Review: Hell Fest (2018)

So, when reviewing movies, you have to factor in two major things:  Is the movie entertaining?, and is the movie well made?  Just because a movie is entertaining doesn't necessarily mean it is a good production, just as a well-made movie can be tedious and boring.  You might be asking why I lead my review of Hell Fest with such a statement, and it is because the movie succeeds at one of these two major considerations while failing absolutely in the other.

The basic premise is that a (traveling?) carnival called Hell Fest comes to town and a group of twenty-somethings - yes, teenagers get to survive this time, as the movie decides to focus on college-age people - decide to attend while, unbeknownst to them, a serial killer also attends.

I will be upfront:  The movie does not live up to the premise.  It does create some interesting sets and works as a decent MacGuffin for why no one notices all of the dead bodies, but that is about all the gold spun from the straw that is this script.  None of the kills are especially inventive, although there is one scene that works exceptionally well during the setup but makes no sense upon the reveal. Afterwards, the movie shifts into the Final Chase, so it sort of deflates quickly at that point anyway.

The acting is adequate - no one is especially terrible, although it feels like a waste of both Tony Todd and Bex Taylor-Klaus' talents giving them the roles that they have.  But it doesn't have the clunky acting that usually accompanies a slasher with no big names.

On the plus side, the movie moves along at a quick pace and doesn't overthink the premise to the point of distraction.  It actually does surprise a little bit on who lives and how it ends, but still pays homage to the 'rules' of the horror genre.

The movie still manages to be entertaining.  It won't ever make any Greatest Horror Movies lists, and if it fades into obscurity in 2 years time, it won't be a huge loss to the genre.  But if you have an hour and a half to kill and you like horror movies, there are worst ways to spend your time.

2024 Addition: In retrospect, I was a little harder on this than I should've been.  The setting, especially, works really well and is used in more interesting ways than I alluded to in my original review.  I think I was correct in my basic assessment - perfectly adequate but ultimately forgettable - but I've bumped up the score from 5 to 6, and my feelings towards it are much warmer.

6.0 out of 10.

Review: Late Night with the Devil (2024)

I have a confession to make: I am an easy mark for possession movies.  Even ones such as this - where possession is only a part of the overall film - have a tendency to get under my skin much easier than other horror films. So, given the positive reviews of this film, I was a bit nervous to see it.  And, even watching it in daylight, it got to me a little bit.

Set on Halloween night in 1977, the film is part found footage, part documentary about the last airing of Night Owls with Jack Elroy, a fictional competitor to The Tonight Show.  Jack Elroy (David Dastmalchian) is on hard times, and the show is a grand attempt to boost rating during sweeps and save it.  So, he has an assortment of psychics, skeptics, and parapsychologists on to capitalize on people's need for scares.  Elroy's wife has also died recently, and it comes into play during the night's events in horrific ways.

First off, having been a fan of Dastmalchian for awhile, it is great to see him get a lead role that he can tear into.  He manages to shade this character in all sorts of interesting ways, especially as the night and the creeps start to affect him.  Desperation weaved with cynicism mixed with longing and terror makes this one of the great performances of the genre.

I also want to mention Ian Bliss as the skeptic, Carmichael Haig.  He perfectly plays someone who thinks the other guests are charlatans, and stubbornly refuses to budge even as evidence piles up that this particular instance is a most real one.  It's an infuriatingly perfect performance of a secondary antagonist.

The 'lost footage' aspects is also done well - so much of it reads like an odd, but interesting late night talk show that when it goes 'behind the scenes' for the documentary aspect, it is seamless despite a hard shift in coloration (the documentary section is black and white) and stylization. 

As the movie continues, it starts to get a bit surreal, and I can never quite pinpoint when it shifts from real footage to unreal(?), which is a great piece of editing.  Without spoiling too much, things take a very dark turn - leading a very dark (but very earned) ending - and it is left ambiguous how much of what happens is caught on camera.

All in all, this is an absolutely spectacular horror movie. I'd recommend it to any fan of horror, and it might become a regular watch during future Halloween marathons.

8.5 out of 10

Review: Crawl (2019)

There's something to be said for a simplistic creature feature.  A bare-bones, no-frills film that gets to the action and doesn't let up until the credits roll.  Crawl is such a film.

When I say bare-bones, I mean it.  The plot?  Stuck in a house swarming with alligators during a hurricane.  The actors?  Mostly a two-person show between Barry Pepper and Kaya Scodelario (if anyone else appears, assumed they aren't long for this world).  The run time?  A cool 87 minutes.  It takes about 15 minutes for the movie to get to the titular crawl space and it is a fight for survival almost until the credits cross the screen.

It isn't without some shading - Pepper's character is the father of Scodelario's, and they are somewhat estranged.  It easily explains how she is able to outswim the alligators (she is a collegiate swimmer) and then lets the action take it from there.

Frankly, both actors are giving this movie more than it needs - which might be why it is such a gem of a film.  Pepper tears into this like it is a family drama, and Scodelario's Haley is a topnotch final girl.  If the movie was a bigger hit - it only grossed $39 million in the US - I think she would easily be included amongst the best in this particular genre.

The movie does earn its R rating.  Both of our main characters get attacked multiple times, and the movie doesn't shy away from gore (though it is less gory than director Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3-D).  The movie is just as relentless on its characters as it is the audience, and the feeling of fatigue that both actors portray by the end feels both real and earned.

The alligators of the film are well rendered.  Even in the water, they have weight to them, so you never feel that you are looking at computer-generated creatures.  Really, all of the effects are well done - the house is a perfect piece of set design, as is the exterior.  During brief moments where they are outside of the house, the surrounding area looks like a neighborhood people would live in (well, outside of the torrents of water).

I cannot recommend this brutally efficient film enough.  Obviously, those who don't like gore or creature features will want to avoid it, but for everyone else, it is a good time.

Also, they don't kill the dog, which kicks it up a notch as far as recommendations go.

8.5 out of 10

Review: The Blob (1958)

There's an inherent danger in reviewing an older movie, especially one from an era completed foreign to the person doing the review.  How do I, who grew up in the 90s, judge a drive-in movie from the late 50s?  I can do some research into the film to provide context - it was in color when this sort of film getting a color treatment was uncommon, and it was the second billed film of a drive-in double feature (the top billed movie being I Married a Monster from Outer Space).  It launched the career of its lead - a 28-year-old Steve McQueen in his second-ever film - and rose above its trappings to eventually be selected for the Criterion Collection.  And nothing in watching the films screams at me that it deserves its many laurels.

Now, that's not to say it is a bad film.  It's good, and I'd daresay that it was several steps better than similar-type films of its era (which no doubt helped it become such a hit that it became the headline film of its double feature after a certain point).  But it's also fairly generic, and I'd venture a guess that the same criticism could've been lobbed at it during its original run in 1958.

To wit, my belief is that the monster - the titular Blob - is the main reason it stood out.  While the effects aren't anything to write home about, a large gelatin-like creature that absorbs people without thought is certainly an unnerving monster to deal with, and I can think of precious few movie villains of such grotesque simplicity.

One would think that Steve McQueen would've given a Star is Born performance in this film also, but I'm not sure I'd call it that.  It is certainly better than anyone else in the film, and you can see his natural screen charisma, but even a veteran actor would struggle with expanding on the paint-by-numbers role.  I will note that McQueen doesn't look anything like a high schooler (none of the speaking teens look anywhere near the age the are portraying), but given the long history of 20somethings playing high schools in cinema, I hardly consider it a strike against him.

The movie also comes down firmly on the side of its teen characters - moreso than you'd expect for a film in this era.  At no point are you supposed to role your eyes at the kids, and instead the frustration stims from adults who just won't listen.  Again, it certainly wouldn't be something a modern audience wouldn't have seen before, but it certainly helped its appeal in 1958.

Would I recommend this movie?  I'd probably point most people to the 1988 remake instead, but there's a charm to this one that makes it worth watching - if only to see an older movie that set a trend for latter movies.

7 out of 10

Review: Salem's Lot (2024)

I went into this movie with low expectations.  Originally filmed a 2021, it has been delayed multiple times, which is never a good thing when it comes to a movie.  Couple that with the poor reviews for it, and my main hope was that it would at least be watchable.

Part of the problem is that any adaptation of this book will have to drop making the city itself a character.  Jerusalem's Lot, much like Derry in IT, is just as much a character in King's novel as Ben, Dr. Cody, Burke, or Susan.  But, as a visual medium, having that come across without boring the audience is hard to do.  The 2017 version of IT was the most successful at achieving this, with a nod to the 1979 miniseries of Salem's Lot for attempting it to mixed results.

This adaptation - a singular movie unlike the 1979 and 2004 miniseries - is... okay?  They make quite a few changes, but only one, I feel, is detrimental to the overall story.  Most just seem unnecessary.  They don't enhance the story in any way, nor does it challenge the viewer.  They are mostly changes for the sake of changing things, and I have to wonder how many of them are a result of reshoots for this oft-delayed movie.

The performances are mostly just alright, with a few exceptions: Bill Camp, as Matthew Burke, is easily the best in show amongst the performances.  And there is a race to the bottom for two other performances - Pilou Asbæk as Straker (far too over the top and theatrical, both for the character and the movie) and Debra Christofferson as Anne Norton (a character changed vastly from the book, and not to anyone's benefit).  I'm thankful the movie opted to show less of Barlow (Alexander Ward) - he is just menacing enough without being over-the-top, and the look they go with harkens back to both Nosferatu and the 1979 version of the character.

Other than what I've mentioned, there's just not much this is noticeable about this film.  It's the cinematic equivalent to eating cotton candy: once it is consumed you can easily forget about it and move on to something else.  That might play into why it has been so poorly received - the only parts that really stick out are the parts where it is bad, so that's what the viewer remembers.

The review is coming across as much more negative than I actually feel about the film (I'd rank it above the 2004 miniseries with room to spare), so I'll end with this: I doubt this movie becomes anyone's favorite, but I doubt it will top any Worst of the Year lists either.  A mediocre effort.

5 out of 10

Review: Poltergeist III (1988)

I've always found it a bit weird that Poltergeist 3 (again, I am not doing the Roman numerals outside of the review title, mostly out of laziness) is considered the worst of the trilogy.  One could consider its muted response was somewhat because of the death of star Heather O'Rourke, a tragedy that would make many avoid a movie where the young actress is in peril.  But even in the years since, this movie is often considered the worst - no critical reappraisal has ever really gone against the popular belief that it is the worst.

There are a few ways that it is a step down from the previous two.  Namely, the 'undead effects' and the non-return of JoBeth Williams, Craig T Nelson, and Oliver Robins.  Losing three-fourths of your main cast would hit any franchise hard, and while I think the director and crew do a good job getting around the reduced budget, the seams still show in several areas.

Set in Chicago instead of California, the film takes place in a high rise tower.  The change is setting helps keep the movie a bit more fresh in my opinion, and the decision to use mirrors as the primary method of scares is a good one.  Who hasn't caught a flash of something as they turned their head from a mirror?  How horrible would it be to turn back and see what you had barely missed before?  Other horror movies have explored this more fully, but as a basis for how the return Kane (Nathan Davis, though Julian Beck is given a special mention in the credits) affects the world around him, the many mirrors is a striking choice.

The movie also differs from the previous two in that is willing to kill characters - the first time in the franchise that has happened (we are not counting Gramma Jess's death from part 2, as it was not caused by the supernatural like in this movie).  It's not a large change, but it does re-add some stakes to the movie after the absence of them from the previous.

The performances from the new cast members are fairly strong, though Nancy Allen struggles with some late-in-the-movie dialogue that feels out of place.  But you have reliable actors like Tom Skerritt and Lara Flynn Boyle working the material well, and even O'Rourke - tasked with much more dialogue than in the previous films - does fine for a young actress.

I'd say it is scarier than 2 though, again, with lesser special effects and makeup.  I don't think either of the sequels would keep anyone up at night, but this one would surprise them a bit more during the viewing.  But if you only watch the first one, it isn't a crime to have missed either of the sequels.

6.5 out of 10

Review: Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

After my glowing review for the original film from yesterday, I feel a bit bad about following up on the sequel with a much more negative review - especially since (spoilers!) tomorrow's review of the third and final Poltergeist film will be more positive than this one.  What can you do, though?  Sometimes a great film is followed by a not-so-great sequel.  Especially in horror.

Poltergeist 2 (I am not using Roman numerals for the entirety of this review - I have neither the patience nor the energy) follows the Freeling family as the try to recover from the events of the first Poltergeist.  The eldest daughter is no longer present or mentioned (for depressing real life reasons I will not go into), but the other four are living with Diane Freeling's mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald, giving this movie its best performance in what amounts to a cameo role).  They are in dire financial straights, as insurance refuses to pay for the loss of their house and Steve (Craig T. Nelson) is no longer selling real estate.

Neither director Tobe Hooper or producer Steven Spielberg return for this sequel, which almost certainly is what damned it to mediocrity.  Despite some well-done special effects (the Tequila Monster is easily best-in-show), most of the film feels cheap - looking older and less well done despite coming four years later and with almost double the budget.  The returning cast all tries their best, but the magic is gone.  Nelson gives a sweaty, effortful performance that only works occasionally, and despite large amounts of the expanded 'lore' of the movie focusing on Diane's side of the family, JoBeth Williams isn't given much outside a single scene involving a picture and the returning Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein).

New villain Henry Kane (Julian Beck), the reverend leader of a cult of people who also died in Cuesta Verde under the Freeling house, is well cast and menacing enough, but the final confrontation feels rushed and almost anticlimactic.  Other than the above mentioned monster, the final moments against Kane are probably some of the best visual effects of the movie.

Other than that though, the movie is mostly a retread of the original, to much less effect.  Other than Kane and Gramma Jess, the only other new character is Taylor (Will Sampson, tasked to play a variation of the Magical Indian trope) - and none of them have arcs within the movie, so much as they are human props to push the story forward.  Even then, almost nothing new is given to the Freeling family, and what little there is doesn't get enough attention to really merit mentioning.

The movie is watchable, at least.  Nothing great happens, but at the very least it moves at a good pace and keeps your interest.  But it's very much the one that I would skip when rewatching the trilogy.

5 out of 10... maybe 6 if I am feeling generous.