Best of 2014

You’ve handled my worst, so you’re now getting my best.

Before I get to the list, here are some that just barely missed the cut (or maybe they didn’t, but I wanted to talk about them.)

Snowpiercer
Honestly, the only reason this one didn’t make the list is because I’m not sure if it qualifies as horror.  It has been a bit overhyped, and I don’t think it’s as good as all the breathless overanalyzing tends to make it sound.  But it’s a solid movie, and I had a lot of fun watching it.  The cast is terrific, the story – riddled with logistical holes as it is – is a lot of fun, and they do a great job with the video game type plot of moving car-to-car, finding a new obstacle in each one.  Try to ignore the hype and watch this for what it is: a fun and unique sci-fi movie.
My original review.

Godzilla
Pacific Rim has ruined me a little, because all I could think was, “Why not just build giant robots and punch Godzilla in the face with their rocket-propelled fists?”  But I got over that before I went into the movie.  I just wanted something fun.  Instead, all I got was a movie following the uncharismatic kid from Kick-Ass as he travels the world as the only bomb expert left, somehow staying in Godzilla’s direct path the whole time.  I also saw two great performers – Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen – get completely washed out of the movie (an early exit and relegated to crying duty, respectively).  There were some good scenes and the last half hour made me walk out excited, but it wasn’t nearly as good as I was hoping.
My original review.

Cheap Thrills
The hype train was all geared up for this one.  I lowered my expectations before I went in.  I’m glad I did, because, even with those lowered expectations, I didn’t enjoy it that much.  Sky high expectations would have led to me hating it.  The cast is terrific (Ethan Embry, David Koechner, Sara Paxton and Pat Healy) and there were some good dark comedy moments, but the story was extremely predictable, made even worse by the feeling that they were trying to deliver a huge emotional gut punch at the end.  (I could see the end coming from a mile away.)  There were also a few scenes that really drove the drama forward by actions that made no sense (I realize it’s a weird statement to make about a movie like this, given all the out-of-character things that happened, but I stand by that statement and am more than happy to discuss it).  It wasn’t a bad movie.  I thought it was decent.  But the overhype really hurt it.  If you don’t expect anything mind-blowing, you should have a good time with this.

Life After Beth
I didn’t expect much out of this.  Just a fun zombie movie with a good cast.  That’s exactly what I got.  It looked at the zombie genre from a slightly different angle, and I enjoyed it.
My original review.

I, Frankenstein
I know, I know.  Keep in mind that I’m a fan of the Underworld series, the first 3 Resident Evilmovies and the first 2 Mummy movies.  I’m a sucker for a fun action/horror movie is my point.  This movie is way more complicated than it has any reason to be, but it was a lot of fun to watch.

Enough of this nonsense.  To the top 10!

10. Under the Skin
All I knew going into this movie was, “Scarlett Johansson artsy Species,” which is really just word soup.  But that’s pretty much what this was.  There’s not a lot of dialogue, and there’s a lot of Scarlett driving around Scotland in a white van, talking to strangers.  There’s seduction and nudity, but none of it is alluring.  This movie definitely isn’t for everyone, and it’s not for every mood, but I really liked this a lot.  It has a hypnotic quality to it.  Once it clicked for me, I was glued to the screen.
My original review.

9. The Sacrament
Those of you who know me know that I have never liked Ti West.  I’ve never liked a single movie of his.  In fact, my favorite Ti West moment is when he gets shot in the head with an arrow inYou’re Next.  But this was something different.  The first 30 minutes were pretty slow, and I started to tune out a little.  I knew where the story was going, anyway: it’s basically a retelling of the events of Jonestown.  But then it started to pick up a bit.  Even though I knew where it was going, it was still able to draw me in.  The paranoia and insanity increased incrementally.  By the time it got to the Kool Aid (or, more accurately, Flavor Aid) scene, I was all-in.  There are some images in this film that I’ll never be able to get out of my brain.  There were some extremely chilling moments.  I didn’t love the whole thing, and I had some logistical issues like, “How did they get the footage off that specific camera?”, but that’s just being nit-picky.  I liked this a lot more than I thought I was going to.
My original review.

8. Sacrament
Not to be confused with the last movie.  This one was directed by Shawn Ewert, and it follows a group of friends as they take a trip to Texas and find themselves in a town surrounded by religious fanatics and the sweet, sweet smell of meat.  This could have easily turned into a predictable slasher, but the religious angle helped to add another layer to the film, as did the fact that these characters felt like actual people.  Ewert made me care about the characters and what happened to them.  There were a couple scenes I wasn’t crazy about, but, again, that’s just being nit-picky.
This is also notable for being one of the final performances of the great Marilyn Burns.  She doesn’t have a huge role, but she’s fantastic when she’s on the screen.

7. Tusk
I just watched this last week.  I’m still trying to make up my mind on it, so it has a chance to climb up the ladder or fall down, depending on where I settle.  For now, #7 seems about right.  I thought I had a decent idea of what this movie would be: crazy old man turns mustachioed Justin Long into a walrus.  I figured it would be really gory.  Something like Human Centipede orHostel or something.  But it really wasn’t.  They didn’t show much of the transformation at all.  That’s good, because just looking at the walrus suit was disturbing enough.  There were a number of scenes in here that made me laugh entirely too hard.  It was a really well done dark comedy/horror.  I loved it.  I could have done without Johnny Depp’s character, and the podcast segment at the end reminded me of how much I dislike Kevin Smith, but those are small complaints.  I thought I would hate this movie, and I was completely blown away by how much I loved it.

6. Oculus
I kind of lumped this into “mirror horror” (which I believe only includes Mirrors and Mirrors 2), so I wasn’t expecting much.  I came away loving this movie.  There were some great performances here (Karen Gillan and Katee Sackhoff were the standouts, but everyone was terrific.  Even the children were great, and I’m normally not a big fan of child actors), the story was good, and there were some really creepy moments.  I love how the film played with the perception of reality.  This is a great movie to put on when you’re by yourself in a dark house.
My original review.

5. The Canal
A great, claustrophobic movie about a man who discovers his wife has been murdered.  The use of old murder footage was really creepy.  This combined elements of The Amityville Horror andSinister, but still had its own style to it.  I knew next to nothing about this movie going in, and I think I was better off for it.  Just watch this movie.
My original review.

4. WolfCop
Some glorious maniac submitted a review for this, and I don’t know if I can describe it any better than he/she did.  Take Hobo With a Shotgun and, instead of the hobo (sorry Rutger Hauer) and throw an alcoholic werewolf cop into the mix.  Bam.  WolfCop.

3. Horns
I read the book and, while I liked it, I didn’t love it like I thought I would.  Still, I was very much looking forward to this movie.  After Daniel Radcliffe’s work on The Woman in Black, I was excited to see what he would do here.  He was fantastic, and the movie was dynamite.  They nailed the dark-comedy-turns-just-plain-dark mood of the book.  A number of moments had me laughing really hard.  Beyond the humor, the story was handled great.  I loved that, behind all the insanity, was a simple love story/murder mystery.  There were times I was so involved in the story that I almost forgot Ig had horns on his head.  The cast was great, and the story was handled wonderfully.  It was everything I hoped it would be.
My original review.

2. Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead
My love for the first Dead Snow is well-known, so it should come as no surprise that the sequel ranked so high on my list.  With the success of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Tommy Wirkola was given a lot more money to work with than he did with Dead Snow.  And he put that money to good use.  Everything was bigger.  More zombies.  More blood.  More intestines.  More insanity.  This movie is a ton of fun.
My original review.

1. The Babadook
How could it be anything else in this spot?  It’s rare that a movie exceeds its considerable hype (for me, anyway), but this movie managed to do that.  The first 30 minutes or so were a bit dicey (screeching children have a way of doing that), but I totally understand why they had to do that.  Then it settled in, and I couldn’t look away.  I was completely drawn in by the story.  By the imagery.  By the relationship between mother and son.  By everything.  It’s a fantastically creepy movie.  Find a dark, quiet night, open a door you can see from your viewing area, and put this on.  Don’t look at your phone.  Don’t carry on long conversations.  Just sit down and drink this in.  You won’t be disappointed.
My original review.  (I may or may not talk about the Pinky & The Brain Christmas Special.)

Worst of 2014

My plan was to combine my Best and Worst onto one list.  But then I got to writing and it got a little too long.  So we’ll roll with Worst right now.

I couldn’t find 10 films I really disliked, but it’s because I avoided a lot of movies that probably would have ended up on that list.  Jessabelle, Ouija, Paranormal Activities: The Marked Ones.  All of these were left unseen by me.  I thought about throwing them at the bottom of the list, but that seems cruel.  One day I’ll watch them and rant about them then.  I don’t want to ruin all that fun just yet.  I gotta pace myself, you see.

9. Zombeavers
It’s not that it was terrible.  It’s more what it represents, combined with the fact that it just wasn’t very good.  What it represents is the new SyFy movie trend of making an obviously bad movie, with the plan of making it so ridiculous (and making the title ridiculous) that people will love it for those reasons.  It’s a way to get people to love something ironically, without actually ever trying to make a movie that would stand on its own merits.  SyFy has been making movies for a while, and, while they’ve been pretty ridiculous, they didn’t always fit this bill.  I would tell you how many times I’ve seen Frankenfish, Minotaur, Yeti, Ice Spiders and Sabretooth, but I don’t need your judgement right now.  The wife and I once made sure we were both home to watchOdysseus: Voyage to the Underworld, starring one Arnold “Imhotep” Vosloo.  They were also behind some really quality movies, like Splinter.  They weren’t cheesy all creature-features.  Then the giant shark movies started showing up, and it all went to hell.  “What if we made nothing but stupid, over-the-top movies?”  It’s hard to fault them, really: I’m sure the Sharknado series has drawn in more viewers/money than Battlestar Galactica ever did.
I’m getting on an old-man rant, so it’s time to pull myself out.
That brings us to Zombeavers.  There was no plan in place to make this a good movie.  The idea started and ended with, “What if there were zombie beavers?”  It wasn’t funny.  It wasn’t clever.  It was just a loud, obnoxious movie about zombie beavers attacking sex-addicted college students in a remote cabin.  There were a couple funny moments, but, for the most part, it was really painful.  An unfunny idea that was turned into a movie without much thought put into it.  I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t good, and it’s just the latest example of a trend that has gone too far.
If it tells you anything, my favorite part of the movie was watching the outtakes with Bill Burr and John Mayer ad-libbing while driving around in a truck.

8. Willow Creek
This is on here because I wanted it to be good.  It’s a found footage Bigfoot movie directed by Bobcat Golthwait.  I’m a fan of Bigfoot, and, seeing as how I had just visited the International Cryptozoology Museum, I was really looking forward to this.
It was really boring, and seemed to steal scenes directly from The Blair Witch Project (Golthwait says he’s never seen Blair Witch, so I guess it’s just some sort of terrible coincidence).  There were a few decent scenes, but I couldn’t stand the main guy, and that really hurt the movie.  It wasn’t terrible, but it just wasn’t very good.
My original review.

7. The Quiet Ones
I’m a fan of Hammer films.  I love the classics, and I’m a huge fan of The Woman in Black.  This has a great cast and a pretty cool story (well, the story this was loosely based on was good.  This version left quite a bit to be desired), but it didn’t really go anywhere.  The writing wasn’t very good, and the characters were barely characters at all.  Like Willow Creek, this wasn’t terrible, but it was really boring and just kind of a slog to get through.

6. The Purge: Anarchy
I really disliked the first Purge movie.  One of my main complaints was that it didn’t show enough of the wider carnage.  All we got was the inside of one house, and the family we were stuck with was terrible.
I got my wish here.  We saw a bigger view of the city.  We got more people involved.  It was exactly what I wanted.  Until I realized that it wasn’t.  Outside of the main character (who was more an action movie stereotype than a character), there wasn’t another likable character to be found.  I think there were a couple good scenes, but I can’t seem to remember them, so maybe it was part of a fever dream.
They tried hard to up their political statement game with this one, and they failed horribly.  It wasn’t smart enough to really say anything; just a string of failed concepts.  How is this only sitting at 6?

5. ABCs of Death 2
Oh.  Right.  Because other movies came out this year that were quite a bit worse.
I didn’t care for the first ABCs of Death, so I wasn’t looking forward to this one.  But I started watching it anyway, because I hate myself.  I say “started”, because I didn’t finish this.  I don’t know that I even made it halfway through.  I had planned to watch the whole thing under the premise of, “If I don’t like what’s on my screen right now, I’ll just wait 5 minutes and a new short will be on.”  But then I remembered I would be doing that for 2 hours, and I just couldn’t do that to myself.  I think I watched 6-7 segments (maybe more), and I didn’t like any of them.  Had I finished this, it would probably be higher on this list.  Or I would be dead.  Either way, I guess.

4. Wolf Creek 2
In what seems to be a theme on this list, I didn’t love the first Wolf Creek.  It wasn’t bad, but there just wasn’t much to it.
For this one, they decided to make Mick Taylor – the killer – more of a personality.  Tell some jokes.  Yuk it up.  Make him more of a wisecracking ne’er-do-well/serial killer.  The people love to laugh with the guy who is brutally murdering and torturing innocent humans, right?
Maybe the thought process was that many people do cheer for the killers in slashers.  But that’s a little different than this.  People cheer for Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers because they’re known entities, and the victims are purposefully vapid.  “Who cares if they die?  They’re not doing the world any good, anyway.”
You could counter my Mick Taylor argument with, “Freddy Krueger cracks jokes,” but those movies were different than this.  By the time Freddy was cracking jokes (“Soul food, nyuk nyuk nyuk.”), those movies had long since veered into the ridiculous.  So far, the Wolf Creek films are still trying to be grounded in reality.  Sure, Mick Taylor may laugh and make jokes as he’s running over a herd of kangaroos (nyuk nyuk nyuk), but they’re still supposed to feel real (they have to, or the ugly torture scenes would be for naught).  This took what I disliked about the first one and made it uglier.
My original review.

3. Alien Abduction
I had high hopes for this.  Something about a found footage alien movie sounded cool.  It sounded like something I could get down with.  But the family we followed were boring/awful, and the movie just dragged.  It was basically the “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” segment fromV/H/S/2 stretched out over 85 minutes.
Hey!  Speaking of V/H/S…

2. V/H/S/: Viral
I didn’t like V/H/S, but I thought part 2 was a huge step up.  I didn’t have high hopes for this, but I did think it would be somewhat enjoyable.  I wasn’t expecting something amazing, just something halfway decent.
I didn’t get that.  I didn’t get that at all.
The second segment – “Parallel Monsters” – wasn’t bad.  It was a decent idea, but it drug on for a bit too long.  Still, a decent enough segment.
The rest was terrible.  The segment with the magician and the magic coat was laughable, and didn’t seem to fit at all within the found footage of the rest of the films.  I honestly thought it was a joke, but I was mistaken.  The skateboarder segment was entirely too long, and the characters were insufferable.  The wraparound story was amazingly confusing.  The entire movie was littered with terrible effects of limbs being chopped off.  This was a terrible, terrible movie.  I know anthology films can be a mixed bag, but there was very little to like here.  “Parallel Monsters” wasn’t even good enough to warrant a rewatch.
And the only reason it wasn’t the worst movie I saw this year…

1. Leprechaun: Origins
I like the original Leprechaun series.  I don’t love it, and I certainly don’t think they’re good movies, but I enjoy them for what they are: ridiculous slasher movies about a killer Leprechaun.  Even if I’m not necessarily in the mood for that kind of thing, they’re pretty good movies to put on in the background while I’m doing something else.  I look up from making dinner, see the Leprechaun killing a guy by jumping on him with a pogo stick, smile, and go back to dinner.
I had prepared myself for something different with this movie.  Something darker.  I was looking forward to it.  The original Leprechaun was kind of played out.  With Warwick Davis being replaced by WWE’s Hornswoggle, I was perfectly fine with a change of direction.
But not like this.  Never like this.
The writing was terrible.  The actual origin story was all told by a 4 minute info dump in a basement.  The only likable character was Sophie, but she was only likable because she was set up as our proxy.  None of the characters had much in the way of an actual character.  Sophie and her boyfriend were having issues, but they did nothing to add to the story or the characters.
And the Leprechaun?  They say it was Hornswoggle, but who could know for sure?  Underneath the Galaxy Invader-esque rubber suit, it could have been anyone.  It could have been the kid fromSmall Wonder for all I knew.
There was not a single redeeming factor in this movie.  I thought I would at least find something to have fun with.  “So good it’s bad.”  I didn’t find that.  Maybe I needed to watch it with a big group of people, but I don’t even know if that would’ve helped.  This was a terrible movie.  Please don’t watch it.  Even if you like the Leprechaun series, don’t watch it.  Please.  I beg you.
My original review.

The Babadook

Synopsis (from the official website):

From breakthrough writer-director Jennifer Kent comes the creepy psychological horror movie The Babadook that has received an explosion of acclaim following its world premiere at Sundance 2014.  The film tells of a single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, who battles with her son's night time fear of a shadowy monster.  But soon, she discovers a sinister presence is lurking in the house.
With echoes of past and contemporary classics like Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant, The Exorcist, The Omen and Let the Right One In, the film is an immaculately crafted tale starring Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman.  The supporting cast includes Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney, Barbara West and Ben Winspear.

My thoughts:

The hype machine was fired up for this one.  The Babadook had been making the festival rounds and was getting nothing but rave reviews.  I wrote a post about the trailer, in which I detailed my attempt to lower my expectations.  I succeeded to some degree, but I was still very much looking forward to this one.  When I finally got my grubby mitts on a copy of this (complete with a severely dialed-back version of the pop-up book), I squealed.  I squealed like a little girl.  In a little dress.  Little saddle shoes.  Little pigtails.

That does sound like a little girl.

The first half hour of this was a little rough.  They needed to set up Essie Davis' Amelia as an exhausted, barely-clinging-to-her-sanity mother of a problem child (the word they kept using was "disobedient," but he was really just an unholy terror).  They needed to do this so that, when Mister Babadook showed up, we weren't sure if there were really a monster in the house or if it was just the frayed edges of her sanity finally becoming fully unraveled.
It's the way this was done that really wore me down in the early going.  Her son, Samuel, is a shrieking horror.  He sees monsters in the house from the beginning, so he comes up with a series of weapons to battle them (my favorite is a backpack that hurls a baseball with a mechanical arm).  As you can imagine, this ends with him breaking lots of things.  He doesn't get along with other children, which leads to them picking on him and him retaliating.  Between his gadgets and his violence, he could be seen as a mix between Macaulay Culkin's character in Home Alone and his character in The Good Son.  He is kicked out of school and forced to spend more time at home with his sleep-deprived mother.  But, most of all, he shrieks.  He kicks and screams and screams and screams and screams...

It's really obnoxious.  I fully understand that's exactly the point, but it's grating.  We're supposed to sympathize with Amelia when she feels like she just can't go on.  She may not love her child, and we're supposed to see exactly why she is at this point.  It's effective, but it's still not a lot of fun to watch.  Then again, we're watching as a mother pretends to love her child, all the while fluctuating between being afraid of him and resenting him.  This isn't supposed to be fun.  

Then Mister Babadook shows up, and the movie really takes off.  A pop-up book shows up and she reads it to her child.  It's horrifying.  She destroys the book, only to have it show up later with some more pages added.  Are those new pages real?  Was the book put there by a stalker, or was it The Babadook?  

She starts hearing noises in the house at night.  Seeing shadows move.  When the first growling strains of, "Ba ba-ba dook dook DOOK," filled the room as she hid under her covers, I felt a chill go up my spine. 
Even then, it was unclear whether or not The Babadook was real, or just a product of her deteriorating sanity.  Was she really hearing those things, or did she just think she was?  She was sleep-deprived to begin with, but, as the movie progressed, it seemed like she didn't sleep more than 15 minutes a night.  That little sleep can do terrible things to a mind.

TERRIBLE things

As Amelia's sanity slipped further way, Samuel somehow became the voice of reason.  The tables had turned.  He was now terrified of his mother, and with good reason.  As much as she recoiled in horror when the book showed her killing her son, a part of her seemed like that would be a good idea.  As a child, what's more terrifying than a mother who wants to kill you?  How she came to that point is trivial.  To Samuel, it doesn't matter if she's possessed by a monster or just exhausted: the end result is the same.

I don't want to get into it too much more, lest I creep into spoiler territory.

I loved this.  As I mentioned, the first act can be a little dicey, but it's a necessary evil.  The second act is great and filled with a lot of creepy moments.  The third act goes completely bonkers, in the best way imaginable.  It can be a little hard to watch at times - we basically have a front row seat for some nasty family violence - but it's not pointless.  Everything is here for a reason.  It's a film that doesn't pull any punches, but also isn't shocking for the sake of being shocking. 
This is an extremely affecting psychological thriller that may-or-may-not involve an actual monster.  While it may not be as terrifying as I had hoped it would be, it was still really creepy and was on my mind for days.  A lot of these images and themes are extremely hard to shake.  This movie works best when you're paying full attention to it.  Find a quiet night, turn off all the lights and lose yourself in The Babadook.

Rating: 5/5

One final thought:
They decided to make copies of the Mister Babadook pop-up book featured in the film.  Did I buy one?  Yes.  Yes I did.  However, I have some concerns.
Let's say that reading this book wills Mister Babadook into existence.  Doesn't it seem like a bad idea to flood households with a book that calls forth a monster?  It's basically the plot of the Pinky & The Brain Christmas special, except instead of it ending with The Brain taking over the world through hypnosis, it ends with a ton of people housing a monster and possibly killing all their loved ones.  This seems like a very bad idea.

Also, is there only one Babadook, or will each book conjure up a separate Babadook?  If there's only one, the results would be delayed.  He would terrorize one family until he's done, then move on to the next (or he would try to split his time equally and end up with all of us being mildly inconvenienced by his presence).  If there is one Babadook for every book, we're in big, big trouble.
I know they say you can't get rid of him, but I take that as a personal challenge.  You and me, Mister Babadook.  Let's dance.

Horns

Short synopsis: Ig’s girlfriend Merrin is found murdered in the woods, and Ig is the prime suspect.  He awakens one morning to find that he has sprouted horns, which give him some highly persuasive powers.  He uses these powers to find out who killed Merrin.

Notable actors: Daniel Radcliffe, Juno Temple, Heather Graham, David Morse, James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan

My thoughts:

I had been looking forward to this movie since I first saw it announced.  I already had plans to see it upon its release on Halloween. 

Apparently I’m terrible at keeping up with horror news, because Horns hit VOD on October 3.  I grabbed it as soon as I got home from work and watched it.

Just like the book, it has a strange tone throughout.  It starts out darkly comedic, then slowly loses the comedy as it goes along.  After the comedy has been stripped away, you’re made fully aware of just how twisted the events of the movie really are.

The comedy is terrific.  It’s odd to say that the guy with the horns works as the straight man, but that’s exactly what happens here.  Daniel Radcliffe’s horned Ig Perrish finds that everyone he comes in contact with feels compelled to tell him their darkest desires.

A woman with a bratty child tells Ig that she wants to abandon her family and run away with her golf instructor.

A bar owner says he wants to burn his bar down to collect the insurance money.

And so on.  Through it all, it’s the reactions of Ig that sell the comedy.  Radcliffe shows off a wide array of faces that feature a mixture of shock, disgust, curiosity, fear, exhaustion and amusement.  Ig navigates his way through his town with a set of horns, but it’s the rest of the inhabitants that show their monstrous side.  (Sorry.  I couldn’t resist.)

At its heart, this is a love story.  The only times we see Ig and Merrin together are through flashbacks.  We hear a lot about her from others, and it’s clear that she was well-loved by everyone who knew her.  In a particularly beautiful and heartbreaking statement, Derrick Perrish (Ig’s father) proclaims, “She was my favorite thing about you,” to which Ig promptly agrees.  The hatred the people in his life have for him is directly proportional to the love they had for Merrin.

It’s a great story, and it’s told really well.  It has great characters and a terrific cast.  It was also a faithful adaptation of the book.  While they changed some things, they were minor and didn’t hurt the overall feel or the story. 

Let’s talk about the book for a few seconds.  I liked the book, but there were quite a few cheesy/cringe-worthy moments that found me rolling my eyes.  A lot of those moments were omitted here, which I appreciated.

I loved this movie, and I love it even more the more I think about it.  My expectations were sky-high, and this may have exceeded those expectations.  I will definitely be watching this again sooner rather than later.

Rating: 5/5

A few random thoughts:

There was some great music here.  The usage of David Bowie’s “Heroes” was absolutely perfect (not that there’s really a bad moment for that song, but still).

The movie looked great, and had some really amazing visual moments. 

The actor who played young Eric Hannity (“Meatbag”) reminded me a little bit of Thurman Murman.

I absolutely loved this quote: “People say you have to do the right thing.  Sometimes there is no right thing.  Then, you just have to pick the sin you can live with.” 

Mini Review: Rigor Mortis

You ever have one of those movies that you watch, get to the end and ask, "What was that?"  For me, that movie was Juno Mak's Rigor Mortis, a vampire/possession-zombie(?) movie that starts and ends in some kind of gray mud, which can probably serve as some sort of commentary on the entire film.  It was made in tribute to the Mr. Vampire series of films and stars a lot of the actors who made their name in those films.  I have not been able to track these down, but I have it on good authority (Wikipedia) that they exist.  So that's something.

Rigor Mortis belongs in the jiangshi genre.  Jiangshi are hopping corpses in Chinese folklore.  These are also known as "hopping vampire films", which sounds about right.  There were hopping entities in this film, complete with red tendrils protruding from their entire body, for reasons I wasn't entirely clear on.  Were they vampires?  I'm still not entirely sure.  They seemed to be more like demons or ghosts, but that's neither here nor there.

Vampires?

Let me try to explain the plot to you and we'll see if my head explodes.  A washed-up actor moves into a decrepit apartment complex with lots of strange characters.  He immediately tries to kill himself and is saved by a resident; a great rice cook/vampire hunter.

There's a woman who lives in the complex with her little white-haired son.  They used to live in an apartment, but now they don't, so they wander the halls, stealing food.  They live in the basement because the kindly security guard feels bad for them.  They used to live in the apartment the actor moved into, but her husband cheated on her and got killed by ghosts?  Maybe?  That whole scene was hard to follow.

There's a warlock.  Like, a straight-up warlock.  It might just be me projecting my thoughts when looking back, but I think he had a really dark goatee and wore a robe.  (He did not wear a robe.)  He coughs a lot and smokes "special cigarettes".  (Spoiler alert: it's the crushed-up bones of innocent children.)

There's an elderly lady and her husband.  He dies by falling down stairs, and the warlock convinces her to do a ritual that will revive her husband.  It's weird and creepy and she becomes unhinged quickly.  He becomes a monster who likes to kill, and she seems legitimately surprised by this, despite the fact that he looks like a monster and was raised from the dead by a warlock.

He's fine, you guys. He's just really sleepy.

There's a big fight scene at the end that I didn't fully understand.  There's a little scene after the fight scene that I didn't fully understand.

I feel like I would have understood this better if I had been very familiar with the Mr. Vampire films.  But I have never seen a Mr. Vampire film, so I was very much in the dark for the duration of the movie.

YAAAAAAAA!

It looked really cool, though.  I feel like this was one of those movies that would be perfect for putting on in the background of a Halloween party.  If I had Halloween parties, I would absolutely do that.  Mute the movie, throw some music on and glance over at the screen from time to time.  It would be tremendous.

I can't recommend it as an actual movie, though.  Cool as it may look, the story is absolutely nonsensical.  It wasn't a complete waste of time, but it was a 75% waste of time.

Rating: 1/5

Mini Review: Life After Beth

Description from IMDB:

A young man’s recently deceased girlfriend mysteriously returns from the dead, but he slowly realizes she is not the way he remembered her.

Notable actors: Aubrey Plaza, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser, Anna Kendrick, Dan DeHaan, Matthew Gray Gubler, Garry Marshall

It’s a well-known fact that I enjoy zombie movies.  Because I have seen so many, I find myself drawn to films that are a bit different from the norm.  I like seeing a familiar story from a different angle.  This is true of horror movies in general.  Fido.  Colin.  Shaun of the Dead.  The Cabin in the Woods.  Scream. And so on.  If there is a movie with a new way of looking at familiar tropes, chances are good that I’ll enjoy it.  (Not all of them, though.  American Zombie was terrible.)

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I loved this movie.  It made me laugh pretty consistently throughout the entire movie.  It started off quickly (one of the first scenes is Beth’s funeral) and didn’t really hit any lulls.  The cast was terrific.  I wasn’t sold on Dane DeHaan at first, but he grew on me as the movie progressed.  I loved seeing how Plaza played Beth; she started as a sweet and fun amnesiac, and ended up being the flesh-craved zombie we knew she would become.  I loved John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon as her relentlessly naïve parents.  Most of all, I loved seeing this weird little story play out on the fringes of a citywide zombie outbreak.

My main complaint is that the music seemed to overtake the dialog from time to time.  I loved the atmosphere of the music (dissonant guitar squawls, courtesy of the great Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), but it had a tendency to be louder than it had any reason to me.  Perhaps that was to contribute to the chaos on screen, but I could have done with it being a little lower in the mix.  (Look at me, complaining about music being too loud.  I’m officially old now.)

That’s a minor complaint, though.  It’s not a perfect movie, but I had a lot of fun with this.  I’m already looking forward to watching it again.

Rating: 4/5

Mini Review: Under the Skin

Thoughts on Under the Skin, in three different stages:

1. During the movie. 

What is going on?  She's an alien, right?  That's what the description said.  Is she going to be driving around in this van for the entire movie?  Are those guys actually having sex with her and then getting destroyed, or are they consumed and converted to fuel without ever touching her?  That seems kind of cruel. 

2. Immediately after the movie. 

That was okay, I guess.  I think I kind of liked it.  It was different than I thought it would be.  I liked the thought process behind her trying to eat cake.  "I think I'm starting to feel things.  Maybe I'm human.  Let me check by eating this cake."  There are worse ways to check to see if you're human or not, I suppose.

3.  The day after the movie.

I really loved that movie.  Scarlett Johansson gave a tremendous performance.  She gave her stoic character a ton of depth, and brought her subtle character arc to life with silence.  It was odd and heartbreaking, and I'm really looking forward to watching it again.

Translation: it's not necessarily an easy movie to watch, but it gets better the more you think about it.  Plus, it can kind of be described as "Art house Species," which I’m a fan of.

Rating: 4.5/5