale nature of the story doesn’t really lend much in the way of suspense and mystery past a certain point, though, and more so, I can’t think of a reason to watch this when you could instead watch something like The Thing, or Leviathan, or even DeepStar Six. It just seems pointless, especially since there’s not much context to this movie to begin with.

Dead in the Water is an apt name for this – unoriginal ideas combined with uninteresting characters leads to a film that doesn’t take long to show how uninspired it all is. Theoretically, Syfy could have been able to cobble together something better than this (maybe along the lines of The Devil’s Tattoo, also known as Ghost Rig, from 2003), but as it is, this movie is very much so below average.

4/10

Directed by Reginald Le Borg [Other horror films: Calling Dr. Death (1943), Weird Woman (1944), Jungle Woman (1944), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), Dead Man’s Eyes (1944), Voodoo Island (1957), Diary of a Madman (1963), House of the Black Death (1971), So Evil, My Sister (1974)]

In some ways, The Black Sleep feels quite a bit like a Hammer film, despite being an American production. It does have a good story, solid cast, and pretty tense ending, but I couldn’t absolutely find myself in a position to love it come the credits.

Recommended to me by an online friend who knows I dabble in the more classic entries of the genre, much in this movie certainly came across a pleasant surprise. The story is pretty fun, and has a twist thrown in there too. Some scenes, such as the dungeon sequence, were rather frightening, and felt more out of a 60’s or 70’s horror film than a 50’s (in fact, some of this movie reminded me quite a bit of Mansion of the Doomed from 1976).

The cast is superb. Basil Rathbone and Herbert Rudley did well as the main characters, Rathbone of course being a rather well-known actor (as he played Sherlock Holmes in quite a few films, including the 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles, a classic), and while I don’t know Rudley, he was convincing in his role. Lon Chaney Jr. (who needs no introduction) didn’t have a big chance to showcase his abilities here, but still exceeded in the role he was given. The same is true for Bela Lugosi, who played a mute, but given that this is his final movie performance before his death later in the same year, that can be excused.

Tor Johnson (perhaps most infamously known from The Beast of Yucca Flats) gives a strong performance here, despite not really appearing until near the end of the film. Patricia Blair isn’t a name I’m familiar with, but I liked her as the main female character in the film. Lastly, both Akim Tamiroff and John Carradine were notable in their roles, though Carradine probably was the most forgettable.

It’s hard for me to say where the downsides of this movie arise from, given that so much of the movie (from the cast to the story) is pretty good. Suffice it to say, maybe the bulk of the film, dealing with a scientist who is above the morality of mere mortals, felt more akin to a 30’s or 40’s throwback film than to the 50’s. At the same time, I could easily see Hammer looking at this movie as a way to influence their Curse of Frankenstein, which came out the following year.

Whatever my personal shortcomings of the film are, I won’t deny that this is a classic that unfortunately seems to be overlooked by many nowadays. I didn’t know much about it before jumping in, but I was mostly pleased by the film overall, and if you’re a fan of the classics of the genre, given the cast this film has, I’m somewhat sure you’ll be pleased also.

7.5/10