I Know What You Did Last Summer Series

I had never seen either of these movies, so I did what any normal person would: I bought a pack with both of the movies on Ebay (for the record, I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer doesn't count as a movie in the series, so I didn't watch that one).  Both of these were pretty predictable horror movies...pretty much exactly what I expected.  But I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Our four main characters are Julie (the good girl), Helen (Julie's best friend), Ray (Julie's boyfriend...he's also supposed to be the poor boy in a rich town, only he doesn't look even close to poor.  Of course, when you're played by Freddie Prinze Jr, it's kind of hard), and Barry (Helen's boyfriend.  He also is, by far, the biggest jerk in the movie).  Helen wins the local beauty contest, and the four of them go out to celebrate.  They get drunk and hit a guy.  Instead of calling the cops, they throw him into the ocean, presuming him to be dead.
A year later, with all four nursing some sort of guilt, people in the town start getting killed, and the four of them are stalked.  They run.  They fight.  They try to figure out what is going on.  And so on.
I will say this for Helen (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar): she's a fighter.  Where Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) makes every stupid mistake imaginable, Helen scraps and claws and punches and jumps out of windows...all to try to get away.

The two survivors from the first movie (Julie and Ray) have defeated killed The Fisherman and are back to living their lives.  Julie is in college, and Ray is working as a fisherman.  Julie and her college friends win a trip to the Bahamas, so they go.  Ray tries to make it, but The Fisherman reappears, killing his friend and putting Ray in a coma.
Somehow, some way, The Fisherman follows Julie and her friends to the Bahamas and starts killing people (including Jack Black, who shows up as a stoner).  They fight back.  And on it goes.
There wasn't much of a difference between this movie and the first one.

Again, there was nothing overly surprising about either of these movies, but I really liked both of them.  For a high school slasher movie, you could do a lot worse.

Rating: 4/5

The Hills Have Eyes, Jennifer's Body, Night of the Demons

The Hills Have Eyes

In keeping with the whole "inbred cannibal" theme, I went with this movie.  In this case, "inbred" isn't really accurate.  Sure, this family has deformities, but it's due to the nuclear testing site that they were living on.  Still, they're crazed cannibals, so it still kind of fits in with the theme of Wrong Turn.
A family is driving through the desert when their tires are blown by a strip of nails thrown down by one of the deformed cannibals.  The family, of course, has no idea what caused the blow-out, so they don't know that they should be cautious.  Of course, members of the family go in different directions to try to find help.  The cannibals descend on the Airstream trailer, and begin picking off the family members (there is an especially grisly and long rape scene).  They steal a baby, and the family fights back.  Some of them make it out alive, but most of them die.
I enjoyed it.  Liked, but didn't love.

Rating: 4 stars

Jennifer's Body

I had heard terrible, terrible things about this movie, so I went in with extremely lowered expectations.  Maybe that helped.  (Something else that helped?  A pint of Trader Joe's Vintage Ale.)
As it turns out, I really liked this movie.  Yeah, it was a little cheesy, but, for the most part, it was pretty good.  I thoroughly enjoyed Adam Brody's Satanic indie rocker.  I thoroughly enjoyed Amanda Seyfried playing the bookish best friend.  I thoroughly enjoyed the fact the J.K. Simmons was in it.  And, of course, I thoroughly enjoyed Megan Fox as a man-eating demon.
Was it the best movie of all time?  No.  And maybe I was just in the right mood to watch it, but I really liked this movie.

Rating: 4 stars

Night of the Demons

I hadn't really heard much about this, but it showed up on my Netflix recommendations.  From watching Undeclared, I'm a big fan of Monica Keena, so I thought I would check this one out.
Some college kids throw a party in an old mansion that is something of a local legend.  The party gets broken up by the cops, but a handful of kids stay behind.  They go to the basement and find a bunch of skeletons.  One of them bites a girl, and she is quickly overtaken by a demon.  Much like zombies, if the demon bites (or kisses) another person, then they will also be overtaken by a demon.  So the demon spreads, and slowly most of the group is taken over by demons.  The three remaining humans try to fend off the demons throughout the night (they find that if they survive until daylight, they'll be free of the demons...but, if they don't, then the world will be overtaken by these demons).  So the humans fight the demons for the remainder of the movie.
It was a fun movie.  Not great, but enjoyable.  Also, it has a fantastic soundtrack.

Random actor sighting: Shannon Elizabeth, Edward Furlong

Rating: 3 stars

I finished three remixes, and you can listen to them here.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Prom Night, Dog Soldiers, Halloween

Prom Night

Yet another one of those movies that I had heard about, but had never seen.  This was as good a time as any to check it out.

It came out 2 years after Halloween, but it seemed much more dated.  Maybe it was the clothes.  Maybe it was the hair.  Or maybe - just maybe - it was the insanely long prom scene with a ton of loud disco.  Yeah, that was probably it.

I could see what they were going for, and I can see how a lot of modern movies were influenced by this.  As opposed to Halloween, you weren't sure who the killer was (although it was fairly easy to figure it out).  

It was fairly entertaining, but not a great movie.  Nowhere near on the level of Halloween.  However, there are bonus points for the guy who played Lou...the "bad boy" in the movies, and one of the more hideous people I've ever seen.  

Rating: 3 stars

Dog Soldiers

I tend to like monster movies, which means I also tend to like werewolf movies.  I had heard good things about this movie, so I thought I'd check it out.  There were werewolves.  There was blood.  There was a man with his guts held in by hot glue.  There was lots of shooting.  Honestly, this is a problem I have with werewolf movies.  Even after the characters realize that nothing short of silver bullets will kill the werewolf, they still keep shooting them.  I realize that it kind of knocks them back a little, but it does no real damage, and it most cases it does little in the way of slowing them down.  It's not just this movie...it's a lot of werewolf movies.

Anyway, this movie was violent and bloody, and ended with a bunch of guys in an old house, shooting at werewolves.  

I liked it, but I didn't love it.  From everything that I had heard about it, I was expecting to love it.  It was enjoyable, but it didn't blow me away.  Maybe I needed to be in the right mood for it, but, for now, I'll give it a "Liked It".

Rating: 3 stars

Halloween

It's really not fair to review this along with Prom Night and Dog Soldiers.  Those movies were decent.  This movie is amazing.  I've seen it a handful of times, and it only gets better with each viewing.  I would have to rank this movie among my top 5 horror movies of all time (somewhere behind Psycho and Night of the Living Dead).  First of all, it just looks amazing.  The cinematography is terrific.  The soundtrack is perfect.  The character of Michael Myers is terrifying in that he has no back story.  We don't know exactly why he kills...we don't know how or why he got to that point.  We just know that he kills, and that he's relentless in his pursuit, and brutal in his murders.  There's the supernatural aspect to the end (how is he still alive?).  There's the camera itself: sometimes acting as the eyes of Myers...but not always, so it keeps you on your toes.
It's hard to describe all the reasons why I love this movie.  I just know that I do, and I love it more every time.

Rating: 5 stars

After watching Halloween, I realized I had not yet watched the entire series.  So I'm doing that now.  I'm skipping 2 (which I had recently watched) and 3 (because Michael Myers is not in it, and because it's awful). I doubt my reviews of these will be much past, "Stabbing stabbing stabbing," but we'll see.

Zombie Prom Update: The prom will be taking place at the Danville Community Arts Center on May 21, starting at 8pm.  You can visit the page (and buy tickets) here, and you can request songs through the Facebook page.