Tag Archives: horror movie

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Split (2017) Movie Review

January 20, 2017 Alex Brannan

The cold open to M. Night Shyamalan’s new venture, Split, features an intriguing mix of directorial choices. There is a Hitchcockian motivated mobile POV, one that starts as an innocent track. There are motivated pans and tilts that follow our protagonist Casey’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) increasingly cautious gazes. There is a sense of impending dread with each edit.

This opening kidnapping was shown in almost its entirety in Split‘s trailer, which presents the premise of a man with multiple personalities (James McAvoy) who steals away three teenage girls (Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, and Taylor-Joy). Ignore the ridiculous notion that Continue reading Split (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, F Movies, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Bye Bye Man (2017) Movie Review

January 12, 2017 Alex Brannan

I was going to come home from the screening of The Bye Bye Man and write a scathing review. I was going to give it a quadruple F-. I was going to tear the film apart and bury the pieces.

But first I told my roommate about this terrible film. I let him know; I said: “Don’t go see this film called The Bye Bye Man…” As the words of the film’s title left my lips, though, I started hearing things. A coin dropping to the floor. Scratching on wood. The sound of my girlfriend having sex with my best friend.

I was going to write an F- review of The Bye Bye Man but…don’t pay money, don’t see it. Don’t Pay Money, Don’t See It. DON’T PAY MONEY, DON’T SEE IT!!

In 1969, a reporter (Leigh Whannell) goes on a murdering spree over a name that people in his neighborhood keep spreading around. “Don’t say it, don’t think it,” he mutters to himself as he paces around his suburban street with a shotgun, stalking people down and shooting them after they comically run away at half speed.

Flash forward to present day, three personality-devoid college students rent a seemingly mansion-sized house. The trio include a couple comprised of Sasha (Cressida Bonas), a character whose only character trait is that Continue reading The Bye Bye Man (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, F Movies, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Incarnate (2016) Movie Review

December 1, 2016 Alex Brannan

The exorcism film. Has it ever lived up to its contemporary creator, The Exorcist? Not really. Yet, here we are four decades later still letting Hollywood churn them out like soap operas.

Incarnate, the latest effort (if we can call it that) from Blumhouse Tilt, takes the possessed child angle to “new heights” by providing our exorcist character Dr. Seth Embers (Aaron Eckhart) with an ability to enter the victim’s subconscious during the exorcism. In short, Incarnate is The Exorcist meets Inception, only without everything that makes those films interesting and different.

The wheelchair-bound Embers is executing exorcisms (or “evictions”) in search for the demon Maggie. Maggie has also been searching for him so that she can cause him interminable pain, only it has taken Embers dozens of exorcisms to find her. Horror movies don’t need logical premises, right?

The reality check with Incarnate is that Continue reading Incarnate (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Halloween Horror, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

UFO: It is Here (2016) Movie Review

October 31, 2016 Alex Brannan

German indie horror flick UFO begins in true Blair Witch fashion, with a young group of students filming a documentary. Coming from a film student who is learning similar production techniques, I can appreciate these opening shots. One person holds up a plastic card to gauge the white balance while another assesses the costuming of the subject of the interview while another asks for a sound level check.

As the group prepares and begins the interview of two workers at a zoo, the animals start going crazy over what appears to be a comet falling out of the sky. The film crew makes the democratic decision to ditch their zoo documentary in order to chase the fallen space object.

Even with the knowledge of the film being a found footage “student” film in the footsteps of The Blair Witch Project (itself receiving the reboot/sequel treatment earlier this year), UFO does not Continue reading UFO: It is Here (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Halloween Horror, Horror, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Murder Party (2007) Movie Review

October 23, 2016 Alex Brannan

Jeremy Saulnier, the mind behind recent indie thriller successes Blue Ruin and Green Room, began his feature directorial career in 2007 with the low-budget horror comedy Murder Party. In it, a man (Chris Sharp) finds an invitation to a Halloween “murder party,” makes himself a cardboard knight costume, and ventures to the secluded warehouse where the party is taking place.

Instead of a costume party, though, the loner Christopher finds himself a Continue reading Murder Party (2007) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Halloween Horror, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) Movie Review

October 20, 2016 Alex Brannan

A recent early review of Ouija: Origin of Evil—the unasked for sequel to 2014’s Ouija—by the A.V. Club is entitled “Ouija: Origin of Evil is much better than it needs to be.” Indeed, critic Katie Rife describes director Mike Flanagan’s (Oculus, Hush) film as “more thoughtful and more meticulously crafted than it needs to be.”

The remainder of the review is more conventional, about what one would expect from a horror movie review. What is most troubling about this review is Continue reading Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Halloween Horror, Horror, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Flop House Trilogy: Castle Freak (1995) Movie Review

October 3, 2016 Alex Brannan

Caution: minor plot spoilers (for this 20 year old movie) below.

It is October once again, and that means it is time for some Halloween Horror. In this iteration, we discuss one of three B-movie horror films that are oft-recommended on The Flop House podcast by Stuart Wellington. Castle Freak may not actually feature a man who rips his own ding-dong off (spoilers?), but that does not mean it isn’t a B-movie classic by B-movie master Stuart Gordon.

Writer-director Stuart Gordon is perhaps most well known as the director of the B-movie classic Re-Animator, his first feature film, or From Beyond. But Gordon also made a little direct-to-video movie entitled Continue reading The Flop House Trilogy: Castle Freak (1995) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Blair Witch (2016) Movie Review

September 15, 2016 Alex Brannan

Blair Witch chronicles the “documentary footage” of a college student and his friends as they search through the mythic Black Hills Forest for his sister Heather Donahue, who disappeared in the woods years earlier.

From the onset, Blair Witch follows the beats of its predecessor, the surprise 1999 hit The Blair Witch Project, as if the studio and creative team believed that the audience this film is marketed toward has never seen the original film. This, or they Continue reading Blair Witch (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Disappointments Room (2016) Movie Review

September 9, 2016 Alex Brannan

The title of The Disappointments Room begs the question: Is The Disappointments Room a disappointment? The short answer: Yes.

The film begins similarly to Haneke’s Funny Games, only without the amazing sound cues. A couple (Kate Beckinsale and Mel Raido) and their young son (Duncan Joiner) move out to the country for a new beginning after a terrible accident. The house, which from certain angles looks more like a castle, is a mess: broken light fixtures, leaking ceilings, junk everywhere. We follow this nuclear family, unassuming and entirely banal, as they fall victim to a strange presence in their home (maybe; it becomes impossible to tell).

The Disappointments Room is a film that is utterly basic. It checks all the boxes of a basic horror movie and then Continue reading The Disappointments Room (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It

Don’t Breathe (2016) Movie Review

August 12, 2016 Alex Brannan

Don’t Breathe opens on an extreme long shot pushing in on a woman being dragged down the street by her hair in broad daylight. The woman is Rocky (Jane Levy), one third of a lowly thieving group. Some time before this inaugural shot, the trio decide to pull a seemingly simple heist on the house of a blind man (Stephen Lang) whose daughter was killed in a hit and run. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it appears.

The camera work in the film is appealing, almost surprisingly so. Long shots and agile movement contradict genre norms, at least through Continue reading Don’t Breathe (2016) Movie Review →