Tag: Horror

Audio Blog

Hey all, PCR here

Now, it’s been said (hell, I’ve said it myself) that, I’m not a “horror guy”.  I don’t get into horror the way others do, I don’t seem to understand the hype some horror movies get.. they just aren’t really my bag.

That’s not to say I don’t try to watch them.

Over the past week, I checked out a few, and here are my thoughts on them…

Insidious

This was “eh” to me, the ‘non-horror-movie-guy’.  It felt kind of stilted, and.. compared to other movies on this list involving children, it felt the tamest in regards to the scares involving kids.  Sure, the creature had some good jump scare moments, and Specs and Tucker were great for their interaction, the whole movie just felt… lacking and like they made it up as they went.

Sinister

Ok, when it comes to using kids in horror movies, it can either feel terrifying, or like a Happy Meal movie.  Sinister was very much the former.  The scary in it was how disturbing the content was.  Very little back story, a nice cameo from Vincent D’Onofrio…  my biggest gripe really was there was zero explanation for anything.  Maybe they came in later films, but that was my biggest complaint regarding this one.  Probably tied for ‘best one I saw this week”

The Conjuring and The Conjuring : The Devil Made Me Do It

The second installment wasn’t available on my streaming service, so I skipped 2 and went to “Devil…”.  In my opinion, the first one was MUCH better.  Better effects, better scares… I think the horror I can lean in to is the horror that doesn’t feel so fantastical… no traveling to different realms, no giant portals with winged beasties flooding through.. shit that feels like it’s much more practical.  There were some legit scenes in the first one that had me pausing and siting up going “what the fuck…”, Devil Made me Do It.. not so much.  The Conjuring tied with Sinister for ‘best watched this week’

The Nun

I know this is a spin off of The Conjuring ‘universe’, I also know this one was bad.  The story felt forced, and full of “Why the fuck would you do that?” moments that I HATE in horror movies.  Nothing seemed surprising and most of the movie felt telegraphed to me.  Easily the bottom of my list.

What about you Somethings?  What are your thoughts on MY thoughts?  Hit us up on our socials and let us know!

– PCR

Three people went off into the Burkettsville woods, and weren’t heard from again… this isn’t their story.
A bunch of other people went off into the woods to take a tour about the people that were never heard from again, which does kind of infer they were heard from again, albeit unintentionally, and now there are tour groups for them and they are apparently cult icons to weiros and documentarians…. this is sort of their story….

Two podcasters decided to sit down and watch Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows and tell you what they thought – this is most certainly their story.

So settle in and throw your map into the river – it’s Something in Review: Blair Witch 2

Ok, here we g-g-g-g-hoooost!

Full Episode

Not all horror movies are created equal… you see, some movies are amazing because they are frigging amazing. Some are amazing because they are bad. Some are just……. bad.

We’re talking about all of them, because none of those headers quite describes ‘lame’.  What is a lame movie? Is it stupid? Does it have a single factor that makes it worse than another? Is it just boring?  Hatton and PCR get into it about what precisely makes a piece of entertainment lame and then tell you their choices.

Join us as we start SomethingSpooktober with a horrorpalooza for the ages!

Ok, here we boo!

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Hey Somethings, I actually had to go back and look through some of my old blog posts to see if I’ve talked about this, and I was surprised to find out that I hadn’t! If the ending of a horror movie ends with the director saying things like, ‘Well, what do YOU think it means?’ like they are your therapist, you may have just watched an arthouse horror movie.

“But Hatton,” you ask, “what IS an elevated/arthouse horror movie?”

Well, it’s a movie that is trying to hide a deeper message beneath its horror. This isn’t new, as films like Jacob’s Ladder (1990), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and even Godzilla (1954) were talking about one thing under the guise of scares. Nowadays though, it is a twofold defense mechanism for:

* Movies that have a deeper message
* Movies that want you to think they have a deeper message
* People who don’t want to admit they like horror movies

Movies like Get Out, with its obvious racial overtones use the vehicle of horror to really turn a topic on its head and make you uncomfortable in your own world. Mother is a story of Christian mythology. Babadook is about abuse. These movies tell an engrossing tale of scares while also at the end give you something to think about. Bad arthouse horror, on the other hand, gives you attempts at symbolism that are never explained and plotholes that you hope are intentional until you get to the credits and you end up confused. The truth is, a good percentage of horror movies out there have some other meaning, intentional or not, and brushing aside any movie because its message isn’t deeply imbedded enough is, at the very least, insulting to the people involved. To sit and look at a movie like Hereditary (2018) or Neon Demon (2016) and comment about how the deeper message is beneath the surface and the horror is what you feel and.. well, I could go on, is to ignore that horror has been telling interesting stories about the human condition since the first vampires were born of fears of porphyria and rabies.

In the future, at the end of a movie, you sit there scratching your head while your one friend who only vapes artisanal clove oil and refers to your fruit salad as a ‘reconstructed charcuterie’ tells you how deep the film you just watched is. It’s ok to hate the movie.. it’s ok to think it was stupid.. it’s ok to want a clear answer to your narrative tales.. and it’s ok to kick that dude out, because seriously, you don’t need that kind of negativity.

Hey Somethings… PCR here.

I know a while ago I gave you my thoughts on AHS : Double Feature and.. at the time, it was rather rosy and hopeful…

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

I have no idea who pitched Season 10, or who OK’d it, but whoever pitched it needs a raise, and whoever OK’d it needs to be fired.  If you can pitch something that turned out like Season 10 did, and can get people to buy into it.. you need to be doing/selling/pitching bigger things than a season of a TV series that.. at this point.. may have gone on too long.

Don’t get me wrong, Red Tide had a lot that I liked (as noted in my previous blog) but they way it was ended was waaaaayy too rushed.  A majority of AHS seasons have been 10 or more episodes, and I think Red Tide could have been a much better story had they given it a full 10.  I know that cancels the whole ‘Double Feature’ vibe they were going for…but when it was done as shitty as this was, things need to be rethought.

That being said, I was really digging the thought and concept of Death Valley…until I found out it was only 4 episodes.

In my opinion, AHS needs to take a long, hard look at itself in the mirror and figure out what worked and what didn’t over the 10 seasons it’s been on.  My biggest fear is that “American Horror StorieS” have given them the idea that they can tell short, non-connected stories that are just as entertaining as their full seasons…and it’s my belief that that kind of thinking is what got us Double Feature.

I can’t even call Double Feature my least favorite season because, to be honest, it didn’t feel like an actual season.

Whatever you call it, and whatever you thought of it…this is one “Double Feature” I wish I had walked out of.

Do you enjoy the Evil Dead series? Or are you a goody two shoes? goody two shoes goody goody two shoes

You don’t like that? ………..screw

Ok, I swear, I’m not just being pithy – it’s just hard to not get an edge of snark in your voice when you are talking about Bruce Campbell in his most famous role of none other than the chainsaw wielding, S-Mart selling, boomstick threatening, words sayin, Ash!

Did his three seasons of horror comedy knock those Deadites down or was that just pillow talk, baby?

Find out on this, the last of our SpoooOooktacular October episodes on, The End: Ash vs. Evil Dead

Ok here we……… groovy!

Full Episode

Before I get into this week’s topic – let me just say that this post includes some spoilers for Halloween Kills.  If you haven’t seen it and you don’t want to have some of it spoiled for you – I suggest you skip this one.

Are they gone?

Ok, good.  We didn’t want them here anyway.

I didn’t want to review Halloween Kills as much as I wanted to talk about what it did right and wrong. You see, the 2018 relaunch/new timeline/thing was, quite literally, the best Halloween movie I have ever seen.  Of course it is hard to compare it to the 70’s original, but that movie defined the tropes of the ‘unkillable monster kills kids’ genre, but with that said, it did what no other Halloween movie had done other than the original… it engaged me.

Now, I love slasher flicks, obviously – but the reason you just don’t see that many is because the genre is stale with a rare exception (See: Terrifier, The Strangers) and there doesn’t feel like much more you can staple on to the old classics of Jason and Michael. But Halloween turns itself around. It isn’t a movie about a monster hunting a woman – it is about a woman who is prepared to kill the monster. It’s Laurie Strode’s movie. She isn’t the final girl – she is the protagonist.

Halloween Kills, as the middle chapter of the preordained trilogy, had hard shoes to fill.  How do you keep the two away from each other so you can get to the actual really real final showdown, but also continue to try and turn the genre on its head?

You show what the PTSD of this monster caused to the town, the collective character of Haddonfield.  With literal pitchforks in hand, this is a story of a hundred people who think they are just like Laurie Strode. They feel guilt about surviving, fear over Myers’ inevitable return, pain at what they’ve lost… and collectively they try and face Michael — and inevitably, they fail.  It really is a brilliant concept, and I bet a few passes around with great writers could have evolved it into a movie just as strong as 2018’s was, but it can’t help but lean into its tropes, bury itself like a hatchet into the skulls of its viewer, and misses every mark along the way.

Somehow, the first film subverts its tropes and has ascended to easily the greatest slasher film of the last decade – and yet, even with a brilliant take on a sequel, the most recent film can’t help but feel like it has taken a step right back into what made people bored with the slasher genre to begin with.

I hope the final act continues the trend of giving us a different story than the one we expect. We’ve seen slashers die before, hell, we’ve seen Michael Myers die a couple of times.. the key is to make us still surprised by the idea.

Sure, Raimi did shakycam first… but did he give an actor a camera and tell them to just act like a dickweed for a few days and then scare the bajeezus out of him?  No, that is Blair Witch territory – a movie franchise you either love or hate.

Maybe you love it because you fell for the gimmick of a movie that might have been real. Maybe you loathe the handicam films that it spawned. Perhaps, you love the whole mythos of the Burkittsville, MD creepy cryptid and need to know everything…

No matter what your stance is, they did a movie in 2016 that you didn’t see – and we’re going to review it. Is it as original as the first one? Does it answer the questions we threw into the damned river? Does it blow snotbubbles and apologize?  Find out on Something In Review!

Ok, here we go.. standing in the corner…

Full Episode

It’s spoOooOoOokytime! 

So how better than to bring in the Autumnal Season of Horror than with two of our favorite people out in the internet’o’verse?

This week, the Somethings are talking about a very particular topic. Some horror movies are good.. some horror movies are bad.. but, what SECOND horror movies are worth giving a shot? Of course anyone can talk about Texas Chainsaw X: Leatherspace or Leprechaun: Bring It On, but when you are only limited to the sophmore outing of your horror series, what’s out there that triumphs?

Joining us are none other than the Silver Screams (@Silver_Screams) – Megan Salinas (@themenguin) and Katie Cullen (@kiaxet) – two internet savvy fear fatales that you can find anywhere fans are talking about the things they love.

So get yourself some Pun’kin Spice, and ok, here we BOO!

Full Episode