Oof. In an attempt to bolster my horror movie canon, I've spent the first half of October just plowing through movies. Here are my thoughts...
Amanda Knox
Okay, the horror doesn't start right away. First up I saw a documentary about Amanda Knox which - yeah, you know what, this was a bit of a horror movie I suppose. If you're familiar with Knox's case already, this doesn't really provide a ton of new insight. But if you aren't, holy shit, watch this as soon as possible! (It's a Netflix original.) You think Steven Avery got screwed? Brother, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen what the British tabloids and Italian courts did to Amanda Knox.
The Invitation
Here's one of those unassuming little indie titles that I see from time to time on Netflix or Amazon. Good reviews, quick runtime, why not? This ended up being a not-so-great movie about a dinner party gone awry, but I don't regret the time I spent watching it. After all, "dinner party gone awry" also describes, say, Coherence, a hidden gem I found last year and absolutely loved. They can't all be winners, folks!
The Congress
I always knew I had to see this, but damn is it a weird one. It's got Robin Wright, playing herself, and struggling with the reality of being an aging actress who very well may never find work again. (House of Cards doesn't seem to exist in this world.) So she sells her image and likeness to a film studio that, using a new technology reminiscent of full motion capture, creates a perpetually 34-year-old "Robin Wright" to use in movies for ages to come. All this is interesting enough, but one third of the way through the movie, shit gets completely surreal. Twenty years later, the entire world becomes animated. By this I mean that people drink hallucinogenic potions and begin to see the world around them as some gigantic mess of Disney and Looney Tunes. The whole thing is directed by Ari Folman, whose Waltz with Bashir is one of the best and most moving animated films I've seen. And it's loosely based, at least in its third act, on The Futurological Congress, a dystopian book from '70s Poland that I read a few years back. Oh, and Jon Hamm is here, too. Or at least his voice is. Now, so many reasons to see this - but did it all come together? Not really. This was messy and almost at odds with itself for the most part, and it's very deserving of the mixed reviews it's garnered. But man, what an experience.
Rosemary's Baby
Okay, here's where the horror binge begins in earnest. Snooze! I've lamented it a dozen times in these movie dumps, but older movies so rarely hold up to my #21stCenturyPrivilege standards and Rosemary's Baby was no exception. I'm sure this was a huge deal in 1968 - a woman, pregnant with SATAN'S BABY? We're all going to hell for even allowing this to be made! - but it really wasn't very scary and it really wasn't very interesting as a story. I'm sorry!
The Others
This was good, and maybe the best ghost movie I've ever seen. (Depends on how "ghosts" are defined, I guess. I'm not talking possessive spirits here.) Not sure what surprised me more - the ending (which, dammit, I should have seen coming!) or the fact that in fifteen years no one spoiled the ending for me. I mean, this is a Sixth Sense-level twist. Anyway, I dug it.
Let the Right One In
This Swedish vampire-ish movie had such good reviews, so I didn't even think to check out the English language remake. I should have! Apparently it's just as good - and how often does that happen? Anyway, this was delightful and fun and all kinds of scary: jump scary, creepy scary, shocking amounts of gore scary, etc. But it wasn't really a horror movie. It's more of a teen romance, or a budding friendship movie, disguised as a horror film. I won't hold that against it - lots of the best movies with horror elements aren't pure "horror" movies at all - but just know heading into this that you'll be saying "aww!" at least as often as you'll be saying "AHH!"
28 Days Later
I knew plenty about this movie going in - mostly that it completely redefined the zombie genre by making the dangerous hordes "infected" and fast and vicious rather than "reanimated" corpses who just kind of ambled along aimlessly - but nothing could have prepared me for how old and shitty and dated this thing looked. This is a 2002 movie that looked grainier and blurrier than most things this side of 1985. Granted, it was a very low-budget film, and the grainy look definitely matched the vibe, so, fine - but still! Anyway, I liked this a lot. Not quite as much as I hoped to; it gets bogged down in the same tedious "other people are the real monsters in a zombie apocalypse" themes that plague everything else in the genre. And hey, maybe - again - this was the catalyst for that trend to start popping up everywhere, but I guess I was looking for more of a "holy shit, fast zombies are everywhere, and we're all gonna die" vibe in the vein of the Dawn of the Dead remake. But this was good! It was good.
Honeymoon
I'm drawn to streamable indie horror flicks. This one's got a grand total of four actors - only two main characters - and it takes place in, of course, a secluded cabin in the woods. Two twenty-somethings gets married. They have great chemistry. They joke a lot. They fuck a lot. And then one night the woman sleepwalks naked out into the middle of the woods, and suddenly, everything is different. She's spacey. Distant. Weirdly cut and bruised. The man is confused, concerned, and eventually of course quite distraught. There aren't a lot of jump scares in this one, and frankly, the story doesn't make a ton of sense - it's an allegory, but for what!? - but the final act is plenty disturbing. I liked this! Your mileage may vary.
Dressed to Kill
Oof. Damn, what a bore. I had high hopes for this - Brian De Palma making a Hitchcock-esque thriller in the '80s about a transgender serial killer? Sure, yes, let's do this! And... nope. Nothing! Even Michael Caine couldn't make this interesting. Let's move on.
The Ring
Alright - this lived up to all the hype. Fucking. Terrifying. Apparently the sequels are butt, which is too bad, but who cares? This is the kind of movie that absolutely would have given my younger self nightmares for days. (Nights?) Glad I didn't see this in 2002 when it came out. I'd still be interested in seeing the original Japanese version. I have one friend who's seen it, as far as I know. That friend? Sheridan, of all people. And he liked it! Imagine that!
From Dusk Till Dawn
I've wanted to see this for a long time - probably fifteen years - but not enough to actually, you know, see it. Because I always knew it'd be this kind of middling Robert Rodriguez movie that played like an Evil Dead knockoff set near the Mexican border. Now, this wasn't bad - Clooney was great, and Tarantino's script elevated this a great deal - but it was still a rather generic monster shoot-em-up, ostensibly about vampires but really just full of whatever the hell monsters and demons Rodriguez and company felt like designing and throwing in there. It all felt very '80s. Very B-movie. But hey, Salma Hayek looked great, huh?
There will be more to come in October, I assure you. But this will have to do for now.
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