2012

Anytime a horror film starts with old home movies, you know something terrible is going to be lurking behind that grainy footage, like an alien or monster or young Adolf Hitler. This one wastes no time letting you know you’re in for: 45 minutes of snuff films. Actually, you are watching a failing author watch the snuff films. It’s like “found footage,” if you were the person who actually found the footage, and not the 13 editors who put together convenient security camera footage.

Ethan Hawke plays alcoholic writer Ellison Oswalt, who selfishly moves his family into a house where there were a series of gruesome murders. He doesn’t tell his family about it, because he is hoping the ghosts will be his muses and give him another best selling book. Because that’s how ghosts work, of course: through philanthropy and patronage.

Ellison discovers a trove of super 8 snuff films in the attic left there by the previous owners (who apparently went through escrow in hell). He decides to watch them all and take notes; as if he was watching a nature film and not the death of a bunch of people through grisly ways.

His wife (who somehow stays with him even though he obviously isn’t a very good at letting go of the past) enables him by understanding that it’s okay for Ethan to hang out in his locked den for hours at a time in the dark. His son has night terrors and sleepwalks (which happened before they moved into this sprawling death ranch). His daughter acts like you would expect a ginger too: making light of everything while painting super dark pictures.

Instead of fleeing, he asks a professor at a local college who is an expert in criminology and the occult (because there is always a professor) about what he has seen. The professor gives him a quick overview of what the “demon” might be, and THEN asks him why he is so interested. This is the worst trope ever. I don’t care if I was the leading expert in Old Testament goat demons, I would still make sure the person asking me about them was on the up-and-up and not trying to start a cult with the blood of children and puppies.

Nevertheless, they finally decide it is probably best they get the hell out of that house and move back home, which is a HUGE mansion. These damn writers, never satisfied. The family’s fates were sealed as soon as a writer go too addicted to snuff films. He could have just watched one, said NOPE, and just look at Reddit for ghoulish inspiration.

If there is anything to be brought away from is movie, it is to never be the child of a true crime writer. You’ll just end up living in murder houses and dealing with rampant alcoholism and your only friends are a demon who feasts on the innocence of the young. Just run away and join the circus; you’ll be safer.

Kindred Spirits | TLC

This show on TLC is a slight spin-off of Ghost Hunters on SyFy, but instead just involves two people and the ghosts are more “personal.” Which is a nice TLC way of saying, “These ghosts are annoying and I fear for my family’s lives.”

The above link is the full first episode and if you’ve never seen a ghost hunting show before, then you might enjoy the 45 minutes of family therapy with a side of static-y voices from beyond the grave. And then have lots of questions.

The process is pretty simple. Two paranormal investigators, Amy and Adam, interview family members and witnesses who believe their home is haunted. This lady has the unfortunate luck of having both inside AND outside ghosts. Your dog will never be safe!

Amy and Adam do both an investigation with the family members and also alone, just in case the deceased ghosts have some sort of grudge against the family. It’s for the safety of the clients and the safety of their sanity probably too. Amy and Adam see and hear a lot more paranormal activity than the family. If I witnessed what they did, I would say to the TLC crew, “Uh, you people are never leaving. You are staying here forever. Don’t leave me with these balls of energy!” I wonder if there’s been any reports of ghost hunters being kidnapped after they confirmed the place was haunted…horror movie screenwriters, please call me.

Anyway, Amy and Adam are also adept at researching the history of the property (or an underpaid production assistant is), and they discover there were 2 pretty gruesome deaths on the property decades ago. It’s kind of gross to think about one of them, so I’ll let that be a shocking and vomit-inducing surprise for you!

2016

 I decided to Live Tweet the TV Movie. I had fun watching it, but I understand why some people hated it, too.

1986

When a movie is rated R in 1986, you already know it is going to be a rough one. And this weird story did not disappoint, nor did it stray from the fact that rich white people are fucking crazy. In any time period.

We open in Geneva at a grand estate in the Summer 1816, where author/poet/sister-lover/all-around-sociopath Lord Byron has invited Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley (who is not Mary Shelley yet, but will be soon), her step-sister Claire (also Lord Byron’s lover), and his doctor Polidori. I never want to be at a party where a doctor his hired just to make sure people don’t die due to “creature” attacks or heart attacks during drug infused orgies.

Every single guest of the household is most definitely in the throws of a syphilis outbreak (except maybe the rats), and they exhibit beyond bizarre behavior that would make those people in The Invitation blush. As the night goes on, the thunderstorms become more intense, as well as the confessions.

Lord Byron may be bisexual, but he also likes to pretend he’s having sex with his sister via the maid in a mask. The doctor is definitely in love with Lord Byron and deals with it by drinking jars of leeches and giving himself a bit of stigmata. Percy Shelley has been spending far too time near the galvanizing plant and probably has the most fried brain of them all. Mary is there to hang out with her future husband and bipolar step-sister to make sure neither of them get struck by lightning or thrown in a stew by Lord Byron.

As the night goes on, and the orgies start to bore them, they decide to read from a book of German ghost stories, which is a phrase I never want to hear ever again. Through a haze of alcohol, morphine, probably absinthe, definitely hallucinogens, the group somehow thinks they have conjured up an evil presence that has taken over the house. It also provides the perfect setting for the appearance of monsters and ghosts and just gross jump cuts. There also seems to be a massive wolf problem on the property that needs to be addressed. Although, Lord Byron probably just wants to fuck a wolf too. Some of his fetishes would make the internet blush.

Is this what all parties are like at writers’ homes? I thought people just drank overpriced wine in turtlenecks and talked about tiresome details of totalitarian universes.

The movie ends with everything returning to “normal” and the talks of all their next projects. Where in Mary’s (almost Shelley) case is going to the Frankenstein. The maids and butlers are all polite, acting like nothing happened. Because i’m assuming this happens every weekend, and the rug cleaning bill is getting absurd.

2015

The film begins in the Vatican, where apparently non-Tom Hanks movies are allowed to be set. Two cardinals are reviewing a tape of a very ill looking young woman who exhibits all the signs of being possessed by a demon: sweating, no makeup, terribly greasy hair, and of course the intermittent demon mark on her face.

In a series of flashbacks, we find out the woman (Angela…too easy) is a fan of posting and answering questions about demons and satanism online. Her boyfriend, Pete is getting together a surprise party for her 25th birthday and her very religious army dad is joining them.

She cuts her finger while cutting the cake and reluctantly heads to the hospital for a seemingly innocuous injury. Of course, it isn’t. Because I’ve seen this before, except her “accident” is about to affect a whole slew of people. First ravens start following her around. Then she causes two car accidents; the last one sends her into a coma for 40 days. When they get her to wake up, she isn’t the same.

A priest played by Michael Peña tries to help her by committing her to a mental hospital. I guess demons don’t like 200 thread count bed sheets, because Angela slowly begins murdering everyone around her. The hospital is finally like, NOPE, go home lady. However, instead of sending her home with just her dad and boyfriend, the priest convinces them to allow an exorcism. The priest sends for one of the Vatican cardinals. The other has to stay behind, because I guess he is the only one who has the password to the Vatican archives. Not very fail-safe-y of you, Pope Frankie.

The exorcism doesn’t go quite as planned, because we find out Angela isn’t possessed by a demon, because she’s actually the anti-Christ and she was born that way. So she’s not like a Body AirBnB for evil. More like the devil has a mortgage on this body, and he’s about to foreclose the world. 

Her mother was a hooker, so even though Jesus can forgive them, Lucifer is far more judgy. It’s kind of disappointing that the anti-Christ can be born of a normal Army Roman Catholic and a call girl, but then again maybe he isn’t her father. Maybe one of the Koch brothers is her actual father.   

Since no amount of praying works, everyone in the house is blown up and she walks away with perfect hair and a few extra holes in her body. Stigmata is totally this year’s Alex & Ani bracelets.

Three months later, a still alive Father Lozano (Michael Peña), shows up at the Vatican where the priest who stayed back shows him a room of horrors. It’s basically every shred of evidence the Vatican has been collecting for a millennium that show demonic possession. The Vatican is so emo. 

Apparently Father Lozano was recovering in a convent, because he hasn’t seen the news since the house explosion. Vatican priest shows him videos of Angela performing miracles and amassing followers. While she is getting TV shows and endorsements, she looks extremely dead behind the eyes and constantly looking for a camera to be on. She’s like a Kardashian now. Uh-oh…everyone quick! Go put holy water in their Botox!

1988

The VHS box of this movie scared me more than anything else. I remember avoiding looking directly at it when I was a kid. As if the image itself would seep into my nightmares. I wasn’t entirely wrong. There is an entire genre of art meant to just creep people out and possibly make them vomit or worse. Those MagicEye pictures, man….

After a boy (Ed) witnesses the dismemberment and death of his neighbor in the 1950s by a supernatural beast, he grows up and for some reason decides to stay in the same house. Unfortunately they are in the backwoods of some southern mountain range, so “getting out of dodge” was probably not plan A or plan B thru Z, supernatural beast or not.

The boy, who is now a grown man with a son, runs a fruit stand and grocery that seems to be the only semblance of civilization for miles around in this small town. Unfortunately, this is also where any “city folk” stop by for their snacks and general douche-baggery.

In this case, it is a group of 20-somethings who love dirt biking. Eventually their drinking and carousing gets the best of them and they run over and kill the son, Billy, who was running after his dog. For once, the pet is safe! Thank goodness! Oh yeah, bummer about your son, Ed.

What makes it even worse is that the 20-somethings go back to their cabin and King DBag, Joel, doesn’t let them call for help, because he is on probation for running over a little kid a few months ago. He even locks a couple in the closet and knocks out another friend when he tries to leave. So we’ve got vehicular manslaughter, hit and run, kidnapping, assault, drunk driving, and probably a whole other list of things. Yeah, this guy deserves everything the supernatural and real universe is about to throw at him.

The father vows revenge and pays off a dirt kid (literally, the kid is just FULL of dirt) Bunt, to tell him where the mountain witch lives. Obviously the witch knows how to conjure up the beast we saw in the beginning of the movie, or why else would that scene exist? So he goes to the pumpkin graveyard. Now, I’m not sure if this is just where they put rotten pumpkins, or where an old cemetery was and a pumpkin patch had overgrown it. This is when I was told I was asking too many questions.

Ed gets grossed out trying to dig up the bones of the Pumpkinhead, but remembers what he is there for: avenge the death of his son through witchcraft and not proper means of the law; which out here in South Deliverance might be just as draconian as a beast mangling.

Pumpkinhead wastes no time wasting those “dirt bikers.” As a very agile beast, his favorite means of torture seems to be picking up these Dbags by their faces and slinging them from the highest tree branch. Like a less bloody version of the Claw Game at arcades.

Ed now feels bad, because one, he’s murdering dumb kids, and two, every time Pumpkinhead murders a Dbag, he feels it too, because he is slowly becoming Pumpkinhead. Obviously this witch isn’t like Ursula, who had the decency to write up a contract before ruining someone’s life. No honor among hillfolk, I guess.

He tries to stop the beast but ends up just getting killed himself. But that’s okay, because once he dies, so does the beast. But two out of the six 20-somethings are still alive. Not a bad body count for a cult horror movie. However, now the only grocer in the area is now gone with no heir to take over. That witch better be damn good at washing fruit. And not just pumpkins.

1961

This film does not disappoint in the “Soundtrack of Nightmares” department: screaming in an empty house, bird chirping at night, whistling during a rain storm, the horrid sounds swans make, and children non-stop humming. Just non stop, it’s awful.

An uncle (who is a massive dick) inherits his “bratty” niece and nephew. All he wants to do is be a traveling playboy in Victorian Era England, so he hires a completely amateur governess to basically take all parenting off his heartless hands. He also complains how “inconvenient” it was that the former governess died. He has shipped the nephew, Miles, off to boarding school, and stuffed the niece, Flora, into one of his country houses to keep her both occupied and non-existent. The governess, Miss Giddens (played by Deborah Kerr), naively accepts this job happily. Because all orphans with absent father figures are gonna be a breeze, right?

When Miss Giddens gets to the house, Flora introduces her to her pet and best friend, a turtle Rupert. I’ve seen enough horror movies lately that I know where this is going, and I’m afraid for this turtle. Run away, little reptile. Evil doesn’t like pets.

The brother arrives home after being kicked out of boarding school for being “insecure.” Which I assume in Victorian language means, “Your kid was kicked out because he was acting creepy as fuck, and we feared for our lives, and the lives of our animals.” And he hits the ground running with his serious sociopath issues. He tells the governess he likes to lie awake in the dark, spends hours playing with pigeons, and puts the governess in a headlock during the worst game of hide-and-go-seek yet.

While she is hiding (either for the game or from these devil children), she sees the male ghost for the first time up close. The is a real in your face ghost; no pussy footing around and lurking in the shadows for this guy. He has no qualms about entering your personal space. Which in Victorian Era England was 12 square feet, I believe. When she exhibits the obviously scared face one you get when you see a ghost, the children seem to laugh maniacally at her. Or maybe just their laughs are always maniacal.

The children are getting creepier, the ghost sightings are getting more frequent, and Miss Giddens outfits are getting more blacker. Not where she got all these “grieving” outfits from, since she was wearing normal clothes at the beginning of the film. Maybe she just brought along a few funeral outfits “just in case.”

We find out the male ghost was the valet who came home one night drunk, and slipped on the ice and died. The boy, Miles, was the one who found him. This gives clues to the reason why the kid is so weird, but not why the little girl is. We then find out the valet’s girlfriend was the former governess. She also became a former person after he died. She basically starved and crazied herself to death. Equally shitty times to be a child in this house.

The governess is getting a little nuts, and asks for help from the housekeeper to keep the children safe. She truly believes that these two ghosts want to inhabit the bodies of the children so that the couple can be together again. EWWWWWWW child molesting AND incest. Gross. I’m never living in the county.

Miss Giddens goes full out breakdown mode which would land anyone in the nut house, even today. She screams at the girl because she won’t admit to seeing the lady ghost. She then banishes everyone from the house, except for her and Miles. She keeps insisting she wants to “be alone with him.” I need a backstory on this woman’s childhood: stat.

In some weird exorcism/green house sauna cleansing, she tries to stop Miles from becoming evil and insist that only he has the power to banish the ghosts to hell. Okay lady, I get that you think you are working in this boy’s best interest, but seriously, he’s not stable. Then he picks up the turtle, and I was done. Actually I was done after Miss Giddens kisses Miles full on the lips to get him to wake up. I’m glad I didn’t see this story as a play it was based on. I would have thrown up in the theater.

2008

I never got around to seeing this movie when it first came out for two reasons: one, obviously it was supposed to be a scary monster movie and I’m not a fan of those, although I am slowly coming around. And two, I heard so many people got sick seeing it that I didn’t want to waste money on a movie that could possibly result in both motion sickness and a nightmare.

If this movie was made today, the kids would use a Go-Pro and Twitter alerts would be non-stop. Cell phones would still not work in the subway, though inexplicably in this movie they do. The idea was actually pretty clever for the time: a found footage movie shot exclusively on one handheld video camera that is the exact length of a DV tape (80 minutes). While someone was probably just like, “JJ Abrams is just cheap and wanted to save a bunch of money.” However, then you remember Steven Spielberg is a producer and this movie cost over $25 million to make. I think that budget is bigger than any of the other movies I watched this month. Combined.

I remember this film being one of the first major viral marketing campaigns. The characters had MySpace profiles. No one actually knew what the movie was, or even if it was a monster movie. JJ Abrams spread rumors that the internet took as Bible and ended up with some pretty interesting (and also some disturbing) fan fiction. It’s like they jump started a revolution in movie marketing. It certainly jump started the careers of almost everyone in this movie.

If I didn’t know who these actors were before seeing the movie, I would definitely be wishing all of their annoying asses to be squished by the first fifteen minutes. Also, how did no one from NYC leave this movie without having flashbacks to 9/11 and suing the studio? The destruction of lower Manhattan was still pretty fresh. I guess when you factor in fake monsters, instead of real ones, the terror is less palpable. Also people were more worried at this time about losing their houses to foreclosure then the trigger warning of a monster movie. 2008 sucked.

The end of the movie leaves the universe wide open to sequels, but JJ either never got around to producing one, or his soul was promptly sold to Disney and the only way to get it back is to produce 1200 episodes of television programs for ABC. Either way, I actually enjoyed this monster, who is a mixture of a horse, octopus, and bat…maybe? With a dinosaur or two thrown in there? I then read the creative director said the monster was a baby who was scared and just looking for its mother. Wait, there’s another one of these things out there? And it is bigger? And possibly lactating?

All I know is, after this month, if I find myself at a party with a bunch of beautiful rich people, get the hell out of there, because shit is about to go down.

2015

This is one of those movies that makes fun of slasher flicks but also is an endearing love letter to them as well. Unlike the parodies of Scary Movie franchise, this one becomes almost meta, as if the characters become both self-aware and dragged into an alternate universe at the same time.

The main character, Max (who is coincidentally played by Taissa Farmiga, Vera’s sister – I’m patronizing that family this week, I guess) is the daughter of an 80s scream queen who is failing as an actress in present day. She then ends up failing as a living person, when a car accident kills her and leaves Max a psychologically damaged teenager (as if there are any other kinds in LA).

Three years later and Max is still trying to cope with the death of her mother, when her best friend’s step-brother basically begs her to show up at a screening of her mom’s most famous movie, Camp Bloodbath. It’s pretty dick  move to force the daughter of a dead woman to relive her finest moments. And also make her relive that time her mom got naked and had simulated sex on screen.

Max brings her best friend and tutor/love interest along for moral support. In some strange string of events, the movie theater catches on fire and the group of friends try to escape through the movie screen. Instead, they end up going WAY over the rainbow and end up actually in the movie world of Camp Bloodbath with the characters, including Max’s mother.

Since they have all seen the movie, they know how the movie ends and they are just sitting ducks waiting for the killer to show up. However, the characters hold the same dumb logic as they do in the movie and therefore won’t believe these interlopers and their predictions of the future. Instead they try their best to stave off death for themselves (while still letting the other characters get murdered) and somehow make it back home.

Unfortunately, they all develop bonds with the movie characters and don’t want them to die, so they try to save them. Obviously they can’t, because if no one dies, no one can escape. This movie’s themes go way deeper than I can wrap my head around sometimes.

After 92 minutes (classic horror movie length) the cross-dimensional time issue is resolved and the friends are all safe again. Or are they?

2013

First off, this movie should have been called The JumpScare. I like a good ghost story, I do, but when you start with dolls and end up with witch demons, I have trouble trusting you, filmmaker. That being said, this was actually a good movie, and I can see why it made so much money. Well that, and also people will line up out the door to see Patrick Wilson in a turtleneck.

The story actually starts with a set up for a spin-off. This director knows how to keep the studio in his pocket. It also introduces the protagonists of the story: Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). They are paranormal investigators who are trying to figure out why two dumb nurses would invite a ghost into their house. I mean, I’m sure rent was expensive in 1968, but telling a demon it can inhabit a doll is not the way to Air BnB. Although, I would pay to see someone make money off that concept.

Ed is a demonologist and Lorraine is clairvoyant. They tag team their “cleansings” and make a nice amount of money along the way. Most of the hauntings so far are your classic, run of the mill ghost sightings. Nothing that can’t be fixed with a good Latin bible quote and some sage burning.

Enter the conjuring family: a large family moves to Rhode Island (incidentally one of the states that does not have the disclosure of “weird shit happens here” clause) and into a run-down house by a body of water. The Perron family immediately starts noticing weird noises and their children sleepwalking. Their dog also does not want to enter the house. When I go house hunting, I’m definitely bringing a dog with me. I don’t need to find out my house is haunted AND the pets don’t want to come inside.

When the ghost goes from bump-in-the-night to bump-on-the-head, the Perrons contact the Warrens and the World’s Worst Sleepover begins! Ed and Lorraine move into the house for a couple nights and set up their extreme cache of cameras, video recorders, and sound recorders. Immediately they both capture things and start to get the shit knocked out of them all. Lorraine finds out a witch sacrificed her baby to Satan (not sure who else you can sacrifice your baby to in the 19th century), and then decided that wasn’t enough. So she hung herself from the creepiest tree in the front yard. Because when you’re a witch, you need to make a dramatic exit, otherwise people won’t know your intentions.

The house then becomes a haven for malevolent spirits and demons over the next century, making sure that everyone who entered the house was immediately cloaked in a dark mass of depression and death. Infanticide is the new black, we get it.

Ed and Lorraine decide the house needs an exorcism post-haste and beg a local priest to help them. The priest is a little shaky since the kids aren’t baptized and the family doesn’t belong to a church. Good to know the Catholic Church was always being assholes to children. Ed decides that maybe his Latin is strong enough that he could do it himself. And it’s a good thing he does, because the Perron mom is about to get inhabited by the demon witch and go full on psychopath. The demon is somehow banished back to hell and the family now has an un-sellable house and a huge therapy bill coming their way.

This is probably the first “scary” movie I’ve seen this month and I have some thoughts:

• Wind chimes are terrible sounding in any decade and I will be damned if i ever allow them in my home.
• The best horror movies are set in the 70s and prior because that’s when they wear those weird looking nightgowns.
• Vera Farmiga somehow looks both young and old at the same time.
• It’s amazing that more toys from the 19th century aren’t possessed. All of them were creep AF.