{"id":17468,"date":"2024-12-08T18:32:14","date_gmt":"2024-12-08T18:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattshorroraddiction.com\/?p=17468"},"modified":"2024-12-08T18:32:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-08T18:32:17","slug":"fatal-exam-funeral-home-it-follows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattshorroraddiction.com\/?p=17468","title":{"rendered":"Fatal Exam, Funeral Home, It Follows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Fatal Exam <\/em><\/strong>– 1990, US, 114m. Director: Jack Synder. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funeral Home<\/strong> – 1980, Canada, 92m. Director: William Fruet. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It Follows<\/em><\/strong> – 2015, US, 100m. Director: David Robert Mitchell. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

FATAL EXAM<\/em><\/strong> (1990)<\/em> College students volunteer for a parapsychology study at a supposedly haunted house where, years earlier, a man named Malcolm Nostrand killed his family before disappearing. The gang sets up recording equipment and other surveillance devices, which don’t capture much in the way of ghostly activity until the next morning when a mysterious figure is seen on video. Several of the students also see apparitions around the house, with one of the group (Mike Coleman) witnessing Nostrand wielding a bloody sword on the staircase. Is it just a form of mass hysteria, or has the presumed-dead Nostrand returned from the beyond? The bigger question is why it takes the filmmakers almost two hours to tell such a paper-thin story, made worse by lifeless characters and sluggish pacing. The screenplay spends time setting up the plot by incorporating elements from The Amityville Horror<\/em> and The Dead<\/em> Zone <\/em>but drops the ball (most likely due to a lack of funds) by delivering a dull retread of every other slasher flick of the era. By the 90-minute mark, Fatal Exam<\/em> ends up being nothing more than a bloated experiment created by overzealous filmmakers. Shot in Missouri, Fatal Exam<\/em> doesn’t make the grade. C<\/strong>– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

FUNERAL HOME <\/em><\/strong>(1980)<\/em> (AKA: Cries in the Night<\/em>) This modest Canadian chiller was marketed as an American-style slasher, but it actually has more in common with Hitchcock’s Psycho<\/em>. Young Heather (Lesleh Donaldson) spends the summer with her religious grandmother (Kay Hawtrey), helping the woman run a newly established bed-and-breakfast. Prior to the new business, the building was used as a funeral parlor\u2014explaining its inherently creepy demeanor, and granny’s peculiar behavior. Several people go missing in the wake of the place’s opening, including Heather’s grandfather (the town mortician), and a land developer who showed interest in purchasing grandma’s property. When she’s not scolding a tourist and his mistress for living in sin under her roof, granny spends her time pacing in the cellar and holding entire conversations with herself. It won’t surprise the sophisticated viewer to learn grandma is off her rocker and willing to go to any lengths to protect the family’s Big Secret. Funeral Home<\/em> is often contrived and predictable, but that doesn’t stop it from being an effective little film featuring good acting and some actual suspense. Worth checking out. B<\/strong> (Currently streaming on Tubi and Shudder.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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IT FOLLOWS<\/em><\/strong> (2015)<\/em> Adolescence has often been used as metaphorical subtext in horror films. Carrie<\/em>, Fright Night<\/em>, the Ginger Snap <\/em>series\u2014these movies deliver good stories of young adults in turmoil, intertwined with an intriguing premise, typically with a fine balance of subtext (budding sexuality, identity, etc.) and horror. The cardinal sin a film like It Follows<\/em> makes is that it wallows so much in allegory that the horror aspects, much like the story’s characters, never feel fully matured. The plot\u2014a young woman (Maika Monroe) is pursued by a demonic entity after she has sex\u2014is textbook teen horror melodrama: sex equals death. There’s nothing particularly special about that plot device, although the teen characters in It Follows<\/em> seem more authentic than the airheads usually littering these kinds of movies. Yet, unlike Fright Night<\/em>‘s Charley, or Carrie White, the viewer is never rooting for Monroe and her cohorts to prevail. In fact, they never come off as truly sympathetic; they just exist to fill space. Perhaps that’s another metaphor? Had the filmmakers focused more on horror and less on existentialism, It Follows<\/em> could have been a new classic in the genre. As it is, the film is too cold to muster much excitement over. C<\/strong> (Currently streaming on Freevee, Prime, and Paramount+.) <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fatal Exam – 1990, US, 114m. Director: Jack Synder. Funeral Home – 1980, Canada, 92m. Director: William Fruet. It Follows – 2015, US, 100m. Director: David Robert Mitchell. FATAL EXAM (1990) College students volunteer for a parapsychology study at a supposedly haunted house where, years earlier, a man named Malcolm Nostrand killed his family before … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Fatal Exam, Funeral Home, It Follows”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capsule-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\nFatal Exam, Funeral Home, It Follows - Matt's Horror Addiction<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mattshorroraddiction.com\/?p=17468\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fatal Exam, Funeral Home, It Follows - Matt's Horror Addiction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fatal Exam – 1990, US, 114m. Director: Jack Synder. 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