Haunted House Month: FOUND FOOTAGE EDITION
One of the better post-Paranormal Activity found footage movies is 2011’s GRAVE ENCOUNTERS, an energetic riff on reality TV ghost-hunting shows that’s both funny and genuinely scary. The small crew of an up-and-coming paranormal investigation series goes to an abandoned…
HAUNTED HOUSE MONTH: Week 4
When it comes to slow burns, filmmaker Ti West knows what he’s doing. Following in the same low-key, suspense-building footsteps as his previous film, The House of the Devil, 2011’s THE INNKEEPERS features a young woman, Claire (Sara Paxton), who,…
HAUNTED HOUSE MONTH: Week 3
When it comes to remakes 1999’s cheesy HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL ranks as one of the more entertaining ones. Giving his best Vincent Price, distinguished actor Geoffrey Rush stars as theme park king, Stephen Price (get it?), who invites five…
HAUNTED HOUSE MONTH: Week 2
Sort of the Blumhouse of the early ’00s, Dark Castle was a well known but short-lived production company that specialized in cheesy but entertaining horror. One of their offerings was 2002’s GHOST SHIP, a visually impressive haunted house variant about…
HAUNTED HOUSE MONTH: Week 1
This month I’ve decided to dive into haunted house/supernatural invasion movies, and to kick things off I watched the 1980 classic, THE CHANGELING. An old-fashioned ghost story, The Changeling stars the always good George C. Scott as a music professor…
RANDOM REVIEWS: The Spiral Staircase, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1946) d: Robert Siodmak. c: Dorothy McGuire, Ethel Barrymore, George Brent, Kent Smith, Rhoda Fleming, Elsa Lanchester, Gordon Oliver. Effective psychological chiller about a mute caregiver (McGuire) in a small New England town in the early 1900s…
SCI-FI/FANTASY MONTH: The Blob, Cabin in the Woods, and Resident Evil ’21
THE BLOB (1988) d: Chuck Russell. c: Shawnee Smith, Kevin Dillon, Donovan Leitch, Joe Seneca, Candy Clark, Jeffrey DeMunn, Del Close. A near-perfect remake of the 1950s monster flick that not only improves upon the original’s special FX but expands…
Mini-Reviews: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE ’74 and ’22
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) d: Tobe Hooper. c: Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Paul A. Partain, Allen Danziger. Perhaps the perfect American horror film, this baby not only took the slasher movie to terrifying new levels…
SPOTLIGHT: The FINAL DESTINATION Series
FINAL DESTINATION (2000) d: James Wong. c: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Kristin Cloke, Seann William Scott, Chad Donella, Tony Todd. A first-rate thrill ride from beginning to end, this giddy, grim chiller pits a group of survivors of…