Movies (Horror) - From Zombos' Closet

The Moor (2023)
When More Should be Less

June 7, 2024 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

Jun 7 2024

Zombos Says: Almost fully terrifying, but bogs down from a slow pace.

Some movies take a lot of time to build suspense or atmosphere. I think movement is more important than time. That movement can come from the camera, from dialog, and from how the story plays out. The Moor, directed by Chris Cronin and written by Paul Thomas has four truly chilling moments surrounded by a lot of dull moments that stretch its running time almost as large as the titular Moor that Bill (David Edward-Robertson), Claire (Sophia La Porta), Ellie (Elizabeth Dormer-Philips), Alex (Mark Peachey), and Liz (Vicki Hackett) find themselves trudging through. I will say up front that Sam Cronin, the cinematographer, makes me dislike that moor (filmed in Yorkshire, England). The endless, boggy and foggy moor-scape imaged here is, alone, quite unsettling. I can see why this movie won the Best Scare at the Total Film FrightFest Awards in 2023, but you will need to be patient because the scares come toward the last third or so of the movie. The last scare, on that dreary moor, is classic.

Bill’s son went missing twenty-five years ago. Since then, he has been searching the moor with the help of Liz, a ranger with experience and sense, something he starts losing throughout the movie. He approaches Claire, a former podcaster, to drum up attention to the case again, as the child-abductor is actually known and was sent to prison for twenty-five years. But with the chance of him being released, Bill is desperate to find anything on the moor that will keep him in prison. …

The Moor (2023)
When More Should be LessRead More »

Handling the Undead (2024)
When Loved Ones Don’t Love Anymore

June 4, 2024 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

Jun 4 2024

Zombos Says: More horror and less lingering reflection would appeal more to horror fans.

Thea Hvistendahl directs this Norwegian horror-lite story with slick and sluggish intent and too much ponderous observation with static, composition-lingering, scenes stretching at times to monotony.

Beautiful camera movement, intense mundane closeups, and whispering emotions play through three families, intertwining the despondent living, dealing with their grief, then dealing with the unexpectedly returning dead, who are devoid of anything human except for their worse-for-death bodies. Rain, subdued color, quiet through most of the film (there is little dialog or music), and gloomy drone-shot vistas increase the desolation of souls and relationships. Handling the Undead is a slow drama that sometimes exceeds its inertia. That is, until the last act of the movie, where Hvistendahl’s more energetic editing increases the pace, ratcheting up the despair and terror as the standard zombie trope surfaces with bite.

The supernatural event begins with the local utility power surging, wreaking havoc with radio, disrupting the flight of birds, and then flicking a brief blackout. Before that, we explore each family. A young mother (Renate Reinsve) sits by a fan, preparing for work. She is grieving the loss of her son. She is inconsolable and no longer communicates well with her father (Bjørn Sundquist) the boy’s grieving grandfather. At work she prepares meals under another fan. Then there are the two lovers (Olga Damani, Bente Børsum). One is saying goodbye to the other in an empty, cavernous, mortuary. As the body is wheeled away it goes through a door beside a filled-up dumpster, barely nudging itself into the frame. The third, somewhat nuclear, household is livelier, until Eva (Bahar Pars), the girlfriend the kids like, dies in an auto accident.

Then the departed return: looking like death warmed over, mute, eyes staring into nothingness. Each family tries to make the new relationship work but this is a zombie movie after all, and zombies are always decomposing and antithetical to the living (except for the delightful Warm Bodies). The heart-broken grandfather, asleep by the gravesite, hears his nephew stirring in his coffin and digs him up (just like that); one lover returns to the other’s delight and is embraced (just like that), but incapable of reciprocating that love, the relationship struggles for air; and finally that girlfriend, who woke up after dying in her hospital room, brings everyone to her bedside with some semblance of joy, but invariably horrifies them (and us, certainly) in a scene worth the price of admission.

Any hope turns to fear as each of the undead reverts to problematic behavior. The visit to Eva in the hospital to reunite the sense of family winds up destroying it. As one lover tries to get the other to eat toast, with the camera slowly inspecting the food on the table as if it is just another meal they are sharing. I kept thinking, watch those fingers. A sudden, quite vigorous, chomp on the toast is unsettling and a hint of worse things to come. And the young mother and Elias, along with grandfather, head to an isolated island to avoid the police. Not so isolated as it turns out, leading to a more George Romero zombie lurking about and a realization leading to a heartrending decision that letting go is the only outcome possible.

Both compelling at times, tedious at times, and with a few beautifully calculated scenes of horror and loss, this is a tough film to market to horror fans spoon-fed on less contemplation and more screams. But there are moments of sadness and terror to appreciate in this almost-arthouse story about the living and the undead.

Husk (2011)
Not All Dried Out

December 26, 2023 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

Dec 26 2023

Zombos Says: Good

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but there’s this movie with an abandoned farm house in the middle of a cornfield and–” I started to say. I was preparing Zombos’ tax information, and my library desk was littered with receipts, scraps of paper notations, vexing forms, and two bone china cups of cold coffee. I decided to take a break.

“–You mean Dead Birds?” interrupted Zombos without looking up from his New York Times newspaper.

“What? No! The cornfield has this smelly, burlap sack-for-a-head decrepit scarecrow–”

“Dark Night of the Scarecrow, then? He turned a page.

“No! If you let me finish, it’s a more recent movie. There are these five college people–well, really they’re too old to play college kids unless they just love to hang out there, but for the sake of the movie you’ve got to go with it–traveling down a country road in an SUV and–”

“Oh, Hallowed Ground, then.”

“No way. Their SUV crashes when a flock of crows bury their beaks deep into the windshield and bleed their guts all over the car.”

“Kakashi, that Japanese horror movie?”

“Definitely not.”

“Scarecrows?”

“Fun movie to watch it’s so bad, but no! Can I finish? All right, then. The movie’s Husk.”

“Oh, one of those After Dark entries.” Zombos turned another page.

“Why aren’t you using the iPad Zimba bought you for Christmas? It’s got the Times on it,” I asked, changing the subject.

Zombos ignored me. Some old people can’t seem to shake the habit of smearing black newsprint ink on their fingertips and crushing pulp paper into awkward folds, I suppose.

“Anyway, getting back to Husk, it’s one of those good After Dark movie entries,” I said. “I mean, if it weren’t for the careless day-for-night lighting used in every supposedly dark scene, I’d even go as far as saying it’s very good.”

Zombos continued to read his newspaper, but he did it with much less crinkling noise and his lips had stopped moving, so I knew he was listening. I continued.

“The crash knocks them all out, but when they wake up, the jock (Wes Chatham) and the nerd (Devon Graye) go looking for help and their missing friend (Ben Easter) , while the cool guy (C. J. Thomason)–it’s his SUV that got slammed by the birds–stays by the car and waits. We don’t know much about their missing friend, but the jock’s girlfriend (Tammin Sursok) stays behind, too. She and the cool guy don’t get along. One of those, she’s-getting-all-the-attention-now kind of sticky buddy-buddy situations, you know?”

“I am not sure I would,” said Zombos. “What is a five letter word for ‘corny’ and ‘artificial’?

“Hokey,” I answered. “Leave the Jumble alone for a minute and listen. And there’s no hokey in Husk, by the way, but a few good twists around familiar characters; the nerd doesn’t die first and he actually figures things out; the girl isn’t kept as a screaming foil; the jock actually acts fairly smart and doesn’t wuse out when the terror starts; and cool guy turns out to be not so cool.

“Natalie, the jock’s girlfriend, gets antsy waiting, so she goes for a walk and finds a scarecrow lying on the ground.”

“It does not sound overly taxing in the terror department so far,” said Zombos.

“The scarecrow, when she pulls the burlap sack back, has teeth. That’s pretty much when things perk up. The mystery involves the upstairs room with the foot-pedal sewing machine, dead people walking and sacking up, and flashbacks the nerd, Scott, experiences. Those flashbacks involve the former tenants of the farm house and what happened to them.

“Action kicks in when they try to leave through the cornfield; they can’t; turmoil erupts when the jock won’t leave without his girlfriend, but it’s a moot point, though I won’t spoil it for you by explaining why; and there’s a frantic escape attempt by the formerly cool guy now acting like girly man, which leaves much blood on the ground but a clue as to the limitations of the scarecrow creeps.

“Director and writer Brett Simons, with the help of his actors and production design team, whip up a nifty ghost slash scarecrow monster slash terror-in-the-corn story with a backstory that adds familial, country-gothic depth to the mayhem. The only stretching of credulity comes into play when everyone gets so battered, you wonder how they can keep going with all their blood leaking out like that.”

“So what do the scarecrows do to bloody them up, throw corn husks at them?” asked Zombos, dryly.

“Don’t be silly, of course not. The scarecrows pound long metal nails into each of their fingers, giving them quite a terminal grip.”

Zombos put his newspaper down. “Perhaps we should do a marathon viewing of scarecrow-related horror movies. What do you think? It has been a while since we last saw something in the cinematorium.”

I looked at the pile of papers waiting on my desk and thought about it. I jumped up after a brief moment of reflection. “Definitely! We can start with Husk and go backwards. I’ll have Chef Machiavelli bring the coffee cart. This will be an all-nighter for sure.”

Dead of Night (1945)

November 28, 2023 / Movies (Horror) / 2 Comments

Nov 28 2023

Zombos Says: Classic

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
(from William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night)

“You must be kidding,” said Zombos, tossing the DVD over to me.

“No, really, it’s a hoot,” said Paul Hollstenwall. This time he brought along the straight to DVD movie The Blood Shed. The man has gone too far this time.

“Your average inbred, hillbilly, cannibalistic family,” I read out loud from the DVD cover. “Paul, I’m not sure this is appropriate. I can’t imagine watching this while sipping my hot chocolate and Sambuca. How about we start with something more apropos of the holiday season? A cozy journey into hysteria and terror by a roaring fireplace might be good. And a twist ending. There’s nothing like hysteria and terror with a twist ending.”

“Something with a touch of ghosts and evil spirits, I think, and British accents,” added Zombos.

“Dead of Night,” we both volunteered.

“Well, okay. But then will you watch The Blood Shed afterwards?” asked Paul eagerly. “It goes great with popcorn.”

We grimly nodded yes. Such are the vagaries of the horror movie fan’s life. Maybe I’ll have the League of Reluctant Reviewers deal with The Blood Shed. They are my go-to people for reviewing the most questionable (or is that objectionable) in horror cinema. But for now, the Dead of Night beckons.

It is the starched collar, stiff upper lip in the face of the irrational that gives this British horror entry an unusual cadence, which still works its devilish magic today. Mervyn Johns, the quintessential Bob Cratchit in 1951’s Scrooge, plays architect Walter Craig. His modest appearance, his earnest demeanor, and his nightmare-bedeviled mind come up against the weird at a country estate where he unexpectedly meets those persons, now real flesh and blood, rattling him in his sleep. Is it déjà vu, or is something more sinister afoot?

Assembled in the living room of the country house he’s come to remodel, they are, at first, surprised by his assertions of familiarity. They quickly warm up to his odd precognition, however, and eagerly describe their own brushes with the preternatural, one by one, including the pooh-poohing psychologist, who saves the most chilling encounter for last.

This sets up the movie’s stories within a framing narrative, with each tale delivering a stronger jolt of the inexplicable intruding into the mundane world; culminating in a whirligig ending, with Craig smack in the thick of it, twisting back to the beginning. But the beginning is the main question he desperately puts the puzzling pieces together in search of an answer.

The caliber of acting is A movie. Michael Redgrave caps off the strong cast with his portrayal of a frazzled ventriloquist whose vent dummy won’t shut up. In the last and strongest story to be told, this one by the psychologist who admits he’s baffled by the encounter.

Ventriloquist Maxwell Frere no longer does all the talking in his act. When his dapper but nasty alter ego, Hugo, goes looking for a new lap to sit in, Frere goes off the very deep end and winds up bashing the dummy’s face to pulp. But you just can’t keep a bad dummy down in horror, so Hugo returns to run the act his way. Madness? Perhaps. But there’s still an air of the weird with Hugo appearing larger than his wooden life would normally allow.

Another strong segment involves a three-panel mirror bought in an antique shop. Old, ornate, and decidedly evil in its reflections, the mirror bodes ill to the poor fellow who receives it as a birthday present from his wife. Obviously not a watcher of the Antiques Roadshow, she decides to learn the provenance of the damned thing after she buys it, much to her regret. Of course, when the shopkeeper tells her about the mirror’s previous owner’s misfortune, prefacing his horrifying story with his hope she’s not superstitious, the chill-to-her-bone realization of what’s happening to her husband sends her straight away to set matters right. This story’s mood of impending doom comes from the mirror’s reflection of a sinister-looking Victorian room, and the deleterious effect it has on her husband who only sees himself standing in it even when his wife is by his side.

Separating these two tales of stark terror is a pawky romantic rivalry between two quirky golfers and their infatuation with a woman who can’t decide which to marry. Loosely based on H.G. Wells’ The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost, it is often criticized as the weakest of the five stories. However, it does provide an absurd humor interlude from the more serious scares. Told by the host of the country house who doesn’t have a real supernatural encounter to relate—but makes one up anyway—it’s an Alfred Hitchock Presents-styled twist ending involving an unwanted haunting and the need for fair play. Its whimsical nature fits in with the host’s personality, and provides contrast to the overall narrative of Craig’s predicament. It also provides a showcase for the British comedy duo of Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne (Charters and Caldicott in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes).

As each story is told, Craig and the psychiatrist argue over their true supernatural experiences. More and more, the architect becomes trapped by events playing out according to his dream, leading him to an inescapable compulsion. But what is real, and what are whispers and shadows heard and seen only in the dead of night is anyone’s guess; especially Craig’s.

This portmanteau movie’s five segments were handled by four directors, and each story supports the main narrative of Walter Craig’s nightmare dilemma. In its initial American release, the opening Yuletide ghost story and the lighter golfing interlude were cut, muddling the pacing and leaving one lodge guest without a story to tell.

This classic compendium of the macabre had a strong influence on subsequent horror movies because of its eerie moodiness and is well worth a view, especially in the dead of night.

Silent Hill (2006)
Dear Mr. Ebert

November 25, 2023 / Movies (Horror) / 4 Comments

Nov 25 2023

Zombos Says: Good

Dear Mr. Ebert:

I am aghast that you, as mentioned in your review for Silent Hill, cannot describe the plot for this movie. I, as you, have not played the video game, but even so I think
the plot woefully obvious. Allow me to illustrate it, with as much brevity as
possible, so you can better appreciate the nuances of this gripping horror story.

But before I begin, I was wondering what you use for a light source when you take notes during the movie? I’ve tried various book-lights and pen-lights, but they’re either too bright, annoying those sitting around me, or too awkward to position, or uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time. I was lucky with Silent Hill as there was an Exit sign which cast just enough reddish light for me to see what I was writing. Of course, I had to sit on the floor next to it, but it wasn’t too uncomfortable; except for the occasional person stepping over me to go to the bathroom or concession stand. It’s a good thing I don’t review Disney movies as I’d have had the little monsters and their rude parents incessantly running back and forth, trampling me.

Getting back to Silent Hill, the plot is a simple one, often repeated in horror and science fiction movies. It even reminded me of the Star Trek episode, And the Children Shall Lead, where Gorgon, an evil alien who appears to children as a friendly angel (played by real-life attorney Melvin Belli), takes advantage of their naivety to further his evil plans. He uses them as a conduit for his nasty powers. Now instead of an evil alien, in Silent Hill we
have a kid, Alessa, who’s being used by a malevolent demon to exact malicious mischief and revenge on the titular (I always love using that word: it sounds so naughty) townspeople that did her wrong.

Now—oh, wait a minute—is it a demon that is using the girl as a conduit or is it actually the dark half of
the girl that’s taking revenge on the townsfolk? The convoluted explanation toward the last quarter of the movie, oddly done in an inappropriate grainy faux-home-movie-styled flashback, describes how badly the poor kid was
mistreated, and how she eventually split into a dark half who curses and destroys the town and everyone in it, and a good half the dark half sends away, only to call it back after nine years. But then why bother to send the
good half away, only to have it return after nine years?

I missed something. I better start over.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I’m surprised that you, as mentioned in your review for Silent Hill, can’t describe the plot for this move. I, as you, have not played the video game, but even so, I think the plot fairly obvious. Allow me to illustrate, with as much brevity as possible, so you can better appreciate the nuances of this atmospheric horror story.

Alessa, born out of wedlock, is tormented by her classmates, victimized by the school janitor, and cooked like
a hot dog by a wacky religious cult. The poor kid, amazingly, survives all this rude treatment and, naturally, develops an evil personification that can reach out from her badly scarred and bed-ridden body to maliciously destroy her tormentors. No wonder there.

Then again, you could look at it this way: a demon from hell takes advantage of the poor girl’s revengeful,
hate-filled state of mind to kill everybody in town and lock their souls into a very imaginatively depicted hell-like limbo filled with endless horrific punishments.

After wreaking chaos and horror on the townsfolk, she realizes she’s been acting rather badly and decides to
create a good version of herself—pre-nastiness and all that, which she then sends away to live with
total strangers until precisely nine years pass. Demon Alessa—or just a hell-spawned demon along for the ride—then summons pre-nastiness Alessa (now Sharon) back to town to…to…what? And what’s that weird, confusing
backstory about a witch burned by townsfolk and the town being on fire for years and years?

Oh, bugger! I thought I had it this time. I have to start over.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I’m not surprised that you can’t describe the plot for Silent Hill. It can be confusing to those not all that familiar with horror movies. Allow me to explain, with as much brevity as possible, so you can better appreciate the nuances of this visually stunning and creepy movie.

But first, I must give kudos to the art direction. It’s a wonderful creaturefest of makeup, CGI-enhanced sets and coloration, and icky-monster costuming that’s quite a treat to watch. The creatures are nightmarish, in that nifty
damned-to-hell kind of way, and the sounds and music when Alessa’s mom goes deeper into that cursed town—especially when the siren blares a warning that the town is going ‘into the darkness’—is goosebumps inducing, evoking quite a horrific mood; and those embers glowing on the damned creatures’ bodies, and all that falling ash and pall over the town—again, Dante himself couldn’t have done any better.

The script is another matter entirely. The dialog, for instance, is atrocious. Many of the lines are eye-rollingly bad. The acting also needed better acting, especially during the climactic Barkeresque Hellraiser-styled confrontation in the church between Alessa’s mom and those evil cult members.

Mom does manage to walk through a congregation of crazed, kid-roasting individuals with amazing ease, doesn’t she?

And the verbal showdown between them is so contextually dry; I wish I had Visine to squirt in my eyes each time
they rolled around those groaners.

While I’m at it, what’s with the black, skin-tight, leather uniform on the female motorcycle cop: I mean really, could you get it any tighter? How DOES she get on the motorcycle dressed in those tight pants? All she needs
to complete her ludicrous ensemble is a pair of stiletto heels. Her weak acting during her own barbecue scene in the church is also very disappointing, especially when she’s the one being barbecued. A little more Ouch! or Ooh!
would have provided more drama.

But before I go off on a tangent, let me explain the plot.

Alessa, a poor kid born out of wed-lock and who winds up roasted like a turkey by an evil religious cult while
HER mom puts up little resistance, takes revenge on the townspeople of Silent Hill.

Though I’m not sure if this occurred before the fires broke out in the mines or afterwards. I’m also not
sure how the witch burning, thirty years beforehand, fits into the events with Alessa. There seem to be a few storylines going on here and little explanation to tie them together.

Anyway, from her hospital bed, the badly scarred and immobile Alessa, either through sheer malevolent will
power, or by the assistance of a hellish demon (maybe the witch’s familiar?) destroys the town and its citizens, forcing their spirits to ‘live’ in a nightmare world that puts Dante’s Inferno to shame. They must endure not only the hellish Limbo they’ve been caught in, but also the Darkness that brings Pyramid Head (you need to have played the video game, but a guy with a pyramid on his head) and his agonies (give or take a few like in the video game) to torture them if they’re unlucky enough to be caught outside their only sanctuary, the church.

Alessa, for some reason, sends off a good version of herself as a baby, now named Sharon, and then summons
Sharon back to Silent Hill after nine years. Since Sharon sleepwalks and blurts out “Silent Hill” in her sleep a lot, her mom, casting caution to the wind, takes her to Silent Hill.

Not exactly sure why since Sharon’s scared sh+tless of the place. Perhaps her mom is just taking that confronting your fears thing a little too seriously?

Yes, Silent Hill! The one with all the well-known, evilly-cursed stuff attached to it. A place so notorious,
Sharon’s father reads about it on the web at www.ghosttowns.com. This is the ABANDONED place that has had toxic fires burning beneath it for years, so much so that ash continually falls from the sky, and deadly fumes reek forth so badly not even a Glade Plug-in Air Freshener could cover it up.

So her mom takes her there, AT NIGHT, hoping to find out why her daughter keeps sleepwalking and saying
“Silent Hill” a lot and seems so frightened of the damned place.

Along the way they’re almost stopped by a dominatrix-looking motorcycle cop who dresses in impossibly tight
leather motorcycle garb (minus stiletto heels, though), but her mom is determined to bring Sharon (really Alessa) to that deserted, fires-still-burning, town (that nobody else wants to go near)—in the middle of the night no less—so she puts the pedal to the metal, promptly crashing her car in the process.

Mom wakes up, finds her daughter missing, and heads into town on foot. The motorcycle cop follows them, promptly crashes her motorcycle, and heads into town on foot, too.

Now, Mr. Ebert, here is where the subtlety begins.

You see, Sharon (really Alessa), her mom, and the motorcycle cop are actually dead, but they don’t realize it.
They died in their respective vehicular crashes. This is why they can be affected by the creatures and hellish darkness of Silent Hill while her husband, and the others searching for her, walk through the town unaffected and
unaware.

Now Alessa, as Sharon, has her mom and the cop go through quite a few trials and tribulations to find her so
she can use them to get into the church to send those evil cult members to Hell—well, more Hell that is, seeing as they’re all ready knee deep in it. Much gore ensues as Alessa gloats and tears them apart in a scene of ripping
butchery that Pinhead would be proud of. Sharon as Alessa–or Alessa as Sharon–and mom then walk back to the car, buckle themselves in for safety—this time—and head home.

Of course, there’s the confusing sequelization-antic ending (my term for forcing a sequel: clever, huh?), where
the husband is home as they return home, but he can’t see them and they can’t see him. The scene shifts between
husband in his nice sunlit home and them in their bleak, ominous-looking home. Sharon-now-Alessa, or the demon posing as Sharon-now-Alessa, gives us that sinister, look, so common in horror movies these days, to tip us off that it isn’t over until the franchise says it’s over.

With them being dead, though, how, exactly, does dead Alessa benefit from taking over now dead Sharon’s body?

And they (the script writers, I mean) still haven’t explained why the witch was burned or why the fires started
in the mines in the first place. Oh bloody hell. I thought I finally had it right this time. Crap.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

Never mind. You were right as usual.

Yours Truly,

Zoc

PS. We miss you.

Creepy Crawly (2023)

October 5, 2023 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

Oct 5 2023

Zombos Says: Not bad, could have been better.

Public Service Message…Creepy Crawly takes its cue from Thailand's giant venomous centipede, scolopendra subspinipes. So stay the hell out of Thailand…end of public service message.

Three months after Covid-19 began, Big Bee Car Rental drops off a group of people for quarantine at a hotel. Also taking up residence at the hotel, soon enough, are multi-legged big buggers that would even scare away the bedbugs.

The hotel staff soon finds creepy crawlies under a bed while relationships between the hotel staff and the two-legged guests provide the usual emotional turmoil, including a strained relationship between a brother (Pirat Nitipasialkul), sister, and their father. The brother is quick to violence, which comes in handy once the threat manifests itself openly.

That threat starts taking over the hotel and the staff. The action scenes are good but the CGI is wonky when infected people turn into centipedic nasties. There are moments where either practical effects or more carefully designed visual ones would have been more effective.

While the movie plays like a horror, it leans more towards monstrous super-villain, hopping from body to body, as the main creature, already revealed by the poster art, acts like the big bad momma while her babies run wild. On the plus side, this buggy family makes the brother, sister, and father come together to survive.

The gore and ickiness elements are here, but never reach the stage of making you wince or feel like your skin is crawling (for me, Arachnophobia 1990, always does that), which you would expect from a movie about multi-legged bugs. Such scenes are started then cut away from too soon.

The end run involves a battle between the overly violent brother and the mother (or, to be fair, daddy) monster. Here is where the movie really kicks ass, leading to a sequelitis-ending (you know, oops-not-dead-yet!) Overall, the direction and story by Chalit Krileadmongkon and Pakphum Wongjinda keeps what could have been a very video-nasty kind of movie tightly "clean," even with the bloody bits. It moves well, but undercuts itself by giving a standard brother hates father backstory that stops the momentum at key moments, and it shies away from the intensity horrific scenes could have reached. The monster design is good and a longer battle scene would have been perfect, but still worth a watch because of its anime and manga-like vibe.

It Lives Inside (2023)

September 18, 2023 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

Sep 18 2023

Zombos Says: Good, in spite of what some other critics may say.

Sticking demons in jars probably isn't the best approach to containing them, especially when the jar is made of glass. Getting the beastie into the jar in the first place can be a painful and terminal experience too. But all of that Tamira (Mohana Krishnan) and Sam (Megan Suri) already know, in this effective chiller directed by Bishal Dutta.

Trying to fit in at an American school is bad enough, but deciphering the cryptic book left behind by a family that left the neighborhood the hard way, and a mother (Neeru Bajwa) who expects she follow family traditions, is making it all very difficult for Sam, her new boyfriend, and her school councilor, Joyce. Her friend, Tamira, has it worse since she is the one left holding the jar. Until Sam smashes it in a fit of disgust. Cue the terror and screaming for both of them.

In true horror movie fashion, the adults are clueless and little help, so Sam and her boyfriend check out the house where that other family didn't stay long. A scary mural matches a drawing in the book and is also not much help at that moment. When the demon goes after her and those around her, the story picks up speed and bloodletting.

While Joyce (Betty Gabriel) becomes a believer in Hindu demonic entities–the hard way–Sam and her mother embrace their culture to fight against the monster and save who they can. Not so surprisingly, it involves a lot of cooking. The ending leaves an opening for more mayhem, but don't they always?

Some critics have reviewed this one as derivative, too cliche-heavy, and the usual freaky creepy tropes kind of effort. I admit the use of oh-it-was-a-nightmare-moments are cheap these days to foster scares and pad the story, but the creature design is beautiful (in a demon sort of way of course), and filming its presence is nicely handled: glimpses at first, then full-0n, run for your life reveals as the situation worsens. And Sam thought fitting in at school was difficult?

I will say the use of yet another cryptic book, filled with incoherent Crayola scribblings and drawings as the key provider of clues, like the overused Internet and YouTube search for just about anything evil, is getting wearisome as go-to ways of moving a story forward. Especially when those books are always beaten, leatherbound, and look like they were buried and dug up a few times while being chewed on. Why not use a Mead notebook for damn sakes, like everyone else?

Don’t Look Away (2023)
Review

August 31, 2023 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

Aug 31 2023

Zombos Says: By all means, see it!

I was robbed! Here I'm thinking, with a title like Don't Look Away, and let's face it, a crazy premise, I had all the snarky review taglines ready: like You Must Look Away! or No, Really, Don't Look! And then they throw a curveball and make an entertaining romp with a devilish mannequin that just stands there like, um, a mannequin. And it works.

I can imagine the pitch party with this one.

"Hey, you know those Weeping Angels in Doctor Who? Cool right? What if we take 'em and add a little Zuni Fetish Doll Warrior-lethal craziness from Trilogy of Terror (1975), toss in some cockamamie curse angle like they do in those J-Horror movies where you don't have to explain the backstory coherently, and punch it up to a mannequin-sized monster that goes after people that see it?"

"Sounds great! But…"

"What buts?"

"Big buts. But the CGI blows our budget out of the water, and, really, how goofy would that look on screen watching a mannequin butcher people? I mean, but how does he move or hold onto things or rip out their throats and do slasher stuff like that? Practical effects would suck, period"

"Oh, that. Thinking, thinking…I know! He doesn't move! We just move him around a lot, do some quick edits, and bam! A quantum singularity mannequin! He appears, cut to people mauled five ways to Sunday, he disappears."

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard and yet, brilliant! Let's go sell this baby!"

And here we are.

Frankie (Kelley Bastard) winds up hitting a truck driver running from a heist gone bad. Seems the sole cargo on the truck was a big box of whoop ass courtesy of a mannequin after the lid is taken off. Eventually Frankie tries to describe what she saw at the crime scene when she's asked if she saw anything, but one of the cops, after the two of them look at each other, asks "like a Bloomingdale's mannequin?" But Kelley has seen the mannequin-stein and that kicks off the cat and mouse game of survival; mostly for her friends though, because she points out the mannequin to them when it hangs (well, stands actually) around her house.

Her friends are also hard to get buy-in on They just head to a nightclub to cheer her up. Bad idea. Of course, Jonah (Michael Mitton), the guy who wants to be her boyfriend, starts to realize she isn't crazy, but her live-in guy, Steve (Colm Hill), who's kind of loopy to begin with, thinks she's imagining things. He has a The Shining moment later on, though, as the mannequin proves it just doesn't stand around. All of which is foreshadowed by a television glimpse of The Shining as the Scooby-Don't team debates Frankie' delusion.

Of course, the one black guy, Drake (Abu Dukuly), suddenly pulls a gun from his drawer to give to his girlfriend, Lucy (Rene Lai). One of these days we'll actually see the one white guy pull a gun from his drawer and give it to his significant other too. But for now, even with a bat in hand, Drake isn't as tough as he looks. None of them are. Even trying to burn it has dire consequences.

Cue the viral video online that alerts them to others who have experienced the mannequin's evil. Reaching out, they learn a few things to save themselves. They also discover Malick (Michael Bafaro), who was the one having the thing shipped to his estate. He certainly doesn't look the type to have an estate, but let that one slide. This is where the J-Horror aspect comes in because Malick tells them they are all cursed but turns out to be less informative than they hope (hell, I think they already knew that), and prone to mischief himself.

This is a franchise-building entry that provides chills through a simple premise with great bang for the buck ratio: an indestructible monster that has to be the cheapest practical effect ever devised, and a story that is crying out for a backstory as to how this evil, demonic thing, came to life. Don't Look Now makes you feel a bit 1980s, and that's a good thing. And I dare them to show me Malick's estate in the sequel. Or explain how this thing can stay locked in a box when it can appear and disappear all over the place in microseconds. I will take whichever comes first.

Dracula (1931)
Bela Does It Best

August 19, 2022 / Movies (Horror), Universal Monsters / 2 Comments

Aug 19 2022

ZC Note: I first posted this in 2007. If you haven't seen Bela as Dracula yet (where the hell have you been?) this review does contain spoilers.

Zombos Says: Classic

It seemed the whole room was filled with mist. Then I saw two red eyes glaring at me, approaching quickly, giving way to a livid face contorted into the gravest mask of terror. It was only Zombos.

"For god's sake, hide me!" he cried.

"Daddos, where are you daddos? You've got a dance question." Zombos Jr was getting closer.

"Playing High School Musical the DVD Board Game, I see," I said, applying more steam to the corpse plants. I had been enjoying the warm, pleasant quiet of the solarium as it filled with mist, attending to my botanical chores. Warm, pleasant, moments never last, do they?

"I don't know why Zimba ever got him that hellish game!" Zombos frantically looked about the room for a hiding place.

"Try behind the bench over there," I pointed. For a man his age, he did move fast when given sufficient reason.

Perhaps I should mention I recommended the game to Zimba. It did make such a wonderful Christmas gift for Zombos Jr; the little fellow simply can't get enough of it.

Zombos Jr came running into the room.

"Did you see my daddos?"

Before I could answer, Zombos sneezed loud enough to wake the dead.

"There you are!" He gleefully ran to Zombos and hustled him out of the room. Zombos let out a moan of despair that followed him all the way up the stairs and down the east hall to the playroom. Wait a minute; I mistakenly told him to hide behind the bench next to the orchids. Silly me, the man’s terribly allergic to them. How could I have forgotten? I turned back to my duties, pondering on another pair of red eyes glaring through dark mist, deep into the dead of night.

The year was 1931. Universal Studios had originally planned a big budget movie, more along the lines of 1923's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and 1925's The Phantom of the Opera, but the Great Depression squelched those plans. Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces and master of extreme characterizations, was onboard to star in Dracula, playing both the titular vampire and Van Helsing, the titular vampire's nemesis. Chaney succumbed to a throat hemorrhage before production began, leaving director and creative partner, Tod Browning, disappointed and disheartened.

Other names were bandied about to replace him, including Conrad Veidt, but only one person was born to play the role of the undead count: Bela Lugosi. Say what you will about the shortcomings of Browning's movie, it’s Lugosi's performance as the aristocratic count of corrupting evil that has defined the sartorial look, voice, and mannerisms of Bram Stoker's Dracula ever since. Lugosi was and still is Dracula, down to his hypnotic stare, sensual cape swirl, and suave malice and upper-class pretentions.

Amazingly, Lugosi, who had starred in the smash stage play Dracula, by Hamilton Deane and later John L. Balderston, had to fight fang and nail for the movie role. The expatriate Hungarian actor whose singular, syllabic voice was both a blessing for playing the blood-thirsty count, and a curse for most of his other roles, took less pay then his fellow actors to get the part. Yet, it’s his performance that has provided horrorheads everywhere with undying dreams of immortality, and punsters with a Google's worth of Lugosi-like enunciations.

Lugosi took Dracula seriously, even though Browning may not have.

Cinema historians and fans have written and debated much on the movie's immobilized camerawork, long silent pauses, dialog-weighted pacing after we leave Transylvania, and a stifling confinement to the play's drawing-room set-pieces, with mostly Lugosi's performance making it all worthwhile. In every one of his endeavors, from B-movie to Poverty Row quickie, he never acted down to the material. And while the Spanish version of Dracula, filmed concurrently at night and on the same sets, may be technically superior to Browning's version, the overly melodramatic acting of Carlos Villarias as Conde Dracula is distracting.

Beginning with what would become the signature Gothic-neverworld of Universal; frightened villagers, dreary mist-shrouded landscapes, and expansive interior sets awash with ominous shadows and portents of supernatural danger, poor Renfield (Dwight Frye) doesn't know what he's in for as he heads to Castle Dracula to deliver the lease for Carfax Abbey to its new owner, Count Dracula—on Walpurgis Night, no less. Ignoring the pleas of the villagers not to go, he hops in a coach to make a midnight rendezvous with another that will take him the rest of the way.

The rendezvous with Count Dracula’s coach, pulled by black horses, in the mist-shrouded forest at midnight is foreboding. Renfield barely gets his feet on the ground before the frightened driver who brought him throws his bag down and whips his horses into a gallop to get away. Dracula himself is the driver of the waiting coach. Cinema historian David Skal points out how the scene as written differs from how it was filmed, leading to an anomaly.

In the script, Dracula has his face covered so only his piercing eyes can be seen by Renfield. On film, Dracula's face is not hidden. Renfield can clearly see him, but at the castle he doesn't realize his mysterious host was also his silent coachman. Or perhaps Dracula simply mesmerized him?

Dracula greets him in the cavernous hall of the castle. Renfield sheepishly walks toward the great stone staircase while Dracula slowly descends it, with both framed and dwarfed by the decaying battlements and desolation. The censors wouldn't allow rats to be shown so Browning chose armadillos instead, hoping they’d be creepy enough. They are. He even has a fat vampire bug crawl out of its tiny coffin, which is more odd than creepy. The art direction by Charles D. Hall, combined with Karl Freund’s cinematography generates eeriness and an underlying and indeterminate dread we sense as well as Renfield.

Hall would go on to helm the memorable art direction in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, while Freund continued casting ominous shadows in his brooding camera work in Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Mummy.

The howling of wolves prompts Dracula to wax poetic as he implores Renfield to "Listen to them…the children of the night…what music they make." Renfield, not quite sure what to make of all this, haltingly follows the count, who effortlessly passes through a large spider web blocking the stairs.

At this point, I'd be running down the stairs, but Renfield shirks it off and uses his walking stick to open a path through the enormous web. He follows his creepy host to a comfortable room, cheerily lit by a crackling fireplace. Greatly relieved, he even mentions how cheery it is.

It’s as cheery as the movie gets.

Before you can say " I don't drink…wine," Renfield is drugged, tapped out of a pint or two of blood, and turned into a raving lunatic who eats flies and fat juicy spiders for their life's fluid. In an energetic performance that would typecast him, Dwight Frye vividly illuminates the pain, pathos, and sinful pleasure of Dracula's questionable "gift" of immortality. His near feverish ravings contrast sharply with Lugosi's studied, methodical performance, setting the tone for every mad doctor's assistant to come.

Unfortunately, the movie leaves its momentum at the Borgo Pass in Transylvania when Dracula and Renfield sail to London aboard the Vesta. As Skal notes, the shooting script had scenes involving Lugosi baring fangs and attacking the Vesta's crew like some all-you-can-eat seafood smorgasbord. In the movie, the budget and censors took their toll, along with Browning's seeming disinterest, and the Vesta’s voyage is a short run of herky-jerky stock footage from a previous silent movie. Except for one chilling scene in which Renfield laughs and glares maniacally from the ship's cargo hold as he’s discovered when the ship drifts into port, the voyage is not a highpoint it could have been. A movie long in development hell called the Last Voyage of the Demeter aims to capitalize on this shortcoming. (Demeter is the name of the Russian schooner carrying Dracula to England in Bram Stoker’s novel.)

While the ponderously static drawing-room scenes slow momentum, the tete-a-tete between Dracula and Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), and Renfield's more colorfully lucid moments between raving insanity and pitiable remorse, give sufficient animus to the proceedings to hold attention.

This character-driven intensity is lost in the Spanish version. For instance, Carlos Villarias’ Dracula clumsily uses a walking-stick to smash a mirror box that betrays him, diluting the defining confrontation between him and Van Helsing with bug-eyed theatrics. In comparison, Sloan’s Van Helsing quietly tricks Dracula into viewing the box just before he reveals the mirror. Realizing he’s been outwitted, Lugosi’s Dracula smashes the box to the ground with his bare hand while jumping back, his hatred and contempt burning through the short distance between them. Van Helsing calmly strokes his chin as if he’s conducting an experiment. Lugosi's feral glare turns to an apology as he regains composure. He gives Van Helsing a parting compliment to his cunning and a warning, noting how Van Helsing’s not lived even a single lifetime.

Renfield's vexing ability to roam freely around Dr. Seward's house provides humor and energy, enlivening what would otherwise be dialog-heavy situations. Frye alternates Renfield through bouts of ecstasy and damnation as he obediently, and at times unwillingly, helps Dracula get to Mina (Helen Chandler). His description of the thousands of rats with red eyes, shown to him by Dracula as a future reward, would have been an incredible scene if the censors and budget had allowed it.

I've seen Dracula many times over the years, but never noticed the large piece of cardboard placed next to the lamp in Mina's room until more astute viewers wondered at why this mysterious, ragged piece of paper is visible in the scene. Cinema historians and fans differ in their opinions: is it a mistake, having been used to diffuse lighting for a certain camera angle and forgotten? or is it there as part of the script, purposely positioned by Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston) to keep the harsh lamp light out of Mina’s eyes so she could sleep? Either way, it’s a testament to Lugosi's riveting performance that it usually remains unnoticed in the background.

The current consensus on Tod Browning’s directorial involvement is that he didn't direct much of the movie, but left it to Karl Freund, whose talents as a cinematographer were exceptional, and more adequate than his directorial abilities. I wonder what kind of movie Dracula would have been with Lon Chaney playing the parts of the undead count and his astute, unwavering nemesis Van Helsing. Would Browning have realized a different vision? Would Chaney have used his incredible make-up talents to fashion a more horrific Dracula than Max Shrek's in Nosferatu? If so, would he have been more or less effective than Lugosi's more socially mobile, suave, and seductive vampiric aristocrat?

While no longer scary—given today's desensitized audiences, not much is—Dracula still remains an iconic and important movie in the pantheon of horror cinema due to its initial art direction, and the eternal performances of Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan. As Universal’s first talking horror movie, it set the tone for a new style of terror, creating generations of undying fans to come.

Rock, Paper and Scissors (2019)
All in the Family

July 9, 2021 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

Jul 9 2021

Zombos Says: Good (Though it unfolds like a slow pull on a rubber band that's suddenly let go).

Macarena Garcia Leniz and Martin Blousson's Rock, Paper and Scissors is a psychological horror movie. It unfolds like a long group session with a distracted therapist where little backstory tidbits play out in the current moments as the patients act up for attention, with both past and present thoughts mixed together as if they were one and the same. The pacing can be slow for Americans who are used to fast food cinema, but the performances razor-line on a mounting sense of odd behaviors, and the slow pull on a rubber band storyline builds the tension and guesswork as to who is being truthful and who isn't, then suddenly snaps when let go toward the end. Warning! One scene made me close my eyes. It happens with little forewarning. You may need to close your eyes, too. It brings new meaning to the saying "if the shoe fits."

In this story there are three patients: Jesus ( Pablo Sigal), Maria Jose (Valeria Giorcelli), and Magdalena (Agustina Cervino), and their group session begins when Magdalena pays a visit after a long absence. Unfortunately for Magdalena, she doesn't fully know what she's in for. Their father has died and she has come to put the estate in order and sell off shared assets like the house that Jesus and Maria have isolated themselves in. Of course, Magdalena's unexpected arrival is not really welcomed, but they smile and invite her in. The relationship between the three becomes more ominous and more convoluted the longer she stays: and worsens when she can't leave.

I saw the word "masterful" used in some of this movie's reviews I've glanced over. That's one word that really needs to be stricken from the lexicon of critics and reviewers. It has little meaning or weight anymore due to pandering misuse. The direction here is not masterful, it is carefully measured. So much so that you don't realize the subtle shifts going back and forth in the relationships between Magdalena and Jesus, Magdalena and Maria, and Jesus and Maria. Perhaps the oddest relationship is between Jesus and Maria, but it is disrupted as Magdalena struggles to find a way out of her suddenly dire situation as Jesus is helpful at first, but begins to fixate on his home movie. A weird movie that has Maria dressing up as Dorothy Gale and treating a little furry animal as Toto.

With the three of them wrapped tightly into this small world of rooms and eccentricities, the story relies heavily on their interactions, us inferring their intentions, and the sudden twists taking place as each struggles to remain the same or to escape. Oddball snippets of Jesus' movie appear as the story develops along troubling moments. Maria is endlessly watching The Wizard of Oz, imagining herself to be Dorothy Gale, and even dressing up as that little girl from Kansas, waiting to be whisked away to Oz. Jesus fixates on making his version of the movie, but Magdalena's arrival and subsequent stay has him putting her into the movie too, much to Maria's annoyance. But is she annoyed? Is Jesus really the saner person in the house? Or perhaps a better question is who is the craziest?

A turn for the worse happens when Dorothy's ruby slippers are too small for Magdalena to wear as she is pushed into the role. I say Dorothy's slippers because the meaning behind them revolves around being able to leave the closed-off world of Jesus and Maria. A turn for the worse happens when Jesus pulls out a rifle, seemingly annoyed that his movie cannot be completed as he wants it to be when Maria rethinks her relationship with him and his movie and where her home really lies.

For the story we see there is little backstory given, though it is implied from the long absence of Magdalena, the stifling home that Jesus and Maria have sequestered themselves in, and the death of their father. They may like to play games, but their preference had been for only two players. Having a third to contend with changes the rules of the game, making who wins a matter of life or death.

Army of the Dead (2021) Not Taking Care of Business

May 24, 2021 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

May 24 2021

Zombos Says: watchable, but not memorable.

“Look, I’m just saying that every time Snyder drops a load it’s like fanboy nirvana minus substance to some. To others, his ass must be red from all the ass-kissing he gets when he spends millions of dollars and stretches time beyond normal physics in a way Einstein would have been proud.”

I finished and looked at Paul Holstenwall (see my review for Neon Maniacs). He looked back at me. His eyes narrowed, his mouth was puckering. Any minute he’d have his riposte to my criticism of Army of the Dead, yet another zackstravagance from Zack Snyder, the director many of us either love or hate or dream about, but fanboys simply swoon over with glee. Paul was consummately a fanboy.

“But there’s a zombie tiger!” Paul grasped. Shiny stuff tends to distract him.

“So what? He doesn’t do anything with it! It’s like he told the CGI guys we need some shiny stuff. I know, let’s have a zombie tiger!” I barely contained myself. “Oh, and obviously he took notes from Will Smiths’s I am Legend, revamped it a little and filled in the dead time with zombie-like mutants that go all tribal primitive and grunt a lot.” The only fun aspect of this is he plopped them down in Las Vegas. Oh, wait a minute, didn’t Resident Evil: Extinction kick some sand around in Las Vegas too with primitive zombie-mutants? Granted their budget was a wee bit smaller so more sand than glitz, but hell, Paul, the movie’s a rehash of stuff we’ve seen before, and so so, again and again, my eyes watered.”

I sipped my Jack and Coke and leaned back. Paul took a long draw from his Screwdriver–his third one by the way–and leaned forward. Chef Machiavelli entered the room pushing a dessert cart filled with apple pie and rich, dark chocolate scones. He took one look at the situation and wheeled it between the two of us and hastily left. One of the perks of Zombos’ mansion was an excellent chef, followed by another perk of having the best stock of bottled inebriation on Long Island. If Paul kept up his enthusiasm for this, yet another, Snyder-snickle (the pickle kind, that is), round two of our discussion would need a stronger malt whiskey to see me through.

“Wasn’t there anything you liked about the movie?” asked Paul, grabbing a scone in one hand while drinking his screwdriver in the other. He was finally coming to his senses. Or maybe leaving them, which would be a good thing, too, in his case.

“Well, let’s see. Yes. First, the cheeky opening credits montage led us into thinking he was going for a Zombieland tongue in cheek approach…but then the movie changed to a more serious tone, so no, that’s not it.” I took a piece of apple pie while I stalled. This was going to be harder than I thought.

“Okay, the characters were well chosen with solid actors to back them up (Dave Bautista, Tig Notaro, Ella Purnell, Theo Rossi, and the bunch of them). No one does snark the way Tig does. And for hulking presence, sort of like a Hostel Yogi Bear, there’s Bautista’s physical gravitas. You don’t know when to duck where he’s concerned and that’s off-setting and tension-building. Of course, having great talent to work with and then doing nothing much with them but a graphic novel’s worth of window-dressing and cliché’s, that’s a blown opportunity. Either the movie needed more solid backstory in a shorter amount of time or Netflix should have gone with a limited series to allow for less montage, more backstory, more meaty events to take place in the fight for survival. Sure, the visual look and feel of the movie is all casino gloss, but when you roll the story dice, it’s just shamblers, faster shamblers, and higher functioning mutants pissing their turf boundaries. Even Garret Dillahunt’s Martin is the usual inside man you know will do wrong. Those sunglasses are a dead giveaway he’s going to be trouble.”

Zombos popped his head into the library and saw Paul was still with us.

“Come on in,” I said. Yes, I was desperate. Zombos always managed to disappear when Paul visited the mansion. Zombos made a funny sawing motion with his hand across his throat and quickly poofed into thin air again before Paul turned his head.

“You just don’t like Snyder’s knack for giving an audience what they want to see,” said Paul. He was definitely over the limit on screwdrivers and scones. I pushed the dessert cart out of his reach with my foot.

“That’s quite true. I fully agree with you. If you’re going to put zombies in Las Vegas, you better come up with a better kickstart than the it’s so old it’s got saggy balls, dog-eared, military super-soldier experiment gone horribly wrong or infected soldier gone horribly wrong. And oops! We let it loose because we needed to, to have a story, so its maximum security container is really a tin can easily dented. One wonders how they got Zeus (Richard Cetrone) into that tin can to begin with? He’s smart enough to wear a bullet-deflecting face mask? You’d hope he’d be more of a problem for them as they work on getting into the casino, cracking that incredibly complex safe, and getting out with millions of dollars that must be awfully heavy to carry.”

I reached for a scone.

“And another thing, why is it always so easy to crack a super-safe by some person on the team? I mean, this should have been more mission impossible than let’s mind our turf and Zeus will mind his and we’ll get in and out like aces. One more thing: Snyder wouldn’t know how to cheer things up if his life depended on it. Everything is doom and gloom and his characters may start out in different ways, but they always end up with the short end of the stick. Would it kill him to make a happier movie at least once?”

I sipped my drink and realized Paul was out cold on the couch. Probably dreaming about the next Snyder movie, he had a smile on his face. If only the rest of us could be so lucky. Here’s something really scary: what if he comes out with a director’s cut of Army of the Dead that’s four hours long. Once he’s infected Netflix, lord knows what will happen.

The 100 Hundred Candles Game (2020)

May 18, 2021 / Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

May 18 2021

Zombos Says: Fair to Good (the wrap around story for this anthology movie is lifeless, but the seven stories are bloody good).

If you have seen Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (1968), you know what the 100 Candles title is referring to. It was a Japanese parlor game (hyakumonogatari kaidankai), circa samurai age-ish, that involved arranging two or three rooms so they appeared like an L if you walked through them. Up to 100 persons could play, but I am not sure that ever happened, unless an entire village joined in. Each person, in turn, would tell a ghost story. Or curse story. Or monster story. As each story was told a light would be extinguished (hence the 100 candles or the original andon lanterns used back then). As each light was extinguished and a new story begun, the rooms would get darker and, presumably, a lot more creepy.

So the Japanese, who brought us the dark, long-haired J-horrors of our cinema nightmares, learned the craft of scaring the bejezus out of anyone hundreds of years ago by creating a mood and a sense of mounting dread. The trick was not to tell those 100 stories. The participants feared that if you reached the 100th story, terrors might be unleashed that were slowly building up as each story was finished, and each villager was quietly positioning themselves closer and closer to the exit just in case all hell broke lose. Now that is a game. Kind of like our contemporary haunt attractions, it relied on scary vignettes and mood lighting.

Sadly, that overall mood and tension is not to be found in 100 Candles.

Part of that lies with the actors in the wrap around story. They are supposed to be friends, but none of them are friendly and the game's host (Magui Bravi) least of all. One wonders why they all gathered together in the first place. More context and lead-in would have helped a great deal. Why are they playing the game? No one was having fun, not even before they started. No one seemed to have a reason for being there to play the game. None of the emotions on display indicated they even liked each other. An explanation of the game was more detailed than the characters playing it. After that explanation, we are into the first story about a witch that eats kids. It is short and sweet but could make for an entire movie with a fleshed out script.

The next story involves a domestic dispute and a twist-ending, followed by an unsettling but confusing sojourn into demonic children. A demon-haunted mother, a woman waking up in a coffin, a demonic possession, and a nasty habit concerning taking pictures with a cell phone round out the remaining scares.

The stories themselves are good and creepy and while fairly traditional in execution, have an earnest taste for blood and horror. But the wrap around story jostles with them uncomfortably. Eventually the wrap around reaches its climax but since we did not learn much about the game's participants we really do not care too much about them or what happens to them.

If you take away the wrapper, the horror candy inside is strong and visually arresting, so I recommend you watch this movie and fast forward through the game's participants as they stiffly dialog their growing concerns about the game (but never just leave), and watch the seven stories instead; which makes this a perfect on-demand view, so go at it.

Note: As always, I receive screeners, links, courtesy copies, etc., for some of my reviews. But I still review 'em as I see 'em. So there.