This is my first “anthology” horror movie, that are all tied together at the end with one common theme. I didn’t know it was this type of movie when I picked it. I picked it because Peter Cushing (of Star Wars pre/non/sequel CGI fame) was billed in the cast. He is only in for like 15 minutes. Still one hell of a quarter-hour though. Nice to see his acting when he was also alive.

The story begins with a young psychiatrist arriving at an asylum for the “incurably insane.” To someone in the medical profession, that really is setting them up for failure. I mean, at least TRY to cure them. Then again, it is 1970s England. I’ve already learned the cops are incompetent, the food was terrible enough to eat people, and yet they still have better healthcare than America. Well, not mental healthcare, but that’s probably what this movie was trying to point out.

The new doctor meets with the current head of psychiatry at the asylum. He tells the doctor that the previous psychiatrist went insane and is currently being held within the asylum. If the new doctor can determine which patient is the crazy shrink, he gets the job! This is probably the most fucked-up game of Guess Who? anyone on the planet has ever played. “Is it a man?” “Does he have crazy eyes?” “Does it look like he has the strength to paralyze another grown man?” “Do demons lurk within the folds of his soul?”

Instead of running away from there and reporting them to the medical board, as any normal person would do, the new doctor decides that hearing “Do you want to play a game?” will somehow end up perfectly well; with everyone getting what they want. I have seen and avoided enough movie trailers to know that it will most definitely NOT. This is an incurable game.

New Doctor meets all the patients and they tell them their stories. There aren’t very many patients here, but the orderly seems to know all their secrets. The last one is my favorite. A former medical doctor himself, Byron, spends his days crafting tiny robots with life-like heads and life-like organs. He claims to have “powers” over these baby robots, and the stop motion special effects are just excruciating to watch.

This film is both un-scary and predictable. Real stories of how mental patients were treated are much more disturbing, although I know it can be seen as disrespectful. It’s a sad world when we treat our dead better than our sick. I mean, hell, we gave Peter Cushing a role in a movie 22 years AFTER he died!

So far, this is my favorite horror movie soundtrack. Although I wouldn’t expect anything less than the director of Animal House and The Blues Brothers. Although this movie is a little different than a drunken romp and road trip. Although just as many boobs though. They literally created a fake porno to show in the movie. And the British cops are just as bumbling as every other London-set film I’ve watched this year.

Boobs and bobbies aside, the story itself isn’t scary; however the special effects are a little more gruesome than I expected. The werewolf transformation scene is what I imagine it would look like if women gave birth alone in the woods, without the fancy beds and drugs and doctors milling around telling her to “stop screaming.”

The story revolves around two American young men who are backpacking across Europe, but unfortunately start in cold, rainy werewolf infested English countryside. They both get attacked by a strange beast. One dies and is forced to roam the earth as a decaying zombie. The other lives and destined to become a werewolf on the next full moon.

Now, I don’t know much about werewolf lure. Most of my knowledge comes from Harry Potter, but it seems like if you know you’re going to change into a man-killing beast, mayyyybe don’t move into a crowded city and shack up with a woman you barely know.

However, maybe that is the theme. Don’t hang around with them city folk and loose women? Stay in the countryside where you can kill arrogant people and be ignored by townspeople. Wait, that last one sounds like the Unabomber. Okay, just don’t eat people–main takeaway. Oh, and cops in London are god awful at their jobs and crowd control.

 

I’ve never been both bored and disturbed by a movie that wasn’t first a play. Yes, I know there are plenty of good plays-turned-movies, but there’s something lost when you aren’t near to the actors. Anyway, this movie actually could have been a play. And I would have bought tickets to see it, even if Naomi Watts was in it or not. And honestly, I never know if I’m looking at Naomi Watts or not. She’s either the most basic looking person or the most chameleon. Like Gary Oldman. I’m going to check to make sure Gary Oldman wasn’t in this movie.

The film is a shot-by-shot remake of the Austrian film by the same name. This always fascinates me when filmmakers do this. Why? Are they lazy? Do they truly believe the first one was so perfect it can’t be improved upon? Or are they in some sort of warped belief that if ONLY they had different actors at the time the first film was made, it would have been a million times better? I don’t know Austrian, so I don’t really have much to compare it to. Although I HAVE seen plenty of rich white people movies, so I have that.

It’s your typical home invasion story where everything seems to go right, for the criminals. Two young men successfully infiltrate the beach house of a wealthy family in a wealthy neighborhood by just mentioning OTHER rich people’s names. If I’m ever a kidnapper, I’m going to be like, “Well Oprah sent me. You know Oprah, right?”

The extra long shots with no breaks add to both the boredom and intensity. The audience has to sort of guess at times what is happening off screen. Or you get to watch TV with the characters. Which is weird, but then I was also wondering what the Austrian people were watching while the characters were watching NASCAR in America. Probably soccer. I don’t think they have any other sports besides soccer in Europe.

Of all the movies I’ve seen in this movie and the past, I honestly don’t recommend this to someone unless you are REALLY, and I mean REALLY in the mindset for it. It’s not just because of the gore, but more of the idea that no one is safe anymore. And people seem to think they are safe because they belong to a community. But when everyone else in the community is also being targeted, there’s no way out. This may be a good time to watch Get Out and compare…

A family decides to move into a fully furnished mansion for the summer, even though the house is suspiciously cheap. They meet the homeowner and her brother, who is the most dandy man I’ve seen in a horror movie so far. They are super eager to get this family to stay here, including some very inappropriate remarks about their 12 year old son. Although maybe it wasn’t inappropriate back then to giggle and call a little boy “full of the devil,” while watching him fall off the porch.

The siblings are going to leave them be, but say that their mother is going to hang out in the attic. She must never be seen, and they must bring her meals three times a day. And the family AGREES! As if this is totally normal. Nevertheless, they move in July 1st and bring the husband’s Aunt Elizabeth (played by Bette Davis).

The first day is full of all kind of surprises that don’t send dumb people running away. The father and son find a graveyard on the property, surrounded by rusted out bikes and farm equipment. The mother, Marian, visits the attic apartment and only finds odd photographs and an old music box (which in my opinion, is the worst sound next to wind chimes and someone whistling at night).

Next, the family is in the pool which subsequently tries to drown them. As in, the pool makes people try to drown each other. The father can’t stop having nightmares, the aunt has no energy, and the mother is slowly trying to turn the entire house into a cover of Unnecessary Gothic Architecture Magazine.

Then, when they wake up one morning, the entire outside is completely clean, and the landscaping is pristine. I mean…if you’re going have a demonic entity, might as well be a good groundskeeper too.

The final straw is when the son gets locked in his room and is slowly being poisoned by a gas leak. Instead of calling someone, the family just starts blaming each other. They start sniping at each other constantly, and it’s a much more realistic dynamic of a family where no one seems to have jobs, but can still afford a mansion house for the entire summer.

The house is now full-on renovating itself, feeding off the agony of it’s inhabitants; ripping down old shingles and spitting out dirty siding. Again, I mean…a demonic entity that is also a speedy contractor AND a good landscaper, still not something to complain about.

 

Crowdfunded movies with no rating premiering on Netflix. Let’s see where this goes…

The movie starts with a massacre in a drug house in the woods followed by two guys burning a body, all while a person in a white sheet with a black triangle on its face watches.

A cop sitting on patrol in the same woods finds a guy crawling out onto the road. The cop, Daniel, brings the broken man to the closest hospital which is a half burnt, almost condemned place with few supplies and even fewer staff and patients. And then Daniel the cop makes it even fewer by killing the nurse who killed a patient. Then stuff gets weird.

While a monster of indescribable features and girth roams the halls, the Tri-Klan guy is back with a bunch of his friends and surrounds the hospital. Then they move the cop’s car. I’m not sure if they moved it with their minds or their arms; it’s hard to tell if these are the undernourished type of cult members, or super ripped ones.

After a father and his son-in-law run into the hospital and try to explain they’ve been killing these cult members for days, no one seems too concerned or connects the hulking monster in the recovery ward and the Kreepy Klan outside.

The one nurse left, who is also Daniel’s estranged wife stupidly tries to go retrieve supplies from another part of the hospital, not the least bit concerned that they might have been damaged by the fire that happened recently. I mean I know when I’m looking for fresh antibiotics, the first place I check is the site of a dumpster fire.

The movie, and the characters, descend into madness. This is obviously some Cthulhu cult that’s gotten so popular in the past few years among people who love talking about cosmic planes of existence and all knowing power and light and ignoring H.P. Lovecraft’s sexism and racism. They’re really just a jump to the right of Scientology in their indoctrination, although Scientologists don’t usually form monster zombies out of their members. Although I don’t know where John Travolta’s hairline comes from recently.

I’m not sure why, but I LOVE a good epidemic story. And this one is about how an epidemic cause an onset of ghost hunters, and subsequently ghost debunk-ers. The protagonist is one of those “science author women” who wear pants that sensible British people are constantly warned about.

The film is set in Britain after the end of WWI and the height of the Spanish Flu. Which had to be a pretty terrible time in Europe. You have like NO friends left. And the ones you did were riddled with survivors guilt and PTSD. No wonder people in America enjoyed the Roaring (Alcoholism) 20s.

Florence is a scientist and researcher who is hell bent on stopping scam artists from taking grieving people’s money for “talking to dead loved ones.” People don’t seem to like her very much, even when she shows them hard evidence that they’ve been taken for a ride. I guess if  you’re already mourning like two-thirds of your family, you don’t want anyone pointing out your also an idiot.

Florence’s un-sunny demeanor aside, news of her aptitude has reached a boy’s school in the British countryside. Apparently a boy died from being scared to death by an entity and Florence is hired by the school’s headmaster and a teacher, Mallory, to investigate. Mallory offers her evidence of a haunting in the form of the school’s photographs. She reluctantly agrees and hops on the Hogwarts Express to Mr. Darcy’s House (I’m not kidding, they used the same sets).

At the school, the matron Maud super fangirl’s on Flo, saying she’s read all her books and just knows she will figure out the mystery. Florence arrives just as the term is ending and the boys will be leaving the school for a couple weeks, leaving her full run of the building for her investigation. A few boys might stay behind if their parent’s are in India (aka, they aren’t loved enough). Another teacher and the headmaster hang out for a bit but soon it is just Flo, Mallory, Maud, and a little boy left in the building.

Now obviously the house (and the exact replica doll house) start to get creepy and continues to escalate the longer she stays. She thinks at first she nailed the scary going-ons on a couple of naughty school boys, but then she sees something in the school’s pond and almost drowns so of course she HAS to stay. This might be because the ride back across the moors with wet hair is just asking for pneumonia.

In addition to hiring people from Harry Potter, some of Game of Thrones cast shows up, because British actors actually just hang around castles in England waiting to be hired for period pieces, the way day laborers hang around Home Depot.

The ending of this movie is more sad than scary. After my run in with The Woman In Black, I didn’t think I could do another British haunted house, but this is a really well done movie. When I realized it was the same screenwriter who did Gothic, I was prepared for some weird drug trip orgy, but it was just another sad English story. And the flu. The flu is actually scarier. Get a flu shot if you’re going to be around pale British children or old war vets.

 

Yes, I know I should have done this on the sixth day, but hindsight is 666, right?

If you’ve never seen the movie (like the scaredy-cat I am), an American ambassador, Robert Thorn, adopts a boy in Rome and passes him off as the dead son his wife gave birth to. Never good to start a family with a lie, but keep going. You’re rich, so this might work out for you.

At the kid’s fifth birthday party, they give him quite the country side bash in London (the Thorns’ new home), complete with extremely dangerous kid-size carnival rides and the traditional nanny suicide. Had to check to make sure this wasn’t just a “British” thing. It isn’t.

A priest from Rome shows up in England, I assume on a routine “evil child recall” notice. Thorn dismisses the priest’s plea to save him at first, but then he probably realizes he’s just blackmailing him. I sometimes wish a dude from Rome would remind me every day to eat some bread and drink some wine. Reclaiming my Body of Christ.

The photographer who was at the party is now very interested in this birthday party turned suicide, as anyone would be. So he decides to start hanging around the ambassador’s office and places he frequents.

Meanwhile, a new governess shows up and assures the Thorns that SHE won’t commit suicide because she doesn’t have boyfriends OR a home to miss. So there. This is definitely a “British” thing. They quickly realize neither of them hired this Mrs. Baylock but shrug it off. Come on, this is the 70s and you are in England and an American ambassador. Just check one reference. And maybe the first time she brings an evil dog in the house, you don’t ask politely to get rid of it. You take it out back and shoot it (it’s not a real dog, it’s a friend of Satan).

After a completely normal tantrum at a church, Thorn realizes his kid has never been sick a day in his life. Which makes me wonder, maybe the anti-vaxxers are worried they won’t be able to pick out the demon children from the regular children (here’s a hint, anti-vaxxers, you’re the demon).

The priest and the photographer finally convince Thorn that he needs to go on a scavenger hunt to kill his child. Sorry, Son of the Devil. Meanwhile at home, the kid is actively trying to kill the mother. Come on, why isn’t he in school or at least at a Nanny-Child yoga class or something?

The priest is now dead so the photographer and Thorn go back to Italy to find the priest who gave him Damien. Conveniently all the birth records were burned in a fire. The refer back to the “prayer” the priest sputtered to Thorn. In it, the scavenger hunt poem/prayer reveals the child will rise from the role of politics. Now…I’m not saying Tiffany Trump is the Antichrist…but….has anyone ever seen her get the flu?

Thorn is told how to kill his little vessel of evil and hurries back to London to do it. Instead he ends up getting killed himself and his son/5 year old demon is now free to roam about the world and bring on Armageddon. I imagine this movie caused a massive drop in the popularity of the name “Damien” and hopefully an increase in checking nanny references.

 

The “found footage” trend has officially become a genre of film. There’s no denying this. Although I’m sure it is still a sub-genre of horror. We don’t really see a lot of “found footage romantic comedies.” You’ve Got Mail was already about cat-fishing; we don’t need to add voyeurism into the mix.

Anyways, back to this concept: A group of five friends decide to rent an RV and tour the scariest Haunted Houses a few days before Halloween. Not “real” haunted houses, these are those scare houses subsidized farms and landlords of abandoned warehouses set up around Halloween to make money and employ…the unemployable (aka actors/sociopaths/carnies in the south)? While they don’t give a specific start point, it all seems to happen in Texas and Louisiana.

Now of course, this is a found footage film, which means every character is a terrible human being who makes bad decisions. The first one is when they sneak to the top of a haunted house’s roof and get thrown out of the farm’s scare house by clowns.

So instead of possibly rethinking this road trip, they decide to smoke weed before the next haunted house visit. Their little antics from the night before has gotten around to the “Scare House” community and they are immediately stalked by the very dedicated and method actors, who remain in character.

Not sure why after the fifth time of being stalked, they wouldn’t give up and end their search for the scariest haunted house, but hey, I’m not five 30-year-olds with unlimited funds and time off of work. Their search eventually leads them to New Orleans where according to underground legend, holds the absolute scariest haunted house there is. And to see it, your friend gets kidnapped and you have to go find him in the middle of a bayou. This is a real thing you can pay for. In real life. Because regular horrors in the world aren’t enough, you need the extra thrill of being stalked by a guy experiencing economic anxiety.

The ending isn’t an ending, because there is a sequel. However, I have to say, this was the first time I’ve watched a found footage film and didn’t want the characters to die because they were annoying. I wanted them to die because of their unchecked stubbornness.

The film is set at an old hotel in Connecticut called the Yankee Pedlar Inn, which is already a contradiction. That’s like saying the American Colour. This is the USA, we don’t mix British spelling into our own. We took out those extra letters so we could Tweet more.

Anger at etymology aside, this wasn’t a bad film, just…borrowed. The filmmaker was obviously a fan of older horror movie shots, and it’s almost a nice familiarity to the cinematography. Like coming home. Which is even how one of the characters who plays a guest at the hotel describes the place. I’m not sure if this is just a love letter to scary movies, or just someone trying to prove to his film college professors that he listened to every lecture.

The main characters are two employees of the inn, which is set to go out of business. The owner has pretty much given up on the place and is out of the country. The employees, Claire and Luke, are also amateur paranormal investigators. Although, they don’t seem that prolific since the inn is the only place they investigate. They also stay at the hotel while they rotate their 12 hours shifts.

Somehow, (I guess because there are still people who DON’T read hotel reviews online–AKA sociopaths) there are a few guests. A woman and her son, an old man, and a former actress-turned-spiritual guru, played by the Top Gun lady, Kelly McGillis (yes, I know she has done other movies, but everyone knows Top Gun).

Claire, played by Sara Paxton, has asthma, which is like a siren call for the paranormal. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the wheezing is at a frequency only ghosts can hear. I want scientists to investigate that theory, please. Claire also believes an old ghost story about a woman who died at the hotel many years ago, and possibly still haunts the place. She proceeds to tell all the guests about it, including the small boy staying there. If the mom didn’t bash this place on Yelp before, she certainly is going to after this.

The other front desk employee, Luke, says he has seen and heard things at the hotel even though we can tell he’s lying just to get closer to Claire. Because as everyone knows, all great love stories starts with someone telling you they see things that aren’t there. Even after Claire finds out Luke was lying, she can’t deny her own experiences. So the two get bored, get drunk, and then get bold. The trifecta of the start of dumb decisions. And their dumb decision is to go investigate the basement of the inn. Which is also unprofessional. You’re still on the clock, idiots.

If you’ve ever been in a basement of a New England building from before 1900, there is NO head room, and any normal size person has to crouch down. I’m assume because contractors back then wanted their legacy to be, “I’m gonna give you all this space under your house, but you’re ALSO gonna get scoliosis in the process–boom: you’ll thank me later.”

Horror ensures, obviously, because “drunk AND wheezy” is not just the name of a uncool rap album I’m writing. The only disappointing thing about this movie was the Lena Dunham shows up, but doesn’t come back later to be killed. Maybe in “Innkeepers 2: Death Forecloses.”