Saying you're not a fan of Mr. M Night Shyamalan's later work is a pretty basic opinion these days. No one enjoyed The Last Airbender; and while The Happening is generally pointed to as his worst film, I will go to my grave saying Lady in the Water is objectively worse. So I did not have high hopes for Old when I first heard about it. And now that I've seen it, I can say that it's another disappointment from a man who had so much potential. What a twist.
body horror
Hellraiser (2022)
Last year for October I watched all the Hellraiser films as part of The Hellbound Halloween. That's 10 movies about Pinhead and his fellow cenobites, with a brief break near the end because holy shit they somehow got progressively worse as time went on. So when I heard that the long-awaited Hellraiser reboot was dropping in October, I knew I had to talk about it. And so here we are on a Saturday while the weekdays are taken up by October of the Living Dead.
Mad God (2021)
Mr. Phil Tippett is a legend. He's partly responsible for the visual effects in classics like Jurassic Park, Star Wars, RoboCop, and also movies like Starship Troopers. And even if he hadn't proven his talent on those films, Mad God is a surreal tour de force that proves he's a master in his field. Too bad it just didn't leave much of an impression on me!
Life (2017)
I will never not be amazed at how some movies just... sneak past me. Like sure, movies come out all the time and sometimes I'm just not paying attention, but how did a movie from 5 years ago starring Mr. Jake Gyllenhaal and Mr. Ryan Reynolds slip by? And it's a sci-fi horror? This feels like an intentional slight and I will not stand for it.
Troll 2 (1990)
Can you believe I'd never seen Troll 2 before? I know, it's kind of shocking. I'm a connoisseur of crappy movies, so somehow avoiding one of the most infamous ones is a little impressive. But Tubi is there for me with just the best selection of awful movies, so I felt it was finally time to fix this cosmic mistake. And everyone was right! This is a really bad movie!
Eraserhead (1977)
A while back, the Criterion Collection had a sale and I bought a couple DVDs that I'd had my eye on. I've already reviewed a few of the movies I picked up, namely The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Beau Travail. But I'd been sitting on the rest for a while now, and it's been a growing annoyance in the back of my skull. So I'm finishing up this week with a light theme! I'm going to be talking about 2 movies I picked up from the Criterion Collection that are surreal experiences from first-time directors released in 1977, starting with Mr. David Lynch's Eraserhead. Yup, that very specific description applies to more than one cult classic.
Virus (1999)
Every movie is somebody's least favorite movie. That's just the law of averages, in my mind. I can look up just about any movie generally regarded as "good" or "a classic" and find 1 star reviews saying it's boring, or just sucks. But while most people can safely ignore idontknowiknowthatidontknow's review of The Shawshank Redemption, "if this film is #2 of all time, then i am Jesus Christ returning to burn this trash," big names saying they hate a movie they actually were in is worth noticing. Case in point, Mrs. Jamie Lee Curtis has said on multiple occasions that Virus is the worst movie she's ever been in, which is a bold claim to make about a fairly okay movie.
Book of Blood (2009)
Not every movie in this interlude near the middle of the Hellbound Halloween is going to have ties to Hellraiser. The previous two films--Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions--are connected through comics and novels, but that still counts (sort of). Book of Blood, however, is just a ghost story. It does have ties to other films, but no obvious connection to Pinhead and his ilk. They can't all fit the theme perfectly.
Lord of Illusions (1995)
On the surface, Lord of Illusions has very little to do with the Hellraiser franchise. One is about a shrewd detective in way over his head among supernatural nonsense, while the other is all about Hell. But what if I were to tell you that they take place in the same universe? Because that's absolutely the case, straight from Mr. Clive Barker himself. So this film actually does fit into this year's October themed event, The Hellbound Halloween! But I'm getting ahead of myself.
CORN (2021)
I can understand the logic behind wanting to make a knockoff movie. Something is popular, so some would want to get on the bandwagon before interest dies down. But CORN is just... confusing. Sure, there's the 2020 Children of the Corn prequel/reboot, but apparently only 10 people saw it and I'm not sure if it will ever have a digital release (trust me, I've spent a lot of time looking into it). And as I have said multiple times, Children of the Corn is nobody's favorite horror franchise. But it's okay! Because CORN's plot has absolutely nothing to do with anything resembling the plot of a CotC film! So why is is even called that? Well...
Chwineka Watches 