 Screening Suggestion
When it comes to Halloween movies, it's easy enough to look at the horror genre, or, obviously, movies that are actually about Halloween in some way. However, there are a few genuinely creepy family features that fit just as well, not the least of which is 'Coraline', here. It's the first official film from Laika Studios, based on the Niel Gaiman book of the same name, and directed by Henry Selick of 'Nightmare Before Christmas' fame. Our basic plot involves an 11-year-old girl named Coraline (Dakota Fanning) who moves into a new home with her all-too-average parents. I many ways, she's bored and frustrated. She misses her friends, her parents are too busy for her, and she certainly doesn't relish in the chore or unpacking. She finds herself wandering the property, running into a fairly annoying boy named Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.) who gives her a mysterious doll that looks just like her. The doll sort of guides her to this mysterious crawl space door within the house, where Coraline discovers a strange but amazing new world. It's much like home, but with awesome, fun parents, who make sure there's never a dull moment for her. It's like the world was built special, just for her. However, this new, wonderful place, might just be a little more sinister than she imagines it to be. Along the way, there are interesting comparisons between the real world and this mystery world. It often profiles a few other characters who, although very strange in the real world, become what Coraline might expect/want them to be in the other. Various additions to the voice cast include the likes of Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Keith David, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, and Ian McShane, all of whom do a great job with their voice acting. However, I remain thoroughly impressed with Fanning on this one, as she very much comes across as that little girl who's a bit bratty, but sees the world through awed eyes. The whole gist of the movie is a cautionary tale on being careful what one wishes for - the perfect life one dreams of isn't all it's cracked up to be, and may have creepy consequences and catches. For those who have seen this movie, you'll all know the role that button eyes play here, and that alone is eerie enough for this one to qualify for an annual Halloween watch. "ParaNorman' is way more up my alley that this, but 'Coraline' could be held accountable for breathing new life into the stop motion art of animation. The film is considered by many to be a sort of instant classic, and it manages to reach the tip-top of a lot of peoples lists when it comes to top stop-motion animated films. Not that there's a whole whack to choose from, but it seems to have that sort of nostalgic power, in a sense. For myself, watching it reminds me very much of just being a kid with a crazy imagination, often being bored of the real world and wanting to escape some place fun. However, it does manage to hit home with a certain range of homesickness she gets, realizing that home isn't such a bad place, being so safe and comfortable. For my money, this really is a great flick for the whole family. It's a nice little intro to scary stuff for the kids, and maintains its creepiness factor for us adults all the same. Even though it's not officially any sort of Halloween movie, it still carries that Halloween magic along with it, and again, could become a non-typical annual watch for many. It seems to have gone that route anyway.
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 Under the Radar
Not to be confused with the Emma Watson/Tom Hanks dramatic thriller, 'The Circle', here we have a relatively intense, relatively original sci-fi thriller involving 50 strangers, a mysterious chamber, and deadly odds. A point of interest about this group is that they are all very different. Men, women, varying races, varying cultures, varying ages. I think the biggest name we have here is Carter Jenkins of 'Mad Men'. The rest of the cast, I didn't recognize, which either makes them no-names, or I've actually seen far less movies than I imagined. The group wakes up, and starts dying off one by one, ridding us of several characters fairly quickly. They soon figure out that they each have the ability to "vote" for who dies next, and it becomes a gruesome process-of-elimination game. The thrill of the film not only comes from how they end up having to inevitably decide who goes next, but the fact that they really don't know where they are, or why they're made to do this. In other words, there's no creepy 'Saw' puppet to guide them. These, folks are left to their own devices. The overall premise is really simple, and the film is definitely of the "bottle" variety, pretty much the whole way through. So if you don't wanna watch 50 strangers killing each other off for an hour and a half, this movie might not be for you. However, much like with a movie like 'Buried', there's more to the film than just claustrophobia. This film ends up being far more of a character study than anything, in that with such a variety of people, we see a lot of varying prejudices as well. The elderly, the dark-skinned, the gay, women (some pregnant), and yes, even a child, are all put to the test, usually against a mouthy, greedy, Caucasian dude. So there's definitely a sense of personal politics going on here, although I will say it doesn't cover everyone, it definitely gets its message across. The whole thing could be seen as a take on the white-washed world. The only real problem the film has, in my opinion, is its acting. It's not all bad, but some of the delivery feels like I'm watching a high school (maybe college) play. But when I don't recognize any of these faces, I can't be too nit-picky about such a thing. The real draw to this is the overall concept, and the execution does feel pretty intense. One must keep in mind that at the end of this, only one person comes out alive. So, much like with 'Game of Thrones', try not to establish a favorite character. 'Circle' can currently be found on Canadian Netflix if you'd like to check it out for yourself. I don't highly recommend it to just anyone and everyone, but if you wanna see an hour and a half bottle movie about, essentially, how our world of prejudices works, I totally recommend it. I definitely enjoyed it, for the most part. 4/5  Now Playing
This one isn't exactly what you'd call a "Halloween" title, but there's an air of mystery and thrill, and I thought it might be in the same vein, at least. Anyway, regardless, here we are with 'Bad Times at the El Royale' - a film that floated under many radars, despite its wide theatrical release. It even debuted at #7 for its opening weekend, according to the Box Office Top 10. However, despite mostly positive reviews, it simply didn't take off because too many people were busy, at the time, arguing about whether or not 'Venom' was any good. This one kinda revisits the bottle mystery sub-genre; movies along the same lines as something like 'Clue', or to match this particular title a bit closer, 'Hateful Eight', as I actually found it to be rather Tarantino-esque in overall style. This one comes from Director Drew Goddard, who's most notable directorial film is 'The Cabin in the Woods' - a movie you either love, hate, or love to hate (I love). This is a step away from that style and, as I say, a bit more Tarantino-esque (maybe that was just me, but I stand by it). The overall plot sees a group of characters come together by chance at the run down El Royale - a hotel with the border of Colorado and Nevada running through it, and a dark history. Each character - a priest (Jeff Bridges), a singer (Cynthia Erivo), a vacuum salesman (Jon Hamm), a hippie (Dakota Johnson) and the hotel's only worker (Lewis Pullman) all have checkered pasts of their own. Before the night is through, true colours are exposed after the arrival of Rose Summerspring (Cailee Spaeny) and her manipulative love-interest, Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth's Abs). All in all, this is one of those times where I don't fully know what to make of a film. I'd have to say it was enjoyable, but by the end of it all, I kinda just wanted to rewatch it with familiar eyes. It's one of those movies that goes back and forth according to different character perspectives, and it's easy for a dude like me to lose track of exactly what's going on sometimes when a movie does this. With that said, however, we had great performances, atmosphere, and intensity, so the film did a good enough job with its overall execution. So, the jumping around aspect of it really was my only major problem. I tend to find this can be fixed with multiple viewings, so odds are, I'll wanna check it out again at some point down the line. But really, it's still one of 2018's lesser titles, despite all it has working for it. I think if it's given some time once its released on DVD and Blu-ray, it has the potential to be a cult hit, but until then, it kinda stands as an enigma to me. Somehow it manages to be good but forgettable all at once. Maybe it's because we've seen this kind of thing before. Maybe it was other titles at the time drowning it out. Maybe it's all the jumping around between time and characters. All I know is that I can't recommend or not recommend this movie to anyone for any reason. It's just kinda there. We'll see what happens, but I suspect this one will suffer for a while until the right audience discovers it and wonders if it was ever released in theaters. 3/5  Catching Up
In this Swedish film from director Tomas Alfredson, author of the book of the same title, John Ajvide Lindqvist, also delivers the screenplay, allowing the original writer some varying creative leeway on the film. Generally a good, or at least promising thing, overall. This particular film starts out with a kid named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) practicing his killing moves and speech with a knife in his room with his shirt off. So pretty disturbing stuff from the get-go. However we quickly learn that Oskar is a victim of constant bullying, and our perspective changes from "I dunno if I wanna watch this" to "Let's see where this goes" petty abruptly. It's a good way to show us in just a few scenes just how troubled this boy is. Soon, we are also introduced to the likes of Eli (Lina Leandersson), a girl who has moved into a neighboring apartment. The pair befriend each other, and we learn that there's more than meets the eye with Eli when we discover that she's, in fact, a vampire. However, this is unknown by Oskar. All he understands is that this girl seems to like him for who he is, and helps him out with his bullies. Much of the pursuing story has to do with the more tragic side of being a vampire; having to consume nothing but blood, perhaps the idea of losing your loved ones, and in Eli's case, trying to be friends with a boy who seems understands her, but without revealing what she is. And yeah, there's a romantic side to this as well. That said, the aspects of vampirism are a bit more scattered through the movie. The main focus of this IS the relationship between Oskar and Eli. I personally found that they used it more to show how much Eli cares for Oskar as opposed to just showing off a bunch of special effects. In fact, the overall execution of anything vampiric here is fairly subtle, once again proving that big budgets aren't necessarily... necessary. I think I can actually admit without much hesitation that this falls somewhere on my list of favorite vampire movies. Although there are some truly disturbing moments within the film, it's just a different take on the whole thing. With it's moderately artistic execution, it's an intriguing change from any vampire stuff I'm more used to. By bringing down the aspects of Eli being a vampire and focusing more on the blossoming friendship, the whole thing could be seen symbolically as how strong a friendship can hold upon discovering stranger and stranger things about your friend. Will you be scared off, or will you stay because you still like who the person is? 4/5  Under the Radar
In my search for Halloween-ish movies that float under the radar, this particular recommendation caught my interest. Aside from the disturbingly intriguing title, the concept sounded good to me. As far as I knew, going into it, we had Jessica (Zohra Lampert); a recently released mental patient who may or may not be losing touch with reality again. And what I got was... well, pretty much that, but in a much different way than I had assumed. Jessica and her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman) move into a quiet farm house only to find a girl named Emily (Mariclare Costello) is squatting there. The couple end up inviting her to stay, and soon, Jessica starts seeing strange things - namely a girl's body floating around in the lake, know to have not been found after she apparently drowned. It really does end up being a bit of a Michigan J. Frog situation in that whenever Jessica wants to show and/or tell her husband and friends something, they kinda just brush it off and wonder if she's mentally healthy. For the most part, I honestly found the film to be pretty dull and boring. It does carry a decent atmosphere, has some pretty genuinely creepy moments, and attempts to tackle the truly horrific matter of mental health issues, but does so in a sort of lame way. It's just another ghost movie at the end of the day, at least for me. I just think I've seen it done much better. This may not be a bad movie for those seeking something that's not truly horrific, but eerie. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it just sort of dull. Not without its moments, but overall just dry and dull. I guess its meant to be something more psychological, but again, it's just been done better since, in my humble opinion. When all said and done, I don't think I can take much away from this one, and I don't really recommend it for those seeking a good scary movie. This almost turns out to be something you could find on Sunday afternoon TV. I can't truly give it to the performances, the soundtrack, the overall execution, or much else. The only leeway I can give it is that it was 1971, and this is well-before a lot of the better horror out there anyway. So, here I sit wanting to write something a little more genuine about the film, but I've honestly said all there is to say from my perspective. For myself, this was straight up watching paint dry for the most part. Small points for atmosphere and creepy imagery, but again, I have seen creepier. This is just a one-off 70's flick no one needs to revisit, or hardly even visit once. I'm just glad the dialogue wasn't insultingly bad. 2/5 |
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