Ok, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I come home, I pick a movie and I watch it. Sometimes I’m in the mood for something a little more highbrow (Not that anything on my list could be considered such) and sometimes I’m just in a slasherin’ sort of mood.
So after that stellar introduction, let’s take a look at a film that proves sequels can be better than the original.
The Friday The 13th movies had already released their third iteration (Leading up to their fourth) by the time tonight’s film had been released. The slasher boom was in full effect (Some would say peaked) but it was still able to turn out off-kilter gems like this one.
When is a classic not a classic? When it’s this film.
Pithy views aside. I watched this film with a certain amount of trepidation, having not seen it in a long time (Perhaps since video) and wondered if it held up at all. Then it dawned on me some part of the way in that in fact I have seen the film since, numerous times in fact. I’d just forgot about it each time.
Sharks. They always get a bad rap. From the seminal Jaws onwards we’ve endured countless tales of these cold killing machines. Though in reality very few people die from shark attacks, it doesn’t stop Hollywood perpetuating the same myths.
So does Shark Night finally set this great injustice right?
Ah Vampires. They seemingly never go out of fashion. Though their depictions may range from the glittery boy band type (I hated typing that) to the rat-like Nosferatu, they endure. It seems that either someone finds a new spin to put on them or they just rehash old ones, but they’re even more popular now than they were back when tonights film was first released.
Here we are faithful reader, our fifth anniversary. Just you and me. When we started on this journey we never knew where it would take us, what dizzying heights we would reach. Sure, there’s been some low points too but we came back strong. And if we can make it to night five well then there’s no reason we can’t make night ten, or even night thirty.
And so this mini run of found footage movies ends with The Last Exorcism.
When I was younger my friends and I would take the long trek to Cefn Mably Sanatorium We would take a long time to get there, pass the gate that had various satanic symbols carved into it before eventually coming upon the titular house. That’s usually about where we would stop. The house was too big, too forboding, too attached to the idea that terrible things happen there. Of course now as an adult I’d love to explore it, safe in the knowledge that there’s nothing out there to get me.
But that childish part of me still remains and it’s what makes me a sucker for any haunted house story.
I’ll admit I’m probably stretching the definition of ‘horror’ here. Monster movies seem to be a genre unto themselves. You never see anyone talk about ‘masked killer’ movies or ‘scary white face’ kid films, but people always refer to monster movies as such.
I’ll say it now. Cloverfield is unfairly maligned when it actually does what it sets out to do extremely well. Is it a controversial opinion? I hope not, but I’ve met far more people that dislike this film than those who like it.
I love a good anthology. Sadly it finds itself under represented in the genre because it’s hard to get right. There was a slew of them in the 60’s and 70’s, mainly from the British studio Amicus Productions. They released films such as Tales From The Crypt, or The House That Dripped Blood (Sadly this never actually occurs) and Asylum, the latter two written by Robert Bloch (Psycho), based on his own stories. They’re all worth checking out if you like little films with a sting in their tale, or just if you want to see Joan Collins get strangled by a homicidal Santa Clause.
Everything is cyclical. Routines, fashions, trends, all of it comes and goes away again, just waiting to be rediscovered. It’s rare to be in at the ground floor with a new trend, but that’s exactly what happened for most of us when The Blair Witch Project was released. ‘Found Footage’ became the new thing. First it was parodied with The Bogus Witch Project or for the more adult audience, The Bare Wench Project, but then it was fully embraced and it seemed that anyone with a few cameras could re-create the success of the original (BWP of course wasn’t the first film of that type, it was just the most successful). The style will die out of course, there will be the huge hits and the majority will (are) be failures.
So where does Evidence sit on that list…well keep reading to find out, I can’t tell you here. It would make for a short article… Continue reading
Is This Thing On? 