Search Results for: horror movie review

Five Scary Movies – Eden Royce

As a fun part of Blogtoberfest, I asked my artist friends to send me their top five scary movies. The results were varied and interesting.

Here’s Eden Royce’s list:

My top five scary movies are:

The Thing

PsychoJ.D.’s Revenge

Army of Darkness

Ganja and Hess

Bio:
Eden Royce is descended from women who practiced root, a type of conjure magic in her native Charleston, South Carolina. She’s been a bridal consultant, reptile handler, and stockbroker, but now writes dark fiction about the American South from her home in the English countryside.

She is the author of Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, a short story collection that features the language and traditions of the Gullah-Geechee people, descendants of the first slaves brought to the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. She also conceived and edited The Grotesquerie, an anthology of twenty-one horror short stories written by women.

Eden writes for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Graveyard Shift Sisters, a site dedicated to purging the black female horror fan from the margins and Dirge, the premier dark culture magazine, covering counterculture arts and entertainment, lifestyle, and editorials.

Website: edenroyce.com

Thriller Movie Review: The Towering Inferno

Title: The Towering Inferno
Genre: Thriller, Action, Drama
Director: Irwin Allen, John Guillermin
Writers: Richard Martin Stern … (novel) Thomas N. Scortia … (novel) and Frank M. Robinson … (novel) Stirling Silliphant … (screenplay)
Stars: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Robert Vaughn…..
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4392454/

HERE MAY BE SPOILERS

Portions of the movie may or may not be revealed.

Synopsis:
At the opening party of a colossal, but poorly constructed, office building, a massive fire breaks out that threatens to destroy the tower and everyone in it.

“To those who give their lives, so that others may live
– to the firefighters of the world –
this picture is gratefully dedicated.”

I decided to watch this one yesterday afternoon. Why? I had seen an article on “Airplane” and that got me thinking about the seventies disaster movies. I had two hours with nothing pressing to do, so I turned it on. The movie is over two hours long, which may be a little too much for those weaned on Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich. However, The Towering Inferno sticks to the seventies formula of disaster movies wherein it develops its characters, then does its best to kill them off.

Inferno also includes the list of Hollywood A-listers (for that time) such as Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman (who my children know only as Doc Hudson from Cars), “faded stars” such as Jennifer Jones, Fred Astaire, William Holden as well as a few “in the background, I know that guy/gal: O.J. Simpson, Robert Wagner (Hart to Hart), and Gregory Sierra (as a child of the 70s, I know him from Sanford and Son as well as Barney Miller). They all interact in one way or another, giving the audience snippets of their personal drama.

By the time we get to love/hate the characters, the real villain of the movie, the fire, is in full force. While the special effects are a little spotty, I have to say, this movie does a lot better with its accurate portrayal of fire and people on fire than some of the movies today. Sure, you can see the stuntman’s gloves as he’s engulfed in flames, but I’m so impressed that they actually SET SOMEONE ON FIRE to get a shot, I don’t even care. It is a movie after all.

Since you get to know the characters (and are not a cynical person), the deaths aren’t throwaway set pieces. I mean, the scene was set so well, and the people involved were portrayed as real human beings, I found myself yelling at the security guard “Don’t open the damn door, can’t you see the smoke?”

It had been so long since I’d seen the film, I wasn’t sure who was going to live or die, which added to the suspense. The movie was well paced, in that it balanced action scenes with quick bits of drama and further character development.

The effects and shots of the burning tower were quite realistic: kudos to the model makers and special-effects photography – it’s a sight better looking than anything produced by the SyFy channel. In fact, I found myself so engrossed with who was going to live/die, that the effects were secondary, but quite convincing.

Is the movie dated? It depends, I suppose on your point of view. I went into the film to enjoy it, not to point out flaws or issues. I simply set all that aside and kicked back. Certainly, some of the fashions will make you look twice and comparisons to 9/11 are inevitable, but all in all, it’s a pretty good movie, even over forty years later.

Grade: A – Watch it for nostalgia, stay for the action and drama.

Thriller Movie Review: Bound to Vengeance

Title: Bound To Vengeance
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Director: Jose Manuel Cravioto
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230213/

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.
Do not read this review if you don’t want portions of the movie revealed.

This movie was recommended to me by an author friend of mine. Given that I don’t shy away from the sometimes terrible thriller/horror movies on Netflix (except the ones that are CLEARLY Lifetime movies), I didn’t hesitate to give this one a shot.

Synopsis: A young girl, chained in the basement of a sexual predator, escapes and turns the tables on her captor.

First of all, the protagonist was a young woman, not a young girl. Young girl implies to me a ten year old. Second, after I viewed the movie, I went back to the imdb listing and discovered that two men wrote the screenplay, which didn’t surprise me at all.

One big thing for me with this film: Black woman dies first. WTF? We haven’t got past that yet? Seriously? Enough with this already.

Basically, young woman escapes, then realizes dude has women trapped up all over the place. He tells her, if he dies, they all die since he’s the only one who knows where they are. So, young woman makes the choice to try to rescue all the women.

One complaint I read about the movie was that if she’d just escaped, she’d be all about going to the police. I give the movie a pass, because, her decision to go rescue the other girls hooked me into the movie.

So, like I said previously, she goes to rescue the black woman first, and she dies by accident. The second rescue goes just as badly. But even as stuff went down, I found myself asking “Why are you letting the psycho dude do all the talking? You know these women must be a little nuts…at least TRY to talk some sense into them, don’t just sit back and let him run his mouth.”

These two incidents happened at the beginning of the action and kind set me against the movie. The flashbacks are interesting, but reminded me of Cloverfield. As a woman of a certain age, I was like “why the heck is all this being filmed, how boring”, even as I knew it was being filmed for a payoff at the end. Chekov’s video footage, if you will.

The confrontation with the secondary villain was just strange and not very compelling.

I will say that the main actress played the part to the hilt and she did an excellent job. The issue of sex trafficking and kidnapping is made real without being super obvious. The material itself, however, was not up to par and parts of the movie had me scratching my head.

This could have been much more than it was. I wouldn’t give it a second viewing, but I don’t feel it was a waste of time.

Grade: C

Movie Review – Flashback – Stir of Echoes

Title: Stir of Echoes
Genre: Thriller/Supernatural Horror
Director: Davis Koepp
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164181

Hey there lovelies!

I’m taking a little vacation for the month of the December, which means I’m cleaning house (literally and figuratively) and sussing out my goals for 2016. Which in turns means movies and music galore! It’s a relief sometimes to take a step away from the pen and paper….but that doesn’t stop the ideas from bubbling over.

Back to the movies. I took a little step back in time to screen Stir of Echoes. I remember watching this back in the day when it first came out on DVD. It’s based on a novel by Richard Matheson, who, as you must well know, wrote Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, I Am Legend and a few other horror/thriller stories. (I use the word “few” as being funny. Matheson was pretty prolific.)

I must say, for a film from the 90s, it holds up pretty well. I enjoyed Kevin Bacon’s younger incarnation – he’s got the loveliest clear blue eyes. I could have done without the “magical negro” trope and the only non-white people in the film were located in a crappy part of town, but other than that, the narrative surrounding Kevin Bacon’s hypnosis by his sister in law (played by a cool Ileana Douglas) and the resulting plot madness is pretty good.

I’ve read the original Matheson story, and because of the dated plot, the screenwriter took some liberty in changing the plot that I don’t really think affected the overall tension and theme.

Also, a slightly tattooed (on his back) Kevin Bacon, sweaty and shirtless. He’s kind of thin in this movie, but it’s still kinda hot in a trailer park kind of way.

Watch or not to watch?:

If you like supernatural thrillers and messages from the other side visited upon a common group of folks, I’d recommend this movie. Screen it for the story and remember it takes place in the 90s when cell phones were NOT commonplace. If you put yourself back in time and watch the movie for what it is, you’ll enjoy it. I know I did.

Grade: A minus

Movie Review – Shrew's Nest

Title: Shrew’s Nest
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Drama
Director: Juanfer Andrés, Esteban Roel
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3417756/

Synopsis according to IMDB:
Spain, 1950s. Montse’s agoraphobia keeps her locked in a sinister apartment in Madrid and her only link to reality is the little sister she lost her youth raising. But one day, a reckless young neighbor, Carlos, falls down the stairwell and drags himself to their door. Someone has entered the shrew’s nest… perhaps he’ll never leave.

This little gem from Spain took me by surprise. As always, I started in the morning, so that any residual fright would wear off by the time I went to bed. Yes. I love horror movies, but I’m the world’s worst scaredy-cat.

(One time I watched Jeeper Creepers 2 for the first time and went to bed. I kept expecting the Creeper to come out of my closet. And no, I’m not 12.)

Anyhoo, this film is in Spanish with English subtitles, so I had to pay close attention to the screen in order to understand what was going on. Let me tell you, I’ve seen a ton of movies working with the same material, but this one presented it in a new and thoroughly shocking way, at least for me. The actors kept the…some may say “tired” plot going until its climax.

It is a psychological drama combined with a horror/slasher so there’s plenty of dark, spooky shadows and sticky blood for all.

The visuals are top notch and, well, the 50s fashion and hair I just loved.

Grade: B+

Watch or not to watch?: Catholic guilt and sin, religious imagery, blood and crazy ladies your thing? Watch it. It has echoes of both Misery and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. And as I said above, if you have watched enough movies, you know where the movie is going and where it has been….but enjoy it for what it is, spooky, Gothic and damned bloody!