Quirky Heroines, Happy Endings
1. It
2. Pet Cemetery
3. Children of the Corn
4. Scream
5. Final Destination
Bio: Katara is a happy radio host who likes to read and write. When she is not taking care of grown up responsibilities you can catch her with her kindle in one hand and her phone in the other.
Visit: bit.ly/katarascafe
1. Nightmare On Elm Street
2. The Grudge
3. The Ring
4. The 7th Sign
5. Dawn Of The Dead (Both)
Bio: Sy Shanti is a being who uses many different channels to express a creativity deep rooted in his two first loves as a child, Alchemy, and Horror .
VisitL https://www.facebook.com/
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
Title: The Ouija Experiment, aka The Realm
Genre: Horror, Found Footage-ish
Director: Israel Luna
Writers: Israel LUna
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2364842/
This was a movie that I stumbled upon perusing some streaming service or another. I suppose if you run a search for the title, it will tell you where it’s playing or where you can get it. Honestly, even though IMDB gives it a 3.4 out of 10, I actually enjoyed the movie. I’d even watch it again!
Here’s the setup. There’s a film student (already annoying, lol) who plays with a Ouija board with his four friends. Why? They want to solve the mystery of a drowned girl that happened some time ago. I’m really fuzzy on the details because, well, it just didn’t matter to me after a while.
Let me say upfront…it’s not scary. The acting is bad and the found footage-ish way of filming can by annoying at times. I don’t know if it was the mood I was in, but I thought the film was rather cute. I liked the dynamic of some of the actors, and the self-aware of “I’m a black person in a horror movie” of the black actress was pretty funny at times.
I felt the first hour was quite strong in the way it set up the story. The actors did a pretty good job for a low budget movie that looks like it was filmed in somebody’s house on the fly. In addition, trivia for the movie suggests the actors’ lines were mostly improvised during this first hour. They didn’t do a half-bad job!
As I noted above, when the scary stuff starts, the black actress is the best. She really made me laugh.
A note on the dialogue: this was the best part of the movie. The conversations and rapid exchanges seem real and unrehearsed. Also, the actors have such a good sense of timing, they did not stumble over each other’s lines as is often the case in the found footage movies where the lines are improvised. I just liked hearing the characters chit chat with each other.
Otherwise, the film and its eventual reveal of the long-ago murder was rather flat and boring. Do not watch this movie if you are looking to be frightened. It won’t happen. If you watch it at all, watch it for the actors’ performances and how they interact.
Film Grade: D
Actors Grade: B for snappy dialogue.
Welcome to October, or as I like to call it, thirty days of Halloween Eve!This is one of the first posts of “Blogtoberfest” and it’s also Zombie Awareness Month!
So…..are you aware? More importantly, are you prepared?
Many people are caught unprepared, no matter what the emergency, whether it be a hurricane, snow storm or zombie apocalypse. This is according to the CDC, which has a page on how to prepare for any emergency event, up to and including a zombie apocalypse. If you don’t believe me, click here.
Again, are you prepared to “bug-out” at a moment’s notice? Your Kindle, table or extra-smart phone won’t be of much help when the ravenous, bloody-mouthed hordes of the un-dead start beating at your door. Well, maybe you can throw your device at them, but at the most it’ll only take out one or two.
Okay, now you’re all asking, Dahlia, what can I do to prepare for the zombie apocalypse or any other emergency that might occur?
Well, I’m glad you asked that. Here’s a list of items that are essential to surviving those first few days of utter confusion when there is no more room in Hell and the dead begin to walk the earth.
In addition to having this emergency kit, you should also have an emergency plan for your family. Zombies wait for no one, so mapping the quickest route out of the infected area (and alternate routes) should be of utmost importance. Does your family have a meeting place just in case you are separated? How about an out of state contact that you can either run to or touch base with to ensure members of a family are safe?
Remember, the farther away you can get from a hungry zombie, the better. And the more prepared you are for any emergency, the better off you and your family will be. Take the time today because……..