Dante's Horror-thon!

I took 3 days and did nothing but watched some horror movies and a horror series.  I haven't reviewed them all but here are the high (and low) lights of the marathon are here- all in preparation for upcoming release of The Woman in Black...which is going to be amazing!

American Horror Story: Season 1

WOW, just wow! I literally stumbled onto this series by accident and it was mind blowing! It was the inspiration for the horro-thon because as soon as I saw one episode I had to see it all and it put me in a horror mood! I was shocked that it was by the same guy that wrote Glee but I suppose if you have to write so much sugery dialogue there has to be some darkness in there somewhere!   The entire series was phenomenal and anyone else writing a horror movie should look to it as a guide to the effective creation of dramatic tension and fear…and the twists! Phew! Did not see them coming! I can’t wait for season two. 

5/5

Hills Have Eyes 2

I was really disappointed in this film, having heard good things about the series I expected rather a lot from it but it went straight down the route of gore over substance.  The premise wasn’t bad but someone needs to take the Director aside and explain to him that adding potential rape to a film plot does not make it scarier or more effective.  Upping the body count and the visible gore cheapens the film. 

1/5

Dolls Graveyard

Another film that was clearly rather cheap to make and relied mostly on gore to be effective but since the killers are a little dead girls dolls that are out to avenge the death of their mistress at the hands of her bullying father it does have a fair amount of creep all of it’s own.  It’s really short, at a little over an hour long, so while it’s not great it is mercifully brief. 

3/5

Don’t be afraid of the Dark

This film was sort of a revelation, I really didn’t expect much from it but the cast was half decent and the over all premise was something I really got into.  A couple and their daughter move into the home of a Victorian painter who went missing from the house just after his son disappeared.  Before long, strange things start to happen in the house.  The cast is probably part of the reason this film is effective, Katie Holmes and Bailee Madison do a good job of ratcheting up the tension, and little Bailee in particular is a credit!   It was directed by a comic book artist and the effect is obvious as the film is stylised and wonderfully and a lot of consideration has been given to the appearance of the film. 

4/5

Amityville Haunting

Utter trite! It’s what I get for watching a movie about the haunting of the house that the murders in the house caused! Seriously it’s about as sinister as a bowl of kittens.  Clearly the success of the Paranormal Activity franchise (the first ones) inspired the making of this film but it really is terrible.  The acting is some of the most hackneyed I’ve ever seen in a film with any sort of production value! It feels like the entire cast are internet actors, in fact that comment is an insult to internet actor’s everywhere. 

1/5

Insidious

I first saw this film in the cinema with my mum and reflecting on it, it was perhaps the fact that she and I were alone in the theatre with an old man who kept changing seats that made the film at all scary because on second view it has little of its original horror value.  That being said, it is what Paranormal Activity could have been, the idea of a child and house being haunted by unseen but clearly present evils is done much more effectively here than in other films of its type.  Although creating a demon that looks like an anorexic Darth Maul does diminish the films effectiveness when it comes to scaring nerdy-types.   

3/5

Bane

It’s a decidedly B movie, so automatically its on the back foot when it comes to scary effectiveness.  For a while it looked like it might actually be half decent.  Four women wake up in a medical cell (which in no way resembled portable security gates and plastic sheeting), with no memory of how they got there.  It seems that they are part of a medical experiment but no one will tell them what it is.  It seemed as though the movie might be headed down a sort of ‘Saw’ avenue, with the women going missing, mysterious surgeries and organ theft until….the ‘Doctors’  are seen talking with something that looks that a really angry Ood and the whole film sort of went downhill from there.   By the end I had no idea what was going on…and I am fairly sure neither did the director. 

1/5

B.T.K

It began with the caveat that this was a fictional movie based on the true story of the BTK killer.  Although the movie was made in 2008 one could be forgiven for thinking that it had been made in the late 80’s/early 90’s, it had very low production value and used a lot of very low rent film methods were other more modern film techniques would have been more effective.  Infact everything about the film was cheap, and the tragedy of B.T.K’s victims would have been better served by a more faithful adaptation of the events.  It was very slow in getting started, although once it actually got into the meat and potatoes of the story it wasn’t bad.  It was a bit freaky how much the lead actor actually looked like Dennis Raider. 

3/5

Bad Reputation

Another movie with very low production value, but it was a bit of a surprise actually.  It didn’t make much a splash into the mainstream but it was actually pretty good.  It was strongly reminiscent of Carrie actually in it’s content and major themes.  Some of the scenes were pretty harsh and pretty graphic.  I would say that this isn’t one for the faint hearted, but it does a great job of distilling all sorts of pain down into pure horrible rage! That’s not to say it was perfect, the film really could have done with a decent script editor.

4/5