Hello Horror 2022 - Day 31 - The Hallow (2015)

  Happy Halloween, everyone!  

Adam (Joseph Mawle) and Claire (Bojana Novakovic) have moved with their infant to a house on the edge of Ireland's last remaining public forest.  Adam is surveying for a logging company and has already felt the resistance of the locals, who warn him not to anger the spirits living in the woods.  He dismisses it as superstition until a weird fungus starts trying to steal his baby.

This turned out to be a much more traditional take on Halloween.  Actual fey!  Not warm and fuzzy, twinkly light Disney fairies, either.  Dark, red-in-tooth-and-claw, pitiless Nature.  You love to see it.

It's hard to ignore the conservationist overtones here.  Mess with Nature, feel Nature's wrath.  But I'm not mad at it.  The horror itself is good, well-crafted, with just enough lore that it feels inevitable.  I've talked before about how horror has consequences.  There's a morality to the mortality.  This is Right and True.  The creature effects are practical, animatronic, and some CGI for flavor with only a couple of moments where they look like dried apple dolls.  This would actually make a great double-feature with Pumpkinhead.

It's currently streaming on Shudder.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 30 - Christmas Evil (1980)

  Also known as You Better Watch Out, not to be confused with Better Watch Out, a different shitty Christmas horror movie.

Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart) has modeled his entire life around Santa Claus.  He works in a toy factory, spies on the neighborhood kids, and keeps a book of who's naughty and who's nice.  His brother (Jeffrey DeMunn) thinks he's crazy but Harry just wants to spread a little joy and mete out a little punishment.  

Mostly, this movie is boring and sad.  It very much paints Harry as deluded but sympathetic, kind of the Arthur Fleck of his day.  He is constantly disrespected by his subordinates at work, dismissed by his superiors, and treated like a burden by his brother.  When he finally gets around to killing people, it's the cynics and the liars that he targets.  But even the killing is lackluster.  He mainly just wants to deliver toys and be Santa.  It's all wrapped up in this weird repressed sex thing because he saw his mom getting freaky with his dad dressed as Santa.  That one instance of awkward role-play ruined any chance he had of living a normal, heterosexual, consumer-driven, 1980s life.

It's lazy and reductive, wanting to bemoan "kids these days" and their perceived lack of innocence and purity.  Give it a miss when you're scrolling through Shudder.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 29 - Candyman (1992)

  I always like to have at least one major classic on the list.  Yes, I will get around to the remake.  Probably next year.  You know how these things go.  Content warning:  dead dog

PhD candidate Helen (Virginia Madsen) is doing research for her thesis on urban legends when she comes across the tale of the Candyman (Tony Todd), a hook-handed apparition that appears if you say his name five times in the mirror.  She traces the stories to a serial killer who stalks the housing project of Cabrini-Green, preying  unchecked in an area cops won't go.  Undaunted, she investigates further, finding a small shrine of razor-bedecked candy amidst the graffiti and a neighbor (Vanessa Williams) to one of the victims.  Helen dismisses the legends as fear-soaked folklore until she blacks out and wakes up branded a murderer and kidnapper.  Now, the Candyman may be her only hope for redemption.

It's kind of a love story?  Like, a toxic one, but still.

Candyman and Hellraiser are both based on Clive Barker stories and have a lot of similar points but Candyman resonated so much more for me.  Maybe because it felt more like a seduction, like the Phantom of the Opera leading Christine through her naïveté.  But with meat hooks instead of opera.

Anyway, it is a classic for a reason and holds up extremely well.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 28 - The Ranger (2018)

  This movie was neon garbage.  Punk deserves better.

Five young adults head up to a cabin in the woods after assaulting a police officer.  Chelsea (Chloe Levine) inherited the cabin after her uncle was killed there.  The death was covered up by the local ranger (Jeremy Holm) who developed an obsession with Chelsea.  Now that she's returned, he'll stop at nothing to make her his.

The only way this movie works is if you consider it an unintentional comedy.  It wants to be Green Room so badly and doesn't even make it past the bouncer.  The villain is pure camp, the dialogue is lame, the kills are mostly off-screen (except for the Black kid.  Hmmm.) and everything in it has been done before and more competently.  Hell, even Tourist Trap did a better job establishing dread.  At least he had creepy-ass mannequins.  This guy just has a wolf pelt and a lot of free time on his hands.  If your movie could have been fixed by someone getting a Netflix account, you should rewrite your script.

It's on Shudder.  Avoid.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 27 - Threads (1984)

  British documentary-style Cold War fearmongering about nuclear armageddon.  Content warning:  rape, starvation, execution, burned bodies, dead animals

A narrator (Paul Vaughn) takes us through the breakout of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States of America over Iranian oil fields and its effect on Sheffield, an industrial city in Great Britain.  Spoiler alert:  it doesn't go well for Sheffield.

Now that we seem to be speed-running the 20th century over again, maybe it is a good time to dust this off.  It's not going to help, mind you.  In fact, it will probably make you feel worse about the increasing tension and threats from autocratic strongmen with their fingers on the Launch button but at least you'll know what to expect when you see that mushroom cloud.

This is a miserable, fact-based slog (Carl Sagan was one of the technical advisers) filled with dire warnings about the future should thermonuclear war occur.  Everyone knows that would be bad, but this movie goes to great lengths to show you exactly how bad.  It's like the Sarah McLachlan animal shelter song but for nuclear disarmament.  Proceed with caution.  It's on Shudder.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 26 - Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

  This is one of the worst sequels and worst entries to the Halloween franchise.  It has nothing to do with the previous installments and has been relegated to errata for a reason.  Content warning:  flashing lights, photosensitivity, annoying music

Deadbeat dad Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) takes a break from drinking and sexually harassing the nurses to investigate a weird murder-suicide.  An assassin (Dick Warlock) kills a hardware shop owner (Al Berry) before setting himself on fire in his car.  Dan partners up with the owner's hot daughter, Ellie (Stacey Nelkin), to travel to the company town of Santa Mira, home of Silver Shamrock Novelties.  Silver Shamrock makes the masks dear old dad was clutching and raving about when he was admitted to the hospital.  Posing as potential buyers, Dan and Ellie take a closer look around the factory and its creepy CEO, Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy).

Dan is a disgusting pig of a man.  The script is stupid and makes zero sense.  Some of the gore is decent practical effect work but there's not enough of it to warrant watching this.  Might be a so-bad-it's-funny with the right atmosphere.  I can't condone it, though.  Peacock has every entry in the franchise.  Skip this one.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 25 - Bones (2001)

  The only thing keeping this from being a Halloween staple is the dodgy special effects, partly from budget and partly because it was 2001.  

1979, Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg) was a local gangster and godfather of the community until he was murdered just as the crack epidemic began.  Over 20 years later, a handful of young adults buy Jimmy's building, planning to turn it into a nightclub.  Patrick (Khalil Kain) remembers very little about growing up in the area because his father (Clifton Powell) moved them to an affluent suburb and remarried.  He doesn't put much stock in local legends, but he is willing to listen to Cynthia (Bianca Lawson), the daughter of a psychic (Pam Grier), mostly because she's really hot.  He is therefore not prepared for Jimmy Bones to arise as a revenant and seek his revenge on the people who killed him.

This is admittedly uneven in tone, and I think the filmmaker could have made a stronger point with the social commentary about drug profiteering in predominantly Black communities, but I love a good revenant story.  The early 00s slang dates it tremendously so it does feel a bit like a historical object.  Whether or not that's a deal-breaker for you, only you know.  Pam Grier is A-list and Snoop has moments but Michael T. Weiss and Ricky Harris are pure cheese.  Somebody on Rotten Tomatoes compared it to Mario Bava but I think they were just being pretentious snots.

Bones is streaming on Tubi.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 24 - Silk (2006)

  I realized I hadn't gotten any Asian horror so far this year.  I had Iranian, Italian, and Finnish, but nothing from Korea, Japan, or Thailand, despite the absolute richness of the genre there.  Clearly, an oversight.  Silk isn't my favorite horror film (a little too sad for me) but I think it might be the first one from Taiwan I've seen.

A government research team has cracked the barrier for antigravity but the creator, Hashimoto (Yôsuke Eguchi), won't give it up without a final experiment.  Hashimoto believes that the Menger Sponge can also make ghosts visible.  He pulls some strings to have Detective Tung (Chang Chen) assigned to his team because of Tung's superior eyesight and ability to read lips.  Tung has no interest in Hashimoto's experiments; he is more concerned with his mother (Chi-Chen Ma) who is comatose and dying of ALS.  But when the team manages to isolate a ghost boy (Kuan-Po Chen), Tung is drawn in despite himself.

This covers a lot of genres.  It's horror, sci-fi, drama, little romance, revenge, redemption, but mostly it boils down to an examination of grief, of holding on and being afraid to let go, of mothers and sons, and what connects us to other people.

It's definitely the only film I've seen recently that shows realistic consequences of firing a gun into a space with civilians.  Tung is a reckless maniac trying to shoot the fucking ghosts even after it becomes abundantly clear that it doesn't work.  He shoots a cop, two civilians, a flower shop, and a subway train, terrorizing a whole bunch of people.  

Silk is unfortunately unavailable for streaming.  I got it on disc from Netflix.  

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 23 - Prevenge (2016)

  Pregnancy is already a horror show but what if your unborn also told you to go on a killing spree?

Ruth (Alice Lowe) wants what any mother wants: to have her baby grow up in a loving, supportive environment.  So when Baby tells her to systematically hunt down and slaughter every single person involved in her daddy's (Marc Bessant) tragic death, Ruth complies.  But as Baby demands more and more blood, Ruth realizes that sometimes children need discipline as well as treats.

This dark comedy hails from Wales.  Alice Lowe wrote and starred in her directorial debut and while I might quibble about style choices, it's a solid film with good pacing and tone work.  It makes excellent use of quick edits for jarring visuals.  

It's only available on Shudder but if you're looking for some fun revenge-flavored body horror, you can do much worse.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 22 - Hush (2016)

  Mike Flanagan has become a Halloween staple in his own right.  I'm only doing movies this year or I'd probably have watched The Haunting of Bly Manor.  I'm definitely planning on watching The Midnight Club since I loved those books as a kid but you guys know how long a time commitment it is to watch a season of anything and it's way far down on the list.

Maddie (Kate Siegel) lost her hearing and voice when she was a teen but has successfully pursued her independence and even made a career as a novelist.  So it's extremely disheartening when she is trapped in her home by a serial killer (John Gallagher, Jr.).  No way of escaping, calling for help, or hiding, Maddie must channel her inner Kevin McAllister to survive the night.

You can read Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Julius Caesar but Home Alone provides excellent principles for preparation of the battlefield.  Bonaparte would have wept.  Hush isn't nearly as elaborate, modeling itself after Wait Until Dark instead, but Maddie is tenacious and highly motivated, sparing the audience (me) from screaming about making dumb decisions.  That's always nice in a slasher.  And the cat lives.  

Hush is currently streaming on Netflix.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 21 - The Addams Family (2019)

  I love the Addams, in all their incarnations.  

Tired of being run out of every town, Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia Addams (Charlize Theron) finally find the home of their dreams: an abandoned insane asylum in the marsh of New Jersey.  For thirteen years, they are able to raise their children at peace until an overeager home improvement maven named Margeaux Needler (Alison Janney) decides the Addams are not picture-perfect enough to be part of the town of Assimilation.  To complicate matters, Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Parker Needler (Elsie Fisher) have become friends, both teenagers committed to rebelling against their repressive mothers, while Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) is struggling with the Addams' rite of manhood: the saber mazurka.  

This adaptation hews much closer to the 60s TV show than the 90s live action film in spirit, but the essential Addams-ness of it is just as true.  It is aggressively wholesome, once again modeling an uxorious dynamic (I never get to use that word!) and cheerfully macabre trappings (Gomez's cufflinks are molars) to tell a story about the trap of protecting children too much and not allowing them the freedom to express who they are, even if that means *shudder* pink unicorn barrettes.

It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 20 - The Beast Must Die (1974)

  It's not Halloween without at least one werewolf movie, although the poster looks more like the Revenge of Benji.

Six guests are invited to the country estate of rich magnate Tom Newcliffe (Calvin Lockhart) for a dinner party, only to find that they've been lured under false pretenses.  Tom is convinced one of the houseguests is a werewolf, though all of them have credibly been accused of murder.  His goal is to expose the beast and then hunt it, for the ultimate thrill.  His wife (Marlene Clark) thinks he's lost his mind.  As the body count begins to rise, Tom comes to realize that being hunted is no laughing matter.

Audience participation!  Peter Cushing!  A Black male lead!  Michael Gambon!  Very good dogs!  Any and all of these are reasons to watch the film.  It's not scary, there's no real violence even depicted on film (although there is one scene implying a dog is put down), and there's very little blood or gore.  It's like a whodunit but with a werewolf.  There's even a 30-second break about 15 minutes before the end so you can guess who it is.  It's a light, British thriller and well worth digging up.  Except you don't have to go far; it's streaming on Shudder, Tubi, PlutoTV, Plex, PopcornFlix, and Shout Factory TV.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 19 - Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel (2018)

  As a sequel, this isn't terrible.  I still hate found footage with every fiber of my being, but this isn't nearly as shaky as other entries in this sub-genre.  It is very reliant on jump scares, but it's not a bad film overall.

Nine years after a documentary crew and a bunch of haunted house patrons died at the Abaddon Hotel, mysteries still surround it.  Bodies were never recovered, people have since gone missing, and families are tormented by messages from their loved ones long after they gave them up for dead.  An investigative journalist (Jillian Geurts) contacts the lone survivor (Vas Eli) and convinces him to go back to find supposed tapes in the basement of the house's founder, Andrew Tully, performing rituals with his cult.  A noted TV psychic (Kyle Ingleman) joins the group.  

The first two-thirds of the movie are good, if a little like a retread of the first, and the additional lore isn't much of an addition, but the last third does nothing but set up the third installment of the franchise and that always feels lazy.  I'll probably still end up watching it next year.  It started out as a Shudder exclusive but now it's available on Tubi.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 18 - Night of the Comet (1984)

  Like, omigod, you guys.  This is totally rad.

A comet last seen by the dinosaurs is making its way past Earth and everyone in Los Angeles is lined up outside to see it, except Reg (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Larry (Michael Bowen), who are holed up in the theater projection room waiting for a film print to be returned from bootleggers.  They are the only ones not affected by the comet's tail, which turns 90% of Angelinos into fine dust and the other 10% into crazed psychos.  Larry finds out about the latter the hard way.  Reg gets home to discover her little sister, Samantha (Kelli Maroney), also survived by virtue of hiding in the steel storage shed after a fight with their bitchy step-mom (Sharon Farrell).  Now the two teens must navigate the wasteland of the city looking for other survivors with only their wits, 80s fashion sense, and the martial arts and weapons skills drilled into them by their Green Beret dad (Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film).  

If I said "Valley Girl horror comedy" you'd probably think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Jennifer's Body, and you wouldn't be wrong.  But you should also consider this the progenitor of those films.  Night of the Comet is funny, very dated, kickass, not scary, and even has moments of pathos along the way.  I watched it on YouTube but I would pay real dollars to see it in a better format.   

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 17 - Voodoo Island (1957)

  I like the idea of following horror movies I hated with old-school creature features but this one should probably remain on the scrapheap of history.  

A hotel magnate (Owen Cunningham) hires a noted skeptic, Philip Knight (Boris Karloff), to investigate a Polynesian island rumored to be cursed.  The only survivor of the previous expedition (Glenn Dixon) was found washed up on a neighboring island in a catatonic state.  Knight's team includes Cynical Boat Captain Who Secretly Cares Too Much (Rhodes Reason), Corporate Shill (Murvyn Vye), Ice Queen (Jean Engstrom), Spineless Greedy Sellout (Elisha Cook, Jr.), and Career Girl Who Needs to be Shown the True Meaning of Femininity (Beverly Tyler).  Their investigation is plagued with problems, but Knight perseveres in his quest for logical explanations.

Voodoo Island serves as a shining example of why diversity in film is so important.  Voodoo is West African and Caribbean, not Polynesian or East Indian.  The leader of the "natives" is a French guy with bronzer.  Coconut crabs will eat a person (RIP Amelia Earhart), though the one in the film is a taxidermied Alaskan King crab.  The same extra shows up at the airfield and then later on a separate island, both times as Vaguely Menacing Brown Guy.  Sure, some of this could be chalked up to budget constraints, but most of it is just '50s racism.

Karloff is a horror icon but he is not enough of a reason to seek this movie out.  However, this is the debut of a baby-faced Adam West (!) playing the radio operator.  I didn't even recognize his face (when too many white dudes are on screen, I find it hard to tell them apart) but his voice cannot be mistaken.  It's on video sharing site dailymotion.com if you're interested, but I would watch only until you see West, then turn it off.  There's nothing else salvageable.  

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 16 - Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)

  It wouldn't be a horror marathon without at least one shitty sequel, right?  This year's installment comes to you from the distant, forgotten land of 1992.  Content warning: moderate gore, a scene reminiscent of lynchiing

After the bodies of the murdered adults are found in Gatlin, Nebraska, news crews swarm the town looking for answers.  The surviving children are sent to foster with sympathetic families in nearby Hemingford.  Tabloid reporter and deadbeat dad, John Garrett (Terence Knox), and his angsty teenaged son, Danny (Paul Scherrer), show up last but manage to score a room at the local bed-and-breakfast, run by way-too-hot-to-be-from-this-town Angela Casual (Rosalind Allen) - ugh - along with orphaned teen Micah (Ryan Bollman).  Micah makes overtures of friendship towards Danny after seeing the hostility between him and his father, but Danny would rather run with way-too-hot-and-desperate-to-leave-this-town Lacey (Christie Clark).  Sure enough, the kids start killing again after Micah is possessed as the new prophet of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

More than the casual misogyny and racism, this film suffers from Trying Too Hard.  Tried too hard to top the first film.  Tried too hard to assign more blame.  Tried too hard to be funny.  Sure, having a house crush a mean old lady with just her legs sticking out is kind of funny.  But you can't have her say "What a world, what a world," as well.  That's the Wicked Witch of the West.  And then have a second old lady (both played by Marty Terry) named Mrs. West be her sister?  That's egging the pudding, my good sir.

We're not even going to talk about the White Savior narrative nonsense.  Yikes.

Anyway, this dreck is streaming in its entirety on YouTube, should you feel so inclined.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 15 - Rare Exports (2010)

  There are so many Christmas horror films.  This one is pretty cute, though.  I would double-feature it with Krampus.  

A shady businessman (Per Kristian Ellefsen) is funding an excavation on Korvatunturi Mountain and insists that it be completed by Christmas Eve.  Two local boys are spying and one, Pietari (Onni Tommila), is convinced the crew is digging out the original Santa Claus, long buried by the Sami people.  No one believes him but on Christmas Eve, every child in town goes missing, a strange, inhuman man is caught in Pietari's father's (Jorma Tommila) wolf trap, and the reindeer herd they depend on for export is slaughtered in the snow.

There are a few inconsistencies (like how Pietari has the world's most specialized library on Santa Claus somehow) but overall, this is a fun delve into the darker side of Kris Kringle.  It has a very Hogfather feel to it, which is damn near the highest praise I can bestow.  I wouldn't call it scary but there is some mild gore and a whole bunch of naked dudes.  It's Finnish and I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't have heard of it, but it's well worth the watch.  It's streaming on Hulu, Shudder, Kanopy, Tubi, and PlutoTV.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 14 - The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

  After the crapfest that was yesterday's movie, here's a nice creature feature from the Atomic Panic years.  Content warning: animal death (pretty sure they just fed an octopus to a shark for some B-roll)

Atomic testing in the Arctic awakens a 100 million-year-old creature.  The eyewitness, Professor Thomas Nesbitt (Paul Hubschmid), is adamant in the face of ridicule and contacts a noted paleontologist (Ceil Kellaway) to confirm his theory.  Not until multiple other attacks happen do any of the authorities take note, and the beast makes it all the way to Manhattan before any real response is put together.  

This very much seems like a Godzilla clone, except it was released the year before.  The monster is by Ray Harryhausen in his solo debut, a phenomenal achievement when you look at how seamless the movement of the beast is and how well-integrated the animation is with the live-action.  You can also see a very young Lee Van Cleef as the sniper assigned to take the monster down with a radioactive bullet.  

It is not available on any streaming services, but you can find the whole thing on the Internet Archive for free.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 13 - The Blair Witch Project (1999)

  I have never wanted to watch this movie because of two words in the description:  "found footage".  God damn shaky cam.  It is the worst.  And whoever decided this should be a "modern classic" should be hung up by their toes.

Three idiot film students wander into the woods of Maryland in search of local ghost story, the Blair Witch.  They have no sense of navigation, no plan, and are soon hopelessly lost.  With each passing night, something in the woods hunts them.

Look, I grew up on the edge of a national forest.  I have been lost in the woods.  I have even gotten lost in Maryland.  My friend and I were hiking on well-traveled, well-marked trails and we took what we thought was a side trail that turned out to just be erosion.  It is very easy to get lost in the woods.  That's why you shouldn't go.  The woods are horrible.  All the trees look the same, there's random tripping hazards, weird noises, and animals that will legitimately kill and eat you.  Plus, you can get hypothermia in 50 degree (F) weather.  I have sympathy for people lost in the woods but not these characters.  Forty minutes in, I was #TeamWitch all the way.  I'm genuinely mad they didn't die faster.  They were fucking annoying and also bad filmmakers.

And at the risk of spoilers for a 22-year-old movie, the whole premise was wrong.  **SPOILERS IN WHITE**  They're out there searching for some lady with hypertrichosis and a lousy dress sense when they should have been looking for Mr. Pratt, the serial killer who put baby boomers in a corner.  None of the stories they heard had anything remotely connecting them, except for being in the woods.  The dead dudes whose bodies disappeared?  Zero connection to the witch.  Girl who saw a furry lady while fishing?  Zero connection.  Serial killer who confessed to seven murders but also "took them in the basement in pairs" which would imply an even number of victims?  Zero connection.  This is bad methodology and shoddy documentary work.  If they hadn't been murdered, they definitely weren't graduating.  **END SPOILERS**

I watched this on Peacock and the most disturbing thing about the film was that the subtitles were censored.  Like, the subtitles were PG-13 at best, while the movie dialogue was R.  If I were a member of the Deaf community, I would complain.  That's infantilizing as fuck.  Maybe try one of the other platforms like Paramount+, PlutoTV, Hulu, or Amazon Prime.  Or don't watch it at all and spare yourself the splitting headache.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 12 - The Witch in the Window (2018)

  This was so fucking cuuuuuuuuute!  Like, an adult version of Monster House (but you probably shouldn't let your kids watch it.  Maybe the older ones.  But not little kids.  Still a horror movie.)

Simon (Alex Draper) has custody of his 12-year-old son Finn (Charlie Tacker) as a punishment after Finn is caught on some disreputable internet sites by his mom (Arija Bareikis).  Simon is renovating a farm house in Vermont and it's the perfect way to try and rebuild the strained bond between father and son.  Except the house isn't exactly empty.  The previous tenet, Lydia (Carol Stanzione), died in the house and the more Simon repairs, the stronger Lydia's presence seems to be.

Okay, so I don't want to detract from the horror elements, because there are many, but this wound up being so wholesome??  100% not what I was expecting but an absolute joy to watch.  No gore, no violence, just some solid atmospherics and mind-fuckery.  10/10, no notes.  It's a Shudder original so that's the only way you're going to get it unless you rent or buy.  It's definitely worth it if you're in the mood for something with a happy(-ish) ending.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 11 - Tourist Trap (1979)

  More killer dolls!  This time it's creepy-ass mannequins.

Five friends on a road trip make the mistake of stopping at a closed tourist trap.  The owner (Chuck Connors) is super friendly and seems thrilled to show off his collections of unique mannequins.  And then psychically command them to kill.

Oh, yes, friends.  Telekinetic murder by plastic people.  It is gloriously trashy.  So far, this is the sleaziest film of the month and there's absolutely zero T&A (except for the mannequins).  The Nightmare Fuel factor is off-the-charts here.  If you've got a thing about dolls or inanimate objects coming to life, you might want to skip this one.  Otherwise, it's streaming on Shudder, Tubi, Peacock, PlutoTV, Freevee, Vudu, and Roku.

And as a bonus, there's a Rifftrax version!

And, hey, fun fact:  this is my 2500th post!

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 10 - Bug (2006)

  Well, this has a hell of a pedigree.

Agnes White (Ashley Judd) is afraid her abusive ex-husband, Jerry (Harry Connick, Jr.) is stalking her so when a friend (Lynn Collins) introduces her to a drifter named Peter (Michael Shannon), she invites him to stay.  Sure, he keeps Jerry at bay but soon reveals that he believes he is infested with bugs, bugs that live in his blood, that feed on him, and now feed on Agnes.  

It's hard not to read this as anything other than post-9/11-PATRIOT Act fear.  There are so many conspiracy theorists that gained traction by virtue of the government admitting that they spied on people and continue to do so.  People don't like uncertainty.  And the beauty of conspiracy theories is that, even when they're proved wrong, there's always another one that explains why they're actually right.  

Look at the Qanon people, looping practically every celebrity death into their story about how there's a secret cabal of Satanic pedophiles running through every layer of government.  Zero evidence to support their claims but they say it anyway.  (Here's a spoiler alert: if you dig deep enough into any conspiracy theory, what you end up with is anti-semitism.)

Anyway, this is a great example of horror being used as a vehicle for social commentary brought to you by a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and an Oscar-winning director.  It's currently streaming on HBO Max.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 9 - Burnt Offerings (1976)

  A second haunted house movie from the 70s!  This one also has a cantankerous caretaker!  Creepy owners!  Buried marital issues that no one is talking about!

Ben (Oliver Reed) and Marian (Karen Black) Rolfe luck into renting an enormous mansion for $900 for an entire summer.  Ben is wary of the catch but Marian can only see the potential in the crumbling pile.  She doesn't even mind caring for the owners' 85-year-old mother, which is part of the price.  Roz (Eileen Heckart) and Arnold (Burgess Meredith) Allerdyce are thrilled to have someone as dedicated as Marian, so thrilled that they leave before the Rolfes can move in.  At first, everything is great, but it soon seems that the more effort Marian puts into restoration, the more the house takes.  And takes.  

This one is available on Amazon  Prime and Paramount+ for the month of October.  It's one of Bette Davis' last roles and kind of a forgotten gem.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 8 - Coherence (2013)

  This is sci-fi but with a strong psychological horror feel.  

Eight friends at a dinner party all experience bizarre events stemming from a passing comet.

I think everyone is familiar with the multiverse theory at this point.  It's still an interesting thought experiment.  What would you do if you could wander through the different realities and pick a better one?  What if you were already in that one?  Would you replace yourself? 

This actually reminded me a lot of an episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street."  It's basically the exact same premise but with less quantum physics and more aliens.

It's not a bad film but I found the extreme close-ups and hazy hand-held shots to be irritating.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Shudder, Kanopy, Tubi, PlutoTV, Peacock, and PopcornFlix so there's tons of places you can find it if you want.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 7 - Deep Red (1975)

  There's a lot of hyperbole on this poster.  I absolutely would not put Deep Red in the same category as Psycho and The Exorcist.  Content warning:  animal death, animal torture

Pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) witnesses the murder of his downstairs neighbor, Helga Ullman (Macha Meril), a noted psychic, and becomes obsessed with finding her killer after a bumbling reporter (Daria Nicolodi) publishes his picture in the paper.  Fearing that he might be the next victim, Marcus tracks down Helga's compatriots and learns that she had a psychic vision of the murderer's previous victims and was going to write down all the details.  The more he uncovers, the more people end up dead.

This is Dario Argento's work and he is the OG of Vibes Only, No Plot.  This was less annoying than Suspiria, but there's a homophobic undercurrent that I did not care for.  It's all very Freudian and regressive.  But it is considered a classic of the giallo sub-genre, so if you're interested, it's currently streaming on Shudder and Tubi.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 6 - The Boy (2016)

  Creepy dolls are a horror staple but this is more of a wet blanket than your Annabelles and your Chuckys.

Greta (Lauren Cohen) is running from an abusive ex and takes a job as a nanny in England.  She is surprised to find that Brahms is actually a porcelain doll.  The couple's real child died in a fire over 20 years ago.  But Greta begins to suspect that there is a life to the doll, some sort of spirit animating it.  She sees it as a way to move past her own tragedy.  Then her ex (Ben Robson) shows up.

The twist is... not twisty.  You'll figure it out pretty quickly, if you haven't already guessed it.  It's not terrible, mostly because Cohen is a very good actress and co-star Rupert Evans is very charming, but it's not great.  Definitely not worth watching a second time and I feel zero desire to give the sequel a chance.  It's currently streaming on Netflix if you want something on in the background that's thematic but you don't have to really pay attention and you're not in the mood for The Great British Bake-Off.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 5 - The Evil (1978)

  This is such a classic '70s haunted house movie.  Drunk caretaker?  Check.  Backstory presented by a realtor?  Check.  Otherwise chill pet that suddenly goes berserk?  Check.  Only one woman can see the ghosts?  Check.  Thinly veiled critique of science versus faith?  Check.

The Vargas house is a sprawling pile built over a sulfurous spring during the Civil War that has been empty for ages.  The locals believe it's haunted.  But doctors CJ (Richard Crenna) and Caroline (Joanna Pettet) Arnold believe it could be an excellent drug rehab facility if they can fix it up a bit.  They bring a bunch of their friends over to renovate but the house has other ideas.

It's so straightforward a film, it feels almost quaint.  There are no twists, no deep commentary, just straight "evil spirit in the basement, don't let it out."  Which they do, because CJ is a godless heathen and can only be saved by a pretty blonde woman of faith who does literally everything and receives zero credit for it.  Sexism!  

It's a fairly fun ghost story if you're looking to be entertained and not think really hard about it.  It's currently streaming for free on Tubi (with ads) or with a subscription to Shout Factory.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 4 - Under the Shadow (2016)

  You don't see a lot of Middle Eastern horror and it's a shame, because it's a really rich background to draw from.

Shideh (Narges Rashidi), still smarting from her rejection in medical school for previous political affiliations, refuses to evacuate Tehran with her daughter, Dorsa (Avin Manshadi), despite the threat of missile strikes from Iraq.  The two stay in place long after all the other residents have left, but they don't feel alone.  Dorsa believes evil spirits, the Djinn, have stolen her doll and she can't leave until she finds it.  Shideh doesn't believe in Djinn, but she cannot deny that strange things are happening, noises in the night, bad dreams, a fever that won't break.  She has to embrace her past in order to save her daughter.

There's a lot of social commentary in this film.  It's basically an extended metaphor about the fear and trauma of 1980s Iranian women when the entire world seemed to shift against them.  Even now there are massive protests about the enforced wearing of the hijab as part of a larger protest about the curtailing of bodily autonomy, making this movie all the more relevant and topical today.

Also, it's pretty scary.  It has excellent use of tension and peripheral vision, even if you can see the various beats before they happen.  Just top marks all around.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 3 - The Endless (2017)

  Benson and Moorehead are quickly becoming one of my go-to directors.  They understand the interplay between said and not-said, humor and horror, and they never show too much.

Justin (Justin Benson) pulled himself and his brother Aaron (Aaron Moorehead) out of a cult when they were children because he was afraid they were being led to mass suicide.  Ten years later, the cult is still there, and Aaron, dissatisfied with his poverty-stricken life, wants to go back.  Justin agrees to go for one day so his brother can have closure, but the more time they spend at Camp Arcadia, the weirder things get until Justin begins to wonder if the cult is actually on to something.

This is one of the best takes on eldritch horror I've seen lately.  It's simple concepts (circles! time!) but presented in a wholly unique and horrifying way.  Even the stuff that's beautiful is terrifying and that's great.  

Fortunately, it is streaming on a bunch of different platforms so there are a multitude of chances for you to watch it.  It's on Shudder (which I get through Amazon), Kanopy, Tubi, Peacock, Plex, Freevee (still a stupid name), PopcornFlix (whatever that is), Crackle, and Roku.  So there's no excuse to miss out.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 2 - The One I Love (2014)

  Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elizabeth Moss) are on a weekend retreat to reconnect on the advice of their therapist (Ted Danson).  They're having a nice enough time, but soon discover that the guest house comes with some amenities they weren't expecting.  Like their doppelgängers.  Ethan 1 gets more suspicious when Sophie starts spending more and more time with Ethan 2 but he is not prepared for how far the doubles are willing to go if it means freedom.

Oh, relationships!  They are filled to the brim with horror in the right hands.  This focuses a lot on Ethan, his mental state, his emotional responses, which I'm not in love with.  I would have preferred a more equal representation, considering that it's Ethan's infidelity that leads to the therapy and then to the pod person/Stepford experiment.  

There's no gore, no violence, no jump scares.  It's purely psychological horror.  If that is your bag, feel free to hop on over to HBO Max where it is streaming.  It's also on Kanopy and with ads on Tubi.

Hello Horror 2022 - Day 1 - Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

  Welcome to the fourth year of my 31 days of horror feature.  All horror is welcome, but all horror will be judged.  We kick off the month with a Vibes-Only film, Berberian Sound Studio.

A mousy sound engineer, Gildroy (Toby Jones) is hired for a giallo flick at a small Italian studio.  Right away, there are problems.  He can't get the money he is owed, the producer (Cosimo Fusco) is a dick, the director (Antonio Mancino) is a creep, and the lead actress (Fatma Mohamed) is out for revenge.  Not to mention the disturbing subject matter he is exposed to over and over in a post-production that seems like it will never end.

This movie seems like a lot of inside baseball.  It's not inaccessible but I did feel like there were a lot of nuances that I just wasn't getting.  Some of it, ironically, was because the audio mixing wasn't great.  The parts that were in English were so quiet and mumbled that it was hard for me to hear, but I couldn't turn up the volume without being blasted by the sound effects.  Thank God half of it is subtitled.  

If you liked Blow Out, this might be worth watching.  It's kind of a mix between that and Suspiria.  Otherwise, ehhhhh.  I need a little more plot to go with my descent into madness.  It's currently streaming on Kanopy.