Welcome back to my month long journey through horror. For those of you that have not read my first installment, I am recording my annual month long horror movie marathon through-out the month of October. As a diehard horror fan, Halloween is my favorite time of the year. I take the opportunity every year to spend the entire month watching horror films that I have not yet seen.
This week I was a little more productive. My goal is to watch five movies a week. I was able to pack in an extra movie.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
One thing about me is that I am not a fan of remakes. The classics are classics for a reason. In some cases it’s okay to make a remake, but that’s not the case for most of them. In most cases, the only reason to remake a film is so that the studio can make money piggybacking off of the success of the original. So, when I heard they were remaking “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, I was not happy. That’s probably the reason it took me 6 years to see it. Even though, I’ve been in love with Katie Cassidy ever since I first saw her in “Harper’s Island” in 2009. For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised. I’m not a big fan of the original “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. To me “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” is the best one. That seems to be the fan favorite. But the one thing that made all the movies so great was Robert Englund. I LOVE Jackie Earle Hayley. I think he is one of the best actors out today. So many of his performances really haunt you. That being said, he just did not seem as scary as Robert Englund. His Freddy Krueger was way too low-key. It didn’t feel as legendary or iconic as Robert Englund’s did. Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger had the scary laugh, the unsettling one liners, and he even looked scarier. There was nothing special at all about Jackie Earle Hayley’s Freddy Krueger. I hate to say this though because I’m such a big fan. I enjoyed this movie. I loved the shift in narrative. The story would follow one teen until their death then it would switch to another. It had the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” vibe. It kept the paranoia that the original films had. I hated how they teased at trying to make Freddy Krueger a sympathetic character. That was the big downside. They just couldn’t get the character right. I have no idea why they didn’t just keep Robert Englund.
Friday the 13th (2009)
If the movie takes place in modern day, then why do so many of the male characters have perms and jheri curls? I was not as impressed with the “Friday the 13th” remake as I was with the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake. I’d probably say that I’m more of a Jason fan than I am a Freddy fan. Kane Hodder is my hero. The one thing about this movie is that it is more-so a remake of “Friday the 13th Part III”, but still tries to include “Friday the 13th” and “Friday the 13th Part II”. The goal is to cover the first four movies, including “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter”. They briefly showed the events from the end of the original movie in the opening scene. This featured the death of Pamela Voorhees, the original killer of the franchise. Then they tried to use the first act to sum up the second movie. This included a group of young people looking for a marijuana field so that they could pick it clean and become rich. This featured Jason donning his original mask which was just a potato sack with a hole in it. (Yes, like The Elephant Man.) He killed off all of those pretty people. Then the story flashes forward 6 weeks later. A group of more young pretty people are heading to party at a cabin on the lake. Meanwhile, Clay Miller, brother to one of the victims from the last group, is trying to find out what happed 6 weeks prior. They made a lot of changes, but played homage to the original series. I think a lot of this was rushed, since they tried to catch up the story. The one thing that didn’t fit was that they made Jason too smart. His traps were well planned out. He used a bow and arrow at one point. He even kidnaps someone because she looks like his mother. To me, Kane Hodder will always be Jason. He did it better and longer than anyone, and he has brought so much to the role. But I have to say, Derek Mears is the scariest Jason to date. I’ve always been a fan of Derek Mears, but I didn’t know he could be so terrifying. Jason seemed faster, stronger, bigger, and more deadly. The use of camera angles and sound effects really added to the terror. Each attack seemed stronger than ever before.
Clown (2014)
If you are the type of person who hates it when kids are killed in movies, you should pass on this. The demon clown in this movie eats children. He devours them whole, then vomits up their bones. So this film is not for most people. The story about how this movie came to be is really fascinating. Originally, the filmmakers released a fake trailer. In the trailer, there was a caption that said that the movie was made by Eli Roth. Eli Roth had nothing to do with “Clown”. He was impressed though that the filmmakers had the guts to pretend he was part of the movie. Eli Roth then agreed to produce the film. This movie is basically a horror version of “The Santa Clause” with Tim Allen. An absentee father tries to save his son’s birthday party when the clown they hired doesn’t show so he puts on a clown costume that he found in a creepy box in the attic of the house he was selling and performs for his son’s birthday party. He soon discovers that the costume will not come off. The wig becomes his hair. The nose becomes part of his flesh. And the suit becomes a part of his skin. He eventually finds out the costume is the hair, flesh, and skin of a demon. His body starts to transform into that of a clown. His feet grow. His skin turns white. And he has a hunger that can never be satisfied. That is when he starts eating children. The structure of this film felt weird. Whenever I kept feeling like the story was coming to an end, I would realize that there was still more to go and the story would continue. Judging by the trailer, I thought that this film would be much harder to watch than it really was. And, of course, Peter Stormare put on an incredible performance as a former wearer of the costume.
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)
So many times people have said to me, “You haven’t seen ‘Tucker & Dale vs. Evil’?!?!?” I’ve been told that it is the perfect film for someone who is a fan of horror. I’ve always been a big fan of Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine, so I’ve been meaning to watch this for a while. This movie is hard to sum up. It definitely takes a unique spin on the horror genre. The movie starts off a lot like “The Evil Dead”. A car full of college students head into the woods to drink and party. They pass a couple of red necks. Then it takes a turn. The story then starts to follow the rednecks, who are just a couple of nice guys heading to their newly purchased vacation home. That night they decide to go fishing, and rescue one of the college students from drowning. Her friends mistake them for murderous hillbillies, and think that they kidnapped her. They then try to attack the hillbillies and rescue their friend, but keep accidently getting themselves killed. Some of these deaths were absolutely hilarious. At one point one of the college students dives at one of the rednecks as he’s throwing wood in the wood chipper. The redneck bends down to pick up a piece of wood, and the college student accidently dives into the wood chipper. The one thing about the movie that I thought was disappointing was the title. In the movie, Tucker and Dale never actually fight evil. The whole point of the movie was that they’re mistaken as “evil”. I did enjoy this movie, but it was definitely more-so comedy than horror.
Scream 4 (2011)
“Scream”, the gift that keeps giving… even though we never asked. I’m not a big Wes Craven fan. I think he’s overrated, and not as much of a legend as people make him out to be. I think the best thing he’s ever done is “Red Eye”, since it’s not a horror movie. Like I said, my favorite “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors”, and that was not Wes Craven. I do love the “Scream” series though. I think the “Scream” franchise defines the slasher genre. The first three movies are great, and I even love the TV show as well. I feel like I don’t have a huge opinion on this film. I didn’t hate it, and I didn’t love it. It was an interesting concept, and I liked what they did with it. The first “Scream” was about the slasher film. “Scream 2” was about sequels. “Scream 3” was about trilogies. Now “Scream 4” is about remakes/reboots. We have our original cast with a whole new cast of newcomers. Something I did like was that they mixed it up and kept it fresh. The killer was a brand new killer, not a killer who has been connected to the original murders all along like the other movies. We have a new killer for a new generation with a new motive. Don’t worry, it’s still Ghostface. The ending also had a fresh twist. They were able to do something new that we haven’t seen before, while still paying homage to the original film. “Scream 4” also had a huge cast, and a really good one at that matter. The big downside of the movie is that Rory Culkin was in it. Yes, I loved him in “Signs”, but he’s not a cute kid anymore. Now he’s just a creepy dude, a lot like Macauley and Kieran.
Apartment 1303 (2012)
When I originally saw the trailer to this movie, I thought it was just a bad attempt at knocking off Japanese horror. But I watched it anyway. It turns out it was actually a bad attempt at remaking a Japanese horror film. There really wasn’t much of a difference between this and “The Grudge”. And I hated “The Grudge”. I am also not a fan of Japanese horror, even though the entire world seems to love it. The one thing that made this movie difficult to watch was the acting. The cast was pretty bad. There was barely any character development, and the actors weren’t capable of taking the characters that far. This film has a shift in narrative, which was interesting, but it kind of hurt the structure of the film. The main character gets killed off halfway through, then the supporting character becomes the protagonist. Julianne Michelle didn’t have many levels. She only had happy over the top or scared over the top. Though her death really did hit me hard and I felt for her. Then Mischa Barton took on the mantel of the hero. She moves into the apartment where her sister killed herself and starts getting haunted by the same ghosts and everything just starts over again. Corey Sevier, who plays the boyfriend, delivered one of the most underdone performances I have ever seen. The only good performances in the movie were from Rebecca De Mornay and John Diehl, who are both acting veterans. For the most part this movie just seems like a bad knock off of “1408”, which I love. Even though the original Japanese film came out the same year. And that is also based on a Ju-on novel.
