Tag: Horror

Cinema Dispatch: Shut In

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Shut In and all the images you see in this review are owned by EuropaCorp

Directed by Farren Blackburn

So when did this movie get announced, because I didn’t know anything about it until I looked up the new releases for this week.  It’s not like Naomi Watts is an unknown actor, and horror movies are big business right now, so the fact that I didn’t even see a trailer for this at any of the horror films I saw this year is not a great sign of what’s to come.  Still, it’s not like movies that get a whole bunch of press are guaranteed to do any better, and a lot of great horror films don’t even get a theatrical release, so maybe they just didn’t know how to sell something like this.  Does this film deliver yet another fantastic horror experience in a year that has already had so many, or will this just get lost in the shuffle?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the Portman Family who at one point consisted of three able bodied and happy members, but after a car accident has been reduced to the mother Mary (Naomi Watts) and her son Steven (Charlie Heaton), the latter of whom has suffered severe brain damage and is pretty much unable to move or communicate.  After six months of this routine where she cares for her son and then goes to work as a childhood psychologist, things start to change when one of her patients Tom (Jacob Tremblay) is being moved to Boston so that he can get more specialized care.  The night after Mary finds this out however, Tom shows up at her doorstep… well technical he smashes the window to her car and crawls inside, and while Mary is trying to figure out what to do next, the boy disappears into the night.  So not only is she dealing with her son who is in need of constant care, she now has a possible dead boy on her conscious (they’re up in Maine so it’s snowing all the freaking time) and starts to hear things go bump in the night along with a series of night terrors that are making it hard for her to distinguish between fantasy and reality.  Are the things that Mary is hearing at night real and a possible threat to her and Steven?  Will Tom be found at some point, or is he really just a kid-cicle waiting to be uncovered once Spring rolls around?  Wait, didn’t I see this movie like a year ago!?

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“I wonder what The Babadook would be like if it didn’t have The Babadook in it.  Steven, get the camera.  Oh right… I’ll just get it.”

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The NekoCon Diaries 2016: Fan Panel Recap

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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So when you’re like me and don’t know what to do with yourself other than look at overpriced figures at the Vendor’s Hall, it’s good to have a schedule to provide some structure to your con going experience; hence why I attended so many panels this year.  Well, that and I knew I was going to recap them for the website; and that’s a win-win in my book!  Today, we’ll be focusing on the fan panels which are hosted by individuals attending the convention rather than the invited guests or representatives of some company looking to market directly to their fans.  Do these manage to have an authenticity and love of their respective fandoms that you wouldn’t find in more professional presentations?  Let’s find out!!

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90s Animation Revisited: Rejoin Your Childhood Friends

Hosted by Peggy Miller

This was the first panel I went to at the convention, and right off the bat it put me in a sour mood.  This was nothing more than nostalgia baiting with nothing even resembling insight or depth into what made these cartoons so memorable (or in certain cases, infamous).  Rattle off the name of a series, show the opening, ask the audience what year it came out, and repeat nineteen more times.  Hell, they couldn’t even stick to the decade as several of these started in the late eighties but remained popular throughout the nineties.  Fair enough I guess, but what about showing Power Rangers which was NOT an animated show?  I’ll let you all know right now that my biggest problem with most of the fan panels this year is that they’re sometimes a mile wide but always an inch deep.  This one did manage to have a breadth of content by name checking twenty different shows in an hour, but so what?  No mention of Klasky Csupo shows, no mention of how Mighty Mouse: the New Adventures from 1987 was the jumping off point for many prominent animators in the following decade, no mention of Disney Television Animation who made half the shows name checked here, and most egregiously (at least in my opinion), they couldn’t even be bothered to tell us all that the creator of Doug was born less than a hundred miles away from where we were sitting.  That’s a VERY easy factoid to just throw out there to the audience and I’m sure several people would have gotten a real kick out of it.  The only thing you’d get out of this is what you already would be bringing into it, and I just don’t think that’s much of a panel.

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Cinema Dispatch: Boo! A Madea Halloween

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Boo! A Madea Halloween and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate

Directed by Tyler Perry

I knew this day would come.  Ever since this guy came on the scene, I’ve just never had an interest in seeing anything he’s made and until now I’ve never had a reason to.  I mean I knew becoming a film critic would have its downsides… but come on!  Oh well.  No point in putting it off any longer.  It’s time for me to sit down and watch a Madea film.  Who knows?  Maybe it won’t be all bad.  Hell, it looks like it’s the spiritual successor to Ernest Scared Stupid, so maybe they’ll replace Jesus with Halloween Kitsch? Yeah, probably not.  Still, is it any good?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is all about Brian Simmons (Tyler Perry) and his increasingly strained relationship with his teenage daughter Tiffany (Diamond White).  Tiffany wants to go to a Halloween party that’s hosted by a Frat House that’s conveniently located within walking distance and wants to drag her Good Christian Preacher’s DaughterTM friend Aday (Liza Koshy) along with her.  Brian says no, Tiffany says Fuck You (not literally) and so he has to pull out the big guns; namely Mabel “Madea” Simmons (Tyler Perry again) along with her friends Uncle Joe (Tyler Perry… again), Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis), and Hattie (Patrice Lovely) to babysit while he goes out on a business trip… on Halloween.  Tiffany isn’t about to give up without a fight though and convinces the four of them that there’s a ghost in the house to keep them distracted while she sneaks off to the party and things get more shenanigan filled from there.  Will Tiffany learn a lesson about listening to her father after getting to the party?  Is there something ACTUALLY haunting Madea and her friends at the house, even if Tiffany’s story was total bullshit?  God damn, is THIS what I’ve been avoiding all these years!?

 

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I WISH Tim Curry would show up in this damn thing!

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Cinema Dispatch: Ouija: Origin of Evil

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Ouija: Origin of Evil and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Mike Flanagan

In a year that’s already been pretty good for horror movies and sequels, has it been just as good for horror movie sequels?  Well ironically enough for a genre known for churning out sequels, there’s really only been two I’ve seen this year; The Purge: Election Year which is one of the best films of the year so far, and Blair Witch which is one of my least favorites.  Sure I heard people liked The Conjuring 2, but I hated the first one with a fiery passion so I highly doubt it would end up on the good end, and then if you wanted you could count 10 Cloverfield Lane as a horror movie which I would put on the good side even if it’s sequel status is somewhat questionable.  My point is that the data on horror sequels this year is, shall we say… inconclusive.  Will we have a more definitive answer one way or the other with this prequel (I know that’s technically not the same thing as a sequel, but I’m freaking counting it!) to a movie that was universally panned just two years ago?  Let’s find out!!

The movie takes place in 1967 at the home of the Zander family, made up the mother Alice (Elizabeth Reaser) and her two daughters Lina (Annallise Basso) and Doris (Lulu Wilson).  Alice is barely getting by after the death of her husband as her fortune telling business isn’t quite paying the bills, but they’ll make due for now and they even get a new item for the show that should definitely drum up some business, right?  Well those concerns become secondary as it JUST SO HAPPENS to be a ghost living in the house already that has started to take control over young Doris and is clearly after something but we’re not sure what.  For now, it’s just using Doris to pretend to be the dead father and freaks everyone out with the Ouija Board as a way to… I don’t know; keep Alice from calling the Ghostbusters?  Either way, Alice is more than happy to have a REAL (and presumably benevolent) ghost in the house to not be used to keep a roof over their heads but to also get some closure with her “husband” after his tragic death.  Of course, Lina smells bullshit from a mile away and knows better than to trust something possessing her sister CLAIMING to be her dead father, so she starts to investigate and even gets a local priest involved (Henry Thomas) to find out exactly what’s going on; something the ghost isn’t too happy about.  Will Lina and the Padre stop this madness before it’s too late?  Just what is the ghost after if it needs to pretend to be good rather than just kill everyone in their sleep?  How the hell is it gonna convince everybody of that when it keeps messing with her face!?

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“Look at that!  How is that normal!?”     “Oh will you relax?  She’s just yawning!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Blair Witch

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Blair Witch and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate

Directed by Adam Wingard

Normally I don’t review movies if I haven’t seen the original, but oddly enough I DID see Blair Witch 2 on TV once, so I at least have that going for me.  Honestly though, this being a years later sequel to a movie that’s not all that complex (some people get lost in the woods and are killed by a witch or something) means that I’m probably not gonna get lost trying to decipher whatever mythology or legacy this movie is cashing in on.  So does this turn out to be a true Blair Witch movie for a new generation (whatever that would entail), or is this another pointless reboot of a series that was firmly a product of its time?  Let’s find out!!

The movie takes place almost two decades after the original where a few teenagers went missing in a nearby forest and the only thing found was fragments of video that seemed to imply something spooky must have happened.  Now that the brother of one of those teenagers is all grown up, James (James Allen McCune) along with his friends Peter and Ashley (Brandon Scott and Corbin Reid) are going into the forest to see if they can find anything and are taking along a local filmmaker Lisa (Callie Hernandez) to document the expedition.  Things get a bit off track right away though as some local Blair Witch nuts Lane and Talia (Wes Robinson and Valorie Curry) ,who ALSO discovered some of the original footage, insist on going along with them.  It doesn’t take too long for things to get spooky though, and now there’s a studio backing this, there’s a chance we might be able to see whatever it is that’s fucking with them!  Can these campers manage to survive whatever curse or magic spell or whatever the hell it is that’s trapped them in the woods?  Will James find that his sister is still alive after all these years?  Just what is the true source of all this weird stuff that’s going on!?

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It was aliens the whole time!  I freaking knew it!!

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Cinema Dispatch: Don’t Breathe

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Don’t Breathe and all the images you see in this review are owned by Screen Gems

Directed by Fede Alvarez

Oh look!  It’s that guy who did the Evil Dead reboot!  I actually thought that movie was really good, but then maybe I’m the only one who thought so considering we’re getting this instead and as far as I know a sequel has been indefinitely put on the back burner.  That, and Ash vs The Evil Dead kind of drew all interest away from doing something new to instead milk the original franchise, but whatever.  The reason that new Evil Dead works isn’t because it was a remake of a movie everyone loved, but because the guy they got behind the camera was a real talent and knew how to bring something new to a franchise that is about untouchable as the Back to Future; a series even Hollywood hasn’t had the guts to try and reboot yet.  So now that the director’s remarkable skills are being used for an ORIGINAL horror film, does he still seem to be the next big genre filmmaker, or will this Raimi protégé prove himself to be a one trick pony?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows three dumb ass…. well I guess I can’t call them KIDS considering they have to be at least in their mid-twenties, but these three ragamuffins are a trio of burglars who go around Detroit and pull small time jobs to keep roofs over their heads and a slowly expanding rainy day fund.  We’ve got Serious Bro named Alex (Dylan Minnette), Wild Card Bro named Money (Daniel Zovatto), and Girl Bro named Rocky (Jane Levy); all of whom have their own clichéd and contrived reasons for doing what they do.  They hear about some blind dude who got a lot of cash after his daughter was killed by some rich kid in a hit and run, and so they figure this is gonna be the last score to get them out of Detroit and go straight to LA… where whatever money they score will probably disappear in a three months.  Do you know how much stuff costs in that town!?  Anyway, this turns out to be the last freaking house you’d ever want to B&E considering the guy may be blind but is built like a brick shit house which makes sense because he’s played by Stephen Lang.  Will the thieves get out the house alive, and will we want them to by the end?  Is there more to the blind man than just being a bad ass military dude you don’t want to fuck with?  Just what kind of sadistic game of Marco Polo is this!?

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“Marco!”     …     “Come on!  You have to say it for this to be fair!”     “…Polo?”     *BANG*

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