The Conjuring

   I was really excited about The Conjuring.  I'd heard crazy things: it was rated R just because of how freaking scary it is (true, it was rated R for "sequences of disturbing violence and terror"); it's based on a true story.  I just wasn't that impressed.  I'd previously seen Insidious, which was also directed by James Wan (Saw, Dead Silence) and was an awesome movie that I will eventually get around to reviewing.
   The Perron family moves into a big creepy house.  This is an old concept, and The Conjuring doesn't do anything spectacular to make it new again.  Insidious had all kinds of creepiness.  The audience was offered a sample platter of scares, so many, they could pick and choose what was scariest.  Was it the murder sisters with the huge, white grins? the creepy old lady with the candle in the window?  Pick your poison.  The Conjuring had the creeps, it just didn't have the scares.
   The five daughters of the Perron family like to play a game called Hide-and-Clap, which is just about the creepiest game in the entire world, without a haunted house to make it even fucking creepier.  Basically, you willingly tie on a blindfold, let your abusers friends spin you around a few times, then go looking for them.  You can ask them to clap three times in order to facilitate finding them, since you are blindfolded and no one wants to hide in the closet for three hours.
   Anyway, while playing this God-awful travesty of a children's game, they accidentally discover a boarded up entrance to a cellar.  Usually when an entrance to someplace creepy is boarded up, it's a good indication that there's something pretty creepy going on in that creepy place.  So they go down there and they find all sorts of creepy shit.  Surprise.
   Mysterious hands grab at the daughters' feet at night.  All these girls sleep with their feet uncovered, which personally I think is just asking for a ghost to grab your ankles and pull you out of bed to be eaten, but that's just me.  The matriarch keeps waking up with mysterious bruises, birds keep flying into the sides of the house, and something killed their dog.
   Apparently all this trouble is caused by Bathsheba, an ACCUSED witch who ALLEGEDLY sacrificed her own infant before running out to the ole creepy tree and, after cursing the land and proclaiming her love for Satan, hung herself from the creepiest possible branch*.
   So the Perrons call in Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are THE authorities on ghoulies and ghosties.  Seriously, they investigated the Amityville Horror**, that haunting in Connecticut***, and apparently a case involving werewolves.  Ed died in 2006, but Lorraine is still alive and kicking evil's ass.  She's like the Chuck Norris of the paranormal.
   So the movie wasn't great.  It wasn't bad, but I'd also say it wasn't that good.  It certainly wasn't the pants-shitting terror that I was hoping for.  I'll give The Conjuring two and a half out of five possessed porcelain dolls.

*She was cleared of the charge of witchcraft and infanticide.  She actually died of natural causes, rather than hanging herself.
**Pretty well debunked, between conflicting witness testimonies, to the dates given in the now-famous book.  Other people who have owned the now-famous house have stated that nothing weird ever happened, aside from sight-seers.
***Save yourself the trouble, don't watch this movie.  Also, apparently Ed Warren was aware that the family was crazy as all hell.  He just wanted to make a buck (no disrespect to the dead, I fully appreciate the need to make cash from the ignorance/delusions of others.

The ABCs of Death

It's not educational.

   Okay, I'm still sort of tripping out from that last short film from The ABCs of Death.  That was crazy.  This is an anthology of twenty-six short films.  Each director was given a different letter of the alphabet and told to come up with a word that starts with that letter.  Then they made short films about those words which strongly feature death.
   I wasn't impressed with a lot of them.  Over half of them were just weird and all fuckered up.The films from Japan were pretty screwy.  One largly featured farting, another featured really messed up sexuality, and the last film of the anthology, "Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)" was so messed up that I don't even have words to describe it.  The notes that I typed up as I watched said things like,

• WHHAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAHHHHTTTTTTTTTTTTT?  
• i can't, i just can;t, this is too weird
• awiafo;nasfsaijo;adfa,;8jioewfiohfawnhjiofwohiawfwhjiwfeohifaiwgogougraohigroigrapjifewpjaewfivfnlvzifewigrwlngrorgaoigraio, 
• oh my god i'm crying

So that one was, you know, probably the weirdest of the twenty-six.

   Really, the anthology doesn't even start getting good until around "R Is for Removed."  This surrealist film began by showing a bloody, raw man laying in a hospital bed.  A doctor flays the man alive and somehow develops his flesh into film.  He is then placed in a cage, covered from head to toe in clothing.  Rabid fans rush up to him and swarm around the cage, fans of the movies pulled from the mutilated man's skin.  In the end, the skinned man's revenge is gruesome and goretastic.  This was when my opinion of the whole anthology began to change.

  "S Is for Speed" was a short film centered around a metaphor.  Absolutely loved it, from the grindhouse-style vibe to the muscle car and flame thrower.  Two pin-up-looking girls are fighting with each other as they are being chased by a hooded figure in the desert.  The hotter of the two throws the other girl in the trunk of a bitchin' muscle car and takes off.  The hooded figure catches her, however, when that bitchin' muscle car runs out of gas.  The twist is glorious and unexpected.  I was able to find a Youtube video of it if you want to watch it.
   "U Is for Unearthed" was a vampire movie like none I've ever seen before.  It was told entirely in the POV of the vampire as he fights the torch-wielding villagers.  Very cool.  Gruesome, too, when they pull the fangs out of the monster, the pulling, tearing sound made me squirm.
   Another really good one is "X Is for XXL," it was a truly gruesome examination of the price of beauty in an increasingly weight-conscious world.  A homely, obese woman is harassed all the way home, from the subway, all along the walk home, and when she arrives there the TV begins to blare a weight-loss commercial featuring a skinny, beautiful brunette.  The woman then proceeds to take her frustration out on her own body, in GOREY, GOREY ways.  Spoiler: The pose she strikes just before she drops dead from blood loss is probably the freakiest image in the entire movie.
   Bear with this one through all the weird, bad films (pretty much "B Is for Bigfoot" through "Q Is for Quack"), if only for the four truly cool films towards the end.  Even if you just skip to 1:14:30.  As a whole, I'd give The ABCs of Death three out of five blocks.  From 1:14:30 until end credits, I'd give it at least four.

Dumplings

   Jiao zi (Dumplings) is a 2004 Chinese film about a woman named Mrs. Li, an aging ex-television actress who is trying to regain her youth because Mr. Li is having an affair with a twenty-something hotel masseuse.  She seeks out a woman named Aunt Mei, who makes dumplings which are famous for their rejuvenating ingredients.  Aunt Mei happens to be over sixty years old, but looks thirty, tops.  When Mrs. Li tries her first dumpling, she immediately spits it on the floor.  Aunt Mei doesn't act offended at all that Mrs. Li didn't like her food, nor that she spat partly masticated food on her floor, she just scoops up the unwanted dumpling and buries it in her potted plant.
   Eventually the dumplings begin to grow on Mrs. Li, and she eats a lot of them in a montage of gross squishing noises and close-ups of her chewing mouth.  However, even having eaten a few dozen of Aunt Mei's dumplings, she still hasn't noticed a change in her looks.  She demands that Aunt Mei give her more potent dumplings.
   Meanwhile, a mother and her teenage daughter appear at Aunt Mei's door.  The daughter is pregnant by her father.  Taking pity on the poor girl, Aunt Mei agrees to abort the child.  It's a long, arduous process, and when it's done, Aunt Mei sticks the fetus in a casserole dish and puts it in her fridge for later.  Yes, seriously.
   Aunt Mei prepares this fetus and serves it to Mrs. Li as dumplings.  Mrs. Li is horrified when she realizes what she's been eating, but proceeds to eat the fetus dumplings anyway.  Finally, the rejuvenating ingredient starts having its effect.  Mr. Li finds her attractive again.
   During a dinner party, Mrs. Li starts to notice that her skin is giving off a strange smell.  She calls Aunt Mei and they argue, but Mei isn't horribly sympathetic.  Eavesdropping, Mr. Li discovers that his wife is a cannibal and goes to confront Aunt Mei.  Rather than acting contrite, Aunt Mei feeds Mr. Li some of the biscuits, and then he screws her on her kitchen table.  Soon, Aunt Mei won't serve Mrs. Li anymore dumplings.  She tracks her down, which probably wasn't too difficult, considering that Aunt Mei wears some of the most ridiculous outfits I have ever seen, but Aunt Mei blows her off.  Growing more desperate, she decides to go out and get some rejuvenating ingredients of her own.
   Okay, this movie is just weird.  It's slow, it's plodding, and it all seems so unnecessary.  I know foreign movies tend to be slower than Hollywood films, but oh, my, God, Dumplings took forever to get to the point.  This movie was actually originally a short movie part of a trilogy called 3 Extremes, and I would actually watch it again in that form.  However, the full length movie was only worth two out of five aborted fetuses.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Serial Killers in Movies

10. Leslie Vernon

   Leslie Vernon is a budding serial killer.  Somehow he finds a documentary film crew willing to follow him through the process of his first massacre.  Well done for a low-budget film.  A darkly funny parody of the slasher films of the 1980's.
Body Count: 10

9. God Bless America

   Written and directed by Bobcat, this dark comedy is just as depressing as it is funny.  Frank has given up on life when he decides to take a few choice people out with him, including reality TV stars, a political commentator and some religious extremists who like to picket funerals.  Almost cathartic for us cynics, really.
Body Count: 40
Roxy: 8
Frank: 32

8. Sweeney Todd

   Todd and his landlord are a bit desperate when they decide that they best money-making scheme is to murder people and sell them in pies.  It's Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, so you know it's directed by Tim Burton.  They don't whistle while they work, either.  No, they sing show tunes.
Body Count: 10+

7. Paul and Peter

   Even the audience is helpless against these two, from the German film, Funny Games.  They break the fourth wall and address the audience.  One of them pauses the film from inside it and has a do-over.  They're polite and charming, and just want to play some games.
Body Count: 3

6. Henry

   Henry, of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is smart.  He knows how to avoid being caught and he is very, very good at what he does.  You can see his pleasure at the horrors he's perpetrated on the screen.  Maybe less twisted than his partner-in-crime, Otis, but Henry takes care of the problem of Otis before the end of the movie.  Based on real-life serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas.
Body Count: 11?


5. Mick Taylor

   Mick Taylor, the psychotic redneck from Wolf Creek (Are they called rednecks in Australia?  No, they're called "bogans."  The more you know...) is based on Australia's very own serial killer, Ivan Milat, the Backpacker Murderer.  So called probably because, you know, he targeted backpackers.  So Mick basically invites some random kids back to his murder shack and from there it gets scary.  One of the two girls is raped, the other is stabbed in the back to make her a "head on a stick."  Her spine is broken, paralyzing her, but she is still conscious and aware of what follows (the audience is not shown what follows, which is probably a good thing.
Body Count: 2 (Way more implied)

4. Firefly Family

   This is an entire family of people who gleefully murder strangers.  This family genuinely loves what it does for a living and seems to kill as many people as they can get their hands on.  Some seriously twisted characters from the mind of Rob Zombie, whose wife plays Baby.
Body Count: 12
House of 1000 Corpses: 7
Devil's Rejects: 5

3. John Doe

   John Doe, the antagonist from Se7En shows up on this list for one very important reason: creativity.  All the other villains are out there stabbing or strangling and John Doe, played by an emotionless Kevin Spacey, decided to force a morbidly obese man to feed himself to death.  All his kills are specifically targeted to punish the seven deadly sins.
Body Count: 8
Gluttony- A morbidly obese man is forced to feed himself to death.
Greed- A defense attorney must pay for his sin of greed with a pound of flesh or be killed.  He fails and     bleeds to death
Sloth- A pedophile is tied to his own bed, kept barely alive for one year.  By the end of that year "his brain is mush.
Lust- A prostitute is raped to death with a bladed dildo.
Pride- With her face brutally mutilated, a young model is forced to choose between killing herself or being disfigured for life.
Spoiler: John Doe kills Mills' wife, Tracy, then allows himself to be shot multiple times by Mills to atone for his sin of envy.

2. Michael Myers

   Certainly the most prolific serial killer on the list with more than one hundred direct kills, Michael Meyers of the Halloween series missed out on number one on this countdown for one reason: lack of personality.  It's part of what makes him so scary.  There's nothing behind the mask.
Body Count: 111
Halloween- 5
Halloween 2- 9
Halloween 3- 0
Halloween 4- 17
Halloween 5- 12
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers- 16
Halloween H20- 6
Halloween Resurrection- 10
Halloween (2007)- 18
Halloween 2 (2009)- 17
Halloween: 10 Years Later- 1


1. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter

   Three men have played Hannibal Lecter, Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, and Gaspard Ulliel.  Anthony Hopkins is perfect for this role.  Charming, suave, and highly intelligent, Lecter is the perfect predator, attractive yet deadly.  His modus operandi involves killing obnoxious people (he calls it the "free range rude"), and making gourmet dishes from their body parts.  Based on a character created by Thomas Harris, I liked the character before Harris gave Lecter a reason for his insanity in the disappointing prequel, Hannibal Rising.
Body Count: 12
Hannibal Rising- 6
Manhunter- 0
Red Dragon- 0
Silence of the Lambs- 3
Hannibal- 3


Honorable Mention: I didn't put Patrick Bateman on this list simply because I already addressed American Psycho in this post.

Chronicle

I've been doing a lot of reading, you know? Like, online about, like, just evolution and natural selection and how like there's this thing, right? It's called the apex predator, right? And basically what this is, is the strongest animal in the ecosystem, right? And as human beings, we're considered the apex predator but only because smaller animals can't feed on us because of weapons and stuff, right? A lion does not feel guilty when it kills a gazelle, right? You do not feel guilty when you squash a fly... and I think that means something. I just think that really means something.

   There is a time and a place for found footage films.  That time and place is horror movies, circa 2008.  The Blair Witch Project was groundbreaking.  [REC] perfected it.  Now it's dead, and we don't need anymore of them.  I'll give credit where credit is due: Chronicle was less shaky than the new Superman movie.  Go home, Hollywood, you're drunk.
   Basically, three high school kids find a cave filled with a giant, glowy thing inside.  Of course they touch it, because they're morons.  Next thing we now they're moving cars and flying around.  Steve is the super popular aspiring politician, charming and somehow nice to everyone.  Matt is the philosopher, and a pretentious douche bag.  If you don't think he's a pretentious douche bag, you might be a pretentious douche bag yourself.  Andrew is hostile, the victim of his father's abuse and seems to only care for his dying mother.  He's also the most powerful and dangerous of the three.
   As Matt tries to create rules to control their new-found telekinesis, but Andrew is having none of that.  He shoves a stranger's car off the road into a pond, crushes cars in a junkyard, and eventually he may or may not kill Steve.  I couldn't tell for sure.  With Steve out of the picture, we're left only with Matt, who becomes mildly less annoying through the course of the movie, and Andrew.  By the time Andrew splays a spider and tears it apart with only his mind, you can tell he's really not all there anymore.
   Anyway, unlike other found footage movies, Chronicle actually uses more than one camera.  It cuts to footage from other cameras, camera phones, police video, and surveillance video.  In terms of a fictional movie, that is pretty neat.  Relevant, too.  Everyone is an amateur photographer nowadays, and I have no doubt that if some sixteen-year-old threw a bitch fit and started creating a natural disaster with his mind, bystanders would be more concerned with filming it than running away.
   All in all, Chronicle was okay.  Neither terribly good nor terribly bad.  Forgettable, but enjoyable.  I'll give Chronicle three crushed cars out of five and probably never think about it again.
 

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Haunted Buildings

10. East Corinth, Orange County, Vermont, just off Highway 25 near the New Hampshire border- Beetle Juice

A beautiful, newly renovated three story house in New England for sale!  Unfinished attic featuring a door to the afterlife.  Minor structural damage.

9. 540 Eastwood, Main Street, Roosevelt Island- Dark Water

Ninth floor, two-bedroom apartment available for rent.  Working elevator.  On-site laundry.  Some water damage and electrical problems such as flickering lights.  No noisy neighbors on the floor above, the tenth floor is completely abandoned!

8. Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel-1408

Looking for a romantic night in a luxury hotel?  Try the historical Dolphin Hotel.  Instead of a mini bar, we have a full bar!  Some fire and water damage.  Featured in Mike Enslin's book on haunted hotels, the Dolphin Hotel has been around for almost one hundred years and you'll want to stay for one hundred more.

7. High Hopes- Amityville Horror

Charming Dutch Colonial home on Amityville Island, New York.  Three stories.  With six bedrooms, there's plenty of room for the whole family!  Features a boathouse in the back.  Some insulation issues, no problem with cooling.  Recent price drop from $120,000 to $80,000.

6. Henry Treat Rogers Mansion- The Changeling

Are you looking for a new home to recover from the trauma of the death of your entire family?  Isolated, Victorian-era mansion located in Canada.  Not wheelchair accessible.

5. Eel Marsh House- Woman in Black

Fully furnished, huge mansion located on sprawling land for sale.  Quiet British village.  Very motivated Realtor.  Some rooms may require a key to enter.  Small graveyard located in the garden.  Some vandalism in an upstairs bedroom.

4. Partarríu Manor- The Orphanage

Large mansion in the beautiful Spanish countryside.  Features a hidden basement and a coal shed.  Located near the sea, the land surrounding Partarríu Manor features beaches, cliffs, and a forest.  Lots of room for the little ones to play.

3. Poltergeist

An almost brand-new, family home located in Cuesta Verde, California.  Garage, in-ground swimming pool, and lots of trees.  Totally not built on a desecrated cemetery.  TONS of closet space.

2. Los Hornillos Palace- The Others

A gorgeous pre-war mansion located near a forest.  Lots of windows allow in natural sunlight.  Comes with its own loyal, dedicated staff.

1.The Overlook Hotel - The Shining (The Kubrick version, not that mini-series.  I know Stephen King liked it, but he has done A LOT of drugs).

Get away from it all at the Overlook Hotel.  Isolated to the extreme, located in the Colorado Rockies.  Large, industrial style kitchen.  Lots of room for work or play.  Features a hedge maze.  Once you visit you'll never want to leave!

Pet Sematary

Sometimes dead is better.

   Based on a novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary the movie was released in 1989.  It's the story of Louis and Rachel Creed, who move with their two small children to a beautiful house very close to a main thoroughfare for semi trucks.  They must have gotten a really good deal because their house is way too close.  It has to have effected the property value.

   Anyway, even after their only son is almost run down in the street within ten minutes of their arrival, the Creeds neglect to put up a fence between their children's home and the obviously deadly street.  Fred Gwynne, who played Herman Munster, plays their kindly widower neighbor, Jud Crandall.  Jud proves himself to be incredibly unhelpful as he befriends the Creeds.

   Louis is a doctor, and wouldn't you know it, on his very first day of work some dumb college kid gets run down by a car.  He's obviously a lost cause, but somehow, even with brain matter exposed, he manages to hold a conversation with Louis with his final breaths.  Victor Pascow warns Louis about "sour ground" and how men's hearts are stonier.  Not really knowing what that means, and assuming it is just the demented ramblings of someone whose brains are no longer contained in his skull, Louis shakes it off.  Pascow continues to reappear to the whole family, warning them about sour ground.

   Eventually, because they barely even tried to prevent it, the Creeds' cat, Church, is plowed down in the road while Rachel and the kids are out of town.  Jud, being the friendly neighborhood idiot that he so obviously is, takes Louis to an Indian burial ground in the hills behind the Pet Sematary.  "Each buries his own," he tells Louis, and smokes a cigarette while he watches him to all the work.  He won't tell Louis exactly what is going to happen, which seems rude, but Louis finds out when his cat reappears, muddy and smelling awful.  Jud knew all along that things buried up in that burial ground don't come back quite right, but doesn't bother to warn Louis until after the cat's already come back.  With glowing eyes and the ability to walk through locked doors, Church proves himself to be a downright dead kitty asshole.  Rachel and the children return from Chicago, and the only indication they give that they suspect something is up with the family cat is that he smells a little funny.

   After their laundry lady commits suicide, Rachel reveals that death really effects her because her sister died when she was eight.  Zelda was completely insane by the time she succumbed to spinal meningitis, twisted up and trapped in the back bedroom.  Zelda's played by a dude, and she is completely messed up.

   Shortly after, Rachel and Louis's small son toddles into the road again because even after their cat died it's like they really don't know about fences.  This time they're not so lucky and they have to bury their three-year-old in a tiny coffin (and let's be honest, there is nothing sadder than a tiny coffin).  Stephen King presides over the funeral, because he's Stephen King, that's why.  Louis spots an opportunity to repair his crumbling family and attempts to use cursed ground to make up for their parental negligence.  He buries Gage in the Indian burial ground, with disastrous results.

   Really, the villain here, however unwittingly, is Jud.  He introduces Louis to the Indian burial ground, neglects to warn him about the effects of burying anything there, lies when asked if anyone's buried a human there, and is just generally really unhelpful.  To the point of being malicious.

   Almost as long-winded as one of Stephen King's novels (he wrote the screenplay), Pet Sematary is scary... eventually.  It takes forever to get there.  It's probably easy to write a five-hundred page novel in a week and a half on speed.  Honestly, King's novels went downhill after he got clean.  Anyway, Pet Sematary gets three out of five scalpels.

Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

Oh hidey ho, there, officer, we've had a doozy of a day. There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house, when kids started killing themselves all over my property   

   Have you ever seen a giant, horrifying spider, and some genius felt the need to impart the wise saying, "They're more afraid of you than you are of them?"  Well, that's what Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is all about.
   Nine college aged douche bags drive out to the middle of nowhere to smoke some weed and drink some beers.  After making uncomfortable, lingering eye contact with a couple of hicks on the highway, they stop at a general store in a backwoods, small town in the middle of nowhere.
   Meanwhile, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) just bought themselves a vacation home in the middle of the woods near Morris Lake.  They stop at the local convenience store to pick up a few supplies to fix the place up.  A scythe, some beer, a wood chipper...  The college aged kids are immediately horrified and disgusted by the so-called hillbillies.  Maybe Dale shouldn't have approached them carrying a giant scythe, but sometimes meeting new people is awkward.
   When they finally arrive, Tucker and Dale are immediately enchanted with their new vacation home.  One of the beams is loose and potentially lethal, the previous owner liked to collect bones and newspaper clippings about murder, but they don't see the dust and grime, they see something they never thought they would be able to achieve.
   While fishing on the lake, Tucker and Dale see Allie (Katrina Bowden) slip and fall in.  Attempting to rescue her, they accidentally abduct her.  In their attempts to save her, the college kids just seem to keep stumbling into harm's way.  Tucker and Dale are super confused when the kids appear to have started killing themselves all around them.  A couple of them spear themselves on sharp branches.  Another throws himself into a wood chipper.  The sheriff accidentally nails himself in the face with, well, a board filled with nails. Then one of them shoots himself in the face.  There's all kinds of twist and turns, it's wacky.
   Chad, the ringleader of the college kids, kidnaps Tucker and ties him upside-down in a tree before chopping off a couple of his fingers.  Suddenly the roles are reversed and the innocent, "crazy hillbillies" are being hunted by the college kids.
   Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is really all about class warfare.  The rich college kids make a few too many assumptions about two guys who happen to live in a rural area, but in the end their ringleader proves himself to be the real menace.  Combining slapstick and gore, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a truly funny parody of the standard slasher-in-the-woods story.  A bit contrived at times, I'll give it four out of five bushwhacking scythes.

Shutter (Thai Version, Duh)

In my opinion these pictures represent more than macabre urban legends.  They are signs.  Think about it.  Why would the dead return to the living without a message to convey?

  Beginning with Ringu in 1998, throughout the late nineties and early naughts, if you wanted good horror, you had to turn to Asia (Now it's all about the French/Western Europe).  Nobody does creepy horror quite like the Asians.  Of course, most of them are fairly similar: pale girl, long hair, out for revenge.
   Shutter is one of my favorite Asian horror movies.  Only four years later, Hollywood felt the need to release their own, Americanized version, 'cause that's what we do.  Read subtitles?  Fuck that, let's just make our own with that guy from Dawson's Creek.  Seems legit.
   Being the movie purist I tend to be, ninety-nine percent of the time I'm going to prefer the original version of any movie over the remake.  Some things just don't translate well to Hollywood.
   Jane, a college student, and Tun, a professional photographer are leaving a wedding together.  Jane is the designated driver and doesn't seem to have been drinking, but she still ends up running someone over.  Tun orders her to drive away, leaving the obviously injured woman unconscious on the side of the road.  Mysterious things start happening around the couple.  Jane starts having creepy dreams.  His neck is super sore and he's gained about one hundred and twenty pounds in, like, two weeks.  Tun can't seem to take a picture without a mysterious spirit photobombing every single one of them.
   They take these photos to a Weekly World News- style magazine, and the editor tells them that while most spirit photography is faked, other pictures can't be explained.  One way to be sure that a picture actually features a ghost is to take its picture with a Polaroid camera.  The camera develops its own film, meaning that there's no chance of human error or tampering.
   Eventually Jane finds evidence that Tun is actually the one being haunted by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend, Natre.  She's an odd loner who quickly and dramatically fell in love with Tun in college.  Spoiler alert: The villain here is not the restless spirit of Tun's ex-girlfriend, it's Tun.  Apparently he let his gross friends rape her while he just watched.  She kills each of his friends, one by one, until only Tun is left.  Rather than killing him outright, her ghost has been riding around on his shoulders.  Desperately trying to free himself of her ghost, he throws himself out a window.  Absolutely no one mourns him.
   Love this movie.  The twist at the end is genius, and although it surprised me the first time I saw it, the hints sprinkled throughout the story are pretty fun to look for the second, third, and fourth time around.  It's a bit slower than the American version, which is often true.  Us Americans really don't have the attention span for a slow, thoughtful build-up of the creep factor.  Maybe that's why we also felt the need to remake Ringu and Ju-on.  Plenty of jump scares to keep the tension high, though.  If you don't feel like reading the subtitles, I judge you, I guess the American version with Joshua Jackson isn't awful, but you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you don't at least try to watch the Thai version.  Shutter gets four out of five Polaroid pictures.

You can watch the full movie here.

American Psycho

I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

   The first time I tried to watch this movie, I couldn't finish it.  Surprising, I know.  I think it was mostly because of the scene with the two prostitutes and the coat hanger.  You'll have to use your imagination, because whatever happens isn't actually shown in the movie.  You see the coat hanger, then the prostitutes, bloodied and crying, leaving.  About a year ago I read the original novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.  That book makes this movie look like a kids' show.
   It's about Patrick Bateman (why yes, that is a reference to Norman Bates from Psycho, how clever of you to notice), played by Christian Bale, post- Newsies and pre- Terminator.  Patrick is obsessed with a few things: pop culture, having all the best stuff,  and physical fitness.  Christian Bale wasn't even this physically fit when he played the Dark Knight.  Oh, and he's obsessed with "murders and executions," and he works in mergers and acquisitions.  Although he's extremely wealthy, he never does any work.  His favorite topic to talk about are serial killers.  No one seems to know what he's talking about when he references Ed Gein or Ted Bundy.
   It borders on funny.  Everything about Patrick Bateman is horrible, but he's so over the top.  He moonwalks during murders.  He watches himself posing in the mirror during sex, more interested in his own perfection than the girls he's screwing.  Somehow he manages to slip confessions into conversations, "I like to dissect girls," he tells someone, "Did you know I'm utterly insane?"
   Although set in the eighties, this movie may always be applicable.  There will always be the extremely wealthy, those who believe that no action of theirs will ever have long-term negative consequences.  He and his fellow Wall Street business men do drugs in public bathrooms and hate women.  They all seem to be of the opinion that the only reason for a woman to have a decent personality is because she's physically unattractive.  They spend hundreds of dollars on dinners and trade wives and girlfriends like Pokemon cards.
   Most compelling about American Psycho is the fact that, like in the book, the audience is never quite sure if any of the atrocities Bateman performs ever actually happened outside of his own head, especially when an ATM tells him to feed it a cat.  By the end, he's not even sure.  At one point he shoots a car with a handgun.  The car explodes in a huge, fiery explosion, and Bateman looks at his gun, like "Whaaaaat?" (because despite what action movies want you to believe, that cannot happen).  Utterly insane, American Psycho will seriously make you doubt the sanity of Christian Bale.  Suddenly all those drunken melt downs aren't all that surprising.  Body count: 41 (18 on screen).  American Psycho gets five out of five lines of coke.
   Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return some video tapes.

VHS

   Let's just start by saying that I am so fucking sick of found-footage horror movies.  They were cool once, with The Blair Witch Project, [REC] (the Spanish version, duh), and maybe the first Paranormal Activity movie.  Now they're done.  The sub-genre is dead.  Let's say a few words, dig a grave, and bury them.
   VHS, despite what I consider a lackluster format, gets points for doing things that haven't been done yet.  It's a horror anthology, with five bite-sized horror stories framed by another.

Tape 56
The frame narrative.  Basically a bunch of hooligans break into an old, dead guy's house and start watching his VHS tapes, looking for one that they're supposed to steal.  Why this dude still has VHS tapes or a VCR are completely beyond me.  My future hypothetical children probably won't even know what VHS tapes are.     Spoiler: Anyway, turns out old, dead dude is a zombie and all the hooligans die.  Nobody mourns them.

Amateur Night
The first tape is POV through some creeper's camera glasses.  His friends want him to use these glasses to film himself having sex with a couple of girls they picked up at that bar.  One of them is creepy and weird.  She has huge, bug-eyes, and all she keeps saying is "I like you."  Spoiler: Once she starts growing scales and eating his friends, Clint loses his boner.  Discovering he is no longer interested, the shame of the succubus is palpable.  You actually feel sorry for her, right until she picks up Clint with her foot-talons, flies him straight up, and drops him onto the ground below.

Second Honeymoon
A married couple, Sam and Stephanie, go on a road trip through Old West tourist traps.  After they check into their skeazy hotel a mysterious woman knocks on their door and asks for a ride.  They politely decline.  Next thing we know, a mysterious intruder picks up the camera and films the sleeping couple, lingering on the buttocks of the wife.  Next the intruder dips Sam's toothbrush in the toilet.  Honestly, he probably deserves it after pressuring Stephanie to have sex on camera and accusing her of stealing money out of his wallet.
Spoiler: The intruder kills Sam, turns out to be a hot lesbian, and then makes out with Stephanie in front of the camera.  

Tuesday the Seventeenth
Four young adults go camping at an underpopulated lake.  Anyone who's read my previous posts knows how I feel about camping. Obviously inspired by Friday the 13th. Spoiler: Survivor girl is nuts and used her friends as bait so she can kill the killer.  Super unsuccessfully.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger
I have to admit, I don't think I really got this one.  Emily keeps telling her doctor boyfriend about all this creepy shit that keeps happening in her new apartment.  Plus she has this weird thing in her arm that she keeps trying to dig out with tweezers and kitchen implements.  Spoiler: Doctors diagnose her as schizoaffective, but really her boyfriend is helping aliens use her as an incubator for their creepy alien fetuses. Oh, and he's cheating on her.  The girl he's cheating on also has this weird thing in her arm...

10/31/98
Four dudes attempt to go to a Halloween party.  They don't realize that they have the wrong house, even though there seems to be no one there.  They break in anyway, because hey, the party has to be there, right?  Instead of a super cool haunted house, they end up witnessing an exorcism.  Being the super geniuses they so obviously are, they save the girl the strange men in the attack are trying to exorcise.  Spoiler: She drives their car in front of an oncoming train.  No one is surprised.

Apparently they're making a second one, to which I say, "meh."  Barely worth a watch once, I can't believe I watched it twice.  VHS gets two out of five VHS tapes.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Reasons to Never Ever Go Camping

   Okay, I am aware that this Top Ten Tuesday is five days late.  I tried a couple of other lists and they just really didn't pan out.  So here it is, I hope it was worth it.

10. Deliverance

A bunch of manly men go on a canoeing trip.  Before they head out they infuriate the banjo playing, inbred yokels.  That's like rule number one in the horror movie handbook.  Don't piss off the yokels.  Eventually they're in a fight to defend their innocence from man-on-man rape.  Rape is already a terrifying concept for women, but it's almost inconceivable for men.

9. The Thing

Yeah, buddy.  I'm not talking the newer prequel, I'm talking the Kurt Russel original in all its eighties glory.  Directed by John Carpenter, one of the masters of horror.  Claustrophobic, gory, and paranoid throughout, this may not technically be a camping movie, but they are trapped in the middle of nowhere.

8. Cabin Fever

Have you ever wanted to see an actor from Boy Meets World be psychologically tortured?  Admit it, we all have.  When a flesh eating virus hits a cabin full of twenty-something kids, we get to watch them fall apart.  Haha, literally.

7. I Spit on Your Grave

This time I am talking about the remake.  I haven't yet seen the original (I know, I know, I'm a bad Movie Monster).  This movie proves, once again, that most of the time humans are the most terrifying creatures on Earth.

6.Cabin in the Woods

See my full review here.

5. Friday the 13th

Not even sleep-away camps for kids are safe, especially not if you're a hormone-crazed young adult.  One of the great slasher movies of the 1980's, Friday the 13th is one of the best slasher movies of all time.  With an original twist before twists became prerequisites, nobody wants to attend Camp Crystal Lake.

4.Blair Witch Project

The first found footage movie.  Made for next to nothing, it was also the most profitable movie of all time.  In a lot of cases with horror movies, the more shit the actors have to go through, the better the final product (The Shining, Evil Dead, Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick films in general...).  The three unknown actors were basically never told what was going to happen.  They were given a camera and some simple guidelines, then the director had some fun tormenting them until they were close to insanity.

3. The Hills Have Eyes

Nobody likes backwoods, inbred mutants, which is probably why they're so sad and misunderstood.  Nah, they're just bloodthirsty and weird looking.  I'm really referring to both versions here.  The remake was pretty true to the original, and most of what they added was worth it.  This movie is why camping isn't even okay in an RV.

2.Evil Dead

Now, I haven't seen the remake yet.  I've heard mixed reviews, but the red band trailers all looked goretastic.  Really, better special effects and a higher budget are almost blasphemous when applied to Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi's first film.  Featuring some awesome camera work and some crazy originality, the remake might not be worth a watch, but I judge people who haven't seen the original.

1. Wolf Creek

Everything in Australia wants to kill you.  From the sharks, to the giant spiders, to the backwoods rapists, everything wants you dead.  One of the most realistic slasher movies ever, it's even creepier because it's based on a couple of real-life Australian serial killers.  And you thought I was exaggerating.

Slither

He looks like something that fell off my dick during the war.

   Grant Grant decides to screw around on his wife with the town slut in the woods.  First of all, if you ever find yourself in the woods in a horror movie, you should probably figure out a way to not be in the woods.  This is why I never go camping, people.  No, it's not fun, it's terrifying, and it's also how you get attacked by zombie redneck torture families, flesh eating viruses, and rapey trees.  Plus the bugs and lack of indoor plumbing.  I'm getting off track.

   Anyway, Grant Grant is about to bone the town slut when they find a creepy, mysterious blob.  A creepy, mysterious, breathing blob.  Being the genius he obviously is, he pokes it with a stick.  The blob retaliates by turning him into a giant amorphous blob.  

   Let's be honest, though, Grant Grant was creepy and gross before he turned into a giant amorphous blob.  You may recognize Michael Rooker from Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Walking Dead.  Elizabeth Banks plays his wife, who, even after finding a pile of dead pets in their basement, still wants to work out their issues.

   Like with all slugs, there is a hierarchy.  Grant Grant is at the top.  He impregnated the town slut with thousands of his slug-like spawn.  Rather than giving birth the normal way, she blows up like Violet Beauregard and the alien slugs explode out of her like a gory water balloon.  Actually, as far as I can tell, that is giving birth the normal way.  "These little fuckers are tearing me apart!" she screams, before spraying the sheriff's department with them.  The slugs then squirm off and zombify the townspeople, who then wander all zombie-like over to the giant amorphous blob that used to be Grant Grant and merge with him.

   Although Nathan Fillion plays the sheriff as sarcastic and not-so-secretly sweet, most of the laughs come from Gregg Henry, who plays Mayor MacReady.  MacReady isn't really anyone's idea of an ideal mayor.  He's crass, impatient, sarcastic, and cowardly.  But jeezo-peezo is he fun to laugh at.  At the beginning of the movie he's sitting in his car and in a fit of road rage he screams, "Move the fuck out of the way, cocksucker!"  Before he looks over to see a voter and her ten year old daughter.  "Eh, you win some, you lose some," he shrugs.

   Somehow, this modern creature feature managed to pull of the combination of horror and comedy, which is probably mostly thanks to the cast, as well as the script, written and directed by James Gunn, Slither was featured in the 30 Even Scarier Movie Moments.  Maybe a little too dependent on CGI rather than practical effects, The Movie Monster gives Slither four out of five alien slugs.

The Lost Boys

One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach. All the damn vampires.

   The Lost Boys is my favorite eighties movie.  And it is SO eighties.  Kiefer Sutherland wasn't weird looking yet.  The first movie featuring the Coreys together.  Everyone has their left ear pierced and a mullet.  Includes a dirtbike race on the beach to some rockin' eighties music.

   Michael is being seduced by a gay vampire street gang run by Kiefer Sutherland before all his DUIs.  The Coreys are trying to kill said vampire street gang.  And their mom is dating Edward Herrman!  

   These vampires don't sparkle.  They're not all depressed and conflicted about being bloodsuckers.  They don't go to high school even though they're over one hundred years old.  The Lost Boys features your very standard vampire rules:

• super sensitivity to sunlight, crosses, garlic, and holy water
• super speed
• super strength
• super hypnosis
• super healing
• super dependence on human blood (none of that "vegetarian" bullsh*t)
• rad dirt bike skills
• greatest weakness: a stake in the heart
  Fun fact about stakes: mythology originally stated that the stakes were used to nail vampires inside their coffins so they couldn't rise.  You could also defeat vampires by tying them in a net.  They had to untie all the knots before they could rise.  Otherwise you could just carry a handful of rice with you.  Legend also stated that vampires suffered from arithmomania, an obsession with numbers.  They would have to count every grain of rice before they came after you.  Oh, and when gingers die, they rise as vampires.

   Oh, and they have bat feet.  However, they're not your standard vampires.  They aren't romantic.  They don't have accents.  They are in touch with the times.  "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire."

   This is a vampire classic, up there with Dracula, and invented the term "vamp out," which later was adopted by Buffy the Vampire Slayer (created by the great Joss Whedon).  Like Angel and Spike, The Lost Boys morph into ugly, fangy creatures when they are hungry or super pissed.  It's pretty goretastic and you always have to appreciate eighties special effects.  Shares a release year with Near Dark, I haven't seen it yet which is a TRAVESTY and I won't allow it.  The Lost Boys gets five out of five eighties mullets for being the best eighties movie of the eighties (f*ck you, John Hughes).

The First: Identity

When I was upon the stair

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today.

I wish, I wish he'd go away.

   I first watched Identity when it was released on DVD in 2004.  I was thirteen or maybe fourteen.  Beforethat I hadn't had much experience with horror.  I wasn't allowed to watch The X-Files, Are You Afraid of the Dark? or even The Nightmare Before Christmas.  My parents rented it from Family Video and somehow I convinced them to let me stay up and watch it with them.  I was instantly hooked on horror.

   The lawyer and psychiatrist of Malcolm Rivers is trying to keep him from being executed.  Meanwhile, eleven strangers are trapped in a seedy motel by a torrential downpour and flash flooding.  Weirdly enough, all of these characters are named after states.  One of their names is Lou Isiana.  Seriously, look it up.  It's the story of misdirection of almost zany proportions.

   John Cusack is the main protagonists.  He's a cop-turned-limo driver.  Supposedly he quit being a cop because he was unable to save a suicide victim, but I wonder if it wasn't because of his lackluster detective skills.  Amanda Peet plays a prostitute-turned-orchard owner.  I wasn't aware that prostitutes make enough money to buy orange groves on E-bay. John C. McGinley best known for playing the aggressive, sarcastic Dr. Cox in Scrubs, plays a bumbling man child.  Finally Jake Busey plays pretty much the same character he always does, which is to say that Jake Busey in general is pretty creeptastic.  Not surprising, considering the genetics that contributed to those giant teeth.
   When I first saw this movie I was super excited about the twist ending.  Keep in mind that was at a time before twist endings became almost required for horror movies.  Now it turns out that everyone is either dead or crazy or some other kind of unreliable narrator.

   Identity gets three out of five heads in a drier, if only for nostalgia's sake. 

The Cabin in the Woods

  

They have to make the choice of their own free will. Otherwise, system doesn't work. Like the harbinger: creepy old fuck practically wears a sign saying "YOU WILL DIE". Why would we put him there? The system. They have to choose to ignore him. They have to choose what happens in the cellar. yeah, we rig the game as much as we have to but in the end, if they don't transgress they can't be punished.

   If, in your entire life, you only ever watch one horror movie (what a sad existence), make sure that one horror movie is The Cabin in the Woods.  Like Scream, it's a horror movie that acknowledges that it is, in fact, a horror movie.  It's meta-horror.  I like to think that I invented this term, but I'm sure I'm not the first.  Featuring every single horror movie character you could ever possibly want: a zombie redneck torture family, a bloodthirsty unicorn, clowns, zombies, witches, sexy witches, a sugarplum fairy, and a merman.  Directed and co-written by Drew Goddard with none other than the great Joss Whedon, while this movie plays homage to as many other horror movies as possible, I've never seen a straight-up genre movie with more originality.  The Cabin in the Woods combines so many elements of classic horror that it becomes something new and better.

   You all know the first half of the movie.  Five twenty-somethings go on a road trip.  An old creepy dude tells them they're all going to die.  They find a creepy book in a creepy cellar and someone feels the need to read the creepy Latin inside.  Redneck torture family rises from their graves and attempt to kill the five twenty-somethings.  The twist?  It's not really a twist.  We know from the beginning that all of this is being orchestrated by a massive corporation that apparently specializes in killing twenty-somethings who decide to vacation in creepy cabins.  From the pheromones pumped into the air to the retarding agent in the blonde's hair dye, they control everything.  The most terrifying thing?  These are ordinary office workers, with families and lives outside of sicking monsters on college students.  They take bets on what monsters will appear and they celebrate with champagne when things go right.

   As playful as it is horrific.  Five out of five bongs disguised as coffee thermoses.  

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

   While technically not a movie, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is the best thing to hit the internet since Lolcats.  During the great writer's strike of 2007, which we all remember because for about four months everything on TV sucked, the great Joss Whedon decided "You know what?  I don't need no lousy writer's guild," and wrote something without them.
   Starring Neil Patrick Harris as the titular bumbling super-villain wanna-be, Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer, corporate tool, and Felicia Day as perhaps the most annoying love interest of all time, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog won a ton of awards and became hugely successful and popular.  To which everyone was like, "Whaaaat?" because no one had ever made a mini series exclusively available online.  Plus, it's a musical tragicomedy.  Obviously, from my previous post about Repo! The Genetic Opera and The Devil's Carnival, I really like musicals combined with other genres.
   Presented in three fourteen-minute acts, this mini series clocks in at less than forty-five minutes total, yet in that amount of time, the Whedon brothers (the great Joss, Zack, and Jed) were able to cram in sixteen original, funny, and tragic songs.  Harris has a wonderful singing voice and everyone else is okay.  Maybe a little above average.  I love Nathan Fillion, and his character was certainly funny, but he's not exactly a virtuoso.
   Anyway, basically Billy (Harris) wants to become a great super villain like his role model, Bad Horse (played by an actual, live horse with a terrible death whinny), but he keeps being thwarted by his nemesis, Captain Hammer.  Fillion plays a phenomenal douche bag.  Day plays their mutual love interest, Penny.  "She works with the homeless and doesn't eat meat.  We have a problem with her."  Saccharine to the point of obnoxious, one-dimensional and static, she serves only as a prop to move the plot along.
   I've heard rumors of a sequel and of course I'm super excited.  Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog gets four out of five cars thrown at its head.

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Scariest Movie Moments

10. Nosferatu

   The original vampire movie.  He's not handsome (Unless you're into that.  I don't judge.). He's not conflicted about his affliction.  Nosferatu wants just one thing.  Your blood.  Without color or even sound, Nosferatu is still able to creep out audiences today.  

9. A Clockwork Orange

   As a woman, any scene involving rape is terrifying.  This violent sexual assault juxtaposed against that song is enough to make you never want to hear "Singin' in the Rain" again.  BTW, that was ad-libbed by Malcolm McDowell.  Apparently Stanley Kubrick, the most famous control freak in movie history, just let him do that.    Thank the film gods, 'cause it's perfectly creepy.

8. Jaws

   "We're gonna need a bigger boat."  This is the first time we get a really good look at the shark (mostly because of all the mechanical problems the crew had with the animatronic title character).

7. Insidious

   This scene is relentless.  First it creeps you out, then jump scare! jump scare!  jump scare!  Not gonna lie, when I saw it in theaters my nerves were so frayed by the end of this one scene that I was about ready to cry.  The movie itself is lackluster, but the evil spirits were all completely awesome and horrible.

6. Cape Fear

   This movie ruined Meet the Parents.  Well, actually Meet the Parents ruined Meet the Parents.  Basically, Robert DeNiro's character has threatened to rape Juliette Lewis' character.  Obviously, she has no idea as she is seduced by what she thinks is her new drama teacher.  Rapist, drama teacher, either way, probably not a good idea to be seduced by him.

5. Alien

   I really don't think I should have to explain this one.  It is the most classic example of a jump scare of all time.  For those of you who were born and raised under a rock, the crew of a space vessel is eating a nice, quiet meal when an infant alien is born.  Straight out of a character's chest.  Way to ruin dinner.  Fun fact: none of the cast knew this was about to happen.  That's why all the actors look terrified, surprised, and disgusted.

4. Jurassic Park

   I recently rewatched Jurassic Park when it was re-released in 3D in theaters.  Twenty-two years old and I still have nightmares about the kitchen scene with the two dumb kids (Seriously, has anyone ever noticed how    aggravatingly stupid these children are?  They should have been eaten by a stegosaurus in the first twenty minutes.  Yes, I know stegosauruses were herbivores, these kids are that friggin' stupid.).

3. The Grudge

   Not going to lie.  I have seen The Grudge exactly once.  That was when it was first released in theaters almost ten years ago.  I have never been able to watch it again.  If you really want to freak me out, just make that rattley, my-neck-is-broken-but-I'll-still-eat-your-soul noise. Ugggggggghhhhhh.  Yuck.  I didn't even watch that video because I can't.  I just can't.  So my apologies if it turns out to be pr0n or something halfway through.

2. Freaks

   Probably my favorite horror movie of all time.  There will never be a remake, because you just can't do things like make a horror movie starring real circus freaks anymore.  Stupid political correctness.  If you were ever wondering where the iconic line, "One of us, one of us," comes from, this is it.  Those freaks are about to make a beautiful trapeze artist and her strongman boyfriend one of them.  Surprisingly, the freaks are sorta the good guys in this scenario.

1. Se7en

   This movie is gloriously disgusting.  Not only is the scene I'm referring to a jump scare, but it's also a creepy concept.  That guy was tied to that bed for not days, not weeks, not months, he has been lying there with only his thoughts and a whole bunch of air fresheners for years.  I can't imagine, and I really don't want to.

If you're looking for more awesome scary movie moments, go to http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/456830/ to watch Bravo's Hundred Scariest Movie Moments.  You'll have to watch it online, because those selfish bastards don't show it on TV year round.  Just around Halloween.