horror

Horror Movie Review – Jack in the Box

Title: Jack in the Box (2019)

Synopsis:

When a vintage Jack-in-the-box is un-earthed and opened, its new owners soon have reason to believe the creepy clown doll within has a life of its own. (from imdb.com)

Genre: Horror

Opinion:

The creepy clown doll has more life than this movie. Not recommended. Read on to find out why.

The movie opens with an older fellow in a field with a metal detector. We horror movie veterans know he’s going to find something he shouldn’t which is going to wreak havoc for the rest of the movie. What does he find? Well, true horror fans, you’ll be pleased to know he finds the creepiest Jack in the Box ever. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of things that jump out of boxes, and this clown is super creepy. But let’s face it folks if it weren’t so scary looking then it wouldn’t be a horror movie now would it?

This opening sequence has very little dialogue but it does have a lot of action and right off the bat we’re privy to what the occupant of the box actually does. I like when horror movies like this do that. It lets the audience know what to expect from the movie monster and all we’re doing is watching to see who gets it first and how.

The movie’s protagonist is some milquetoast dude named Casey and he is supposedly an American. But I will tell you this, he neither looks nor acts like any American I’ve ever seen in any horror movie ever. While I suspect the actor himself is not American I’m not going to quibble about their casting choice. the real movie opens 12 years later after the opening sequence in a Toy Museum. apparently the Jack-in-the-Box has found its way there and sits in the storeroom just waiting to claim its next victim.

Note: The box has four letters along the top and when it is first revealed the letters spell DYBK (I think, I couldn’t be arsed to rewind, so if I’m wrong let me know in the comments), which immediately made me think of the Dybbuk box. Just a side note to show how horribly detail oriented I am. Also, how less than impressed I was with the acting.

After the movie gets going with a bit of character development and backstory, we find out the history of the Jack in the box, which I thought was rather interesting. I love the “expert”: a black dude who comes in, gives his lines, and disappears into the “night”. Very cool part. (Also, he wasn’t around to die.)

I went along with the ride of the movie until about a half hour in, then I became annoyed. There was a lack of …..time passage? I didn’t know how much time passed between scenes. Characters appeared and disappeared without explanation. The main example of this is the woman who worked at the toy museum before Casey got there. She hangs around long enough for the story to get started, then she’s just….gone. She does come back later in the movie, but it’s just odd the way the movie rolls out.

Through the obligatory internet search, we find out about the Jack in the Box and the evil contained within.

What I also found interesting about this movie was the number of people who took the time to pause, stare, and speak to this creepy looking exhibit. Plus, though they seemed to be put off by it, they had no problem insulting it! Personally, I see something like that, I’m walking right by that mess.

All in all it’s not a great movie. I watched the rest of it just to see how things turned out, but as I mentioned, I had checked out thirty minutes in.

After much ado, I did finish it. Sigh. Unfortunately, good premise,but poor execution. In fact, on some levels it was rather boring. There was some stabbing, some yelling and some Latin. I’m telling you, I was so done with this film, I didn’t even bother to rewind to hear the Latin words. I….didn’t care.

Questions and quibbles:

What was the point of the protagonist being from America? Except for a visit to an American-type diner, this wasn’t mentioned at all. He just as well could have been from France or Canada or Mexico. Also, they never mentioned a state….just “America”.
In the diner, the glasses of soda they are served have no ice and the glasses are dirty. Also, the straws are already unwrapped and put in the glass. Yuk.
Most of the women did not carry purses. I’m sorry, but it’s super rare to see a woman without a purse or a fanny pack or something. (Yes, it’s a small detail, which is why it’s a quibble, LOL)
The protagonist’s backstory was like….wut? It didn’t set him up as sympathetic.

I will say the special effects/costuming of the monster clown was effective and creepy. They did put a lot of work into it and it was done very well.

That’s all folks. I’m sorry this movie wasn’t good and wasn’t bad enough to be fun. It was tedious, illogical, and seemed strung together. Again, great premise, poor execution. The script needed a lot of work.

Horror Movie Review – Hell House, LLC

Title: Hell House, LLC (2015)

Synopsis:
Five years after an unexplained malfunction causes the death of 15 tour-goers and staff on the opening night of a Halloween haunted house tour, a documentary crew travels back to the scene of the tragedy to find out what really happened. (from imdb.com)

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Opinion

Well, well, well. The found footage genre isn’t completely dead.

If you’re a friend of mine on social media, you should well know I’ve never met a found footage film I didn’t like. Well, scrap that, because I realized, yes, I’ve met a few I didn’t care for at all. However, I am fascinated by the whole genre of found footage horror films and never pass up a chance to screen them….if I can take it. Some I won’t see because the gross factor is too high. But that’s blog post for another day.

Hell House, LLC is a little gem I found hiding on Amazon Video. Sidenote- I got the prime membership just for the shipping, but the Video area is kind of like your favorite Palmer Video. I’ve been finding quite a few cool films included with my Prime membership. Back to the movie.

The premise is quite simple: A group of friends put on haunted houses each Halloween season in New York City. This season, they decide to rent an old hotel. The Abbadon hotel in Abbadon, New York. Now, I’m pretty genre savvy, so I knew that Abbadon meant something or other, but was too lazy to reach for my phone to look it up. No matter, because I simply like watching the story unfold before my eyes. Why do research when surely the filmmakers will do it for me?

As a found footage film, this is one of the better ones. There’s not a ton of shaky cam or people yelling profanity at the camera, which is good. The movie opens telling us of an incident that happened five years prior, where people were killed/injured at the opening of the haunted house. It then circles back to before the incident, where the haunted house was being set up.

I must say, this film offered me quite a few scares from places I didn’t expect and had me covering my eyes at one point. It’s fun and it holds together, pretty much, plot wise. There is very little blood/gore – it’s not a slasher film, but I tell you, it’s creepy enough that I remember some of the scenes from it a few weeks later.

Recommended – have fun!

Rating – B

Blogtoberfest – Zombies!

October is the month of being scary, right? But I’m a romance author, so I found a way to combine the two. Loving Among the Dead is the answer that I found. A mix of erotic romance and scary zombie adventure, it’s sure to get your blood racing in one way or the other. Here’s a blurb.

A survivor of a zombie apocalypse that’s ripped her world apart….

Nothing in her graduate history courses prepared Judith Graham for the monotony of her existence in the weeks following a zombie apocalypse. Hiding from the rotted world in her makeshift fortress, she subsists on dehydrated food and lonely thought.

When she gives up and decides to satisfy her need for a break in routine, she crosses paths with Sky Beckett, a high school physics teacher making his way to his Southern childhood home. Several passionate encounters coupled with Sky’s assertion that things are only going to get worse not better, spark Judith’s doubts about the isolated life she’s chosen.

But can an ever-cautious Judith find the strength to leave the false security of her past behind to create a new future with Sky in an uncertain world?

Click the book cover below to purchase:
Please note, this is an erotic romance with a heat level of 4.

Here’s an excerpt:

Judith Graham buried her parents on a Sunday. After a brief prayer, she placed her mother’s favorite plant at the head of her grave, and her father’s pipe—still full of tobacco ashes—at the head of his.

She brushed the dirt from her jeans, tucked the work gloves in her back pocket, and sat on the back deck sipping from a can of warm soda, watching the sun set. There were no tears. Her mother’s pistol was at her side, the gunmetal gleaming in the fading orange light.

Would it have made a difference if she had gotten home sooner?

The letter, written on her mother’s heavy monogrammed stationery, had been propped on the mantel, addressed to “Judith” in even, no-nonsense script. A marked contrast to the pale lavender paper, the black words indicated her father brought home the infection. She shot him in the back of his head when he started making gurgling, groaning sounds at the static on the television. Then she dug their graves, dragged him into his, and shot herself.

Stay hidden. Don’t trust anyone. Her mother’s final words to her. Jude was alone.

Her brother was south, somewhere, Alabama, the last she’d heard. Marcus did what he wanted, when he wanted. She was the good daughter who minded what her parents told her.

It wasn’t so bad at first. Between the initial shock of her parents’ deaths, and making defensive alterations to the house, there was no time or energy to think or feel much of anything.

Once the house was safe, the dehydrated food, water bottles, and toiletries arranged in the first floor den, the camp shower with its battery pump working and the lanterns loaded, there was lots of time to be lonely. Rereading favorite novels, patrolling the inside of the house, and searching for elusive ham broadcasts on the shortwave radio only filled up so much time.

She stopped looking at family photos because they made her cry, leaving her exhausted and listless, lying on the bed or the sofa or the floor for hours until the urge to pee roused her enough to move.

Her neighborhood was deserted. No walking dead bodies roamed the streets. Either her neighbors had gotten out or had been zombified in the confines of their homes, unable to juice up the physical memory necessary to open a door and escape. For that she was grateful. She’d had to smash too many zombie heads on her way back home from Philadelphia for her to revisit it with people she once knew.

3 Vacation Horror Movies

Vacation! Hurray, right? Who doesn’t love going on vacation? it’s a time to relax, have a good time, and drink fruity drinks on the beach or beside the pool. Traveling to a different country, a different atmosphere, it’s enough to give anyone peace of mind, right?

But….things can go horribly wrong, even on a wonderful vacation. You only have to check out these films to see what could possibly happen.

Aftershock:

A film starring Eli Roth, the mastermind behind the wonderfully gross Cabin Fever. Here, he and his friends take a vacation to Chile, where of course they want to party and drink. All the fun goes to hell, however, when there’s an earthquake and the physical infrastructure of the city falls apart around them.

Not a great movie, but it’s a different enough disaster film to keep you interested. I was brought up on disaster movies like Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, and the (original) Poseidon Adventure that I was able to enjoy this effort with “the young folks”. Get some popcorn and have some fun.

Turistas:

I’ve seen this film titled also as Turistas: Go Home, so don’t be put off if you see either title. Again, a group of young people go on vacation to Brazil on what was supposed be a fun vacation. Instead a bus accident maroons them somewhere and well, bad things happen. Again, the premise is interesting, the setting of the jungles of Brazil is lush and beautiful, and of course some of those friends on vacation don’t make it out alive.

Fun fact: The director of this movie, John Stockwell, played the “best friend” in the movie “Christine” based on a Stephen King novel.

The Ruins:

Ah, The Ruins. One of the creepiest, crawliest movies I’ve ever seen. I might be extra squeamish, but I really can’t watch every scene of the film: some of the sequences are too much for me. Take from that what you will. However, this film, which is based on a book by Scott Smith (who also wrote the book A Simple Plan), centers around, you guessed it, a group of friends on vacation. They leave a perfectly good resort to go into some jungle to see some Mayan ruins. And, well, they got ruined.

The Horror Movie Tag

It’s almost that time of year. We’re creeping up on Halloween, which seems to be fast becoming the most popular holiday out of the year! Being a lover of horror movies (in the bright light of morning and afternoon, that is), Halloween is a fun time of the year for me too. Although my children have now outgrown the need to dress up for the holiday–well, except for my youngest, who requested a gas mask to complete his costume–I still enjoy the spirit of the holiday.

I like to keep up with my horror movie watching with this cool journal I created… keeps all your horror movie reviews in a safe place:

As I mentioned, I do love horror movies during the day, so I found a YouTube Tag online that feeds my habit but good. I present to you the Horror Movie Tag.