Movie Review – Page 115

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

freddys dead

This has upset many of horror fans, even more Freddy fans and has made me a few friends. However this is my favorite Nightmare on Elm Street movie. While not the scariest of the bunch I did find it the most entertaining.

This time around a group of delinquent teens must stop Freddy. The catch? One of them may be the long lost child of Freddy himself. What follows are some great deaths, for example Freddie pushing a bed of spikes under a falling teen like something out of a loony tunes cartoon. True to Freddy form he needs his kid to escape not just one set of victims to another but this time a new town all together, because remember, every town has an Elm Street. The death of Freddy sadly seems pretty shallow for such a legend, but can a legend really die? Ponder that, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Saw

saw

Anyone want to play a game as I dig into the Saw movies per Savior’s request? No, well shit. Saw is a crazy huge modern low budget that spawned eight movies, two video games, and arguably the film that helped kick off the “gorno” phase of horror films in the early-mid 2000’s.

Saw is the story of Dr Lawrence Gordon and a dude named Adam who wake up chained by a foot in a dingy bathroom with a dead body, a few strange clues, and a hack saw and are basically left to piece together what’s going on. Gordon recounts the stories he’s heard of the “Jigsaw Killer”, this killer that drops people into deranged and disturbing deathtraps they have to overcome or die. The most famous example of this is the first survivor we encounter, Amanda. A druggie, she awakens with with a strong, rusty metal contraption wired into her mouth that will pretty much break her head apart like a reverse bear trap; her salvation rest in the stomach of her past cellmate and with a a couple minutes to decide she has to cut him open to get the key before dying. We also join two cops on Jigsaw’s trail as they question Gordon, sure he is the culprit. Another player in this game takes Gordon’s family hostage and it is him left with the saw and the choice, how far will he go to survive?

Saw, as a standalone film is pretty solid. It was one of the earliest, if not the first movie James Wan ever did, and you can tell the man who would later give us the modern classics Insidious and The Conjuring has talent; he is one of my favorite directors today. Stylistically it’s interesting. The traps are interesting and actually pretty realistic which adds to the creep factor. Tobin Bell’s voice is iconic now for Jigsaw and the first time you hear his voice with the puppet it’s fucking creepy, I can’t lie. The ending of the movie is actually pretty cleaver and punctuated perfectly by a great score. The only real flaw I can say is sometimes it feels slow and essentially, yes half of the movie is two dudes talking in a filthy bathroom. I’d recommend it. Thank you as always and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Nightmare on Elm Street 5

elm street 5

The Dream Child (1989) brings back Alice one final time and is another movie that like most of the Freddy movies has a weird cult following. Fans seem to love the series while critics hate them. While I do admit the first movie was probably the best ( tho my favorite is yet to come) it is impossible to say I don’t enjoy my yearly Nightmare weekend. Yes I watched and wrote all these over the course of a weekend. Anyway, this time around Freddy is using the dreams of Alice’s unborn child in an attempt to return. After killing the father Alice is alone with no one left to believe her and the deaths start once again. Will Alive ever sleep again? May the gaming gods bring you glory.

5 fun horror sequels

jason

Jason maybe a heartless killer and hockey fan but his movies knew how to have fun a bit. Sometimes there’s just a crappy sequel that makes us laugh and makes us appreciate the scary shit a bit more. Here’s 5 of my picks in no particular order of fun horror sequels good for a laugh.

friday6 1. Friday the 13th part 6: Jason Lives- The first movie that flipped off continuity and whatever realistic pretenses the series had by having Jason resurrected from the dead. The dark comedy moments are funny as hell and we get a decent end to the Tommy Jarvis arc. It was a hard pick between 6, 8, and 10 but 6 wins in my heart.

alienr1 2. Alien: Resurrection- “Resurrection” may have a curse when it comes to deeply terrifying horror franchises. The fourth Alien movie has a good concept but sooooo many WTF moments tossed in there and some pretty great moments of overacting. It can be a fun WTF movie if in the right mindset.

3. Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows- I actually will defend this as a decent movie with some good heavy 90’s music in it and some creepy imagery. Sometimes the acting ain’t great in some places and one o two of the scares backfire which can be kinda funny. Me and my oldest friend had plenty of fun either laughing or decoding this sequel.

leprachaun 5 4. Leprechaun: In the Hood- I hope this says it all, and if it doesn’t, allow me- WHY THE FUCK IS THE LEPRECHAUN IN THE HOOD?…one scene says it all, a bunch of dudes hittin a bong with the Leprechaun. Yep.

halloween 8 5. Halloween: Resurrection- 2 words. All I need. Busta Rhymes. I’ve never laughed more at a horror movie than Busta’s crazy ass using kung fu on Michael Myers and cursing him out. You have to watch it for yourself to gather the absurdity of this movie.

Misery

misery film

Ya know how there’s a drawback to every career choice, no job is completely great and wonderful. I know being famous ain’t all it’s cracked up to be but this made me not want to be a writer, director, or any kind of artist. Misery is the rare kind of story that believably real and so much more terrifying because of it. Much like Pet Sematary, which I covered earlier, both movie and book are great but this time I can say I prefer the book, though the movie is still an amazing adaptation.

Paul Sheldon is a famous author of a series of books named after the main character Misery, which he has gotten fed up with over the years. He has a tradition to go to a cabin he has in the mountains when he’s about to finish a book. He finishes the last book in Misery’s series to his relief. On his way back down to go to his publishers, he gets caught in a storm storm and crashes his car. His car totaled, his body unconscious and wrecked, it looks bad for the author. But he is saved by a large, heavy woman named Annie Wilkes that brings him home and nurses him back to health. Annie loves the Misery books with all her heart. Looking through his bag, she finds Paul’s manuscript for a new Misery; Paul lets her read it, after all she did save his grumpy ass and nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Annie is full of girlish glee…until she reads the ending. She snaps, screaming at Paul, slamming him and his bed up and down in a violent rage. She forces him to burn the new book he has been working on and begin a new book to revive Misery, dedicated to her of course. Paul is in living hell, immobile, isolated from a world that thinks he’s dead except for a sheriff in the mountain town. But can Paul hold out until then while Annie grows more intensely mad and her true colors reveal themselves…

A main difference I get between the book and movie is that the two main characters are much more flushed out. In the book we learn a lot about Paul as he struggles to finish the book he never wanted to make and how by the end he almost loves the series again because of how much it challenged him. Annie’s portrayal either way amazingly lifelike but there were touches in the book that strangely made me relate her to Blaine the Mono from the third Dark Tower book. The movie does an amazing job with the acting, especially Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, and never ceases to loose tension in it’s confined space. I highly recommend it if you enjoy good old fashion suspense over gore and body counts, though who can forget the hobbling?

Nightmare on Elm Street 4

elm street 4

Dream master (1988) always had mixed reviews but I found it rather enjoyable. This movie saw the torch of being able to summon people into dreams passed from Kristen to Alice when Freddie killed the final child of the parents that killed him with Kristen. With Alice the power seems to work slightly different tho, after every death she takes on a trait from the one Freddie killed, for example when her martial arts buff brother died she became much more physically capable. It was a pretty neat idea that some people just didn’t seem to get behind. All in all while not the best in the series it sets up number 5 nicely while still offering a fun story and a nice selection of deaths. As always sweet dreams and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Pet Sematary Two

pet sematary two

Of course of course there had to be a sequel. It’s almost absolute certainty in the film industry, especially the horror genre, because good things just can’t get left alone. Pet Sematary Two isn’t horrible, especially by horror sequel standards, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the the original.

The sequel follows two teens, primarily Jeff played by Edward Furlong, a boy saddened by the tragic on-set death of his movie star mother. Him and his father, a veterinarian, movie into Ludlow, Maine, years after the Creed’s fate, becoming a ghost story we hear years later. He becomes friends with a fat kid named Drew, whose stepdad Gus is the town sheriff and a total dick bag. Gus kills Drew’s dog and of course they have to take it up to the pet cemetery. The dog comes back. Jeff asks the question Louis asked before him. Before that happens though, Drew’s returned dog kills Gus while defending him from Gus’s abusive ass. Gus comes back and more deadly shenanigans ensue and Jeff’s mom comes back…yeah

Seriously this ain’t a terrible movie just sure as shit not great. The main leads are pretty good for 90’s teenagers. My biggest issue is that it tries too damn hard to be trendy, like the 90’s is bitch slapping you in the face whereas the original didn’t feel like a 80’s movie but that feels almost timeless. I never felt scared or remotely alarmed by the undead in this movie, in fact I laughed a few times. Overall, it’s a sequel that’s there. It ain’t great or shit, just a floater in the gray in between. May the gaming gods bring you glory my friends.

Pet Sematary

“Sometimes Louis, dead is better.” Pet Sematary by legendary writer Stephen King was my introduction to his insanity and brilliance when I was three or four, not much older than poor Gage Creed. To this day the movie still has an impressive talent for creeping the shit out of me and tugging at my heartstrings a bit. The book is equally as good and pretty damn close comparison wise, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Louis and Rachael Creed move into a new house in rural Maine with daughter Ellie, cat Church and baby son Gage. Its a wide, picturesque place; a long road of speeding trucks separates them from there old, kindly neighbors Judd and Norma Crandall. The Crandalls and Creeds hit it off, especially Judd and Louis. Louis is a doctor, and first day at his new job, a young man named Pascow dies on his table after getting hit by a car while jogging. Louis has dreams of Pascow’s ruined body warning him about something Judd once told the family, beyond the old Pet Sematary out back. While the rest of his family is away, Louis finds Church dead. Judd sees the pain on Louis’s face of having to break the news to Ellie. Judd reluctantly takes Louis to a very special place far beyond the ruins of the cemetery to bury Church. Judd tells him it used to be a special place for the Native Americans that used to live there; after a long trek, Judd tells him to bury his own. Days later, Church returns. Not the sweet lovable cat he knew, Church exists with a horrible stench and a lonesome, sometimes hostile temper. Louis asks Judd how the hell church came back. Judd tells him the legend of the land but stops short when Louis asks the obvious question, have ever buried a person up there. Pascow returns to Louis again, warning him away from the ground again. Time goes by and on a fateful summer’s day Louis finds himself with a broken heart and a breaking family when Gage perishes tragically. Against everything, Louis bring Gage to the burial ground and waits for his son to come home with horrific and tragic results…

A story this simple, genuinely genius in how frightening and sad it is proves why King is a legend at the craft. Whether you watch the unforgettable movie or took the extra initiative and read the book, they sync up really well. The characters feel realistic and flushed out well. A lot of the imagery sticks with you; the most memorable image from the movie to me is Zelda, Rachael’s dying sister. That shit stays with you man. Definitely locked in my top 3 favorite Stephen King stories of all time, perhaps even my favorite considering how much it influenced me, I can’t recommend it enough. Thank you as always and just remember, “some lines aren’t meant to be crossed, doc.”

Nightmare on Elm Street 3

elm street 3

Dream Warriors brings us back to the Wes Craven Nightmare movies. Nancy is back, this time to help a group of kids in a hospital to help kids suffering from a type of group psychosis resulting in nightmares. Kristen has the ability to call the others into her dreams to face the master of dreams, and that master is none other than Freddie himself. Each child has a special ability that can be used to battle in the dream world to buy time for Nancy and Dr. Neil Gordan as they attempt to find the body of Freddie in the real world to bury it on hallowed ground and stop him once and for all and only 1 man can supply that information,the very drunk Donald Thompson father of Nancy.

A lot of things happen in this movie, like finding out from the ghost of Freddy’s mother that he is the bastard son of 100 maniacs and a few other things I won’t spoil just in case someone happens to have not seen it. Be careful when you sleep, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

5 horror movies for non horror fans

Horror is in my blood, it’s grafted onto my soul since birth. Whether you get off on the tension of a good psychological scare, enjoy gallons of blood, or a cheap laugh and some boobs, horror has something for everyone. Most of all, it makes us look at ourselves, our friends and family, and the world around us all differently. But some people insist horror is stupid, tasteless, or exploitative and sometimes yes it is but I wanted to prove there are some great horror movies the haters can enjoy. In no particular order, here we go:

1. IT (2017)- The most recent movie on this list, It not only is a great horror movie but also a wonderful coming of age story. The children have a heart warming chemistry that gives us some great story thread outside the constant threat of Pennywise and some funny moments. Either way, I highly recommend it.

2. Cabin in the Woods- Just as creative as it is funny and badass, Cabin in the Woods took most of us by storm in 2012 as a totally unique and original movie about the ultimate cabin in the Woods horror film…seriously if you never saw it, you’re in for a huge treat as the plot is full of fun characters and monsters from all walks of horror- and a unicorn too.

alien 3. Alien- If you read my review for this sci-fi horror classic, you’ll know how much I loved it but now I’m going to focus on the tension this movie builds. Some beautiful, claustrophobic settings and a terrifying as hell creature hunting relate able characters in space. If you’re a sci fi nerd, definitely should go on your must watch list.

4. Poltergeist- As much of a great horror movie this classic is, there is equally a sense of wonder to it you don’t find in many horror movies. It’s a heartfelt family and a cast of likable characters that doesn’t take itself too seriously but when it’s scary, is scary as hell. Always worth a view.

seven 5. Seven- After Alien 3, David Fincher came back with a vengeance with this freaky crime thriller staring a young Brad Pitt and the always amazing Morgan Freeman. So much creepy imagery as they track down a killer basing his murders on the 7 deadly sins; fans of cop dramas will enjoy the dark, grim atmosphere and the twists and turns.

I hope you all enjoyed the countdown and check these movies out and may the gaming gods be with you.