Spooktober IV Review 16: IT Chapter 2

IT: Chapter 2 (2019)

Andy Muschietti

"Fuck you."

Usually there's one or two solid horror movie options in theaters come October, but maybe Hollywood didn't get the memo this year, because what we got were Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which looks dumb and should have been an anthology film, and Zombieland 2, which I have no interest in seeing because I didn't like the first one. Still, with an afternoon free and a desire to be out of the house, I forged ahead and caught one of the last showings of the IT sequel at my local megaplex. And my God, friends. My God! What a tremendous waste of time.

Here's the thing, this sucker is ten minutes short of three hours long. Three. Hours. Long. For a horror movie that isn't Suspiria, this should be against MPAA regulations. IT should receive an X rating simply based on runtime. Now to be fair, I knew this going in, understanding well ahead of time that I would be squandering precious hours of autumn sunshine to sit in an empty dark theater and force myself to watch the scary clown show, but that's no excuse for how the three hours unfold. So much of this movie is just farting around for farting around's sake. At the point when you assume the plot is starting to wrap up, you still have an hour left. It's excruciating.

It's not all horrible, mind you. There are some genuinely fun or interesting moments, but they mostly serve to remind you that good movies are possible and that this one has made a conscious decision to avoid being one. For example, the scene featuring Jessica Chastain at the old woman's house from the trailer is really creepy and well executed, but it's all pointless because the whole thing was in the trailer, and there's no surprise to it anymore. All of the tension the scene wanted to build had the rug pulled out from under it before it could even start. Why would you make a trailer out of a whole scene anyway? That's just advertising "hey, this is literally all we have you filthy hogs, but you're all going to line up to see it anyway, so fuck you." I mean, what's the audience supposed to do at that scene? I guess it's a good time to get up and go to the bathroom since you already know how the whole fucking thing plays out, but why kneecap one of the most effective scenes in your film this way? It's madness.

But the biggest problem with this scene (actually all the decent scenes) is that it ends in an attempted jump scare which involves LOUD CLOWN NOISES and a shaky cgi monster. This movie has lots of moments where there's a nice buildup of creepiness, only to end with some goofy faced computer generated monster doing loud screams and skittering toward the camera, typically while shaking. That trailer scene would have been terrifying had it ended with an actual naked old lady, maybe with some subtle makeup, lurching toward Jessica Chastain, but instead it was a giant old lady monster with floppy cgi boobs doing yells. It feels like you're watching a Star Wars gleep glop alien rampage through an old lady's sitting parlor, which elicits many feelings, none of which are fear. It completely subverts whatever horror or tension the scene had going for it. This was also my biggest criticism of the first IT film, and was the major reason it made no impression on me, but by gum, I'm stubborn. And dumb. Just so very dumb.

I haven't read IT in many years, so my memory of plot specifics are hazy, but I definitely don't recall it being this half baked. The film chases threads that really have no impact on the story as a whole, and one that literally ends in a hall of mirrors (you know, where directions become meaningless) and has no impact on anything, other than to further resolve a character to kill IT, which he already had to begin with. Another character (who was indeed featured in the novel) is given so much screen time in the first act, but is dispatched clumsily by an ax to the head before he can do literally anything important. There was no adaptation of the source material here. The filmmakers just went through the novel piece by piece and filmed everything they could without a thought to what it might mean to the film's visual narrative as a whole. It's a bit like a D&D scenario where the party kills off a not mission critical NPC and the Dungeon Master just shrugs and figures out a way to continue the story without them. But movies aren't made on the fly! Just write them out of the story, for fuck's sake! You'd save money!

There's a certain charm to Stephen King's coke-fueled writing, but when it's translated onto film through a boring and, more importantly, sober director, you're left with a wandering mess that feels wholly unsatisfying. IT the novel does take the long way 'round, but at least it packs a punch, and you're left feeling something other than boredom. I'd much rather be outraged by an ending than feel nothing besides an overwhelming urge to pee.

The story, if you're not aware, is a jump forward in time from the end of the first film. It is now 27 years later, and weird shit is happening in Derry, Maine once more. After making a disgusting hand gouging pact as children, the Losers have to collect once more to face off against their greatest fear: a clown that can become a giant disheveled old lady with floppy titties who can't even manage to kill Jessica Chastain. You never really get a sense for the true nature of the fear that IT can generate because it all sucks. There's a scene when the Losers all meet up in Derry where their fortune cookies come to life as little bugs with baby heads and eyeballs with tentacles, but, like, everyone would be afraid of that. After being confused by it first. That's what so much of the "fear" in this movie actually is: raw confusion. Now, if you opened a fortune cookie and inside it said "Your mom drowned your twin brother when you were babies and just never told you about it," that would fuck you up. But it's hard to make a shaky cgi monster out of that, I suppose.

There's some interesting criticism about this film that claims that it has a subversive queer message to it, but I just don't see it. The cold open of the film involves two gay men being harassed and assaulted at some shitty Maine carnival, and then Pennywise eats one of them. I don't know that this has some subversive queer message to tell besides "never go to Maine," and "the true homophobes are ancient evil clown demons." They strongly imply that Bill Hader's character is gay and is in love with one of the other male Losers, but it's hardly explored, and he spends the entire movie making fat jokes and spitting out Parks and Rec style one-liners that are so fucking annoying, I wanted to Ludovico Technique the writers while I ripped up the script in front of them.

I know this movie wasn't for me, but I'm also not entirely sure who it's for. If you're just in it for the jump scares and clown pranks, you have to sit through SO MUCH nonsense to get there. If you're in it for the subtle exploration of fear and horror, you have to sit through SO MUCH shaky clown yells. If you're in it for blood and guts, there's 2 hours and 30 minutes of stuff that is not that. IT is so bereft of actual cohesive content that it's almost like they tried to make a movie that pleased no one and possessed no vision. I still can't believe the final act (which feels like it takes 17 hours) when the Losers fight the manifestation of all of their collective fears, which turns out to be a giant spider monster that is also a clown that does yells. The whole thing is like a video game cutscene filled with quick time events. Bill Hader's character has to tap A repeatedly to avoid the tentacle, and Jessica Chastain has to hit L1 and R1 at the same time to duck under a rock. It's so frenetic and nonsensical that it has no punch. You simply don't care what happens as long as its interesting or different from "giant clown spider swings a claw at a human and misses...again." It also culminates with the losers defeating the spider monster by screaming "you stupid motherfucker" at it like 100 times. Seriously.

The more I write, the more wretched this movie becomes in my mind. There will never, never, NEVER be a situation where I will ever willingly sit through this again (and I'm about 5 months away from an 18 hour flight to New Zealand). If you turned all the raw footage from this film over to a competent director and editor, and you were able to strip out and reshoot all of the shaky cgi bullshit, you might come away with a spooky and fun two hours. But why bother?

The only part of the film that gave me any (grim) satisfaction was right after "THE END" when the screen proudly proclaimed this was "An Andy Muschietti Film" as if this means anything.

REVIEW: A cgi clown shaking and running while screaming "PEE PEE POO POO"

HOW I WATCHED IT: In a theater that was empty enough that I could use my phone during the lulls. I also snuck in a sandwich, so the afternoon wasn't a total loss.

BEVERAGE: A frozen Pepsi. My local multiplex has the best fucking self-serve frozen drink machine. I'd prefer Coke, but it's not like I have good taste or, frankly, any self respect, so Pepsi it shall be.

Spooktober Side Car 9: The Curse of La Llorona

It's the final film (released so far) in the CCU. Good God almighty, thank you! This time we're taking a look at the spring 2019 classic, the Curse of La Llorona. It follows the trials and tribulations of a single mother with two kids who are haunted by a ghost who wants to drown the children. A tale as old as time.

The pluses of this movie? Its 93 minute run time. The downsides of it? Pretty much everything else. It plays out like a poor man's version of Drag Me to Hell where a grieving/ angry woman curses another and then scary things happen to the cursed woman/ family. The problem is that movie is funny and creepy and good and this movie is none of those things and instead it's just shitty poo poo.

Once the creepy things start happening, like this scary ghost washing the little girl's hair:

Don't forget to rinse out the suds!

Mom goes to a priest for help. But, because it's the church, it's gotta go through levels at the Vatican. Levels that this family just doesn't have time for. Luckily the priest knows a man who used to be a priest that doesn't play by the rules. He's a maverick but he might just be the only chance this family has to not get murdered by a sad ghost.

Hi I'm hear to wash hair and also maybe drown your kids.

This movie likes water. In the original legend (at least according to this movie and I sure as shit ain't about to research if it's true) when La Llorona was alive she murdered her kids by drowning due to her being pissed at her husband for having an affair so now all she wants to do is drown more kids. So there's the above bath tub, the Los Angeles River (I mean that's more concrete than water but there's at least the concept of water there), the backyard pool, and a rainstorm. Water water everywhere so let's all take a drink.

So this movie is bad and you shouldn't watch it. I like to call it The Curse of La Bore-ona (nailed it). Especially because it costs way more than it should to rent it on Amazon. Punch yourself in the dick repeatedly instead. It's cheaper and will feel better. Oh well at least it was better than Annabelle (thank you so much 93 minute run time).

And thus ends our journey into the CCU. There are at least 3 movies currently in development: the conjuring 3, the nun 2: nunning again, and the untitled crooked man (based on another scary monster from the conjuring 2). These 7 movies have ranged from really bad to fairly fun and entertaining. In order, from worst to best:

Annabelle, The Curse of La Llorona, Annabelle Creation, The Nun, Annabelle Comes Home, The Conjuring, and The Conjuring 2.

The top 3 are worth watching. The other four are not. They suck super fucking hard. Thank god I can write about things that are better now... or will I just watch more shitty horror? Yeah probably more shitty horror. Fuck.

Spooktober Side Car 8: The Nun

Only two to go! Thank god. Today we're talking about The Nun. Once again, the powers that be in the CCU decided to give us the backstory on some demon from the Conjuring movies. This one, given the title, was the demon nun that we saw a couple of times in the Conjuring 2. At least, I assume this movie is named after the demon nun. Or it might be named after one of the other non-demon nuns in the movie? If you're going to call your movie The Nun you should probably only have one nun in it. Maybe they should have called it A Nun.

The movie opens in a convent in Romania where we see two nuns (title already debunked!) One nun goes through a door that has something spooky written on it and the other stays behind. Then some scary things happen and the stay behind nun tries on a noose and takes a jump out the window. SCARY.

The Vatican decides it's time to investigate so they send a priest and he brings along a non-vowed nun. Once they get to Romania they team up with a guy named Frenchie (he's actually French Canadian) to go get to the bottom of this nun suicide. Blah blah blah, some rich guy used to live in a castle or some shit which is where the convent is now and he tried to summon a demon and that demon is doing it's best to come into the world to... kill people or steal souls or something I don't know or care?

So the a priest, a non-vowed nun, and a Frenchie walk into a convent... Classic set up for a joke (which this movie is). They battle some spooky happenings, Frenchie says "holy shit" to which the priest responds "the holiest" about something I can't remember, and that's about it. Who lives, who dies, who wins, who loses, who cares?

This movie was not good but it was more fun than the first two Annabelle movies. At least the setting was a creepy convent castle and not an apartment or a dollmaker's house. So this has a way better atmosphere than those two ass piles. The other plus side is it's on HBO so I didn't have to pay to watch it. I've spent a lot of money watching awful fucking horror movies this October. I leave you with some screen shots (with time stamps because I am much too lazy to expend effort cropping photos from this shit movie because it does not deserve the effort).

Don't watch this movie. It fucking sucks. On the bright side, only one more CCU to write about! Unfortunately it's a doozy.

The cross is upside down so there's a satan. It's also on fire so that probably means a double satan.

That's a ghost vomiting a snake, alright.

Spooktober Side Car 7: Annabelle Comes Home

The newest film on the CCU is the third of the Annabelle films. It's also by far the most fun of the three (and easily in the top half of Cinematic Universe). Annabelle comes home is the closest to a creature feature of the 7 movies. I watched this before one of the two remaining movies I haven't written about yet but I figured I might as well finish up the Annabelle Trilogy.

The movie opens with the Warren's bringing home the Annabelle doll after collecting it in the opening scene of The Conjuring. Some time later, they go on a trip and leave their daughter in the care of a babysitter. The babysitter's friend/ classmate had a recent loss in the family and due to the Warrens' reputation decides she should crash the babysitting party and try and contact that ghost.

Long story short, friend gets into the cursed object room and opens the case that Annabelle is stored in. She also touches all of the other cursed objects in the room so welp now we got a whole lot of bonus demons to go along with Annabelle. I won't spoil any more here because it is a surprisingly fun movie (especially considering how NOT fun the other 2 A-belles were).

Why did this movie work for me so much more than the other two? Well first, it's fun. The other two are just so dark and dour and miserable. This one has a sense of lightness to it (despite it being about a bunch of demons tormenting 3 young girls.) There's also the fact that they didn't have to try and establish anything about Annabelle in this. They didn't have to show us how evil the doll is or how the doll got all eviled up: all that crap was established. Now it's just time for her to get out there and spook it up.

I'm shocked I would actually recommend one of the three Annabelles but here I am. You can easily skip the other two. All you need to know coming into this one is there is a spooky doll full of a scary demon.

I was under the weather when I watched this so my drink was a gatorade zero. I give this movie two creepy doll eyes up.

Spooktober IV Review 15: Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)

Sergio Martino

"Is it true about you being a two-bit whore?"
"Well, they might be considered two bits well spent."

At one point during my viewing of the film last night (from now on, let's just call it Your Vice for brevity's sake), I texted Ryan and Zach to say that it had a "hold of me with its disgusting greasy Italian hands," and I only half meant this as a slight against the Italian people. I feel like we've dabbled deep enough into the fetid giallo pool to understand this filth-inherent film genre, at least on an intermediate level, but this one really pushed the boundaries of vileness in ways that I did not expect, but absolutely loved. It features rape, graphic domestic violence, emotional abuse, alcoholism, failure, animal abuse, murder, incest, adultery, and so many sweaty Italian closeups all in a tight 97 minute package. It's a whirlwind of smut!

Obviously I loved this movie and I'm going to recommend it to everyone, but let's take a step back for a minute. Before watching this, I was familiar with the giallo genre (as we remember from previous Spooktober's past, it's a primarily Italian genre of cheaply made and overly stylized films featuring lurid stories of crime and murder), but had never heard of either this ponderously titled film or its director. The greats of the genre have all been featured here before, including Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci, and each brings something different to their films: Argento's are bathed in garish light and thrumming with visceral energy, Bava's are filmed through reflection and glass to ponder the nature of reality, and Fulci's are splashed with gore. And now we have Martino.

When I still lived in Nashville, there was a glorious month in 2015 where the Belcourt Theatre hosted a Seijun Suzuki film festival, which introduced me to his history as a filmmaker. Unfortunately I only managed to catch Gate of Flesh and Branded to Kill, but that was enough to understand the unquestioned genius behind the camera. Suzuki never found the mainstream success of Japanese auteurs like Kurosawa and Kobayashi, and was hired because he could take dirty, trashy little scripts about whores living under a bridge in post-war Japan or a James Bond style assassin with a strange addiction and (efficiently) elevate them beyond their humble underpinnings. These two films are mostly stripped down, but they ooze style, subtle humor, and more than a little grime. He was the original Japanese giallo director!

I think it's also fair to assess Sergio Martino as the Italian Seijun Suzuki, because his career is littered with "I need to make this so I can afford my mortgage" style films, but I can't wait to poke around his filmography a little bit more (especially an 80's sci-fi adventure movie titled 2019: After the Fall of New York), because the talent here is undeniable and I love trash with vision. I'm not going to pretend Martino is on the same level as Argento, but one of them was stuck behind the 8-ball career-wise and had to work for a living, and god damn do I respect that blue collar style of filmmaking. 

Getting back to the film of the day, Your Vice is a loose adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story The Black Cat (which was also adapted by Lucio Fulci, but that sounds like a gory slasher more than anything). The Black Cat, like all Poe stories, is about murder, guilt, and something giving up the murderer as they are wracked with anxiety, but Martino takes the simple story and weaves it into a tale about a failed writer who has turned to the bottle and torturing his wife for solace. The writer, Oliviero, begins the film by lauding the history of his blessed mother, whose portrait hangs proudly in their rapidly decomposing mansion, and belittling his wife, Irina, calling her a whore in front of a group of his "friends." His treatment of women in general is abysmal, as he then singles out their maid, a poor immigrant woman from some former fascist Italian colony, sexually assaults her by groping her breasts, and then heaps on the racism. This poor maid is treated miserably by everyone in this film, even people who like her. She's easily the most sympathetic character in the whole film, and her only mistake was ever being around rich white people.

Oliviero, using the free time he has when he's not fantasizing sexually about his dead mother and abusing/raping his wife, also has a mistress who was a former student of his when he was still teaching at the local university. He makes noncommittal plans to meet her one night, but as the scheduled time for their tryst approaches, the poor girl is slashed to death by a mysterious assailant. Obviously the police suspect Oliviero, but like all giallo films, the initial suspect you're led to believe is the culprit is invariably not-guilty (although hardly innocent). In the midst of a police investigation into this homicide, the poor housemaid is also brutally murdered while trying on Oliviero's mother's flowing gown (the one from her portrait). Oliviero frantically denies committing these crimes, but Irina is not so sure, especially since her husband is so insistent that they hide the body and make up some story about her leaving their employ. It is in the course of this conspiracy plot that he A) rapes her, B) strangles her, and C) makes her clean the maid's blood out of his mother's gown. So far in this film, the only creature he's been even halfway kind to is is black cat named Satan.

This is about when Oliviero's niece Floriana arrives for a visit. She is played by Edwige Fenech, and is maybe one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. When she appeared on the screen, my eyes actually flew out of my skull and wrapped around each other while I pounded my foot on the ground like a cartoon wolf. Oliviero feels the same way, despite the fact that he's her uncle. I couldn't really get a feel for their specific family tree, because she would refer to Oliviero's mother as "Aunt," but this could be an issue with the subtitle translation (there were a number of odd discrepancies). Regardless: they're related and it's gross.

Floriana immediately acts as a sympathetic ear to Irina, listening to her tale of woe and concerns of being married to a murderous lech. Her suggestions range from "GTFO" to "just shove him over a cliff and be done with it," both of which Irina rejects as possibilities. At this point, Floriana and Irina have passionate sex, because, hey, why not? In fact, Floriana flits through this movie enjoying sex the whole time. She fucks Irina, a nice motorcycle boy, and Oliviero in the course of her time in the film, but is not victimized in any way. She just loves to fuck, and who can blame her? She's not even ashamed of it, openly admitting to Irina that she and Oliviero had sex while the three of them are at a cliffside picnic. And to her credit, Irina is pretty chill about the whole adulterous incest thing.

The police inquiry is thrown for a loop after Oliviero's mistress' boss is bludgeoned to death by a whorehouse Madam shortly after he murders a local prostitute. I love how the prostitute's life is framed here: she has had a busy day, turns down a client out of sheer exhaustion, is supported fully by her Madam, clearly makes a good living, and is played as confident and just a little sassy. It's a very sex work positive portrayal, and reminded me distinctly of the brash and honest working girls in Suzuki's Gate of Flesh. Unfortunately she is murdered brutally, but such is the fate of the giallo whore.

The great twist of the film begins to take shape after Irina confronts Oliviero's cat Satan after he's eaten some of her beloved pet doves. She attempts to kill the feline with a pair of scissors, but only manages to poke out one of his eyes. This is witnessed by an old junk woman, who beats a horrified and hasty retreat from the scene. The rest of the film is haunted by the pained and mournful cries of the pitious cat, and this begins to drive Irina insane. Like all classic Poe stories, her guilt has to bear a physical manifestation of some sort. After discovering him in the house one night, she chases him with that same pair of scissors to finish the job, but comes across a passed out Oliviero at his typewriter. Seizing her opportunity, Irina stabs her abusive husband to death while he sleeps, and leans on Floriana to help her cover up the death by walling her up in the same crawlspace they hid their poor maid in.

I don't want to give up the climax of the film, but suffice it to say, the evil double-crosses do not stop, and Satan's role in the story is not yet complete (nor is the role of the old junk woman).

It's great that there's an easy-to-follow Poe mystery at the heart of the tale here, because it gives the story some structure. Even the best giallo films tend to wander a bit, so having a clear and coherent direction to head towards is a boon to the film. It also leaves ample opportunity for Martino to explore the elements that make up a sick and depraved marriage, and to play with his audience's sympathies to the point that by the end, the only person we ever truly respected was the maid.

Your Vice is the sweaty, vile, sex-crazed, violent murder fantasy that you've been looking for all month, and you absolutely need to watch it very soon. Potentially alone. In your boxers. To accentuate the experience, of course.

REVIEW: Me saying "mama mia" while gurgling on my own blood after being stabbed by my vindictive wife

HOW I WATCHED IT: Amazon Prime, paisanos!

BEVERAGE: Unibroue's La Fin du Monde. The end of the world, indeed.

Spooktober IV Review 14: Return of the Living Dead

Return of the Living Dead (1987)

Dan O'Bannon

"Brains!"

This is going to surprise you, but when I was 14, I was a stupid idiot. Just a large dumb boy with bad opinions about lots of things. It was during this cursed time when I, already a big fan of the zombie apocalypse universe created by George Romero, that I watched Return of the Living Dead. I remember being dismayed by the level of humor and angry at the zombies who "didn't follow the rules" (as if rules are important for fictional monsters). The ghouls in this film run, talk, don't die when their heads are destroyed, and use coordinated planning and logic to defeat the humans, which is obviously the opposite of the shambling, mostly silent corpses of Romero's universe. It's a shame that I gave up on it after one watch and tucked it in the "harrumph, I hate this" category until last night, because Return of the Living Dead is an absolute masterpiece. 

Yes, it's funny, and yes it changes the rules of the Romero-verse, but those are powerfully good things, especially the way both are achieved in the film. I texted Zach and Ryan last night to point out that it has Shaun of the Dead level comedic payoff built into the script, while still retaining its violent and terrifying edge. It wasn't until the movie started that I realized it was both written and directed by Dan O'Bannon, one of the geniuses behind the immortal Alien, and the quality of talent behind this film really shines through.

The film begins brilliantly, introducing one of our main characters in the context of a new employee orientation at a bizarre medical supply warehouse. As he's learning the ropes, we as an audience are doing the same, meeting characters, understanding our setting, and getting an initial taste of what's going to cause the mayhem we paid to see. This first five minutes or so also sets up about six jokes that will have a delicious payoff at some future point in the film. We also learn that the film Night of the Living Dead exists in this universe, but that it was based on a real incident in Pittsburgh involving a chemical spill, and George Romero made his film to get the secret out (without explicitly saying so, and by changing some of the details). This is when the action kicks off, and during a tour of the basement of this supply company, we are introduced to a barrel filled with 2-4-5 Trioxin and a mummified corpse. Naturally the chemical leaks out, sprays our two hapless employees in the face, and the trouble begins in earnest.

I was already hooked by this point, but the real genius of the film comes when our characters meet the first reanimated corpse and have a frantic discussion about how to kill it. Remembering the Romero rules, they decide to destroy it's brain by pinning it to the ground and driving a pickaxe through its skull. This doesn't work (which causes them to angrily wonder why a movie would lie to them), so they use a hacksaw to cut the head clean off the body. The headless body gets up and runs around the room independent of its brain, so they hack it into chunks. The chunks begin to move on their own, so their brilliant idea is to burn the parts in a crematorium, but this just releases ash into the air (which washes into a graveyard thanks to a rainstorm). You can see where things are heading the whole time, but the journey it takes to get there is so fucking funny, and gross, and just so damn pleasurable to be a part of. You're stifling your screams to the characters and wondering how they haven't seen the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment of Fantasia before.

Most of the teen characters in the films are part of some comically exaggerated punk rock clique of friends who want to hang out in a graveyard, dance naked, and say curse words. Except, of course, the central damsel in distress, who appears to be a clean, demure, girl-next-door goody two shoes, who just happens to hang around crude punk rockers for no other reason than it's convenient to have her as a character being chased by zombies. The two main adult characters are played brilliantly by B-movie superstars Clu Gulager and James Karen, and they vacillate between scenery chewing like they're trapped in a 1950's monster matinee and genuine bloody fear so well. They were cast and directed perfectly. The sequence where they are trying to kill/dismantle the first zombie, James Karen screams, cries, and wails almost incessantly for 5 minutes straight. It's the panicky Barbara role from Night of the Living Dead, only filtered through a white dude in his mid-50's, and it's hysterical.

The dripping and disgusting gore effects are second to none, and when the zombies chomp into a character's head to get to their sweet and juicy brains, the resulting nastiness is revolting. And of course, this was the film that turned zombies from your bog standard flesh eating ghoul into something that loudly and voraciously desires the fresh brains of the living. One of my favorite sequences in the film is when a living character captures a particularly desiccated and incomplete corpse to interrogate her on why they're so desperate to eat brains. Her answer is that brains are the only way to stop the pain of being dead. For some reason 2-4-5 trioxin wakes you up from death, but also leaves you permanently aware of how painful it is to rot away. She reveals this information while strapped down to a metal autopsy table, dripping fluid from her freshly hacked apart spine. You actually start to pity the dead! They didn't ask to be woken up.

This next paragraph contains spoilers about the ending, so if you care, skip it!

I also love the scene just before the climax of the film, where the characters call the "In case of emergency" phone number on the side of the chemical barrel and are put in touch with an Army general (who we met briefly at the beginning of the film with no explanation at the time). We only see the conversation from the perspective of the general asking various questions, and giving his one-sided answers back. He recaps the whole film through questions like, "And then what happened? Oh my. And what did they do? I see. How many? Oh dear. Why didn't you call the number right away? I guess that's understandable." He takes meticulous notes on the conversation, then calmly gets out of bed, goes over to a computer console, and drops a nuclear bomb on the whole city! Such a funny deus ex machina that pulls the rug out from under you.

Since this movie grabbed hold of me so wonderfully, I decided to see if the genius continued with the sequel and made last night into a double feature. Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up. The best part of the sequel is that James Karen and Thom Mathews (the lead punk/new employee from the first film) are back, but as completely new characters doing essentially the exact same thing they did in the first one. At one point, in the throes of his zombification, Mathews' character screams, "I feel like I've done this before!" But beyond that, eh. A lot of half-cocked ideas and underdeveloped storylines. Overall, it's a lot more generic.

I honestly can't wait to watch this again, and I may do so before this Spooktober ends. It's going to join my collection of Blu-Rays as soon as I can get around to ordering it, and I have no doubt that it will make an appearance at a Five Hours of Terror event in the future. I can't believe it took me so long to come back around to it, but I'm very glad I did. As Emily pointed out last night, this is the reason Spooktober is our favorite. Sometimes you discover something new that excites you, and sometimes you rediscover something lost that changes your mind and blows you away.

Get on this one, folks. You won't regret it.

REVIEW: A whole heaping helping of succulent juicy chess club brains.

HOW I WATCHED IT: Amazon Prime. You don't have an excuse NOT to watch it!

BEVERAGE: I started with a Surly One Man Mosh Pit IPA but was enjoying myself so much, I poured myself a snort of Auchentoshan Three Wood for the third act.

Spooktober Side Car 6: Annabelle Creation.

I watched this about 2 weeks ago but I've been putting off writing about it because it sucked. I mean it didn't suck as bad as Annabelle but it was still pretty shitty. Luckily, I took a bunch of notes that I fully plan on mostly ignoring while writing this up.

The movie opens on the family of a doll maker: mom, dad, and little girl. Little girl and dad play hide and seek with notes. I should add that before that, dad makes the very creepy and scary Annabelle doll. They go to church. On the way home from church their car breaks down. While dad is changing the tire a lug nut rolls into the street. The little girl runs to get it and is immediately smoked by a truck. This happens 7 minutes in. Given how few  people have died in the CCU so far this was exciting news.

Flash forward 10 years and mom and dad welcome a bus full of orphans, a priest, and a nun to use their house as an orphanage. Mom is bed bound and not seen by the new tenants. All the bedrooms for the girls (all the orphans are girls) are upstairs but one had polio so she's got leg braces. Luckily, the house has a Gremlin's style motorized chair that can take her up the stairs. Upstairs they have access to all rooms, except one, which is locked. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

At night, the handicapped girl finds a note on the floor that says "find me" (CALL BACK TO THE HIDE AND SEEK NOTES OMG) and walks out of her bed room. A note comes from under the locked scary room that says "in here" and the door spookily unlocks. She explores, finds the scary Annabelle doll in a secret locked wall closet. She ends up going back to bed and nothing too scary happens.

The next night (or some night there isn't a good sense of time in this movie) and the girl hears music coming from the locked room of scares and creeps. She finds a diary in there, reads it, and she sees a ghost. She asks the ghost what it wants, ghost says "your soul" and it demonizes and attacks her. SHOCKING

hello I am a scary ghost of a girl and also a demon. Well a scary demon pretending to be a ghost of a girl

The girl tries to run away but can't get down the stairs. She uses the Gremlin chair but when it gets halfway down it brings her back up. The demon rips her out of the chair and throws her over the rails. She doesn't die and shows back up in a wheel chair. The demon makes the wheel chair roll her into a shed and then possesses her.

To make a long rest of the story short, possessed girl murders mom and dad (or the demon does) and mom's death is legit gruesome (she's ripped in half) and dad's scene features some ouchies happening to his hand.

I think you're gonna need an orthopod to help with those fingers

The demon/ girl attacks everyone else but no one else dies. She gets thrown into the locked little cubby where the Annabelle doll was and everyone is relieved. When the police come to find her she's burrowed out of that room somehow and escapes. She is adopted by the next door neighbors from the first Annabelle and it ends by reshowing that murder scene. ~FIN~

I have no interest in analyzing or talking about anything more than a plot summary because these movies suck and don't deserve the brain effort. This movie was shit but thankfully less shit than Annabelle. I cant remember what I drank during the movie but hopefully it was paint thinner. Fuck it.

Spooktober IV Review 13: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Chuck Russell

"Welcome to prime time, bitch!"

Sequels to films are tough to pull off. The cemetery of shitty, rushed-out-the-door sequels that fell flat is like Flanders Field at this point. But occasionally you get something that is interesting or significant, tackling the original concept from the first film in a slightly different way. Terminator 2, Aliens, Gremlins 2, Evil Dead 2, Dawn of the Dead (and Day of the Dead, rounding out the rare "perfect trilogy"), each of the Planet of the Apes sequels (both original and remake): they all utilize the original story--and our knowledge of it--to twist things around and give us a new perspective. They may not always surpass the original story, but they add to its existence in a pleasing way.

And then you have the big three 1980's horror franchises: Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th. Each franchise is a complete jumbled grab-bag of quality, with a strong statistical lean toward "unbelievable shit," but a couple of notably strong (or strange) entries do exist. The most notable example is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. It was John Carpenter's attempt to break the franchise out of its doldrums before it got stale and turn it into a "spooky movie anthology" series that would try new stories under the banner of Halloween. But then it came out, didn't have Michael Meyers in it, was hated by morons, and so now we all get to see a new dumb Halloween movie every couple of years.

Two Spooktobers ago, we looked at A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, which was a surprising treat, mostly due to its wonderful queer subtext that was woven into the script unbeknownst to the director. The movie as a whole is a bit incomprehensible, but there's enough there to charm you into enjoying it, maybe even despite yourself. Like Halloween 3, it was also panned by fans (and audiences in general) for going too far off the rails, so the next film in the series would need to get back to its roots. That's where today's film comes in.

Dream Warriors isn't quite the masterpiece of horror that the original Elm Street is, but asking someone to replicate the skill and vision of Wes Craven is unfair, and Chuck Russell does an admirable job. The concept is downright brilliant: instead of just outright hacking and slashing teens, or turning them into a geyser of blood, Freddy injures them enough that the teens are suspected of self harm and are locked up in a mental hospital where they can be tortured and picked off at his leisure.

The execution is a little muddled for my tastes, because the filmmakers drag the character of Nancy Thompson (played abysmally by Heather Langenkamp again) back in so that she can train the teens in the art of dream combat, which I guess she mastered because she didn't die to Freddy that one time? But who cares about the story execution, because the most important facet that this film introduces to the franchise is creating the character of Freddy Krueger as we know him today. Freddy is unique among the 80's slasher monsters because he can talk and emote, and this is the film where they really turn Robert Englund loose and gave Freddy his best character moments of the series. When someone mentions Freddy Krueger, this is exactly the kind of thing you think of:

This is a bit of a double-edged sword, unfortunately, because as great as the TV scene is, it gave future hacks permission to do crimes against humanity like this:

So while Dream Warriors Freddy may be the ideal Freddy, it moved the...um...Kruegerton Window toward pure cartoonish goofiness and it never really looked back. It's a shame, because Dream Warriors is still scary and disgusting. Flesh is slashed, children are tortured, and a character has his veins ripped out and used to control him like a marionette doll.

I really enjoy the subtext about the teens tackling their own inner trauma. Throughout the film the teens are told by the hospital staff that their wounds and tortured dreams are their own fault, and faulty Freudian psychoanalytic thinking is thrown in their faces. As a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, I like the idea of being proactive with mental health challenges. The characters challenge their fear head on with strategies they work on in group therapy with their peers. Freddy may as well be a maladaptive thought or some negative self talk, and the only way to defeat these things is to confront them. It's a nice touch to give some depth to the film, even if its a little sloppy in its execution.

The stuff I really don't like is the exploration of Freddy's origin. There's a ghostly nun character that one of the therapists sees hanging out around the hospital who eventually explains that Freddy's mother was raped by 100 criminally insane mental patients and that she gave birth to a demon, or something. It's just so unnecessary, and only exists to tack on another 12 minutes to the runtime. However, the quest the nun gives to return Freddy's earthly remains to hallowed ground does give us the scene where his skeleton fights like he's in Jason and the Argonauts and then roars like an animal while pumping his fists in the air. So I guess it's not all bad.

Dream Warriors may not keep pace with the creme de la creme of 80's slashers, but it adds enough to the forumla to make it the second best of the series (at least until Wes Craven steps back in with New Nightmare), and features some strong performances by Patricia Arquette (in her first role!) and a young Larry Fishburne. 

REVIEW: It's an easy recommend from me, bitch.

HOW I WATCHED IT: I own all these movies on Blu-Ray, bitch.

BEVERAGE: A Brewery Vivant Verdun, bitch.

Spooktober IV Review 12: We Are What We Are

We Are What We Are (2013)

Jim Mickle

"I don't know what you think you heard, but you must be mistaken."

*GENERALIZED SPOILERS AHEAD*

One of my favorite episodes of The X-Files is "Home," the one about the family of crazy backwoods inbred cannibals. You know, it's the one where they drag momma out from under the bed and she's had all of her limbs hacked off and eaten. It meant a lot to my 13-year-old brain, because some of the imagery was just so visually striking, especially for a network television show. It's shocking to see gangrenous limb stumps just a few minutes after Briscoe County Jr. ends.

Of course that episode borrowed heavily from The Family of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, the ur- disgusting backwoods inbred cannibal weirdos. The idea that there is a seedy and ghoulish society beyond the suburban and exurban highway off-ramps, strip malls, and combination Subway/gas stations has been a mainstay of horror since, well, cavemen told spooky stories about the monstrous weirdos who lived in the hills. Geniuses like Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes) tapped into that ancient well of fear, and made rural America into the fearsome place that it truly is in the most gruesome ways possible.

But for those of us slobs living in the urban centers of society, middle-of-nowhere Texas might as well be the center of Mars in terms of how likely we'd ever find ourselves there. Thankfully there's a whole subgenre of film that explores the idea of evil living right under our noses, of course. From the unpleasant reality of a film like Room, to the goofiness of Fright Night, or in the unsettling mystery of Rosemary's Baby, the monsters become harder to identify, but no less sinister.

Then there are the films that tuck these themes into an even smaller space, exploring the evil that dwells within a single family unit. Films like The VVitch, Raw, and (the vastly underappreciated) Clovehitch remove the barriers of geographic distance and even locked doors between the innocent and the evil. The vulnerability is the source of the fear.

What I liked so much about We Are What We Are is the blending of all of this into one neat little package. The mystery that unfolds over the course of the film plays with your expectations of each of these tropes. Within the first act, you're provided with a dearth of hard information--just whispers and hints really--that you're unsure if this is a Room situation or a Silence of the Lambs/Buffalo Bill scenario. What comes to pass is far more banal yet no less vile. It's a wonderful subversion.

I appreciate how the characters in this film are not just cartoonish analogs for whatever group of people the writer and director are looking to lampoon. There is obviously room for that in art, but this feels grounded in a way that lends it more weight. The father in the film is a firm believer in the old traditions of his family and faith, but when his wife dies after a freak accident at the beginning of the film, he goes through profound and affecting grief. He drinks, he smokes, he weeps, he treats his children poorly, and he withdraws. You could make him bizarrely stoic, or use his suppressed grief to hint at the darkness, but giving him humanity in his grief is critical to this particular story.

So too with the setting of the film. The family lives in a small town, sure, but they have neighbors. They live on a normal looking street. Their house is not secluded away in the trees, or tucked in the mountains. This is out in the open, and the family has routine interactions with the people around them. They're no different from the family up the block that just happens to homeschool their children and maybe places a bit more importance on that old timey style of religion. The father even accepts the kindness of his neighbor and reaches out to her in a time of need, asking her to watch his son while they bury the mom. Freakish hill folk these are not.

The other facet of the unfolding mystery of the film that I loved were the two daughters. Emily asked me a great question after the movie: is there a horror movie that focuses on the male coming of age story? We could only come up with comedies (Teen Wolf may be the closest thing to a horror movie we could think of). But it makes sense. The male coming of age story is not compelling told through the lens of horror. Obviously puberty is traumatic and unpleasant for everyone, but as a boy you come out of the other side bigger, stronger, hairier, and with everyone telling you that you can take on the world. With girls, you come out the other side (literally) bloodied, traumatized, and with the instilled knowledge that for millennia before and for millennia to come, society will always consider you second.

All of this simmers just beneath the surface of We Are What We Are. Cloistered homes with strict religious views and unspoken secrets are simply not kind to young girls. After the mother dies, the father makes vague statements about how the eldest daughter will now have "new responsibilities," responsibilities that she does not seem particularly excited about undertaking. I won't spoil what that entails because that's the fun of the film, but I know your mind is suddenly filled with a phone book of horrible things that "new responsibilities" could mean.

We Are What We Are isn't the most polished or stylized horror movie ever, but it plays effectively with the themes similar genre films that came before it created. The pacing is great, and allows for the sinister mystery to dance around in your head, contorting into all sorts of horrible shapes before the reveal comes. 

REVIEW: A hearty helping of long pig

HOW I WATCHED IT: Free on Amazon Prime

BEVERAGE: Surly's Furious IPA

Spooktober IV Reviews 10 & 11: They Came from the 80’s!

I’m a bit fed up with 80’s nostalgia. While I’ll freely admit that I enjoyed the first season of Stranger Things, it was in the way that I also enjoy episodes of bizarre sci-fi police procedural Alien Nation. Was it a pleasant enough distraction at the time? Sure. Will I ever go back and watch it again? Not on your life. 

What is there to be nostalgic about anyway? The 1980’s sucked, at least at a societal level. We look back fondly on the consumerist hellscape that sprouted up around our ears, but when your wistful obsession with an entire decade boils down to “you can turn this car into a robot” and “wow remember Eggo Waffles, that thing that still very much exists at every grocery store in the country,” it might be an intellectually hollow pursuit.

Do not misunderstand me, there are so many things that came out of the 1980’s that I love; things that could only have come out of the 1980’s precisely because of the shitty nature of the world at the time. Constant threat of nuclear annihilation? Check. A supervirus pandemic that attacked some of the most vulnerable and under-served communities of people? Check. A psychotically unsympathetic government in charge of everything? Check. What about rampant consumerism combined with the complete erosion of our financial system that only benefited the already impossibly wealthy? Double check. All of the smart people making good art in the 1980’s were shaped and molded by this poisoned cultural well. The shiny fun Stranger Things bullshit is surface deep, and by their very nature can only offer fleeting moments of “ah yes, I do indeed remember [pop culture reference or discontinued consumer product].”

This review is not about some of the great films from the 1980’s. This review is about a couple of not-so-great movies that are so blissfully and stupidly 80’s that they scratch that nostalgic itch while also reminding us of that important fact: it was a dumb decade. 

The Stuff (1985)

Larry Cohen

“Can’t get enough of The Stuff!”

Remember that episode of Futurama where Fry and Leela discover a planet covered in a delicious snack they call Popplers, and it becomes a worldwide sensation before it’s discovered that they’re actually alien embryos? You do? Perfect! Then you’ve already seen The Stuff and you don’t need to be worried about spoilers.

Well, to be fair, The Stuff is not alien embryos. It is a gelatinous, yogurt-like substance that evidently A) tastes amazing, B) is good for you, C) cures what ails ya, D) is addictive, E) controls your mind, and F) turns you into one of the hollow robot employees from the Silver Shamrock company in Halloween III so that when you get punched, your whole face falls off. It also comes from the ground and is sucked out of the earth by the petroleum corporation that discovered it, rushing it to market after paying off the FDA so that they wouldn’t research its potential downsides. You can see where the VERY SUBTLE social commentary might come in.

It might sound like I’m shitting on The Stuff, and, well, maybe, but it’s really not as bad as I’m flippantly making it out to be. It’s just sloppy. Like dropping a full carton of yogurt onto your rug sloppy. There are moments here that are truly great. When The Stuff is either entering or leaving a human’s body without their approval, we get some great mask and splatter effects as the white goop shoots out of their face holes with great aplomb. There are also some really wonderful camera tricks when the titular stuff is moving on its own, giving something that looks like Cool Whip a menacing, almost Blob-like quality. All of the fluff (no pun intended) around The Stuff is also fantastic. The commercials, songs, and even fashion shows devoted to The Stuff are all great, but are never long enough and don’t pack the same punch as the extra fluff in, say, Robocop. It comes off feeling a little thin here.

This man is full of stuff

The movie was a passion project for Larry Cohen, a man who built his career on B-movie schlock, and is clearly poking fun at the genre, especially at the trend in films at the time to take something from the 1950’s and remake it for a modern audience (The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly). The only problem is that Larry Cohen is not John Carpenter, Philip Kaufman or David Cronenberg, and so The Stuff tries to make fun of the very thing it is: a schlocky half-baked horror/satire. I actually like some of the performances here, especially from Detroit’s own Michael Moriarty playing a corporate saboteur hired by ice cream companies to find out what The Stuff actually is. His accent never really finds a home, and his character is just so poorly written, but he acts his heart out anyway, and I respect that. Oh, and Garrett Morris shows up for about seven minutes, and steals the show, but I’m guessing they could only afford him for one day of shooting, because he disappears for an hour before showing up right at the end still wearing the same clothes from the earlier scene. 

By the time Paul Sorvino’s too-goofy-by-half army man character shows up in the third act, you just want to eat a tub of Cool Whip and go to bed.

REVIEW: A pint of mediocre ice cream that your dog licked the top of. You’re still going to eat it, but you’re only going to enjoy some of it.

HOW I WATCHED IT: Amazon? I rented it? I don’t remember.

BEVERAGE: I also don’t remember, but let’s say: beer.

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Ed Hunt

“Clippings of murders? What are you, a little ghoulie?”

When John Carpenter’s Halloween came out in 1978, it simultaneously created the genre of teenage slasher and proved to every director that, regardless of means, they too could make a career defining horror film. And so three short years later, Bloody Birthday is thrust unto the world for all to enjoy.

Bloody Birthday is not such much an homage to Halloween as it is, at times, almost a shot-for-shot ripoff. Obviously the premise is slightly different, but the ideas at the gooey center are all the same. In Bloody Birthday  we have three (unrelated) evil 4th graders who were all born under the double whammy of bad signs: a solar eclipse AND a planetary convergence. As they approach their 10th birthdays, the evil inside them begins to stir, and they terrorize the community around them. 

Well, sort of. The movie talks a big game, but the body count is disappointingly low (as is the blood). The kids really just go after a parent, a teacher, a few horny teens (fun fact: a group of horny teens in a movie is known as a murder of horny teens) and some pesky witnesses to their horrible crimes. They hint that they have bigger evil plans in mind, but these never come to fruition. Probably because 10 year olds are stupid. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it; the kids are evil and so they have to kill. Finally we have an answer to the question of “what would have happened if Michael Meyers hadn’t been institutionalized as a small boy?” And that answer is “he would have maybe killed a couple people and then been stopped easily by literally any adult paying attention.”

In Halloween, the sparse body count and dearth of gore works because every scene is working to build the tension. In Bloody Birthday, the scenes in between kills are just the kids farting around with dumb hijinks like pretending to put ant poison in birthday cake icing, or using a peep hole to spy on one of the kid’s teenage sister while she changes (they have to pay the little girl 25 cents per peep). 

Easily the best scene in the movie, both in terms of absurd hilarity and genuine creep factor, is at the birthday party for the three little creeps. Nobody gets killed, but in the background of one of the shots, there’s a horrible early 80’s birthday clown juggling for a group of kids. When the camera gets closer to him, for just a brief moment, you get a shot of his face and his shirt, and friends it is chilling. Take a look:

His shirt says “I Can’t Say No!” At a birthday party! For children! That is simply not an appropriate outfit for a clown. It's just a t-shirt for Christ's sake. This is scarier than all 14 hours of the IT films.

It’s hard to believe that a 4 second scene can make a movie, but here we are.

REVIEW: You can definitely say no

HOW I WATCHED IT: Shudder, baby


BEVERAGE: Ant Poison

Spooktober IV Reviews 7, 8, & 9

One Cut of the Dead (2018)

Shinichiro Ueda

"Pom!"

I don't want to say much about One Cut of the Dead, because it's a movie that should be experienced for the first time with a totally clean slate, but here's the premise: while shooting a low-budget zombie movie, the cast and crew are attacked by zombies. That's all I'm going to say. You just need to watch it. Trust me.

REVIEW: Five conveniently placed axes out of five.

HOW I WATCHED IT: You can catch this one on Shudder. It's worth the headache of cancelling the free trial if you really don't want to pay the $6 for a month of Shudder, but there's lots of other great stuff on there too.

BEVERAGE: Revolution Brewing's NE IPA. Light, refreshing, and a little unexpected.

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017)

Issa Lopez

"I can't wish your mother back to life."

We watched Tigers Are Not Afraid after the madcap zaniness of One Cut of the Dead, and folks, let me tell you: not a great one-two punch. It was sort of like brushing your teeth with very minty toothpaste and then immediately tucking into a plate of citrus slices. The first 20 minutes or so were disorienting as I tried to get my head back in regular movie mode, so this is not going to be the best review.

Tigers Are Not Afraid is the story of a young girl and her gang of friends orphaned in the Mexican drug wars told with one foot in the genre of gritty, brutal realism, and the other in dark fairy tale. It reminded me a lot of something like Pan's Labyrinth, where a child experiences the trauma inflicted on her by the cruel adult world through fantastical creatures and lands.

Our young hero in Tigers Are Not Afraid receives three pieces of chalk from her teacher while cowering from a gang shootout near the school, and is told that she can make a wish on each one just like in a fairy tale. After her mother goes missing (likely abducted by the local cartel), she fearfully wishes that her mom would return. Evidently, they did not cover the story of the Monkey's Paw or the need to be judiciously specific when making wishes, because her mom does indeed return, but in a more vengeful, wraith-like way, rather than in her standard corporeal form.

There's a lot here about what it's like to grow up as a child in the midst of unrelenting violence, and the journey of the children through the blasted out landscape of their unnamed Mexican city is the most captivating parts of the whole film. I don't think I was in the right frame of mind to watch it, however. It's a bleak film, and any small moments of joy or comfort are quickly undercut by more trauma.

I'm sure it's a fine movie, but you have to be ready for the crippling sadness that's going to come along with the spooky stuff. I was not.

REVIEW: A hundred sad children painting a hundred sad pictures in a dilapidated orphanage

HOW I WATCHED IT: Shudder.

BEVERAGE: A Guinness straight out of the can. Do I really deserve anything more than that?

Revenge (2017)

Coralie Fargeat

"Women always have to put up a fucking fight."

There's a sub-genre of exploitation/grindhouse filmmaking that I've never gotten into called rape revenge, initially made famous by 1978's I Spit on Your Grave, the themes were explored by dozens of other grindhouse films looking to cash in. The storylines of these films are all generally the same: 1) a young woman is brutally assaulted, raped, and left for dead, 2) she rehabilitates herself in some way, 3) she exacts bloody and brutal revenge on the men who wronged her. And without spoiling too much, Revenge does not reinvent the wheel.

But that's not a bad thing! I'm extremely down for gritty and visceral grindhouse stuff, especially when it has someone with real talent behind the camera. Unlike most of the cheap shock-schlock that has come out in this seedy little genre, Revenge is downright beautiful when it's not trying to be disgusting, and it's clear Fargeat knows what she's doing. So while the basic story is no mystery, the little touches are lovely.  I'm not going to rehash the whole thing, but there's something about watching rich white men die in bloody and awful ways that really warms my heart. 


Like my friend Ryan, I didn't really see the whole "wildly inventive feminist twist" angle that the promotional stuff exclaimed about the movie, but it's certainly more updated than I Spit on Your Grave. I did appreciate that the rape scene was appropriately unpleasant but not explicit. A lot of disgusting movies (I'm looking at you Death Wish III) use rape as a cheap and convenient vehicle to get female nudity into the film, and, well, that's gross. If this genre is still going to be a thing (it does not need to still be a thing), it should be left in the hands of female filmmakers.

Overall, Revenge is a nice piece of modern grindhouse/exploitation for our post-Tarantino world. It's not as stylized or outlandish as Kill Bill or Mandy, but that makes Revenge refreshing. It still keeps its arthouse edges while winking toward the exploitation films of old. 

So, if you're interested in watching white dudes get wasted, and you're not squeamish about gallons of blood, Revenge might just be what you're looking for. I can say with all honesty, Revenge is the Citizen Kane of disgusting exploitation rape revenge grindhouse movies.

REVIEW: A whole bloody pile of dead rapists

HOW I WATCHED IT: Shudder

BEVERAGE: Bell's Oktoberfest