We Heart Horror - Day 11: The Lure (2015)

  Horror musicals are awesome.  Killer mermaids are awesome.  A horror movie about killer mermaids who sing?  Sign me the fuck up.

A pair of sirens, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszanska), are added to a Warsaw cabaret show by Krysia (Kinga Preis) and her band as a new, exotic act.  The girls are open to new opportunities but Silver soon sets her heart on Mietek (Jakob Gierszal) while Golden is more of a dine-on-hapless-men-and-dash kind of girl.

My favorite part of this is how no one in Poland blinks at having monsters in their midst.  These two broads sprout tails as soon as they get splashed and nobody so much as blinks, much less questions it.  My second favorite part is the opening credits, which are gorgeous and creepy.  I would hang stills of them on my walls.  The music is good and there's a decent amount of gore.  Also, there is a lot of nudity.  Like, 90% of the time, these chicks are naked so maybe don't watch it in front of children or old people.  They're so impressionable.

Best movie of the month so far.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

We Heart Horror - Day 10: The Last Days (2013)

  Another Spanish-language horror!  This one comes from Spain and checks the box for apocalyptic horror.

A mysterious plague has overtaken the world.  People are suddenly struck with agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces, trapping them in whatever building they happen to be in at the time.  Marc (Quim Gutiérrez) was at work, across the city from his girlfriend, Julia (Marta Etura).  After three months, the office workers are able to break into the subway line and Marc is determined to find Julia again.  He makes a deal with Enrique (Jose Coronado), the efficiency expert that in brighter days would have had Marc fired, to use a stolen GPS to get back to Marc's apartment.  Marc and Enrique slowly learn to trust and rely on one another as they make their way through the underground of a city --a world, really-- gone mad.

It's a pretty standard post-apocalypse road movie but that's not to say it isn't well done.  I think the point of the movie is more to do with the increasing fears of people who feel like the world is changing too fast.  Studies show that we are more connected but also more isolated than ever.  'Climate grief' - the fear of a global catastrophe caused by climate change is a real thing that people are feeling, especially younger generations who have to inherit a less hospitable planet.  The Last Days taps into all that very deftly, if not subtly.

I can see why people would have classified it as a horror film, but there's nothing particularly frightening in the movie.  No zombies, no cannibals, and the ending is really more heartwarming than anything else.  I'm a little sad that so far my horror fest is turning into just a movie marathon but I'm still hopeful to find at least one good pants-wettingly terrifying movie this month.

The Last Days is currently streaming on Hulu.

We Heart Horror - Day 9: We Are What We Are (2013)

I'm having some technical difficulties right now because my computer decided to update and take forever so I'm on a borrowed laptop.  I'll get the poster up tomorrow.  

No, this isn't a repost.  This is the American version of the Mexican cannibal movie I watched last week.  Turns out the American version is streaming on Amazon so all your cannibal-watching desires could be fulfilled.  There are some striking differences but we'll get to them in a minute.

After their mother (Kassie Wesley DePaiva) dies, teenage girls Iris (Julia Garner) and Rose (Ambyr Childers) are left to bear responsibility for "Lamb's Day" where the family ritually kills and eats someone.  The town doctor (Michael Parks) is suspicious when boiled bones wash up in his creek and begins to pressure the local deputy (Wyatt Russell) to trace them back to their source.

Aside from the gender swaps of the surviving parent from female to male, and the swaps from male to female for the two oldest children, this remake takes the action from an urban environment to a rural one, adds an unnecessary backstory about cannibals in the frontier days, and draaaaaags out the conclusion.  Where the original ran for a lean 89 minutes, this clocks in at just under two hours and really doesn't add anything in that time.

It's got higher production values, nicer costumes, and Kelly McGillis but if you want a true thrill, skip it and stick with the original.

We Heart Horror - Day 8: Horns (2013)

  This is teetering into not-really-horror but that may be because I am a filthy heretic, so what would I know?

Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) has a problem.  Everyone in town thinks he murdered his girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple) and now he's begun to grow actual, literal horns.  The horns inspire every person he meets to tell Ig all their darkest impulses so he starts pushing back to try to find whoever really killed Merrin.

The worst part about this movie is how clever it thinks it is while being as stupidly obvious as possible.  It's like that drunk dude at a party who thinks he's using the subtlest innuendo when he's really just shoving his finger into a circle he's made of his other hand and winking a lot.  That being said, if you're willing to overlook how on the nose it is, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen.  Sole credit for that goes to Radcliffe who is definitely slumming here in an attempt to let the Harry Potter image go for good.  He got naked on Broadway, and played a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man, slapping on some Hot Topic horns is practically tame.  Stay tuned for his next film where he has guns bolted to his hands like a slapstick Videodrome.

(That is a real thing and it's called Guns Akimbo.  You're welcome.)

So if you're in the mood for a Radcliffe no-fucks-given performance, Horns is streaming on Netflix.  Be drunk, it'll probably help.

We Heart Horror - Day 7 - Ghost Story (1981)

  This is a surprisingly solid ghost film.

Don (Craig Wasson) returns to his quaint Vermont hometown after the death of his twin, only to find his father (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) upset and unwilling to discuss it.  Then his father takes a nosedive into a frozen river, and the family doctor (Melvyn Douglas) also dies mysteriously.  Don starts sniffing around into his father's past and discovers an old crime, long unpunished, that has come due.

It helps that the cast has about 150 years of experience between them.  Fairbanks, Douglas, Fred Astaire, and John Houseman are legends and this could feel like a slight offering from them if it were not for their comportment.  This movie belongs to Alice Krige, however.  She steals every scene she's in and she is luminous.

There is some 80s cheese with the exposition fairies of Gregory and Fenny Bate (Miguel Fernandes and Lance Holcomb, respectively) but overall, the concept of old, rich men facing judgment for their crimes against women, and leaving the younger generation to be the voice of morality rings pretty current.  The creature effects are good and well-utilized but this isn't one that is going to leave you gasping for breath.  It's a fun, easy-to-watch New England campfire tale, though.

We Heart Horror - Day 6: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

  Okay, this is cheating a little bit because I actually watched this on Saturday as part of Bethany's continuing education but I'm sticking to my "one a day" format to give myself a little breathing room in case something comes up during the week.  We also watched Psycho and Trick 'r Treat, which are also classics of the genre that I've previously reviewed.

Nancy (Heather Langencamp) has been having strange dreams.  As her friends die one by one, she becomes convinced that the sinister man she sees in her nightmares is real and he has targeted her for a very specific reason.

This one might only be better with nostalgia.  I watched it when I was in the fifth grade, maybe, so like 11 or 12, and I didn't sleep for a week.  I taught myself lucid dreaming as a way to handle the nightmares.  Watching it now, I'm amazed that I ever felt so strongly about it.

It's obviously a highly successful franchise and the time might be right to try another reboot with updated effects.  We could talk about why the 2010 one failed but some other time.  At any rate, you should be showing this to your children/younger relatives around the 10-13 mark for maximum psychological damage.

We Heart Horror - Day 5: Halloween (1978)

  It's part of my on-going mission to make my friend, Bethany, watch every classic horror movie and tonight we're starting with an absolute classic.  People, show the younger members of your family this gem as soon as they are able to appreciate it.  Don't let them make it to their mid-20s having never experienced the silent stalking of one Michael Meyers.

Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) takes a babysitting job on Halloween night, unaware that she has inadvertently drawn the attention of an escaped murderer named Michael Meyers.  Fifteen years previously, Meyers had murdered his teenage sister on Halloween night and has been patiently waiting for opportunity to strike again.  His psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), desperately searches the town for him, hoping against hope that he can stop Meyers before he kills again.

This film holds up extremely well, considering its age, and part of that is due to the simplicity of design.  Michael Meyers doesn't need a complicated backstory or origin movie.  He's like a shark, zeroing in on his prey with no feeling, no remorse.  He's completely implacable.  There's no reasoning with him, no justification.  He kills.  And it's beautiful.

It's currently streaming on Shudder, which I get through Amazon.