Showing posts with label Shocktober. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shocktober. Show all posts

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Shocktoberfest 2015 Housebound (Gerard Johnstone, 2014)

2014 was a great year for New Zealand horror!  Two Kiwi films from that year, Gerard Johnstone's first feature length, claustrophobic, comedy/thriller Housebound and the mockumentary vampire film What We Do In The Shadows both figure prominently on Mark Hofmeyer's The Top 21 Horror Films of the 21st Century!

I watched Housebound on Netflix and had a great time with it.  The film paces itself well while dissecting the inner workings of a dysfunctional family attempting to reintegrate their prodigal daughter while living in an apparently haunted house.  Morgana O'Reilly shows great prowess as Kylie who swings between royally pissed off daughter who is forced to return home and seeming victim of a malevolent force that just wants to help.

I should also mention that it is a screwy-screwball comedy with bumps, jumps, pratfall and plenty of hilarious one-liners!


While lacking any touching or sentimental moments, Housebound packs in plenty of laughs, thrills and genuinely scary moments plus an appropriate amount of  gore.

And to top it off, there is this song at the end: 


Click here to see the list of movies I am shooting to watch between now and the Halloween. Make sure to check out the original article at Movies, Film and Flix !

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Shocktoberfest 2015-Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In), Tomas Alfredson, 2008

 Remember that kid in middle school that no-one liked?  The one that just didn't fit into any group except as Fresh Meat for the bullies?  Ever wonder what happened to him or are you glad you don't have to avoid sitting next to his funny smelling ass on the bus any longer? According to original novelist and screenwriter, John Ajvide Lindqvist, there is a pretty good chance he is drugging people, draining their blood and taking it home to feed it to his best friend, a centuries old vampire.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Shocktoberfest 2015-Cabin in the Woods Edition (Joss Whedon, 2012)

October is really Shocktober in my house.  That's when I try to watch as many horror movies as I can.
I am not a very organized person, and terrible at planning, so I usually wing these yearly marathons and try to make some sort of tally of what I watched.  Well, I made a list last year.  That was a step up from previous years.  Last weekend I came across this interesting article which listed the top 21 horror films of the 21st century (thus far), according to the Internets. Inspired by the fact that many of my favorite, modern films were on it, I made an executive decision and decided that Shoctoberfest would start early this year.  Here is the list that Mark Hofmeyer at Movies Films & Flix created, so let's get busy:

21. (tie) Session 9 (2001)
21 (tie). The Devil’s Rejects (2005)
20. What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
19. Paranormal Activity (2007)
18. The Mist (2007)
17. The House of the Devil (2009)
16. American Psycho (2000)
15. Trick r’ Treat (2007)
14. [Rec] (2007)
13. Martyrs (2008)
12. The Conjuring (2013)
11. The Ring (2002) (American remake)
10. Drag Me To Hell (2009)
9. Mulholland Drive (2001)
8. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
7. The Babadook (2014)
6. It Follows (2014)
5. Let the Right One In (2008)
4. The Descent (2005)
3. 28 Days Later (2002)
2. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
The Winner: Cabin in the Woods (2012)
(My honorable mentions include Kill List, the entire [REC], VHS and ABC's of Death franchises.  I know that not everyone enjoyed the franchise films as much as I did, but why heck wasn't Kill List on this list?)

To find out how the author chose these films, read the article.  My goal is to try to watch as many of these films as I can before I get distracted by oh look, nonfat Greek Yogurt...But really, let's just jump right to the top of the list and start talking about the movies.

To start off, I watched Joss Whedon's 2012 meta-horror film The Cabin in the Woods. If you haven't seen it, stop reading and go watch it.  Seriously, the less you know, the better your experience will be.  We'll wait.

What does the suffix meta mean when applied to any type of art work?  If you are still reading and haven't seen the movie, I wash my hands of all responsibility.  Meta is an adjective that describes a creative work referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre.  It is  self-referential.  Does that make The Cabin in the Woods a horror movie about horror movies? Or is that just dumb?  Well, IMHO, the whole meta genre can get old, tired and predictable pretty quickly.  It can also re-plow the once fallow fields of an exhausted old farm and yield a smart, exciting and entirely fresh approach.


Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford proving that peeling off the opaque layers
 and removing the obfuscations behind  reviled archetypes (and stereotypes) is cool.
It took a awhile to warm up to the film the first time through because it was so trite and cliched in the first third.  But that is what made the rest of the film so amazing!  Plus Whedon and co-writer Drew Goddard (The Martian, Cloverfield) wrote themselves into the script as a two man chorus whose wry banter provided excellent exposition.





To get all the "in" joke references, check out this cool video on Good Bad Flicks's YouTube page (worth checking out for further content).  Make sure to watch to the end (it is about 10 minutes long) because he does a great job (better than I could) explaining why  The Cabin in the Woods is such a fun and important film for fans of the genre.


I realize that most of this post is content from other posts, so does that make this a meta-post?

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Insomniac Theater Presents: My (Pretty lame for a guy that calls hmself a horror movie fan) Shocktober Movie List


The Halloween Spirit  appeared, for the first time this year, on Friday night when Adrienne and I went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show,  a loving tribute to many of the movies I saw as a kid.  This was the first time in (way) over two decades that I had been to a "live" RHPS showing.  Fortunately it wasn't at midnight because there is no way I could have stayed up that late.

It was a great show; in addition to the antics in the audience, there was a fairly well choreographed stage show.  Many of the men and woman in the audience wore jaw-droppingly revealing costumes, often made up of bustiers, lingerie and thigh high stockings held in place with a garter belt.  I was hoping to see amongst the usual Playboy Bunnys, sexy nurses, maids, stewardesses and pirate babes, some serious female role model type  costumes like Slutty Secretary of State or Supreme Court Dominatrix.